The New Zealander

An image of the New Zealander, from 'London: a Pilgrimage' by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, 1872.

In the 'Edinburgh Review' of October 1840, T. B. Macaulay reviewed a recently translated book by Leopold von Ranke (The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries). In reference to the Catholic Church Macaulay wrote: 'And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s'.

This image of the New Zealander became a popular symbol for describing the fall of the capital. Already something of a cliche by 1872, Jerrold and Doré nevertheless make use of the image as they survey the Thames and reflect on the end of their 'pilgrimage': 'Now we have watched the fleets into noisy Billingsgate; and now gossiped looking towards Wren's grand dome, shaping Macaulay's dream of the far future, with the tourist New Zealander upon the broken parapets, contemplating something matching - "The glory that was Greece - The grandeur that was Rome".'