'Oceana' Revisited: J.A. Froude's 1884 Journey to New Zealand and the Pink and White Terraces

Abstract

In his popular Romance of London (1867), John Timbs refers to Thomas Babington Macaulay's oft-repeated metaphor of a “New Zealander sitting, like a hundredth-century Marius, on the mouldering arches of London Bridge, contemplating the colossal ruins of St Paul's” (290). Originally intended as an illustration of the vigor and durability of the Roman Catholic Church despite the triumph of the Reformation, Macaulay's most famous evocation of this idea dates from 1840, the year of New Zealand's annexation; hence it is reasonable to suppose that this figure is a Maori (Bellich 297–98). For Timbs and subsequent generations, however, the image conveyed the sobering idea of the rise and fall of civilizations and in particular of England being invaded and overrun, if not by a horde of savages, then by a more robust class of Anglo-Saxons from the other side of the world.