In regard to the proceedings of the court, I only know that the point under discussion concerned one Johnson, and a pump; and Mr. Pickwick's judge sat upon the bench. Whether he was originally round, red-faced, with gooseberry eyes, I do not remember; but all these pleasing characteristics he possessed at this present time, as well as a pudgy forefinger, with which to point his remarks.
"You say," he repeated, with a solemnity of which my pen is incapable, and impressing every word upon the poor man in the front pew with this same forefinger, "that--Bunsen--went--to--the--pump?"
"Johnson, my lord," the witness ventured to correct him, in a low tone.
"It makes no difference," responded the judge, irate, "whether it is Bunsen or Jillson. The question is, Did--Jillson--go--to--the--pump?"
Whom the gods destroy they first deprive of their five senses. Four, at least, of the poor man's had departed some time since. The fifth followed. "Johnson went, my lord," he replied, doggedly. Having found one point upon which his mind was clear, he clung to it with the tenacity of despair.
"Johnson! who's _Johnson_?" gasped the bewildered judge, over whose face a net of perplexed lines spread itself upon the introduction of this new character. In the confusion of denials and explanations that followed, we descended from our perch, and stole away; nor are we at all sure, to this day, as to whether Johnson did or did not really go to the pump.
Imagine our surprise, one day, when admiring a pretty ribbon upon a friend, to be told that it came from St. Paul's Churchyard. Hardly the place for ribbons, one would think; but the narrow street which encircles the cathedral in the form of a bow and its string goes by this name, and contains, besides the bookstores and publishing houses, some fine "silk mercers'" establishments.
The gray surface of the grand edifice is streaked with black, as though time had beaten it with stripes, and a pall of smoke and dust covers the statues in the court before it. Consecrated ground this is, indeed. From the earliest times of the Christian religion, through all the bigotry and fanaticism of the ages that followed, down to the present time, the word of God has been proclaimed here--in weakness often, in bitterness many times that belied the spirit of its message; by a priesthood more corrupt than the people; by noble men, beyond the age in which they lived, and whom the flames of martyrdom could not appall. Under Diocletian the first church was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and destroyed again by the Saxons. Twice has it been levelled to the ground by fire. But neither sword nor flame could subdue it, and firm as a rock it stands to-day, as it has stood for nearly two hundred years, and as it seems likely to stand for ages to come. The sacred stillness that invests the place was rudely broken, the morning of our visit, by the blows from the hammers of the workmen, resounding through the dome like a discharge of artillery. A great stage, and seats in the form of an amphitheatre, were being erected in the nave for a children's festival, which prevented our doing more than glance down its length. We read some of the inscriptions upon the monuments, that one, so often quoted, of Sir Christopher Wren, among them--"Do you seek his monument? Look around you;" glanced into the choir, with its Gothic stalls, where the service is performed, and then descended into the crypt beneath all this, that labyrinth of damp darkness where so many lie entombed. Here is the funeral car of Wellington, with candles burning around it, cast from the conquering cannon which thundered victory to a nation, but sorrow and death to many a home. Shrouded with velvet it is, as are the horses, in imitation of those which bore him to his rest. All around were marble effigies, blackened, broken, as they survived the burning of the late cathedral, at the time of the great fire. Tombstones formed the pavement. "Whose can this be?" I said, trying to follow with the point of my umbrella the half-worn inscription beneath my feet. It was that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Strange enough it seemed to us, coming from a country so new as to have been by no means prolific in great men, to find them here lying about under our feet.