Letters from England, Volume 2 (of 3)
Date: 2020-02-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs; Southey; Robert; 1774-1843 -- Travel -- England; Authors; English -- Travel -- England

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters from England, Volume 2 (of 3)

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Title: Letters from England, Volume 2 (of 3)

Author: Robert Southey

Release date: February 24, 2020 [eBook #61506]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS FROM ENGLAND, VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***

Transcriber's Note:

This work is by Robert Southey. It is a fictitious account of an imaginary Spanish nobleman travelling through England.

Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been rationalised. Inconsistent spelling (including accents and capitals) has been retained.

LETTERS
FROM
ENGLAND:

BY
DON MANUEL ALVAREZ ESPRIELLA.
TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND
BROWN, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1814.

Edinburgh:
Printed by James Ballantyne and Co.

CONTENTS
OF THE
SECOND VOLUME.

| Page
LETTER XXXII

High-street, Oxford.—Dress of the Oxonians.—Christ Church Walk.—Friar Bacon's Study.—Lincoln College.—Baliol.—Trinity.—New College.—Saint John's.—Mode of Living at the Colleges.—Servitors.—Summer Lightning.

1

LETTER XXXIII

Reform in the Examinations at Oxford.—Nothing but Divinity studied there.—Tendency towards the Catholic Faith long continued there.—New Edifices.—The Bodleian.—The Schools.

18

LETTER XXXIV

Godstow.—Fair Rosamund.—Blenheim.— Water-Works at Enstone.—Four-shire Stone.—Road to Worcester.—Vale of Evesham.—Hop-yards.—Malvern Hills.

27

LETTER XXXV

Man killed at Worcester by a Sword-fish.—Teignton Squash.—Grafting.—Ned of the Toddin.—Worcester China.—Cathedral.—St Wulstan.—K. John's Grave.—Journey to Birmingham.

38

LETTER XXXVI

Birmingham.—Miserable State of the Artificers.—Bad Guns manufactured for the Guinea Trade.—Anecdotes of Systematic Roguery.—Coiners.—Forgers.—Riots in 1791.—More Excuse for Dishonesty here than in any other Place.

56

LETTER XXXVII

Mail Coaches.—Mr Palmer ill-used.—Vicinity of Birmingham.—Collieries on fire.—Stafford.—Stone.—Newcastle-under-Line.—Punishments for Scolding.—Cheshire.—Bridgewater Arms at Manchester.

67

LETTER XXXVIII
Manchester.—Cotton Manufactory.—Remarks upon the pernicious Effects of the manufacturing System. | 81
LETTER XXXIX

Manchester.—Journey to Chester.—Packet-boat.—Brindley.—Rail Roads.—Chester Cathedral.—New Jail.—Assassination in the South of Europe not like Murder in England.—Number of Criminals,—but Abatement of Atrocity in Crimes.—Mitigation of Penal Law.—Robert Dew.—Excellent Administration of Justice.—Amendments still desired.

96

LETTER XL
Voyage to Liverpool.—Filthy Custom at the Inns.—School of the Blind.—Athenæum.—Mr Roscoe.—Journey to Kendal. | 113
LETTER XLI

Queen Mary I.—Lake of Winandermere.—Ambleside—Lake of Coniston.—Kirkstone Mountain.—Lake of Brotherwater.—Paterdale.—Lake of Ulswater.—Penrith.

127

LETTER XLII
Keswick, and its Lake.—Lodore Waterfall.—Ascent of Skiddaw. | 146
LETTER XLIII
Borrodale.—Wasdale.—Waswater.—Calder Bridge.—Ennerdale.—Crummock Water.—Lake of Buttermere.—Lakes on the Mountains. | 160
LETTER XLIV

Departure from the Lakes.—Wigton.—Carlisle.—Penrith.—The Borderers.—The Pillar of the Countess.—Appleby.—Brough.—Stainmoor.—Bowes.—Yorkshire Schools.

183

LETTER XLV

York City and Minster.—Journey to Lincoln.—Travellers imposed upon.—Innkeepers.—Ferry over the Trent.—Lincoln.—Great Tom.—Newark.—Alconbury Hill.

206

LETTER XLVI

Cambridge.—Republican Tendency of Schools counteracted at College.—College a useful Place for the debauched Students, a melancholy one for others.—Fellowships.—Advantage of a University Education.—Not so necessary as it once was.

223

LETTER XLVII

Newmarket.—Cruelty of Horse-racing.—Process of Wasting.—Character of a Man of the Turf.—Royston.—Buntingford.—Cheshunt.—Return to London.

241

LETTER XLVIII

Middlesex Election.—Nottingham Election.—Seats in Parliament, how obtained.—Modes of Bribery.—Aylesbury.—Ilchester.—Contested Elections.—Marriages at Bristol.—Want of Talent in the English Government accounted for.

250

LETTER XLIX

Fashion.—Total Change in the English Costume.—Leathern Breeches.— Shoes.—Boots.—Inventors of new Fashions.—Colours.—Female Fashions.— Tight Lacing.—Hair-dressing.—Hoops.—Bustlers.—Rumps.—Merry-thoughts and Pads.

268

LETTER L

Lady Wortley Montagu's Remark upon Credulity.—Superstitions of the English respecting the Cure of Diseases.—Sickness and Healing connected with Superstition.—Wesley's Primitive Physic.—Quacks.—Dr Graham.—Tractors.—Magnetic Girdles.—Quoz.—Quack Medicines.

278

LETTER LI
Account of Animal Magnetism. | 304
LETTER LII
Blasphemous Conclusion of Mainauduc's Lectures.—The Effects which he produced explained—Disappearance of the Imposture. | 331
LETTER LIII

Methodists.—Wesley and Whitfield.—Different Methods of attacking the Establishment.—Tithes.—Methodism approaches Popery, and paves the Way for it.—William Huntington, S. S.

340

ESPRIELLA'S
LETTERS FROM ENGLAND.

LETTER XXXII.

High-street, Oxford.—Dress of the Oxonians.—Christ Church Walk.—Friar Bacon's Study.—Lincoln College.—Baliol.—Trinity.—New College.—Saint John's.—Mode of Living at the Colleges.—Servitors.—Summer Lightning.

D. has a relation at one of the colleges, to whom he dispatched a note immediately upon our arrival. By the time tea was ready he was with us. It must be admitted, that though the English are in general inhospitable towards foreigners, no people can be more courteous to those who are properly introduced. The young student told us that he should show us the University with as much pleasure as we could see it; for he had abstained from visiting many things himself, till he should have a lion to take with him. Upon enquiring the meaning of this strange term, I found that I was a lion myself; it is the name for a stranger in Oxford.

The High-street, in which our inn is situated, is said to be the finest street in Europe. The Calle de Alcala is longer, broader, straighter, and, were the trees in the Prado of tolerable size, would have a finer termination. In point of fine buildings, I should suppose no street can be compared with this; but the whole cannot be seen at once, because it is not sufficiently straight.

The dress of the collegians is picturesque; that which the great body of students wear is not unlike that of a secular priest. The cap is square, worn diagonally, covered with black cloth, and has a silk tassel in the middle: noblemen have the tassel of gold. It is graceful, but inconvenient, being of no use against sun, wind, or rain. Every degree has its distinguishing habit; they are not numerous, and all are of the same colour. I was the more sensible of the beauty of this collegiate costume, as cloaks are not worn in this country: there are no monastics, and the clergy are not to be distinguished from the laity; so that there is a total want of drapery in the dress of Englishmen every where, except in the universities.

We went after tea to a walk belonging to the college of Christ Church, a foundation of the famous Wolsey, who thus made some compensation to literature, and, as he thought, to the church, for the injury which he had done them. The foundation has been greatly increased;—it has a modern square, finely built, with a modern gateway leading to it; but modern buildings are not in keeping with the monastic character of the place. Our monasteries, indeed, are rarely or never so beautiful as these colleges: these are lighter, without being the less venerable in appearance, and have that propriety about them which characterizes every thing English. The greater part of Christ Church college is antient; nothing can be finer than the great gateway, the great square, and the open ascent to the refectory, though the great square is debased by a little miserable fountain of green and stinking water in the centre, so pitiful, that the famous Mannekè of Brussels might well be placed in the midst of it, as the appropriate god of the puddle.

The walk belonging to this college is truly beautiful: a long avenue of fine old elms, whose boughs form a perfect arch in the vista, well exemplifying the hypothesis, that Gothic church architecture was designed to imitate the places where the Pagan Goths worshipped in the forest. At the termination of the walk a narrower way trends off, and winds round a large meadow by the side of the Isis, a river as much celebrated by the English poets, as the Mondego by the Portuguese. Nothing could be conceived more cheerful than the scene: a number of pleasure-boats were gliding in all directions upon this clear and rapid stream; some with spread sails; in others the caps and tassels of the students formed a curious contrast with their employment at the oar. Many of the smaller boats had only a single person in each; and in some of these he sat face forward, leaning back as in a chair, and plying with both hands a double-bladed oar in alternate strokes, so that his motion was like the path of a serpent. One of these canoes is, I was assured, so exceedingly light, that a man can carry it; but few persons are skilful or venturous enough to use it. Just where the river approaches nearest to the city, an old indented bridge stretches across, and a little fall cuts off all communication by boats with the upper part. Several smaller bridges over branches of the river were in sight, on some of which houses are built. On one of these formerly stood the study of Roger Bacon, the celebrated Franciscan. It was said, that whenever a wiser than he should pass under it, it would fall upon his head. I know not whether he who ordered its demolition was under any personal apprehensions, but it has been pulled down, not many years ago. It might have stood another millennium before the prediction would have been accomplished.

Our land view was not less interesting, nor less cheerful, than that towards the water. The winding walk was planted, with trees well disposed in groups, and all flourishing in a genial soil and climate: some poplars among them are of remarkable growth. Here the students were seen in great numbers; some with flowing gowns, others having rolled them up behind, others again with the folds gathered up and flung loosely over the arm. Spires, and towers, and pinnacles, and the great dome of the Radcliffe library, appeared over the high elms. The banks of Ilyssus, and the groves of Academus, could never have presented a sight more beautiful.

We walked till nine o'clock was announced by Great Tom, as the bell of Christ Church college is called: probably the last bell in the kingdom which has been baptized. It is of great size, and its tone full and sonorous. This is the supper hour in the colleges, after which the gates are shut. The names of those students who return late are taken down, and reported to the master; and if the irregularity be often repeated, the offender receives a reprimand. Order seems to be maintained here without severity; I heard no complaint of discipline from the young men, and the tutors on their part have as little reason to be displeased.

The next morning when I awoke, so many bells were chiming for church service, that for a while I wondered where I was, and could not immediately believe myself to be in England. We breakfasted with our fellow-traveller at Lincoln. This is a small and gloomy college; but our friend's apartments far exceeded in convenience and propriety, any which I have ever seen in a convent. The tea-kettle was kept boiling on a chafing-dish; the butter of this place is remarkably good; and we had each a little loaf set before us, called by the singular name of George Brown.[1] One man, whom they call a scout, waits upon the residents; another is the bed-maker. Service is performed in the chapels twice every day, at seven in the morning, and at five in the afternoon. The fellows lose their fellowships if they marry. It is surprising that so much of the original institution should still be preserved. A figure of the devil formerly stood upon this college; why placed there I have not learnt; but it is still a proverbial phrase to say of one who shows displeasure in his countenance, that he looks like the devil over Lincoln. Another college here has the whimsical ornament of a brazen nose on its gateway, from which it derives its name.

At ten o'clock the students go to their tutor, and continue with him an hour. At eleven therefore we called upon D.'s relation at Baliol college, which, though not large, nor of the handsomest order, is very neat, and has of late received many improvements, in perfectly good taste. The refectory is newly built, in the Gothic style; nothing can be less ornamented, yet nothing seems to need ornament less. There are four long tables, with benches for the students and bachelors. The fellow's table is on the dais at the upper end; their chairs are, beyond comparison, the easiest in which I ever sate down, though made entirely of wood: the seats are slightly concave from side to side; I know not how else to describe their peculiarity of construction, yet some thought and some experience must have been requisite to have attained to their perfection of easiness, and there may be a secret in the form which I did not discover. The chapel has some splendid windows of painted glass: in one, which represents the baptism of Queen Candace's eunuch, the pearl in the Ethiop's ear was pointed out to me as peculiarly well executed.

Our friend told us that Cranmer and Latimer were burnt before the gateway of this college, in bloody Queen Mary's days, by which name they always designate the sister of the bloody Elizabeth. I could not refrain from observing that these persecutors only drank of the same cup which they had administered to others, and reminded him of the blessed John Forrest, at whose martyrdom these very men had assisted as promoters, when he and the image of Christ were consumed in the same fire! It is truly astonishing to see how ignorant the English are of their own ecclesiastical history.

From hence we went to the adjoining college, which is dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The garden here is remarkable for a wall of yew, which encloses it on three sides, cut into regular pilasters and compartments. D. cried out against it, but I should lament if a thing, which is so perfect in its kind, and which has been raised with so many years of care—indeed, so many generations—were to be destroyed, because it does not suit with the modern improved taste in gardening. You would hardly conceive that a vegetable wall could be so close and impervious, still less, that any thing so unnatural could be so beautiful as this really is. We visited the gardens of two other colleges. In those of New College, the college arms were formerly cut in box, and the alphabet grew round them; in another compartment was a sun-dial in box, set round with true lovers' knots. These have been destroyed, more easily as well as more rapidly than they were formed; but as nothing beautiful has been substituted in their places, it had been better if they had suffered these old oddities to have remained. One proof of their predecessors' whimsical taste has however been permitted to stand; a row of trees, every one of which has its lower branches grafted into its next neighbour, so that the whole are in this way united. The chapel here is the most beautiful thing in the university: it was repaired about ten years ago: and when the workmen were preparing the wall to set up a new altar-piece, they discovered the old one, which had been plastered up in the days of fanaticism, and which, to the honour of the modern architect, is said to have differed little in design from that which he was about to have erected in its place. The whole is exquisitely beautiful; yet I have heard Englishmen say that new Gothic, and even old Gothic dust renovated, never produces the same effect as the same building would do, with the mellowed colouring, the dust, and the crumbliness of age. The colouring, they say, is too uniform, wanting the stains which time would give it: the stone too sharp, too fresh from the chisel. This is the mere prejudice of old habits. They object with better reason to a Gothic organ, so shaped that a new painted window can be seen through it, as in a frame: a device fitter for stage effect than for a chapel. The window itself, which is exceedingly beautiful, was designed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great English master.

The other garden to which we were led, was that of St John's; it is laid out in the modern taste, with a grass lawn, winding walks, and beds of flowers and flowering shrubs. High elms, apparently coeval with the building itself, grow in its front, the back looks into the garden; and this view is that which I should select, of all others, as giving the best idea of the beauty and character of the English colleges.

We dined with our friend at Baliol, in the refectory. Instead of assembling there at the grace, we went into the kitchen, where each person orders his own mess from what the cook has provided, every thing having its specific price. The expenses of the week are limited to a certain sum, and if this be exceeded the transgressor is reprimanded. I was well pleased at this opportunity of becoming acquainted with the œconomy of the colleges. The scene itself was curious: the kitchen was as large as that of a large convent; the grate of a prodigious size, because roast meat is the chief food of the English; it was so much shallower than any which I had seen in private families, as to consume comparatively but little coal; and the bars, contrary to the usual practice, placed perpendicularly. The cook's knife was nearly as long as a small sword, and it bent like a foil. The students order their messes according to seniority: but this custom was waived in our friend's favour, in courtesy to us as strangers. Every thing was served with that propriety which is peculiar to the English; we ate off pewter, a relic of old customs, and drank from silver cups.

I observed that the person who waited on us wore a gown, and had the appearance of a gentleman. On enquiry, I learnt that he was one of a class called servitors, who receive their education gratuitously, and enjoy certain pensions on condition of tolling the bell, waiting at table, and performing other menial offices. They are the sons of parents in low life, and are thus educated for the inferior clergy. When we talked upon this subject, D. said that he felt unpleasantly at calling to a man as well educated as himself, and of manners equally good, to bring him a piece of bread or a cup of beer. To this it was replied, that these persons, being humbly born, feel no humiliation in their office; that in fact it is none, but rather an advancement in life; that this was the tenure on which they held situations which were certainly desirable, and enjoyed advantages which would not else have been within their reach; and that many eminent men in the English church, among others the present primate himself, had risen from this humble station.

After dinner we adjourned to our friend's rooms. A small party had been invited to meet us: wine was set on the table in readiness, and fruit handed round. This, it seems, is the regular way of passing the afternoon. The chapel bell rung at five for evening service; some of our party left us at this summons; others remained, being permitted to absent themselves occasionally; a relaxation easily granted where attendance is looked upon as a mere matter of form, not as an act of religion.

Tea was served as in a private family, the English never dispensing with this meal. We then walked out, and ascending a hill close to the city, enjoyed a magnificent prospect of its towers and trees and winding waters. About ten there began one of the most glorious illuminations which it is possible to conceive,—far more so than the art of man can imitate. The day had been unusually hot, and the summer lightning was more rapid and more vivid than I had ever before seen it. We remained till midnight in the great street, watching it as it played over the bridge and the tower of St Magdalen's church. The tower, the bridge, the trees, and the long street were made as distinct as at noon-day, only without the colours of day, and with darker shadows,—the shadows, indeed, being utterly black. The lightning came not in flashes, but in sheets of flame, quivering and hanging in the sky with visible duration. At times it seemed as if the heavens had opened to the right and left, and permitted a momentary sight of the throne of fire.

[1]   George Bruno, probably some kind of roll so called from its first maker, like the Sally Lun of Bath.—Tr.

LETTER XXXIII.

Reform in the Examinations at Oxford.—Nothing but Divinity studied there.—Tendency towards the Catholic Faith long continued there.—New Edifices.—The Bodleian.—The Schools.

School and college are not united in the English universities. Students are not admitted till their school education is completed, which is usually between the age of seventeen and nineteen. Four years are then to be passed at college before the student can graduate; and till he has graduated he cannot receive holy orders, nor till he has attained the age of twenty-two years and a half. Formerly they went younger: the statutes forbid them to play at certain games in the streets, which are exclusively the amusement of children; but when the statutes were made, there were few other schools. The examinations preparatory to graduation were, till within these three or four years, so trifling as to be the opprobrium of Oxford. Some score of syllogisms were handed down from one generation to another; the candidate chose which of these he pleased to be examined in, and any two books in the learned languages. Any master of arts who happened to come into the schools might examine him. It was usually contrived to have a friend ready, lest too much might be expected, and not unfrequently nothing was done,—the champion had appeared in the lists, and that was enough. A great change has just taken place, and the examination is now so serious and severe, that the present generation speak with envy of the happy days of their predecessors.

At one of the colleges a needle and thread is given to every member on New Year's Day, with this admonition: "Take this, and be thrifty!" But though thrift may be enjoined by the statutes, it is not by the customs, of Oxford. The expence of living here is prodigious; few have so small a pension as 150l. sterling; and the students of the privileged classes expend four and five fold this sum. It might be thought that in learning, as in religion, there should be no distinction of persons. Distinctions however there are, in the universities, as well as in the churches; and the noble and wealthy students are admitted to academical honours, without passing through the term of years which is required from others.

Lectures are delivered here upon every branch of science: the students may attend them or not, at their own pleasure, except those of the divinity professor; a certificate of their attendance upon these is required before the bishops will ordain any candidate for orders. Degrees are granted in law, medicine, and music; but law must be studied in London, medicine in Edinburgh, and music wherever the musician pleases. It is only for those persons who are designed for the clergy, that a college education is indispensable; others are sent there because it is the custom, and because it is convenient that they should be under some little restraint, and have at least the appearance of having something to do, when they have ceased to be boys, and are not yet men. But, strictly speaking, Oxford is a school for divinity, and for nothing else.

I cannot look upon this beautiful city—for beautiful it is beyond my powers of language to describe—without a deep feeling of sorrow. The ways of Providence are indeed mysterious! Little did the pious founders of these noble institutions think to what a purpose they were one day to be made subservient: little did they think that they were establishing seminaries wherein their posterity were to be trained up in heresy and schism, and disciplined to attack that faith, for the support of which these stately buildings had been so munificently endowed. That this perversion might be complete, Catholics are excluded from these very universities which owe their establishment to Catholic piety. Every person who enters is obliged to subscribe the heterogeneous articles of the Church of England; a law which excludes all Dissenters, and thus shuts out no inconsiderable part of the English youth from the advantages of a regular education. Yet, to do Oxford justice, it must be admitted that the apostacy began in the state, and was forced upon her; that she clung to the faith till the very last, restored it with avidity under the short sunshine of Philip and Mary's reign, and, whenever there has appeared any disposition towards Catholicism in the government, has always inclined towards it as the saving side. More remains of the true faith are to be found here than exist elsewhere in England, as the frequency of church service, the celibacy to which the fellows are restricted, and the prayers which are said in every college for the souls of the founders and benefactors. It is surprising that so much should have been permitted to remain; indeed, that the colleges themselves should have been spared by the barbarous and barbarising spirit of the founders of the English schism, Lutherans, Calvinists, Bucerists or Zwinglians, call them which you will; from whichever head you name it, it is but one beast—with more heads than the hydra, and upon every forehead is written Blasphemy.[2]

A few buildings have been added to the city in later times,—not like the former ones. Protestantism builds no cathedrals, and endows no colleges. These later monuments of liberality have had science in view, instead of religion: the love of fame upon earth has been the founders' motive, not the hope of reward in heaven. The theatre, a library, a printing-office, and an observatory, have all been built since the great rebellion; the last is newly erected with the money which was designed to supply the library with books. The Bodleian was thought sufficient; and as there are college libraries beside, there seems to have been good reason for diverting the fund to a more necessary purpose. The Radcliffe library, therefore, as it is called, though highly ornamental to the city, is of little or no immediate use, the shelves being very thinly furnished. The Bodleian well deserves its celebrity. It is rich in manuscripts, especially in Oriental ones, for which it is chiefly indebted to archbishop Laud, a man who was so nearly a Catholic that he lost his head in this world, yet still so much a heretic, that it is to be feared he has not saved his soul in the next. Yet is this fine collection of more celebrity than real advantage to the university. Students are not allowed access to it till after they have graduated, and the graduates avail themselves so little of their privilege, that it may be doubted whether the books are opened often enough to save them from the worms. In their museums and libraries the English are not liberal; access to them is difficult, and the books, though not chained to the shelf, are confined to the room. Our collections of every kind are at the service of the public; the doors are open, and every person, rich or poor, may enter in. If the restrictions in England are necessary, it must be because honesty is not the characteristic of the nation.

The schools wherein the public examinations are held, are also of later date than the schism. James I. built them in a style as mixed and monstrous as that of his own church: all the orders are here mingled together, with certain improvements after the manner of the age, which are of no order at all. At the university printing-office, which is called the Clarendon press, they are busied upon a superb edition of Strabo, of which great expectations have long been formed by the learned. The museum contains but a poor collection. Oliver Cromwell's skull was shown me here, with less respect than I felt at beholding it. Another of their curiosities is the lanthorn which Guy Vaux held in his hand when he was apprehended, and the gunpowder plot detected. The English still believe that this plot was wholly the work of the Catholics!

[2]   In reply to such instances of the author's bigotry, which occur but too often, the words of an old English divine may not unaptly be quoted. "Sufficeth it us to know, that as the herneshaw, when unable by main strength to grapple with the hawk, doth slice upon her, bespattering the hawk's wings with dung or ordure, so to conquer with her tail what she cannot do with her bill and beak: so Papists, finding themselves unable to encounter the Protestants by force of argument out of the Scriptures, cast the dung of foul language and filthy railing upon them."—Tr.

LETTER XXXIV.

Godstow.—Fair Rosamund.—Blenheim.—Water-works at Enstone.—Four-shire Stone.—Road to Worcester.—Vale of Evesham.—Hop-yards.—Malvern Hills.

Monday, July 5.

The coach by which we were to proceed passes through Oxford between four and five o'clock in the morning; we left our baggage to be forwarded by it, and went on one stage the preceding day, by which means we secured a good night's rest, and saw every thing which could be taken in upon the way. Two of our Oxford acquaintances bore us company: we started soon after six, and went by water, rowing up the main stream of the Isis, between level shores; in some places they were overhung with willows or alder-bushes, in others the pasture extended to the brink; rising ground was in view on both sides. Large herds of cattle were grazing in these rich meadows, and plovers in great numbers wheeling over head. The scenery was not remarkably beautiful, but it is always delightful to be upon a clear stream of fresh water in a fine summer day. We ascended the river about a league to Godstow, where we breakfasted at a little ale-house by the water-side.

This place is celebrated for the ruins of a nunnery, wherein Fair Rosamund was buried, the concubine of King Henry II., a woman as famous for her beauty and misfortunes as our Raquel the Jewess, or the Inez de Castro of the Portugueze. The popular songs say that Henry, when he went to the wars, hid her in a labyrinth in the adjoining park at Woodstock, to save her from his queen. The labyrinth consisted of subterranean vaults and passages, which led to a tower: through this, however, the jealous wife found her way, by means of a clue of thread, and made her rival choose between a dagger and a bowl of poison; she took the poison and died. The English have many romances upon this subject, which are exceedingly beautiful. But the truth is, that she retired into this convent, and there closed a life of penitence by an edifying death. She was buried in the middle of the quire, her tomb covered with a silken pall, and tapers kept burning before it, because the king for her sake had been a great benefactor to the church; till the bishop ordered her to be removed as being a harlot, and therefore unworthy so honourable a place of interment. Her bones were once more disturbed at the schism, when the nunnery was dissolved; and it is certain, by the testimony of the contemporary heretical writers themselves, that when the leather in which the body had been shrouded within the leaden coffin was opened, a sweet odour issued forth. The remains of the building are trifling, and the only part of the chapel which is roofed, serves as a cow-house, according to the usual indecency with which such holy ruins are here profaned. The man who showed us the place, told us it had been built in the times of the Romans, and seemed, as well he might, to think they were better times than his own. The grave of Rosamund is still shown; a hazel tree grows over it, bearing every year a profusion of nuts which have no kernel. Enough of the last year's produce were lying under the tree to satisfy me of the truth of this, explain it how you will.

From hence we walked to Blenheim, the palace which the nation built for the famous Duke of Marlborough; a magnificent monument of public gratitude, befitting such a nation to erect to such a man. The park in which it stands is three leagues in circumference. It is the fashion in England to keep deer within these large, and almost waste, inclosures: the flesh of these animals is preferred to any other meat; it is regarded as the choicest dainty of the table, and the price at which it sells, when it can be purchased, is prodigious. They were standing in groups under the fine trees which are always to be found in these parks, others quietly feeding upon the open lawn: their branching antlers, their slender forms, their spotted skin, the way in which they spring from the ground and rebound as they alight, and the twinkling motion of their tails which are never at rest, made them beautiful accompaniments to the scenery.

We went over the palace, of which, were I to catalogue pictures, and enumerate room after room, I might give a long and dull account. But palaces, unless they are technically described to gratify an architect, are as bad subjects for description as for painting. Be satisfied when I say that every thing within was splendid, sumptuous, and elegant. Would it interest you more to read of the length, breadth, and height of apartments, the colour of hangings, and the subjects of pictures which you have never seen?

Woodstock is near at hand; a good town, celebrated for smaller articles of polished steel, such as watch-chains and scissars, and for leathern gloves and breeches of the best quality. Here we dined: our friends from Oxford left us after dinner, and we proceeded about a league to Enstone, a village where the stage would change horses at a convenient hour on the following morning, and where we were told there were some water-works which would amuse us, if we were in time to see them. To effect this we left Woodstock the sooner. It was but a melancholy sight. The gardens had been made in the days of Charles I. above a century and half ago, and every thing about them was in a state of decay. The water-works are of that kind which were fashionable in the days when they were made;—ingenious devices for wetting the beholder from the sides, roof, floor, and door-way of the grotto into which he had entered, and from every object which excited his curiosity. Our inn furnished us with such a lodging as is called indifferent in England: but every thing was clean, and we had no cause for complaint. They brought us two sorts of cheese at supper, neither of which had I ever before met with; the one was spotted with green, being pleasantly flavoured with sage; the other veined with the deep red dye of the beet-root: this must have been merely for ornament, for I could not perceive that the taste was in the slightest degree affected by the colouring. There was upon both cheeses the figure of a dolphin, a usual practice, for which I have never heard any reason assigned.

*****

Tuesday, July 6.

We rose at a wholesome hour, and were ready before six, when the coach came up. The morning was fine, and we mounted the roof. The country is uninteresting, hills of neither magnitude nor beauty, and fields intersected by stone walls. We passed through a town called Chipping-Norton, which stands on the side of a hill, and then descended into a marsh, from whence the little town on the hill side became a fine object. A few miles beyond, a pillar has been erected to mark the spot where the four shires of Oxford, Warwick, Worcester, and Gloucester meet; this latter one we now entered. Breakfast was ready for us at Moreton in the Marsh, a place which seems to have little else to support it than its situation on the high road from Worcester to London. Before we entered, the coachman pointed out to us the town of Stow in the Wold, built on a high hill to our left, where he told us there was neither fire, water, nor earth. Water was formerly raised from a deep well by means of a horizontal windmill, but this has fallen to decay.

The marsh ended at Moreton, and we entered upon a country of better features. We crossed the Campden Hills, ascending a long hill from Moreton, travelling about two leagues on the top, and descending to a little town called Broadway. From the height we overlooked the Vale of Evesham, or of the Red Horse, so called from the figure of a horse cut in the side of a hill where the soil is of that colour. This is one of the most fertile parts of England, yet is the vale less striking than the Vale of Honiton—at least in the point from which we saw it—because the inequalities, which may render it in parts more beautiful, prevent it from being seen as a whole. It is remarkable in English history as the place where Simon de Montford, son to the Champion of the Church against the Albigenses, was defeated and slain by prince Edward. The town from whence the vale derives its name is old, and has some fine remains of an abbey, which I wished to have examined more at leisure than the laws of a stage-coach would allow.

Our road to Worcester lay through this highly-cultivated valley. I was delighted with the fine pear-trees which wooded the country, and still more by the novel appearance of hop-yards, which I had never before seen, and which were now in full beauty. If this plant be less generous and less useful than the vine, it is far more beautiful in its culture. Long poles are fixed into the ground in rows; each has its separate plant, which climbs up, and having topt, it falls down in curly tresses. The fruit, if it may be called such, hangs in little clusters; it resembles the cone of the fir, or rather of the larch, in its shape, but is of a leafy substance, and hardly larger than an acorn. They use it in bittering beer, though I am told that there still exists a law which prohibits its culture as a poisonous weed, and that in the public breweries cheaper ingredients are fraudulently used. Hop-picking here is as joyous a time as our vintage. The English have two didactic poems concerning this favourite plant, which is more precarious than any other in its crop, being liable to particular blights, so that it often fails. It is cultivated chiefly in this province and in Kent, and is rarely attempted in any other part of the kingdom.

Malvern was in sight to the west; a range of mountains standing in the three provinces of Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford, and on the side where we beheld them rising immediately from the plain. This sierra is justly admired for the beauty of its form, and its singular situation. It is the first which I have seen in England, nor are there any other mountains between this and the eastern and southern coasts. Westward the mountainous part begins almost immediately behind it, and extends through the whole line of Wales. About three we reached Worcester, a fine and flourishing city, in the midst of this delightful country.

LETTER XXXV.

Man killed at Worcester by a Sword-fish.—Teignton Squash.—Grafting.—Ned of the Toddin.—Worcester China.—Cathedral.—St Wulstan.—K. John's Grave.—Journey to Birmingham.

Tuesday, July 6.

Were I an epicure, I should wish to dine every fast day at Worcester. The Severn runs through the town, and supplies it with salmon in abundance, the most delicious of all fish. You would hardly suppose that there could be any danger from sea-monsters in bathing at such a distance from the mouth of the river, which is at least five-and-twenty leagues by the course of the stream; yet about thirty years ago a man here actually received his death wound in the water from a swordfish. The fish was caught immediately afterwards, so that the fact was ascertained beyond a doubt.

Perry is the liquor of this country: a cyder made from pears instead of apples. The common sort when drawn from the cask is inferior to the apple juice, but generous perry is truly an excellent beverage. It sparkles in the glass like Champaign, and the people here assure me that it has not unfrequently been sold as such in London. I am told a circumstance concerning the particular species of pear from which this of the finer quality is made, which would stagger my belief, if I did not recollect that in such cases incredulity is often the characteristic of ignorance. This species is called the Teignton squash—(admire, I pray you, this specimen of English euphony!)—all the trees have been grafted from the same original stocks at Teignton; those stocks are now in the last stage of decay, and all their grafts are decaying at the same time. They who have made the physiology of plants their study, (and in no other country has this science ever been so successfully pursued as here,) assert that with grafted trees this always is the case; that the graft, being part of an old tree, is not renovated by the new stock into which it is inoculated, but brings with it the diseases and the age of that from which it has been taken, and dies at the same time of natural[3] decay. The tree raised from seed is the progeny of its parent, and itself a separate individual; it begins a new lease of life. That which is produced from a graft obtains, like a dismembered polypus, a separate existence; but its life, like that of the fabled Hamadryads, ends with that of the trunk from which it sprung.

The adjoining province of Herefordshire, with its immediate vicinity, is the great cyder country; more and of better quality being made here than in the West of England. Particular attention is now paid here by scientific men to the culture of the apple, which they raise from seed, in conformity to the theory just explained; they choose the seed carefully, and even assert that the pips from the southern chambers of the apple are preferable to those in the other side. In many parts of England cyder is supposed to be an unwholesome liquor; experience here disproves the opinion. It is the common drink: the people drink it freely at all times, and in harvest times profusely: a physician of the country says that any other liquor taken so profusely would be hurtful, but that no ill effects are produced by this. Madness is said to be frequent in this province; and those persons, who, when they find two things coexistent, however unconnected, immediately suppose them to be cause and effect, attribute it to the use of cyder. If the fact be true, the solution is obvious; madness is an hereditary disease: in former times families were more stationary than they are now, intermarriages took place within a narrow sphere, and the inhabitants of a whole province would, in not many generations, all be of the same blood.

A generation ago there certainly were in these parts many poor madmen or idiots, who, being quite harmless, were permitted to wander whither they would, and received charity at every house in their regular rounds. Of one of these, his name was Ned of the Toddin, I have just heard a tale which has thrilled every nerve in me from head to foot. He lived with his mother, and there was no other in family:—it is remarked that idiots are always particularly beloved by their mothers, doubtless because they always continue in a state as helpless and as dependent as infancy. This poor fellow, in return, was equally fond of his mother; love towards her was the only feeling of affection which he was capable of, and that feeling was proportionately strong. The mother fell sick and died: of death, poor wretch, he knew nothing, and it was in vain to hope to make him comprehend it. He would not suffer them to bury her, and they were obliged to put her into the coffin unknown to him, and carry her to the grave, when, as they imagined, he had been decoyed away to a distance. Ned of the Toddin, however, suspected that something was designed; watched them secretly, and as soon as it was dark opened the grave, took out the body and carried it home. Some of the neighbours compassionately went into the cottage to look after him: they found the dead body seated in her own place in the chimney corner, a large fire blazing, which he had made to warm her, and the idiot son with a large dish of pap offering to feed her.—"Eat, mother!" he was saying,—"you used to like it!"—Presently, wondering at her silence, he looked at the face of the corpse, took the dead hand to feel it, and said, "Why d'ye look so pale, mother? why be you so cold?"

*****

Wednesday, July 7.

The main manufactory of this place is in porcelain, and the shops in which this ware is displayed are as splendid and as beautiful as can possibly be imagined. They are equal in length to a common parochial church, and these exquisite works of art arranged in them in the best order upon long counters, around the sides, and in the windows on each side the door which occupy the whole front. In China it is said that the prepared clay is buried in deep pits, and left to ripen there for half a century; by which means their porcelain attains that semi-pellucid and pearly delicacy which has never been equalled here. If this be the case, the inferiority of the English ware is accounted for. Trade in England will not wait for such slow returns. But if the Chinese excel them in this particular instance, and rival them in the vividness of their colours, they must yield the palm in whatever depends upon taste. One dinner service you see painted with landscapes, every separate piece being a different picture; another represents flowers or fruit coloured to the life; another, the armorial bearings of the family for whom it has been fabricated, emblazoned with all the richness of heraldic colouring. These things are perfect in their kind: yet such are the effects of prejudice and habit, that the grotesque and tasteless patterns of the real China are frequently preferred; and the English copy the hair-lined eyebrows of the Chinese, their unnatural trees and distorted scenery, as faithfully as if they were equally ignorant of perspective themselves. There is however thus much to be said in favour of this prejudice, that plates and tea-saucers have made us better acquainted with the Chinese than we are with any other distant people. If we had no other documents concerning this extraordinary nation, a series of engravings from these their own pictures would be considered as highly curious, and such a work, if skilfully conducted and annotated, might still elucidate the writings of travellers, and not improbably furnish information which it would be in vain to seek in Europe from other sources.

Another important branch of the trade of Worcester is in leathern gloves. One inevitable consequence of the unnatural extension of trade in this land of commerce is, that the slightest change of fashion reduces so many of the labouring class to immediate distress and ruin. Three or four years ago the English ladies chose to wear long silken gloves; the demand for leathern ones immediately ceased, and the women, whose business it was to make them, were thrown out of employ. This was the case of many hundreds here in Worcester. In such cases men commonly complain and submit; but women are more disposed to be mutinous; they stand less in fear of law, partly from ignorance, partly because they presume upon the privilege of their sex, and therefore in all public tumults they are foremost in violence and ferocity. Upon this occasion they carried their point within their own territories; it was dangerous to appear in silken gloves in the streets of this city; and one lady, who foolishly or ignorantly ventured to walk abroad here in this forbidden fashion, is said to have been seized by the women and whipped.

The cathedral church of this city is a fine Gothic edifice, which has lately undergone a thorough repair. It is some satisfaction to see, that if the English build no new cathedrals, they at least preserve the old ones, which I hope and trust are likely to survive that schism which threatened them with destruction, and to witness the revival and restoration of the true faith, whereof they are such splendid memorials.

St Wulstan was the founder. His name indeed is remembered here; but in this church, where the shrine of the founder was once devoutly visited, the tomb which is now pointed out to the notice and respect of travellers is that of the bishop who first set the example of disobedience to king James II. when he attempted to recall the nation to the religion of their fathers! It is not in this magnificent monument of his own rearing that the history of St Wulstan is to be learnt. I have found in the Chronicle of a Spanish Benedictine what I should never have heard at Worcester. This holy man was elected to the see against his own will, nor did he accept it till he had been convinced by signs that it was the will of God. After some years his enemies conspired to depose him. There are few finer miracles in hagiology than that which is recorded as having been vouchsafed upon this occasion. They complained that he was illiterate, and therefore unworthy of the dignity which he held. The true cause of the accusation was, that he was a Saxon; the Norman conquest had been effected since his appointment to the see, and it was wanted for a foreigner. A council was assembled in Westminster abbey. The king and the Norman prelates were prejudiced judges; and Lanfranc, the primate, though too holy a man ever to commit an act of wilful injustice, in his zeal for learning lent a ready ear to the charges, and, being an Italian, was easily deceived by the misrepresentations of the accusers. Accordingly he pronounced sentence of deposition against the saint, and required him to deliver up his ring and crosier. St Wulstan, neither feeling dismay at heart, nor manifesting sorrow in his countenance, rose up as soon as sentence was pronounced against him, and leaning upon his crosier, replied: "Certainly I know that I am unworthy of my honourable office, and unequal to the weight of my dignity; but it is no new thing for me to know this! I knew it and acknowledged it when my clergy elected me; and the bishops compelled me to accept it, and holy king Edward, my lord, by apostolical authority, imposed this weight upon my shoulders, and ordered this crosier to be given into my hands. You," said he, addressing himself to Lanfranc, "you demand from me the crosier which you did not give me, and take from me the office which I did not receive from you. I therefore, confessing my own insufficiency, and obeying the decree of the council, yield up my crosier, not to you, but to him from whose authority I received it." Saying this, he advanced to the tomb of holy king Edward the Confessor. "There are new laws in this land," he exclaimed, "a new king and new prelates, who promulgate new sentences! They accuse thee of error, O holy king, in promoting me, and me of presumption for having obeyed thee. Then, Edward, thou couldst err, for thou wert mortal; but now, when peradventure thou art enjoying the presence of the Lord, now,—canst thou now be deceived?—I will not yield up my crosier to these from whom I did not receive it; they are men who may deceive and be deceived. But to thee do I deliver it, who hast escaped the errors and darkness of the world, and art in the light of truth; to thee with the best willingness I resign my pastoral staff, and render up the charge of my flock. My lord and king, give thou the charge to whom thou thinkest worthy!" He then laid the crosier upon the tomb, disrobed himself of his episcopal insignia, and took his seat like a private monk in the assembly. The crosier entered the stone, as if it had been imbedded in melting wax, and could not be taken from it by any other hand than by that of the holy bishop who had laid it there.

The grave of king John is here, a monarch remarkable in English history for having signed the Great Charter, resigned his crown to the pope's legate, and offered to turn Mohammedan if the Miramolin would assist him against his subjects. As there were some doubts whether the grave which was commonly supposed to be his was really so, it was opened two or three years ago, and the tradition verified. It appeared that it had been opened before for other motives; for some of the bones were displaced, and the more valuable parts of his dress missing. As this was at the time when the revolutionary disposition of the people had occasioned some acts of unusual rigour on the part of government, it was remarked in one of the newspapers, that if king John had taken the opportunity to walk abroad and observe how things were going on, it must have given him great satisfaction to see how little was left of that Magna Charta, which he had signed so sorely against his will.

We waited in Worcester for the coach from Bristol to Birmingham, which passes through in the afternoon, and in which we were tolerably sure of finding room, as it is one of those huge machines which carries sixteen withinside. Its shape is that of a coffin[4] placed upside-down; the door is at the end, and the passengers sit sideways. It is not very agreeable to enter one of these coaches when it is nearly full: the first comers take possession of the places nearest the door at one end, or the window at the other, and the middle seats are left for those who come in last, and who for that reason, contrary to the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, may literally be said to bear the heat of the day. There were twelve passengers already seated when we got in; they expressed no satisfaction at this acquisition of company; one woman exclaimed that she was almost stewed to death already, and another cried out to the coachman that she hoped he would not take in any body else. The atmosphere of the apartment, indeed, was neither fresher nor more fragrant than that of a prison; but it was raining hard, and we had no alternative. The distance was only two stages, that is a long day's journey in our own country, but here the easy work of five hours; but I never before passed five hours in travelling so unpleasantly. To see any thing was impossible; the little windows behind us were on a level with our heads, the coachman's seat obstructed the one in front, and that in the door-way was of use only to those who sat by it. Any attempt which we made at conversation by way of question, was answered with forbidding brevity; the company was too numerous to be communicative; half of them went to sleep, and I endeavoured to follow their example, as the best mode of passing away time so profitless and so uncomfortable. But it was in vain; heat, noise, and motion, kept me waking. We were heartily rejoiced when the coach arrived at Birmingham, and we were let loose, to stretch our limbs at liberty, and breathe an air, cool at least, if not fresh.

[3]   Hudibras might have added this illustration to his well-known simile of the new noses: but the experiments of Taliacotius have been verified in modern times; and this may teach us not too hastily to disbelieve an assertion which certainly appears improbable.—Tr.

[4]   The author compares one of these coaches elsewhere, (vol. i. p. 35,) to a trunk with a rounded lid, placed topsy-turvy. It should appear, therefore, that coffins in Spain are shaped like trunks.—Tr.

LETTER XXXVI.

Birmingham.—Miserable State of the Artificers.—Bad Guns manufactured for the Guinea Trade.—Anecdotes of Systematic Roguery.—Coiners.—Forgers.—Riots in 1791.—More Excuse for Dishonesty here than in any other Place.

Thursday, July 7.—Birmingham.

You will look perhaps with some eagerness for information concerning this famous city, which Burke, the great orator of the English, calls the grand toy-shop of Europe. Do not blame me if I disappoint you. I have seen much, and more than foreigners are usually admitted to see; but it has been too much to remember, or indeed to comprehend satisfactorily. I am still giddy, dizzied with the hammering of presses, the clatter of engines, and the whirling of wheels; my head aches with the multiplicity of infernal noises, and my eyes with the light of infernal fires,——I may add, my heart also, at the sight of so many human beings employed in infernal occupations, and looking as if they were never destined for any thing better. Our earth was designed to be a seminary for young angels, but the devil has certainly fixed upon this spot for his own nursery-garden and hot-house.

You must forgive me, if I do not attempt to describe processes which I saw too cursorily, and with too little pleasure to understand. A sick stomach will not digest the food that may be forced down it, and the intellect is as little able to assimilate that for which it has no aptitude.

When we look at gold, we do not think of the poor slaves who dug it from the caverns of the earth; but I shall never think of the wealth of England, without remembering that I have been in the mines. Not that the labourers repine at their lot; it is not the least evil of the system, that they are perfectly well satisfied to be poisoned soul and body. Foresight is not a human instinct: the more unwholesome the employment, the higher of course are the wages paid to the workmen; and incredible as it may seem, a trifling addition to their weekly pay makes these short-sighted wretches contend for work, which they certainly know will in a very few years produce disease and death, or cripple them for the remainder of their existence.

I cannot pretend to say, what is the consumption here of the two-legged beasts of labour; commerce sends in no returns of its killed and wounded. Neither can I say that the people look sickly, having seen no other complexion in the place than what is composed of oil and dust smoke-dried. Every man whom I meet stinks of train-oil and emery. Some I have seen with red eyes and green hair; the eyes affected by the fires to which they are exposed, and the hair turned green by the brass works. You would not, however, discover any other resemblance to a triton in them, for water is an element with the use of which, except to supply steam-engines, they seem to be unacquainted.

The noise of Birmingham is beyond description; the hammers seem never to be at rest. The filth is sickening: filthy as some of our own old towns may be, their dirt is inoffensive; it lies in idle heaps, which annoy none but those who walk within the little reach of their effluvia. But here it is active and moving, a living principle of mischief, which fills the whole atmosphere, and penetrates every where, spotting and staining every thing, and getting into the pores and nostrils. I feel as if my throat wanted sweeping like an English chimney. Think not, however, that I am insensible to the wonders of the place:—in no other age or country was there ever so astonishing a display of human ingenuity: but watch-chains, necklaces, and bracelets, buttons, buckles, and snuff-boxes, are dearly purchased at the expence of health and morality; and if it be considered how large a proportion of that ingenuity is employed in making what is hurtful as well as what is useless, it must be confessed that human reason has more cause at present for humiliation than for triumph at Birmingham.

A regular branch of trade here is the manufacture of guns for the African market. They are made for about a dollar and a half; the barrel is filled with water, and if the water does not come through, it is thought proof sufficient; of course they burst when fired, and mangle the wretched negro who has purchased them upon the credit of English faith, and received them most probably as the price of human flesh! No secret is made of this abominable trade; yet the government never interferes, and the persons concerned in it are not marked and shunned as infamous.

In some parts of Italy, the criminal who can prove himself to be the best workman in any business is pardoned in favorem artis, unless his crime has been coining; a useful sort of benefit of clergy. If ingenuity were admitted as an excuse for guilt in this country, the Birmingham rogues might defy the gallows. Even as it is, they set justice at defiance, and carry on the most illegal practices almost with impunity. Some spoons which had been stolen here were traced immediately to the receiver's house: "I know what you are come for," said he to the persons who entered the room in search of them, "you are come for the spoons," and he tossed over the crucible into the fire, because they were not entirely melted. The officers of justice had received intelligence of a gang of coiners; the building to which they were directed stood within a court-yard, and when they reached it they found that the only door was on the upper story, and could not be reached without a ladder: a ladder was procured: it was then some time before the door could be forced, and they heard the people within mocking them all this while. When at last they had effected their entrance, the coiners pointed to a furnace in which all the dies and whatever else could criminate them, had been consumed during this delay. The coins of every country with which England carries on any intercourse, whether in Europe, Asia, or America, are counterfeited here and exported. An inexhaustible supply of halfpence was made for home consumption, till the new coinage put a stop to this manufactory: it was the common practice of the dealers in this article, to fry a pan-full every night after supper for the next day's delivery, thus darkening them, to make them look as if they had been in circulation.

Assignats were forged here during the late war; but this is less to be imputed to the Birmingham speculators, than to those wise politicians who devised so many wise means of ruining France. The forgery of their own bank notes is carried on with systematic precautions which will surprise you. Information of a set of forgers had been obtained, and the officers entered the house: they found no person on any of the lower floors; but when they reached the garret, one man was at work upon the plates in the farthest room, who could see them as soon as they had ascended the stairs. Immediately he opened a trap-door, and descended to the floor below; before they could reach the spot to follow him, he had opened a second, and the descent was impracticable for them on account of its depth: there they stood and beheld him drop from floor to floor till he reached the cellar, and effected his escape by a subterranean passage.

You may well imagine what such people as these would be in times of popular commotion. It was exemplified in 1791. Their fury by good luck was in favour of the government; they set fire to the houses of all the more opulent dissenters whom they suspected of disaffection, and searched every where for the heresiarch Priestley, carrying a spit about on which they intended to roast him alive. Happily for himself and for the national character, he had taken alarm and withdrawn in time.

It ought, however, to be remembered that there is more excuse to be made for dishonesty in Birmingham, than could be pleaded any where else. In no other place are there so many ingenious mechanics, in no other place is trade so precarious. War ruins half the manufacturers of Birmingham by shutting their markets. During the late war nearly three thousand houses were left untenanted here. Even in time of peace the change of fashion throws hundreds out of employ. Want comes upon them suddenly; they cannot dig; and though they might not be ashamed to beg, begging would avail nothing where there are already so many mendicants. It is not to be expected that they will patiently be starved, if by any ingenuity of their own they can save themselves from starving. When one of Shakspeare's characters is tempted to perform an unlawful action, he exclaims, "My poverty, but not my will, consents." It is but just, as well as merciful, to believe that the same extenuation might truly be pleaded by half the criminals who come under the rod of the law.

Being a foreigner, I could not see Messrs Bolton and Watts's great works at Soho, which are the boast of Birmingham, and indeed of England. As these extraordinary men have by the invention of the steam-engine produced so great a change upon the commercial system, and thereby upon society in this country, I could have wished to have seen their own establishment; but it was in vain, and I did not choose by making the trial to expose myself to the mortification of a refusal.

LETTER XXXVII.

Mail Coaches.—Mr Palmer ill-used.—Vicinity of Birmingham.—Collieries on fire.—Stafford.—Stone.—Newcastle-under-Line.—Punishments for Scolding.—Cheshire.—Bridgewater Arms at Manchester.

Friday, July 9.

The mail coach which communicates between Bristol and Manchester, leaves Birmingham at a reasonable hour in the morning. These coaches travel at a rate little short of two leagues in the hour, including all stoppages; they carry four inside passengers, two outside; the rate of fare is considerably higher than in other stages; but a preference is given to these, because they go faster, no unnecessary delays are permitted, and the traveller who goes in them can calculate his time accurately. Every coach has its guard, armed with a blunderbuss, who has charge of the mails; he has a seat affixed behind the coach, from whence he overlooks it, and gives notice with a horn to clear the road when any thing is in the way, to bring out the horses when he approaches the end of a stage, and to be ready with the letter-bags when he enters a post-town. Guards and coachmen all wear the royal livery, and the royal arms are upon the coaches.

It is now about twenty years since this plan has been adopted. Before that time the mails were carried by a single courier, who was as long again upon the road, and at the mercy of every footpad. They are now perfectly safe; they go without expense, in consequence of the profits of the coaches: and the effect of the rapid communication has been to double that branch of the revenue which is derived from the post-office. Yet the projector has little reason to be satisfied with the justice of the nation. He stipulated for a centage upon the clear increase of revenue above a certain sum. The whole management of the post-office was intrusted to him; but there were two lords above him with higher powers and higher salaries. These places he wished to abolish as useless, not recollecting that government desires to have as many places at its disposal as possible, and, instead of wanting to curtail the number of old ones, would have been obliged to him to have invented new. In the struggle he was displaced himself: so far all was fair, as he only lost the stake for which he was playing: but advantage was taken of this to annul the terms of the contract between him and the nation, and assign him 4000l. a-year, in lieu of his per centage, which already amounted to a much larger sum, and would yearly have increased with the increasing revenue. Of course he remonstrated against this breach of public faith; the cause was brought before parliament, and it was absurdly argued against him, that smaller pensions than this had been deemed a sufficient reward for their victorious admirals,—as if rewards and contracts were of the same nature. The minister was against him, and parliament therefore annulled its own contract in its own favour.[5]

Before this plan of Mr Palmer's was established, the ordinary pace of travelling in England differed little from what it still is in other countries: an able-bodied man might walk the usual day's journey. Its effects have not been confined to the revenue. Other stages immediately adopted the guard, and became secure from robbers; they were stimulated to rival speed, and in consequence improvements in coach-building of some kind or other are every year discovered and adopted; even waggons travel faster now than post coaches did before this revolution. Hence travelling consumes at present so much less time, and is attended by so much less fatigue, that instead of being regarded as an evil, it is one of the pleasures of the English; and people, as is our case at this very time, set out upon a journey of two hundred leagues to amuse themselves.

The morning was fair, we mounted the roof, and I looked back upon Birmingham not without satisfaction at thinking I should never enter it again. A heavy cloud of smoke hung over the city, above which in many places black columns were sent up with prodigious force from the steam-engines. We rejoiced that we were travelling into a better atmosphere, but the contagion spread far and wide. Every where around us, instead of the village church, whose steeple usually adorns so beautifully the English landscape, the tower of some manufactory was to be seen in the distance, vomiting up flames and smoke, and blasting every thing around with its metallic vapours. The vicinity was as thickly peopled as that of London. Instead of cottages we saw streets of brick hovels, blackened with the smoke of coal fires, which burn day and night in these dismal regions. Such swarms of children I never beheld in any other place, nor such wretched ones,—in rags, and their skins encrusted with soot and filth. The face of the country as we advanced was more hideous that can be described, uncultivated, black and smoking. I asked the coachman from whence the smoke proceeded, and he told me the whole earth beneath us was on fire; some coal-mines had taken fire many years ago, and still continued to burn. "If you were to travel this road by night, sir," said he, "you would see the whole country a-fire, and might fancy you were going to hell!"—A part of the road which is thus undermined gave way lately under one of the stages; it did not sink deep enough to kill the passengers by the fall, but one of them had his thigh broken.

This deplorable country continued for some leagues, till we had passed Wolverhampton, the last manufacturing town in this direction. Between this place and Penkridge it improved, we were once more in an agricultural land, and beheld clean skins and healthy countenances. We passed through Stafford, the county town, a small but well-built place, of which the main trade consists in shoes; and dined the next stage beyond it at Stone. Here were formerly venerated the two martyrs Wulfold and Rufinus, who were slain by their own father Wulpher, the Pagan king of Mercia, the father of St Werburga also; who, by the merits of his children, was himself at last favoured with grace to repentance. All traces of their worship have long since disappeared; only the town derives its name from the stones which were heaped over the place of their burial. Here we entered the country of the potteries, from whence the greater part of England is supplied with common ware, and also with that finer sort called Wedgewood, after its inventor, and known all over Europe. Etruria is the name which he gave to his fabric, because the Etruscan remains were his models, and to him it is that England, and, it may be added, Europe,—for where do not the fashions of England extend?—is indebted for having familiarised to us the beautiful forms of Etruscan design.

This is a populous province; in no other part have I seen the towns standing so near together. We soon advanced to Newcastle-under-Line. Here my friend the coachman told me they had a curious custom of punishing scolds, by putting a bridle and bitt into the mouth of the offender, so as to confine her tongue, and leading her in this manner through the streets as an example. Whether the English women are particularly addicted to this offence, I am not sufficiently acquainted with them to say; but it should seem so by the severity with which the laws regard it. In other places immersion is the punishment; the woman is fastened in a chair at the end of a long plank or pole, which is hoisted out over the river, and there elevated or lowered by means of a lever; in this manner they dip her as often as the officiating constable thinks proper, or till she no longer displays any inclination to continue the offence, which probably is not till she has lost the power. Both methods are effectual ones of enforcing silence upon an unruly tongue, but they are barbarous customs, and ought to be wholly disused.[6]

We were now entering Cheshire, the great cheese country, and the difference between a land of manufactures and a land of pasturage was delightful. The houses of the labourers were clean cottages: those of the rich, old mansions with old trees about them in view of the village church, where generation after generation, for ages back, the heirs of the family had been baptized in the same font, and buried in the same vault; not newly-erected brick buildings with shrubs and saplings round them, in hearing of the mill-wheels and hammer, by which the fortune of the owner has been fabricated. One house which we passed was the most singular I have ever seen: very old it must needs be,—how many centuries I will not venture to conjecture. The materials are wood and mortar without stone; the timber-frames painted black, and the intervening panes of plaster-work whitened; no dress in an old picture was ever more curiously variegated with stripes and slashes. The roof rises into many points; the upper story projecting over the lower like a machicolated gateway, except that the projection is far greater; and long windows with little diamond-shaped panes reach almost from side to side, so that the rooms must be light as a lantern. There is a moat round it. I should guess it to be one of the oldest dwelling-houses in the kingdom.

We saw this quiet pastoral country to the best advantage; the sun was setting, and the long twilight of an English summer evening gives to the English landscape a charm wholly its own. As soon as it grew dark the coach lamps were lighted; the horses have no bells, and this is as needful for the security of other travellers as for our own. But the roads are wide; and if a traveller keeps his own proper side, according to the law of the roads, however fearful it may be to see two of these fiery eyes coming on through the darkness, at the rate of two leagues in the hour, he is perfectly safe. We meant, when evening closed, to have forsaken the roof and taken our seats withinside; but the places were filled by chance passengers picked up on the way, and no choice was left us. Star-light and a mild summer air made the situation not unpleasant, if we had not been weary and disposed to sleep; this propensity it was not safe to indulge; and the two hours after night set in till we reached Manchester, were the most wearying of the whole day.

The entrance into the city reminded me of London, we drove so long over rough street stones, only the streets were shorter and the turns we made more frequent. It was midnight when we alighted at a spacious inn, called the Bridgewater Arms. In these large manufacturing towns, inns have neither the cleanliness or comfort which we find in smaller places. In the country there is a civility about the people of the house, and an attention on their part, which, though you know hospitality is their trade, shows, or seems to show, something of the virtue. Here all is hurry and bustle; customers must come in the way of trade, and they care not whether you are pleased or not. We were led into a long room, hung round with great-coats, spurs, and horsewhips, and with so many portmanteaus and saddle-bags lying about it, that it looked like a warehouse. Two men were smoking over a bottle of wine at one table; they were talking of parabolics and elliptics, and describing diagrams on the table with a wet finger; a single one was writing at another, with a large pocket-book lying open before him. We called for supper; and he civilly told us that he also had given a like order, and if we would permit him should be happy to join us. To this we of course acceded. We found him to be a commercial traveller, and he gave us some useful information concerning Manchester, and the best method of proceeding on our journey. It was going towards two o'clock when we retired. We slept as usual in a double-bedded room, but we had no inclination to converse after we were in bed. I fell asleep almost instantaneously, and did not awake till nine in the morning.—I must not forget to tell you, that over the entrance to the passage on each side of which the bed-rooms are arranged, is written in large letters Morphean!

[5]   If Don Manuel had remained long enough in England, he might have seen parliament annulling its own contract in its own wrong, granting away the public money at a time when the people were more heavily burthened than they had ever been before, and doing this in defiance of the legal authorities.—Tr.

[6]   D. Manuel is mistaken in supposing that they are still in use. The ducking-stools are fallen into decay, and in many places the stocks also,—little to the credit of the magistrates.—Tr.

LETTER XXXVIII.

Manchester.—Cotton Manufactory.—Remarks upon the pernicious Effects of the manufacturing System.

J. had provided us with letters to a gentleman in Manchester; we delivered them after breakfast, and were received with that courtesy which a foreigner, when he takes with him the expected recommendations, is sure to experience in England. He took us to one of the great cotton manufactories, showed us the number of children who were at work there, and dwelt with delight on the infinite good which resulted from employing them at so early an age. I listened without contradicting him, for who would lift up his voice against Diana in Ephesus!—proposed my questions in such a way as not to imply, or at least not to advance, any difference of opinion, and returned with a feeling at heart which makes me thank God I am not an Englishman.

There is a shrub in some of the East Indian islands which the French call veloutier; it exhales an odour that is agreeable at a distance, becomes less so as you draw nearer, and, when you are quite close to it, is insupportably loathsome. Alciatus himself could not have imagined an emblem more appropriate to the commercial prosperity of England.

Mr —— remarked, that nothing could be so beneficial to a country as manufactures. "You see these children, sir," said he. "In most parts of England poor children are a burthen to their parents and to the parish; here the parish, which would else have to support them, is rid of all expense; they get their bread almost as soon as they can run about, and by the time they are seven or eight years old bring in money. There is no idleness among us:—they come at five in the morning; we allow them half an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner; they leave work at six, and another set relieves them for the night; the wheels never stand still." I was looking while he spoke, at the unnatural dexterity with which the fingers of these little creatures were playing in the machinery, half giddy myself with the noise and the endless motion: and when he told me there was no rest in these walls, day nor night, I thought that if Dante had peopled one of his hells with children, here was a scene worthy to have supplied him with new images of torment.

"These children, then," said I, "have no time to receive instruction." "That, sir," he replied, "is the evil which we have found. Girls are employed here from the age you see them till they marry, and then they know nothing about domestic work, not even how to mend a stocking or boil a potatoe. But we are remedying this now, and send the children to school for an hour after they have done work." I asked if so much confinement did not injure their health. "No," he replied, "they are as healthy as any children in the world can be. To be sure, many of them as they grew up went off in consumptions, but consumption was the disease of the English." I ventured to enquire afterwards concerning the morals of the people who were trained up in this monstrous manner, and found, what was to be expected, that in consequence of herding together such numbers of both sexes, who are utterly uninstructed in the commonest principles of religion and morality, they were as debauched and profligate as human beings under the influence of such circumstances must inevitably be; the men drunken, the women dissolute; that however high the wages they earned, they were too improvident ever to lay-by for a time of need; and that, though the parish was not at the expense of maintaining them when children, it had to provide for them in diseases induced by their mode of life, and in premature debility and old age; the poor-rates were oppressively high, and the hospitals and workhouses always full and overflowing. I enquired how many persons were employed in the manufactory, and was told, children and all about two hundred. What was the firm of the house?—There were two partners. So! thought I,—a hundred to one!

"We are well off for hands in Manchester," said Mr —— ; "manufactures are favourable to population, the poor are not afraid of having a family here, the parishes therefore have always plenty to apprentice, and we take them as fast as they can supply us. In new manufacturing towns they find it difficult to get a supply. Their only method is to send people round the country to get children from their parents. Women usually undertake this business; they promise the parents to provide for the children; one party is glad to be eased of a burthen, and it answers well to the other to find the young ones in food, lodging, and clothes, and receive their wages." "But if these children should be ill-used?" said I. "Sir," he replied, "it never can be the interest of the women to use them ill, nor of the manufacturers to permit it."

It would have been in vain to argue had I been disposed to it. Mr —— was a man of humane and kindly nature, who would not himself use any thing cruelly, and judged of others by his own feelings. I thought of the cities in Arabian romance, where all the inhabitants were enchanted: here Commerce is the queen witch, and I had no talisman strong enough to disenchant those who were daily drinking of the golden cup of her charms.

We purchase English cloth, English muslins, English buttons, &c. and admire the excellent skill with which they are fabricated, and wonder that from such a distance they can be afforded to us at so low a price, and think what a happy country is England! A happy country indeed it is for the higher orders; no where have the rich so many enjoyments, no where have the ambitious so fair a field, no where have the ingenious such encouragement, no where have the intellectual such advantages; but to talk of English happiness is like talking of Spartan freedom, the Helots are overlooked. In no other country can such riches be acquired by commerce, but it is the one who grows rich by the labour of the hundred. The hundred human beings like himself, as wonderfully fashioned by Nature, gifted with the like capacities, and equally made for immortality, are sacrificed body and soul. Horrible as it must needs appear, the assertion is true to the very letter. They are deprived in childhood of all instruction and all enjoyment; of the sports in which childhood instinctively indulges, of fresh air by day and of natural sleep by night. Their health physical and moral is alike destroyed; they die of diseases induced by unremitting task-work, by confinement in the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms, by the particles of metallic or vegetable dust which they are continually inhaling; or they live to grow up without decency, without comfort, and without hope, without morals, without religion, and without shame, and bring forth slaves like themselves to tread in the same path of misery.

The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are in narrow streets and lanes, blocked up from light and air, not, as in our country, to exclude an insupportable sun, but crowded together because every inch of land is of such value, that room for light and air cannot be afforded them. Here in Manchester a great proportion of the poor lodge in cellars, damp and dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to accumulate, because no exertions of domestic care can ever make such homes decent. These places are so many hot-beds of infection; and the poor in large towns are rarely or never without an infectious fever among them, a plague of their own, which leaves the habitations of the rich, like a Goshen of cleanliness and comfort, unvisited.

Wealth flows into the country, but how does it circulate there? Not equally and healthfully through the whole system; it sprouts into wens and tumours, and collects in aneurisms which starve and palsy the extremities. The government indeed raises millions now as easily as it raised thousands in the days of Elizabeth: the metropolis is six times the size which it was a century ago; it has nearly doubled during the present reign; a thousand carriages drive about the streets of London, where, three generations ago, there were not an hundred; a thousand hackney coaches are licensed in the same city, where at the same distance of time there was not one; they whose grandfathers dined at noon from wooden trenchers, and upon the produce of their own farms, sit down by the light of waxen tapers to be served upon silver, and to partake of delicacies from the four quarters of the globe. But the number of the poor, and the sufferings of the poor, have continued to increase; the price of every thing which they consume has always been advancing, and the price of labour, the only commodity which they have to dispose of, remains the same. Work-houses are erected in one place, and infirmaries in another; the poor-rates increase in proportion to the taxes; and in times of dearth the rich even purchase food, and retail it to them at a reduced price, or supply them with it gratuitously: still every year adds to their number. Necessity is the mother of crimes; new prisons are built, new punishments enacted; but the poor become year after year more numerous, more miserable, and more depraved; and this is the inevitable tendency of the manufacturing system.

This system is the boast of England,—long may she continue to boast it before Spain shall rival her! Yet this is the system which we envy, and which we are so desirous to imitate. Happily our religion presents one obstacle; that incessant labour which is required in these task-houses can never be exacted in a Catholic country, where the Church has wisely provided so many days of leisure for the purposes of religion and enjoyment. Against the frequency of these holy days much has been said; but Heaven forbid that the clamour of philosophizing commercialists should prevail, and that the Spaniard should ever be brutalized by unremitting task-work, like the negroes in America, and the labouring manufacturers in England! Let us leave to England the boast of supplying all Europe with her wares; let us leave to these lords of the sea the distinction of which they are so tenacious, that of being the white slaves of the rest of the world, and doing for it all its dirty work. The poor must be kept miserably poor, or such a state of things could not continue; there must be laws to regulate their wages, not by the value of their work, but by the pleasures of their masters; laws to prevent their removal from one place to another within the kingdom, and to prohibit their emigration out of it. They would not be crowded in hot task-houses by day, and herded together in damp cellars at night; they would not toil in unwholesome employments from sun-rise till sun-set, whole days, and whole days and quarters, for with twelve hours labour the avidity of trade is not satisfied; they would not sweat night and day, keeping up this laus perennis[7] of the Devil, before furnaces which are never suffered to cool, and breathing in vapours which inevitably produce disease and death; the poor would never do these things unless they were miserably poor, unless they were in that state of abject poverty which precludes instruction, and, by destroying all hope for the future, reduces man, like the brutes, to seek for nothing beyond the gratification of present wants.

How England can remedy this evil, for there are not wanting in England those who perceive and confess it to be an evil, it is not easy to discover, nor is it my business to enquire. To us it is of more consequence to know how other countries may avoid it, and, as it is the prevailing system to encourage manufactures every where, to enquire how we may reap as much good and as little evil as possible. The best methods appear to be by extending to the utmost the use of machinery, and leaving the price of labour to find its own level: the higher it is the better. The introduction of machinery in an old manufacturing country always produces distress by throwing workmen out of employ, and is seldom effected without riots and executions. Where new fabrics are to be erected it is obvious that this difficulty does not exist, and equally obvious that, when hard labour can be performed by iron and wood, it is desirable to spare flesh and blood. High wages are a general benefit, because money thus distributed is employed to the greatest general advantage. The labourer, lifted up one step in society, acquires the pride and the wants, the habits and the feelings, of the class now next above him.[8] Forethought, which the miserably poor necessarily and instinctively shun, is, to him who earns a comfortable competence, new pleasure; he educates his children, in the hope that they may rise higher than himself, and that he is fitting them for better fortunes. Prosperity is said to be more dangerous than adversity to human virtue; both are wholesome when sparingly distributed, both in the excess perilous always, and often deadly: but if prosperity be thus dangerous, it is a danger which falls to the lot of few; and it is sufficiently proved by the vices of those unhappy wretches who exist in slavery, under whatever form or in whatever disguise, that hope is as essential to prudence, and to virtue, as to happiness.

[7]   I am informed by a catholic, that those convents in which the choir service is never discontinued are said to have laus perennis there.—Tr.

[8]   This argument has been placed in a more forcible light in the first volume of the Annual Review, in an article upon the Reports of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor, attributed to a gentleman of Norwich. It is one of the ablest chapters upon this branch of political œconomy that has ever been written.—Tr.

LETTER XXXIX.

Manchester.—Journey to Chester.—Packet-boat.—Brindley.—Rail Roads.—Chester Cathedral.—New Jail.—Assassination in the South of Europe not like Murder in England.—Number of Criminals.—but Abatement of Atrocity in Crimes.—Mitigation of Penal Law.—Robert Dew.—Excellent Administration of Justice.—Amendments still desired.

A place more destitute of all interesting objects than Manchester it is not easy to conceive. In size and population it is the second city in the kingdom, containing above fourscore thousand inhabitants. Imagine this multitude crowded together in narrow streets, the houses all built of brick and blackened with smoke; frequent buildings among them as large as convents, without their antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness; where you hear from within, as you pass along, the everlasting din of machinery; and where, when the bell rings, it is to call wretches to their work instead of their prayers.... Imagine this, and you have the materials for a picture of Manchester. The most remarkable thing which I have seen here is the skin of a snake, fourteen English feet in length, which was killed in the neighbourhood, and is preserved in the library of the collegiate church.

We left it willingly on Monday morning, and embarked upon the canal in a stage-boat bound for Chester, a city which we had been advised by no means to pass by unseen. This was a new mode of travelling, and a delightful one it proved. The shape of the machine resembles the common representations of Noah's ark, except that the roof is flatter, so made for the convenience of passengers. Within this floating house are two apartments, seats in which are hired at different prices, the parlour and the kitchen. Two horses, harnessed one before the other, tow it along at the rate of a league an hour; the very pace which it is pleasant to keep up with when walking on the bank. The canal is just wide enough for two boats to pass; sometimes we sprung ashore, sometimes stood or sate upon the roof,—till to our surprise we were called down to dinner, and found that as good a meal had been prepared in the back part of the boat while we were going on, as would have been supplied at an inn. We joined in a wish that the same kind of travelling were extended every where: no time was lost; kitchen and cellars travelled with us; the motion was imperceptible; we could neither be overturned nor run away with, if we sunk there was not depth of water to drown us; we could read as conveniently as in a house, or sleep as quietly as in a bed.

England is now intersected in every direction by canals. This is the province in which they were first tried by the present duke of Bridgewater, whose fortune has been amply increased by the success of his experiment. His engineer Brindley was a singular character, a man of real genius for this particular employment, who thought of nothing but locks and levels, perforating hills, and floating barges upon aqueduct bridges over unmanageable streams. When he had a plan to form he usually went to bed, and lay there working it out in his head till the design was completed. It is recorded of him, that being asked in the course of an examination before the House of Commons for what he supposed rivers were created, he answered after a pause,—To feed navigable canals.

Excellent as these canals are, rail-roads are found to accomplish the same purpose at less expense. In these the wheels of the carriage move in grooves upon iron bars laid all along the road; where there is a descent no draught is required, and the laden waggons as they run down draw the empty ones up. These roads are always used in the neighbourhood of coal-mines and founderies. It has been recommended by speculative men that they should be universally introduced, and a hope held out that at some future time this will be done, and all carriages drawn along by the action of steam-engines erected at proper distances. If this be at present one of the dreams of philosophy, it is a philosophy by which trade and manufactures would be benefited and money saved; and the dream therefore may probably one day be accomplished.

The canal not extending to Chester, we were dismissed from the boat about half way between the two cities, near the town of Warrington, which was just distant enough to form a pleasing object through the intervening trees. A stage, to which we were consigned, was ready to receive us; and we exchanged, not very willingly, the silent and imperceptible motion of a water journey, to be jolted over rough roads in a crowded and noisy coach. The country was little interesting, and became less so as we advanced. I saw two bodies swinging from a gibbet by the road side; they had robbed and murdered a post-boy, and, according to the barbarous and indecent custom of England, were hanged up upon the spot till their bones should fall asunder.

We found Chester to be as remarkable a place as our travelling friend at Manchester had represented it. The streets are cut out of a soft red rock, and passengers walk, not upon flag-stones at the side, as in most other cities, nor in the middle of the street,—but through the houses, upon a boarded parade, through what would elsewhere be the front room of the first floor. Whenever a lane or street strikes off, there is a flight of steps into the carriage road. The best shops are upon this covered way, though there are others underneath it on a level with the street. The cathedral is a mean edifice of soft, red, crumbly stone, apparently quarried upon the spot: it would have been folly to have erected any thing better with such wretched materials.

The old walls are yet standing; there is a walk on the top of them, from whence we overlooked the surrounding country, the mountains of Wales not far distant, and the river Dee, which passes by the city, and forms an estuary about two leagues below it. The new jail is considered as a perfect model of prison architecture, a branch of the art as much studied by the English of the present day, as ever cathedral building was by their pious ancestors. The main objects attended to are, that the prisoners be kept apart from each other, and that the cells should be always open to inspection, and well ventilated, so as to prevent infectious disorders, which were commonly occurring in old prisons. The structure of this particular prison is singularly curious, the cells being so constructed that the jailor from his dwelling-house can look into every one,—a counterpart to the whispering dungeons in Sicily, which would have delighted Dionysius. I thought of Asmodeus and Don Cleofas. The apartment from whence we were shown the interior of the prison was well, and even elegantly furnished; there were geraniums flowering upon stands,—a piano-forte, and music-books lying open,—and when we looked from the window we saw criminals with irons upon their legs, in solitary dungeons:—one of them, who was intently reading some devotional book, was, we were told, certainly to be executed at the next assizes. Custom soon cauterizes human sympathy; or the situation of the keeper who sits surrounded with comforts, and has these things always in view, would be well nigh as deplorable as that of the wretches under his care.

Of late years the office of jailor has become of considerable importance, and ennobled by the title of Governor. The increase of criminals has given it this consequence; and that the number of criminals must be prodigiously increased, is sufficiently proved by the frequency and magnitude of these new prisons. In fact, more persons annually suffer death in this country than in the whole of Christendom besides; and from hence it has been inferred, that either the people of England are the most depraved people in Europe, or their laws are the bloodiest. No, say the English; the true reason is, that in other countries crimes are committed with impunity,—and they never fail to instance assassination: thus they satisfy themselves and silence the objector. True it is that in all the southern parts of Europe, to our shame be it spoken, assassination is far more frequently committed than punished; but murder with us, generally speaking, is neither in its motive nor in its manner, the same atrocious crime which in England is regarded with such religious abhorrence, and punished with such certain severity. Among us, a love dispute between peasants or mechanics leads as regularly to this deadly spirit of revenge, as a quarrel upon the point of honour between two English gentlemen. The Spanish zagal holds the life of his rival no cheaper than the English gentleman that of his equal, who has elbowed him in the street, or intruded into his places at the theatre; a blow with us is revenged by the knife, as it is in England with the pistol. The difference is, that the sense of honour extends lower in society among us, and that the impunity which we allow to all, is restricted in England to the higher orders; and the truth is, that, wherever assassination or duelling prevails, the fault is more to be imputed to the laws than to the people. These are offences from which men may be easily deterred; life will never be held cheap by the people, if the laws teach them that it should be held sacred.

Every stage of society has its characteristic crimes. The savage is hard-hearted to his children, brutal to his women, treacherous to his enemies; he steals and runs away with his booty; he poisons his weapons; he is cowardly and cruel. In the barbarian, pride and courage introduce a sense of honour which lays the foundation for morality: he is a robber, not a thief, ferocious instead of cunning, rather merciless than cruel. When states become settled, new offences spring up, as the weeds in meadow land differ from those of the waste; laws are necessary to restrain the strong from oppression, and the weak from revenge. A new tribe of evils accompany civilization and commerce,—the vices which are fostered by wealth, and the crimes which are produced by want. Still the progress of the human race, though slow, is sure; the laws and the people soften alike, and crimes and punishments both become less atrocious.

More offences are committed in England than in other countries, because there is more wealth and more want; greater temptations to provoke the poor, greater poverty to render them liable to temptation, and less religious instruction to arm them against it. In Scotland, where the puritan clergy retain something of their primitive zeal, the people are more moral; poverty is almost general there, and therefore the less felt, because there is little wealth to invite the contrast. In both countries the greater number of offences are frauds; even they who prey upon society partake of its amelioration, and forsake the barbarous habits of robbery and murder, for methods less perilous to themselves and to others. The weasel fares better than the wolf, and continues her secret depredations after the wolf has been extirpated. In Ireland, on the contrary, where the characteristics of savage life are still to be found, murder is the most frequent crime; and, horrid as it is, it is generally rendered still more so by circumstances of wanton cruelty. If the Welsh are addicted to any peculiar offence it is sheep-stealing, because the sheep have ceased to be wild,—and the people have not.

The laws are mitigated in due proportion to the amelioration of the people:—it was formerly the custom, if a prisoner refused to plead to a capital charge, to stretch him upon his back, and lay weights upon his breast, which were daily to be increased till he died; now he is regarded as guilty, and sentenced as such. Till lately, women were burnt when men were only hanged;[9] the punishment is now the same for both sexes; the horrible butchery for treason, by which the martyrs suffered under the persecutions of Elizabeth and James, is commuted for beheading. In these last instances the mitigation is of the national manners, and not of the law: but the laws themselves should be amended; custom is no security: a cruel minister might enforce these inhuman sentences which are still pronounced,—and nations can never take too many precautions against the possibility of being rebarbarized. There is no Misericordia in England: and, except indeed for spiritual assistance, its humane services are not needed; the prisoners are sufficiently fed and clothed, and the law which punishes, allows every alleviation of punishment which does not defeat the main end of justice. Something of the spirit of this charitable institution was displayed by an individual in the metropolis two centuries ago. He gave fifty pounds to the parish in which the great prison is situated, on condition that, for ever after, a man on the night preceding an execution should go to Newgate in the dead of the night, and strike with a hand-bell twelve tolls with double strokes, as near the cells of the condemned criminals as possible,—then exhort them to repentance. The great bell of the church was also to toll when they were passing by on their way to execution, and the bellman was to look over the wall and exhort all good people to pray to God for the poor sinners who were going to suffer death. Robert Dew was the name of this pious man: the church is dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre, which these heretics have ingeniously converted into a saint!

I need not tell you that the torture has long since been abolished in England. In no other part of the world are laws so well executed; crimes are never committed here with impunity;—there is no respect of persons, justice is never defeated by delay, and the people are not familiarised to cruelty by the sight of cruel punishments. The effect of so familiarizing a nation has been dreadfully exemplified in France. All history does not present a spectacle more inexpiably disgraceful to the country in which it occurred, than the council of surgeons assembled to fix the sentence of Damiens; a council appointed by the king of France and his ministers, to discover in what manner the poor madman could be made to feel the most exquisite tortures, and kept alive as long as possible to endure them! Louis XV. signed this sentence,—and then desired he might not be told when it was to be executed,—because it would hurt his feelings! The present king of England has, in like manner, twice escaped death; and in both instances the unhappy persons concerned have been lodged in the public hospital for the insane. Is there upon record another contrast so striking between two neighbouring nations?

Even however in England some improvements are still desirable in criminal law. The principle of the law is, that every man shall be presumed innocent till he is proved guilty; yet this principle is never carried into effect, and the accused are confined in irons:—it is necessary to secure them; but any rigour not absolutely necessary for this purpose, is in manifest violation of this humane and just axiom. A pleader should be permitted to defend the prisoner, as well as one to accuse him; where the innocence of the prisoner is proved, he ought to be indemnified for the losses he has sustained, and the expenses he has incurred by his imprisonment and trial; where he is convicted, the expense of bringing him to justice ought to fall upon the public, not upon the individual prosecutor, already a sufferer by the offence.

[9]   Only for coining, and for murdering their husbands. The author seems to have supposed it was always the case.—Tr.

LETTER XL.

Voyage to Liverpool.—Filthy Custom at the Inns.—School of the Blind.—Athenæum.—Mr Roscoe.—Journey to Kendal.

Wednesday, July 14.

We left Chester yesterday at noon, and embarked again upon a canal. Our last navigation had ended by transferring us to a coach; we had now to undergo a more unpleasant transfer. The canal reached the Mersey, a huge river which forms the port of Liverpool, across which we had about three leagues to sail in a slant direction. A vessel was ready to receive us, on board of which we embarked, and set sail with a slack wind. At first it was pleasant sailing,—the day fair, a castellated hill in full view up the river, and Liverpool at a distance, near to its mouth, upon the northern shore. But the wind rose, the water became rough, there came on a gale from the west with heavy rain, which drove us below deck, and then we were driven up again by the stench of a close cabin, and the sickness of women and children. The gale was so strong that we had reason to be thankful for reaching the town in safety.

Immediately upon our landing we were surrounded by boys proffering cards of the different inns by which they were employed to look out for strangers, and contesting who should carry our luggage. The rain continued, and confined us for the evening. They have a filthy custom at the inns in England, that when you pull off your boots, the man brings you a pair of old slippers, which serve for all travellers, and indeed are frequently worn-out shoes with the heels cut away: clean as the English are, this impropriety does not in the slightest degree offend them.

The next morning we enquired for a gentleman with whom I had been acquainted in London. A book containing the names and place of abode of all the inhabitants is kept in every inn: so that there was no difficulty in finding him out. With him we spent the day, and were obliged to him for showing us whatever was most worthy of notice in the town. There is no cathedral, no castle, gate, town-wall, or monument of antiquity, no marks of decay. Every thing is the work of late years, almost of the present generation.

There is but one fine street in the city, which is terminated by the Exchange, a handsome structure; but as you look up the street to it, it is not in the centre, and this irregularity produces a singularly unpleasant effect. One side of the street, it seems, was built with reference to this Exchange, and the other was to have corresponded with it; but when the governors of the city came to purchase the ground, some obstacles were discovered which had not been foreseen. As there are few fine streets, so there are few which display much poverty: this external appearance of prosperity is purchased at a dear price; for the poor, as in Manchester, live mostly in cellars, underground. The height of some of the warehouses excited the wonder of my companion, and he expressed his surprise that I should not be astonished at them also. In fact, old houses in England are generally lower than modern ones, and even these have never more than four floors. Yet the value of ground is prodigiously great, and the island is not subject to earthquakes.

Here is a hospital for horses, of which the sign-board caught my eye as we passed along. We visited a school for the blind, a sight as interesting as it was melancholy. They make curtain lines by a machine which a blind man contrived; list-slippers, which were an invention of the French emigrants; baskets;—every thing, in short, in which the sense of sight can be supplied by touch. It was surprising to see them move about the room, steering clear of every thing as surely as though they had seen what was before them,—as if they had possessed that sixth sense, which experimental naturalists, the most merciless of human beings, are said to have discovered in bats, when they have put out their eyes for the sake of seeing how the tortured animal can find its way without them. They sung a hymn for our gratification: their voices were fine; and the deep attention which was manifest in their eyeless faces, dead as they necessarily were to all external objects which could distract them, was affecting and even awful. Such as discover a taste for music are instructed in it; and some have been thus enabled to support themselves as organists in the churches, and by tuning instruments. The blind must be very numerous in England, as I am told there are many such institutions; but there is good reason to hope that the number will be materially lessened in future by the vaccine inoculation, a very large proportion of these poor sufferers having lost their eyes by the smallpox.

Liverpool has become a place of great maritime trade, against every natural disadvantage. The river is sheltered only from the north, and at low-water sand-banks may be seen round its mouth for leagues off in every direction. Vessels when leaving port easily avoid them, because they start with a fair wind, but to returning ships they are far more perilous. In spite of this, there is not any other place where so much mercantile enterprise is displayed in England, nor perhaps in the whole world.—Two ships came in while we were upon the quay: it was a beautiful sight to see them enter the docks and take their quiet station, a crowd flocking towards them, some in curiosity to know what they were, others in hope and in fear, hastening to see who had returned in them.

Fortunes are made here with a rapidity unexampled in any other part of England. It is true that many adventurers fail; yet with all the ups and downs of commercial speculation, Liverpool prospers beyond all other ports. There is too a princely liberality in its merchants, which, even in London, is not rivalled. Let any thing be proposed for the advantage and ornament, or honour of the town, however little akin it may be to their own pursuits, habits, and feelings, they are ready with subscriptions to any amount. It has lately been resolved upon to have a botanical garden here; a large sum has been raised for the purpose, and the ground purchased. "It will be long," said I to our friend, "before this can be brought to any perfection." "Oh, sir," said he, with a smile of triumph which it was delightful to perceive, "you do not know how we do things at Liverpool. Money and activity work wonders. In half a dozen years we shall have the finest in England."

The history of their Athenæum is a striking instance of their spirit:—by this name they call a public library, with a reading-room for the newspapers and other journals,—for all periodical publications, whether daily, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, are called journals in England. Two of the literary inhabitants were talking one day after dinner of the want of a public library in the town, and they agreed to call a meeting for the purpose of forming one. The meeting was advertised,—they went to it,—and found themselves alone. "What shall we do now?" said the one: "here is an end of the business." "No," said his friend;—"take you the chair, I will be secretary; we will draw up our resolutions unanimously, and advertise them." They did so; and in four-and-twenty-hours sufficient funds were subscribed to establish the finest institution of the kind in the kingdom.

Literature also flourishes as fairly as commerce. A history of Lorenzo de Medici appeared here about eight years ago, which even the Italians have thought worthy of translation. The libraries of Florence were searched for materials for this work, and many writings of Lorenzo himself first given to the world in Liverpool. This work of Mr Roscoe's has diffused a general taste for the literature of Italy. It has been said of men of letters, that, like prophets, they have no honour in their own country; but to this saying, to which there are so few exceptions, one honourable one is to be found here. The people of Liverpool are proud of their townsman: whether they read his book or not, they are sensible it has reflected honour upon their town in the eyes of England and of Europe, and they have a love and jealousy of its honour, which has seldom been found any where except in those cities where that love was nationality, because the city and the state were the same. This high and just estimation of Mr Roscoe is the more praiseworthy, because he is known to be an enemy to the slave-trade, the peculiar disgrace of Liverpool.

*****

Thursday, 15.

We had choice of stage-coaches to Kendal, but it was only a choice between two of the same sort, the long, coffin-shaped machines, of which we had had so bad a sample between Worcester and Birmingham. One of these we ascended at seven this morning for a day's journey of twenty leagues. The outskirts of Liverpool have an unsightly appearance,—new streets of houses for the poorer classes, which bear no marks either of cleanliness or comfort, fields cut up for the foundations of other buildings, brick yards, and kilns smoking on every side. It was not easy to say where the town ended; for the paved way, which in all other parts of England ends with the town, continued here the whole stage, sorely to our annoyance. We passed through Ormskirk, a town chiefly famous for the preparation of a nostrum of more repute than efficacy against hydrophobia, and breakfasted a stage beyond it, at a single inn beside a bridge, the worst and dirtiest house of entertainment which I have yet seen in England. Sometimes we had a view of the sea towards Ireland; but the country was flat and unpleasant, and the trees all blighted and stunted in their growth; they seemed to have shrunk and twisted themselves to avoid the severity of the sea-blasts.

Preston was the next stage, a large manufacturing town: before we entered it we crossed the river Ribble by a good bridge, and immediately ascended a long hill,—it was the only pleasant spot which we had seen upon the way. Near this place an officer once met his death in battle by a singular accident. His horse upon some disgust he took at the guns, as the old writer oddly expresses it, ran off and leapt a ditch; the man's sword fell, and at the same minute he was thrown upon its point, and it ran him through. There is a spring about three leagues from hence, the water of which will burn with a blue flame like spirits of wine. Beyond Preston the roads were good, and the country also improved. We changed horses again at Garstang, a little town where the picture over the inn door caught my notice. It was an eagle carrying away a child—representing a circumstance which is believed to have happened in old times in this part of the country. Near the town we saw the ruins of a castle to the right. Another easy stage brought us to Lancaster, one of the best built cities in the kingdom. The view as we left it after dinner was truly fine; two stone bridges over the river Lon, the town on the opposite bank, and on the highest part of the hill a castle, which has been newly built or repaired as a prison.—Lancaster could scarcely have appeared more beautiful in the days of the shield and the lance.

Our land of promise was now in sight; high mountains seen across a great bay, with all the aërial hues of distance: but the clouds gathered, and we were driven to take shelter in the coach from a heavy rain. About ten we arrived at Kendal. Here, while supper was preparing, we sent for A Guide to the Lakes, and a map of them. This is one of the comforts of travelling in England;—wherever you go, printed information is to be found concerning every thing which deserves a stranger's notice. From hence our pedestrian expedition was to begin. We took out our knapsacks, stored them with a change of linen, &c., and dispatched our trunks by the carrier to meet us at Ambleside.

They produced at supper potted char, which is their delicacy, this fish being peculiar to the Lakes. So many are potted and sent to other parts of the country, chiefly as presents, that pots are made on purpose, which have on them a rude representation of the fish. It resembles a trout, but is I am told more beautifully spotted, and of a more delicate flavour. In its potted state it was very good, as I suppose any eatable fish would have been if prepared in the same manner.

LETTER XLI.

Queen Mary I.—Lake of Winandermere.—Ambleside.—Lake of Coniston.—Kirkstone Mountain.—Lake of Brotherwater.—Paterdale.—Lake of Ulswater.—Penrith.

Friday, July 16.

Kendal, though less populous and less busy than the noisy manufacturing towns which we have left behind us, is yet a place of thriving industry, and has been so during some centuries. The most interesting fact connected with its history is this; after the death of Henry VIII. his daughter, the pious Mary, being deeply concerned for the state of his unhappy soul, would fain have set apart the revenues of this parochial church as a fund for masses in his behalf. She consulted proper persons upon this matter, who assured her that the pope would never consent to it; and she then, still endeavouring to hope that he was not utterly out of the reach of intercession, gave the advowson to a college which he had founded in Cambridge, thinking that, as the foundation of this college was the best thing he had done for himself, the best thing she could do for him would be to augment its revenues for his sake.

The morning threatened rain, luckily, as it induced us to provide ourselves with umbrellas, a precaution which we might otherwise have neglected. They make these things in England to serve also as walking-sticks, by which means they are admirably adapted for foot travellers. Much rain has fallen lately in this neighbourhood; and the influx of such visitors as ourselves is so great, that the person of whom we purchased these umbrellas told us, he had sold forty in the course of the week.

After breakfast we began our march. You would have smiled to see me with the knapsack buckled over my breast, and a staff in hand, which, if not so picturesque as the pilgrim's, is certainly more convenient in so showery a land as this. Our way was up and down steep hills, by a good road. The carts of this country are drawn by a single horse; and this is conceived to be so much the best mode of draught, that the Board of Agriculture is endeavouring to make it general throughout the kingdom. In about two hours we came in sight of Winandermere, mere being another word for lake. We had now travelled over two leagues of uninteresting ground, where the hills were so high as to excite expectation of something to be seen from the summit which we were toiling up, and when we had reached the summit, not high enough to realize the expectation they had excited. The morning had been over-cast; twice we had been obliged to our portable penthouses for saving us from a wetting; the sun had oftentimes struggled to show himself, and as often was overclouded again after ineffectual gleams: but now, when we had reached the height from which our promised land was indeed visible, the weather ceased to be doubtful, the sun came fairly forth, the clouds dispersed, and we sat down upon a little rock by the road side to overlook the scene, perhaps with greater pleasure, because we had at one time so little hope of beholding it in such perfection.

The lake which lay below us is about three leagues in length: but a long narrow island stretches athwart it in the middle, and divides it into two parts. The lower half resembles a broad river, contracting its breadth towards the extremity of the view, where the hills on both sides seem to die away. The upper end is of a more complicated, but far nobler character. Here the lake is considerably wider; it is studded with many little islands, and surrounded with mountains, whose varieties of form and outline it would be hopeless to attempt describing. They have not that wavy and ocean-like appearance, which you have seen round you among some of our sierras; each has its individual form and character; and the whole have a grandeur, an awfulness, to which till now I had been a stranger. Two or three boats were gliding with white sails upon this calm and lovely water. The large island in the middle is planted with ornamental trees, and in the midst of it is a house, for the architecture of which no other excuse can be offered, than that, being round, and other houses usually square, something unusual may be conceived to suit so singular a situation. We were eager for a nearer view, and proceeded cheerfully to Bowness, a little town upon its shore; and from thence to the end of a long tongue of land, whence we crossed to an inn called the Ferry, on the opposite bank,—a single house, overshadowed by some fine sycamore trees, which grow close to the water-side.

We were directed to a castellated building above the inn, standing upon a craggy point, but in a style so foolish, that, if any thing could mar the beauty of so beautiful a scene, it would be this ridiculous edifice. This absurdity is not remembered when you are within, and the spot is well chosen for a banqueting-house. The room was hung with prints, representing the finest similar landscapes in Great Britain and other countries, none of the representations exceeding in beauty the real prospect before us. The windows were bordered with coloured glass, by which you might either throw a yellow sunshine over the scene, or frost it, or fantastically tinge it with purple.—Several boats were anchored off the island; the neighbouring islets appeared more beautiful than this inhabited one, because their trees and shrubs had not the same trim, plantation-appearance, and their shores were left with their natural inequalities and fringe of weeds, whereas the other was built up like a mound against the water.

After dinner we landed on the island, a liberty which is liberally allowed to strangers: having perambulated its winding walks, we rowed about among the other islets, enjoying the delightful scene till sun-set. Kingdoms, it is said, are never so happy as during those years when they furnish nothing for historians to record: I think of this now, when feeling how happy I have been to-day, and how little able I am to describe this happiness. Had we been robbed on the road, or overtaken by storms and upset in the lake, here would have been adventures for a letter:—do not however suppose that I am ambitious of affording you entertainment at any such price.

*****

Saturday.

We slept at the Ferry House, and the next morning recrossed the water, and proceeded along a road above the lake, but parallel with it, to the little village of Ambleside, which is one of the regular stations on the tour. The upper end of Winandermere became more majestic as we advanced, mountains of greater height and finer forms opened upon us. The borders of the lake were spotted with what the English, in opposition to our application of the word, call villas, for which it would be difficult to find a term,—single houses of the gentry, the casarias of the rich, which distinguish England so much from other countries, not only in its appearance, but in the very name of its society. A stronger contrast cannot well be imagined than that of a shore thus ornamented, and the wild mountains beyond;—yet wooded hills and crags rising one above the other, harmonized the whole into one accordant and lovely scene. Grand and awful I called these mountains yesterday: they are so, and yet the feeling which the whole scene produces is less that of awe than of delight. The lake and its green shores seem so made for summer and sunshine joyousness, that no fitter theatre could be devised for Venetian pageantry, with the Bucentaur and all its train of gondolas. I wished for Cleopatra's galley, or for the silken-sailed ships of the days of chivalry, with their blazonry, their crimson awnings, their serpent-shaped hulks, music at the prow, and masquers dancing on the deck.

Several carriages passed us, and when we reached Ambleside the inn was full, and they were obliged to lodge us in the village, so great is the concourse of visitors to these Lakes. Some of the old houses here, with their open balconies, resemble our cottages and posadas; but these vestiges of former times will not exist much longer. New houses are building, old ones modernized, and marks of the influx of money to be seen every where.

It was noon when we arrived, for the distance was not quite two leagues. Two smaller lakes were to be seen within a league of Ambleside, called Ryedale and Grasmere, and two waterfalls on the way. This was our afternoon's walk, and a more beautiful one perhaps is not to be found in the wide world. My own recollections are so inadequately represented by any form of words, that it is best to give up the attempt as hopeless. One of the waterfalls, however, is of so singular a character that it may be imagined from description. We were admitted into a little hut, and then beheld it from the window of a rude room, falling under a bridge, into a bason between rocks which were overhung with trees. Every thing is upon so small a scale, that the trick of surprise is not offensive, and the sort of frame through which it was seen, not dissuitable to the picture. On our way back we took shelter from a shower in a cottage, where the mistress was making oaten cakes, the bread of this province. The dough being laid on a round board, which was a little hollowed, she clapped it out with her hands till it covered the board; then slipt it off upon a round iron plate of the same size, which was placed over a wood fire; and when the cake was crisp on the one side, as it soon became, being very thin, she turned it. We tasted of this bread: it was dry, but not unpleasant. They who are accustomed to it like it well, and think it nutritious; but it is said to produce or aggravate cutaneous diseases.

*****

Sunday.

The English are not quite so mad in their own country as they are abroad; and yet follies enough are committed at home to show that travelling Englishmen are no unfaithful representatives of their countrymen. We had as singular an instance of their characteristic folly this morning as could be wished. D. and I were on our way to visit Coniston Lake, when, as we were ascending a hill, we saw an open carriage drawn by two horses coming down: the body of the carriage was placed upon the wheels with the back part forwards, and a gentleman was driving with his back to the horses, and never looking round. The hill was steep, and the road winding; he was going at no very safe pace; and if the horses had not been more cautious than their master, we might very probably have had an opportunity of seeing what it was in the inside of his head, which supplied the place of brains. Some wager must have been the occasion of this prank.

It was but a dreary road to Coniston, of two leagues,—neither were we well repaid when we got there by the sight of a lake extending into a tame country. Had we approached from the other end it would not perhaps have disappointed us, but we came from the mountains at its head, instead of advancing towards them. Slates of remarkable size are used for fences and in building about this neighbourhood. They are so high that I saw one row forming the whole front of a cottage, and in another place a house-porch was constructed of four, one on each side, and two leaning against each other for the roof. The quarry is among the mountains.

The language of the people here is almost unintelligible to me; it resembles Scotch more than English. D. is frequently at a loss to understand their meaning, though they seem to have no difficulty in understanding him.

*****

On Monday we left Ambleside, and toiled up Kirkstone Mountain, perhaps the longest and most laborious pass in England, a full league up, though the highest point of the road is considerably below the summit of the mountain. Immediately upon beginning to descend, a striking scene opened upon us; we were between two walls of rock, and on the left hand a brook, increased by innumerable streams from the heights on either side, rolled down a rocky channel. This opening soon spread into a vale, which continued to widen before us as we advanced. Here we saw scattered cottages built of loose stones and covered with slates, both roof and sides so rudely built, so tinged by weather, and clothed with ferns and mosses, as to blend with the colours of the natural scenery, almost as if they had been things of nature themselves, and not the work of man. They are the rudest cottages which I have seen in England, and indicate either great laziness in the inhabitants, or dismal poverty.

In this rude vale we met a travelling Jew pedlar, laden with barometers and thermometers. What an extraordinary land is this! In a place as wild and savage as the desert of Batuecas might we have purchased such weather-glasses, as certainly it would be hopeless to seek for in most of the cities in Spain.

The waters which accompanied our descent spread themselves into a little lake in the valley, called Brotherwater; small, but exquisitely beautiful. I have never seen a single spot more beautiful or more rememberable. The mountain behind,—it is one of the highest in the country,—forms a cove, in which a single old mansion stands in a green field among old trees. The most rigid Jeronymites could not wish for a place of more total seclusion. Out of this lake flowed a little river, clear, rapid, and melodious; we crossed it, and our path lay along its banks. How often did I stop and look back, and close my eyes to open them again, as if repetition could better impress the landscape upon remembrance than continuity; the delight I felt was mingled with sorrow by a sense of transitoriness;—it was even painful to behold scenes so beautiful, knowing that I should never behold them more.

We had started early, to have the day before us, so that we reached Paterdale to breakfast; the distance was two leagues and a half, enough to raise an appetite even had it been plain ground,—and the mountain air had made us almost ravenous. If the people of the inn had not been prepared for a succession of numerous visitors, our hunger might have looked for supplies in vain: and if many of their visitors were as hungry as ourselves, they would breed a famine in the land. No banquet, no wines could have exhilarated us more than food. We truly felt the joy of health and the reward of exercise.

The abundance of water in these vales is more delightful than can be imagined. Nothing languishes here for drought. It is the midst of summer, and the brooks are full. If the sound of a tank or a water-wheel is so agreeable, judge what the voice must be of these living streams, now breaking round rocks, which, in the process of ages, they have worn smooth, now leaping and foaming from crag to crag, now coursing over a bed of pebbles. How little do our Valverdes and Valparaisos bear comparison with these vales, which are kept always green by streams which never fail!

Here we took boat upon the lake of Ulswater. The beauties of Winandermere, highly as they had excited our admiration, seemed as nothing when we compared them with this grander country. Higher mountains rose here immediately from the Lake, and instead of villas and gardens there was a forest on the shore. On Winandermere I had wished for gondolas and mirth and music;—here I should have felt that they were incongruous with the scene, and with the feelings which it awakened.—The domestic architecture of the English is however so abominable that it will spoil whatever can be spoilt. There is a detestable house here belonging to a gentleman, who, for his great possessions in the vale, is called the King of Paterdale. Wherever it is seen it is as impertinent and offensive as the old Gracioso[10] in a scene of real passion.

Ulswater forms three reaches,—each three miles in length. The whole can never be seen at one view, nor indeed any two of the reaches except from their point. We landed near a singular building, which serves as a hunting-seat for the duke of Norfolk, and we were admitted to see a waterfall in his garden. Nature produces as endless varieties of scenery with the elements of wood, water, and rock, as she does of countenance with the features of the human face, and it is as hopeless to delineate by words the real character of one as of the other. Ara Force is the name of this waterfall. A chaise passed us as we were returning to the boat; there were three picturesque tourists in it, and one of them was fast asleep in the corner.

The lake and the mountains end together; a broad and rapid river called the Emont flows out of it. We landed, and proceeded a league and quarter through a cultivated country to Penrith, a town which, though we should have thought little of it in any other part of England, seems here, by comparison, like a metropolis. The flies have grievously tormented us upon our walk. I used to complain of our mosquitos, but they have at least the modesty to wait for night and darkness;—these English tormentors attack man to his face in broad day-light. Certainly they are of the same species as those which were chosen to be one of the plagues of Egypt.

[10]   The buffoon of the Spanish stage.—Tr.

LETTER XLII.

Keswick, and its Lake.—Lodore Waterfall.—Ascent of Skiddaw.

Wednesday.

From Penrith to Keswick is four leagues and a half; and as we were told there was no place where we could breakfast upon the way, we lay in bed till a later hour than would otherwise have beseemed pedestrians. The views were uninteresting after such scenery as we had lately passed, yet, as we were returning to the mountainous country, they improved as we advanced. Our road lay under one very fine mountain called Saddleback, and from every little eminence we beheld before us in the distance the great boundaries of the vale of Keswick. At length, after walking five hours, we ascended the last hill, and saw the vale below us with its lake and town, girt round with mountains even more varied in their outline, and more remarkably grouped, than any which we had left behind. It was beginning to rain; and to confess the truth, we derived more satisfaction from the sight of the town than from the wonders around it. Joyfully we reached the inn to which our trunks had been directed from Ambleside, but our joy was in no slight degree damped by the unwelcome intelligence that the house was full. Was there another inn?—that was full also; the town was crowded with company: but if we would walk in they would endeavour to procure us beds. In a few minutes word was brought us that they had procured one bed, if we had no objection to sleep together,—and if we had, it seemed there was no alternative. We were assured, for our comfort, that strangers had sometimes slept in their carriages. Accordingly we were conducted to our apartment, which proved to be at the house of the barber.

The Barber in England is not the important personage he is in our country; he meddles with no surgical instruments, and the few who draw teeth practise exclusively among the poor, and are considered, as degrading the profession;—still the barber is a person of importance every where. Our host was as attentively civil as man could be, and partly out of compliment to him, partly from a fancy to be shaved in the English fashion, I submitted my chin to him. Barbers-basons, it seems, are as obsolete here as helmets, and Don Quixote must in this country have found some other pretext for attacking a poor shaver. Instead of rubbing the soap upon the face, he used a brush; this mode of operating is not so cleanly as our own, but it is more expeditious. We find him of great use in directing our movements here. He has been a sailor; was in the famous action against the Comte de Grasse; and after having been in all parts of the world, returned at last to his native place, to pass the remainder of his days in this humbler but more gainful employment. His wife was as active as himself in serving us; our trunks were presently brought up,—the table laid,—dinner brought from the inn;—and though we might have wished for a larger apartment, which was not to serve for bed-room as well, yet the behaviour of these people was so unlike that of inn-waiters, and had so much the appearance of real hospitality, that the gratification of seeing it was worth some little inconvenience. The room is very neat, and bears marks of industrious frugality;—it has a carpet composed of shreds of list of different colours, and over the chimney-piece is the portrait of one of the admirals under whom our host had served.

It rained all night, and we were congratulated upon this, because the waterfall of Lodore, the most famous in all this country, would be in perfection. As soon as we had breakfasted a boat was ready for us, and we embarked on the lake, about half a mile from the town. A taste for the picturesque, if I may so far flatter myself as to reason upon it from self-observation, differs from a taste for the arts in this remarkable point,—that instead of making us fastidious, it produces a disposition to receive delight, and teaches us to feel more pleasure in discovering beauty, than connoisseurs enjoy in detecting a fault. I have sometimes been satiated with works of art; a collection of pictures fatigues me, and I have regarded them at last rather as a task than as a pleasure. Here, on the contrary, the repetition of such scenes as these heightens the enjoyment of them. Every thing grows upon me. I become daily more and more sensible of the heights of the mountains, observe their forms with a more discriminating eye, and watch with increased pleasure the wonderful changes they assume under the effect of clouds or of sunshine.

The Lake of Keswick has this decided advantage over the others which we have seen, that it immediately appears to be what it is. Winandermere and Ulswater might be mistaken for great rivers, nor indeed can the whole extent of either be seen at once; here you are on a land-locked bason of water, a league in length, and about half as broad,—you do not wish it to be larger, the mirror is in perfect proportion to its frame. Skiddaw, the highest and most famous of the English mountains, forms its northern boundary, and seems to rise almost immediately from its shore, though it is at the nearest point half a league distant, and the town intervenes. One long mountain, along which the road forms a fine terrace, reaches nearly along the whole of its western side; and through the space between this and the next mountain, which in many points of view appears like the lower segment of a prodigious circle, a lovely vale is seen which runs up among the hills. But the pride of the Lake of Keswick is the head, where the mountains of Borrodale bound the prospect, in a wilder and grander manner than words can adequately describe. The cataract of Lodore thunders down its eastern side through a chasm in the rocks, which are wooded with birch and ash trees. It is a little river, flowing from a small lake upon the mountains about a league distant. The water, though there had been heavy rains, was not adequate to the channel;—indeed it would require a river of considerable magnitude to fill it,—yet it is at once the finest work and instrument of rock and water that I have ever seen or heard. At a little public-house near, where the key of the entrance is kept, they have a cannon to display the echo; it was discharged for us, and we heard the sound rolling round from hill to hill,—but for this we paid four shillings,—which are very nearly a peso duro. So that English echoes appear to be the most expensive luxuries in which a traveller can indulge. It is true there was an inferior one which would have cost only two shillings and sixpence; but when one buys an echo, who would be content, for the sake of saving eighteen pence, to put up with the second best, instead of ordering at once the super-extra-double superfine?

We walked once more at evening to the Lake side. Immediately opposite the quay is a little island with a dwelling-house upon it. A few years ago it was hideously disfigured with forts and batteries, a sham church, and a new druidical temple, and, except a few fir-trees, the whole was bare. The present owner has done all which a man of taste could do in removing these deformities: the church is converted into a tool-house, the forts demolished, the batteries dismantled, the stones of the druidical temple employed in forming a bank, and the whole island planted. There is something in this place more like the scenes of enchantment in the books of chivalry than like any thing in our ordinary world,—a building, the exterior of which promised all the conveniences and elegancies of life, surrounded with all ornamental trees, in a little island the whole of which is one garden, and that in this lovely lake, girt round on every side with these awful mountains. Immediately behind it is the long dark western mountain called Brandelow: the contrast between this and the island, which seemed to be the palace and garden of the Lady of the Lake, produced the same sort of pleasure that a tale of enchantment excites, and we beheld it under circumstances which heightened its wonders, and gave the scene something like the unreality of a dream. It was a bright evening, the sun shining, and a few white clouds hanging motionless in the sky. There was not a breath of air stirring,—not a wave, a ripple, or wrinkle on the lake, so that it became like a great mirror, and represented the shores, mountains, sky, and clouds so vividly, that there was not the slightest appearance of water. The great mountain-opening being reversed, in the shadow became a huge arch, and through that magnificent portal the long vale was seen between mountains and bounded by mountain beyond mountain, all this in the water, the distance perfect as in the actual scene,—the single houses standing far up in the vale, the smoke from their chimneys,—every thing the same, the shadow and the substance joining at their bases, so that it was impossible to distinguish where the reality ended and the image began. As we stood on the shore, heaven and the clouds and the sun seemed lying under us; we were looking down into a sky, as heavenly and as beautiful as that overhead, and the range of mountains, having one line of summit under our feet and another above us, were suspended between two firmaments.

*****

Thursday.

This morning we enquired as anxiously about the weather as if we had been on shipboard, for the destined business of the day was to ascend the great Skiddaw. After suffering hopes and fears, as sunshine or cloud seemed to predominate, off we set with a boy to guide us. The foot of the mountain lies about a mile from the town; the way for the first stage is along a green path of gradual and uninterrupted ascent, on the side of a green declivity. At the northern end of the vale there is another lake, called Bassenthwaite, closed in like a wedge between two mountains, and bounding the view; the vale, with both its lakes, opened upon us as we ascended. The second stage was infinitely more laborious, being so steep, though still perfectly safe, that we were many times forced to halt for breath, and so long that before we had completed it the first ascent seemed almost levelled with the vale. Having conquered this, the summit appeared before us, but an intervening plain, about a mile across, formed the third stage of the journey; this was easy travelling over turf and moss. The last part was a ruder ascent over loose stones with gray moss growing between them,—on the immediate summit there is no vegetation. We sat down on a rude seat formed by a pile of these stones, and enjoyed a boundless prospect,—that is, one which extended as far as the reach of the human eye, but the distance was dim and indistinct. We saw the sea through a hazy atmosphere, and the smoke of some towns upon the coast about six leagues off, when we were directed where to look for them: the Scotch mountains appeared beyond like clouds, and the Isle of Man, we were told, would have been visible had the weather been clearer. The home scene of mountains was more impressive, and in particular the Lake of Bassenthwaite lying under a precipice beneath us. They who visit the summit usually scratch their names upon one of the loose stones which form the back to this rude seat. We felt how natural and how vain it was to leave behind us these rude memorials, which so few could possibly see, and of those few in all human probability none would recognise,—yet we followed the example of our predecessors. There are three such seats upon the three points of the mountain; all which we visited. It is oftentimes piercingly cold here, when the weather is temperate in the vale. This inconvenience we did not perceive, for the wind was in the south,—but it brought on rain as we were descending, and thoroughly wetted us before we reached home.

After dinner, as the rain still continued, and we could not go further from home, we went to see an exhibition of pictures of the Lakes, a few doors distant. There were several views of one called Waswater, which is so little visited that our book of directions is silent concerning it. It seemed to us, however, to be of so striking a character, and so different from all which we have yet seen, that we consulted with our host concerning the distance and the best mode of getting there, and have accordingly planned a route which is to include it, and which we shall commence tomorrow.

The people here wear shoes with wooden soles. D., who had never seen any thing of the kind before, was inclined to infer from this that the inhabitants were behind the rest of England in improvement; till I asked him whether in a country so subject to rain as by experience we knew this to be, a custom which kept the feet dry ought not to be imputed to experience of its utility rather than to ignorance; and if, instead of their following the fashions of the south of England, the other peasantry would not do wisely in imitating them.

LETTER XLIII.

Borrodale.—Wasdale.—Waswater.—Calder Bridge.—Ennerdale.—Crummock Water.—Lake of Buttermere.—Lakes on the Mountains.

Friday.

The Lakes which we were next to explore lay south-west, and west of Keswick. We took an early breakfast, provided ourselves with some hard eggs, slung our knapsacks, and started about seven, taking the horse-road to Lodore. The morning promised well, there was neither sun to heat us, nor clouds enough to menace rain; but our old tormentors the flies swarmed from the hedges and coppices by which we passed, as many, as active, as impudent, and hardly less troublesome than the imps who beset St Anthony.

For half a league we had no other view than what a gate, a gap in the hedge, or an occasional rise of ground afforded. On the left was an insulated hill of considerable height wooded to the summit, and when we had left this, a coppice which reached to the foot of a long and lofty range of crags, and spread every where up the acclivity where soil enough could be found for trees to take root. This covered road terminated in a noble opening: from a part which was almost completely overbowered we came out at once upon a terrace above the Lake, the open crags rising immediately upon the left. Among these rocks some painter formerly discovered the figure of a female, which, with the help of imagination, may easily be made out, and accordingly he named the place Eve's crag, because, he said, she must certainly have been the first woman.—Lodore was glittering before us, not having yet discharged all the rain of yesterday; and Borrodale, into which we were bound, became more beautiful the nearer we approached.

We had consulted tourists and topographers in London, that we might not overpass any thing worthy of notice, and our Guide to the Lakes was with us. They told us of tracts of horrible barrenness, of terrific precipices, rocks rioting upon rocks, and mountains tost together in chaotic confusion; of stone avalanches rendering the ways impassable, the fear of some travellers who had shrunk back from this dreadful entrance into Borrodale, and the heroism of others who had dared to penetrate into these impenetrable regions:—into these regions, however, we found no difficulty in walking along a good road, which coaches of the light English make travel every summer's day. At the head of the lake, where the river flows into this great reservoir, the vale is about a mile in width, badly cultured because badly drained, and often overflowed; but the marsh lands had now their summer green, and every thing was in its best dress. The vale contracted as we advanced, and was not half this width when, a mile on, we came to a little village called the Grange.

This village consists of not more than half a score cottages, which stand on a little rising by the river side,—built apparently without mortar, and that so long ago that the stones have the same weather-worn colour as those which lie upon the mountain side behind them. A few pines rise over them, the mountains appear to meet a little way on and form an amphitheatre, and where they meet their base is richly clothed with coppice wood and young trees. The river, like all the streams of this country, clear, shallow, and melodious, washes the stone bank on which the greater number of the pines grow, and forms the foreground with an old bridge of two arches, as rude in construction as the cottages. The parapet has fallen down, and the bridge is impassable for carts, which ford a little way above. The road from the bridge to the village is in ruins; it had been made with much labour, but has been long neglected, and the floods have left only the larger and deeper rooted stones, and in other places the floor of rock; the inhabitants therefore are relatively poorer than they were in former times.—In this scene here are all the elements which the painter requires; nothing can be more simple than the combination, nothing more beautiful. I have never in all my travels seen a spot which I could recall so vividly; I never remember it without fancying that it can easily be described,—yet never attempt to clothe my recollections in words without feeling how inadequately words can represent them.

Another mile of broken ground, the most interesting which I ever traversed, brought us to a single rock called the Bowder Stone, a fragment of great size which has fallen from the heights. The same person who formerly disfigured the island in Keswick Lake with so many abominations, has been at work here also; has built a little mock hermitage, set up a new druidical stone, erected an ugly house for an old woman to live in who is to show the rock, for fear travellers should pass under it without seeing it, cleared away all the fragments round it, and as it rests upon a narrow base, like a ship upon its keel, dug a hole underneath through which the curious may gratify themselves by shaking hands with the old woman. The oddity of this amused us greatly, provoking as it was to meet with such hideous buildings in such a place,—for the place is as beautiful as eyes can behold, or imagination conceive. The river flows immediately below, of that pale gray green transparency which we sometimes see in the last light of the evening sky; a shelf of pebbles on the opposite shore shows where it finds its way through a double channel when swoln by rains:—the rest of the shore is covered with a grove of young trees which reach the foot of a huge single crag, half clothed with brush-wood:—this crag when seen from Keswick appears to block up the pass. Southward we looked down into Borrodale, whither we were bound,—a vale which appeared in the shape of a horse-shoe.

This lovely vale when we had descended into it, appeared to lie within an amphitheatre of mountains; but as we advanced we perceived that its real shape was that of the letter Y: our way lay along the right branch. They have a pestilential fungus in this country which has precisely the smell of putrid carrion, and is called by the fit name of the stinker. It is so frequent as to be quite a nuisance along the road. We passed through one little village, and left a second on our right, the loneliest imaginable places;—both villages, and the few single houses which we saw in the vale, have pines planted about them. A third and still smaller village called Seathwaite lay before us, drearily situated, because no attempt has been made to drain the land around, easily as it might be done. Above this lies the mine of black-lead of which those pencils so famous over all Europe are made,—it is the only one of the kind which has yet been discovered. We could not see it, as it is worked only occasionally, and had just been shut.

Our attention had been too much engaged by the delightful scenes around us to let us think of the weather, when, to our surprise, it began to rain hard:—there was no alternative but to proceed, for we were between two and three leagues from Keswick. Dreary as the wet and plashy ground about Seathwaite had appeared as we approached, it became cheerful when we looked back upon it,—for it seemed as if we were leaving all inhabitable parts,—nothing but rock and mountain was to be seen.—When we had almost reached the extremity of this ascending vale, we came to a little bridge, as rude as work of human hands can be; the stream making a little cataract immediately under it. Here the ascent of the mountain began, a steep, wet, winding path, more like a goat's highway than the track of man. It rained heavily; but we consoled ourselves with remarking that the rain kept us cool, whereas we should otherwise have suffered much from heat. After long labour we reached a part which from its easier acclivity seemed almost like a plain; and keeping by the side of a little stream came to a small mountain lake, or Tarn as it is called in the language of the country. A crag rose behind it; the water was so dark that till I came close to it I could scarcely believe it was clear. It may be thought that there is nothing more in a pool on the mountains, than in a pool on a plain,—but the thing itself occasions a totally different sensation. The sense of loneliness is an awful feeling. I have better understood why the saints of old were wont to retire into the wilderness, since I have visited these solitudes. The maps call this Sparkling Tarn; but Low Tarn is the name given it in the neighbourhood, and another about half an hour's height above it they call High Tarn. This other is omitted in the maps, which, indeed, the knowledge we have of their track, little as it is, enables us to say are very incorrect. It would make a fine picture, and the height of its situation might be expressed by alpine plants in the foreground.

Beyond this there was about half a mile still up, and by a steeper road. Having reached the highest point, which is between Scafell and Great Gabel, two of the highest mountains in England, we saw Wasdale below bending to the south-west, between mountains whose exceeding height we were now able to estimate by our own experience,—and to the west the sea appeared through an opening. The descent may without exaggeration be called tremendous; not that there is danger, but where any road is possible, it is not possible to conceive a worse. It is, like the whole surface round it, composed of loose stones, and the path serpentizes in turns as short and as frequent as a snake makes in flight. It is withal as steep as it can be to be practicable for a horse. At first we saw no vegetation whatever; after a while only a beautiful plant, called here the stone-fern, or mountain parsley, a lovely plant in any situation, but appearing greener and lovelier here because it was alone. The summits every where were wrapt in clouds; on our right, however, we could see rocks rising in pinnacles and grotesque forms,—like the lines which I have seen a child draw for rocks and mountains, who had heard of but never seen them,—or the edge of a thundercloud rent by a storm. Still more remarkable than the form is the colouring; the stone is red; loose heaps or rather sheets of stones lay upon the sides,—in the dialect of the country they call such patches screes, and it is convenient to express them by a single word: those which the last winter had brought down were in all their fresh redness, others were white with lichens; here patches and lines of green were interposed. At this height the white lichen predominated, but in other parts that species is the commonest which is called the geographical from its resemblance to the lines of a map; it is of a bright green, veined and spotted with black,—so bright as if nature, in these the first rudiments of vegetation, had rivalled the beauty of her choicest works. Wasdale itself, having few trees and many lines of enclosure, lay below us like a map.

The Lake was not visible till we were in the valley. It runs from north-east to south-west, and one mountain extends along the whole of its southern side, rising not perpendicularly indeed, but so nearly perpendicular as to afford no path, and so covered with these loose stones as to allow of no vegetation, and to be called from them The Screes. The stream which accompanied our descent was now swoln into a river by similar mountain torrents descending from every side. The dale is better cultivated at the head than Borrodale, being better drained; and the houses seemed to indicate more comfort and more opulence than those on the other side the mountain; but stone houses and slate roofs have an imposing appearance of cleanliness which is not always verified upon near inspection. Ash trees grow round the houses, greener than the pine, more graceful, and perhaps more beautiful,—yet we liked them less:—was this because, even in the midst of summer, the knowledge that the pine will not fade influences us, though it is not directly remembered?

The rain now ceased, and the clouds grew thinner. They still concealed the summits, but now began to adorn the mountain, so light and silvery did they become. At length they cleared away from the top, and we perceived that the mountain whose jagged and grotesque rocks we had so much admired was of pyramidal shape. That on the southern side of the dale head, which was of greater magnitude, and therefore probably, though not apparently, of equal height, had three summits. The clouds floated on its side, and seemed to cling to it. We thought our shore tamer than the opposite one, till we recollected that the road would not be visible from the water; and presently the mountain, which had appeared of little magnitude or beauty while we passed under it, became, on looking back, the most pyramidal of the whole, and in one point had a cleft summit like Parnassus; thus forming the third conical mountain of the group, which rose as if immediately from the head of the Lake, the dale being lost. But of all objects the screes was the most extraordinary. Imagine the whole side of a mountain, a league in length, covered with loose stones, white, red, blue, and green, in long straight lines as the torrents had left them, in sheets and in patches, sometimes broken by large fragments of rocks which had unaccountably stopt in their descent, and by parts which, being too precipitous for the stones to rest on, were darkened with mosses,—and every variety of form and colour was reflected by the dark water at its foot: no trees or bushes upon the whole mountain,—all was bare, but more variegated by this wonderful mixture of colouring than any vegetation could have made it.

The Lake is a league in length, and the hilly country ends with it. We entered upon a cultivated track, well wooded, and broken with gentle swells, the mountains on the right and left receding towards Ennerdale and Eskdale. About half a league beyond the end of the Lake we came to a miserable alehouse, the first which we had found all day, where they charged us an unreasonable price for milk and oaten bread. We went into a church-yard here, and were surprised at seeing well-designed and well-lettered tombstones of good red stone, in a place apparently inhabited by none but poor peasantry. In about another league we came to a larger village, where manufactures had begotten alehouses; in the church-yard was a pillar of the Pagan Danes converted into a cross, once curiously sculptured, but the figures are now nearly effaced. Here we came into the high road which runs along the coast, and in a short time arrived at a little town called Calder Bridge, where, to our comfort, after a walk of not less than seven leagues, we found a good inn. The bridge from which this place is named is very beautiful; the river flows over rocks which it has furrowed at the banks, so that shelves of rock jut out over the water, here green, here amber-coloured; ash, mountain-ash, and sycamores overhang it.——We have seen inscriptions over some of the houses in Saxon characters to-day,—a proof how long old customs have been retained in these parts.

Saturday.

"Well," said D. this morning when he came into my room, "we shall not be caught in the rain to-day, that is certain,—for we must set off in it."—We were to return to Keswick by way of Ennerdale and Crummock Lakes:—the road was not easy for strangers, and we soon lost it; but while we were stopping to admire an oak growing from three trunks of equal size which united into one, breast-high from the ground, a man overtook us and set us right. Perhaps the tree was originally planted upon a hillock, and these three stems had been the roots. It was nearly two leagues to Ennerdale bridge, and it rained heavily the whole way:—there we breakfasted in a dirty and comfortless alehouse;—but while we dried ourselves by the fire the sun came out, and we set off cheerfully towards the foot of the Lake.

Ennerdale water is a sort of square, spreading widely at its base. The mountains seem to have planted their outworks in the lake; they rise directly up to a certain height on both sides, then leave an interval of apparently level ground, behind which they start up again to a great height. All are bare, with something of the same colouring as in Wasdale, but in a less degree. The Lake is about a league in length; at its foot the dale is cultivated, spotted with such houses as suit the scene; and so wooded as to form a fitting and delightful foreground. We had here a singular and most beautiful effect of shadow. A line of light crossed the Lake; all that was in sunshine seemed water; all that was in shade reflected the shores so perfectly, with such a motionless and entire resemblance, that it appeared as if the water were stopt by some unseen dam on the edge of a precipice, or abyss, to which no bottom could be seen.

From this place we ventured to cross the mountains to Crummock, where there was no track: they told us we could not miss the way; and it was true,—but woe to the traveller who should be overtaken there by clouds or by storms! It was a wild tract,—a few straggling sheep upon the green hill sides, and kites screaming over head, the only living things. We saw the rude outline of a man cut in the turf by some idle shepherd's boy, and it gave us some pleasure as being the work of hands. As we were descending, having effected a passage of nearly three hours, we saw to our right a chasm in the mountain in which trees were growing, and out of which a stream issued. There we turned, and soon found that it must needs be the waterfall called Scale-force, one of the objects especially marked in our route. The stream falls down a fissure in the rock in one unbroken stream, from a prodigious height, then rolls along a little way, and takes a second but less leap, before it issues out.

A heavy shower came on: but we were well repaid on reaching the shore of Crummock Lake; for one of the loveliest rainbows that ever eyes beheld, reached along the great mountain opposite,—the colours of the mountain itself being scarcely less various or less vivid. We came to an inn at the foot of the Lake, procured a boat and embarked; but this Lake is not supplied like Winandermere and Keswick. Never did adventurers in search of pleasure set foot in a more rotten and crazy embarkation,—it was the ribs and skeleton of a boat: however, there was no other; if we would go upon the Lake we must be contented with this. We were well repaid:—for, of all the scenes in the Land of Lakes, that from the middle of Crummock is assuredly the grandest. In colour the mountains almost rival the rainbow varieties of Waswater; they rise immediately from the water, and appear therefore higher and more precipitous than any which we have seen. Honistar crag forms the termination, the steepest rock in the whole country, and of the finest form; it resembles the table-mountains in the East Indies, each of which has its fortress on the summit. To appearance it was at the end of this water, but a little vale intervened, and the smaller Lake of Buttermere. We landed at the end, and walked to the village by this second water, where we took up our abode for the night, for the first time in a village inn.

*****

Sunday.

The western side of this little lake is formed by a steep mountain called Red Pike; a stream runs down it, issuing from a Tarn in a bason near the summit, which, when seen from below, or from the opposite heights, appears certainly to have been once the crater of a volcano. The situation of this Tarn was so peculiar that we would not leave it unseen. Before breakfast we commenced our labour, and labour in truth it was. We had supposed an hour and a half would be sufficient for the expedition; but we were that time in getting up, and just as long in returning, so steep was the mountain side. As we ascended, it was remarkable to perceive how totally Crummock water had lost all its grandeur,—it was a striking emblem of human pursuits, thus divested of their importance and dwindled into insignificance when we look back upon them. Having conquered the ascent, instead of finding the Tarn immediately on the edge, as we expected, there was a plain of half a mile to cross, and then we found it lying under a buttress of rock,—as lonely a spot as ever mountain kite sailed over. Like Low Tarn, its waters were dark; but the sun shone, and the wind just breaking up the surface, rolled over it a fleeting hue like the colour of a pigeon's neck. There is a pleasure in seeing what few besides ourselves have seen. One Tarn, I perceive, differs little from another:—but the slighter the difference of features is, the more pleasure there is in discovering that difference;—and if another of these mountain pools lay in our way, I should willingly spend three hours more in ascending to it.

The most unpleasant part of this expedition, fatiguingly steep as it was,—and nothing could be steeper which was not an actual precipice,—was, that we had a wall to cross of loose stones, very broad, and as high as an ordinary man's stature. The utmost care was necessary, lest we should drag the stones after us; in which case they would have killed us and buried us at the same time.

Our road to Keswick lay up a long ascent between green swelling mountains—a pastoral scene, with its stream in the bottom, and sheep-folds beside it—then down that vale of Newlands, which is seen so beautifully from Keswick through the great mountain portal.

LETTER XLIV.

Departure from the Lakes.—Wigton.—Carlisle.—Penrith.—The Borderers.—The Pillar of the Countess.—Appleby.—Brough.—Stainmoor.—Bowes.—Yorkshire Schools.

Monday.

We were now to leave the land of lakes and turn our faces towards London. T he regular road would have been to have returned to Penrith, and there have met the stage; but it would cost us only half a day's journey to visit Carlisle from whence it starts; and a city whose name occurs so often in English history, being the frontier town on this part of the Scotish border, was deserving of this little deviation from the shortest route. For Carlisle, therefore, we took chaise from Keswick, the distance being eight leagues. Our road lay under Skiddaw, and, when we had advanced about five miles, overlooked the lake of Bassenthwaite, nearly the whole of its length. We now perceived the beauty of this water, which, because of its vicinity to Keswick, is contemptuously overlooked by travellers; and the sight of its wooded shores, its mountainous sides, with its creeks and bays, and the grand termination formed by the Borrodale mountains as we looked back, made us regret that we had not devoted a day to exploring it. The road at length bent to the eastward, leaving the lake; and shortly afterwards, walking up a steep hill, we had a new and striking view of the vale. The Lake of Keswick was hidden behind Brandelow, the long mountain which forms its western bank: over this appeared the mountains behind the waterfall of Lodore, and over these we could distinguish the point of a remarkable mountain at the head of Winandermere. This was our last view of this lovely country: and a certainty that it was the last, that no circumstances could ever lead me to it again, made me gaze longer and more earnestly, as if to fix deeper in my memory so exquisite a landscape. I remembered the day of my departure from my father's house, and, for the first time, anticipated with fear the time when I should leave England, never to return to it.

We had left the mountains, but their roots or outworks extended to some distance before the plain began. The road lay over an open country of broken ground, with hills at a little distance, enclosed in square patches, and newly, as it appeared, brought into cultivation. There was not a single tree rising in the hedge-rows. Our stage was to Wigton, five leagues and a half, which is unusually far. The postboy rested his horses at Ireby, one of those townlets in which every thing reminds us of the distance from a metropolis. It consists of a few houses forming something like a plaza, grass grows between the stones of the pavement, and the children came clattering round us in their wooden shoes, as if the sight of a chaise were a novelty. We soon gained an eminence, from whence the flat country opened upon us. Solway Firth and the Scotish mountains lay to the north, to the east and south the plain extended as far as we could see;—a noble prospect, and to us the more striking as we had been so much among the close scenery of a mountainous district. We passed near a quadrangular farm-house, which the driver told us was built like those in Scotland. The dwelling and out-houses are round the fold, and the dung-hill in the middle of the court. This form was evidently devised for defence against cow-stealers.

Wigton bears all the marks of increasing prosperity. It is not many years since its market was held on Sunday, and the country people bought their meat before they went into church, carried it into the church with them, and hung it over the back of their seats till the service was over. The many well-drest inhabitants whom we beheld were sufficient proof that no such custom could now be tolerated there. Good inns, good shops, carts and chaises in the streets, and masons at work upon new houses, were symptoms of rapid improvement. They paint their houses with a dark red, thus hiding and disfiguring good stone; perhaps it may be thought the paint preserves the stone, but there can be no good reason for preferring so abominable a colour. Going up the stairs of the inn I noticed a common alehouse print of the battle of Wexford, which was an action with the Irish insurgents, in the late rebellion in that country. It represented a lady, by name Miss Redmond, at the head of the rebels, who is said to have taken arms to revenge the death of her lover. The artist was probably a well-wisher to the Irishmen.

From hence to Carlisle was less than three leagues, and the cathedral was in view over the plain. We met carts upon the way having wheels of primitive rudeness, without spokes, such as are used in our country, and which I have never till now seen since I left it. One of these wheels we saw by the road side, laid against the bank as a stile, its two holes serving as ladder-steps to ascend by. Carlisle is the capital of these parts, and is indeed a great city. While dinner was preparing we hastened to the cathedral. Its tower would not be thought fine upon a parochial English church, and looks the worse for standing upon so large a body. The inside, however, proved far more interesting than the exterior had promised. The old stalls remain, admirably carved in English oak, which rivals stone in durability; but the choir is disfigured by a double row of those vile partitions which crowd and debase all the heretical churches; and the window, instead of old painted glass, of which every pane is stained, having only a border of bright yellow, with corners of bright green, round uncoloured compartments, flings a glaring and ill-assorted light. The lives of St Augustine, St Anthony the Great, and St Cuthbert, are represented here in a series of pictures. They were plaistered over at the time of the schism, but have been lately recovered as much as possible, by the exertions of Percy, the antiquary and poet, who is a dignitary of this church. As vestiges of antiquity they are curious; but otherwise they might well have been spared, the subjects being taken from those fabulous legends by which men of mistaken piety have given so much occasion of scandal. One of them represents the devil appearing to St Augustine, with a large book upon his back, fastened with great clasps, which is the register wherein he keeps his account of sins committed, and it seems a sufficient load for him. He had brought it to show the Saint his debtor account, which we are to suppose has been cancelled by immediate prayer, for the devil is saying, Pœnitet me tibi ostendisse librum, 'I repent having shown thee the book.' Over some of the oldest tombs we noticed a remarkable form of arch, which might be adduced as an example of the sylvan origin of Gothic architecture: it resembles a bent bough, of which the branches have been lopt, but not close to the stem.

The city walls, which half a century ago were capable of defence, are now in a state of decay; the castle is still guarded, because within the court there is a depositary of arms and field-pieces. Here is an entire portcullis, formed of wood cased with iron. Manufactories of late introduction have doubled the population within few years, but with little addition to the decent society of the place. Poor Scotch and poor Irish chiefly make up the increase, and the city swarms with manufacturing poor in their usual state of depravity. We are once more in the land of salmon. Some of the natives here take this fish with a dexterity truly savage; they ride on horseback into the water, and pierce them with a heavy trident as long as a tilting-spear.

I observe many peculiarities at our inn. Two grenadiers painted upon wood, and then cut out to the picture so as to resemble life, keep guard, one at the bottom of the stairs, another half way up. They brought us a singular kind of spoon in our negus,—longer than the common one, the stem round, twisted in the middle, and ending in a heavy button or head, the heavy end being placed in the glass, and designed to crush the sugar. The boot-cleaner is an old Scotchman, with all the proverbial civility of his nation;—he entered with a low bow, and asked if we would please to give him leave to clean our boots. My bed curtains may serve as a good specimen of the political freedom permitted in England. General Washington is there represented driving American Independence in a car drawn by leopards, a black Triton running beside them, and blowing his conch,—meant, I conceive, by his crown of feathers, to designate the native Indians. In another compartment, Liberty and Dr Franklin are walking hand in hand to the Temple of Fame, where two little cupids display a globe, on which America and the Atlantic are marked. The tree of liberty stands by, and the stamp-act reversed is bound round it. I have often remarked the taste of the people for these coarse allegories.

*****

Tuesday.

At six we were on the roof of the stage-coach on our return to London after this long journey. We saw symptoms of our vicinity to Scotland upon the road. Scotch drovers were on their way home, men who are employed in driving lean cattle into England to be fattened for the English market; they wore instead of a hat a sort of flat turban, and had a large mantle of gray checquered cloth scarft round them, a costume far more graceful than the English. One woman we saw walking barefoot, and carrying her shoes in her hand.—"'Tis the way they do in Scotland," said the coachman, who seemed to pride himself on having been born the south side of the border. Skiddaw appeared to our right, in a new form, and of more impressive magnitude than when we first beheld it at its foot, because we were aware of the distance, and knew by experience its height. During the whole of the first stage the road inclined towards the mountains which we had left:—we did not look at them without something of regret, remembering hours and days spent among them, in that happy state of health, both bodily and mental, which extracts enjoyment even from difficulty and toil.

We breakfasted at Penrith. There are the remains of a castle here on a little eminence, which have been much dilapidated of late;—a fine gateway has been pulled down for the sake of the materials, and after it had been demolished, the stones were found to be so excellently cemented together, that it was cheaper to dig fresh ones than to separate them. This habit of quarrying in castles and abbeys has been fatal to some of the most interesting ruins in England. Richard III. resided here when Duke of Gloucester: the character of this prince, like that of our Pedro, has been vindicated by late historians; and the prevailing opinion is, that he has been atrociously calumniated to gratify the Tudors, an able but a wicked race of princes. It is a proof of his popular qualities at least, that his memory is still in good odour here, where he could not have been beloved unless he had eminently deserved to be so, because the country was attached to the hostile party.

We had an intelligent companion on the roof, a native of the country, who seemed to take a pleasure in communicating information to us concerning it, perceiving me to be a foreigner, and that I listened to him with attention. This rendered the next stage, for unfortunately he proceeded no farther with us, particularly interesting. The road ran parallel with the sierra of Crossfell, at some little distance from it; its length and uniformity of outline so diminished its apparent height, that I listened to him at first with incredulity when he told me it exceeded any of the mountains in the lake country: yet books confirm his statement, and appearances must not be weighed against measurement. It formed a fine screen to the east. Immediately near Penrith we crossed two rivers which still retained the wild character of mountain streams. The country is beautiful, and its scenery enriched by the ruins of many castles, the strong-holds in former times of the Banditti of the Border. These Borderers carried the art of cow-stealing to its greatest possible perfection; they are now reduced to a state of subordination and law, and their district is as orderly as any in the kingdom; yet in those parts which are remote from the great roads, though their plundering habits are laid aside, they retain much of their old rude manners and barbarous spirit. An instance of this we heard from our companion. A Borderer, who was at mortal enmity with one of his neighbours, fell sick, and, being given over, sent for his enemy, that they might be reconciled. "Ah," said he, when the man entered the room, "I am very bad, very bad indeed;—d'ye think I shall die?" "Why, hope not," replied his visitor,—"hope not;—to be sure you are very bad, but for all that perhaps you may do yet." "No, no," said the other, "I shall die, I know I shall die,—and so I have sent for you that I may not go out of the world in enmity with any one. So, d'ye see, we'll be friends. The quarrel between us is all over,—all over,—and so give me your hand." Accordingly this token of reconciliation was performed, and the other took his leave; when, just as he was closing the door after him, the sick man cried out, "But stop," said he,—"if I should not die this time, this is to go for nothing: Mind now,—it's all to be just as it was before, if I do not die."

Not far from Penrith is a pillar of stone, well wrought, and formerly well emblazoned, with dials on each side, and this inscription upon a brazen plate:

This pillar was erected anno 1656, by the Right Honourable Anne, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, and sole heir of the right honourable George Earl of Cumberland, &c., for a memorial of her last parting in this place with her good and pious mother, the right honourable Margaret Countess Dowager of Cumberland, the 2d of April, 1616. In memory whereof she also left an annuity of four pounds to be distributed to the poor within the parish of Brougham every 2d day of April, for ever, upon the Stone Table hard by.

The little low stone table stands close at hand, on which the distribution of this alms is still made. I have seldom been so interested by any monument or inscription, as by this, which relates wholly to the private feelings of an individual. She was an admirable woman, and her name is still held in veneration.

A little distant, though not in sight of the road, is the scene of a circumstance which I have seen more frequently related than any other single anecdote in English books: so deep an interest do these people, one and all, take either in the practice or the tales of hunting. It is the park,—Whinfield is its name,—where a hart was once started, and chased by a single buck-hound from thence to Red Kirk in Scotland, which is sixty English miles off, and back again, thirty leagues in all. The hart returned to die upon his lair: he leaped the park pales, and expired immediately; and the hound, not having strength for the leap, died on the outside. Their heads were nailed against a hawthorn-tree, with these lines under them:

Hercules killed Hart-o-Greece,

And Hart-o-Greece killed Hercules.

We passed through Kirkby Thur, that is, the Church by Thor, one of the few etymological vestiges of Saxon idolatry in England. The worship of this god was common in these parts; the name Thor occurs in a pedigree, as that of the lord of one of the manors in Cumberland. Through Temple Sowerby next, where the Knights Templars were once established. It was not unusual formerly, for men who found it necessary to limit their expenses as much as possible, to retire into this neighbourhood, where thirty years ago they could live in a respectable family for so small a pension as eighteen English pounds;—a sort of banishment, for there was then little intercourse between the metropolis and these remote parts, and no stage coach nearer than York. Then we reached Appleby, the county town of Westmoreland, though apparently a smaller place than Kendal. The road runs close by it, but does not enter, a river dividing it from the town. A castle, one of the few which are still habitable, overlooks it from a wooded eminence; the river and bridge come into the foreground, and the whole forms a highly beautiful scene. Here we lost our companion. He told us that Appleby was almost in as high a state of faction about horse-racing as ever Constantinople had been from the same cause.

The road, which was now become of a drearier character, continued under Crossfell till we approached Brough, when it drew nearer to the sierra just at its termination. Its sides were broken here with rocks, and loose stones brought from above by the frosts and torrents. Under it stood some well-built houses, with a few trees about them, not set thickly enough to look like plantations, but as if of spontaneous growth. The appearance of these houses, wherein certainly the elegancies as well as comforts of life would be found, formed an impressive contrast with the dreariness of the adjoining country, which was as bleak and ungenial as the worst wastes of Galicia. At Brough the coach dined, at an hour unreasonably early, and at an inn bad enough and dirty enough to be in character with a beggarly town.

Our next stage was over the sierra of Stainmoor, a cold and desolate tract. The few houses upon the way bear testimony to the severity of the climate; their roofs are raised to as acute an angle as possible, that the snow may not lie upon them, which covers these heights probably all the winter through. Since my first day's journey in Cornwall, I have seen nothing so desolate, and in this latitude the sky is as cheerless as the earth. Beyond this is the town of Bowes, which is in Yorkshire, a huge province, as large as any other three in the island. The town, like all those which we have seen since Carlisle, has its ruined castle, meant formerly for protection against their marauding neighbours, who long after the union of the two kingdoms carried on incessant hostilities against English beef and mutton.

At Bowes begins the great grazing country for children.—It is the cheapest part of England, and schools for boys have long been established here, to which tradesmen, and even some parents of higher order who think money better than learning, send their children from all the great towns, even from the western provinces,—but London supplies the greater number. Two of these lads we took up, who were returning to their parents in the metropolis after a complete Yorkshire education. One of them, who was just fourteen, had been four years there, during which time one of his sisters and his father had died, and he had never seen face of friend or kinsman. I asked him if he thought he should know his brothers and sisters when he saw them: he said, he supposed not; but presently, after a pause, added with a smile in the dialect of the country, "I think I shall ken 'em too." This was an interesting lad with a quick eye and a dyspeptic countenance. He will be apprenticed behind some London counter, or at a lawyer's desk, and die for want of fresh air. His companion was a fine, thriving, thick-headed fellow, with a bottle belly and a bulbous nose; of that happy and swinish temperament, that it might be sworn he would feed and fatten wherever he went.

These schools are upon the most œconomical plan: a pension of sixteen pounds sterling pays for everything, clothing included. For certain they are kept upon Spartan fare; but the boys, who were from different schools, spake well of their masters, and had evidently been happy there. Sheets are considered as superfluous, and clean linen as a luxury reserved only for Sundays. They wash their own clothes by means of a machine; and the masters use no other labourers in getting in their harvests both of hay and corn; so that what with farming, teaching, and a small cure, for they are generally priests, they make the system answer. What is taught is merely what is required for the common purposes of life, to write well, and be ready at the ordinary operations of arithmetic. They profess to teach Latin, but I could not find that the masters ever ventured beyond the grammar. At one of these schools they had been enacting plays, to which the neighbourhood were admitted at a price. Three pounds a night had been their receipt, and this was divided among the boys. Our little friend related this with great satisfaction, told us that he himself had played a part, and was easily persuaded to give us one of his songs. They had moveable scenes, he said, as good as we should see in any theatre.—One of these schools consists of Irish boys, and the master goes over every summer to catch a drove of them.

A single house at Greta-Bridge was our next stage, pleasantly situated beside a clear rapid river in a woody country; but after this single scene of beauty all was flat and dismal. The road, however, had this recommendation, that for league after league it was as straight as the most impatient traveller could wish it. At midnight we left the coach at Borough-Bridge, bidding adieu to the poor boys who had forty hours to travel on.

LETTER XLV.

York City and Minster.—Journey to Lincoln.—Travellers imposed upon.—Innkeepers.—Ferry over the Trent.—Lincoln.—Great Tom.—Newark.—Alconbury Hill.

Wednesday.

From Borough-Bridge, which is a little town full of good inns, we took chaise in the morning for York. The road was a straight line over a dead flat; the houses which we passed of red brick, roofed with red tiles, uglier than common cottages, and not promising more comfort within. York is one of the few English cities with the name of which foreigners are familiar. I was disappointed that its appearance in the distance was not finer,—we saw its huge cathedral rising over the level,—but that was all; and I found that the second city in England was as little imposing as the metropolis upon a first view. We drove under an old gateway and up a narrow street, ordered dinner at the inn, and set out to see the cathedral, here called the minster.

Though I had seen the cathedral churches of Exeter, Salisbury, Westminster, and Worcester, my expectations were exceeded here; for though on the outside something, I know not what, is wanting, the interior surpasses any thing to be seen elsewhere. It is in magnitude that York minster is unrivalled; it is of the best age of Gothic, and in admirable repair:—this praise must be given to the English heretics, that they preserve these monuments of magnificent piety with a proper care, and do not suffer them to be disfigured by the barbarism of modern times. Here indeed we felt the full effect of this wonderful architecture, in which all the parts are highly ornamented, yet the multiplicity of ornaments contributes to one great impression. We ascended the tower by such a wearying round of steps that I was compelled to judge more respectfully of its height, than we had done when beholding it from below. The day was hazy; we saw however sufficiently far into a flat country; and the city, and the body of the immense building below us, with its towers and turrets, its buttresses and battlements, were objects far more impressive than any distant view.

Having satisfied our curiosity here, we strolled in search of other objects, saw the castle, which is converted into a prison, and found our way to a public walk beside the river Ouse, a sluggish and muddy stream, which, however, as it is navigable, the people of York would be loth to exchange for one of the wild Cumberland rivers, which we could not but remember with regret. There is a bridge over it of remarkable architecture, whose irregular arches, with the old houses adjoining, form a highly picturesque pile. While we were looking at it, we heard some one from the ships sing out, "There he goes!" and this was repeated from vessel to vessel, and from shore to shore, chiefly by boys and children, in a regular tone, and at regular intervals, almost like minute guns. It was some time, before we paid any attention to this; but at last it was repeated so often that it forced itself upon our notice, and we enquired of a woman, whose little girl was joining in the cry, what it meant. She told us it was a man, then crossing at the ferry, whom the children always called after in this way:—she could give no further account, and did not know that he had done any thing to provoke it. He was a man in years, and of decent appearance. It is possible that he may have committed some offence which drew upon him the public notice,—but it is equally possible that this was begun in sport; and if so, as the woman indeed understood it to be, it is one of the strangest instances of popular persecution I ever witnessed. Age and deformity, I may here remark, are always objects of ridicule in England; it is disgraceful to the nation to see how the rabble boys are permitted to torment a poor idiot, if they find one in the streets.

*****

Thursday.

At five in the morning we left York, I could not but admire the punctuality of the old coachman. He was on his box, we on the roof,—every thing ready to start. One church clock struck,—another followed,—house clocks all around us,—"All but the minster," said the old man,—for the minster was his signal. Presently that began with its finer tone,—and before the first quarter had ended, crack went his whip and we were off. It was a cloudy morning,—we passed through Tadcaster, and a few smaller places not worth naming, because not worth remembering, till we reached Ferry-bridge to breakfast. The bridge is new and handsome, yet our bridges are in a better taste than those of the English:—the river, a slow stream, as dull and uninteresting as a canal. On to Doncaster, one of the handsomest towns I have ever seen:—the country around is as insipid as the plains of Old Castille, though perhaps the Doncastrians are of a different opinion, as their race-ground is one of the best in England. The scenery improved when we entered the province of Nottinghamshire, and the sun came out and brightened every thing; here we saw a few hop-gardens. Our places were taken to an inn called Markham Moor, from whence we expected to reach Lincoln time enough to see it easily that evening. It was nineteen miles from the inn: they told us they had no chaise at home, and must send for one from Tuxford, therefore we had better go on to Tuxford, which was two miles further, and then we should be one mile nearer Lincoln. To this we readily agreed,—but our coach dined at this Markham Moor,—here would be an hour lost, ill to be spared when we were prest for time: another stage passed us while we were deliberating, and by the landlord's especial advice we mounted this and advanced. Lincoln cathedral was distinctly in sight at this distance.

At Tuxford we ordered chaise for Lincoln, which we had been told was eighteen miles distant,—the waiter said it was twenty, the landlady that it was twenty-one. "Why have they no Corregidores in England?" said I to my companion, who wished as heartily, but as vainly, as myself for summary redress. The woman knew that we knew we were imposed on, and expressed it in her countenance and manner. There was no remedy but the never-failing panacea of patience. Mark the complication of roguery.—Instead of taking a cross road, which would have cut off two miles, we were driven back to Markham Moor, by which excellent manœuvre we had to pay for twenty-one, instead of nineteen, and an additional turnpike into the bargain. We called at this inn, and asked for the landlord, meaning to tell him our opinion of his conduct; but he did not choose to appear. No class of people in England require the superintendance of law more than the inn-keepers. They fix their own prices, without any other restriction than their own conscience, and uniformly charge the fraction of a mile as a whole one, so that the traveller pays for a mile, in almost every stage, more than he travels. False weights and measures are punishable here, why should this kind of measure be exempted?

When we had proceeded about half a league further, the driver dismounted to open a gate. Just on the other side was a little bridge over a ditch of clear and slowly-flowing water: the wall of this bridge was continued far enough, as might have been supposed, for security, and then sloped aside from the road, and ended. By the side of the road was a steep bank, not higher than with a bound one might spring up; at the bottom of this was a young hedge fenced with rails on both sides, at right angles with the ditch-stream. Our horses went on before the driver could remount, and they chose to bend this way; the chaise was soon in such a situation that it was prudent for us with all speed to alight; he held the horses and out we got; but to get them into the road was not so easy. Both were spirited beasts, indeed we had been admiring them;—both were startlish, and the mare vicious;—she had lately run with a chaise into the river at Newark, and drowned the post-boy. They began to plunge,—the weight of the chaise, which was on the declivity, pressed upon them, the horse leapt at the rails and broke them down, the mare fell in the bottom, and had the bank been in the slightest degree steeper the chaise must have rolled upon her. As it was, we expected to see her killed, or her bones broken at least. D. called to the driver to cut the traces instantly and let the horse loose, or he would frighten the mare still more, and make bad worse:—he hesitated to do this till after more plunging the mare got into the ditch:—however, the traces were loosed, and the beasts got into the road with little other hurt than the violent agitation they were in. We now exerted all our strength to drag up the chaise, but to no purpose. D. went one way for help, the driver another, while I sate upon the wall of the bridge and looked at the stream. D. brought with him a man and two boys, and the driver a carthorse, who soon did the business,—and we proceeded not without some apprehensions of another accident, from the fear of the horses, but, thanks be to God, all went on well.

We came presently to Dunham Ferry,—the interruption and expence of crossing here were well compensated by the beauty of the scene. The Trent at this place is the largest fresh-water river which I have seen in England,—indeed I believe it rolls a greater body of fresh water to the sea than any other. Two of its huge arms, which embraced a long island, met just above the ferry, like two large rivers. The opposite bank was high and broken. The island terminated in a sharp point, to which the stream had worn it, and just at this point were about a score or five-and-twenty remarkably large willow-trees, as tall as elms. Some men of taste must have planted them two centuries ago; the rest of the island, as far as we could see, was fine meadow land,—and a colony of rooks had established their commonwealth in the trees. The country up the river was a dead flat, with a handsome church in the distance, and another on the shore which we were leaving; many little islands, with a bush or two upon them, in the stream below,—the price at the ferry was half-a-crown, which we thought exorbitantly dear.

The road now ran between plantations of birch, oak, beech, and hazel, with ditches of clear weedy water on each side, which sometimes spread into little pools in which the overhanging boughs and bank weeds were reflected,—a complete contrast to the mountain streams, and yet beautiful. It opened upon a marsh, and we once more beheld the cathedral upon its height, now two leagues distant. This magnificent building stands at the end of a long and high hill, above the city. To the north there are nine windmills in a row. It has three towers, the two smaller ones topped with the smallest spires I have ever seen;—they were beautiful in the distance—yet we doubted whether they ought to have been there, and in fact they are of modern addition, and not of stone, so that on a near view they disgrace and disfigure the edifice. Imagine this seen over a wide plain, this the only object,—than which the power of man could produce no finer. The nearer we approached the more dreary was the country—it was one wide fen,—but the more beautiful the city, and the more majestic the cathedral: Never was an edifice more happily placed; it overtops a city built on the acclivity of a steep hill,—its houses intermingled with gardens and orchards. To see it in full perfection, it should be in the red sunshine of an autumnal evening, when the red roofs, and red brick houses would harmonize with the sky and the fading foliage.

Our disasters had delayed us till it was too late to see the church. So we sate down to a late dinner upon some of the wild fowl of the fens.

Friday.

The exterior of Lincoln cathedral is far more beautiful than that of York, the inside is far inferior. They have been obliged in some places to lay a beam from one column to another, to strengthen them; they have covered it with Gothic work, and it appears at first like a continuation of the passages above. It is to be wished that in their other modern works there had been the same approximation to the taste of better times. A fine Roman pavement was discovered not many years ago in the centre of the cloister; they have built a little brick building over it to preserve it with commendable care; but so vile a one as to look like one of those houses of necessity which are attached to every cottage in this country—and which it is to be hoped will one day become as general in our own. A library forms one side of the cloister-quadrangle, which is also modern and mean. Another vile work of modern time is a picture of the Annunciation over the altar.

Most of the old windows were demolished in the days of fanaticism; their place has not been supplied with painted glass,—and from the few which remain, the effect of the coloured light crowning the little crockets and pinnacles, and playing upon the columns with red and purple and saffron shades of light, made us the more regret that all were not in the same state of beauty. We ascended the highest tower, crossing a labyrinth of narrow passages; it was a long and wearying way,—the jackdaws who inhabit these steeples have greatly the advantage of us in getting to the top of them. How very much must these birds be obliged to man for building cathedrals for their use! It is something higher than York, and the labour of climbing it was compensated by a bird's eye view all around us.

We ascended one of the other towers afterwards to see Great Tom, the largest bell in England. At first it disappointed me, but the disappointment wore off, and we became satisfied that it was as great a thing as it was said to be. A tall man might stand in it, upright; the mouth measures one and twenty English feet in circumference, and it would be a large tree of which the girth equalled the size of its middle. The hours are struck upon it with a hammer. I should tell you that the method of sounding bells in England is not by striking, but by swinging them: no bell, however, which approaches nearly to the size of this is ever moved, except this; it is swung on Whitsunday, and when the judges arrive to try the prisoners,—another fit occasion would be at executions, to which it would give great solemnity, for the sound is heard far and wide over the fens. On other occasions it was disused, because it shook the tower, but the stones have now been secured with iron cramps.—Tom, which is the familiar abbreviation of Thomas, seems to be the only name which they give to a bell in this country.

Only one coach passes through Lincoln on the way to London, and that early in the morning, we were therefore obliged to return again into the great north road, which we did by taking chaise to Newark; the road is a straight line, along an old Roman way. A bridge over the Trent and the ruins of a castle, which long held out for the king in the great civil war, are the only remarkable objects in this town,—except indeed that I saw the name Ordoyno over a shop. The day ended in rain; we got into a stage in the evening, which took us through the towns of Grantham, Stamford, and Stilton, and dropt us in the middle of the night at a single inn called Alconbury-Hill,—where after a few minutes we succeeded in obtaining admittance and went to bed.

LETTER XLVI.

Cambridge.—Republican Tendency of Schools counteracted at College.—College a useful Place for the debauched Students, a melancholy one for others.—Fellowships.—Advantage of a University Education.—Not so necessary as it once was.

Wednesday.

From From Alconbury-Hill to Cambridge is two short stages,—we passed through Huntingdon, the birth-place of Oliver Cromwell, and travelled over a dismal flat, the country northward being one great fen. The whole of these extensive fens is said once to have been dry and productive ground reduced to this state by some earthquake or deluge, unremembered in history. Tools found beneath the soil, and submersed forests, are the proofs. A century and half ago they began to drain them, and the draining still proceeds. In old times they were the favourite retreat of the religious: the waters were at that time carried off by great rivers through the level, above twenty leagues long, which formed innumerable lakes, many of them of considerable size, and on the islands in these a hermitage or a convent was placed in safety from the sudden attack of the Northern Sea Kings, and in that solitude which its holy inhabitants desired. The greater number of the old English saints flourished in this district.

A singular custom prevailed here about fourscore years ago, and perhaps may not yet be wholly discontinued. The corpse was put into the ground a few hours after death, and about a week afterwards they buried an empty coffin with funeral ceremonies. Possibly this strange peculiarity may have been introduced upon occasion of some pestilence, when it would have been dangerous to keep the body longer. The body is always kept some days in England, usually till signs of decay appear.

At length we came in sight of Cambridge:—How inferior to the first view of Oxford! yet its lofty buildings and old trees gave it a characteristic appearance, and were more beautiful because in the midst of such a dreary land. The streets are narrow, and the greater number of the colleges mean brick buildings; there is, however, one edifice, the Chapel of King's College, which exceeds any thing in Oxford, and probably in the world. This unrivalled edifice is dedicated to Mary the most pure and to St Nicholas. It was finished by the arch-apostate Henry VIII., when he had just effected his adulterous marriage with Anne Boleyn, and here their names appear twined together with true lovers' knots, the only place where his initials remain joined with hers.

In this university are sixteen colleges.[11] The principal one is dedicated to the most holy Trinity; it consists of two handsome squares, or quadrangles as they are called, the larger of which the Cantabrigians would fain believe to be finer than the great quadrangle of Christ Church at Oxford, of which they may perhaps persuade those who have never been at Oxford. The Library, the Chapel, and the Refectory were shown to us; the two latter are little curious, but in the anti-chapel is a statue of the great Newton by Roubiliac, a name of great eminence in this country. It is a good example of Vandyke in marble, and that will give you the best idea of its style and excellence. The sculptor has endeavoured to make it picturesque, by representing the texture and the light and shade of silk in the drapery; and as the vulgar can always comprehend dexterity of hand, and can seldom comprehend any thing above it, the statue has obtained much admiration for its faults.

The Library is a most magnificent room about an hundred paces in length, with a painted window at the end, of which it would not be easy to say whether the design or the execution be most faulty: in this, Minerva, Bacon, George III., and Newton are all brought together in their respective costumes. Besides a splendid collection of books, there is a cabinet of medals here, but they are seldom shown lest they should be stolen, as books frequently have been. It is singular that in the public libraries and collections of England there are more precautions taken against thieves than in any other country in Europe. It is not often I understand when an offender is discovered that the law is enforced against him; but now and then, the librarian said, they were obliged to make an example; and he turned to a MS. Catalogue, and showed us a record that a member of the University had been degraded for seven years for this offence. In the University library we were shown several books which had been stolen, and the title-pages nearly cut out, in order to avoid detection. Offences of this kind, though in their consequences so truly abominable, seem to be little thought of. Indeed, it should appear that the English scarcely think it any crime to plunder the public in any way.

I had an introduction to a resident member of —— ; it proved a very valuable one, and there are few of my English friends from whose conversation I have derived so much instruction. The objects of curiosity in Cambridge were soon seen, but we remained a few days there, for the pleasure of his society. The University was almost empty, it being now the vacation time. There is a greater variety of dresses here than at Oxford, the colleges not dressing all alike, and some wearing purple instead of black. The privileged class also wear a hat instead of the academical cap. A round church of the Templars, built after the Holy Sepulchre, is one of the most remarkable things in this university.—I was pleased too with the sight of a huge concave celestial globe, in the midst of which you stand, and it revolves round you. The Cam, a lazy stream, winds behind the town and through the college walks, collecting filth as it goes. "Yonder," said our friend, "are the Gogmagog Hills;"—in spite of their gigantic appellation they are so very like a plain, that I looked all around to see where they were.

*****

"What a happy life," said I to our Cambridge friend, "must you lead in your English universities! You have the advantages of a monastery without its restrictions, the enjoyments of the world without its cares,—the true otium cum dignitate." He shook his head and answered, "It is a joyous place for the young, and a convenient place for all of us,—but for none is it a happy one—and he soon convinced me that I was mistaken in the favourable judgment which I had formed. I will endeavour to retrace the substance of a long and interesting evening's conversation.

It is a joyous place for the young,—joy and happiness however are not synonymous. They come hither from school, no longer to be treated as children; their studies and their amusement are almost at their own discretion, and they have money at command. But as at college they first assume the character of man, it is there also that they are first made to feel their relative situation in society. Schools in England, especially those public ones from which the universities are chiefly supplied, are truly republican. The master perhaps will pay as much deference to rank as he possibly can, and more than he honestly ought:—it is, however, but little that he can pay the institutions have been too wisely framed to be counteracted, and titles and families are not regarded by the boys. The distinctions which they make are in the spirit of a barbarous, not of a commercial calculating people; bodily endowments hold the first, mental the second place. The best bruiser enjoys the highest reputation; next to him, but after a long interval, comes the best cricket-player, the third place, at a still more respectful distance, is allowed to the cleverest, who, in the opinion of his fellows, always takes place of the best scholar. In the world,—and the college is not out of it like the cloister,—all this is reversed into its right order; but the gifts of fortune are placed above all. Whatever habits and feelings of equality may have been generated at school, are to be got rid of at college,—and this is soon done. The first thing which the new student perceives on his arrival, is, that his school-fellows, who are there before him, pass him in the streets as if they knew him not, and perhaps stare him full in the face, that he may be sure it is not done through inadvertency. The ceremony of introduction must take place before two young men who for years have eaten at the same table, studied in the same class, and perhaps slept in the same chamber,—can possibly know each other when they meet at college.

There is to be found every where a great number of those persons whom we cannot prove to be human beings by any rational characteristic which they possess; but who must be admitted to be so, by a sort of reductio ad absurdum, because they cannot possibly be any thing else. They pass for men, in the world, because it has pleased God for wise purposes, however inscrutable to us, to set them upon two legs instead of four; to give them smooth skins and no tail, and to enable them to speak without having their tongues slit. They are like those weeds which will spring up and thrive in every soil and every climate, and which no favourable circumstances can ever improve into utility. It is of little consequence whether they shoot water-fowl, attend horse-races, frequent the brothel, and encourage the wine trade in one place or another; but as a few years of this kind of life usually satisfy a man for the rest of it, it is convenient that there should be a place appointed where one of this description can pass through this course of studies out of sight of his relations, and without injuring his character; and from whence he can come with the advantage of having been at the University, and a qualification which enables him to undertake the cure of souls. The heretical bishops never enquire into the moral conduct of those upon whom they lay their unhallowed hands,—and as for the quantity of learning which is required,—M. Maillardet, who exhibits his Androeides in London, could put enough into an automaton.

Such men as these enjoy more happiness, such as their happiness is, at the University than during any other part of their lives. It is a pleasant place also for the lilies of the world, they who have neither to toil nor to spin; but for those who have the world before them, there is perhaps no place in their whole journey where they feel less at ease. It is the port from whence they are to embark,—and who can stand upon the beach and look upon the sea whereon he is about to trust himself and his fortunes, without feeling his heart sink at the uncertainty of the adventure? True it is that these reflections do not continue long upon a young man's mind, yet they occur so often as insensibly to affect its whole feelings. The way of life is like the prospect from his window,—he beholds it not while he is employed, but in the intervals of employment, when he lifts up his eyes, the prospect is before him. The frequent change of his associates is another melancholy circumstance. A sort of periodical and premature mortality takes place among his friends: term after term they drop off to their respective allotments, which are perhaps so distant from his own, that years may elapse, or the whole lease of life be run out, before he ever again meets with the man whom habits of daily and intimate intercourse had endeared to him.

Let us now suppose the student to be successful in his collegiate pursuits, he obtains a fellowship,—and is, in the opinion of his friends, provided for for life. Settled for life he would indeed have been according to the original institution, and it still is a provision for him as long as he retains it,—but mark the consequences of the schism,—of altering the parts of an establishment without considering their relations to the whole. A certain number of benefices belong to the college, to which, as they become vacant, the fellows succeed according to seniority, vacating their fellowships by accepting a benefice, or by marrying. Here one of the evils of a married clergy is perceived. Where celibacy is never regarded as a virtue, it is naturally considered as a misfortune. Attachments are formed more easily perhaps in this country than in any other, because there is little restraint in the intercourse between the sexes, and all persons go so much from home into public. But the situation of the college-fellow who has engaged his affections is truly pitiable. Looking with envious eyes at those above him on the list, and counting the ages of those who hold the livings for which he is to wait, he passes years after years in this disquieting and wretched state of hope. The woman, in like manner, wears away her youth in dependent expectation, and they meet at last, if they live to meet, not till the fall of the leaf—not till the habits and tempers of both are become fixt and constitutional, so as no longer to be capable of assimilating each to the other.

I enquired what were the real advantages of these institutions to the country at large, and to the individuals who study in them. "They are of this service," he replied, "to the country at large, that they are the great schools by which established opinions are inculcated and perpetuated. I do not know that men gain much here, yet it is a regular and essential part of our system of education, and they who have not gone through it always feel that their education has been defective. A knowledge of the world, that is to say, of our world and of the men in it, is gained here, and that knowledge remains when Greek and geometry are forgotten." I asked him which was the best of the two universities; he answered that Cambridge was as much superior to Oxford, as Oxford was to Salamanca. I could not forbear smiling at his scale of depreciation: he perceived it, and begged my pardon, saying, that he as little intended to undervalue the establishments of my country, as to overrate the one of which he was himself a member. "We are bad enough," said he, "Heaven knows, but not so bad as Oxford. They are now attempting to imitate us in some of those points wherein the advantage on our part is too notorious to be disputed. The effect may be seen in another generation,—meantime the imitation is a confession of inferiority."

"Still," said I, "we may regard the universities as the seats of learning and of the Muses." "As for the Muses, sir," said he, "you have traversed the banks of the Cam, and must know whether you have seen any nine ladies there who answer their description. We do certainly produce verses both Greek and Latin which are worthy of gold medals, and English ones also, after the newest and most approved receipt for verse-making. Of leading, such as is required for the purposes of tuition there is much,—beyond it, except in mathematics, none. In this we only share the common degeneracy. The Mohammedans believe that when Gog and Magog are to come, the race of men will have dwindled to such littleness, that a shoe of one of the present generation will serve them for a house. If this prophecy be typical of the intellectual diminution of the species, Gog and Magog may soon be expected in the neighbourhood of their own hills."

"The truth is, sir," he continued, "that the institutions of men grow old like men themselves, and, like women, are always the last to perceive their own decay. When universities were the only schools of learning they were of great and important utility; as soon as there were others, they ceased to be the best, because their forms were prescribed, and they could adopt no improvement till long after it was generally acknowledged. There are other causes of decline.—We educate for only one profession: when colleges were founded that one was the most important; it is now no longer so; they who are destined for the others find it necessary to study elsewhere, and it begins to be perceived that this is not a necessary stage upon the road. This might be remedied. We have professors of every thing, who hold their situations and do nothing. In Edinburgh the income of the professor depends upon his exertions, and in consequence the reputation of that university is so high, that Englishmen think it necessary to finish their education by passing a year there. They learn shallow metaphysics there, and come back worse than they went, inasmuch as it is better to be empty than flatulent."

[11]   Accurately speaking, there are twelve colleges and four halls.—Tr.

LETTER XLVII.

Newmarket.—Cruelty of Horse-racing.—Process of Wasting.—Character of a Man of the Turf.—Royston.—Buntingford.—Cheshunt.—Return to London.

Three leagues from Cambridge is the town of Newmarket, famous for its adjoining race-ground, the great scene of English extravagance and folly. They who have seen the races tell me it is a fine sight:—the horses are the most perfect animals of their kind, and their speed is wonderful; but it is a cruel and detestable sport. The whip and the spur are unmercifully used. Some of the leading men of the turf, as they are called, will make their horses run two or three times in as many days, till every fibre in them is sore, and they are disabled for ever by over exertion. Whatever pleasure, therefore, a man of clean conscience might lawfully have taken in beholding such sports, when they were instituted (if such was their origin) for the sake of improving the breed, and were purely trials of swiftness, is at an end. The animal, who evidently delights in the outset, and ambitiously strains himself to his full length and speed, is lashed and gored till his blood mingles with his foam, because his owner has staked thousands upon the issue of the race: and so far is this practice from tending to the improvement of the breed, that at present it confessedly injures it, because horses are brought to the course before they have grown to their full strength, and are thereby prevented from ever attaining to it.

It is hardly less hurtful to the riders; their sufferings, however, would rather excite mirth than compassion, if any thing connected with the degradation of a human being could be regarded without some sense of awe and humiliation. These gentlemen are called jockeys. Jockeyship is a particular trade in England;—I beg its pardon—a profession. A few persons retain one in their establishment, but in general they go to Newmarket and offer their services for the occasion. Three guineas are the fee for riding a race; if much be depending upon it, as is usually the case, the winner receives a present. Now, in these matches the weight which the horses are to carry is always stipulated. Should the jockey be too light, he carries something about him to make up the due number of pounds; but if unhappily he exceeds this number, he must undergo a course of wasting. Had Procrustes heard of this invention, he would have made all travellers equal in weight as well as in measure, and his balance would have been as famous as his bed. In order to get rid of this supererogatory flesh they are purged and sweated; made to take long walks with thick clothing on; then immediately on their return drink cold water, and stew between two feather beds, and in this manner melt themselves down to the lawful standard. One of the most eminent of these jockeys lately wasted eighteen pounds in three days; so violent a reduction that it is supposed he will never recover from it.

Our friend here once heard the character of one of the great Newmarket heroes from a groom. Mr —— , said the man, was the best sportsman on the turf; he would bet upon any thing and to any sum, and make such matches as nobody else could ever have thought of making, only it was a pity that he was such a fool—he was a fool to be sure. It was difficult to say whether the fellow was most impressed by the absolute folly of his hero, or by his undaunted love of gambling; the one he could not speak of without admiration, and he laughed while he was bemoaning the other: for certain, he said, there was nobody like him for spirit,—he was ready for any thing; but then unluckily he was such a cursed fool. To be sure he was losing his fortune as fast as it could go. But his comfort was, he used to say, that when all was gone he was sure of a place, for his friend Lord —— had promised to make him his whipper-in.

The pedigree of the horse is as carefully preserved as that of the master; and can in many instances be traced further back. In general the English horses are less beautiful than ours, and they are disfigured by the barbarous custom of mutilating the tail and ears. Dogs suffer the same cruel mutilation. It is surprising how little use is made of the ass here; it is employed only by the lowest people in the vilest services; miserably fed and more miserably treated. Mules are seldom seen: in Elizabeth's days a large male ass which had been brought from France into Cornwall began a fabric of them, and the people knocked them on the head for monsters as soon as they were foaled.

*****

Had it been the racing season I should have gone to Newmarket; the ground itself, celebrated as it is, did not tempt me. Our friend was going to the immediate vicinity of London; so having his company we travelled by chaise, the expense for three persons not materially exceeding that of going by stage. Royston was our first post. In this neighbourhood there was a man lately who believed himself entitled to a large estate which was wrongfully withheld from him; he worked at some daily labour, and his custom was to live as penuriously as was possible, and expend the savings of the whole year in giving a dinner upon his birth-day at a public-house upon the estate, to which he invited by public notices all persons who would please to come. D. remembers in his childhood a man, who, under the same feeling, had vowed never to put on clean linen, wash himself, shave his beard, comb his hair, or cut his nails, till he had recovered his right; a vow which he kept during the remainder of his life, and died in his dirt. They called him Black John, and he was the terror of children.

At Buntingford is a mansion built about two centuries ago, of which they say that when the house was built the staircase was forgotten; a common story this of all those old houses which have the winding turret staircase: something more remarkable is, that it has a room to which there is no entrance. By Ware we saw the New River: a canal which begins there and supplies great part of London with water,—sufficiently filthy it must needs be, for it is open the whole way, and as it approaches the suburbs is the common bathing-place of the rabble,—yet the Londoners are perfectly contented with it! We passed through Cheshunt, a village memorable as being the place where Richard Cromwell lived in peace and privacy to a good old age, and died[12] as he had lived,—a happier man than his more illustrious father. Here also was the favourite palace of James I.; it has been demolished; but a moss walk under a long avenue of elms, a part of his gardens, is still preserved. Near this is a cross at Waltham, one of those which Edward I. erected at every place where the body of his excellent queen halted on the way to its burial. It is a beautiful monument of pious antiquity, though mutilated and otherwise defaced by time. Nothing else worthy of notice occurred on the road, which lay through the province of Hertfordshire. The country, though tame, is beautiful; far more so than any which we had seen since our departure from the land of Lakes.

Widely different were the feelings with which I arrived at J—— 's door from what they had been that evening when it was first opened to me. Then I came as a stranger; now I was returning as if to my own house. My reception, indeed, could hardly have been more affectionate in my own family. J—— and his wife welcomed me like a brother, Harriet climbed my knee, and John danced about the room for joy that Senor Manuel was come home again.

[12]   The tomb of Richard Cromwell is at Hursley, near Winchester.—Tr.

LETTER XLVIII.

Middlesex Election.—Nottingham Election.—Seats in Parliament how obtained.—Modes of Bribery.—Aylesbury.—Ilchester.—Contested Elections.—Marriages at Bristol.—Want of Talent in the English Government accounted for.

During my travels I have missed the sight of a popular election. That for Middlesex has been carried on with uncommon asperity; it is the only instance wherein the ministry have exerted their influence; for, contrary to the custom of all their predecessors, they have fairly trusted themselves to the opinion of the people. Here, however, they have taken a part,—and here they have been beaten, because they stood upon the very worst ground which they could possibly have chosen.

The English have a law called the habeas corpus, which they regard, with good reason, as the main pillar of their freedom. By this law it is the right of every person who is arrested upon a criminal charge, to be tried at the first sessions after his arrest; so that, while this law continues in force, no person can be wrongfully detained in prison, but his guilt or innocence must be fairly proved. It was thought expedient to suspend this statute during the late revolutionary ferment. The place chosen for the suspected persons was a prison in the immediate suburb of the metropolis; being one of the new buildings upon the fashionable plan. Complaints were made by the prisoners of cruel usage, and Sir Francis Burdett, a young man who has warmly espoused the popular party, brought the business forward in parliament. A wise minister would have listened to the complaint, examined into it, and redressed the grievance, even ostentatiously; for the object of government being to secure these men, and it being also notorious that there was no legal proof of guilt against them, as if there had they would have been brought to trial, all rigour not absolutely necessary for the purposes of confinement, appeared like a determination to punish them in every way they could, and consequently as an act of arbitrary and cruel power. But pride and obstinacy are the predominant parts of Mr Pitt's character; right or wrong he never yields; and he now chose to show his power by protecting the gaoler in defiance of public opinion. Repeated complaints were made; and it was affirmed upon oath that a Colonel Despard, one of these prisoners, had been confined there in a cell without windows, and without fire, till his feet were ulcered with the frost. At length a deputation was named to inspect the prison:—it consisted chiefly of persons disposed to see every thing with favourable eyes; and, as you may well suppose, the prison was prepared for their visitation. When they came into the cell where a sailor was confined who had been concerned in the great mutiny, one of the deputies noticed a bird which hopped about him, and said how tame it was. "Aye, sir," said the man, "this place will tame any thing!" and though a hardy English sailor, he burst into tears. The report was in favour of the prison. Complaints, however, were still continued. The place acquired the name of the Bastille; and merely upon the ground of having raised his voice in parliament against this new species of punishment, Sir Francis Burdett has become the most popular man in England. He offered himself as candidate for Middlesex. The ministry acted unwisely in opposing him; and still more unwisely in supporting against him a man who had no other possible claim to their support, than that he was implicated in the charges against the management of the prison, because he was one of the magistrates whose duty it was to inspect it, and he had given it his full approbation. By this impolicy they made the question of the Middlesex election to be this,—whether this system of imprisonment was approved of by the people or not; and the answer has been most undeniably given against them.

Electioneering, as they call it, is a game at which every kind of deceit seems to be considered lawful. On these occasions, men, who at other times regard it as a duty to speak truth, and think their honour implicated in their word, scruple not at asserting the grossest and most impudent falsehoods, if thereby they can obtain a momentary advantage over the hostile party. A striking instance of this has occurred with respect to the election for Nottingham, a considerable town in the middle of England, where the contest has been violent, because party-spirit has always been carried to a high degree there. Some years ago the mob ducked those who were most obnoxious to them, and killed some of them in the operation. This was not forgotten. The opposite party had the ascendancy now, and those who were noted as having been active in this outrageous cruelty were severely handled. In such cases of summary justice the innocent are liable to suffer with the guilty, and the rabble, when they had got the power, abused it. Whoever voted for the obnoxious candidate had the skirts of his coat cut off, and it was well if he escaped without further injury. It might have been thought that the plain statement of these facts would have sufficed to show that the election was not a fair one; but instead of being satisfied with a plain tale, a gentleman comes forward as the advocate of the unsuccessful party, accuses all the other party of the most violent jacobinism, and asserts that at the triumph of the winning candidate the tree of liberty was carried before him, and that a naked woman walked in the procession as the Goddess of Reason. The history of the tree is, that as the candidate's name happened to be Birch, a birch bough was borne in his honour: the other falsehood is so apparent that no person supposes this writer can possibly believe it himself. It is a pious fraud to answer a party purpose, and on such occasions no frauds, pious or impious, are scrupled.

Any thing like election, in the plain sense of the word, is unknown in England. Members are never chosen for parliament as deputies were for a Cortes, because they are the fittest persons to be deputed. Some seats are private property;—that is, the right of voting belongs to a few householders, sometimes not more than half a dozen, and of course these votes are commanded by the owner of the estate. The fewer they are, the more easily they are managed. Great part of a borough in the west of England was consumed some years ago by fire, and the lord of the manor would not suffer the houses to be rebuilt for this reason. If such an estate be to be sold, it is publicly advertised as carrying with it the power of returning two members; sometimes that power is veiled under the modest phrase of a valuable appendage to the estate, or the desirable privilege of nominating to seats in a certain assembly. Government hold many of these boroughs, and individuals buy in at others. The price is as well known as the value of land, or of stock, and it is not uncommon to see a seat in a certain house advertised for in the public newspapers. In this manner are a majority of the members returned. You will see then that the house of commons must necessarily be a manageable body. This is as it should be;[13] the people have all the forms of freedom, and the crown governs them while they believe they govern themselves. Burleigh foresaw this, and said that to govern through a parliament was the securest method of exercising power.

In other places, where the number of voters is something greater, so as to be too many for this kind of quiet and absolute control, the business is more difficult, and sometimes more expensive. The candidate then, instead of paying a settled sum to the lord of the borough, must deal individually with the constituents, who sell themselves to the highest bidder. Remember that an oath against bribery is required! A common mode of evading the letter of the oath is to lay a wager. "I will bet so much," says the agent of the candidate, "that you do not vote for us." "Done," says the voter freeman,—goes to the hustings, gives his voice, and returns to receive the money, not as the price of his suffrage, but as the bet which he has won. As all this is in direct violation of law, though both parties use the same means, the losing one never scruples to accuse his successful opponent of bribery, if he thinks he can establish the charge; and thus the mystery of iniquity is brought to light. It is said that at Aylesbury a punch-bowl full of guineas stood upon the table in the committee-room, and the voters were helped out of it. The price of votes varies according to their number. In some places it is as low as forty shillings, in others, at Ilchester for instance, it is thirty pounds. "Thirty pounds," said the apothecary of the place on his examination, "is the price of an Ilchester voter." When he was asked how he came to know the sum so accurately, he replied, that he attended the families of the voters professionally, and his bills were paid at election times with the money. A set of such constituents once waited upon the member whom they had chosen, to request that he would vote against the minister. "D—mn you!" was his answer: "What! have I not bought you? And do you think I will not sell you?"

It is only in large cities that any trial of public opinion is made,—for in the counties the contest, if any there be, lies between the great families, and a sort of hereditary influence is maintained, which is perhaps unobjectionable. But in large cities public opinion and faction have their full scope. Every resource of violence and of cunning is here brought into play. A great proportion of the inferior voters are necessarily under the absolute control of their employers; but there are always many who are to be influenced by weighty arguments applied to the palm of the hand; and the struggle for these, when the parties happen to be well balanced, leads to a thousand devices. The moment one party can lay hold on a voter of this description, they endeavour to keep him constantly drunk till the time of election, and never to lose sight of him. If the others can catch him, and overbid them, they, on their part, are afraid of a rescue, carry their prize out of town, and coop him in some barn or outhouse, where they stuff him day and night with meat and drink till they bring him up to the place of polling, oftentimes so intoxicated that the fellow must be led between two others, one to hold him up as he gives his voice, while the other shows him a card in the palm of his hand, with the name of the candidate written in large letters, lest he should forget for whom he is to vote.

The qualification for voting differs at different places. At Bristol a freeman's daughter conveys it by marriage. Women enter into the heat of party even more eagerly than men, and, when the mob is more than usually mischievous, are sure to be at the head of it. In one election for that city, which was violently disputed, it was common for the same woman to marry several men. The mode of divorce was, that as soon as the ceremony was over, and the parties came out of church, they went into the church-yard, and shaking hands over a grave, cried, "Now death us do part;"—away then went the man to vote with his new qualification, and the woman to qualify another husband at another church.

Such tricks are well understood, and practised by all parties: but if an appeal be made against a return as having been thus obtained by illegal means, the cause is tried in the house[14] of commons, and these are perhaps the only subjects which are decided there with strict impartiality. Bribery is punished in him who gives, by the loss of his seat, and he may be prosecuted for heavy fines: he who receives, falls under the penal law—the heaviest punishment ought to fall upon the tempter; and as government in England is made a trade, it seems hard that the poor should not get something by it once in seven years, when they are to pay so much for it all the rest of the time.

These abuses are not necessarily inherent in the nature of popular election; they would effectually be precluded by the use of the ballot. The popular party call loudly for reform, but they are divided among themselves as to what reform they would have; and the aristocracy of the country, as they have every thing in their own hands, will never consent to any which would destroy their own influence.

One evil consequence results from this mode of representation, which affects the rulers as well as the people. The house of commons has not, and cannot have, its proportion of talents: its members are wholly chosen from among persons of great fortune. The more limited the number out of which they are chosen, the less must be the chance of finding able men: there is, therefore, a natural unfitness in having a legislative body composed wholly of the rich. It is known both at schools and at universities, that the students of the privileged classes are generally remiss in their studies, and inferior in information for that reason to their contemporaries;—there is, therefore, less chance of finding a due proportion of knowledge among them. Being rich, and associating wholly with the rich, they have no knowledge of the real state of the great body for whom they are to legislate, and little sympathy for distresses which they have never felt: a legislature composed wholly of the rich, is therefore liable to lay the public burthens oppressively upon the inferior ranks.

There are two ways in which men of talents, who are not men of fortune, find their way into parliament. The minister sometimes picks out a few promising plants from the university, and forces them in his hot-bed. They are chosen so young that they cannot by any possibility have acquired information to fit them for their situations; they are so flattered by the choice that they are puffed up with conceit, and so fettered by it that they must be at the beck of their patron. The other method is by way of the law. But men who make their way up by legal practice, learn, in the course of that practice, to disregard right and wrong, and to consider themselves entirely as pleaders on the one side. They continue to be pleaders and partisans in the legislature, and never become statesmen.

From these causes it is, that, while the English people are held in admiration by all the world, the English government is regarded in so very different a light; and hence it is, that the councils of England have been directed by such a succession of weak ministers, and marked by such a series of political errors. An absolute monarch looks for talents wherever they are to be found, and the French negotiators have always recovered whatever the English fleets have won.

Long peace is not more unfavourable to the skill of an army, than long security to the wisdom of a government. In times of internal commotion, all stirring spirits come forward; the whole intellect of a nation is called forth; good men sacrifice the comforts of a wise privacy to serve their country; bad men press on to advance themselves; the good fall a sacrifice, and the government is resigned into the hands of able villains. When, on the contrary, every thing has long been safe, as is the case in England, politics become an established trade; to which a certain cast are regularly born and bred. They are bred to it as others are to the navy, to the law, or to the church; with this wide difference, that no predisposing aptitude of talents has been consulted, and no study of the profession is required. It is fine weather; the ship is heavy laden; she has a double and treble allowance of officers and supernumeraries,—men enough on board, but no seamen; still it is fine weather, and as long as it continues so the ship sails smoothly, and every thing goes on as well as if Christopher Columbus himself had the command. Changes are made in the equipage; the doctor and the pilot take each other's places; the gunner is made cook, and the cook gunner; it may happen, indeed, that he may charge the guns with peas, and shot them with potatoes,—what matters it while there is no enemy at hand?

[13]   Spaniard! But is he wishing to recommend a Cortes, by insinuating that it would strengthen the power of the crown?—Tr.

[14]   A committee chosen from the house of commons.—Tr.

LETTER XLIX.

Fashion.—Total Change in the English Costume.—Leathern Breeches.—Shoes.—Boots.—Inventors of new Fashions.—Colours.—Female Fashions.—Tight lacing.—Hair-dressing.—Hoops.—Bustlers.—Rumps.—Merry-Thoughts and Pads.

The caprice of fashion in this country would appear incredible to you, if you did not know me too well to suspect me either of invention or exaggeration. Every part of the dress, from head to foot, undergoes such frequent changes, that the English costume is at present as totally unlike what it was thirty years ago, as it is to the Grecian or Turkish habit. These people have always been thus capricious. Above two centuries ago a satirist here painted one of his countrymen standing naked, with a pair of shears in one hand, and a piece of cloth in the other, saying

I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,

Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear,

For now I will wear this, and now I will wear that,

Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear,

When J. was a school-boy every body wore leathern breeches, which were made so tight that it was a good half-hour's work to get them on the first time. The maker was obliged to assist at this operation:—observe, this personage is not called a tailor, but a maker of breeches,—tailors are considered as an inferior class, and never meddle with leather. When a gentleman was in labour of a new pair of leathern breeches, all his strength was required to force himself into them, and all the assistant-operators to draw them on: when it was nearly accomplished, the maker put his hands between the patient's legs, closed them, and bade him sit on them like a saddle, and kick out one leg at a time, as if swimming. They could not be buttoned without the help of an instrument. Of course they fitted like another skin; but woe to him who was caught in the rain in them!—it was like plucking a skin off to get out of them.

The shoes—I am not going back beyond a score of years in any of these instances—were made to a point in our unnatural method; they were then rounded, then squared, lastly made right and left like gloves to fit the feet. At one time the waistcoat was so long as to make the wearer seem all body; at another time so short that he was all limbs. The skirts of the coat were now cut away so as almost to leave all behind bare as a baboon, and now brought forward to meet over the thigh like a petticoat. Now the cape was laid flat upon the shoulders, now it stood up straight and stiff like an implement of torture, now was rounded off like a cable. Formerly the half-boot was laced: the first improvement was to draw it on like a whole-boot; it was then discovered that a band at the back was better than a seam, and that a silken tassel in front would be highly ornamental, and no doubt of essential use. By this time the half-boot was grown to the size of the whole one. The Austrians, as they were called, yielded to the Hessians, which, having the seams on each side instead of down the back, were more expensive, and therefore more fashionable. Then came an invention for wrinkling the leather upon the instep into round folds, which were of singular utility in retaining the dirt and baffling the shoeblack. At length a superior genius having arisen among boot-makers, the wheel went completely round, and at this present time every body must be seen in a pair of whole-boots of this great man's making.

"Almost all new fashions offend me," says Feyjoo, "except those which either circumscribe expense, or add to decency."—I am afraid that those reasons are practically reversed in England, and that fashions are followed with avidity in proportion as they are extravagant and indecorous—to use the lightest term. The most absurd mode which I have yet heard of was that of oiling the coat and cold-pressing it; this gave it a high gloss, but every particle of dust adhered to it, and after it had been twice or thrice worn it was unfit to be seen. This folly, which is but of very late date, was too extravagant to last, and never I believe extended into the country. I asked my tailor one day, who is a sensible man in his way, who invented the fashions. "Why, sir," said he, "I believe it is the young gentlemen who walk in Bond-street. They come to me, and give me orders for a new cut, and perhaps it takes, and perhaps it does not. It is all fancy, you know, sir." This street serves as a Prado or Alameda for all the fops of rank, and happy is he who gets the start in a new cut; in the fall of a cape, the shape of a sleeve, or the pattern of a button. This emulation produces many abortive attempts, and it is amusing to see the innovations which are daily hazarded without ever attaining to the dignity of a fashion.

Colour, as well as shape, is an affair of fashionable legislation. Language is nowhere so imperfect as in defining colours; but if philosophical language be deficient here, the creative genius of fashion is never at a loss for terms. What think you of the Emperor's eye, of the Mud of Paris, and Le soupir étouffé,—the Sigh supprest? These I presume were exotic flowers of phraseology, imported for the use of the ladies; it is however of as much importance to man as to woman, that he should appear in the prevailing colour. My tailor tells me I must have pantaloons of a reddish cast, "All on the reds now, sir!" and reddish accordingly they are, in due conformity to his prescription. It is even regulated whether the coat shall be worn open or buttoned, and if buttoned, whether by one button or two, and by which. Sometimes a cane is to be carried in the hand, sometimes a club, sometimes a common twig; at present the more deformed and crooked in its growth the better. At one time every man walked the streets with his hands in his coat pocket. The length of the neck-handkerchief, the shape, the mode of tying it, must all be in the mode. There is a professor in the famous Bondstreet, who, in lessons at half-a-guinea, instructs gentlemen in the art of tying their neck-handkerchiefs in the newest and most approved style.

The women have been more extravagant than the men;—to be more foolish was impossible. Twenty years ago the smaller the waist the more beautiful it was esteemed. To be shaped like a wasp was therefore the object of female ambition; and so tight did they lace themselves, or rather so tightly were they laced, for it required assistant strength to fasten their girths, that women have frequently fainted from the pressure, and some actually perished by this monstrous kind of suicide. About the same time they all wore powder; the hair at the sides was stuck out in stiff curls, or rolls, tier above tier, fastened with long double black pins; behind it was matted with pomatum into one broad flat mass, which was doubled back and pinned upon a cushion, against which the toupee was frizzed up, and the whole frosted over with powder, white, brown, pink, or yellow. This was the golden age of hairdressers; the ladies were completely dependent upon them, and obliged to wait, patiently or impatiently, for their turn. On important occasions, when very many were to be drest for the same spectacle, it was not unusual to submit to the operation over night, and sit up all night in consequence,—for to have lain down would have disordered the whole furniture of the upper story. The great hoop, which is now confined to the court, was then commonly worn in private parties. Besides this there were protuberances on the hips called bustlers, another behind which was called in plain language a rump, and a merry-thought of wire on the breast to puff out the handkerchief like a pouting pigeon. Women were obliged to sip their tea with the corner of their mouths, and to eat sideways. A yet more extraordinary costume succeeded, that of pads in front, to imitate what it must have been originally invented to conceal.

All these fashions went like the French monarchy, and about the same time; but when the ladies began to strip themselves, they did not know where to stop.

And these follies travel where the science and literature and domestic improvements of the English never reach! Well does Anguillesi say in his address to Fashion:

Non perchè libera e industre
Grande è in pace è grande in guerra,
Or tra noi si chiara e illustre
E la triplice Inghilterra;

Non perchè del suo Newtono
Và quel suol fastoso e lieto,
E del Grande per cui sono
Nomi eterni Otello e Amleto;

Ma perchè ti nacque idéa
D' abbigliarti a foggia inglese,
Oggidi, possente Dea,
Parla ognun di quel paese.

Quindi in bella emulazione
Quai Mylord vestir noi vedi,
E l'italiche matrone
Come l'angliche Myledi.

Not because she is free and industrious, great in peace and great in war, is triple England now so dear and so illustrious among us; not because that land proudly rejoices in her Newton, and in that great one by whom Othello and Hamlet are become immortal names. But because it has pleased thee, O powerful goddess, to attire thyself after the English mode,—every one speaks of that country. Hence it is that in fine emulation we are seen to dress like My-lord, and Italian matrons like the English My-lady.—Tr.

LETTER L.

Lady Wortley Montagu's Remark upon Credulity.—Superstitions of the English respecting the Cure of Diseases.—Sickness and Healing connected with Superstition.—Wesley's Primitive Physic.—Quacks.—Dr Graham.—Tractors.—Magnetic Girdles.—Quoz.—Quack Medicines.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the best letter-writer of this or of any other country, has accounted for the extraordinary facility with which her countrymen are duped by the most ignorant quacks, very truly and very ingeniously. "The English," she says, "are more easily infatuated than any other people by the hope of a panacea, nor is there any other country in the world where such great fortunes are made by physicians. I attribute this to the foolish credulity of mankind. As we no longer trust in miracles and relics, we run as eagerly after receipts and doctors, and the money which was given three centuries ago for the health of the soul, is now given for the health of the body, by the same sort of people, women and half-witted men. Quacks are despised in countries where they have shrines and images."

How much to be lamented is the perversion of a mind like hers, which, had it not been heretical, would have been so truly excellent! She perceives the truth; but having been nursed up in a false religion, and afterwards associated with persons who had none, she does not perceive the whole truth, and confounds light and darkness. The foolish credulity of mankind!—To be without faith and hope is as unnatural a state for the heart as to be without affections. Man is a credulous animal; perhaps he has never yet been defined by a characteristic which more peculiarly and exclusively designates him, certainly never by a nobler one; for faith and hope are what the heretics mean by credulity. The fact is, as she states it. Infidelity and heresy cannot destroy the nature of man, but they pervert it; they deprive him of his trust in God, and he puts it in man; they take away the staff of his support, and he leans upon a broken reed.

In the worst sufferings and the most imminent peril a true catholic never needs despair; such is the power of the saints, and the infinite mercy of God and the most holy Mary: but the heretics in such cases have only to despair and die. They have no saint to look to for every particular disease, no faith in relics to make them whole. If a piece of the true cross were brought to a dying Englishman, though its efficacy had been proved by a thousand miracles, he would reject it even at the last gasp; such is the pride and obstinacy of heresy, and so completely does it harden the heart.

There are a thousand facts to verify the remark of Lady Wortley. The boasted knowledge of England has not sunk deep; it is like the golden surface of a lackered watch, which covers, and but barely covers, the base metal. The great mass of the people are as ignorant, and as well contented with their ignorance, as any the most illiterate nation in Europe: and even among those who might be expected to know better, it is astonishing how slowly information makes way to any practical utility. In domestic medicine for instance;—a defluxion is here called a cold, and therefore for its name's sake must be expelled by heat. Oil is employed to soften a hard cough, and lemon juice to cut it; because in English sourness is synonymous with sharpness, and what is sharp must needs cut. But it is of superstition that I am to speak, and perverted credulity.

The abracadabra of the old heretics was lately in use as a charm for the ague, and probably still is where the ague is to be found, for that disease has almost wholly disappeared within the last generation. For warts there are manifold charms. The person who wishes to be rid of them takes a stick, and cuts a notch in it for every wart, and buries it, and as it rots the warts are to decay. Or he steals a piece of beef and rubs over them, and buries it in like manner. Or stealing dry peas or beans, and wrapping them up, one for each wart, he carries the parcel to a place where four roads meet, and tosses it over his head, not looking behind to see where it falls; he will lose the warts, and whoever picks it up will have them. But there are gifted old women who have only to slip a thread over these excrescencies, or touch them with their saliva, and they dry away.

It is a truth, that we have but too many such superstitious follies; with us, however, there is always some mixture of devotion in them, and the error, though it be an error, and as such deservedly discouraged, is at least pious. He who psalms a sick man, or fancies that the oil from his saint's lamp will heal him of all his complaints, errs on the safe side. Here none of these palliations are to be found; the practices have not merely no reference to religion, but have even the characters of witchcraft. The materials for the charm must be stolen to render them efficacious, secrecy is enjoined, and it is supposed that the evil is only to be got rid of by transferring it to another. In Catholic countries the confessor commands the thief to make restitution,—here the person who has been robbed repairs to a witch or wizard to recover the loss, or learn who the criminal is, by means of a familiar spirit! A Cunning-Man, or a Cunning-Woman, as they are termed, is to be found near every town, and though the laws are occasionally put in force against them, still it is a gainful trade. This it is to deprive credulity of its proper food.

None suffer so severely from this as they who are labouring under diseases; if money is to be gotten, such is the spirit of trade, neither the dying nor the dead are spared, and quackery is carried to greater perfection of villainy here than in any other part of the world. Sickness humbles the pride of man; it forces upon him a sense of his own weakness, and teaches him to feel his dependence upon unseen Powers: that therefore which makes wise men devout, makes the ignorant superstitious. Among savages the physician and the conjurer are always the same. The operations of sickness and of healing are alike mysterious, and hence arises the predilection of many enthusiasts for quackery, and the ostentation which all quacks make of religion, or of some extraordinary power in themselves. The favourite assertion formerly in all countries was, that of an innate gift as a seventh son, I know not on what superstition founded, and of course augmented seven fold in due proportion, if the father had been a seventh son also, or even the mother a seventh daughter, for in this case there is no Salic law. Another has claimed the same privilege because he was born deaf and dumb, as if nature had thus indemnified him for the faculties of which he was deprived. The kings of England long since the schism, though the practice is now disused, have touched for the evil, and used to appoint a day in the Gazette for publicly doing it. Where this divine property has not been ascribed to the physician it has been imputed to the medicine. The most notorious of these worthies who flourishes at present calls his composition the Cordial Balm of Gilead, and prefaces every advertisement with a text from Jeremiah, "Is there no Balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"—Thus the Arabs attribute the virtue of their balm to the blood of those who were slain at Beder. We see among ourselves but too many scandalous proofs of this weakness. A Cistercian historian assures us that he was cured of an obstinate illness by taking a pill of the earth of the pit in which God made Adam: and at this day the rinsings of the cup are eagerly sought after by the sick, notwithstanding the prohibition of the church.

Perhaps we are indebted to the Jews for the vulgar feeling of the divine origin of the healing art. They will have it that Adam had an intuitive knowledge of medicine, and that Solomon's Book of Trees[15] and Herbs was written by inspiration. The founder of the Quakers was in danger of taking to the practice of physic from a similar notion. He fancied that he was in the same state as Adam before the fall, and that the nature and virtues of all things were opened to him, and he was at a stand, as he says, whether he should practise physic for the good of mankind.

Wesley went beyond him, and published what he called Primitive Physic, fancying himself chosen to restore medicine as well as religion, and to prescribe both for body and soul, like St Luke. The greater number of his remedies are old women's receipts, neither good nor ill; but others are of a more desperate nature. For a cold in the head he directs you to pare an orange very thin, roll it up inside out, and put a plug in each nostril; for the wind colic, to eat parched peas; for the gout, to apply a raw beef-steak to the part affected; for raving madness, to set the patient with his head under a great waterfall as long as his strength will bear it; and for asthma and hypochondriasis, to take an ounce of quicksilver every morning! If all his prescriptions had been like this last, his book might have been entitled, after the favourite form of the English, Every Man his own Poisoner. In general they are sufficiently innocent; which is fortunate, for I have selected these instances from the twenty-first edition of his work, and no doubt the purchasers place in it implicit confidence.

Any scientific discovery is immediately seized by some of the numerous adventurers in this country, who prey upon the follies and the miseries of their fellow-creatures. The most eminent quack of the last generation was a Doctor Graham, who tampered with electricity in a manner too infamous to be reported, and for which he ought to have received the most exemplary public punishment. This man was half mad, and his madness at last, contrary to the usual process, got the better of his knavery. His latest method of practice was something violent; it was to bury his patients up to the chin in fresh mould. J. saw half a score of them exhibited in this manner for a shilling:—a part of the exhibition was to see them perform afterwards upon shoulders of mutton, to prove that when they rose from the grave they were as devouring as the grave itself. The operation lasted four hours: they suffered, as might be seen in their countenances, intensely from cold for the first two, during the third they grew warmer, and in the last perspired profusely, so that when they were taken out the mould reeked like a new dunghill. Sailors are said to have practised this mode of cure successfully for the scurvy. The doctor used sometimes to be buried himself for the sake of keeping his patients company: one day, when he was in this condition, a farmer emptied a watering-pot upon his head to make him grow. When J. saw him he was sitting up to the neck in a bath of warm mud, with his hair powdered and in full dress. As he was haranguing upon the excellent state of health which he enjoyed from the practice of earth-bathing, as he called it, J. asked him, Why then, if there was nothing the matter with him, he sate in the mud? The question puzzled him.—Why, he said,—why—it was—it was—it was to show people that it did no harm,—that it was quite innocent,—that it was very agreeable: and then brightening his countenance with a smile at the happiness of the thought, he added, "It gives me, sir, a skin as soft as the feathers of Venus' dove." This man lived upon vegetables, and delighted in declaiming against the sin of being carnivorous, and the dreadful effects of making the stomach a grave and charnel-house for slaughtered bodies. Latterly he became wholly an enthusiast, would madden himself with ether, run out into the streets, and strip himself to clothe the first beggar whom he met.

Galvanism, like electricity, was no sooner discovered than it was applied to purposes of quackery. The credit of this is due to America; and it must be admitted that the inventor has the honour of having levied a heavier tax upon credulity than any of his predecessors ever dared attempt: in this respect he is the Mr Pitt of his profession. For two pieces of base metal, not longer than the little finger, and not larger than a nail, he is modest enough to charge five guineas. These Tractors, as they are called, are to cure all sores, swellings, burns, tooth-ache, &c. &c.: and that the purchasers may beware of counterfeits, which is the advice always given by this worshipful fraternity, a portrait of the tractor is engraved upon his hand-bills, both a front view and a back one, accompanied with a striking likeness of the leathern case in which they are contained. Many cures have certainly been performed by them, and how those cures are performed has been as certainly exemplified by some very ingenious experiments which were made at Bath and Bristol. Pieces of wood, and others of common iron, shaped and coloured like the tractors, were tried there upon some paralytic patients in the Infirmary. The mode of operating consists in nothing more than in gently stroking the part affected with the point of the instrument, and so, according to the theory, conducting off into the atmosphere the galvanic matter of pain! It is impossible that where there is no sore, this can give any pain whatever,—yet the patients were in agonies. One of them declared that he had suffered less when pieces of the bone of his leg had been cut out,—and they were actually enabled to move limbs which before were dead with palsy.—False relics have wrought true miracles.

Another gentleman quacks with oxygen, and recommends what he calls vital wine as a cure for all diseases. Vital wine must be admitted to be something extraordinary; but what is that to a people for whom solar and lunar tinctures have been prepared! Another has risen from a travelling cart to the luxuries of a chariot by selling magnetic girdles; his theory is, that the magnetic virtue attracts the iron in the blood, and makes the little red globules revolve faster, each upon its own axis, in the rapidity and regularity of which revolutions health consists,—and this he proves to the people by showing them how a needle is set in motion by his girdles. But magnetism has been made the basis of a far more portentous quackery, which is in all its parts so extraordinary that it merits a full account, not merely in a Picture of England, but also in the history of the century which has just expired. My next shall develop this at length.

The reason why these scoundrels succeed to so much greater an extent in England than in any other country, is because they are enabled to make themselves so generally known by means of the newspapers, and, in consequence of the great internal commerce, to have their agents every where, and thus do as much mischief every where, as if the Devil had endowed them with a portion of his own ubiquity. Not only do the London papers find their way over the whole kingdom, but every considerable town in the provinces has one or more of its own, and in these they insert their long advertisements with an endless perseverance which must attract notice, and make them and their medicines talked of. How effectually this may be done, I can illustrate by an odd anecdote. Some twelve or fifteen years ago a wager was laid between two persons in London, that the one would, in the course of a few weeks, make any nonsensical word, which the other should choose to invent, a general subject of conversation. Accordingly he employed people to write in chalk upon all the walls in London the word Quoz. Every body saw this word wherever they went staring them in the face, and nobody could divine its meaning. The newspapers noticed it,—What can it be? was the general cry, and the man won his wager.

Upon this system the quacks persist in advertising at an enormous expense, for which, however, they receive ample interest,—and which indeed they do not always honestly pay. Part of their scheme is to advertise in newspapers which are newly set up, and which, therefore, insert their notices at an under price; and one fellow, when he was applied to for payment, refused, saying that his clerk had ordered the insertion without his knowledge. To go to law with him would have been a remedy worse than the disease.

El vencido vencido,

Y el vencedor perdido,[16]

is true here as well as in other countries.

These wretches know the sufferings and the hopes of mankind, and they mock the one and aggravate the other. They who suffer, listen gladly to any thing which promises relief; and these men insert such cases of miraculous cures, signed and sworn to and attested, that they who do not understand how often the recovery may be real and the cure imaginary,—the fact true and the application false,—yield to the weight of human testimony, and have faith to the destruction of their bodies, though they will have none to the salvation of their souls.

Attestations to these cases are procured in many ways. A quack of the first water for a long time sent his prescriptions to the shop of some druggists of great respectability. After some months he called there in his carriage, and introduced himself, saying that they must often have seen his name, and that he now came to complain of them, for unintentionally doing him very serious mischief. "Gentlemen," said he, "you charge your drugs too low. As medical men yourselves you must know how much depends upon faith, and people have no faith in what is cheap,—they will not believe that any thing can do them good unless they pay smartly for it. I must beg you to raise your prices, and raise them high too, double and treble what they now are at least,—or I really must send my patients elsewhere." This was strange, and what they were requested to do was not after the ordinary custom of fair trading;—but as it did not appear that there could be any other advantage resulting to him from it than what he had stated, they at last promised to do as he desired. This visit led to some further acquaintance; and after another long interval, they were persuaded one day to dine with their friend the Doctor. During dinner the servant announced that a person from the country wished to see the Doctor, and thank him for having cured him. "Oh," said he, "don't you know that I am engaged? These people wear me out of my very life! Give the good man something to eat and drink, tell him I am very glad he is got well, and send him away." The servant came in again,—"Sir, he will not go,—he says it is a most wonderful cure,—that you have raised him from the dead, and he cannot be happy till he has seen you and thanked you himself. He is come a long way from the country, sir." "Gentlemen," said the Doctor, "you see how it is. I do not know how to get rid of him, unless you will have the goodness to allow him just to come in, and then he will be satisfied and let us alone. This is the way I am plagued!" In came the countryman, and began to bless the Doctor, as the means under God, of snatching him from the grave; and offered him money tied up in a leathern bag, saying it was all the compensation he could make; but if it were ten times as much it would be too little,—the Doctor crying, "Well, well, my friend, I am glad to see you so well," and refusing to take his money. Still the man persisted, and would tell the company his case,—he could not in conscience be easy if he did not,—and he began a long story, which the Doctor first attempted to stop, and then affected not to listen to,—till at length, by little and little, he began to give ear to it, and seemed greatly interested before he had done, and interrupted him with questions. At last he called for pen and ink, saying—"This is so very extraordinary a case that I must not lose it;" and making the man repeat it as he wrote, frequently said to his visitors, "Gentlemen, I beg you will take notice of this,—it is a very remarkable case:" and when he had finished writing it, he said to them, "You have heard the good man's story, and I am sure can have no objection to subscribe your names as witnesses." The trick was apparent, and they begged leave to decline appearing upon the occasion. "Why, gentlemen," said he, "you and I had better continue friends. You must be sensible that I have been the means of putting very great and unusual profits into your hands, and you will not surely refuse me so trifling a return as that of attesting a case which you have heard from the man himself, and can have no doubt about!" There was no remedy: they were caught, felt themselves in his power, and were obliged to submit to the mortification of seeing themselves advertised as witnesses to a cure which they knew to be a juggle.

This same man once practised a similar trick in such a way that the wit almost atones for the roguery. Some young men of fashion thought it would be a good joke to get him to dinner and make him drunk, and one of them invited him for this purpose. The Doctor went, and left his friend the countryman to follow him, and find him out;—of course it was still better sport for them to hear the case. But the next morning it appeared in the newspapers with the names of the whole party to attest it.

Government gives an indirect sort of sanction to these worst of all impostors. They enter the receipt of their medicines as a discovery, and for the payment of about 100l. sterling, take out a privilege, which is here called a patent, prohibiting all other persons from compounding the same; then they announce their discoveries as by the king's authority, and thus the ignorant are deceived. The Scotch[17] Universities also sell them degrees in medicine without the slightest examination,—this trade in degrees being their main support,—and they are legally as true Doctors in medicine as the best of the profession. This infamous practice might soon be put a stop to. Their medicines may be classed under three heads; they are either such as can do no good, but produce immediate exhilaration, because they contain either laudanum or spirits; or they are well-known drugs given in stronger doses than usual, so as to be sure of producing immediate good at the probable chance of occasioning after mischief; or they are more rarely new medicines, introduced before the regular practitioners will venture to employ them. In this way arsenic was first employed. The famous fever powder of Dr James is of this description; he knew it would be adopted in general practice, and, to secure the profits to his representatives after the term of his privilege should have expired, had recourse to means which cannot be justified. Every person upon taking out a patent is obliged to specify upon oath the particular discovery on which he grounds his claim to it. He entered a false receipt: so that, though the ingredients have been since detected by analysis, still the exact proportions and the method of preparation are supposed to be known only to those who have succeeded to his rights, and who in consequence still derive an ample income from the success of this artifice.

There is yet another mystery of iniquity to be revealed. Some of the rascals who practise much in a particular branch of their art are connected with gamblers. They get intimate with their young moneyed patients, and as they keep splendid houses, invite them to grand entertainments, where part of the gang are ready to meet them, and when the wine is done with the dice are produced.

[15]   1 Kings, iv. 33.

[16]   He who loses, loses, and he who wins is ruined.—Tr.

[17]   Don Manuel should have said some of the Scotch Universities, and not have involved Edinburgh and Glasgow in the censure.—Tr.

LETTER LI.

Account of Animal Magnetism.

I shall I shall devote this letter to a full account of the theory of Animal Magnetism, which was put a stop to in France by the joint authority of the Church and State, but had its fair career in England. The Lectures of Mainauduc, who was the teacher in this country, were published, and from them I have drawn this detail:

Leggilo,[18] che meno

Leggerlo a te, che a me scriverlo costa.

According to this new system of physics, the earth, its atmosphere, and all their productions are only one, and each is but a separate portion of the whole, accasionally produced and received back into itself, for the purpose of maintaining a continual and regular rotation of animate and inanimate substances. An universal connection subsists between every particle and mass of particles of this whole, whether they be comprehended under the title of solids or fluids, or distinguished by the particular appellation of men, beasts, birds, fish, trees, plants, or herbs; all are particles of the same original mass, and are in perpetual cycle employed in the work of forming, feeding, decomposing, and again re-forming bodies or masses. A regular attachment universally exists between all particles of a similar nature throughout the whole; and all forms composed in and of any medium of particles, must be influenced by whatever affects that medium, or sets its particles in motion; so that every form in the earth and atmosphere must receive and partake of every impulse received by the general medium of atoms in which and of which they are formed.

All forms are subject to one general law; action and re-action produce heat, some of their constituent atoms are rendered fluid by heat, and form streams, and convey into the form atoms for its increase and nourishment; this is called composition by vegetation and circulation. Circulation not only brings in particles for growth and nourishment, but it also carries off the useless ones. The passages through which these particles pass in and out, are called pores. By a pore we are to understand a space formed between every two solid atoms in the whole vegetating world, by the liquefaction of the atom, which, when solid, filled up that space. As circulation, vegetation, and consequently animal life, arise from the formation of pores, so the destruction of them must terminate every process of animal existence, and each partial derangement of porosity induces incipient destruction of the form, or what is called disease.

By the process of circulation atoms of various kinds are carried in, deposited, and thrown out of each part of every form; and every form is surrounded and protected by an atmosphere peculiar to itself, composed of these particles of circulating fluids, and analogous to the general atmosphere of the earth. This is the general atmosphere of the form. The solid parts of the body throw off in the same manner their useless particles, but these pass off and become blended with those of the general atmosphere of the earth. These are called the emanations of the form. Thus, then, earth and atmosphere are one whole, of which every form is but a part; the whole and all its parts are subject to the same laws, and are supported by action; action produces re-action; action and re-action produce heat; heat produces fluidity; fluidity produces pores; pores produce circulation; circulation produces vegetation; vegetation produces forms; forms are composed of solids and fluids; solids produce emanations; fluids produce atmospheres; atmospheres and emanations produce partial decomposition; total decomposition is death; death and decomposition return the atoms to the general mass for re-production.

The whole vegetating system is comprised in miniature in man. He is composed of pipes beyond conception numerous, and formed of particles between which the most minute porosity admits, in every direction, the passage of atoms and fluids. The immense quantity of air which is continually passing in and out through every part and pore of the body, carries in with it such atoms as may become mixed with the general atmosphere, and these must either pass out again, or stop in their passage. If they should be of a hurtful nature, they injure the parts through which they pass, or in which they stop; if, on the contrary, they should be healthy and natural, they contribute to health and nourishment. Butchers, publicans, cooks, living in an atmosphere of nutritious substances, generally become corpulent, though they have slender appetites; painters, plumbers, dyers, and those who are employed in atmospheres of pernicious substances, become gradually diseased, and frequently lose the use of their limbs long before decomposition takes place for their relief.

Hence it appears that the free circulation of healthy atoms through the whole form is necessary, and that obstructions of its porosity, or stoppage of its circulating particles, must occasion derangement in the system, and be followed by disease. To obviate this evil, innumerable conductors are placed in the body, adapted, by their extreme sensibility, to convey information of every impression to the sensorium; which, according to the nature of the impression, or the injury received, agitates, shakes, or contracts the form to thrust forth the offending cause. This is Nature's established mode of cure, and the efficacy of the exertion depends on the strength of the system; but these salutary efforts have been mistaken for disease.

As every impression is received through one medium, disposed over the whole form for that purpose, it may be asserted that there is but one sense, and that all these impressions are only divisions of the sense of feeling. The accuracy of any of these divisions depends on the health of the nervous system in general.—This nervous or conducting system is only a portion of a much greater one, similar in its nature, but far more extensive in its employment.

There are in the general atmosphere innumerable strings of its component atoms; the business of these strings is to receive and convey, from and through every part of the atmosphere, of the earth and of their inhabitants, whatever impulses they receive. These conductors are to be called atmospherical nerves; the nerves of the human body are connected with these, or rather are a part of them.

This is elucidated by the phænomena of sound. Theorists agree that sound is produced in a bell by the tremulous motion of its component atoms, which alternately changes its shape from round to oval a million times in one instant; as is proved by horizontally introducing a bar into the aperture, which, counteracting one of the contractions, the bell splits.—The conveyance of sound they account for by saying that the atoms of the atmosphere are displaced by the alternate contractions of the bell. Place a lighted candle near the bell, and this theory is overthrown: if the general atmosphere is agitated, wind must result, but the flame of the candle remains steady. Let us substitute the true process.

Every impression in nature has its own peculiar set of conductors, and no two sets interfere with, or impede, each other. The stroke of the bell affects the nearest atom of the nerves of sound, and runs along them in every direction. Human nerves are continuations of the atmospherical; all animated beings being only as warts or excrescences which have sprung up amidst these atmospherical nerves, and are permeated by them in every direction. The atmospherical nerves of sound are parts of the auditory nerves in man; the atmospherical nerves of light are continued through man to form his optic nerves; and thus the auditory and optic nerves of one man are the auditory and optic nerves of every animated being in the universe, because all are branches sent off from the same great tree in the parent earth and atmosphere.

It may be asked, What prevents the derangement of these innumerable strings when the atmosphere is violently agitated? Aërial nerves are like those of animated bodies, composed of atoms, but the atoms are in loose contact. When a ray of sunshine comes through the hole in a window-shutter the atoms are visible, and the hand may pass through them, but they instantly resume their situations by their attractive connection.

Every inanimate substance is attached to its similar; all animate and inanimate substances are attached to each other by every similar part in each of their compositions; all animate beings are attached to each other by every similar atom in their respective forms, and all these attachments are formed by atmospherical nerves. If two musical instruments perfectly in unison be placed one at each end of the same apartment, whatever note is struck upon the one will be repeated by the other. Martial music may be heard by a whole army in the field; each note has its peculiar conductor in the general atmosphere, and each ear must be connected with the atmospherical conductor of each note; so that every note has not only its separate conductor in the atmosphere, but also its separate conductor in every ear.—We have got through the hypothesis, now to the application.

The mind is the arbitrator over the bones, the muscles, the nerves, and the body in general, and is that something which the anatomist's knife can neither dissect, discover, nor destroy. But to define what that something is, we must apply to the words of our Saviour,—"It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." The decisions, adoptions, and commands of this spirit are man's volition; but we are not accustomed to investigate the means by which volition is exerted, nor to seek for the privilege of improving it beyond the common necessary avocations of life. Yet, if it be properly sought for, a power of volition may be called forth in man, in a far more exalted degree than what he now exerts; a power subordinate to a far superior one, by whom it is portioned out to individuals according to the purposes for which they exert it, and which is partially or totally recalled when neglected or abused. The accomplishment of any purpose of the will depends physically on the length of time required for its performance, and on the undisturbed continuance of the act of volition during that time. The least interruption, or the change of the will to any other subject before the first intention is accomplished, totally destroys the influence. This axiom is unalterable in this new science of healing, that to produce salutary effects the suggestion must be pure and moral, the attention steadily determined, the intention single and fixed, and volition vigorously exerted, continuing unvaried and unrelaxed either till the purpose is effected or relinquished.

On the pretensions to inspiration which are implied here I shall remark elsewhere, nor will I interrupt the account with any comments upon the impudent hypocrisy with which it is seasoned to the public taste. To proceed then;—the atmospherical part of the human body is capable of contraction, of distention, and of direction; it may be attracted from, or distended to, any unlimited distance, and may be so directed as to penetrate any other form in nature.

The rejected atoms from the fluid, and emanations from the solid parts of bodies, when rightly understood, are the only and unerring criterion by which the obstructions and diseases of each part can be ascertained, and when judiciously employed they become material instruments for the removal of every malady. They are subject to the influence of volition, and may be forced out of their natural course, or attracted into the pores of the operator; and the human body, which in many respects resembles a sponge, is adapted to receive such emanations and atmospheres as a skilful practitioner may propel into any part of it, and to afford them a free passage wherever he directs them. The countless number of universal nerves which combine with, and are regular continuations of, those similar conductors called nerves in animal forms, are subject to the influence of man's spiritual volition, and are affected or influenced if we strike one or more of them with the atoms which are continually flowing from us; that affection is conveyed on to such parts of the body as those conductors are attached to, and the nature and degree of the impulse will be according to the nature of the intention and the energy of the volition.

To determine the situation, nature, and extent of derangement or disease, recourse must be had to the atoms which proceed from the patient, for the rejected atoms resemble in their healthy or diseased qualities the parts from which they pass. These particles of matter are so immediately subject to the influence of combined spiritual volition, that the established system by which they are mixed with the universal medium gives way during our exertion, and they follow the course which we prescribe; and whatever may be the direction or medium through which we propel them, they remain unalterably the same, and continue passive and unchanged either by distance, direction, or contact, until we withdraw that influence, and discharge them from our service.

To judge of the state of the part from whence these atoms proceed, they must be attracted to some part of the examiner's body, and must strike his nerves; this process is called receiving impressions or sensations from the patient. Every substance in nature will afford some impression to that part of his body which the experienced examiner opposes to receive it, but professors usually prefer the hands and especially the fingers. The roots of the nails most commonly announce the first impressions, because the cuticle is thinnest in that part, and the pungent emanations more readily arrive at the nerves. No part perhaps of this astonishing science, says the lecturer, creates more jealousy among students than their susceptibility of sensations. Some enjoy that privilege to a great degree of accuracy even at the first essay, whilst others are in pursuit of it for months. This difference is at first constitutional; but when the science has produced a proper influence on the mind and morals, the impressions insensibly grow into accuracy. It sometimes happens that they who were most susceptible at first become totally deprived of that blessing until they approve themselves more worthy servants. It is essentially necessary to render the process of receiving the atoms emitted from every object familiar; this will be effected by habitually seeking for them. For this purpose students should frequently receive the emanations from salt, sugar, water, fire, and in short from every substance which occurs; by this means they soon become expert.

There are two modes of Examination; the first is that which should accurately be attended to by newly initiated students, as it affords a catalogue of sensations which become a regular standard to judge of all diseases by, and to reduce examination to accuracy and perfection. This mode consists in opposing one or both hands towards the patient. The examiner should sit or stand in an easy position, cautiously avoiding all pressure on his body or arms, lest he should suspect the impressions to proceed from that cause rather than from the disease. He should fix on some particular part of the patient, external or internal; then turning the backs of his hands, he must vigorously and steadily command the emanations and atmosphere which pass from that part to strike his hands, and he must closely attend to whatever impressions are produced on them. He must not permit his attention to wander from the object: if he should, his labour is entirely lost. To render the process more steady, the eyes of the examiner should be fixed on the part to which he is attending, with the unvaried intent of directing the effluent atoms towards his hands; it might naturally be supposed that his eyes should be open, but is better they were shut, as all extraneous objects are by that means excluded, and the porosity of the eyelids removes the idea of impediment. It is perfectly immaterial what may be the distance between the examiner and the patient: the process and the impressions will be exactly the same, provided he calls forth in himself the requisite exertion.

The second mode of examination is by opposing the whole body to that of the patient. In this the operator must not seek to know where the patient is, but recollecting that all human beings are connected to each other by innumerable atmospherical nerves, and that the whole medium in which they are placed is composed of loose atoms, he must fix his attention upon the patient, as if he stood before him. Thus situated, he must vigorously exert his power to attract all the emanations and atmospheres proceeding from the patient to himself. The atoms, then, which proceed from each particular part of the patient run to the same parts of the examiner, who feels in every part of his own person whatever the patient feels in his, only in a less degree, but always sufficiently to enable him to describe the feelings of the patient, and to ascertain the very spot in which the derangement exists, and the consequences resulting from it. If the examiner's attention is directed only to one particular viscus, that same viscus alone will receive information in himself; but if it be generally directed, every part of his body will give an account of its own proceedings. It is to be remarked that undiseased parts will not convey any remarkable impression to the examiner, as nothing results from health but gentle, soft, equable heat.

The mode of healing is termed Treating;—it is a process made use of by the operator to create, if partially obliterated, or to increase, if become languid, the natural action and re-action in any part of the body; and to assist nature by imitating and re-establishing her own law, when she is become inadequate to the task. This process is the opposite to the last; in that the examiner attracted the atoms from the patient to himself, but in this he must propel the atoms from himself to the patient. By a steady exertion of compound volition we have it in our power to propel the particles which emanate from our own body, against and into whatever part of any other form we fix our intention upon, and can force them in any direction and to any distance. Thus, by a continual and regular succession of particles directed vigorously in a rapid stream against those atoms which are stopt in their passage and accumulated into a heap, we break down the impediments, push off those atoms which we detach, direct them into the circulating currents for evacuation, and save the system from all the evil consequences which its impeded functions were occasioning. This is like throwing handfuls of shot at a heap of sand in a rivulet, which, as the grains of sand are separated from each other, washes them along before it. As all obstructions are not equally hard or compact, they are not all destroyed with the same facility. A single look will often prove sufficient for a recent accumulation of particles, for an accidental contraction, or a sudden distention, whereas those of long standing and of a more serious nature demand frequent, long, and judiciously-varied treatment.

The general process of treatment is an influence of mind over organized matter, in which unorganized matter is the occasional instrument. The mind should be able to perform this work without any particular motions of the body, or of its extremities. But, says the professor, inexperience, and the frequent disturbances which occur to divert the attention, induce us to adopt some mode of action, the constant repetition of which may attract, rouse, or recall the mind to its subject, when it becomes languid, or diverted from its employment. Hence, he adds, we generally employ our hands in the act of treating, and write, as it were, our various intentions on each part by the motions we make towards it: or, in fact, we trace on the diseased part with our current of emanations the various curative intentions of our mind or spirit.

The Pathology is soon explained. The impressions produced upon the fingers of the examiner by the stone will be heaviness, indolence, and cold. Burns and scalds produce heavy dull pricking at first, when inflammation has taken place great heat and sharp pricking, but indolent numbness from the centre. Rheumatic headache occasions pricking, numbness, and creeping or vermicular motion, heat if the patient be strong, cold if he be relaxed. Inflammation caused by confined wind produces intense heat, pricking and creeping; the heat is occasioned by the inflammation, the pricking by the wind acting against the obstructed pores, and the creeping by the motion of the wind from one part to another. Pus communicates to the hand of the examiner such a feeling of softness as we should expect from dipping the hand in it, but combined with pricking from the motion which the wind contained in it makes in its endeavours to escape. Diseased lungs make the fingers feel as if dough had been permitted to dry on them, this is called clumsy stiffness. Pleurisy occasions creeping, heat and pricking; deafness, resistance and numbness. Contracted nerves announce themselves to the examiner by a pressure round his fingers, as if a string was tightly bound round them; cases of relaxed habit by a lengthened debilitated sensation; diseased spleen, or ovaries, by a spinning in the fingers' ends, as if something were twirling about in them. The impression which scrofula produces upon the practitioner is curious and extraordinary: at every motion which he makes, the joints of his fingers, wrists, elbows, and shoulders crack. Worms excite creeping and pinching; bruises, heaviness in the hands, and numbness of the fingers.

The Modus Operandi must now be exemplified, premising, according to the professor's words, that the operator's own emanations become for him invisible fingers, which penetrate the pores, and are to be considered as the natural and only ingredients which are or can be adapted to the removal of nervous, or of any other affections of the body.

Instead therefore of lithotomy, the stone may thus be cured without danger or pain. This invisible power must be applied to the juices which circulate in the vicinity of the stone: and they must be conducted to the stone and applied to its surface, that the stone may be soaked in them for the purpose of dissolving the gum which makes the particles of sand cohere. If the hands are employed in this process, the mind must conceive that the streams of atoms which continually rush forth from the fingers, are continued on, and lengthened out into long invisible fingers which become continuations of our natural ones; and which, being composed of minute particles, are perfectly adapted to pass through the pores of another form, and to be applied, as we should apply our visible fingers, to the very part on which it is intended to act. The last process is Action: by striking those very emanating particles that constitute that invisible elongation of the part of our own body which it is intended to employ, whether it be the hand, the eye, or any other part,—by striking them forcibly in constant and rapid succession against the stone, the particles of sand, having been rendered less tenacious by the soaking, loosen, and fall apart, and are washed out of the body by the natural evacuation.

One instance more will suffice. In cases of indigestion the sensations produced by the ropy humour in the stomach are a thick gummy feel on the fingers; and when they are gently moved they meet with a slight degree of resistance. To judge of the depth of this slimy humour the fingers must be perpendicularly dipt in it to the bottom of the stomach; the consequence will be the impression of a circular line as if a string surrounded each finger, marking the depth to which they had sunk. Now to remove this derangement, the coat of the stomach must be cleared, which is done by the invisible fingers scraping all the internal surface.

You have here the whole sum and substance of a secret for which a hundred guineas were originally paid by aspirants, and which was afterwards published at five guineas by subscription. The list of subscribers contains the names of some nobles and of one bishop; but it is short, and for that reason I suppose the second and third parts, which were to contain new systems of anatomy and midwifery, as improved by this new science, were never published.

It follows incontrovertibly from the principles which have been advanced, that as the practitioners in this art heal diseases, so they can communicate them; that they can give the itch by shaking with invisible hands, and send a fit of the gout to any person whom they are disposed to oblige. The Indian jongleurs, who, like these English impostors, affect to feel the same pain as the patient, lay claim to this power; but it did not answer the purposes of imposture here to pretend to a power of doing mischief.

[18]   Read it; for it will cost you less to read it than it did me to write it.—Tr.

LETTER LII.

Blasphemous Conclusion of Mainauduc's Lectures.—The Effects which he produced explained.—Disappearance of the Imposture.

The conclusion of the extraordinary book from whence I have condensed the summary of this prodigious quackery, is even more extraordinary and more daring than the quackery itself. It may be transcribed without offence to religion, for every catholic will regard its atrocious impiety with due abhorrence.

"I flatter myself," says this man at the close of his lectures, "you are now convinced that this science is of too exalted a nature to be trifled with or despised; and I fondly hope that even the superficial specimen which you have thus far received has given you room to suppose it, not a human device, held out for the sportive gratification of the idle moment, but a divine call from the affectionate creating Parent, inviting his rebellious children by every persuasive, by every tender motive, to renounce the destructive allurements of earthly influence, and to perform the duties which he sent his beloved Son into the world to inculcate, as the only and effectual conditions on which the deluded spirit in man should escape future punishment. The apostles received and accepted of those terms; disciples out of number embraced the doctrine, and by example, by discourse, and by cures, influenced the minds of the unthinking multitude, absorbed in sin, and rioting in obstinate disobedience.—Again, the Almighty Father deigns to rouse his children from that indifference to their impending fate, into which the watchful enemy omits no opportunity of enticing them. To lead our Saviour from his duty, the tempter showed and offered him all this world's grandeur;—so he daily in some degree does to us. Our Saviour spurned him with contempt, and so must we. Our blessed Saviour, whose spirit was a stranger to sin, cured by perfect spiritual and physical innocence, and by an uninterrupted dependence on his Great, Omnipotent, Spiritual Father. He never failed. His chosen apostles cured by relinquishing this world and following him. We have but one example, that I can recollect, of their having failed, and then Christ told them what was necessary to ensure success. The disciples and the followers of the apostles performed many cures, but how far they were checquered by failures I am not informed. Paracelsus, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Robert Fludd, and several others, experienced sufficient power in themselves to verify the words of our Saviour; but were soon deprived of what was only lent to urge them to seek for the great original cause. "Verily, verily," said Christ, "the works which I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do, for I go unto my father." Valentine Greatrakes, by obeying the instructions imparted to him in visions, performed many cures; but ceasing to look up to the source, and giving way to medical importunity, he administered drugs, and could not expect success. Gasner, a moral and religious man, performed many cures; he was shut up in a convent, through the ignorance of his superiors, and the superstitious blindness of the age he lived in; thence his progress was trivial, though his dawnings seemed to promise much. Mesmer pillaged the subject from Sir Robert Fludd, and found to a certainty the existence of the power: undisposed to attend to our Saviour's information, he preferred loadstones and magnetic ideas to the service of the Great Author; and after performing several accidental cures, his magnetism and his errors shared the fate of his predecessors. Doctor D'Eslon, his partner, though a man of strong reason and impartiality, ascribed the power which he experienced to the physical will of man; and after performing some cures, he fell asleep. At length, after so many centuries of ignorance, it has graciously pleased the Almighty Father to draw aside the veil, and disclose his sacred mysteries to this favoured generation. And when I shall be called home, it will, I hope, appear, that for a bright and happy certainty of serving my God, and living with my Saviour, I pointed out to you, my brethren, the Almighty's real science, and that path to Heaven, which Christ, the only perfect and successful one of this list, left to mankind, as his last testament, and inestimable dying gift."[19]

This portentous blasphemy shows to what excess any kind of impiety may be carried on in this country, provided it does not appear as a direct attack upon religion. So infamous an impostor would in our country quickly have been silenced by the Holy Office, or, to speak more truly, the salutary dread of the Holy Office would have restrained him within decent bounds. Was he pure rogue undiluted with any mixture of enthusiasm, or did he, contrary to the ordinary process, begin in rogue, and end in enthusiast?

It is a common observation, that a man may tell a story of his own invention so often that he verily believes it himself at last. There is more than this in the present case. Mainauduc pretended to possess an extraordinary power over the bodily functions of others: it was easy to hire patients at first who would act as he prescribed, and much was to be expected afterwards from credulity; but that it should prove that he actually did possess this power in as great a degree as he ever pretended, over persons not in collusion with him, nor prepared to be affected by their previous belief, but unprejudiced, incredulous, reasonable people, philosophical observers who went to examine and detect the imposition, in sound health of body and mind, was more than he expected, and perhaps more than he could explain. This actually was the case; they who went to hear him with a firm and rational disbelief, expecting to be amused by the folly of his patients, were themselves thrown into what is called the crisis: his steady looks and continued gesticulations arrested their attention, made them dizzy, deranged the ordinary functions of the system, and fairly deprived them for a time of all voluntary power, and all perception.

How dangerous a power this was, and to what detestable purposes it might be applied, need not be explained. The solution is easy and convincing, but it by no means follows that he himself comprehended it. If we direct our attention to the involuntary operations of life within us, they are immediately deranged. Think for a minute upon the palpitation of the heart, endeavour to feel the peristaltic motion, or breathe by an act of volition, and you disturb those actions which the life within us carries on unerringly, and as far as we can perceive unconsciously. Any person may make the experiment, and satisfy himself. The animal magnetists kept up this unnatural state of attention long enough by their treatment to produce a suspension of these involuntary motions, and consequent insensibility.

In a country like this, where the government has no discretionary power of interfering, to punish villany, and of course where whosoever can invent a new roguery may practise it with impunity, till a new law be made to render it criminal, Mainauduc might have gone on triumphantly, and have made himself the head of a sect, or even a religion, had the times been favourable. But politics interfered, and took off the attention of all the wilder and busier spirits. He died, and left a woman to succeed him in the chair. The female caliph either wanted ability to keep the believers together, or having made a fortune thought it best to retire from trade. So the school was broken up. Happily for some of the disciples, who could not exist without a constant supply of new miracles to feed their credulity, Richard Brothers appeared, who laid higher claims than Mainauduc, and promised more wonderful things. But of him hereafter.

[19]   The translator thought the daring impiety of this whole extract so truly extraordinary, that he determined to seek for it in the original work, instead of re-translating it from D. Manuel's Spanish. With much difficulty he succeeded in finding the book: it is a large thin quarto volume, printed in 1798, with a portrait of Mainauduc from a picture by Cosway. From this the technical language of the summary has been corrected, and the exact words of this extract copied, so that the reader may rely upon their perfect accuracy.—Tr.

LETTER LIII.

Methodists.—Wesley and Whitfield.—Different Methods of attacking the Establishment.—Tithes.—Methodism approaches Popery, and paves the Way for it.—William Huntingdon, S. S.

In the year 1729 a great rent was made in the ragged robe of heresy. Wesley and Whitfield were the Luther and Calvin of this schism, which will probably, at no very remote time, end in the overthrow of the Established Heretical Church.

They began when young men at Oxford by collecting together a few persons who were of serious dispositions like themselves, meeting together in prayer, visiting the prisoners, and communicating whenever the sacrament was administered. Both took orders in the Establishment, and for awhile differed only from their brethren by preaching with more zeal. But they soon outwent them in heresy also, and began to preach of the inefficacy and worthlessness of good works, and of the necessity of being born again, a doctrine which they perverted into the wildest enthusiasm. The new birth they affirmed was to take place instantaneously, and to be accompanied with an assurance of salvation; but throes and agonies worse than death were to precede it. The effect which they produced by such a doctrine, being both men of burning fanaticism, and of that kind of eloquence which suited their hearers, is wonderful. They had no sooner convinced their believers of the necessity of this new birth, than instances enough took place. The people were seized with demoniacal convulsions; shrieks and yells were set up by frantic women; men fell as if shot through the heart; and after hours of such sufferings and contortions as required the immediate aid either of the exorcist or the beadle, they became assured that they were born again, and fully certain that their redemption was now sealed.

There may have been some trick in these exhibitions, but that in the main there was no wilful deception is beyond a doubt. Duæ res, says St Augustine, faciunt in homine omnia peccata, timor scilicet et cupiditas: timor facit fugere omnia quæ sunt carni molesta; cupiditas facit habere omnia quæ sunt carni suavia. These powerful passions were excited in the most powerful degree. They terrified their hearers as children are terrified by tales of apparitions, and the difference of effect was according to the difference of the dose, just as the drunkenness produced by brandy is more furious than that which is produced by wine. All those affections which are half-mental, half-bodily, are contagious;—yawning, for instance, is always, and laughter frequently so. When one person was thus violently affected, it was like jarring a string in a room full of musical instruments. The history of all opinions evinces that there are epidemics of the mind.

Such scenes could not be tolerated in the churches. They then took to the streets and fields, to the utter astonishment of the English clergy, who in their ignorance cried out against this as a novelty. Had these men, happily for themselves, been born in a catholic country, it is most probable that they might indeed have been burning and shining lights. Their zeal, their talents, and their intrepid and indefatigable ardour, might have made them saints instead of heresiarchs, had they submitted themselves to the unerring rule of faith, instead of blindly trusting to their own perverted judgments. It was of such men, and of such errors, that St Leo the Great said: In hanc insipientiam cadunt, qui cum ad cognoscendam veritatem aliquo impediuntur obscuro, non ad Propheticas voces, non ad Apostolicas literas, nec ad Evangelicas auctoritates, sed ad semetipsos recurrunt; sed ideo magistri erroris existunt, quia veritatis discipuli non fuere.

Thousands and tens of thousands flocked to hear them; and the more they were opposed the more rapidly their converts increased. Riots were raised against them in many places, which were frequently abetted by the magistrates. There is a good anecdote recorded of the mayor of Tiverton, who was advised to follow Gamaliel's advice, and leave the Methodists (as they are called) and their religion to themselves. "What, sir!" said he: "Why, what reason can there be for any new religion in Tiverton? another way of going to Heaven when there are so many already? Why, sir, there's the Old Church and the New Church, that's one religion; there's Parson Kiddell's at the Pitt Meeting, that's two; Parson Westcott's in Peter Street, that's three; and old Parson Terry's in Newport Street, is four.—Four ways of going to Heaven already!—and if they won't go to Heaven by one or other of these ways, by —— they sha'n't go to Heaven at all from Tiverton, while I am mayor of the town."—The outrages of the mob became at length so violent that the sufferers appealed to the laws for protection, and from that time they have remained unmolested.

The two leaders did not long agree. Wesley had deliberately asserted, that no good works can be done before justification, none which have not in them the nature of sin,—the abominable doctrine which the Bonzes of Japan preach in honour of their deity Amida! Whitfield added to this the predestinarian heresy, at once the most absurd and most blasphemous that ever human presumption has devised. The Methodists divided under these leaders into the two parties of Arminians and Calvinists. Both parties protested against separating from the Church, though they were excluded from the churches. Wesley however, who was the more ambitious of the two, succeeded in establishing a new church government, of which he was the heretical pope. There was no difficulty in obtaining assistants; he admitted lay preachers, and latterly administered ordination himself. The œconomy of his church is well constructed. He had felt how greatly the people are influenced by novelty, and thus experimentally discovered one of the causes why the Established clergy produced so little effect. His preachers, therefore, are never to remain long in one place. A double purpose is answered by this; a perpetual succession of preachers keeps up that stimulus without which the people would relapse into conformity, and the preachers themselves are prevented from obtaining in any place that settled and rooted influence which would enable them to declare themselves independent of Wesley's Connection (as the sect is called), and open shop for themselves. An hundred of these itinerants compose the Conference, which is an annual assembly, the cortes or council of these heretics, or, like our national councils, both in one; wherein the state of their numbers and funds is reported and examined, stations appointed for the preachers, and all the affairs of the society regulated. The authority of the preachers is strengthened by the system of confession,—confession without absolution, and so perverted as to be truly mischievous. Every parish is divided into small classes, in which the sexes are separated, and also the married and the single. The members of each class are mutually to confess to and question each other, and all are to confess to the priest, to whom also the leader of each class is to report the state of each individual's conscience. The leader also receives the contributions, which he delivers to the stewards. The whole kingdom is divided into districts, to each of which there is an assistant or bishop appointed, who oversees all the congregations within his limits; and thus the conference, which is composed of these assistants and preachers, possesses a more intimate knowledge of all persons under their influence than ever was yet effected by any system of police, how rigorous soever.

While Wesley lived his authority was unlimited. He resolutely asserted it, and the right was acknowledged. It was supposed that his death would lead to the dissolution of the body, or at least a schism; but it produced no change. The absolute empire which he had exercised passed at once into a republic, or rather oligarchy of preachers, without struggle or difficulty, and their numbers have continued to increase with yearly accelerating rapidity. He lived to the great age of eighty-eight, for more than fifty years of which he had risen at four o'clock, preached twice and sometimes thrice a day, and travelled between four and five thousand miles every year, being seldom or never a week in the same place; and yet he found leisure to be one of the most voluminous writers in the language. The body lay in state for several days,—in his gown and band in the coffin, where it was visited by forty or fifty thousand persons, constables attending to maintain order. It was buried before break of day, to prevent the accidents which undoubtedly would else have taken place. For many weeks afterward a curious scene was exhibited at his different chapels, where the books of the society are always sold. One was crying "The true and genuine life of Mr Wesley!" another bawling against him, "This is the real life!" and a third vociferating to the people to beware of spurious accounts, and buy the authentic one from him.

Wesley had no wish to separate from the Establishment, and for many years he and his preachers opened their meeting-houses only at hours when there was no service in the churches. This is no longer the case, and the two parties are now at open war. The Methodists gain ground; their preachers are indefatigable in making converts: but there is no instance of any person's becoming a convert to the Establishment;—waifs and strays from other communities fall into it, such as rich Presbyterians, who are tempted by municipal honours, and young Quakers who forsake their sect because they choose to dress in the fashion and frequent the theatre; but no persons join it from conviction. The meeting-houses fill by draining the churches, of which the Methodists will have no scruple to take possession when they shall become the majority, because they profess to hold the same tenets, and to have no objection to the discipline.

The Whitfield party go a surer way to work. They assert that they hold the articles of the Church of England, which the clergy themselves do not; and therefore they cry out against the clergy as apostates and interlopers. The truth is, that the articles of this Church are Calvinistic, and that, heretical as the clergy are, they are not so heretical as they would be if they adhered to them. The Whitfield Methodists, therefore, aim, step by step, at supplanting the Church. They have funds for educating hopeful subjects and purchasing church-livings for them, simony being practised with little or no disguise in this country, where every thing has its price. Thus have they introduced a clamorous and active party into the Church, who, under the self-assumed title of Evangelical or Gospel Preachers, cry out for reform—for the letter of the articles—and are preparing to eject their supiner colleagues. In parishes where these conforming Calvinists have not got possession of the church, they have their meetings, and they have also their county rovers, who itinerate like their Wesley-brethren. The Calvinistic dissenters are gradually incorporating with them, and will in a few generations disappear.

The rapidity with which both these bodies continue to increase may well alarm the regular clergy; but they having been panic-struck by the French Revolution and Dr Priestley, think of nothing but Atheists and Socinians, and are insensible of the danger arising from this domestic enemy. The Methodists have this also in their favour, that while the end at which they are aiming is not seen, the immediate reformation which they produce is manifest. They do, what the Clergy are equally pledged to do, but neglect doing;—they keep a watchful eye over the morals of their adherents, and introduce habits of sobriety, order, and honesty. The present good, which is very great, is felt by those who do not perceive that these people lay claim to infallibility, and that intolerance is inseparable from that awful attribute which they have usurped.

The Establishment is in danger from another cause. For many years past the farmers have murmured at the payment of tithes;—a sin of old times, which has been greatly aggravated by the consequences of the national schism: since the gentry have turned farmers these murmurs have become louder, and associations have been formed for procuring the abolishment of tithes, on the ground that they impede agricultural improvements. Government has lent ear to these representations, and it is by no means improbable that it will one day avail itself of this pretext, to sell the tithes, as the land-tax has already been sold, and fund the money;—that is, make use of it for its own exigencies, and give the clergy salaries,—thus reducing them to be pensioners of the state. The right of assembling in a house of their own they have suffered to lapse; and they have suffered also without a struggle, a law to be passed declaring them incapable of sitting in the House of Commons;—which law was enacted merely for the sake of excluding an obnoxious individual. There will, therefore, be none but the bishops to defend their rights,—but the bishops look up to the crown for promotion. If such a measure be once proposed, the Dissenters will petition in its favour, and the farmers will all rejoice in it, forgetting that if the tenth is not paid to the priest it must to the landholder, whom they know by experience to be the more rigid collector of the two. When the constitutional foundations of the church are thus shaken, the Methodists, who have already a party in the legislature, will come forward, and offer a national church at a cheaper rate, which they will say is the true Church of England, because it adheres to the letter of the canons. I know not what is to save the heretical establishment, unless government should remember that when the catholic religion was pulled down, it brought down the throne in its fall.

It is not the nature of man to be irreligious; he listens eagerly to those who promise to lead him to salvation, and welcomes those who come in the name of the Lord with a warmth of faith, which makes it the more lamentable that he should so often be deluded. How then is it that the English clergy have so little hold upon the affections of the people? Partly it must be their own fault, partly the effect of that false system upon which they are established. Religion here has been divested both of its spirit and its substance—what is left is neither soul nor body, but the spectral form of what once had both, such as old chemists pretended to raise from the ashes of a flower, or the church-yard apparitions, which Gaffarel explains by this experiment. There is nothing here for the senses, nothing for the imagination,—no visible object of adoration, at which piety shall drink, as at a fountain of living waters. The church service here is not a propitiatory sacrifice, and it is regarded with less reverence for being in the vulgar tongue, being thereby deprived of all that mysteriousness which is always connected with whatever is unknown. When the resident priest is a man of zeal and beneficence, his personal qualities counteract the deadening tendency of the system; these qualities are not often found united; it is true that sometimes they are found, and that then it is scarcely possible to conceive a man more respected or more useful than an English clergyman—(saving always his unhappy heresy)—but it is also true that the clergy are more frequently inactive; that they think more of receiving their dues than of discharging their duty; that the rector is employed in secular business and secular amusements instead of looking into the spiritual concerns of his flock, and that his deputy the curate is too much upon a level with the poor to be respected by them. The consequence is, that they are yielding to the Methodists without a struggle, and that the Methodists are preparing the way for the restoration of the true church. Beelzebub is casting out Beelzebub. They are doing this in many ways: they have taught the people the necessity of being certain of their own salvation, but there is no certainty upon which the mind can rest except it be upon the absolving power of an infallible church; they have reconciled them to a belief that the age of miracles is not past,—no saint has recorded so many of himself as Wesley; and they have broken them in to the yoke of confession, which is what formerly so intolerably galled their rebellious necks. Whatever, in fact, in methodism is different from the established church, is to be found in the practices of the true church; its pretensions to novelty are fallacious; it has only revived what here, unhappily, had become obsolete, and has worsened whatever it has altered. Hence it is that they make converts among every people except the Catholics; which makes them say, in their blindness, that atheism is better than popery, for of an atheist there is hope, but a papist is irreclaimable:—that is, they can overthrow the sandy foundations of human error, but not the rock of truth. Our priests have not found them so invincible; a nephew of Wesley himself, the son of his brother and colleague, was, in his own life-time, reclaimed, and brought within the fold of the Church.

Wesley was often accused of being a Jesuit;—would to Heaven the imputation had been true! but his abominable opinions respecting good works made a gulf between him and the church as wide as that between Dives and Lazarus. Perhaps, if it had not been for this accusation, he would have approached still nearer to it, and enjoined celibacy to his preachers, instead of only recommending it.

The paroxysms and epilepsies of enthusiasm are now no longer heard of among these people,—good proof that they were real in the beginning of the sect. Occasionally an instance happens, and when it begins the disease runs through the particular congregation; this is called a great revival of religion in that place, but there it ends. Such instances are rare, and groaning and sobbing supply the place of fits and convulsions. I know a lady who was one day questioning a beggar woman concerning her way of life, and the woman told her she had been one of my lady's groaners, which she explained by saying that she was hired at so much a week to attend at Lady Huntingdon's chapel, and groan during the sermon. The countess of Huntingdon was the great patroness of Whitfield, and his preachers were usually called by her name,—which they have now dropt for the better title of Evangelicals.

Notwithstanding the precautions which the Methodists have taken to keep their preachers dependent upon the general body, the standard of revolt is sometimes erected; and a successful rebel establishes a little kingdom of his own. One of these independent chieftains has published an account of himself, which he calls God the Guardian of the Poor and the Bank of Faith. His name is William Huntington, and he styles himself S. S. which signifies Sinner Saved.

The tale which this man tells is truly curious. He was originally a coal-heaver, one of those men whose occupation and singular appearance I have noticed in a former letter; but finding praying and preaching a more promising trade, he ventured upon the experiment of living by faith alone, and the experiment has answered. The man had talents, and soon obtained hearers. It was easy to let them know, without asking for either, that he relied upon them for food and clothing. At first supplies came in slowly,—a pound of tea and a pound of sugar at a time, and sometimes an old suit of clothes. As he got more hearers they found out that it was for their credit he should make a better appearance in the world. If at any time things did not come when they were wanted, he prayed for them, knowing well where his prayers would be heard. As a specimen, take a story which I shall annex in his own words, that the original may prove the truth of the translation, which might else not unreasonably be suspected.

"Having now had my horse for some time, and riding a great deal every week, I soon wore my breeches out, as they were not fit to ride in. I hope the reader will excuse my mentioning the word breeches, which I should have avoided, had not this passage of scripture obtruded into my mind, just as I had resolved in my own thoughts not to mention this kind providence of God. 'And thou shalt make linen breeches to cover their nakedness; from the loins even unto the thighs shall they reach,' &c. Exod. xxviii. 42, 43. By which and three others, (namely, Ezek. xliv. 18; Lev. vi. 10; and Lev. xvi. 4.) I saw that it was no crime to mention the word breeches, nor the way in which God sent them to me; Aaron and his sons being clothed entirely by Providence; and as God himself condescended to give orders what they should be made of, and how they should be cut, and I believe the same God ordered mine, as I trust it will appear in the following history.

"The scripture tells us to call no man master, for one is our master, even Christ. I therefore told my most bountiful and ever-adored master what I wanted; and he, who stripped Adam and Eve of their fig-leaved aprons, and made coats of skins and clothed them; and who clothes the grass of the field, which to-day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven; must clothe us, or we shall soon go naked; and so Israel found it when God took away his wool, and his flax, which they prepared for Baal: for which iniquity was their skirts discovered, and their heels made bare. Jer. xiii. 22.

"I often made very free in my prayers with my valuable Master for this favour, but he still kept me so amazingly poor that I could not get them at any rate. At last I was determined to go to a friend of mine at Kingston, who is of that branch of business, to bespeak a pair; and to get him to trust me until my Master sent me money to pay him. I was that day going to London, fully determined to bespeak them as I rode through the town. However, when I passed the shop I forgot it; but when I came to London I called on Mr Croucher, a shoemaker in Shepherd's Market, who told me a parcel was left there for me, but what it was he knew not. I opened it, and behold there was a pair of leather breeches with a note in them! the substance of which was, to the best of my remembrance, as follows:

"'sir,

"'I have sent you a pair of breeches, and hope they will fit. I beg your acceptance of them; and, if they want any alteration, leave in a note what the alteration is, and I will call in a few days and alter them.

'J. S.'

"'I tried them on, and they fitted as well as if I had been measured for them: at which I was amazed, having never been measured by any leather-breeches maker in London. I wrote an answer to the note to this effect:

"'sir,

"'I received your present, and thank you for it. I was going to order a pair of leather breeches to be made, because I did not know till now that my Master had bespoke them of you. They fit very well; which fully convinces me that the same God, who moved thy heart to give, guided thy hand to cut; because he perfectly knows my size, having clothed me in a miraculous manner for near five years. When you are in trouble, sir, I hope you will tell my Master of this, and what you have done for me, and he will repay you with honour.'

"This is as nearly as I am able to relate it; and I added:

"'I cannot make out I. S. unless I put I. for Israelite indeed, and S. for Sincerity; because you did not 'sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.'

"About that time twelvemonth I got another pair of breeches in the same extraordinary manner, without my ever being measured for them."

Step by step, by drawing on his Master, as he calls him, and persuading the congregation to accept his draft, this Sinner Saved has got two chapels of his own, a house in the country, and a coach to carry him backwards and forwards.

My curiosity was greatly excited to see the author of this book, which is not only curious for the matter which it contains, but is also written with much unaffected originality. I went accordingly to Providence Chapel. It has three galleries, built one above another like a theatre; for, when he wanted to enlarge it, an exorbitant ground-rent was demanded: "So," says the doctor, as he calls himself, "the heavens, even the heavens, are the Lord's; but the earth hath he given to the children of men. —Finding nothing could be done with the earth-holders, I turned my eyes another way, and determined to build my stories in the heaven (Amos ix. 6.), where I should find more room, and less rent." The place, however, notwithstanding its great height, was so crowded, that I could with difficulty find standing room in the door-way. The doctor was throned on high in the middle of the chapel,—in a higher pulpit than I have ever seen elsewhere: he is a fat, little-eyed man, with a dew-lap at his chin, and a velvet voice; who, instead of straining himself by speaking loud, enforces what he says more easily by a significant nod of the head. St Jerome has almost prophetically described him,—ante nudo eras pede, modo non solum calceato, sed et ornato: tunc pexâ tunicâ, et nigrâ subuculâ vestiebaris sordidatus, et pallidus, et callosam opere gestitans manum, nunc lineis et sericis vestibus, et Atrabatum et Laodiceæ indumentis ornatus incedis; rubent buccæ, nitet cutis, comæ in occipitium frontemque tornantur, protensus est aqualiculus, insurgunt humeri, turget guttur, et de obesis faucibus vix suffocata verba promuntur. His congregation looked as if they were already so near the fire and brimstone, that the fumes had coloured their complexions. They had as distinct a physiognomy as the Jews, with a dismal expression of spiritual pride in it, as if they firmly believed in the reprobation of every body except themselves.

It would be rash, and probably unjust, to call this man a rogue. He may fancy himself to be really divinely favoured, because, like Elijah, he is fed by ravens,—not remembering that his ravens are tame ones, whom he has trained to bring him food. The success of his own pretensions may make him believe them. Thus it is: the poor solitary madman who calls himself Ambassador from the Man in the Moon, is confined as a madman, because he can persuade nobody to believe him;—but he who calls himself Ambassador from the Lord is credited, and suffered to go at large; the moment that madness becomes contagious it is safe!

Huntington's success has occasioned imitators, one of whom, who had formerly been a drover of cattle, insisted upon having a carriage also; he obtained it, and in imitation of the S. S. placed upon it A. J. C. for Ambassador of Jesus Christ! Then he called upon his congregation for horses, and now threatens to leave them because they are so unreasonable as to demur at finding corn for them. The proof, he says, of their being true Christians is their readiness to support the preachers of the Gospel. Another of these fellows told his congregation one day after service, that he wanted 300l. for the work of the Lord, and must have it directly. They subscribed what money they had about them, and some would then have gone home for more;—he said No, that would not do; he wanted it immediately, and they must go into the vestry and give checks upon their hankers—which they obediently did.—And the English call us a priest-ridden people!

Morality, says one of these faith-preachers—is the great Antichrist. There are two roads to the devil, which are equally sure; the one is by profaneness, the other by good works; and the devil likes the latter way best, because people expect to be saved by it, and so are taken in.—You will smile at all this, and say

Que quien sigue locos en loco se muda,

Segun que lo dize el viejo refran:[20]

but you will also groan in spirit over this poor deluded country, once so fruitful in saints and martyrs.

[20]   That he who follows madmen becomes mad himself, as the old proverb says.—Tr.

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