MORNING'S WALK FROM LONDON TO KEW. By sir RICHARD PHILLIPS. LONDON: PRINTED BY J. ADLARD, 23, BARTHOLOMEW -CLOSE: SOLD BY JOHN SOUTER, 1, PATERNOSTER-ROW ; AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 1817. fs ^•^ THE LIBRARY OP CONGRESS WASHINGTON PREFACE, The Author of the following Obser- vations, made during a morning's WALK, will doubtless be allowed to possess but a moderate degree of literary ambition. He has not qua- lified himself, by foreign travels, to transport his readers above the clouds, on the Andes, the Alps, or the Appenines ; to alarm them by descriptions of Earthquakes, or Eruptions; or to astonish them by accounts of tremendous Chasms, Caverns, and Cataracts: but he has restricted his researches to subjects of home scenery, which thousands can daily examine after him; and consequently has not enjoyed that A 2 ir latitude of fancy, or been able to exercise any of those rare powers of hemming and seeing, by means of which travellers into distant regions are enabled to stimulate curiosity and monopolize fame. The class of readers who seek for sources of pleasure beyond the ordinary course of nature, will therefore feel disappointment in attempting to follow a pedestrian tourist through a route so destitute of wonders. Nor will this feeling, it is to be feared, be confined to searchers after supernatural phe- nomena in regard to the facts which appertain to such a work. In the sentiments which accompany his narrations, it will be found that the Author, accustomed to think for himself, admits no standards of truth superior to the evidence of the senses and the deductions of reason ; consequently, that his con- clusions on many important topics are at variance with existing prac- tices, whenever it appears they have no better foundation than the con- tinuity of prejudices and the arbi- trary laws of custom. He there- fore entertains very serious doubts whether his work will be accept- able to those LEARNED PrOFESSORS in Universities, who teach no doc- trines or opinions but those of their predecessors ; or whether it will suit Students, whose advance- ment depends on their submission to the dogmata of such superiors. He questions whether it will ever be quoted as an authority by Statesmen who consider the will of princes as standards of wis- dom; — by Legislators who bartef away their votes, and decide on the presumed integrity of ministers and leaders; — ^by Politicians who ba- nish the moral feelings from their practices; — or by Economists who do not consider individual happiness as the primary object of their calcu- lations. Nor is he more sanguine that his work will prove agreeable to those Natural Philosophers who account for phenomena by the operation of virtues or influences which have no mechanical contact ; — or to those Metaphysicians who conceive that truth can be exhibited only in the sophistical subtleties of the schools displayed in the mazy labyrinths of folios and quartos \ — or to those Theologians who main- tain that the obligations of reason and morality are superseded by those of Faith. While, in regard to those Vll Topographers and Antiquaries whose studies are bounded by dates of erection, catalogues of occupants, and copies of tomb-stones ; — to those Naturalists who receive delight from enumerations of Linnaean names of herbs, shrubs, and trees, and from Wernerian descriptions of rocks ; — to those Bibliomaniacs who value a book in the inverse ratio of the information it contains ; — and to those learned Philolo- gists who see no beauties in modern tongues, and affect to find (^but without anticipating any of them, J all modern discoveries of Natural Philosophy in Homer, and all im- provements of mental Philosophy in the mysteries of Plato — the author deeply laments his utter inability to accommodate either his taste, his feelings, or his conclusions. Vlll In regard to the spirit, tone, and character of the author^s opinions, they have necessarily emanated from the state of knowledge, in an aera when, at the termination of four cen- turies after the adoption of Printing, mankind have achieved four great objects; (1,) in the revival of Literature, and regeneration of Philosophy; (2,) in the emancipa- tion of Christendom from the sys- tematic thraldom of Popery ; (3,) in the assertion of the rights op MAN, against overwhelming usurpa- tions ; and (4,) in the establishment of A spirit of free enquiry, which constitutes the vivifying ener- gy of the age in which we live, and promises the most important results in regard to the future con- dition and happiness of the human race. IX The accomplishment of these ch'cmiistances has generated, in all countries, a numerous class of readers, among whom are many Professors, Philosophers, Statesmen, Politicians, Theolo- gians, Antiquaries, Naturalists, and EMINENT Scholars; besides Amateurs of general Literature, with whose taste, feelings, and principles, the Author of this volume is anxious to identify his own, and whose favourable opinion he is am- bitious to enjoy ; — these are the free and honest searchers after moral, political, and natural truth, — the votaries of common sense, — the patients of their natu- ral sensibilities, — all, who are neither too old, too powerful, nor TOO wise, — and, finally, all those who pass their lives in search OF HAPPINESS, and who are not unwilling to be pleased, in what- soever form, or by whomsoever the attempt may be made : TO SUCH ESTIMABLE PER- SONS, IN ALL COUNTRIES, AND IN ALL SITUATIONS, THE AUTHOR RESPECT- FULLY DEDICATES THIS V0LU3IE. HoIIowai/, Middlesex ; Fehruary 8, 1817. CONTENTS. 1St. James's Park -- 2 Beggars ,.,,-..-.«.---.-.-.-.•---. 3 Milk Fair 5 Regent's Palace 6 Washington and Alfred ...,......-.-...,- 7 Public Offices 9 Military Slaves 10 Country Residents... ... 11 St. James's Palace ....... 14 Promenade in the Mall ..-..- -. 15 Suggested Improvements 17 PiMLICO 18 The Ty-bourn , 19 Isle of St. Peter's 20 Chelsea ^ 21 Ranelagh ........_>.,.,.,....,,... 22 Chelsea Buns , 25 Hospital 27 Villany of War ... ,-... 28 Invalid without Arms 29 A Centenarian 32 Securities of Peace 33 Caesar's Ford 34 The Botanic Garden 27 Don Saltero's .... . 38 Sir Thomas More 39 Sir Hans Sloane 40 XLl CONTENTS. Battersea 40 Waste of Public Wealth 4l Cupidity of Trade 42 Insufficiency of Wealth -- 44 Mr. Brunei's Saw Mills... .-.--- 4^ • Shoe Manufactory 47 Evils of Machinery 48 Lord Boliugbroke's House 51 York House 57 An American Aloe ...^ 59 Reflections on Pride...... ,...-.......-.. — Wandsworth - --. 63 Phenomena of Rivers ,.-., .......... — Distilleries and Drunkenness 64> Haunted House 66 Causes of Superstition ............. --- ^8 Population of Villages. - 74 Iron-Rail Roads...' 75 Borough of Oarrat 77 Garrat Elections - 78 Value of Popular Elections. .......-.- - 82 An Oil Mill 84 An Iron Foundry - 8^ Inutility of Machinery 88 Demon of War -- 89 A Country Assembly.... ........... 9^ Vice of Balloting - 9^ Plan for rendering Society social 96 Characteristics of Novels --.-.. 98 ^..^ Villages round London.... 100 Condition of Poverty ...302 Poverty and Wealth contrasted ...J 03 Inadequate Remuneration of Labour. ....... 105 Visit to Wandsworth Workhouse ....107 Philosophy of Roads ...120 Cruelty to Horses 121 Value of good Foot-paths... 126 Citizen's Villas 127 Axioms of Political Economy ,,.....-.-..129 CONTENTS. xiit Putney Heath ---130 The Smoke of London -.131 Earl Spencer's Park..-- -..--..-- 132 Hartley's Fire-House -.134 Means of Preventing Fires in Houses, and 7 ^35 on Female Dress «-...... 3 The Telegraph System 141 Suggested Extension of - -146 Interesting Prospect «..--- — .i48 Reflections on the Metropolis .150 Criminal Neglect of Statesmen lo5 Removal of Misery 160 Death and Character of Mr. Pitt. --....... 16 1 Indifference of Statesmen .-. -.166 Fruit Trees preferable to Lumber Trees i6S Roehampton 171 Monastic Dwellings «..-...-....-...-• — - Inhabitants of Cottages. .........-.--. ...173 Humility of Pride .-- .175 Pilton's Invisible Fences -....•-.-.-...176 House and Character of Mr. Goldsmid.....! 78 Destructive Electric Storm -.--.-.-182 Nature of Electricity investigated........ ..184 Secondary Causes discussed... ...-.18S Security against Lightning -.-.-.-...-..189 The District described ..... .-.-......191 Dundas and Tooke contrasted -.192 Barnes..,.. -..-- 193 Its Poor-House on a Common ..-•.--^. — Wretchedness of Parish-Poor. -194 Geology of Barnes-Common .--.....167 Fitness and Harmony of Things... ........ 200 Kit-Cat Club Rooms..... ...201 Tonson the Bookseller........ . -._....... SOT Effect of distant Bells... 209 Chiswick Church .---. ---.212 Barnes Church -..--..-_.,... .... .215 Enclosed Cemeteries -....--.--...*^,,,,...2l6 atlV^ CONTENTS. Benevolence of Mr. Morris.............. .218 Tragedy of the Count and Countess D'Au- \a,Q traigues J Horticultural Speculation of the Marquis \ deChabannes / ^^^ Supply of London with Vegetables.... 224 Shropshire and Welsh Girls. „«« ...225 Neglect of Public Cleanliness ....... .....229 Cleanliness an Incentive of Virtue 231 MORTLAKE 232 Tomb of Partridge ...r. .. ...233 Pretensions of Astrology . .235 Doctrines of Fatality examined......... ...23^ Free-Will and Necessity discussed „ .241 Success of Predictions referable to the Doc- ) ^ - trine of Chances ..... .-..-.-.. j ' Art of Fortune-Telling illustrated --..-,...250 Tomb and Character of Alderman Barber 253 Union and Multiplication of the Human Race 257 Mortlake Church 263 Picture of Parochial Happiness .......... .264 Cause of its Failure. ..265 Genuine Religion characterized.... ........266 Vulgar Notions of Churches , ....268 Belief in Ghosts exploded ............... 270 Reflections on the Deity , 271 Effluvia of Dead Bodies 273 Impostures of Dr. Dee 275 Virtues of Sir John Barnard ......._ 276 Tomb of the Viscountess Sidmouth ........278 False Foundation o? the late War,... , . .279 Lesson to Mankind , 2S0 Patriotism of the Common Council of Loudon 282 Improved Psalmody of Gardiner ...... ....283 Religious Statistics of Mortlake - 284 Uses and Abuses of Church Bells.... ......285 Dee's House 290 Female Education discussed -......,.--.--291 CONTENTS. , XY General Causes of Human Errors „„ .29* Proposed Improvement of Education '29S Manufactory of Delft Ware ..299 Progress of the Arts ... «.-........--. 30 1 Archiepiscopal Residence ... — ... — 302 Mercy dispensed by the Catholic Priesthood. 305 Food and Charity by the same ..-.--. SOS Enormous Walnut-Trees .-..310 Box-Tree Arbour....,..,-- - .- 31 1 Disinterment of the Dead *-- — 313 Abundant Manure of Religious Houses 31^ Reflections on Past Ages............ 3i7 Origin of Superstition 320 Progress of Mythology 322 Intolerance of Philosophical Schools....... .325 Invocation to Philosophy 327 The Author's System of Physics 329 Popular Schools recommended 330 Addresses of Females. _ .-..-.-,.--.334 Changes wrought by Rivers...... ......---335 Alternate Conversion of Land and Sea 33S The Primitive Earth 340 Origin of Organization ......341 Laws of Inorganic Matter.... ._,,,. .^....344 ~ Vegetable Existences. ... 345 Loco- Motive Existences -347 Principle of Vitality .,349 Questions of the jFirst Philosophy. 350 Compatibility, Fitness, and Harmony, iilus-1 ^^^ trated.... j "^^^ The Tides explained .............. ^ 354 Phenomena of Rivers ... 355 Causes of Sterility 356 The Errors of Man in Society 357 Interview with Gipsies.- ,,^ 363 Social Slavery characterized .... ...... 365 Gipsy Fortune-telling illustrated 36h Instance of Vulgar Terror 37 5 Kevv Priory described 37u xn CONTENTS. Kew _ 377 Its Chapel . .-_-.380 Tomb of Meyer ^--. --..-.«.«-..... .381 Church Fees 382 Tomb of Gainsborough .............^ 38.3 Comparison of Poetry and Painting.. ^3S4 Tomb of Zoffany -«.-.. --....385 — Hogarth........... , ....387 • ■ Thomson ........ ..388 The Author's Reflections and Conclusion.... 389 %* To guard the work against some apparent anachronisms, it is proper to state, that the substance of the foUoicing Pages appeared in various Numbers of the Moiithly Magazine^ be^ ticeen the Years 1813 and 1816. In reprinting, in this form, many interpolations have been made, and some subjects of a temporary nature have been omitted: but it was often impossible, in treating of local situatio7is, to avoid some reference to temporary circumstances. A MORNING'S WALK FROM LONDON TO KEW. — »»M < — We roam into unhealthy climates, and en- counter difficulties and dangers, in search of curiosities and knowledge, although, if our industry were equally exerted at home, we might find in the tablets of Nature and Art, within our daily reach, inexhaus- tible sources of inquiry and contemplation. We are on every side surrounded by inter- esting objects; but, in nature, as in morals, we are apt to contemn self-knowledge, to look abroad rather than at home, and to study others instead of ourselves. Like the French Encyclopaedists, we forget our own Paris • or, like editors of newspapers, we seek for novelties in every quarter of the world, losing sight of the superior in- terests of our immediate vicinity. a A morning's walk These observations may perhaps serve as a sufficient apology for the narrative which follows : — existing notions, the love of the sublime, and the predilections above described, render it necessary for a home tourist to present himself before the public with modesty. ..The readers of voyages round the whole world, and of travels into unexplored regions of Africa and America, will scarcely be persuaded to tolerate a narrative of an excursion which began at mne in the morning and ended at six in the afternoon of the same day ! Yet such, truly, are the Travels which afford the materials of the present narrative; they were excited by a fine morning in the lat- ter days of April, and their scene was the high-road lying between London and Kew, on the banks of the Thames. With no guide besides a map of the country round the metropolis, and no set- tled purpose beyond what the weather might govern, I strolled towards St. James's Park. In proceeding between the walls frorai Spring Gardens, I found the FROIM LONDON TO KEW. 3 lame and the blind taking their periodical stations on each side of the passage.- — I paused a few minutes to see them approach one after another as to a regular calling ; or as players to take their stations and enact their settled parts in this drama. One, a fellow, who had a withered leg, approached his post with a cheerful air; but he had no sooner seated himself, and stripped it bare, than he began such hide- ous moans as in a few minutes attracted several donations. Another, a bhnd wo- man, was brought to her post by a little boy, who carelessly leading her against the step of a door, she petulantly gave him a smart box of the ear, and exclaimed, '^D — n you, you rascal, can't you mind what you're about;" — and then, leaning her back to the wall, in the same breath, she began to chaunt a hymriy which soon brought contributions from many pious pas- sengers. The systematic movements of these peo- ple led me to inquire in regard to their con- duct and policy from an adjacent shop- b2 4 A morning's walk , keeper, who told me, that about a dozen of them obtained a good living in that passage ; that an attendance of about two hours per day sufficed to each of them, when, by an arrangement among them- selves, they regularly succeed each other. He could not guess at the amounts thus collected, but he said, that he had once watched a noisy blind fellow for half an hour, and in that time saw thirty-four people give him at least as many half- pence; he thence, and from other observa- tions, concluded that in two or three hours each of them collects five or six shillings ! We cannot wonder then at the aversion entertained by these unhappy objects to the indiscriminate discipline of our com- mon work-houses; nor can we blame the sympathy of those benevolent persons who contribute their mite to relieve the cries of distress with which they are assailed. But it excites our wonder and grief that statesmen, who have superfluous means for covering the country with barracks, should find themselves unable to establish com- FROM LONDON TO KEW. fortable asylums for all the poor who are incurably diseased, in which they should be SO provided for, that it would be as criminal in them to ask, as in others to afford them^ eleemosynary relief. On my entrance into the Park, I was amused and interested by an assemblage of a hundred mothers, nurses, and valetudi- narians, accompanied by as many children, who are drawn together at this hour every fine morning by the metropolitan luxury of milk warm from the cow. Seats are pro- vided, as well as biscuits, and other con- veniences, and here from sun-rise till ten o'clock continues a milk fair ^ distinguished by its peculiar music in the lowing of cows, and in the discordant squalling of the nu- merous children. The privilege of keep- ing these cows, and of selling their milk on this spot, belongs to the gate-keepers of the Park ; and it must be acknowledged to be a great convenience to invalids and children, to whom this wholesome beve- rage and its attendant walk are often pre- scribed. B 3 6 A morning's WALK On the right hand stands the garden-* wall of the puny, though costly, palace of the Regent, Prince of Wales. It is, how- ever, fortunate, that it is not larger, if the expenditure of palaces, like that of private houses, were to keep pace with their bulk. TJie inside is adorned like the palace of Aladin • .apd a better notion of its splendour may be formed, by stating that it has cost the labours of twenty thousand men for a year, or of one thousand for twenty years, than that above a million sterling has at different times been expended upon the building and furniture. Yet, it is said that it forms but the eastern wing of a palace, which the architects of this Prince have projected, and that half the south side of Pail-Mall and considerable tracts of. the Park will, be appropriated to complete their plans, if approved by their royal patrom I am aware, that the love of shew in princes, and persons in authority, is often justified by the alledged necessity of imr posing on the vulgar; but I doubt whether any species of imposition really producer PROM LaNDON TOXEW. 7 the effect which the pomp of powBr is so wiUing to ascribe to it, as an dxc use for its own indulgences. Nor ought it ever to be forgotten, that no tinsel of gaudy trap- pings, no architectural arrangements of stone or wood, no bands of liveried slaves, (however glossed in various hues, or dis- guised by various names,) can sustain the glory of any power which despises public opinion, forgets the compact between all power and the people, violates the faith of public treaties, and measures its moral ob- ligations, not by the sense of justice, but by considerations of expediency and self- interest! On this important, though almost exhausted, topic, it should be known by all Princes who covet true glory, that Washington the Great hired no armed men to sustain his power, that his habits were in all things those of a private citizen, and that he kept but one coach, merely for occasions of state— his personal virtues being bis body-guards — the justice of his measures constituting the strength of his government, — -the renown of his past 8 A morning's walk deeds enshrining him with more splendour than could, be conferred by the orders of all the courts in Europe — his unquestion- able love of public liberty endearing him to the people over whom he presided — and the pure flame of his patriotism caus- ing him to appear in their eyes as a being more than mortal ! Britain might envy America her Washington, if she could not herself boast of an Alfred, worthy also of being called the Great — a sove- reign who voluntarily conceded liberty to his people, and founded it on bases which all the inglorious artifices of his succes- sors have been unable to undermine — but, alas ! such men, like Epic poets, seem destined to succeed but once in a thousand years! On the left hand I beheld, in vari- ous magnificent erections, the germs of in- numerable associations, gratifying to the vice of national pride ; but affording little pleasure to one whose prejudices of prinr ciple, and habits of thinking, have taught bim to estimate all human labours by their FROM LONDON TO KEW. 9 influence on the happiness of the sentient creatures to whom the earth is a common inheritance. There was the British Admiralty — the just pride of a people's defence against foreign invaders — but less worthy of admiration, if ever used as an instrument of ambition, or as a means of gratifying base passions. There was the British War-Office, of which a Briton can say little, who doubts the policy of the colonial system, who feels a conviction that *^ Britain's best bulwarks are her wooden walls," and who thinks that the sword should never be wielded but by citi- zen soldiers, nor ever be used till the con- stable's staff has been exerted in vain. And there was the British Treasury, the talisman of whose power has destroyed the efficacy of title-deeds, and converted the land and houses of the empire into paper-money and stock-debts, for the pur- pose of carrying on wars and performing deeds, which impartial history will justly characterize, when alas ! the truth will be ^useless to the suffering victims ! 10 A morning's WALK Just at this moment I beheld several bands of armed men, disguised in showy liveries, drawn up in array to exercise themselves for combat. But, having no taste for such mistakes of power, and being in no degree deluded by the gloss of their clothes, the glitter of their murderous weapons, or the abuse of celestial har- mony in the skill of their musicians, I silently invoked the energies of truth to remove from the understandings of men, that cloud which permits such illusions to be successful. No legitimate power, like that of the government of Endand, founded on such bases as Magna Charta, the laws of Edward the First, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement, can, for its lawful purposes, ever stand in need, in a properly educated community, of the support of a single man armed with a murderous w^eapon. These piles of buildings, ranged in a semi- circular form, are imposing on the eye from their magnitude, and on the imagination from their fame. I paused to enjoy their FROM LONDON TO KEW. 11 perspective; but, is not senseless war, I exclaimed, even now ravaging or dis- turbing the four quarters of the world, and is it not from this scite that it receives its impulse and direction? I charitably hoped that mere errors of judgment had guided the councils of the men who in- habit these buildings — but I sickened as I thought of the consequences of their errors, perhaps at that moment displayed in distant parts of the earth in agonies of despair and in smoking ruins — and, to avoid the succession of feelings which were so painful, yet so unavailing, I turned away from the spot. ; In my way towards and along the Mall, I ri^marked that few were walking in my direction; but that all the faces and foot- steps were earnestly directed towards Lon-^ don. The circumstance exemplified that feature of modern manners which leads thousands of those who are engaged in the active business of the metropolis to sleep, and to keep their families, in neighbouring villages. These thousands walk or ride, it A morning's walk therefore, every day to and from London, at hours corresponding with the nature and urgency of their employments. Be- fore nine o'clock the various roads are covered with clerks of the public offices, and with bankers' and merchants' clerks, who are obliged to be at their posts at that hour, all exhibiting in their demeanor the ease of their hearts. From nine till eleven, you see shop-keepers, stock-bro- kers, lawyers, and principals in various establishments, bustling along vr\\h careful and anxious countenances, indicative of their various prospects and responsibilities. At twelve, saunters forth the man of wealth and ease, going to look at his balances, orders, or remittances ; or merely to read the papers and hear the news ; yet demon- strating the folly of wealth by his gouty legs, or cautious rheumatic step. Such is the routine of the Park, along which no car- riages are allowed to pass; but other avenues into the metropolis present, through every forenoon, besides lines of pedestrians, crowded stage-coaches, pri- 1 FROM LONDON TO KEW. 13 vate coaches, and chariots, numerous gigs and chaises, and many equestrians. I amused myself with a calculation of the probable number of persons who thus every day, between eight and sh, pass to and from London within a distance of seven miles. In the present route I con- cluded the numbers to be something like the following, 200 from Pimlico, 300 from Chelsea, 200 from the King's Road and Sloane Street, 50 from Fulham and Put- ney, and 50 from Battersea and Wands- worth; making 800 per day. If then, there are twenty such avenues to the metropolis, it appears that the total of the regular in- gress and egress will be 16,000 persons, of whom perhaps 8,000 walk, 2,000 arrive in public conveyances, and 6,000 ride on horseback, or in open or close carriages. Such a phenomenon is presented no- where «lse in tlie world ; and it never can exist except in a city which unites the same combined features of population, wealth, commerce, and the varied employments ^hich belong to our own vast metropolis. 14 A MORNING^S WALK I observed with concern that this' Park presents a neglected appearance. The seats are old and without paint, and many vacancies exist in the hnes of the trees. The wooden raihng round the centre is heavy and decayed, and the appearance of every part is unworthy of a metropo- litan royal domain, adjoining the constant residence of the court. I was also struck with the aspect of St. James's Palace in ruins ! A private dwelling after a fire would have been restored in a few weeks or months; but the nominal palace of the four preceding sovereigns of England, the last of the Stuarts and three first of the Guelphs, and the scene of their chief grandeur, presents even to the con- temporary generation a monument of the instability of every human work. The door at which Margaret Nicholson made her attempt on the life of George the Third, and at which the people were used to see that monarch enter and depart for many years past, is now a chaos of ruins; as is that entire suite of apartments which FROM LONDON TO KEW. 15 Jed to those drawing-rooms in which the Court was accustomed to assemble, till within these five years, on birth and gala days ! — He w'ould have been deemed a false and malignant prophet, who seven years ago might have foretold that the pub- lic Palace of the Kings of England wx)uld so soon become a heap of unrepaired ruins, and its splendid chambers '^ the habitation of the fowls of the air." Yet, such has been the fact, in regard to the eastern apartments of this famous Palace ! My spirits sunk, and a tear started into my eyes, as 1 brought to mind those crowds of beauty, rank, and fashion, which, till within these few years, used to be displayed in the centre Mall of this Park on Sunday evenings during the spring and summer. How often in my youth had I been a delighted spectator of the en- chanted and enchanting assemblage ! Here used to promenade, for one or two hours after dinner, the whole British world of gaiety, beauty, and splendour ! Here could be seen in one moving mass, extending the i6 A morning's WAtK whole length of the Mall, five thousand of the most lovely women, in this country of female beauty, all splendidly attired, and accompanied by as many well-dressed men ! What a change, I exclaimed, has a few years wrought in these once happy and cheerful personages 1 — How many of those who on this very spot then delighted my eyes are now mouldering in the silent grave! — And how altered are all their persons, and perhaps their fortunes and feelings! Alas, that gay and fascinating scene no longer continues, and its very existence is already forgotten by the new generation ! A change of manners has put an end to this unparalleled assemblage, to this first of metropoUtan pleasures, though of itself it was worth any sacrifice. The dinner hour of four and five, among the great, or would-be great, having shifted ta the unhealthy hours of eight or nine, the promenade after dinner, in the dinner full- dress, is consequently lost. The present walk in the Green- Park does not possess therefore the attractions of high rank; FROM LONTDaN TO KEW. >f while' the morning assemblages in Hyde- Park and Kensington- Gardens, though gay and imposing, have little splendour of dress, and lose the effect produced by the pre- sence of rank and distinguished character, owing to the greater part of the company being shut up in carriages. J) The modern custom of abandoning the metropolis for the ^ea-coast, or the country, as soon as the fine weather sets in, operates too as another draw^-back from the fascination and agreeableness of our Sunday promenades. Ancient manners, in the capricious whirl of fashion, may how- ever again return; and, if the dinner- hour should recede back to four, I trust the luxury and splendour of this delightful Mall will be restored. , These Parks may be denominated the Lungs of the metropolis, for they are essential to the healthful respiration of its inhabitants, by contributing to their cheap and innocent pleasures. Under a wise and benevolent administration, they might be made to add still more to the public c IS A MORN I NG S W ALK '■■ happiness, and it would be a suitable homage of the government to the people, to render these promenades as attractive as possible. The two bands of the Guard* might be allowed to play in the Malls for two hours every evening, between Lady- day and Michaelmas, and the number and construction of the seats might be increased and improved. Such measures, would indicate, at least, a desire in the governors to contribute to the happiness of the governed, and would occasion the former to appear to the latter in a Iriore grateful character than as mere assessors of taxes, and as organs of legal coercion. At Pimlico, the name of Stafford- Row reminded me of the ancient distinction of Tart- Hall, once the rival in size and splen- dour of its more fortunate neighbour, Buckingham- House, and long the depo- sitory of the Arundelian Tablets and Statues. It faced the Park, on the pre- sent scite of James-Street; its garden- wall standing where Stafford-Row is now FROM LONDON TO KEW. t§ built, and the extensive livery-stables being once the stables of its residents. I turned aside on the left, to view the river Tye, or Ty-bourn, which runs from the top of Oxford-street, under May- Fair, across Piccadilly, south-east of Bucking- ham-House, under the pavement of Staf- ford-Row, and across Tothill-Fields, into the Thames. It is a fact, equally lost, that the creeks which run from the Thames, in the swamps, opposite Belgrave-Place, once joined the canal in St. James's-Park, and, passing through White-Hall, formed, by their circuit, the ancient isle of St. Peter's* Their course has been filled up between the wharf of the water-works and the end of the canal in St, James's-Park; and the Isle of St. Peter's is no longer to be traced. It is singular that such a marsh should have become the focus of the government, jurisprudence, and power, of this great empire ! Yet, so it is, the offices of Government, the Houses of Par- liament, and the Supreme Courts of Law, 3tand on the lowest ground in or near the c ^ 20 A MORNING*S WALK metropolis; the greater part of which is still the swamp of Tothill and Milbank- Fields; and the whole is exposed to the in- undations of land-floods or extraordinary tides. A moralist would say, that such bulwarks of a nation ought to have been seated on a rock — a wit would refer to the nature of the soil, the notorious cor-^ ruptions of the body-politic — and a vo*^ tary of superstition would ascribe the splen- did fortunes of the scite to the favour of heaven, as announced in the vision to the monks who, eleven hundred years since^ built Westminster-Abbey, in so unpro- mising a situation ! m^^^ ^^r a :^i The wall of what are called the Gardens of Buckingham House, form one side of the main street of Pimlico ; but these gar^ dens consist merely of a gravel walk, shaded by trees, with a spacious and uri^ adorned area in the centre. The whofe is the property of Queen Charlotte, and is inaccessible to a visit of mere curiosity. ;^ The water-works, to the left of the road, ^pply Pimlico and part of Westminster FROM LONDON TO ICEW. 2t with water, and, I may add, with smoke, of which it emits large volumes, though there are so many contrivances for con- suming it. It consists simply of a steam and forcing engine, not remarkable for novelty or ingenuity of construction. Op- posite stands the manufactory of the inge- nious Bramah, whose locks baffle knavery, ^d whose condensing engines promise such important results to philosophy and the mechanic arts. Belgrave-Place, lower and upper, proves the avidity of building- speculations, which could thus challenge the prejudices against the opposite marshesl But I was assured by a resident of twenty years, that he and his family had enjoyed un- interrupted health in Upper Belgrave-Place, and that such was the general experience. On entering Chelsea, I was naturally Jed tQ inquire for the scite of the once gay Ranelagh! I passed up the avenue of trees, which I remember often to have seen blocked up with carriages. At its ex- tremity, I looked for the Rotunda and its surrounding buildings; but, as I could not c 3 i$ - A ^o R N I no's w a LK, : see thera, I concluded, that I had acquired but an imperfect idea of the place, in my nocturnal visits! 1 went forward, on an open space, but still could discern no Kanelagh ! At length, on a spot covered with nettles, thistles, and other rank weeds, I met a working man, who, in answer to my inquiries, told me, that he saw I was a stranger, or I should have known that Ranelagh had been pulled down, and that 1 was then standing on the scite of the Rotunda ! Reader, imagine my feelings, for I can- not analyze them! This vile place, I exclaimed, the scite of the once-enchant- ing Ranelagh ! — It cannot be — the same eyes were never destined to see such a metamorphosis! All was desolation ! — A few inequalities appeared in the ground, indicative of some former building, and holes filled with muddy water shewed the foundation walls— but the rest of the space, making about two acres, was covered with clusters of tall nettles, thistles, and docks.! Qn a more accurate survey, I traqed the FROM LONDON TO KEW. 23 circular foundation of the Rotunda, and at some distance discovered the broken arches of some cellars, once filled with the choicest wines, but now with dirty water ! Further on were marks against a garden wall, indicating, that the water-boilers for tea and coffee had once been heated there I I traced too the scite of the orchestra, where I had often been ravished by the finest performances of vocal and instru- mental music! My imagination brought the objects before me ; I fancied I could still hear an air of Mara's ; I turned my eye aside, and what a contrast appeared !— r No glittering lights!— -No brilliant happy company ! — No peals of laughter from thronged boxes !^ — No chorus of a hun- dred instruments and voices! — All was death-like stillness 1 Is such, I exclaimed, the end of human splendour? — Yes^ truly, all is vanity — and here is a striking example ! — Here are ruins and desolation, even without antiquity ! I am not mourn- ing, said I, over the remains of Babylon or Carthage — ruins sanctioned by the u^f 2^ A MORNING'S WALK - sparing march of time ! — But here it wa& all glory and splendour, even yesterday ! Here, but seven years have flown away, and I was myself one of three thousand of the gayest mortals ever assembled, in one of the gayest scenes which the art of man could devise — aye, on this very spot — ^yet the whole is now changed into the dismal scene of desolation before me I — Full of such reflections, I cast my eyes eastward, when Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Church presented themselves in a con- tinued line Ah\ thought I, that line may at some distant epoch enable the curious antiquary to determine the scite of our British Daphne; but I could not avoid feeling, that if the pile of Ranelagh and its glories have so totally disappeared, ', in 80 short a season, no human work, even yonder colossal specimens of G othic and Grecian art, or the great MetropoHs itself, can be deemed a standard of locality for the guide of distant ages! I moved pensively from a spot which exciting such solemn and affecting emotions, had dimi- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 23 iiished the vigour of my frame by exhaust* ing my nervous energies. ; .. i I soon turned the corner of a street which took me out of sight of the space on which once stood the gay Ranelagh; but it will be long ere I can remove from my heart the poignant sensations to which its sudden destruction had given rise.* " Before me appeared the shops so famed Hov Chelsea buns ^ which, for above thirty years, I have never passed without filling niy pockets. In the original of these shops, for even of Chelsea buns there are counterfeits, are preserved mementos of domestic events, in the first half of the past century. The bottle-conjuror is ex- hibited in a toy of his own age; portraits are also displayed of Duke William and other noted personages; a model of a British soldier, in the stiff costume of the same age ; and some grotto-works, * I afterwards learnt in Chelsea, that, latterly, Ranelagh did not pay the proprietors five per cent, for their capital, and therefore they sold the mate rials to the best bidder. 26 A morning's walk serve to indicate the taste of a former bwner, and were perhaps intended tp rival the neighbouring exhibition at Don Saltero's. These buns have afforded a competency, and even wealth, to four generations of the same family ; and it is singular, that their delicate flavour, light- ness and richness, have never been sue* cessfuUy imitated. The present proprie- tor told me, with exultation, that George the Second had often been a customer of the shop; that the present King, when Prince George, and often during his reign^ had stopped and purchased his buns; and that the Queen, and all the Princes tnd Princesses, had been among his oc? casional customers. A litde further to the west, is a vulgar sign of Nell Gwyn^ to whose female sen- sibility, and influence on royalty, are as- cribed the foundation of the adjoining hospital for invalid soldiers. If the mis- tresses of Princes always made a similar .use of their ascendency, and were to teach their royal lovers to respect the duties of humanity, and build hospitals for the vie- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 2f tims of their idiotic ambition, the world would complain less of their extravagancies and vices. The excellent hearts of women might warrant such an expectation ; but, unhappily, this depraved portion of the sex generally part with their feminine sensible lities, at the same time that they part with their character and modesty. Contemn- ed, despised, or neglected by the world, ,tbey become haters of their species, and too commonly make use of their power^ to avenge on society the personal affronts which they are compelled to endure. The approach to the hospital was indi* cated by the appearance of numbers of mur tilated soldiers. It afflicted me, to see young men of two or three and twenty, some of whom had lost both their arms, and others hoih their legs ! I learnt, on enquiry, that a few living objects of this description are all that now remain of regiments of thei^ comrades ! The rest had been killed ia battle, or had died of fatigue, or camp dis- eases ! The querulous k;Aj/, and for zvhaf, §tiU crossed my imagination; but I again 2S A MORNING'S WALK referred such busy doubts to ministers! I wzflij/ be wrong ; they c^wwo^ be wrong ! No ! they must be right, or such things would not be. I confess, notwithstanding, that it deeply afflicts me that such things are; yet how is the play of human passions to be avoided, and how are the mischiefs of living errors to be corrected ? Words, arguments, morality, and rehgion, at the commencement of a quarrel, are exerted in vain — the storm of bad passions carries;^ for a season, all before it — and after mis- chiefs are irretrievably perpetrated, reason and experience produce repentance, when, alas, it is useless ! Princes and states- men are too proud and powerful to permit themselves to be instructed, or I would advise them on such occasions to doubt their imaginary infallibility. Let them solemnly doubt whenever some mischief, which they cannot repair, must be the con- sequence of their decision ; and when that decision may, perchancCy arise from some mistake ! But I fear this just maxim of Phi- losophy will never become a practical rule PROM LONDON TO KEW. t9 of policy strong enough to counteract the benefits of extended patronage enjoyed during wars by corrupt ministers ; to allay the puerile love of glory cherished by weak princes ; or to subdue the demo- niacal passions and irrational prejudices artfully excited by rulers, and too often cherished by infatuated nations. 1 accosted a young man, who had lost both arms, and was walking pensively between the trees. After some expressions of heart-felt commisseration, I enquired bj what mischance he had met with so untoward a wound? He told me that he was in the act of loading his musket, when a cannon-ball, passing before him, carried off one arm above the elbow, and so shattered the other, that it was necessary to amputate it. He then named some paltry battle where this ac- cident befel him ; the issue of which tQ either of the contending parties was, as I t^coUected, not worth the joint of a little^ finger, even if the entire object of the jja^rapaign, or war, was worth so much I 1 ^0 A morning's WALK But, said I, you are of course well pro-^ vided for in the hospital—" No, (he repli^* ed,) there is not room for me at present) btit, owing to the severity of my wounds, I have a double allowance as an out-pen- sioner—yet, (he modestly remarked,) it may easily be supposed that even a double allowance is not enough for a man who cannot help himself in any thing — I cannot dress myself, nor even eat or drink, but am obliged to be fed like a child; I have a poor old mother who does her best for me, or"— here the young man's voice faultered, and some tears hung on his cheeks — for, alas, even these he could neither wipe away nor conceal ! Parched must have been the eye that would not mingle tears with those of this poorfellow, on hearing the tale of his unchangeable fate ! I found too that my own utterance sympathized with his — but, shewing him a shilling—- and indicating, by signs, the di^ ficulty I felt in putting him in possession of it---" here sir, ' ' said he, ^ ^ and God bless you;" then^ stooping with his mouth, I FROM LONDON TO KEW. ^ put it between his lips I — Ah, thought I, as I turned from this wretched object, the most hard-hearted of those who were con- cerned in breaking public treaties, and rejecting overtures for peace, would hav^ relented, if with my feelings they had beheld this single victim of the miUion^ that have been imolated, to the calcula- tions of their fallible policy* I now enquired for veterans — for Fonte*- jioy men— Culloden men — Minden menrtTi Quebec men ! To some of the two last I was introduced; but I found them blind, deaf, maimed, and childish ! What a sickening picture of human nature, whether we consider the causes, objects, pr consequences ! Among these hoary ^nd crippled heroes, I was introduced to one who is now in his hundred and first vear ! His name is Ardenfair, and he is a native of Dorsetshire, He en- tered into the Marines about the year 1744; was in Anson's action, in 1747^ ^nd in Hawke's, in 17^9. This ve- teran sees, talks, hears, and remembers ^2 A morning's WALK well; and it is remarkable, that he per - forms the daily drudgery of sweeping the gravel-walks, and wheeling water in a bar- row 1 One wonders at the ability to per- form such labour, in a Centenarian ; that such a one should be allowed to be the sweeper of the hospital ; and still more, that his age had not recommended him to the special bounty of the officers. It might be expected, that the successive fathers of these invalids would, at all- times, be exempted from ordinary duties, and receive some additional means of cheering their extension of life, so long beyond the ordinary duration. On the north-east border of this hos- pital, I was shewn a new erection, near- ly of the same size, devoted to the educa- tion of the children of soldiers. It is, I am told, a very interesting establishment to those who view with complacency the favourite system of Germanizing the Eng- lish people — but how inadequate are all such institutions, to repay the obligations of any government to tts invalided soldiers, FROM LONDON TO KEW. 33 if ambition, prejudice, or a love of false glory, may, on light grounds, cover the earth with bleeding and mangled victims 1 As each of the veterans in such hospitals is often the solitary survivor of a thousand, of whom the complement have fallen pre- mature victims of the cruel accidents of war, the authors ought not to conclude that they atone for their crimes by lodging, feeding, and cloathing the thousandth man, when he is no longer able to §erve their purposes ! Mankind are, however, so selfish, that notTiing but the experience or the immi- nent danger of great sufferings seems likely to correct the errors of governments and the infatuations of people on the subject of war. The best security of peace is, conse- quently, the danger that the chances of war may bring its scourges home to the fire- sides of either of the belligerents. The fears of nations have, therefore, taught them the duty of doing to each other as they would be done unto. It forms, how- ever, a new epoch in the history of society, p S4> A morning's walk that, owing to their insular situation, the. passions of one great people are unchecked by this salutary fear ; and public morality, in consequence, has stood in need of some new stimulus, to relieve the world from th^. danger of suffering interminable slaughters. What a TEST this new situation afforded to. the powers of Christianity ! But for twenty years, alas, Christianity has total- ly FAILED, and pretended zealots of the religion of peace and charity have beea even among the most furious abettors of implacable war ! Opposite the superb terrace of the Hospital gardens, stands a tea-drinking house, called the Red House ; and about fifty yards on the western side of it is the place at which Caesar crossed the Thames. The reader who has read Stuke- ley's reasons for fixing on Chertsey as the place of this celebrated passage, may star- tle at the positive affirmation here made^ Stukeley says that the name of Chertsey is all Cagsar; so also is Chelsea, by analo- gies equally natural. London, or Lyn-dyn, 4 FROM LONDON TO KEW. 35 was then the chief town in South Britain, andi would, as matter of course, be the place towards which the Britons would re- treat and the Romans advance. Land- ing near Deal, they would cross the river at the ford nearest their place of landing, and would not be likely to march to Ghertsey, if they could cross at Chelsea; and the marshes of the Thames, to which the Britons retreated, would correspond better with the marshes of Lambeth and Battersea than with the low lands near Chertsey, where the river is inconsidera- ble, and where there is no tide to confer strength and military character on the marshes. This ford, from the Red House to the Bank, near the scite of Ranelagh, still remains ; and I have surveyed it more than once. At ordinary low water, a shoal of gravel, not three feet deep, and broad enough for ten men to walk abreast, ex- tends across the river, except on the Sur- rey side, where it has been deepened by raising ballast. Indeed, the causeway from the south bank may yet be traced at d2 S6 A morning's walk low water; so that this was doubtless a ford to the peaceful Britons, across which the British army retreated before the Ro- mans, and across which they were doubt- less followed by Caesar and the Roman legions. The event was pregnant with such consequences to the fortunes of these islands, that the spot deserves the record of a monument, which ought to be pre- served from age to age, as long as the ve- neration due to antiquity is cherished among us. Who could then have contem- plated that the folly of Roman ambition would be the means of introducing arts among the semi-barbarous Britons, which, in eighteen hundred and forty years, or after the lapse of nearly sixty generations, would qualify Britain to become mistress of Imperial Rome ; while one country would become so exalted, and the other be so debased, that the event would excite little attention, and be deemed but of secondary importance? Possibly after another sixty generations, the posterity of the savage tribes near Sierra Leone, or New Holland, >ROM LONDON TO KEW. 3? Diay arbitrate the fate of London, or of Britain, as an affair of equal indifference ! I passed a few minutes in the famous Botanic Garden of the Apothecaries* Company, founded at Chelsea by Sir Hans Sloane. It was the first es-^ tablishment of the kind in England, but has now for some years been superseded in fame and variety by the Royal Gardens at Kew. It still however merits notice, as containing specimens of all the plants recognized in the Materia Mediea, and with that view^ is maintained, at a heavy expence to the company, for the use of medical students. The company's Pro- fessor of Botany annually gives lectures at this institution to the apprentices of the members, and accompanies them in sim- pling excursions in the country round the metropolis. The statue of the public spirit-^ ed founder still adorns the garden; and the famous cedars of Lebanon add an air of solemn grandeur to the whole, which could be conferred by nq other objects of nature or art. The conservatories are on P3 38 A jMQi^NIJslG's WALK , a grand scale ; and so many interesting exotics claimed my notice, that I could have passed a week or a month in con- templating them. In Cheyne Walk, facing the Thames, I sought for the Museum and Coffee- house of Don Saltero, renowned in the swimming exploits of Franklin. Here stands the same house, and it is still a place of entertainment ; but, about ten years ago, the lease expired, when the rarities, pre- sented by so many collectors, to the spi- rited Barber Salter, (nicknamed, Don Sal- tero, ) were sold by public auction. A little farther stands the ancient and unostentatious palace of the Bishops of Winchester, and here has resided the ve- nerable Brownlow North, during the thirty- three years that he has filled that wealthy see; and, a hundred yards to the west, I sur- veyed, with becoming interest, the decayed premises, now a paper-hanging manu- factory, which once was the residence of the witty Sir Thomas More, and where, as it is recorded, he entertained Erasmus, I FROM LONDON TO KEW. 59 was, therefore, on classic ground ; though Faulkner, in his amusing History of CheU sea, ascribes the residence of the Chan- cellor to another situation. The men who adorned the era of the revival of learning, and, as its patrons, furnished us with wea* pons by which to deprive imposition of its powers, are well entitled to our esteem ; but many of them were entangled in the bridle, by whose means more crafty persons had long rode on the backs of mankind. Thus the friendship and intercourse of sir Thomas More and Erasmus were founded on their mutual zeal in behalf of those ecclesiastical frauds which for so many ages had sub- dued every scintillation of reason. They were, in their days, among the adherents of Popish superstition, what Symmachus had been to the Roman polytheists in the age of Theodosius-^what Peter the Hermit was to the fanatics of the darker ages-— ■ and what Burke was to the bigotted poli- ticians at the dawn of liberty in France. Erasmus; it is true, exposed, with great ability much priestcraft and statecraft, yet his learning and labours were, for the chief 40 A morning's walk part, devoted to the support of certain ir- rational points of theological faith; and poor Sir Thomas More lost his head on the scaffold rather than aid his less fastidiou3 sovereign in overturning the spiritual su- premacy of the bishops of Rome. We may honour the conscientious scruples of such men ; but, enabled, as we now are, to view their errors at a proper focal distance, we are warranted, by their example, in drawing the inference that the highest hu- man authorities are no tests of truth, and that great energies of intellect often serve but to strengthen prejudices, and give mis- chievous force to aberrations of reason. The tomb of Sir Hans Sloane caught my eye as 1 passed the corner of the church- yard, but not in so good a condition as the improved value of his estates might warrant one to expect. It is surmounted by the mystic symbols of the egg and ser- pent ^ in a good style of sculpture. Part of the church is precisely what it was when the Chancellor More regularly formed part of its congregation. In crossing the bridge to Battersea, I FROM LONDON TO KEW. 41 . was called upon to pay toll, and was in- formed, that this bridge is private property. —A bridge across a great river, in a civil" ized country, private property !•— Is not this monstrouSj thought I, in a country in which seventy millions of taxes are coU lected per annum, and which has accu- mulated a debt of nine hundred millions since the accession of the house of Guelph? Yet, if bridges remain private property, FOR WHAT BENEFIT has SO Hiuch mo- ney been expended? Have bridges, or hospitals, or schools, or houses for the poof, been built with the money? — It seems not ! — Have roads been made — ^ canals cut — rivers widened — harbours im- proved? — No, these are private and inr terested speculations! What then, I ex- claimed, has been done with it ? If this bridge cost twenty thousand pounds, one million of the nine hundred would have built fifty such bridges! — Yet, the war in the Peninsula, for the purpose gf setting up the bigotted Ferdinand in place of the liberal Joseph, costs the pountry three millions per month; or a§ 42 A morning's walk much as would build a hundred and fifty fine bridges over the principal ri- vers of the empire I Another three mil- lions would build a hundred and fifty great public hospitals for the incurable poor ! A third such sum would make fifty thousand miles of good roads 1 And a fourth would construct three thousand miles of canal, or ten or twelve such as the Grand Junction Canal ! That is to say, all these substantial benefits might be produced to the country by a few weeks' cost of the war in the Peninsula; a war of such doubtful benefit, either to England, to Spain, or to humanity ! At the distance of a hundred yards from Battersea Bridge, an extensive pile of massy brickw^ork, foi^ the manufactory of Soap, has recently been erected, at a costy it is said, of sixty thousand pounds. I w^as told it was inaccessible to strangers, and therefore was obliged to content my- self with viewing it at a distance. Such vast piles are not uncommon in and near London; yet how great and certain must be the profits of a commodity to warrant FROM LONDON TO KEW. 43^ the expenditure of such large capitals be- fore there can be any return ! It might seem too that a man possessed of sixty thousand pounds, or of as much as, at the present value of money, would pur- chase for ever the constant labour of from above sixty to eighty men, would have avoided the hazards of trade. — Yet in England it is not so — the avaricious spirit of commerce despises all mediocrity — care is preferred to enjoyment — and the ends of hfe are sacrificed to the means 1 It has always been the foible of man not to be contented with the good he possesses, but to look forward to happiness in the anti- cipation of something which he hopes to attain. Thus, few congratulate themselves on the comforts they enjoy, or consider the consequences of losing them; but, ne- glectful of blessings in hand, rush forward in quest of others which they may never be able to obtain, and which, when possessed, are again as little enjoyed. Poets, divines, and moralists, have as- serted thib important truth in all ages; 44 A morning's walk but have failed to cure the delusion, though it is at once the cause of the greater part of the miseries of individuals, and of the mischievous errors of governments. Moses guarded against it by new subdivi- sions of property in every year of jubilee ; but the fraternal regulations of the family of Abraham are not conceived to be appli- cable to the whole family of man, as blended in modern nations ; and statesmen and economists now think it better that endless competitions should be encouraged, and indefinite accumulations tolerated, than that industry should be checked by any regard to the personal happiness which might result from moderated and bound- ed wealth. Hence, he that has health and strength to labour for his own subsistence is not contented unless he can accumulate enough to purchase the labour of others — and he who has enough to purchase the labours of fifty, is miserable if another can purchase the labours of sixty — while he who can purchase the labours of a thousand is still wretched if some other can pur* FROM LONDON TO KEW. 45 chase the labours of two thousand. In the wilds of Africa and America, men suffer every species of misery for want of the impulse created by the reward of labour ; whereas the suffering is little less, though varied in kind, from the gradations created in long-established societies by the insa- tiable cravings of avarice ! I am aware that it is hazardous to discuss a subject which probes to the quick the sensibility of pride ; yet this is a social problem which merits the consideration of all statesmen who are anxious to promote the happiness of communities ; and it ought not to be lost sight of by any future Solon who may be called upon to ameliorate the condition of his country. At a few yards from the toll-gate of the bridge, on the Western side of the road, stand the work-shops of that emi- nent, modest, and persevering mechanic, Mr. Brunel; a gentleman of the rarest genius, who has effected as much for the Mechanic Arts as any man of his time. The wonderful apparatus in the dock-yard 46 A morning's walk at Portsmouth, by which he cuts blocks for the navy, . with a precision and expe- dition that astonish every beholder, se- cures him a monument of fame, and echpsea all rivalry. In a small building on the left, I was attracted by the solemn action of a steam-engine of a sixteen-horse or eighty- men power, and was ushered into a room, where it turned, by means of bands, four wheels fringed with fine saws, two of eighteen feet in diameter, and two of them nine feet. These circular saws were used for the purpose of separating veneers, and a more perfect operation was never per- formed. I beheld planks of mahogany and rose-wood sawed into veneers the six- teenth of an inch thick, with a precision and grandeur of action which really was sublime 1 The same power at once turned these tremendous saws, and drew their work upon them. A large sheet of ve- neer, nine or ten feet long by two feet broad, was thus separated in about ten minutes, so even, and so uniform, that it > appeared more like a perfect work of Na- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 4f tare than one of human art ! The force: of these saws may be conceived when it; is known that the large ones revolve sixty- five times in a minute • hence, 18 x 3, 14 =' 56, 5 X 65 gives 3679, feet, or two-thirds pf a mile in a minute; whereas, if a saw- yer's tool give thirty strokes of three feet in a minute, it is but ninety feet, or only the fortieth part of the steady force of Mn Brunei's saws ! In another building, I was shewn his manufactory of shoes, which, like the other, is full of ingenuity, and^ in regard to subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory of pins. Every step in it is effected by the most elegant and precise machinery; whil§ as each operation is performed by; one hand, so each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who complete from the hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred- pair of strong and well- finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by in- genious applications of the mechanic pow- 48 A MORNINGS WALK ers, and all the parts are characterized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their respective du- ties in a few hours. The contract at which these shoes are delivered to government is 6s. 6d. per pair, being at least 2s. less than what was paid previously for an un- equal and cobbled article. While, however, we admire these tri- umphs of mechanics, and congratulate society on the prospect of enjoying more luxuries at less cost of human labour, it ought not to be forgotten, that the general good in such cases is productive of great par- tial evils, against which a paternal govern- ment ought to provide. No race of work- men being proverbially more industrious than shoemakers, it is altogether unrea- sonable, that so large a portion of valua- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 49 ble members of society should be injured by improvements which have the ultimate effect of benefitting the whole. The low price of labour deprives these classes of the power of accumulating any private fund, on which to subsist while they are learning new trades ; it seems there- fore incumbent on governments to make sufficient provision, from the public stock, for all cases of distress, which arise out of changes of this kind. If governments were benevolent, and vigilant in their benevo- lence, no members of the community would, under any circumstances, suffer from causes which are productive, or sup- posed to be productive, of general benefit. I qualify the position by the word sup-^ posed, because, owing to social monopohes, and to the advantages taken of poverty by the habits of wealth, the mass of the peo- ple are less benefited by the introduction of machinery than they ought to be. If a population have been drawn or driven from agriculture to manufactures, and the lands which maintained in humble independance £ 50 A morning's walk the ancestors of the manufacturers are, in consequence, united into single farms, the manufacturers should not be left without resource, if their trade fails, or their labour is superseded by machinery. Against the ill effects of such changes, paternal govern- ments should provide means of relief, so as to render them as little prejudicial to individuals as possible ; and no transitions in the productive value of various labour, should be allowed to destroy the industri- ous part of the population, or force them to seek subsistence in foreign climes. It be- ing the object of all machinery to save human labour, of course society at large ought to enjoy the benefit ; and all who are in danger of suffering for a benefit to be enjoyed by the whole, should be libe- rally indemnified out of the common stock. Nothing could be more easy than for a board of commissioners or arbitrators to assess on the public such individual losses ; and, in cases of great transitions, imposts should be so levied on monopoly as to restore the equihbrium of great FEOM LONDON TO KEW. 51 branches of industry. For what but for such purposes of equalizing happiness are governments constituted and maintained? I passed from the premises of Mr. Brunei, to the nearly adjoining ones of Mr. Hodgson, an intelligent maltster and distiller, and the proprietor of the elevated horizontal air- mill, which serves as a land- mark for many miles round. But his mill, its elevated shaft, its vanes, and weather or wind boards, curious as they would have been on any other scite, lost their inte- rest on premises once the residence of the illustrious Bolingbroke, and the re- sort of the -philosophers of his day. In ascending the winding flights of its totter- ing galleries, I could not help wondering at the caprice of events which had con- verted the dwelling of Bolingbroke into a malting- house and a mill. This house, once sacred to philosophy and poetry, long sanctified by the residence of the noblest genius of his age, honoured by the frequent visits of Pope, and the birth- place of the immortal Essay on Man, is E 2 ^ S2 A mohning's walk now appropriated to the lowest uses ! The house of Bolingbroke become a windmill ! The spot on which the Essay on Man was concocted and produced, converted into a distillery of pernicious spirits ! Such are the lessons of time! Such are the means by which an eternal agency sets at nought the ephemeral importance of man ! But yesterday, this spot was the resort, the hope, and the seat of enjoyment of Bolingbroke, Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson, Mallet, and all the contempo- rary genius of England — yet a few whirls of the earth round the sun, the change of a figure in the date of the year, and the groupe have vanished ; while in their place I behold hogs and horses, malt-bags and barrels, stills and machinery ! Alas, said I, to the occupier, and have these things become the representatives of more human genius than England may ever witness on one spot again — have you thus satirized the transitory fate of hu- manity, — do you thus become a party with the bigotted enemies of that philo- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 53 sophy which was personified in a Boling* broke and a Pope ? No, he rejoined, I love the name and character of BoHngbroke, and I preserve the house as well as I can with religious veneration ; I often smoke my pipe in Mr. Pope's parlour, and think of him with due respect as I walk tlie part of the terrace opposite his room. He then conducted me to this interesting par- lour, which is of brown polished oak, with a grate and ornaments of the age of George the First; and before its window stood the portion of the terrace upon which the malt-house had not encroached, with the Thames moving majestically under its wall. I was on holy ground ! — T did not take off my shoes — but I doubtless felt what pilgrims feel as they approach the temples of Jerusalem, Mecca, or Jagger- naut! Of all poems, and of all codes of wisdom, I admire the Essay on Man, and its doctrines, the most ; and in this room, I exclaimed, it was probably planned, dis*- cussed, and written ! Mr. Hodgson assured me, this had al- E 3 M A morning's walk ways been called *' Pope's room," and he had no doubt it was the apartment usually occupied by that great poet, in his visits to his friend Bolingbroke. Other parts of the original house remain, and are oc- cupied and kept in good order. He told me, however, that this is but a wing •of the mansion, which extended in Lord Bolingbroke's time to the church-yard, and is now appropriated to the malting-house and its warehouses. The church itself is a new and elegant structure, but chiefly interesting to me, as containing the vault of the St. John fa- mily, in which lies the great Lord, at \\hose elegant monument, by RoubiUiac, I lingered some minutes. On inquiring for an ancient inhabitant of Battersea, I was introduced to a Mrs. Gilliard, a pleasant and intelligent woman, who told me, she well remembered Lord Bolingbroke; that he used to ride out every day in his chariot, and had a black patch on his cheek, with a large wart over his eye-brows. She was then FROM LONDON TO KEW. 55 But a girl, but she was taught to look upon him with veneration as a great man. As, however, he spent little in the place, and gave little away, he was not much regarded by the people of Battersea. I mentioned to her the names of several of his contemporaries, but she recollected none, except that of Mallet, who, she said, she had often seen walking about in the village, while he was visiting at Bo- lingbroke House. The unassuming dwel- ling of this gentlewoman affords another proof of the scattered and unrecorded wealth of Britain, in works of superior art. I found in her retired parlour, a fine hisjiorical picture, by Vandyke, for which she said she had been offered 5001. but which she refused to part with, not less from a spirit of independence, than from a tasteful estimate of the beauties of the picture. It was in the warm alluvial plain adjoin- ing this village, the very swamp into which the Britons retreated before Caesar, that the first asparagus was cultivated in Eng* 56 A morning's WALK land. I could learn no particulars of this circumstance, but such vast quantities are still grown here, that one gardener has fifty acres engaged in the production of this vegetable, and there are above two hun- dred acres of it within a mile of Battersea church. Proceeding onward between some an- cient walls which bound the grounds of various market gardeners, I was told that here resided the father of Queen Anne Boleyn ; but I could not fix any thing with precision on the subject, though it appears from the monument of Queen Elizabeth, in Battersea church, that the Boleyns were related to the St. John's. A manufacturer of pitch and turpentine politely shewed me over his works. I trembled as I passed among his combus- tible cauldrons, and not without cause, for the place had recently been burnt to the ground, and it experienced the same fate a second time, but a few weeks after my visit. May we not hope that the apphcable powers of heated gas will enable such ma- FROM LONDON TO KEW* Sf nufectories to be carried on without the inevitable recurrence of such conflagra- tions. This walk brought me to a large distillery, which still bears the name of York House, and was a seat of the Arch- bishops of York, from the year 1480 to its alienation. Here resided Wolsey, as Archbishop of York— here Henry VIH* first saw Anne Boleyn — and here that scene took place which Shakespeare re- cords in bis play of Henry VHI; and which be described truly, because he wrote it for Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, within fifty years of the event, and must himself have known liviftg wit^ nesses of its verity. Hence it becomes more than probable, that Sir Thomas Boleyn actually resided in the vicinity, and thai his daughter was accidentally among the guests at that princely entertainment. I know it is contended, that this interview took place at York House, Whitehall; but Shakespeare makes the King come by Water; and York House, Battersea, BS' A morning's walk was beyond all doubt a residence of Wol- sey, and is provided with a creek from the Thames, for the evident purpose of facilitating intercourse by water. Besides, the owner informed me, that a few years since he had pulled down a superb room, called *Hhe ball-room," the pannels of which were curiously painted, and the divisions silvered. He also stated that the room had a dome and a richly ornamented ceiling, and that he once saw an ancient print, representing the first interview of Henry yni. with Anne Boleyn, in which the room was portrayed exactly like the one that, in modernizing his house, he had found it necessary to destroy. My polite host took me to his green- house, and shewed me a fine specimen of that wonder of the second degree of organized existence — an American aloe, about to put forth its. blossoms. Its vigor- ous upright stem was twelve feet high, and its head promised a rich profusion of jsplendid flowers. It is indeed no fable, that thi^ perennial plant grows about a FROM LONDON TO KEW. 5^ hundred years (a few more or less,) before it blooms ; and, after yielding its seed, the stem withers and dies ! I could not avoid being struck with the lesson which this centenarian affords to the Pride of man, when, on asking its owner, how he knew *hat it was a hundred years old, he inform- ed me that *'it had been in his possession the half of his life," that is, the mighty period of five*and-twenty years ! " That it had previously been the property of the Hon. Mrs. — ," whose name, in spite of her honour, is now as lost to fame as she iierself is lost to that existence which gave rise to any self-importance! That he ^'had heard, that, before he?' time, it belonged to Lord ," a name which I have also forgotten, because it was unnecessary to remember it, the common-place peer hav- ing also exhausted the measure of his days fiince our still-flourishing aloe was in its dawn! ''Ah, Sir," said I, ''so the aloe Jhas seen out all those who vainly called it their property — They have been swept ^way, generation after generation, yet it 60 A morning's WAIK Still survives a living commentary on their utter insignificance; and it laughs at the proud assumption of those who called themselves its proprietors, but could not maintain a property in themselves ! J ust so the same creature of yesterday asserts bis property in that ancient globe, which he is destined to enjoy but an hour ; and he as- serts, that all was made for him, though in another hour he leaves all and becomes again, as to the planet which nurtured him, the nonentity of yesterday. Pride, the bane of man — I exclaim- ed, as I passed the gate — what are its claims? Does it arise from fine clothing? — let it be remembered that every part has been stolen from the lowest of Nature's works — that the finest glitter is but a mo- dification of the very surface — and that the garments which tliis year deck beauty and rank, will in the next be rotting on the dunghill! Does Pride feed on the records of ancestry? — let it visit the fa- mily tomb, and examine the bones and dust of that ancestry on which it founds FROM LONDON TO KEW. §1 its self-importance ! Is Pride derived from titles of distinction? — let it inquire who conferred them — for what — and by what intrigues — and let it be considered, that titles or names confer no inherent quality, and do not alter the nature of any thing to which they are applied! Does an inexperienced girl take a lesson of Pride from her looking-glass? — she may be cured of her foible, by conceiv- ing 10 to be added to the date of the year, or by looking on those ten years older than herself! Is it an office of power which serves as the basis of a lofty and insulting Pride ?— let him who fills it remember that he is but the puppet of knaves, or fools ; and at best but a mere servant of the pubHc! Does wealth intoxicate the weakness of man ? — let it never be forgot- ten that the possession is distinct from the possessor, and that the most contemptible of the human race have been the ac- cumulators of wealth 1 Does the name of wisdom, puff up any of its profes- sors ? — of such it may truly be said, that their wisdom is foolishness — for none truly 6# A morning's walk wise ever felt, in the researches of man; any ground of arrogance, while pursuits of philosophy serve only to teach humility ! — But to what purpose tend such obser^ vations? Every man is his own micro- cosm, and his case, in his own view, is that of no other man ! Pride will always find food in self-love, which in spite of exhortations, it will devour with ravenous appetite ! If men were immortal, how intolerable would be existence from the ar- rogance and perpetuity of Pride ! While this passion infects and misleads the go- vernors of the world, the only consolar tion in looking on weak princes, wicked statesmen, unfeeling lawyers, and mili- tary butchers, is that, in the course of nature, Death will soon relieve the world from the pest of their influence! And there are few men who would not prefer death as their own fate, and who would not hail death as a coaimon blessing, rather than live an eternity under the dominion of the weak, the crafty, or the cruel Proud ! The road from York House towards FROM LONDON TO EEW. 6S Wandsworth, lay across a Plain of unen^ <;losed fields, which, before the Thames had carved out the boundaries of its course, was, 1 have no doubt, generally covered with its waters. After the ocean left the land, and the hills became the de- positaries of the clouds, how many ages must have elapsed before the beds of rivers were circumscribed as we now see them in England. The water always fol- lowed the lowest level, but, being of differ- ent quantities at different seasons, vegeta- tion would flourish on the sides occasion- ally covered, and in time would generate banks; while the stream itself, by carrying off the argillaceous bottom, would add to the depth — the two combined causes pro- ducing all the phenomena of bounded rivers,* The Thames, after heavy rains, or thaws of snow, still overflows its banks, thereby adding to the vegetable produc- tions of its meadows, which, if not con- * It is difficult to assign limits to the gradual ef- fects of the circuit of the waters by evaporation and rain on the creation of land, from the decay of vege- €4 A MOKNING'S WALK - sumed, or carried away by man, would, long ere this, have fixed unalterably the limits of its course. The effect of these inundations in our days, or in past ages, has been to render its banks the fertile scite of all those fine garden-grounds which supply the metropolis so abundantly wi& fruits and vegetables. Some large Distilleries, on the banks of the river, reminded me of the bad policy of governments^ which, sacrificing the end to the means, that is, the health and fnorals of the people to purposes of reve- nue, tolerates and even encourages manuf factories so pernicious. I am aware I may be answered, that the working classes table organizations. All the rain which falls on such a country as England^ from two to three feet deep per annum, tends to raise the surface of the soil with the substances generated by it, which we call solids. How small a portion reaches the rivulets, and bow little returns to the sea I The considera- tion seems at least to justify the notion, that the waters desiccate in spite of the encroachments of currents, and that all things have proceeded froni ihe Mlent agency of water. FROM LONDON TO KEW. 65 love this poison, and must be gratified; and that in 1813 the duty on British spirits produced £1,636,504. But I re- ply, first, that it is obligatory on good governments to protect the people against the effects of their vices ; and second, that, if the people were not indulged in the ruinous habit of gin-drinking, and de- stroyed by it in body and mind, they would be able to pay a greater sum to the revenue from productions of a salu- tary nature. Such are the pernicious ef~ fects of drunkenness, and the numerous miseries created by drinking fermented and spirituous liquors, that I have often been tempted to consider it as an atone- ment for the impostures of Mahomet, that he so forcibly prohibited the practice, and so far succeeded, that a rigid forbearance is observed by his followers, and a Mus- selman rendered beastly vicious and dis- eased by habits of drunkenness is never seen. The doctrines of the New Testa- ment and the example of the Founder of our religion inculcate an equal degree of F 6& A morning's walk abstemiousness, yet how contrary are the practices of Christians ! There seems indeed, in regard to this vice, to be no middle course. Spirituous, and perhaps also fermented, liquors, will be abused, or they must be wholly prohibited ; be- cause the stimulus which they create at one time, is sought at another, and the oftener it is repeated, the oftener it is desired and required ; till at length it be- comes necessary to the sense of well-being, or apparently essential to the power of sustaining the fatigue of life. In the middle of these fields I passed a handsome house, which appeared to have been empty for a considerable time. On enquiring the cause of a young woman, who passed at the moment ; she told me, with an artless countenance, that ^'it was haunted,'' I smiled, and asked how she knew it. **Ah, Sir," said she, -'its; nothing to laugh at- — every body here- abouts knows it well enough — such strange noises are heard in it, and such lights flit about it at midnight." — Have you seen 3 FROM LONDON TO ICEW. 6? them ? *' No, Sir, but I knows those thut have, and rm sure its true." Seeing a labouring man at a distance, I enquired what he knew of the haunted house, when he told me, with a face full of faith, that " he knew gentlefolks laughed at such things, but seeing was believing — that, pass- ing the house one night, he was quite sar- tain he had seen a light in one of the rooms, and had heard groans — that he got home as well as he could, but all the world should not induce him to pass the house again at that time of the night." '*And others," said I, '*have perhaps seen the the same?"— ** Aye, by goles, have they," exclaimed the fellow with terror in his countenance. — I then told him, I would with pleasure sit up in the house to see these ghosts — ''Rather you than 1, Sir,'" said he. — *'Nay, nay," said I, '' I dare say now for five shillings you would sit up with me !" " Naugh, dang me if I would, nor for the best five pounds in the worlds much as I wants money 1 1 don't fear man, but I am naugh match for the devil I ¥ 2 \ 68 A morning's walk — T believes in God, and does nobody any harm; and therefore don't think he'd let the old-one hurt me : but some main wicked ones lived, as I've hard, in that there house, so I'll have naught to do with it; and dang me if any of 'em shall catch me in it after night." ;0 viiaa The poor fellow uttered these sentiments with such earnestness, that my risible emor tions were converted into pity. 1 forebqre, however, to argue the point with him for many instances of superstition equally gross had long convinced me that the unr taught and half-taught of my countrymen are, in this respect, little superior to the savage tribes, whom we pity, in Tartary, Africa, and America: yet in this instance the man's inference was a consequence of his premises, and his error in these it might have been deemed heretical to expose. ...i The nursery becomes the means of fixing similar impressions in the families of the most enlightened, and the unformed minds of children propagate in public schools the stones of their nurses. The lowest FROM LONDON TO KEW. 6p superstition pervades therefore all ranks, even of a population so comparatively enlightened as that of England ; and, being imbibed in infancy and confirmed, through the entire period of youth, no im- pressions are more strong, or more univer- sally operative. The poet and the priest either encourage the feeling, or do not take any pains to remove it. The agency of spirits and abstract principles, is coun- tenanced by some of the records of re- ligion, and by philosophers and physicians in their reasonings about occult causes, sympathies, coincidencies, and destinies. It is urged in vain, that ghosts and super- natural effects are never seen, except by the weakest or most ignorant of mankind, in ages or states of society when the people might be made to believe any thing ; or at times so distant, or places so remote, that the narrators run no risk of detection or exposure. The love of the marvellous, the force of early impressions, the craft of many persons, and the folly of others, will however occasion every village to haVe its haunted F 3 70 A morning's walk house for ages to come, in spite of the press, and of those discoveries of philosophy which are every day narrowing the sphere of miracles and prodigies. In considering this subject with the at- tention that is due to it, it has appeared lo me that all the stories of ghosts and super, or, un-natural appearances, may be feferred to some of the following causes ; 1. To the augmentation produced by fear in any effect on the senses — thus the ear of a terrified man will convert the smallest noise into the report of thunder, or his eye will change the stump of a tree into a monster twenty feet high. As the senses are furnished for protection, their irritability, under the impression of fear, is part of their economy, as the means of preserving our being; but it is absurd to refer back the effects thus augmented, to external causes which might be capable of producing the augmentation. To such an error of the senses and of reasoning, is, however, to be referred half the ghosts and supernaturals of which we hear in village ale-houses, in nurseries and schools. FROM LONDON TO KEW. fl 2r To diseased organs of sensation ; as an inflamed eye producing the effect of flasiies of light in the dark, or fulness of blood producing a ringing or singing in the ears. Sometimes diseases of the vi- sual organs are accompanied by halluci- nations of mind ; and persons ill in fevers often see successions of figures and ob- jects flit before their eyes till the disease has been removed. The workings of con- science or nervous affections will also pro- duce diseases of the senses, and such hal- lucinations of mind as to occasion a per- son to fancy he sees another, or to be haunted by him. But there is nothing supernatural in all this; it is sometmies a local disease, sometimes an effect of fever, sometimes a nervous affection, and some- times partial insanity. 3, To natural causes not understood by the parties. Thus, anciently the north- ern lights were mistaken for armies fight- ing ; meteors and comets for flaming swords, portending destruction or pesti* lence ; the electrified points of swords to the favour of heaven ; the motions of the 72 A MORNING*S WALK planets to attractive effluvia; and all the effects of the comixture of the gases to benign or diabolical agency, as they liap- pened to produce on the parties good or evil. So in the Hke manner old houses are generally said to be haunted, owing to the noises which arise from the cracking and yielding of their walls and timbers, and from the protection and easy passage which in the course of time they afford to rats, mice, weasels, &c. whose activity in the night-time affords the foundation of numerous apprehensions and fancies of the credulous. 4. To spontaneous combustions or de- tonations, which produce occasional lights and noises, or, under unchanged circum- stances, recurring lights and noises, chiefly claiming attention in the night. Thus houses shut up and unaired are apt, from the putrefaction of animal and vegetable matter, to generate hydrogen gas, the ac- cidental combustion of which by contact with p^iosphoric matter, naturally gene- rated in the same situation, will produce those effects of lights and noises heard in FROM LONJ)ON f 6 KEW. 73 empty bouses. So Church-yards, Churches IB which the dead are buried, Cemete- ries, and Ruins of old buildings, must fre- quenty give out large quantities of these gases; and consequently, from exactly si- milar causes, they are likely to produce the very effects which we witness in the will- o'-the-wisp, or in hydrogen gas when inflamed during calm weather in marshy situations. 5. To the prevailing belief that effects, which cannot readily be accounted for, or which are caused by the contact of the invisible fluids or media always in action in the great laboratory of nature, are pro- duced by the agency of spirits or demons; which belief, concurring with the unknown causes of the effects, and affording a ready solution of difficulties, prevents further ifiKjuiry, silences reasoning, and tends in consequence to sustain the prevailing er- rors and superstitions. Such are the general causes of o^hosts, spirits, charms, miracles, and supernatu- ral appearances. They all arise either from hallucinations of the mind or senses ; f4t A morning's walk from the mutual action of the natural, though invisible, powers of gaseous and ethereal fluids ; from the delusions of ig- norance, implicit faith, or the absence of all reasoning. While occupied in these speculations, I arrived at the entrance of the populous^ industrious, and opulent village of Wandsr worth. A reader in the highlands of Scotland, in the mountains of Wales, or the wilds of Connaught, will starde when he hears of a village containing 5,644 ia*- habitants, and 2,020 houses, in which 620 families are returned as engaged in trade and manufactures. Yet, such are the overgrown villages round our overgrown metropolis. Even in this vicinity, Chelsea contains 1 8,262 inhabitants; Fulham 5,903^ Clapham 5,083; Hammersmith 7,3^3; Kensington 10,886; Brentford, New and Old, 7,094; and Richmond 5,219. This village of Wandsworth, in truth, is of the size of most second-rate towns in distant counties, its main street, of compact and well-built houses, being half a mile in length, with several collateral one^.a quar- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 75 terof a mile. It also contains, or has in its vicinity, many considerable manufac- tories, which flourished exceedingly be- fore the silly vanity of ambition and mili- tary parade led a nation of merchants to endeavour to dictate to their foreign cus- tomers, and forced them to subsist without their commodities \ The manufactories of Wandsworth are created or greatly aid- ed by the pure stream of the Wandle, and by the Surry iron rail-way, which runs from Croydon to a spacious and busy wharf, on the Thames at this place. They consist of dyers, calico-printers, oil-mills, iron-founderies, vinegar-works, breweries, and distilleries. I found leisure to inspect the two or three which were employed; and I felt renewed delight on witnessing at this place the economy of horse-labour on the iron rail-way. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me, as 1 thought of the incon- ceivable millions which have been spent about Malta, four or five of which might have been the means of extending double lines of iron rail-ways from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Milford, 76 A morning's WALK Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover and Ports- mouth ! A reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches, and other vehicles of various degrees of speed, with the best tackle for readily turning out; and we might, ere this, have witnessed our mail coaches running at the rate of ten miles an hour, drawn by a single korse, or impelled fifteen miles by Blen- kinsop^s steam-engine ! Such would have been a legitimate motive for overstep- ping the income of a nation, and the completion of so great and useful a work would have afforded rational grounds for public triumph in general jubilees 1 Wandsworth having been the once- famed scene of those humorous popular elections of a mayor, or member for Garrat; and the subject serving to iU lustrate the manners of the times, and abounding in original features of cha- racter, I collected among some of its elder inhabitants a variety of amusing facts and documents, relative to the eccentric can- didates and their elections. Southward of Wandsworth; a road ex^ FROM LONDON TO KEW. 7f tends nearly two miles to the village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or hamlet, by the side of a small common, called Garrat, from which the road itself is called Garrat Lane. Various encroachments on this common led to an association of the neighbours about three-score years since, when they chose a president, or mayor^ to protect their rights ; and the time of their first election, being the period of a new par- liament, it was agreed that the mayor ^hoqld he re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election ; and, when party spirit ran high in the days of Wilkes and Liberty y ii>iwaisj easy to create an appetite for a burlesque election among .the lower or- ders of the metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clap- ham, and Vauxhall, made a purse to give it character ; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest universal, by caUing one of his. inimitable farces, ^^ the Mayor of Garrat ,'^ 7^ A morning's walk I have indeed been told, that Foote, Gar- rick, and Wilkes, wrote some of the can- didates' addresses, for the purpose of in-^ structing the people in the corruptions* which attend elections to the legislature, and of producing those reforms by means of ridicule and shame, which are vainly expected from solemn appeals of argu-. ment and patriotism. Not being able to find the members for Garrat in Beatson's Political Index, or in any of the Court Calendars,. I am obliged to depend on tradition for information in regard to the eariy history of this famous borough. The first mayor of whom I could hear was called Sir John Harper. He filled the seat during two parliaments^ and was, it appears, a man of wit, for, on a dead cat being thrown at him on the hustings, and a bye-stander exclaiming that it stunk worse than a fox. Sir John voci- ferated, * that's no wonder, for you see it's a/?o//-cat." This noted baronet was, in the nretropolis, a retailer of brick-dust; and, his Garrat honours being supposed Hy FROM LONDON TO KEW. fp be a means of improving his trade and the condition of his ass, many characters in similar occupations were led to aspire to the same distinctions. He was succeeded by Sir Jeffrey Dun- stan, who was returned for three parlia- ments, and was the most popular candi- date that ever appeared on the Garrat hustings. His occupation w^as that of^ buying old wigs, once an article of trade like that in old clothes, but become obso- lete since the full-bottomed and full-dres- sed wigs of both sexes went out of fashion. Sir Jeffrey usually carried his wig-bag over his shoulder, and, to avoid the charge of vagrancy, vociferated, as he passed along the streets, " old wigs ;" but, having a per- son hke Esop, and a countenance and man- ner marked by irresistible humour, he never appeared without a train of boys, and curious persons, .whom he entertained by his salHes of wit, shrewd sayings, and smart repartees; and from whom, without begging, he collected sufficient to maintain his dignity of mayor and knight. He was 80 A morning's walk no respecter of persons, and was so se- vere in his jokes on the corruptions and compromises of power, that, under the iron regime of Pitt and Dundas, when freedom was treason, and truth was blas- phemy, this political punch, or street- jester, was prosecuted for using what were then called seditious expressions ; and, as a caricature on the times, which ought never to be forgotten, he was in 1793 tried, convicted, and imprisoned 1 In consequence of this affair, and some charges of dishonesty, he lost his popu- larity, and, at the general election for 179^, was ousted by Sir Harry Dimsdale, muffin-seller, a man as much deformed as himself. Sir Jeffrey could not long sur- vive his fall; but, in death as in life, he proved a satire on the vices of the proud, for in 1797 he died, like Alexander the (jfeat, and many other heroes renowned in the historic page — of suffocation from ex- cessive drinking ! Sir Harry Dimsdale dying also before the next general election, and no can- PROM LONDON TO KEW. 81' didate starting of sufficient originality of character, and, what was still more fatal, the victuallers having failed to raise a PUBLIC PURSE, which was as stimulating a bait to the independent candidates for Garrat, as it is to the independent candi- dates for a certain assembly ; the borougb of Garrat has since remained vacant, and the populace have been without a ^r^e^^- ed political buffoon. None but those who have seen a Lon- don mob on any great holiday can form a just idea of these elections. On seve- ral occasions, a hundred thousand per- sons, half of them in carts, in hackneyt coaches, and on horse and ass-back, co- vered the various roads from London, and choaked up all the approaches to the place of election. At the two last elec- tions, I was told, that the road within a mile of Wandsworth was so blocked up by vehicles, that none could move backward or forward during many hours ; and that the candidates, dressed like chimney- sweepers oa May-day, or in the mock- o S2 A morning's walk fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages of peer^y drawn by six_ horses, the owners them- selves condescending to become their drivers I Whether the effect of inculcating use- ful principles by means of these mock poli- ticians, was compensated by the ridicule thrown on the sacred exertions of patriot* ism, may perhaps be doubted. These elections served, however, to keep alive the feelings of the people on public ques* tions, and tended to increase those dis- cussions and enquiries which support the arterial circulation of the body politic. The deadly plague of despotism, and the equally fatal disease of ministerial cor-- ruption, find victims of their influence only among people who are devoid of moral energies and public spirit, and whose stagnant and torpid condition gene- rates morbid dispositions that invite, rather than resist, the attacks of any public enemy. I am a friend, therefore, on principle, FROM LONDON TO KEW. »3 to the bustle and tumult of popular elec- tions. They are the flint and steel, the animating fiiction, the galvanic energy, oi society. Virtue alone can face them. Vice dreads them as it dreads the light. With uncourtly hands, they tear the mask from Hypocrisy ; they arraign at the bar of public opinion, political Culprits, amenable to no other tribunal ; and they probe to the quick, the seared consciences pf Peculators and Oppressors. If the sycophants of courts, and the sophistical apologists of arbitrary power, should craf- tily urge that the people are sometimes misled by fraud and falsehood, and there- fore unable to distinguish between patriots and plunderers, we should not forget that SDCcasional errors are misfortunes which do not abrogate general rights ; and that po Ipular elections are never adopted in well- trained despotisms, as part of the ma- chinery of the state, calculated to subjugate the bodies and minds of their slaves. Do we hear of the suffrages of the people among the Turks, the Russians, the Moors, g2 ^^ A M011NING*S WALK or the Algerines ? Rather, as the means of eliciting the public voice, and of ex- citing enquiry, are they not of all despo- tisms, the bane ; and of all usurpations and ^ abuses of power, the terror; while, by generating that pubhc spirit which is the animating soul of freedom, they serve as tests of dauntless pubhc virtue, afford the last and the best hope of patriotism, and constitute national schools, in which impressive Lessoris of Liberty are taught to the whole people. In my walk towards Garrat, my atten- tion was attracted by a pretty mansion, which pleased my eye, though the mono- tonous blows of its adjoining oil-mill an«- noyed my ear. The owner, Mr. Were, politely exhibited its details; and more mechanical ingenuity than is here display- ed could not well be applied to aid the simple operation of extracting oil from linseed. A magnificent water-wheel, of thirty feet, turns a main shaft, which gives motion to-a pair of vertical stones, raises the driving-beams, and turns a band FRQIW LONDON TO KEW* 85 which carries the seed, in small buckets, from the floor to the hopper. The shock on the entire nervous system, produced by the noise of the driving-beams as they fall on the wedges, is not to be described. The sense of hearing for the time is wholly destroyed, and the powers of voice and articulation are vainly exerted. The noise is oppressive, though a rebound, comparatively tuneful, takes place, till the wedge is driven home ; but afterwards, the blows fall dead, and produce a painful janr on the nerves, which affected me for several hours with a sense of general las- situde. The gardens of this sensible ma- nufacturer evince considerable taste, and produce that agreeable effect which always results from the combination of comfort, rural beauty, and useful industry. A manufactory in a picturesque situation, surrounded by the usual characters of opulence, is one of the most pleasing features of an English landscape, com- bining whatever we most admire in nature and art, with moral associations, that pro- g3 8^ A morning's walk duce in the mind a sentiment of perfect satisfaction. Nearer to Wandsworth, Homer would have found imagery by which to improve bis description of the abode of Vulcan; for how feeble must have been the ob- jects of this nature, which a poet could view on the shores of the Mediterranean/, compared with the gigantic machinery of an English iron-foundry. The applica- tion of the expansive powers of nature, as a moving agent in the steam-engine : the means of generating and concentrating heat in our furnaces ; the melting of iron ; the casting of the fluid; the colossal powers of the welding hammer, the head of which, though a ton in weight, gives a stroke per second ; the power of shears, which cut thick bars of iron like threads; the drawing out of iron hoops by means of rollers, and the boring of cannon, are the "every- day business of one of these manufactories, all of which I saw going on at the same instant, without bustle or effort. Iron, the most universal, the most FROM LONDON TO KEW. 87 durable, and most economical of the metals, is thus made subservient to the wants of man, at a time when his impro- vidence in the use of timber has rendered some substitute necessary. New appli- cations are daily made of it, and a new face is, by its means, promised to society. Used as sleepers and bond-pieces in the brick-work of houses, it will extend their duration through many ages; and, as joists, rafters, and plates for roofs, it will defy the assaults of storms and the ravages of fire. As railing for gardens, parks, and other enclosures, it combines elegance with security. As pipes for gas, or for water, it is justly preferred to lead or wood. As frames for windows, it unites lightness with durability. As bedsteads, it excludes vermin; and, as square frames for bridge-pieces, it presents the triumph of human art. Yet these are only a few of its modern applications, for they are illimitable, and a description of the manu- factories of Birmingham and Sheffield, of which iron is the staple, would fill a 9& A morning's walk volume. On my remarking to the pro- prietor of this foundry, that the men Blinded themselves with the fire like sa- lamanders ; he told me, that, to supply the excessive evaporation, some of them found it necessary to drink eight or tea pots of porter per day. Many of them presented in their brawny arms, which were rendered so by the constant exertioft of those limbs; and in their bronzed coun- tenances, caused by the action of the heat and the effluvia, striking pictures of true sons of Vulcan ; and, except in oc- casional accidents, they enjoyed, I was told, general good health, and often at- tained a hearty old agfe. In regard to these manufactories, I karnt, that the application of machinery in them saves two-thirds of the manual labour ; or, in other words, that a triple effect is produced by the union of a given number of hands, with appropriate ma- chinery. In this we rejoice; but, from our past experience of the effects, I ask emphatically, Why ? If in this age the FROM LONDON TO KEW. 89 same necessaries and luxuries are pro- duced by one- third of the manual labour which was required in the age of Eliza- beth, it is evident that the English of this day ought to subsist as well by work- ing not more than half as much as in the days of Elizabeth, or our boasted machinery is useless. By making the wind, the water, the elastic fluids, and new combinations of the mechanical powers, perform our labour, we compel Nature to work for us ; and, though in a northern latitude, we place ourselves in the very situation of the inhabitants of the Tro- pics, where the ever- bountiful chmate feeds the people with slight exertions of manual labour. Yet, is such the effect ? Enquire of our labouring classes, who toil for in- adequate subsistence from twelve to fif- teen hours per day ! Does not some malevolent influence then deprive us of the advantages of our ingenuity ? Doubt- less it is so; and the Demon of War^ who has so long hovered over this deluded nation, and whose calls for blood and trea- go A morning's walk sure are so insatiable^ is the sufficient cause. But on this subject the voice of reason and humanity have been raised so aftert, that it seems to be as useless as the ap- peals of a mother, standing on the sea- shore, to the tempest which is destroying her children in a visible wreck. Infa-i tuated nations are like exhilarated dram- drinkers ; they ridicule and despise warn- ing, till a palsy or apoplexy renders them a proverb among their neighbours, and brings on a death-bed, but unavailing, repentance ! I had not time to view any of the other ingenious and valuable manufactories of this place; but, perceiving that the ma- nufacturers formed a numerous and opu- lent class of inhabitants, and that there were many elegant mansions of families living on their fortunes, besides many respectable shop-keepers, I was induced to seek information in regard to the state of society and mutual intercourse in a country-town possessing such capabilities. On enquiring at the principal Inn, l FROM LONDON TO KEW. 91 found that a subscription-assembly was held six times in the year, at an ex- pence of three guineas, but it had only thirty-two subscribers, though within a mile there then were a hundred families that kept their own carriages, and another hundred qualified by habit and manners to give and receive pleasure at such an entertainment I learnt, however, that this solitary establishment, the only means by which the inhabitants can practically feel that they do not live in a wilderness, is poisoned at its source by a strict ballot, which places the privilege of admission in the discretion of any two or thj^eo;; narrow-minded and impertinent persons, who may have become directors. Of course, no man of sense or delicacy would ever expose himself and family to the insult of being black- balled^j and these institutions, which are calculated to pro- mote general happiness, become, in con- sequence, a source of mortification to the majority of a neighbourhood, and of petty and inadequate gratification to those 2 f l>>^^ §Z A morning's walk whose inanity of character, or obsequious- ness of manners, have rendered them to- lerable to the family, or small junto, who usually take it upon themselves to govern such assemblies. Some observations on this subject merit record, because happiness is the end of life, the proper business of study, and the true object of all disquisition ; and there is no point in which families are rendered more uncomfortable, and in which the spirit of caprice and tyranny is more successfully exerted, than in the institu- tion and conduct of country assembhes; while, at the same time, nothing would be easier than to render them a means of happiness to all who are capable of it. It is evident, that many persons, by habit and education, are ill-adapted to take part in the polite amusements of an assembly; that some men are odious by their vices ; and that many females of equivocal cha- racter ought not to be allowed to mix with the virtuous part of the sex; conse^ quently, every inhabitant of a district ought FROM LONDON TO KEW. ^S not to be admitted to join in amusements which imply the contact of dancing and cards. It is also too certain, that a con- temptible and unworthy pride often accom- panies 4:he wealth which assumes an as- cendancy in assemblies ; that scaiidal and falsehood more commonly govern the de- cisions of society than charity and truth; and that the base passions of envy and malice mix themselves more or less with all human conduct. What then is the security against the intrusion of the vici- ous? A ballot, in which one black-ball in ten, or sometimes two or three among the whole body of the subscribers, operate as an exclusion, that is to say, are a means of setting a mark on a family, and placing it at issue with a considerable portion of the neighbourhood ! What a pernicious engine for the gratification of pride, scan- dal, envy, and malice ! What an inqui- sition of the few bad by which to torment the many good ! What a dagger in the hands of tolerated assassins ! In short, what a perversion of reason, what a dis- $4 A morning's walk ease in the very bosom of society, what a lurking demon stationed at the threshold of every happy family, to blast and thwart the modest ambition of its amiable mem- bers ! Doubtless, in and near .Wands- worth, a mistaken constitution in the system of ballot renders a hundred fami- lies uncomfortable, while the thirty-two elect are not benefitted. The principle, therefore, is erroneous, and exclusion should result only from a majority/ of black-balls. For the honour of our na- ture we may presume, that a majority of men are not governed by bad passions; at least, our only security consists in its not being so: it may, therefore, be pre- sumed, that a majority of black-balls would be fair evidence of a fault in the candidate rather than in the electors. Perhaps, a simple majority ought to be decisive ; but, to guard against the intrigues of bad pas^ sions, the decision would be more just if two-thirds w ere required to be black-balls ; for it may be safely trusted, that no third of a respectable assembly will ever vote FROM LONDON TO KEW. §5 for the adoiission of a character truly ob- jectionable. ^^But am I to mix," exclaims one of my starch female readers, *' with members whom I do not like, or give up my sub- scription to the assembly." ^* Unques- tionably, Madam; your dislikes ought not to be gratified — your hatred and prejudice are odious vices, which you ought to keep at home, where you can invite whomso- ever you like, and reject those whom you dislike ; but a public assembly is the pro^ perty of society, whose happiness ought to be consulted in its arrangements, and which ought to be governed by general rules of morals and justice, and not by the bad passions of the unworthy few." After all, is it not matter of wonder, that only once a month, during the win- ter, any congregation of part of the inha- bitants of Wandsworth takes place for pur- poses of amusement? Yet, is not this the general characteristic of English so- ciety, from the Orkneys to the Land's- End ? The inhabitants of populous dis- ^6 A morning's walk tricts or towns in Britain might as well, in regard to their intercourse with the com- munity, live in the wilds of America or Siberia ! 'Tis true, they assemble on Sun- days at church or chapel when their devo- tions forbid the gaiety which ought to vary the grave pursuits of life — and they meet also in the common receptacle of mor- tality in the parish cemetery — but they sel- dom oi^ never meet to cheer life's dull round, to soften asperities, to remove formal distances, to cultivate friendships, and to perform social and neighbourly offices of courtesy and kindness. Why is there not, in every populous vicinage or adjoining to every town, a pubHc gra- velled, or paved, Walk, provided with co- vered and open seats, to which, from spring to autumn, the inhabitants might resort, and promenade between the hours of six- and eight or nine. Might not such walk be rendered attractive, during those hours, by being provided with two, three, or four Musicians to play marches and lively airs, and increase the hilarity of FROM LONDON TO KEW. ^J the scene ? A district would thus become social, and the inhabitants would know each other; though the proud need not mix with the humble more than would be agreeable. Such an arrangement would reri- der less necessary those costly and vitia- ting excursions to watering-places, which are made in quest of similar gratifications ; and they would render two hours of every twenty-four a period of enjoyment to ten^ of thousands, who now enjoy no relief from gloomy cares, except at the public- house, the card-table, or the backgam- mon-board. It would, moreover, be a cheap pleasure, supported by a. rat^ of half-a-guinpa per house per annum^ while it would afford at least 1000 hours of innocent and healthful gratification to their famihes. To enumerate all the di- rect and collateral advantages must be unnecessary, because it would be difficult to imagine a single objection that could weigh against the obvious benefits. So- ciety would then become a social state; and it would no longer be problematical, H ^8 A morning's walk whether a noari in a wilderness, separated from the bad passions of his fellow-men^ were not happier than he who is surround- ed by them, but who has no counterpoise in their intercourse and afifections ? May these considerations sink deep into the minds of ' * Men of Ross, "wherever they ar« to be found; and, if acted upon as thej merit, I may perhaps live to form one of many happy groupes of village or parish promenades, which owe their origin to these observations. As an infallible test of the intellectual cultivation and social dispositions of any town, I enquired of two dealers in books, whether there existed aiiiy Book-club, but was answered in the nega- tive. A small collection of those beguilers of time, or cordials for ennuiy called No^ vels, constitute a circulating library; and, judging from the condition of the volumesi this degree of literary taste is general among the females of this village. Far be it from me to depreciate the negative merits of novel-reading, bec^use^^tboe Vas^ FROM LONDON TO KEW. §9 jority tend to improve the heart, to direct the sensibihties arid sympathies of the liiind, and to create many liberal and rational reflections, to which without Novels their readers might have been total stran- gers. This is no small praise of any pur- suit ; yet the same and still higher purposes would be attained, if real, rather than fic- titious, life were the object of study ; if we enquired after man as he was, is, and evei: will be, instead of satisfying ourselves with the contemplation of him in the false co^ louritigs, distorted positions, and earica*- ture resemblances, of many works pf fiction. There can, however, exist iio moral agertt more effective than a good novel, wherein Attention is rivetted by the author's fancy, Taste is fascinated by his style, and Errors, Prejudices, and Follies of the hour are corrected by his pow- ers of ridicule or argument. To instruct as well as to amuse- — to speak great truths in epigrams— to exhibit the substance, of sermons without sermonizing — to be wise without appearing so— to make philoso- 100 A morning's walk phers trifle, and triflers philosophize— to exhibit precept in action — and to surprise the judgment through the medium of the passions and the love of the marvellous, —ought to be the purposes of those who cultivate this interesting branch of literary composition. Yet, unsociable as is "Wandsworth, it is in that respect like all the villages round London. Gay and splendid as they ap- pear to the summer visitor, nothing can be more dull and monotonous than the lives of their constant residents. Made up of the mushroom aristocracy of trade, whose rank, in its first generation, affords np palpable ground of introduction — of pride, whose importance, founded on the chances of yesterday, is fed on its self- sufficiency— of individuals whose conse- quence grows neither out of manners, in- tellectual endowments, superior taste, nor polished connections — and of inhabitants of a metropolis, among whom shyness of in- tercourse is necessary as a security against imposture^ — it is not to be wondered that FROM LONDON TO KEW. 101 most of the showy mansions in these vil- lages are points of repulsion rather thaa of attraction. It must, however, be con- ceded, that many of these famihes are hospitable, charitable, sociable, and anxi^ ous to be agreeable — qualities which would serve as the basis of systems of more liberal intercourse, if properly directed, and if cherished in such establishments as book- clubs, periodical assemblies, and evening promenades. Nor should it be forgotten that mapy of jthe proprietors of these mansions consider them as mere retreats from the craft and selfish jargon of the world, in which, to enjoy the contrast afforded by the simplicity of nature, they court Solitude, for its own sake, during their temporary residence from evening till morning, and from Saturday till Monday. In a Village once famous for its manufac- tories, which, as the effect of the wicked Policy that involved the country in twen- ty J years' warfare, have lost their powers of giving employment to the population whom Jhey had drawn together, I wa3 H 3 102 A morning's WALK naturally led to inquire .the condition of these helpless victims of deluded and de- luding statesmen. What an affecting topic for the contemplation of Sensibility ! How- painful the condition of Poverty, con- trasted with that of Wealth ; yet how closely are they allied, and how adven- titiously separated ! The Rich solace themselves in a fancied exemption froni the miseries and ignominy which: attach to the Poor, though their daily experi- ence of the caprice of fortune ought to teach thera, that, while they have the power, it would be wiser to diminish the contrast by ameliorating the condition of Poverty I How glorious is the spectacle afforded by the contrast of civilized so- ciety, with the wretched condition of sa- vages, though that justly admired civiliza- tion is often but a result of artifices that create the distinctions of rich and poor ! What a gulph between the ancient Britons in the social equality of their woods and caverns, and the favoured English in their luxurious cities and magnificeat palaces ! FHOM LONDON TO KEW. 103 Yet, alas ! wealth and splendour and great* ness are such only by contrast !— Wherever there are rich there must be poor — wherever there is splendour there must be misery — • and wherever there are masters there must be servants. These conditions of men in society are like the electrical power in nature, which never indicates its positive qualities without creating corresponding negations; and which, when equally dif- fused, exhibits no phenomena* If then men are rich merely because they have ab- stracted or absorbed the w^ealth of others, their obligations, as moral and sympathe- tic creatures towards those by whose abase- ment they are exalted, can require no formal proof. The kws may allow, and the arrangements of society may require, as a condition of civilization, that the rich should enjoy their ascendency ; but it jg neither just, nor wise, nor decent, nor humane, nor necessary, that the poor should be deprived of benefits which ought to result to the whole family of man, from the triumphs of Art over Nature. All are 1 04 A M OR N I NG's W ALK - bound cheerfully to concede to superiority in virtue and intellect, those advantages which are the result of virtuous and intel- lectual exertions ; but, as common descend-- ants of the once-equal Britons, the lowest are warranted in claiming, as matter of right, to be as well fed and as comfortably provided for, on performing, or on evinc- ing a willingness to perform, the duties of their stations, as their equal ancestors among the Britons, or society at large can- not be said to have profitted by our boasted civiHzation. To adjust these intricate re* lations, so that all virtue may partake in its sphere of the gifts of nature, augment- ed by the ingenuity of man, is the arduous, tut interesting, task of wise legislation. It would not be reasonable to expect, that every case should be met, and every exigen- cy anticipated, by adequate arrangements;, but it is the duty of power, in whomsoever it is placed, to exert itself with unremitting anxiety, so as in the arrangements of man ^p approximate to the dispositions of na-. ture, whicb are always marked by ine_3^^. 1 FROM LONDON TO KEW. 105 haustible abundance, by appropriate be- nevolence, and by means commensurate to suitable and desirable ends. Under the influence of such reasoning, I made a variety of enquiries between Battersea and Wandsworth, relative to the condition of the poor. I learnt with grief that the payment of day-labourers varies from Qs, 6d. to \s. 6d, per day, or on an average is not more than 12^. per week ; of women from Is, 3d, to 1*. or about 6s. per week; and of children from Qd. to 6d. or 4*. per week; though, for the two last classes there is sufficient employment for only half the year. A poor man, who had a wife and three children to maintain on I As. per week, told me, that for many months he and his family had been stran- gers to meat, cheese, butter, or beer — that bread, potatoes, nettles, turnips, carrots, and onions^ with a little salt, constituted jthe whole of their food — that during the winter months he was obliged to rely on the parish — that in case of sickness he and his children had no resource besides the 105 A morning's walk workhouse — and that, though it had pleased God to take two of his children, it was better they should go to heaven than con- tinue in this wicked and troublesome world. *' But I don't think," said he, '' the gentlefolk saves much by running down we poor so nation hard, for we are oMi-» gated to get it on the parish, which they pay; so it's all one; though it grieves a poor man, as one may say, to apply to them overseers, and to have no hope but the workhouse at last." I agree with this humble Economist that it seems to be as ungenerous as ira* politic to throw on the poor's rates a bur- then which ought to be borne by those who profit from the labour thus inade- quately remunerated. It could not, and ought not, to be difficult to fix a minimuna (not a maximum) on twelve hours' labour per day, such as should be sufficient to support an average-sized family. Suppose for bread and flour 6s. were allowed ; for meat, cheese, butter, milk, and beer, 4^.; for potatoes, &c, Qs. candles, soap, and coals, 1 FROM LONDON TO KEW, 107 ^s, cloathing 3^. 6d. house-rent 2,y. 6d, sun- dries \s, — total 2U. Here is nothing superfluous, nothing but what appertain^ to the earHest stages of civilization, and what every well- arranged society ought to be able to give in return for manual labour of the lowest kind. With inferior means the labourer must suffer the obloquy of being remunerated from the parish rates, to which all are forced to contribute as fully as though the employer paid the fair value of the labour in the first in- stance, and the amount were assessed on the price of his commodity, instead of being assessed in the form of poor's rates. It being, however, they2?^ownVe system to pay the difference between what the labourer receives, and what he ought to receive, through the medium of the work- house or parish officers, I anxiously di- rected my way to Wandsworth Work- house, to examine whether it was an asy- lum of comfort or a place of punishment ? On my entrance I found the hall filled with a crowd of poor persons, then ap- 108 A MORNING S WALK *^lying to receive a weekly stipend from the overseers, who, with other parish- officers, were assembled in an adjoining apartment. Many women with infants at their breasts, and other children clinging round their knees, presented interesting subjects for poets and painters. Every feeling of the human heart, though in the garb of rags, and bearing the aspect of misery, evidently filled the various indi^ viduals composing this groupe. I pressed forward to the room, where I found the overseers were sitting at a table, covered with bank-tokens and other silver for dis^ tribution. They received me politely, and, on learning my wish to view the interior, directed the matron to accompany rae. The manners and countenances of ttieso Overseers flatly contradicted the prejudices which are usually entertained against per»^ sons fining the office; and it gratified me to hear several of the poor, whose cha^ racteristic is said to be discontent, exclaim, *^ God bless 'em, they're noble gentlemen." The matron conducted me into a spa- cious yard; round which are suites of roomsi FROM LONDON TO KEW. 109 built in the manner of alms-houses, a plan which cannot be too much commended, because it sufficiently detaches the tenants of each, secures to every set their peculiar comforts, and may be rendered the means of separating virtue from vice. In the middle of the area stand the offices and kitchen, dividing it into two yards, one for the men, and the other for the women. The whole had been recently white- washed, and, but for the name of work-house, and certain restraints on their habits and liberty, it seemed calculated to secure the comfort of its inmates. The matron took me into several of the men's rooms, and here I found tottering grey hairs, crippled youth, inveterately diseased of all ages, and artizans destitute of employment. Six or eight were in a room, though I was informed they slept for the most part but one in a bed. A fine young girl about twelve years old, who had slipped out of the women's yard, was seated by the side of her father, an interesting looking artizan, whose trade 110 A morning's WALK had ceased to afford him eraployment. This, I found, was contrary to the disci- pline of the house, and the matron chid the girl for coming there; *^ however,.'' said she to me in an under-tone, witl^ great good nature — **one can't blame a child . for getting to her father, nor the father for encouraging his child to come over to him." — ^'No, madam," said I^ *'and no one can blame you for granting such an indulgence, while all must admire the goodness of heart which dictates that sentiment." Would to God, thpught Ij that all workhouses were governed by ma^ trons as capable of sympathizing with the feelings of the unfortunate inmates; and that all those who Embitter poverty by directing the separation of parents from their children, and husbands from their wives, may themselves become the object of their own law ! My guide now led me to a room where lived a man, his wife,, and children, a saw^ yer out of work, whose eyes were so af- fected by the dust that falls into the pit, FBOM LONDON TO KEW. Ill ^ tt> render hini incapable of following his employment. His pride, as well as that 6f his wife, seemed to be piqued at being exhibited to view in the workhouse, and they took much pains to convince me that it was their misfortune, not their fault or thetr wish. Two fine children, one of them a chubby happy creature, playing on the floor, added to the groupe an interest that ^^as deeply affecting. Doubt- leiss, thought I, these simple people once entertained many projects of humble am^ bition, which, if explained, might draw a smile from the great — but here, alas ! they seem to be entombed for ever ! I now took a cursory view^ of the wo- Eien's yard, in which I found the same appearances of cleanliness and comfort as on the men's side. But the most interest* ing scene was the nursery, where sixteen little cherubs, the oldest about five years, were engaged in their innocent diversions, regardless whether they were in a work- house or a palace, and unsuspicious of the ills that await them in a world governed 112 A morning's walk by selfishness, where the greatest of all crimes, and the forerunner of all calami- ties, is poverty ! I was pleased to find that the mother of three of them was al- lowed to fill the office of nurse, and the tears trickled down the poor woman's face, as I particularly admired one fine boy, who, it happened, was her child. "Ah ! Sir, (said she,) he's so like his poor father I — my poor husband little thought, when he died, that his dear children would so soon be in a workhouse" — here her tears and loud sobs stopt her utterance; but, recovering herself — **if I can't main- tain 'em with the labour of my hands, (said she,) I will do what I can for 'em here; there is no other happiness for me ia this world, and I will continue to do for them till God shall please to take me also." A woman's and mother's tearsr, are so contagious, and the scene before me formed so deep a drama of real life> that I hurried from the room 1 The good matron now showed her cleanly kitchen, her well-arranged laun- FBOM LONDON TO KEW. 113 dry, pantry, bakehouse, &c. &c. with which my feelings were not at that mo- ment in unison ; I saw, however, much to admire and nothing to condemn. On inquiry, I found that these excellent re- gulations were the effect of a late revolu- tion in the establishment. Till a very recent period, it had been the criminal practice of the overseers, and the negli- gent sufferance of the parish, to farm or LET OUT the poor to some grim tyrant or task-master, at the average rate o€ 5s. 6d. per head ! This man was to pro- vide for these wretched victims of the pub- lic neglect, and of his miscalculation, out of 5*. 6d, per week, rent exclusive; and his remuneration consisted in the differ- ence between their cost and that pitiful allowance. The cries of the poor at length forced their way to the ears of the opulent, the contractor was turned out, and it was then humanely determined that the overseers, aided by a master and ma- tron, should in future superintend the work- house as trustees for the parish. I 114 A MORNING S WALK I understood that they had hitherta performed this duty with great attention and humanity, giving meat-dinners four days in the week, and soup-dinners on the other days, the cost proving about 6s. ^d, per head, on the one hundred poor in the house, of whom forty were children. In the petty labours with which the aged, crippled, and infant poor are too often harassed in these receptacles, they had, as yet, made no essays. The stipends out of the house amounted, I learned, to nearly as much as the cost within, or to about 50/. per week, which, at 9>s, 6d, per head, assists two hundred and forty objects, making a total charge on the parish of from 3 to 4000/. per annum. How many parishes in the metropolis still, however, persist in the negligent practice of farming their wretched poor at only 4^. or even Ss. 6d. per week! And how few of the opulent, idle, and well-intentioned of the parishioners, con- cern themselves about their condition or sufferings ! When the overseer calls for FROM LONDON TO KEW. 115 the rates, they perhaps coQiplain so hea- vily of the amount, that he fears to in- crease the allowance, however sensible he may be of its necessity ; or, perhaps, when accosted by a beggar in the street, they excuse themselves by quoting their large contributions to the rates, and refer the despairing wretch to the workhouse ! How incumbent then to see what that work- house is ! — ^Whether its arrangements aro not more fitted for dogs or pigs, than for rational and heart-broken fellow-creatures, however unequal in fortune, or however differing even in virtue 1 Let us then neither wonder nor complain, that our streets or highways are filled with objects of misery, preferring the cold ground, the unsparing storm, and the inclemency of seasons, to the provisions legally provided for them ; if we have not had the industry to ascertain, the courage to reform, and the benevolence to improve, the condition of their parochial asylums ! The reader of sensibility will not, I trust, complain of the length of details IS 116 A morning's walk on an object which interests every son and daughter of Britain. The other de- mands on my time allowed me to spend but twenty minutes in this receptacle of the helpless and unfortunate; yet what a volume of feelincfs and reflections were excited in that short period ! We have had a, Howard, I exclaimed, who visited our gaols and alleviated the condition of those who are forced to drink the dregs of the cup of misery, from the iron-hearted and unsparing hands of lawyers, whose practices are sometimes countenanced by the incorrigible character of criminals! We have a Webb, who vainly assaults the giant Penury on the King's highway, but whose frightful strides outstrip his generous speed ! — We want then some ANGEL, in the form of man, who, uniting the courage and perseverance of a How- ard with the liberaUty of a Webb, will visit and report on the condition of our Workhouses. But, if, as every parish contains its workhouse, and every county but one gaol, the task in consequence is mOM LONDON TO KEW. llf too great for one life, though actuated by the godhke zeal of a Wesley ; then it is a task worthy of parish committees, com- posed of groupes of Angels, in the form of benignant Women, who will find, that the best-spent and the happiest morning of every month would be passed in a visit to the workhouse; where, with slender alms, kind advice, and fostering care, they would be able to soothe the sorrows of the aged widow,— to comfort the sick and helpless, — to pour balm into the mental lyounds of those who are reduced from 9 if.eviery? thing done for governments wer^-flol^|pppyei;f^l^ tfiOM LONDON TO KEW. 1^ heen to enable the observer to see the greatest nuQiber of hours ; consequently the light should be intercepted by the smallest quantity of glass. Dollond's achro- raatics contain, however, six lenses, and possess no recommendation but their en- larged field, and their freedom from pris- matic colours in that field ; points of ^ no consequence in looking through a fixed glass at a fixed and circumscribed object. The field of the Galilean telescope is quite large enough, and, having but two lenses, one of which is a thin concave, it exhibits the object with greater brightness, and therefore ought to have been preferred for this purpose. It seems strange also, that, to ease the operator, it has never been contrived to exhibit the fixed spectrum on the principle of a portable camera, so that, without wearying the eye, the changes of the distant telegraph might have been exhibited on a plain surface, and seen with both eyes like the leaf of a book. The application of optical instruments, between a fixed station and fixed object^ L 146 - AJUORNING^S WALK iBiight to have been made in an appm- priate inanner, and not influenced by the prfictices ^'hich prevail in regard to mov^ able telescopes for various objects, ^' I hav^ long thought that a system l^f •telegraphs for donjestic purposes wotM cotistitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occa- sions in u^hich individual interests require that events should be communicated with ^egraphic celerity. Shipping concerss aione would keep telegraphs constantly ^t work, between all the ports of the king- dom and Lloyd's coffee-house ; and co«i^ Amerce would be essentially served, ii^ during 'Change-hours at London, Bfrstol, Liverpool, Hull, and Glasgow, commti- inications could be interchanged rMative ?t6 the state of markets, pur<3hases, s^l^$, sand other transactions of business. -H^ .^convenient too would be such a rapid intercourse between London and country rbankers, in regard to balances, advances, :^nd money transactions; how desirable ^ Jaw business between London ted PBOM LONBON TO KfiW. 147 country practitioners ; and how important in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency 1 In family concerns, notices of deaths, births, accidents, progressive sickness, &c. it would often be deeply interesting. The tstate of elections, the issues of lawsuits, .determinations of the legislature, questions v_for answers, and numberless events of more or less importance, would occur suf- ^^cient to keep telegraphs in constant requi- ^tip^ and abundantly repay the cost of ^^intaining them. A guinea might be paid per hundred miks, for every five or six words, which, in matters of private con-* €ern> might, by pre-concert, be trans* mitted in cypher. Instead of sixty^four telegraphs, we might then require five Jiundred, and a>n establishment costing 100,000/. per annum ; yet five hundred messages and replies per day, between difFerenta parts of the kingdom, taken at 2/. each, would in two hundred and fifty 4ays produce 250,000/. or a net revenue ^1 150,000/. But to achieve so vast ^purpose, and to confer ©n men a species J. 2 14S AJMORNlNO's WALK_ of ubiquity, even if 50,000/. per annum were lost to the government, would it not be wortli the sacrifice, thus to give to the peo- ple of England an advantage not possessed, and never likely to be possessed, by any other people on earth ? , What a triumph of civihzation would be afforded by such an extension of the telegraphic system] The combinations of the telescope; be- gan what those of the telegraph would complete. United, they would produce a kind oi Jinite ubiquity, rendering the in- tercourse of an industrious community in- dependent of time and distance, and bind- ing the whole in ties of self-interest, by uieans which could be achieved only in a •hii^h state of civilization through fortunate combinations of human art. ,, , .. As I looked around me from t,his j^i- iience, a multitude of ideas, sympathies, and affections, vibrated withiivme, which it .would , be impossi ble ^ j pp v^tediqus ^ tx^ a^s^ . The. organ o1-^i|ijb J[|:3^^^^s here played upon like that, o^ ^ |tiie J|^r^ j.i| ^"musical concert. Nor,\y^^s |j:|fb^9^;S^^sf FROM LONI>ON TO KEW. 149 afeiie wmch was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and tone found a separate concord or discord, in innu- merable associations and reminiscences. R'was, in truth, a chorus to the e3^e, un- attended by the noise and distraction pro- duced by the laboured compositions of Handel ; v\^hile it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an effect like one of the tender symphonies of Haydn. It was'a Panorama, better adapted, however, to ap(5^t tharl a painter; for it had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any eminences which raise tiie landscape above an angle of six or eight degrees; yet, to a poet, how rich It ^wasr in associations — how endless in pictures for the imagination 1 ''^^'' ^^'Tftie north and north-east were still ob- scured by the dingy, irregular, and dense smoke issuing from the volcano of the Me- tropolis; and, in looking upon it, how difficult if wa^^to avoid tracing; the now mingled maks^s back to their several sources* coti- sFdering the happiness or misery which they L 3 reflected from their respective fire-sideSy and gaging the aspirations of hope, or the sighs of wretchedness, which a fertile imagination might conceive to be com- bined with this social atmosphere ! Con* venieiit alike to every condition of h«ma- taty> it might be considered as flowing at once from the dangeons of despairing convicts, the cellars and garrets of squalid poverty, the busy haunts of avarice, the waste of luxury, and the wantonness of wealth, 3^i^ Straight before me, the metropoHs, hke a devouring monster, exhibited its equivo- cal and meretricious beauties, its extensive manufactories,, its dispirmg churches and towers, and other innumerable edifices. Westminster Abbey stood promi- nent, at once reviving the recollection of i4s superstitious origin, and exciting deep- veneration as the depository of the relics- of so much renown. What topics for com- mentary, if they had not been recently ex;r hausted in the classical stanzas of a Mau* %iCi;l Stt Paul's, the moimmeiat oE FROM LONDON TO KEW. 151 Wren, was but just visible through the haze, though the man at the Telegraph as-, serted, that he could sometimes tell the hour by its dial without the aid of a teles- cope \ How eharacteristic is this structure become af the British metropolis, and how fiat the mass of common spires and smoky chimneys would now seem without it I The Menu^ment, recording the delusions of fac- rion,r. and the Tower, with all its gloomy associations, were visible in the reach of the river. Of Churches there appeared a monotonous groupe;^ while the houses presented a dingy and misshapen mass, as uninteresting at the distance of seven miles as an ant-hill at the distance of severi ^f^hflndeed, any wretch capable of set- ting his foot upon an ant-hill, and of de- stroying it, because it made no palpable appeals ta his sympathy, might at this di&tanee,. by parity of feeling, let fall a Bnll-stone on this great city, and extinguish J^ £iH instant the hopes and cares of its ini:iiabitants. On this spot then I behold an assemblage of the greatest wonders of man's <:reation, at a focal distance, whiGh reduces them to the measure of an ant- nitL; and still further off they would bte eliminished even to a point ! Such is the estimate of the eye, nor is it heightened by that of the ear ; for I was assured that during tranquil nights, particularly by lis^t tening near the ground, the confused hum of til e vast British metropolis could her^ be compared only to the buz of a bee- hive, or the sound of a goxgh! What a lesson do these considerations afford to the pride of man, whose egotism repre- sents him to himself as the most important object of the infinite creation ; for whose use, he asserts, all things were made, and to whom all things are subservient ! It is> kais'e\»er, natural that the nearest object ahottld fill the iarfijesl angle, whether viewr ed by the mind or the eye; though it is the business of wisdom and philosophy to cor"^ rect such illusions of. our intellectual, or^ sensitive powers. h<'1 "^di i:pi'ymii »s>ildw r(i3^f.»thfe. moral condition, and feelings, c^aeeutrated within a spot thus emlxraced FR©M LONDON TO KBW. l53 by a glance of the eye, bow impossible to form an estimate ! Supposing 900,000 human beings are thus huddled together^ vtk 150,000 houses^ we may conclude, that 100,000 will always be lying on the bed ^-sickness, and that 30.^000 are con- stantly afflicted by mortal diseases, eighty of- whom expire every day, or three in every bour! Of the 150,000 bouse- keepers, above 50,000 are jacked by po- ^#ft// or by -the dread of its approach; otber-v^j 000 maintain a precarious inde-. pendence ; while the remaining 50,000 enjoy comfort and happiness, chequered, however, by care and the conflict of human passions. The greater part of the first (;tass are either already plunged, or pre- disposed to plunge, into vices and crimes unknown except in such a city; those of tlie second class maintain a virtuous struggle, but m^ore frequently sink into the lower, thaa irise into the higher class; while, among the third class, tbere are fotuid all degrees of virtue and worth, altbpugh mixed with an envious spirit of 154 A morning's WA'LU,: rivalry, and an indulgence in expense and luxury that greatly reduce the number of truly happy families. J On the north, north-west, and east^ I still beheld the signs of this overgrown metropolis in vilkges-, which branch, lil^^ luxuriant shoots, on every side. An^riJ: was only on the south and south-wes%]tj|0 the swelling downs and in tb^ charms of Box-hill, Leith-hill, and Dorking, that fl could discover the unsophisticated beauties of nature, which seemed to mock the toils of man, in the contrast they afforded ii> the scene m the opposite directioiif^nK# mm, who never fecei^r instruction ex- cept through their own experience, flo^k in tens of thousands to share in the lot^* tery presented to their ambition in great .:€ities, where thousands perish while in pur- suit of the prize, where other thousands obtain nothing but blanks and disappoint- ments, and whence the tens who achieve their object, gladly escape to enjoy theijf' wealth, free from the disturbance of city passions, amid the placid and unchange- able beauties of nature. FROM LONDON TO KiSW, t5^ ' -fn looking around me from the windows of Hartley's Fire- house, it was impossible to avoid refiectins on the wretchedness of Want existing in the sooty metropolis, and the waste of Means in the uncultivated country imiBediately around me. I had just been sympathizing with the forlorn i0* habitants of the workhouse at Wandsworth,, at the distance of only a mile; and half a dozen other such receptacles of misery in- vited commiseration within equal distances,, & other directions^ y^ a radius of a few hundred yards round this spot would have <^€luded as much unappropriated and use- less laud as might have sufficed to con- fer independence and plenty on their hope- less inmates ! In the north-eastern direc- M^^ within a distajnce of ten miles, at Im^p tir^ty thousand families iuight be discovered pining in squalid misery ; though here 1 found myself in an unpeopled and uncultivated tract, nearly four miles square^ and containing above fifteen thousand acres @f good soil, capable of affording indepen^ deat subsistence to h^f as many families 1 50 esuJ 015^0 aidir 156 :a morning's walk" I could not help exclaiming against the perversity of reason — the indifference of power — the complication of folly ^^— and the ascendancy of turpitude, which, sepa- rately or conjointly^ continue to produce circumstances so cruel and preposterous I Let it be recorded, said I, to the eternal disgrace of all modern statesmen, of m^n^ hundreds of ambitious legislators,' atfiS olf our scientific economists, that in/'^f Bis luxuriant county of Surrey, there sfilf exist, without productive cultivatiorr, ric^ less than 25,000 acres of open commons^ S0,.000 acres of useless parks j'-^l^^'^lfe^ acres of heaths, and 30,000 iacriB^ dfWM WHs, "serving but to subsist a! fe^ herds 61 deer and cattle, and to grow some unpro- ductive trees, though at the very instant 10,000 families in the same county are dependent on the bounty of their respec- tive parishes ! Is this,' said. I, ih^^lMtiir ^d age of reason ? Are these thi& crenuihe* fruits of civilization? Do such circtitti^ stances indicate the ascendency of bene-' volence ? Do they not rather demonstrate FROK LONDON TO K5W. l^% ttjat the principle of doing to #thers as we would be done unto, has little influr ence on the practices of our §tat^s,g^gp a.nd Legislators ? ; i ;;. Jrfi .wif may be told, that the principle of enclosing waste lands has long been recog- nised in the prevailing system of econoniyi and that the Legislature is incessantly active in passing Bills for new enclosures. But, I ask, for whom, and for whose benelit^ $fe these bills passed ? Do they provide =|pj^ t|\e poor?? Do they help those who require help ? Do they, by augmenting the supply, make provisions cheaper? Do they increase the number of independent lire- sides.?^-7- ftMher, do they not wantonly add .j(^4Jv^e,.nj^^i3s, of monopolists? J)o tb fined in so narrow a circle? Has natur-e provided abundance, and do w^ create in- ^ijperable bars to its enjoyment? I^^U^f^ ^hei line of demarcation between the seifisb ordinances of man, and the wise dispensit- ^|ons of Providence? ,^ ^j.^,, ,^,^^5 ^^, Let me recommend our legislators .fcsr ^nce to put their greedy, covetous, and ^ordinate Selves .putv.pf^pQnsideration. The poor may not Jbe quahfied to plead their rights, except by acts of ripting; bu4: let them find clamorous advocates iu_v the consciences of some of their law-makers^ la ispite, then^ of the fees of parliament^ j^^f hort th^ Legislature to pass a G^i^js^i. XKCLos^ujij: jBiLj., not suc\\ a on% howr TROM LONDON TO KEW. t49 ever, ias would be Teconitli ended by the illustrious Board of Agriculture, but found- ed on such principles as might appropri- ately confer on it the title of a Bit^ FOR THE EXaTNCTION OF WANT ! In discussing and enacting its provisions^ let it be borne in mind, that the surface of the earth, li^e the atmosphere in which We breathe, and tlie light in which we Ifee, is the natural and common patrimony ^fifiAkn. Let it b© considered, that hf ^mtM^ we iare tillers of the soil, and that a'll the artifices of society, and the employ*- tnents of towns, are good and desirable in the degree only in which they promote Ifce comforts of the country. Let it ^i^ Mt,' that the 1-0,000 destitute families iiP^tei' county of Surrey, and the half ^ai&n' in England and Wales, are so, yUerelf because servitude or manufac- ^^eishave failed to sustain them ; and that ^hey require, in consequence, the free use of the means presented by nature for their subsistence. In fine, let it be considered, that the unappropriated wastes are ana- 160 A morning's walk r tional stock, fortunately in reserve as a provision for the increasing numbers of destitute; and that no more is required of the law than to arrange and economize the distribution, consistently with the wants of some, and the rights of all. I indulged myself in a pleasing reverie on this subject, while I rambled from the spot where it originated towards an ad- jacent house, ill which died the late Mr. Pitt, a man who had the opportunity of executing that which I have the power only to speculate upon, and who, though resident in this tract, was blind to its capa- bilities. Ah ! thought I, perhaps in a less selfish age, this very heath, and all the adjoining heaths, waste tracts, and com- mons, from Bushy to Wioibledon, and from Barnes to Kingston, may be covered with cot tag€S, each surrounded by its two or three acres of productive garden, or- chard, and paddock! The healthful and happy inhabitants, emerged from the work- houses, the gaols, the cellars, the stews, lite St Giles's, the loathsome courts^ 3 FROM LONDON TO KEW. l6i tifleys, and lanes of the metropolis, would have reason to return thanksgivings to the wise Legislature, who had thus restored' ibem to the condition of men, and enabled thuem to exhibit the moral effects of the change. SudU^ in the opinion of the w«-iter>. would be a radical cure for several of .the complicated and deep-rooted 4ht-y eais€s which now afflict British society |^ ats -least, it isa remedy without cost .or; sacrifiei^; riandii i^,§ rst^b, aa homage fdiler from affl;a€n£€?rfa|MJi power to indigence and misfortune. Such a plan would dra^. frotp the over-peopled towns, that destitut^t portion of the population, whose means I of living have been reduced or supersedqd,^ byrshoals of adventurers from the co^ntry^^- Itityould render workhouses usekss; excepH^; tbi?itte vicious ;or incorrigibly idle ; woul(i;|i •diminish the poor-rates, and deprive the inmates of gaols of the powerful excuse afforded to crime by the hopeless ajiij.. g^Uiig GOndition of poverty. ?jdj?f}f||.^i|q<».fi The house in which that darhng of £«ime, the late Mr. Pitt., lived a fei^,* M r 162 A'MORNING-S WALK years, and terminated his career, is a re^* dest and irregularly-built mansion^ sur- rounded by a few acres of pleasure-ground^ and situated about a quarter of a mile from the paling of Richmond Park. Mj curiosity led me to visit the chamber in which this minister di^d, to indulge in the viv^id associations produced by the contem- plation of remarkable localities. I seated myself in a chair near the spot where stood the couch on which he took his eternal slumber. I fancied, at the in- stant, that I still saw the severe visage and gaunt figure of the minister standing .between the Treasury-bench and the table of the House of Commons, turning around to his admiring partisans, and filling th6 ear of his auditory with the deep full tones of a voice that bespoke a colossal stature. Certain phrases which he used to parrot still vibrated on my brain: *' Bo- naparte, the child and champion of Jaco- binism," — *' the preservation of socid order in Europe," — " the destruction of .whatever is dear to our feehngs as Eug- VKQ^ J^ON©9M TO K|iW. If 3 lishmen," — *' the security of oiir religLcp^a, liberties, and property," — -*' indemnity fqi the past and security for the future,'' witj^| which he used to bewilder or terrify th^ plain country gentlemen, or the youtb§ from Eton, Oxford, or Cambridge, wba constitute a majority of that House. Hjs success in exciting the passions of such senators in favour of discord and war, his lavish expenditure of the public money in corrupting others, and his insincerity in whatever he professed for the public be- nefit, rendered him through life the sub- ject of my aversion : bat, in this chamber, reduced to the level of ordinary men, and sinking under the common infirmities of humanity, his person, character, and pre- mature decease became objects of interest- ing sympathy. Perhaps he did what he thought best ; or, rather, committed the least possible evil amidst the contrariety of interests and passions in which he and all public men are placed. This, how- Lever, is but a poor apology for one who knt his powerful talents to wage waj's that M 2 164 A tmorning's walk tiiivolved the happiness of millions, who became a willing firebrand among nations, and who, as a tool or a principal, was foremost in every work of contemporary mischief. The love of office, and a pas- sion for public speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To gratify the former, he became the instru- 'ment 'of others, and thence the sophistry of his eloquence and the insincerity of his character ; while, in the proud display of Ans acknowledged powers as an orator, he Was stimulated not less by vanity, than by the virtuous rivalry of Fox. As a finan- cier, he played the part of a nobleman who, having estates worth 20,000/. per annum, mortgages them to enable him to spend 100,000/. and then plumes him- self on his power, with the same free- holds, to make a greater figure than his predecessors. But, except for the lesson which he afforded to nations never to trust their fortunes in the hands of in- V^xperienced statesmen, why do I gravely ^discuss the measures and errors of one FROM LONDON TO KEW. l65 who did not live long enough to prove his genuine character? No precocity of talents, no mechanical splendour of elo^ quence, can stand in the place of judgment founded on Experience. At forty-six, Pitt would have begun, hke all other men of the same age, to correct the errors of his past life; but, being then cut off — his STORY IS INCOMPLETE ! He had vvithin him the elements of a great man, yet they were called into action before their powers were adjusted and matured ; and the world suffered by experiments made in teaching himself, instead of profiting by the union of his experience with his intellectual ener- gies. He was an actor on the stage, while he ought to have been in the closet study- ing his part ; his errors, therefore, merit pity, and those alone are to be blamed for them who made a dishonest use of his pre- cocious powers. I learnt in the immediate vicinity, that he was much respected, and was a kind master to his domestics. A person, who a little before his death was in this rpom, M 3 I#§ A HXGRNlNfe's WALK told me that it was heated to a very high Ittid oppressive temperature ; and that the €eep voice of the dying minister, as fee 'sr^ked his valet a question, startled this Visitor, who had been unused to it. H'e died calmly, and apparently under none of those political perturbations which, at the l^rod, Vere mistakenly ascribed to his last ^lioments. The Bishop of Lincoln, who 'tiCfted the part of his friend and confessor, pGbtished an Intere^ing account of his de- t^ease, the a<;eiiracy of which has never been ^questioned. It being ray intention, on leaving this "spot, to descend the hill to Barnes-Elms, and to proceed by that once classical re- sort through Barnes anti MoFtlaketo Kew, I left Mr. Pitt's house on the rigiit, and crossed the common to the retired village ©f Roehampton. Opposite to me were the boundaries of Richmond Park ; and, little more than half a inile fi-om the house of Pitt, in one 'Hsf the most pictiifesque shuations of that %eaatiful deiiiesi^, stands the elegant. FKOM LQ^ DCm TO K E W • l6f mansfofl which was presented, it is said, to the then favourite minister, Mr. Ad- DfNGTGN. Thus it appears, that two succeeding ministers of England, in an age Feputed enlightened, lived in a district possessing the described capabilities for re- moving the canker-worm, of poverty, yet neither of them displayed sufScient energy or wisdom to apply the remedy, to the disease. I am not, however^ arrogant enough to adduce my plans as tests of the patriotism of statesmen; but I venture to appeal from the judgment of this age to that of the next, whether any minister could deserve the reputation of sagacity, who, in an over-peopled country, in which targe portions of the inhabitants of the towns were destitute of subsistence, lived themselves in the midst of waste tracts capable of feeding the whole, and yet took no measures nor made a single effort ta apply the waste to their wants. If the same facts were related of a ruler in any ibreign country, or in any remote age, wbat would be the inference of a modern. 168 A morning's walk English reader in regard to his genuine benevolence, wisdom, or patriotism ? I am desirous of advancing no opinions which can be questioned, yet I cannot refrain from mentioning, in connexion with this wooded horizon, my surprise that peculiar species of trees have not yet found a line of distinction between inha- bited and civilized, and uninhabited and barbarous countries. Does not the prin- ciple which converts a heath into pasturage and corn-fields, or a collection of furze- bushes or brambles into a fruit-garden, de- mand that all unproductive trees should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other trees which afford food to the in- habitants? Are there not desolate countries enough in which to grow trees for the mere purposes of timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees as use- ful as the timber of many of the lumber- trees wbich now encumber our soil ? It is Irue^ that, when wood constituted the fuel FROM LONDON TO KEW. l6f^> of the country, the growth of lumber-trees^ was essential to the comforts of the inha- bitants; but that is no longer our condi- tion. I conceive, therefore, that a wise and provident government, which, above all other considerations, should endeavour to feed the people at the least cost and labour, ought to allow no lumber-trees to encumber the sail until fruit-trees were planted sufficient to supply the inhabitants with as much, fruit as their wants or luxu- ries might require. The primary object of all public economy should be to saturate a civilized country with food. Why should not pear and walnut-trees supply the place of oaks, elms, and ash ; the apple, plum, cherry, damson, and mulberry, that of the birch, yew, and all pollards? It would be difficult, I conceive, to adduce a reason to the contrary; and none which could weigh against the incalculable ad- vantages of an abundant supply of whole- some provisions in this cheap form. Nor does my plan terminate with the orna- ments of forests, parks, and hedge-rows ; 17©^ A mo*hnjng's walk but I ask, why many hedges themselves raightnot, in like manner, consist of goose- berry and currant trees in their most luxu-^ riant varieties, intermingled with rasp-- berries, nuts, filberts, bullaces, &c. ? Not to give this useful and productive face to a country, appears to me to be shutting our eyes to the light; to prefer the useless to the useful ; to be so inconsistent as to expect plenty where we take no means to create it; or, in other words, to sow tares and desire to gather w^ieat, or expect grapes where we have platited only thorns. Let us, even in this point, condescend to bor- row a lesson from an illustrious, though oft despised, neighbour, who> it appears by 'the evidence of all travellers, has taken care that the roads and hedges of France should be covered with productive fruit trees. If such also were the condition of Britain, how insignificant would become the anxious questions about a Corn Bill, or the price of any single article of food. We should then partake of the ample stores provided, and perhaps contemplated^. FKOJf LONDON "TO KEW. 17 1 by our forefathers, when they rendered indigenous the fruit-trees of warmer cli- flaates; and, feeling less solicitude in regard to the gross wants of animal subsistence, we should be enabled to employ our facul- ties more generally in improving our moral and social condition; We should thui^ extend the principle, and reduce the gene- ral purpose of all productive cultivation^ to an analogous economy, enjoying the fullest triumph which- our climate would admit, of the fortunate combinations of human art over the inaptitude and primi^ live barbarity of nature.. The sequestered village of Hoebampton ^consists of about thirty or forty smalli -bouses, in contact ; and of a dozen mo- ^Esastic mansions, inhabited by noblemen and well -accredited traders. Each of the k:tter being .surrounded by twenty or thirty acresof garden and pieasure-grounds, and bounded by high brick walls, w^hich in^ every direction line the roads, .Roebaoip- ton pFoseBts to a^ stranger a most cheerless^ iaapect, .!As the :planXations are oldj. the I72f A MORNING'^ WALK fuU-grown oaks, elms, and chesnuts, with- in the walls, add to the gloomy and call to mind those ages of mental paralysis when Druids and Monks gave effect to their impostures by similar arrangements. They serve to prove how slavishly men aTe the creatures of imitation; how seldom*^ in how few things, and by what small gradations genius gives a novel direction to their practices! When this island was overrun v\ith beasts of prey, in the shape of quadrupeds, and lawless bipeds,, the baron and the man of wealth found it necessary to shut themselves within cas- tellated mansions and circumvallated do- mains; and hence the vulgar association between such establishments and a pre- sumed high rank in their occupiers. The state of the country and of modern society renders th6m no longer essential to secu- rity ; yet they are maintained as the effect of a false association ; and half the stimu- lus of avarice would be lost without the anticipated grandeur of u monastic esta- blishment, buried in the centre of a wood, TTROM LOIJ DO N TO K E W. 173 and cut off from the cheerful world, and the healthful circulation of the atmo- sphere, by damp and mouldering walls! It does not signify how apparently dull, how unappropriate to iixed habits, how unvarying the inanimate scene, how much the inmates may be visited by low fevers, agues, rheumatisms, and pulmonary af- fections; the manor-house, or the ancient •monastery, which has for ages been the residence af nobility, becomes, in conse- quence, the meed of wealth, , and the goal of vulgar hope, to be patiently endured, however little it may be enjoyed! Pride will feed upon the possession ; and, if that master- passion be gratified, minor in- conveniences will have little weight in making the election. 1 confess it — and I make the declara- tion in the humble form of a confession, 'in the hope -that those who think 1 have sinned, will be led to forgive my error — ithat I could not help thinking that the inhabitants of the humble cottages by the way-side, whose doors stood wide opeii. 174 A morning's "WALK whose children were intemlingUng and playing before them, whose society Is m^ stricted by no formal reserve, whose means depend on their industry, who HAVE NOT LEISURE TO J3E UNHAPPY, who cannot afford to stimulate their appe^ tite^ so as to enfeeble themselves by the languor of repletion, or disease themselves by the corruptions of plethora, and who would have no wants if the bounties of na- ture were not cruelly intercepted — I could not help feeling, that such unsophisticated beings experience less care, less self- oppression, less disease, more gaiety of heart, more grateful sympathy, and more even of the sense of well-being, than the artificial and constrained personages who, .howevesr amiable, and however free frotii the common vices of rank and wealth, in- habit the adjacent mansions, with all their decorations of art, and all their luxuries of hot-houses, graperies, pineries, ice- houses, temples, grottoes, hermitages, and .'Other fencies, with which power hopes. 1^ FR&M LONSCyN TO KEW. ITS •cheat itself into enjoyment, as an apology for its insatiable monopolies. The inefficacy of wealth to raise man above his cares and mortal feehngs has, however, of late years been so honestly conceded, that the rich have begun, at least in external appearance, to assume the con- dition of the poor. Hence, few of those mansions are built, or even restored, on whose gloomy character I have been re- marking; and our proudest nobility nov/ condescend to inhabit the cheerful, though humble, Cottage. They find, or by their practices they seem to prove they have found, that the nearest approach to hap- piness, is the nearest approach to the humility of poverty ! The thatched roof — the tiny flower-garden — the modest wicket —the honey-suckle bower — the cleanly dairy — the poultry yard — the dove-cote^ — the piggery — and the rabbit-pen,— compre- ihe^ded under the names of the Ferme Ornie, or Cottage Oniee, now constitute vthe favourite establishments of those who .found so few comforts in marble partico.cs, A morning's walk liivvalls hung with the works of the Go- t)elins or the Italian school, in retinues of -servants, and extensive paries. What a concession of pride — what a homage ren- dered to nature — what a consolation to discontented poverty — what a warning to inconsiderate ambition ! Yet our taste ought to be governed by our reason and our wants. Large families require large houses ; it is therefore the business of good taste to combine capacity with cheerfulness. Nothing, at the same time, within the sphere of human enjoy- ment, equals the delight afforded by well- planned garden-grounds; and it is conse- quently the duty of the artist to unite these w^ith the cheerful family mansion. Here, then, begin the obtrusion, and the alledged necessity of those boundary walls, against Avhich I have been protesting. No such thing — such walls, thanks to the ge- nius and good taste of a Pilton, are be- come unnecessary. We may now, with- out walls, have secure boundaries — we' iaay keep out trespassers vvithout excluding FROM 1*0 N DON TO KEW. 17^ the freah air — and we may circumscribe our limits without diminishing our external prospects. In that case, how different in appearance would be this village of Roe- hampton— how much more tolerable to its residents — how far more healthy— and how enchanting to strangers, — if, instead of monotonous brick-walls, the boundaries were formed by the magical fences of P,i;xTON, allowing the free passage of the solar rays and the vital air, reciprocating delightful prospects from plantation to plantation, and adding the essential charms of variety to the pleasures of possession, The first house in the lane is the classical seat of the Earl of Besborough, enriched with specimens of ancient sta- tuary from Italy and Greece, and with exquisite pictures of the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools. Adjoining, is the highly finished residence of the Mar- chioness of Downshire; and farther on, are the superb mansions of Mr. Gosling, a banker; and of Mr. Dyer. In the lane leading to Richmond Park, across whicii 178 A mobning's walk there is a delightful drive to the Star-and- Garter, is the charming residence of Mr. Temple; and, farther north, is the splendid mansion of the late Mr. Benjamin Gold- smid, since become the property of Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough. Various associations in regard to its first and its present proprietor, drew my attention to the site last mentioned. I had not leisure to examine its interior, but the exterior is in the best style of such edifices. The house looks to the north-- west, and, being the last in the descent of the hill, commands an uninterrupted pros- pect over the country towards Harrow and Elstree. The front consists of a superb portico of white marble columns, in the Corinthian order; but in other respects the house is not very striking, and its dimensions are inconsiderable. The lawn falls pleasingly towards a piece of water, and on its eastern side is a fascinating drive of half-a-mile, terminated by a pair of east-iron gates of singular beauty. But the object which more particularly called PROM LONDON TO Kl^W. 17^ to mind the unbounded wealth of its former proprietor, is a subterraneous way to the kitchen-garden and lawns on the opposite side the road. It is finished with gates resembling those of a fortified castle, with recesses and various ornaments, ail of Port- land-stone ; and on the near side is a spa- cious hermitage. In this house the late Mr. B. Gold- smrd resided, while he balanced the finances of the British empire, and raised for the Pitt Administration those vast sums wirich enabled it to retard the progress of liberal opinions during the quarter of a century! After the instance of a Gold- smid, the reputed wealth of a Cra?sus sinks into insignificance. The Jew broker, year after year, mised for the British govern- ment sums of twenty and thirty millions, while the Lydian monarch, with all his boasted treasures, would have been un- able to make good even the first instal- ment ! Such, however, is the talisman of credit in a commercial and banking coun- try ! In addition to their own funds, and IM A MOENING'S WALK to the funds peripanently confided to their prudence from foreign eorrespondents, ^mouriting to three of four millions, the brothers, Benjamin and Abraham Goldt smid, commanded for many years, from day to day, the floating balances of the pirincipal London bankers ; and they were among bankers, what bankers are among private traders. It was their daily prac- tice to visit most of the bankers' counting- houses, and address them briefly—*^ Will you borrow or lend fifty thousand to- day?'* — According to the answer, the sum required was deposited oj^; the spot, or carried away — ^no memorandum passed, and a simple entry in their respective books served merely to record the hour when the sum was. to be repaid, with its interest. With such credit, and such ready means, it is not to be w^ondered that the Goldsmids commanded the wealth of the world ; nor that their services were courted by an administration which never suffered its projects to languish while these brokers co.uld raise money on exchequer- I PIJOM LOKDON Tb KEW. 181 bills ! A paper circulation is, however, a vertex, out toF which neither individuals nor governments evei' escaped without ca- lamity, and from Whose fatal effects the pra- dence and integrity of these worthy men served as no adequate protection. A whisper that they had omitted to repay a banker's loan at the very hour agre'ed, first shook their credit; while some changes m the financial arrangements of govern- ment, and the malignity of some envious persons, (for rivals they could have none,) led to a fatal catastrophe in regard to one brother in this house ; afterwards to a similar tragedy in regard to the Other, at Merton ; and finally to the breaking-up of their vast establishment Whether their exertions were beneficial to the country may be doubted; this, however, is certain;^ that the Goldsmids were men of a princely spirit, who possessed a command of wealth, during the twelve or fifteen years of their career, beyond any example in the do- mestic history of nations. In this house Ben|amin repeatedly gave banquets, wor- N 3 182 A MORNING'S WALK thy of his means, to the chief branches of the royal family, and most of the nobiUty and gentry of the realm : and it deserves to be mentioned, to his honour^ that he was the constant patron of literature and of distressed men of letters. Abraham, in like manner, gave royal entertainments^ and was the unshaken friend of Lord Nelson, and of the interesting widow of Sir William Hamilton, whose premature death in a state of poverty, was a con- sequence of the misfortunes of her gene- rous protector. Adjoining the splendid iron gates which lead into these grounds, stands a house memorable for the violent effects of a thunder storm. The records of the vear 1780 probably describe the details of these phenomena; but, happening to meet, on the premises, with a man who had wit- nessed the whole, I collected from him the following particulars : — He related, that, after a pleasant day in September, a sud- den storm of thunder and lightning, ac- companied by rain and wind,, took place,, FROM LONDON TO KEW. 183 which lasted not more than ten or fifteen minutes. That, believing *' the world av an end, his master and family went to prayers;" but, on the noise abating, they found that their extensive barn, with va- rious out-buildings, had been entirely car- ried away. Parts of them were found, on the following morning, on Barnes Com- mon, at the distance of a mile, while other parts were scattered around the fields. He related also, that two. horses which were feeding in a shed, were driven, with their manger, into the ditch on the opposite side of the lane ; and that a loaded cart was torn from the shafts and wheels, and wafted into an adjoining field. A crop of turnips were mov^^ed down as with a scythe, and a double row of twenty or thirty full-grown elms, which stood on the sides of the lane, were torn up by the roots. One man was killed in the barn, and six others were wounded, or so severely shocked as to require relief in an hospital. Having never before met with a case of such total destruction from the action of 184 A morning's walk electricity, 1 considered these facts as too interesting to be lost. It may be worth while to add, in elucidation, that the mis- chief was doubtless occasioned by an ascending ball; or rather, as the action extended over a surface of three or four acres, by a succession of ascending balls.* The conducting substances were dry or imperfect, and thence the violence of the explosions. This is neither the time nor place to speak of the erroneous views still entertained of a power which is only known to us by experiments made within a non-conducting atmosphere, whose anta- gonist properties, or peculiar relations to it, afford results which are mistakenly ascribed to the power itself, as properties per se. Are we warranted in calling in an inde?- * I use the word hall, because 1 consider the power called electric, which shews itself between four containing and contained surfaces, as a phy- sical pomt bearing geometrical relations to those surfaces ; which point, by the rapidity of its motioft to restore some disturbed equilibriuo], generates a continuous fire, and deceives the eye by the seni- %iattce of a stream. FROM LONDON TO fefeW. 185 pendent agent to account for phenomena which are governed in their appearances by every different surface in connexion with which they are exhibited, and which Can be produced only in certain classes of surfaces in .fixed relations to other sur* faces? Can the cause of phenomena, of which we have no knowledge but in the antagonist relations of surfaces called con- ducting and non-conducting, be philoso- phically considered but as the mere effect of those nicely-adjusted relations? Can that power be said to be distinct from the inherent properties of various matter, which can never be exhibited ex- cept in contrast, as plus on one surface, ^x\^ minus in another, or, if positive on A. necessarily and stimultaneously nega- tive on B. ? Are the phenomena called LIGHT, HEAT, GRAVITATION, COHE- SION, ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM, and MAGNETISM, produccd by different powers of nature, or by the action of one power on different bodies, or by the action of different bodies on one active power? 3 is6 A morning's walk Do not the phenomena appear constantly to accompany the same bodies, and are they not therefore occasioned by the qua- lities of the bodies ? May not the different qualities of bodies be sufficient to explain the phenomena on the hypothesis of one active power? Is it necessary that the phenomena should be confined to parti- cular bodies, if there are as many active fluids as phenomena? Is not the exact limitation of each set of phenomena to particular bodies conclusive evidence that the phenomena grow out of some anta- gonist qualities of those bodies ? In fine, do not the varying powers calculated to produce the phenomena, consist of the varying qualities of bodies, and the vary- ing circumstances in which they are placed in regard to each other ; and may not the active power be fixed and always the same? Does not this conclusion best ac- cord with the simplicity of nature ? Is it probable that two active powers could be co-existent? May not the elasticity of a universal medium account for most of the FROM LONDON TO KEW. 187 intricate phenomena of bodies ? May not motion grow out of the vacuum between the atoms of that universal medium ? May there not be set within set, each necessary to the motion of the other, till we ap- proximate a plenum ? May not certain varieties of these involved series of atoms constitute the several media which pro- duce the several phenomena of matter ? Prudence forbids me to extend these queries on subjects which will ever in- terest the speculative part of mankind, but on which it will be difficult, if not im- possible, to arrive at certain and indubi- table conclusions : as, however, I have been led into this digression by existing errors relative to Electricity, I may remark, in conclusion^ that the phenomena produced by this power arise from the action of opposing surfaces through intervening media ; that the excitement impels the sur- faces towards each other ; and that all the phenomena grow out of the motive quality of intervening bodies, whose surfaces are alternately attracted by the comprehend- 188 A MORNliiG-S WALE ing excited surfaces, or out of the want of perfect sraootliness in the opposing or excited surfaces. Electricity is in fact the phenomena of surfaces, growing out of the sole property of their mutual me- chanical attractions, which attractions are gbverned by some necessary relations of the surfaces of the intervening media to the surfaces of the opposing conductors. At any rate, it is irrational to suppose that the cause of causes operates in the production of natural phenomena by the aid of such complicated machinery, and such involved powers, as meti have forced into nature, for the purpose of accounting for affections on their senses, or effects of matter on matter; in the measure of which they have no standard but theif sensitive powers and the undiscovered re- lations of the agent and patient. Would it not, on the contrary, be more con- sistent with the proper views of philosophy to dismiss all occult powers, which are sc many signs of our ignorance or supersti- tion; and to search for the segondaut FROM LONDON TO KEW. 189 CAUSES of all phenomena, as well be^ tween the smallest as the largest masses, in the undeviating laws of arithmetic, GEOMETRY, and mechanics; whose simplicity, sublimity, perfection, and im- mutability, accord with our deductions in regard to the attributes of an omni- scient architect and omnipotent director of the universe? This, however, is certain, that such ca- tastrophes as those described could never occur, if the imperfect conductors of which our buildings are generally composed, were encompassed by more perfect con- ductors. The ridge of the roof of every house should be of metal ; and, if that metallic ridge were connected with the leaden water-pipes, and by them continued into the ground, all buildings would be protected. A descending or an ascending ball would then find a conduit, by which to pass, or freely propagate its powers, without the violent etfects that accompany its transition through air and other non-conductors. The rods of Franklin 'S'SO A MORNlNiO*S WALK :• ar-e toys, which were ingeniously con- trived in the infancy of this branch of science, but they onght now to be for- gotten. Before I dismiss this interesting topic, 1 w^ould ask whether the transmifesioa of the power called e/fcz^nc, to a particular spot, does not always afford evidence^ that at that spot there exists, beneath the surface of the earth, either a vein of metallic ore, a spring, or some other competent conductor, which the power called electric is seeking to reach, when the antagonist non-conductors exhibit their destructive phenomena? Does not the power or vacuum created by the change of volume in the aqueous vapour of the cloud, regard only the perfect con- ductors prepared to receive it, however deeply they may be concealed beneath the surface of the non-conducting ^r im- perfectly-conducting soil and vegetable surface ? If it were not so, would not the stroke always affect the higher objects, oi? prefer palpable conduetors in moderatelf FROM LONDON TO KEW. ^ l^l devated sites ? In this instance 200 de- grees of the horizon were more elevated than the place attacked, while the destruc- tion proves that the superficies invited no accumulation here. Must not then the predisposing and operative cause have existed beneath the surface ; and, hence, may not the selection of lightning, in njost cases where it prefers lower sites, afford evidence of the existence of metallic strata, of springs, or other conducting surfaces, the discovery of which, by such natural test, may sometimes be important to the owner of the soil ? The bottom of Roehampton-lane joins the road which leads from Putney and Wandsworth to Richmond. Here I came again upon the same alluvial Fiat which I left when I ascended from Wandsworth to Putney-heath, having since passed a corner of the undulating high land on which stand Wimbledon, its common, Roehampton, Richmond-park, and its lovely hill. A more interesting site of the same extent, is not perhaps to be found 192 A morning's WALK in the world. Its picturesque beauty, and its general advantages as a place o'' resi- dence, are attested by the preference given to it by ministers and public men, v/ho select it as a retreat from the carej* of ambition. On this ridge Pitt, Tqoke, Addington, Burdett, Goldsmid, and Pun- das, were recent contemporary residents. Here, amid the orgies of the latter, were probably concerted many of those poli- tical projects which have unfortunately desolated the finest portions of Europe, for the wicked, yet vain, purpose of de- stroying Truth by the sword ! In an ad*- joining domain, Tooke beguiled, in phi- lological pastime, the evening of a life whose meridian had been employed in disputing, inch by inch, the overwhelming march of corrupt influence; while, as though it were for effect of light apd shade, the spacious plain of Wimbledon served to display the ostentatious manceu- vres of those aer-vile agents of equivocal justice, whose permanent organization by an anti-human policy has been ^agrafted ifROM LONDON TO KE>T. 193 on modern society, but whose aid would seldom or never be necessarv, if the purposes of their employers accorded with the omnipotent influence of truth, reason, and justice. I was now on the border of Barnes Common, consisting of 500 acres of waste; and at a few paces eastward stands Barnes poor-house! Yes! — in this enlightened country — in the vicinage of the residence of many boasted statesmen— . stands a parish poor-house on a waste! The unappropriated means of plenty and independence surrounding a mansion of hopeless poverty, maintained by collections of nearly 4000/. per annum from the industrious parishioners ! Lest readers in future ages should doubt the fact, the antiquary of the year 2500 is hereby assured, — ^^that it stood at the angle of the Wandsworth and Fulham roads, at the perpendicular distance of a mile from the Thames, and by the side of the fashionable ride from London to Rich- Kond !^ — Did so monstrous an incongruity o 194 A morning's WALK never penetrate the heads or hearts of any of the high personages who daily pass it ? Did it never occur to any of them that it would be more rational to convert the materials of this building into cottages, surrounded by two or three acres of the waste, by which the happiness of the poor and the interests of the public would be blended? Can any antiquated feudal right to this useless tract property super-* sede the paramount claims of the poor and tlie public? — From respect to any such right;, ought so great a libel on our political economy to be suffered to exist, as a re- ceptacle for the poor in the middle of an ancultivated and unappropriated waste? To dwell further on so mortifying a proof of the faUibility of human wisdom may, how- ever, pique the pride of those who enjoy the power to organize a better system :^*-l therefore forbear ! '' These and other considerations prompt-^ ed me to visit the interior. I found it clean and aky, but the best rooms were not appropriated to the poor. The mas* 1 FEOM XONBON TO TCE W. 1 9$ ter and raatron were plain honest people, tvho, I have no doubt, do all the justice that is possible with a wretched pittance of 5s. 6d, per head per week Should 4^. 6d, remain to provide each with twenty* one meals, this is but two-pence half^ penny per meal 1 Think of this, ye pam- pered minions of wealth, who gorge turtle at a guinea a pound, who beastialize your* selves with wine at a shilling a glass, and who wantonly devour a guinea's worth of fruit after finishing a sumptuous dinner !•— The guardians have judiciously annexed to the house an acre or two of ground for a garden, which is cultivated by the pau- pers, and supplies them with sufficient vegetables. This, though a faint approach to my plan, is yet sufficient to prove what the whole common would effect, if prot perly applied to the wants and natural claims of the poor. It is too often pre- tended that these wastes are incapable of cultivation — but the fertile appearance of enclosed patches constantly falsifies such selfish and malignant assertions. 196 A morning's walk ,jj?| J visited the community of these pan-* pers, consisting in this small parish of only thirty men, women, and children, in one large room. Among them were some dis^ gusting-looking idiots, a class of objectis who seem to be the constant nuisance of every poor-house.* How painful it must be to honest poverty to be brought into contact with such wretched creatures, who are often vicious, and, in their tricks and habits, always offensive and dirty. Sure- ly, for the sake of these degraded speci- mens of our kindy as well as out of respect to the parish-poor, who have no choice but to live with them, every county ought to be provided with a special Asylum ^r idiots ; whose purpose should be to smoothen their passage through life, and to render it as little noisome to others, and to one another, as possible. On leaving this poor-house, I crossed 1 Barnes Common in a north-eastern direc- * Since these observations were first published, a ^ new law has provided for the separate maintenance ' «f these wretched objects, aeariy on the plan sug- gested. FROM LONDON TO KEW. \0f tion, with a view to visit at Barnes-Elms the former residence of Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, and once the place of meeting of the famous Kit-Cat Club. siseQn j]^ig Common, nature still appeared to be in a primeval and unfinished state. The entire Flat from the high ground to the Thames, is evidently a mere fresh- water formation, of comparatively iKiodern date, created out of the rocky ruins which the rains, in a series of ages, have washed from the high grbunds, and further augmented by the decay of local vege- tation. The adjacent high lands, being elevated above the action of the fresh water, were no doubt marine formations, created by the flowing of the sea during the four thousand years when the earth was last in fe perihelion during our sum- mer months; which was between twelve and seven thousand years since. The Flat or fresh-water formation, on which I was walking, still only approaches its com- pletion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defiaed the boundaries of the o 3 19$ A morning's WALK rivef. At spring-tides, particularly when the line of the moon's apsides coincides with the syzygies, or when the ascending node is in the vernal equinox, or after heavy rains, the river still overflows its banks, and indicates its originally extended scite under ordinary circumstances. The state of transition also appears in marshes, bogs, and ponds, which, but for the interference of man, would many ages ago have been filled up with decayed forests and the remains of undisturbed vegetation. Rivers thus become agents of the never- ceasing CREATION, and a means of giving greater equaHty to the face of the land. The sea, as it retired, either ab- ruptly from some situations, or gradually from others, left dry land, consisting of downs and swelling hills, disposed in all the variety which would be consequential on a succession of floods and ebbs durhag several thousand years. These downs, acted upon by rain, were mechanically, or in solution, carried off by the water to the lowe&t levels, the elevations being FUOM I.0NIM3EN TO KfiW. 19^9 thereby depressed, and the valleys pro- portionally raised. The low lands became of course the channels through which the rains returned to the sea, and the suc- cessive deposits on their sides, hardened by the wind and sun, have in five or six thousand years created such tracts of allu- vial soil, as those which now present themselves in contiguity with most rivers. The soil, thus assembled and compounded, is similar in its nature to the rocks and^ hilk whence it was washed; but, having been so pulverized and so divided by so* lution, it forms the finest medium for the secretion of all vegetable principles, and hence the banks of rivers are the favourite residences of man. Should the channel constantly narrow itself more and more, till it becomes choaked in its course, or at its outlet, then, for a time, lakes would be formed, which in like manner would narrow themselves and disappear. New channels would then be formed, or the fain would so diffuse itself over the sur-^ face, that the fall and the evaporation would balance each other. 20d A morning's walk*^, Such are the unceasing works of crea- tion, constantly taking place on this ex- terior surface of the earth ; where, though less evident to the senses and experience of man, matter apparently inert is in as progressive a state of change from the operation of unceasing and immutable causes, as in the visible generations of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Thus water, wind, and heat, the energies of which NEVER CEASE to be excrtcd, are constantly producing new combinations, changes, and creations ; which, if they accord with the harmony of the whole, are fit and '* good ;" but, if discordant, are speedily re-organized or extinguished by contrary and opposing powers. In a word, WHATEVER IS, IS FIT; AND WHATEVER IS NOT FIT, IS NOT, OR SOON CEASES TO BE ! — Such sccms to be the governing principle of Nature — the key of all her mysteries — the primary law of creation ! All things are the proximate effects of a balance of immutable powers— those powers are results of a primor- dial QAusE, — -while that cause is in- fROM LONDON TO KEW. 561 scrutable and incoraprehensible to crea- tures possessing but a relative being, who live only in time and space, and who feel and act merely by the impulse of limited senses and powers. A lane, in the north-west corner of the Common, brought rae to Barnes' Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker of London. The family were not ^.t home; but, on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they as- sured me, with great simplicity, that no such gentleman lived there. 1 named the Kit- Cat'dub, as accustomed to assemble here ; but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule ; and I was told that no such Club was held th^re ; but, perhaps, said one to the other, the gentkman means the Club that assembles at the public- house on the Common. Knowing, how- ever, that I was at the right place, I could not avoid expressing my vexation, that the periodical assemblage of the first men of their age, should be so entirely forgotten by those who now reside on the 202 A morning's walk spot-^vvheil one of them exclaimed, '* I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room," — ^' Aye," re- joined his comrade, *' I remember some- body coming once before to see something of this sort, and my master sent him there." I requested then to be shewn to this room ; when I was conducted across a detached garden, and brought to a handsome structure in the architectural style of the early part of the last century — evidently the establishment of the Kit- Cat Club ! A walk covered with docks, thistles, nettles, and high grass, led from the re- mains of a gate-way in the garden-wall, to the door which opened into the build- ing. Ah ! thought I, along this desolate avenue the finest geniuses in England gaily proceeded to meet their friends; — ^yet within a century, how changed — how deserted — how revolting ! A cold chill seized me, as the man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and as I beheld the once- elegant haU, filled with cobwebs, a fallen FROM LONDON TO KEW. 208 ceiling, and accumulating rubbish. On the right, the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the par* lours into a wash-house ! The door on the left led to a spacious and once su- perb staircase, now in ruins, Med with dense cobwebs, which hung from the lofty ceiling, and seemed to be deserted even by the spiders ! The entire building, for want of ventilation, having become food for the fungus, called dry-rot, the timber had lost its cohesive powers. I ascended the staircase, therefore, with a feehng of danger, to which the man would not expose himself; — but 1 was well re- quited for my pains. Here I found the Kit- Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed ill the- days of its glory. It is eighteen feet high, and forty feet long, by twenty wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of its age ; but the whole was falling to pieces, from the effects of the drv-rot. My attention was chiefly attracted by the faded cloth-hanging of the room, ^04 A morning's walk whose red colour once set off the fa- mous portraits of the Club, that hung around it Their marks and sizes were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guidance of the hanger I Thus was I, sis it were, by these still legible names, brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, ari'fl Dryden, and with many hereditary nobles, remembered, only because they were pa- trons of those natural nobles ! — I read their names aloud! — I invoked their de- parted spirits 1— I was appalled by the echo of my own voice '.—The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs in the win- dows, and a swallow's nest in the corner of the ceiling, proclaimed that I was viewir^ a vision of the dreamers of a past age,-^ that I saw reahzed before me the speak- ing vanities of the anxious career of man L The blood of the reader of sensi- bility will thrill as mine thrilled ! It was deling without volition^ and therefore in- capable of analysis 1 JROM LONDON TO KEW. SOS I could not help lingering in a place so consecrated by the religion of Nature; and, sitting down for a few minutes on some broken boards, I involuntarily shed a tear of sympathy for the departed great — for times gone by, — here brought be- fore my eyes in so tangible a shape ! I yielded to the unsophisticated sentiments which I could not avoid reading in this VOLUME of ruins ; and felt, by irresistible association^ that every object of our £tf- fections— that our affections themselves — and that all things that delight us, must soon pass away like this place and its former inhabitants ! Beginning yes- terday—flourishing TO-DAY — ^easing to-morrow! — such is the sum of the history of all organized being I Certain combinations excite, and the cre- ative powers proceed with success, till balanced by the inertia of the materials — a contest of maturity arises, measured in length by the activity of the antagonist powers ; — but the unceasing inertia finally prevails over the original excitement and £06 A mohning's walk its accessary stimuli, and ultimately pro- duces disorganization and dissolution ! Such is the abstract view of the physical laws which, in the peculiar career of intellec- tual man, successively give rise to hope in youth — pride in manhood — reflec- tion in decay — and humility in old age. He knows his fate to be inevitable —but every day's care is an epitome of his course, and every night's sleep affords an anticipation of its end I — He is thus taught to die — ^and, if in spite of his vices or follies he should livo till his ivorld has passed away before him, he will then contentedly await the termina* tion of that vital action which, creating no passion, affords no enjoyment. Such, said I, is the scheme of Benevolence, which, by depriving the prospect of death of its terrors, makes room, without suf- fering, for a succession of new genera-* tions, to whose perceptions the world is ever young. The only wise use therefore which men can make of scenes like that before me, is to deduce from them a FROM LONDON TO K12W. tOT lesson of inoderaLtion and humility ; — ^for, such as are these dumb, though visible cares of that generation— such will our own soon be ! On rejoining Mr. Hoare's man in the hall below, and expressing my grief that so interesting a building sliould be suffered to go to decay for want of attention, he told me that his master intended to pull i| down and unite it to an adjoining barn, so as to form of the two a riding-house ; IMid I learn that this design has since been executed! The Kit- Cat pictures were painted early in the eighteenth century, and, about the year 1710, were brought to this spot ; but the room I have been describing was not built till ten or fifteen years afterwards. They were forty- two in number, and were presented by tlie members to the elder Tonson, who died in 1736. He left them to his great nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. They were then removed from this building to the house of his brother^ at Water- Oakley, near Windsor; 20t A morning's WALIC and, on his death, to the house of Mft.; Baker, of Hertingfordbury, where thcg^ now remain, and where I lately saWi them splendidly lodged and in fine pre-, nervation. It may be proper to ob- serve, that the house of Mr. Hoare wa* not the house of Mr. Tonson, and thal,^ Mr. Tonson's house stood nearer to thc^ Kit- Cat Club-rooms, having a few years^ since been taken down. The situation- is certainly not a happy one, being on a^ level with the Thames, and the adjacent* grounds being deeply flooded at higk tides. It is, however, completely se-* questered from vulgar approach, and oa that account was, perhaps, preferred aa^ the retreat of a man of business. At Barnes' Elms lived the virtuous minister of Elizabeth, Sir Francis Wal- siNGHAM, and here he once entertained that chivalrous queen. Cowley, the poet, afterwards resided here ; and, in a later age Heydegger, the bufFoony who gave an eccentric entertainment to the second Guelph, and contrived to gra- FROlfif rONDON TO KEW. 20$ tify'fiis listless mind by an ingenious sur- prize, in at first making him believe that he was not prepared to receive him, and then contriving a sudden burst of lights, music, and gaiety. Mn returning through the lane which led from the Kit-Cat Club-room to Barnes Common, the keenest emotions of the human mind vvere excited by an unfore- seen cause. I was admiring the luxuri- ance and grandeur of the vegetation, in trees which from the very ground ex- panded in immense double trunks, and in the profusion of weeds and shrubs which covered every part of the untrodden sur- face — when, on a sudden, 1 caught the dis- tant sound of a ring of village bells. Nothing could be more in accordance with the predispositions of my mind. All the melancholy which is created by the recurrence of the same succession of tones, instantly controlled and oppressed my feel- ings. I became the mere patient of these sounds ; and I sank, as it were, under the fof^f of gloomy impressions, which so p 210 A morning's walk completely lulled and seduced me, that I suffered without being able to exejrt an effort to escape from their magic spell. Seldom had the power of sound ac- quired a similar ascendency over me. I seemed to be carried back by it to days and events long passed away. My soul, so to speak, was absorbed; and 1 leaned upon a gate, partly to indulge the re- verie, partly as an effect of lassitude, and partly to listen more attentively to the sounds which caused so peculiar a traiaof feeling. There were six bells ; and they rang what might be designed for a merry peal, to celebrate some village festival; or, perhaps, thought I, they may be profaning a sanc- tuary of the religion of peace, and out- raging a land of freedom, to announce some bloody victory, gained by legions of trained slaves, over patriots who have been asserting the liberties and defend- ing the independence of their country. Whichever might b^ the purpose, (for, alas 1 the latter, among my degenerated FROM LONDON TO KEW. 211 countrymen, is as likely as the former,) the recurring tones produced correspond- ing vibrations on my nerves, and I felt myself played Ajpon like a concordant mu- sical instrument. Presendy, however, it occurred to me, that I was not an entire stranger to the tones of those bells, and that part of their fascination arose from an association between therii and some of the earliest and dearest objects in my remembrance. '^ Surely," I exclaimed, *^they are Ghiswick bells 1— the very bells under the sound of which I re* ceived part of my early education, and, as a school- boy, passed the happiest days of my life ! — Well may their tones vi- brate to my inmost soul — and kindle un- common sympathies !" I now recollected that the winding of the river must have brought me nearer to that simple and primitive village than the profusion of wood had permitted me to perceive, and my nerves had been unconsciously acted upon by tones which served as keys to all the associations connected with p 2 212 A MOHNING'S WALK these bells, their church, and the village of Chiswick ! I listened again, and now discriminated the identical sounds which I had not heard during a period of more than thirty years. I distinguished the very words, in the successive tones, which the school-boys and puerile imaginations at Chiswick used to combine with them. In fancy, I became again a school- boy — ^' Yes," said I, *^ the six bells repeat the village-legend, and tell me that " my dun cow has just calv'd,'' ex- actly as they did above thirty years since!" — Did the reader ever encounter a similar key-note, leading to a multitude of early and vivid impressions ; for in like manner these sympathetic tones brought before my imagination number- less incidents and personages, no longer important, or no longer in existence. My scattered and once-loved school-mates, their characters, and their various fortunes, passed in rapid review before me; — my school- master, his wife, and all the gen- try, and heads of families, whose orderly FROM LONDON TO KEW, 213 attendance at Divine service on Sundays, while those well-remembered bells were ''chiming for church," (but now departed and mouldering in the adjoining graves ! ) were rapidly presented to my recollection. With what pomp and form they used to enter and depart from their house of God 1 — I saw with the mind's eye the widow Hogarth and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, dressed in their silken sacks, their raised head- dresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high erook'd canes, pre- ceded by their aged servant, Samuel ; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew I There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Re- view, with his literary wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap ! And oft- times the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecu- niary distress, created by the luxury of p 3 214. A morning's walk charity ! Nor could I forget the humble distinction of the aged sexton Mortefee, whose skill in psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched groupe of singers, whom Hogarth so happily pourtrayed ; whose performance with the tuning-fork excited so much wonder in little boys; and whose gesticulations and contortions of head, hand, and body, in beating time, were not outdone, even by Joah Bates in the commemorations of Handel ! Yes, simple and happy villagers 1 I remember scores of you ; — Kow fortunately ye had escaped the contagion of the metropolitan vices, though distant but five miles; and how many of you have I conversed with, who, at an adult age, had never beheld the degrading assemblage of its knaveries and miseries ! I revelled in the melancholy pleasure of these recollections, yielding my whole soul to that witchery of sensibility, which magnifies the perception of being, till one of the bells was overset ; when, the peal stopping, - 1 had leisure to reflect on the FROM LONDON TO KEW. 215 rapid advance of the day, and on the consequent necessity of quickening my speed. At the end of this lane I crossed a mad, which I found led to ChisAvick Ferry. The opening gave increased ef- fect to the renewed peal, and I regretted that I could not then indulge in a nearer approach to that beloved spot. I passed a farm-house and some neat villas, and presently came to the unostentatious, but interestingly-ancient structure of Barnes Ghurcb, situated on the Common, at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the village. I essayed to enter the church- yard to read some of the chronicles of mortality, particularly as it invited at- tention by the unusual object of a dis- play of elegant Roses, which I afterwards learnt had been cultivated on the same spot about 150 years, to indulge the conceit of a person of the name of Rose, who was buried there, and left an acre of ground to the parish to defray the ex- pence ; but I found the gate locked, and ^l6 A morning's WALK was told it was never opened, except during service. 1 confess I vi'as not pleased with this regulation, because it appeared to sever the affections of tlie living from their proper sympathy with the dead. I have felt in the same manner in regard to the inclosed cemeteries of the metropolis : they separate the dead too abruptly from surviving friends and re- latives. Grief seeks to indulge itself un- observed ; it desires to be unrestrained by forms and hours, and to vent itself in perfect solitude. The afflicted wife longs to weep over the grave of her husband ; the husband to visit the grave of a be- loved wife ; and the tender mother seeks the spot endeared by the remains of her child : but they cannot submit to the for- mality of asking permission, or allow their griefs to be intruded upon by strange at- tendants. Such tributes to our unso- phisticated feelings are, however, denied by the locks, bolts, and walls, of the metropolitan cemeteries. The practised grave-digger w^onders at the indulgence of FROM LONDON TO KEW. 2l7 unavailing woe — the unconscious tenants of his domain possess no pecuhar claims en his sympathy — he cannot conceive how any can be felt by others — and, if he grant permission to enter, it must be for some cause more urgent, and more ap- parent, than that of bewailing over a grave 1 Did it never occur, however, to the clergymen who superintend these de- positories of mortality, that more respect is due to the feelings of survivors ? Is it necessary for any evident purpose, that the gates should be locked at any time, or for more than a few hours in the night? And, if even this privation be suffered merely from the fear of resur- rection-men, is it not due to the best feelings of our nature that the severest punishment should attach to the crime of steaUng dead bodies? What can now be learnt of anatomy which cannot be found in books and models, or be taught in the dissection of murderers? I would there- fore rather bury a detected resurrection- jnan alivQ with the body he might 1 218 A morning's \^ALK be stealing, than shut out the living froQa all communion with the dead, and from all the sympathies and lessons ad- dressed to the heart and understanding by their unrestricted intercourse. Barnes consists of a few straggling houses opposite the Common, of a mean street leading to the water-side, and of a row of elegant houses facing the Thames, on a broad terrace nearly half a mile long. On the opposite side of the river is a tract of new-made swampy ground, shaped circularly by the winding of the river. The chord of this circle extends from Chiswick to Strand-on-the-Green ; and upon it is seen the exquisitely beau- tifol villa of the Duke of Devonshire, where Charles James Fox lately termi- nated his patriotic career ; and on the left are the house and extensive grounds long occupied by the amiable Valentine Morris, esq. who, on his death-bed in Italy, in 1786, bequeathed these pre- mises and a competent annuity as a pro- vision for about thirty aged horses and FROM LONDON TO KEW. 219 dogs, — and here some of them survived till within these seven years, dying, from the gradual decay of their vital powers, at the ages of forty and fifty. The beauty and seclusion of this ter- race have long invited the residence of persons of wealth and distinction. Many of those Frenchmen who, from interested connexions, or the prejudices of edu- cation, preferred exile and comparative poverty in foreign lands, to the reign of liberty and reason at home, came to reside on this spot. Here was acted the terrible tragedy of the Count and Countess D'Antraigues. These fa- mous intriguants, after traversing Europe to enlist the vain prejudices of kings, and the sycophant spirit of courtiers, against the unalterable principles of the rights of man, settled themselves in a small house near the upper end of this terrace. Here their establishment consisted only of a single Italian footman, and two maid- servants. One day in every week they went to London, in a hired coach, to 220 . A morning's WALK confer with their partizans; and it was oh the morning of onq of these excursions that these unhappy persons were suddenly butchered by their Itahan faotraan. The coach stood at the door, and the Count and Countess had descended the stairs, when the servant, rushing from the par- lour, fired a pistol at the Count ; the ball of which struck, but did not injure him. It, however, so much surprised him as to throw him off his guard, when the wretch struck him with a stiletto between the shoulders. The Count at first reeled on the step of the door, but instantly rushed up stairs, as is supposed, to get e^rms from his bed-chamber, which he reached, but only to fall dead on the floor. In the mean time, the Countess, who was two or three paces in advance, and had reached the carriage-door, not aware of the cause of the report of the pistol, and of the Count's precipitate retreat, asked the man, peevishly, why he did not open the door? He advanced as if to do it; but instantly stabbed her in i FROM I/ONDON TO KEW. 22 1 the breast to the hilt of his weapon : she shrieked, reeled a few yards, and fell dead beside the post which adjoins the house to the West, on the .pavement near which her blood was lately visible. The villain himself fled up-stairs to the room where his master lay weltering in his blood, and then, with a razor, cut his own throat. I saw the coachman, who told me that scarcely five minutes elapsed between the time when he heard them approach the car- riage and beheld them corpses ! The several acts were begun and over in an instant. At first he could not conceive what was passing ; and, though he leaped from the box to the aid of the dying lady, he had then no suspicion of the fate of the Count. I took pains to ascertain the assassin's mo- tive for committing such horrid deeds; but none can be traced beyond a feeling of revenge, excited by a supposed intention t)f his master to discard him, and send him out of the kingdom ; a design which, it is said, he discovered by hstening on the stairs to the conversation of the Count 222 A morning's walk and Countess, while they were enjoying the water- scene by moon-light, on the preceding evening, from their projecting windows. It was impossible to view the spot where such a tragedy had been acted, without horror, and without deep sympathy for the victims ; yet it gratified me to find the house already inhabited by a respect- able family, because it thus appeared that there are now dispersed through society many whose minds are raised above the artifices of superstition, — which, in no dis- tant age, would have filled these premises with ghosts and hobgoblins, till they had become a bye-word and a heap of ruins ! Nearly adjoining and behind the resi^ dence of Count d'Antraigues, stand the premises and grounds long occupied by another distinguished emigrant, the Mar- quis de Chabanes, a relation of the noto- rious and versatile Talleyrand. This mar- quis here pursued two speculations, by which, at the time, he attracted attention iind applause. In the first he undertook to give useful body and consistency to the FROM LONDON TO KEW. 223 dust of coals, of which thousands of tons, before their application to gas-lights, were annually wasted in the shipping and coal- wharfs ; and for this purpose he erected a manufactory; but, after much loss of labour and property, found it necessary to abandon the project. In the second speculation, he proposed to introduce va- rious French improvements into English horticulture, and undertook to supply the fruiterers of the metropolis with tender and unseasonable fruits and vegetables, in greater perfection, and at a lower rate, than they had heretofore been supplied by the English gardeners. For this pur- pose he built large and high walls, and very extensive hot-houses and conserva- tories ; but, being unable to contend against the fickleness of our climate, he found it necessary to abandon this scheme also; when the glasses, the frames^ &c, were sold by auction; and no vestiges now remain of his labours, but his vines and the ruins of his flues and founda- tion-wall&. 224 A morning's WALK During my inquiries of the working gardener who has succeeded him on the ground, I learnt some particulars in re- gard to the economy by which the metro- polis receives its vast supplies of fruits and fresh vegetables. Mr. Middle-^ TON, in his philosophical Survey of Mitf^ dlesex, estimates the quantity of gardeii^ ground, within ten miles of the metropoli^t at 15,000 acres, giving employment in the fruit- season to 60,000 labourers. Tfe mode of conveying this vast produce t6 market creates habits among this-^^t^ merous class of people which are little suspected by the rest of the community. A gardener's life appears to be one of the most primitive and natural ; btit^ passed near London, it is as artificial and unnatural as any known to our forced state of society. Covent-garden market is held three days in the week, and othea- markets on the same or other days; and, as vegetables ought to be eaten as soon as possible after they are gathered, it is the business of the gardener to gather one FROM LONDON TO KEW. 225 day and sell the next; hence the inter- vening night is the period of conveyance from the places of growth to those of consumption. AH the roads round Lon- dpU| - therefore, are covered with markett carts and waggons during the night, so that they may reach the markets by three^ four, or five o'clock, when the dealers attend ; and these markets are over by si% or seven. The shops of retailers are then supplied by the aid of ill- paid Irish women//^ho carry loads of a hundred- weight to all parts of London on their heads, to meet the demands of good house-wives, who, at ten or eleven, buy their garden-stuff for the day. This rapid routine creates a prodigious quantity of labour for men, women, and horses. Every gardener has his market-cart or carts, which he loads at sun-set; and, they depart at ten, eleven, twelve, or one o'clock, according to the distance from London. Each cart is accompanied by a driver, and also by a person to sell, gene- rally the gardener's wife; who, having 22G A morning's walk . sold the load, returns with the team by nine or ten o'clock in the morning ; and has thus finished the business of the day, before half the inhabitants of London have risen from their beds. Such is the economy of every gardener's family within ten miles of London, — of some every night, and of others eveiy other night, during at least six months in the year. The high vegetable season in sum- mer, as well as peculiar crops at other times, call for exertions of labour, or rather of slavery, scarcely paralleled by any other class of people. Thus, in the strawberry season, hundreds of women are employed to carry that delicate fruit to market on their heads; and their industry in per- forming this task is as wonderful, as their remuneration is unworthy of the opulent classes who derive enjoyment from their labour. They consist, for the most part, of Shropshire and Welsh girls, who walk to London at this season in droves, to perform this drudger}^, just as the Irish peasantry come to assist in the hay and FROM LONDON TO KEW. 227 €orn harvests. I learnt that these women carry upon their heads baskets of straw- berries, or raspberries, weighing from forty tO' fifty pounds, and make two turns in the day, from Isleworth to market, a dis- tance of thirteen miles each way; three turns from Brentford, a distance of nine " miles ; and four turns from Hammersmith, a distance of six miles. For the most part, they find some conveyance back; but even then these industrious creatures e^ny loads from twenty-four to thirty miles a-day, besides walking back unladen some part of each turn ! Their remunera- tion for this unparalleled slavery is from Ss» to 9s, per day ; each turn from the distance of Isleworth being 4^. or 4*. 6d.; and from that of Hammersmith Qs, or ^s. 3d, Their diet is coarse and simple, their drink, tea and small-beer; costing not above Is. or 1^. 6d. and their back- conveyance about ^s. or ^s, 6d, ; so that their net gains are about 5s, per da}^, which, in the strawberry season, of forty days, amounts to 10/. After this period 225 A morning's walk the same women find employment in gathering and marketing vegetables, at lower wages, for other sixty days, netting about 5L more. With this poor pittance they return to their native county, and it adds either to their humble comforts, or creates a small dowry towards a rustic establishment for life. Can a more in- teresting picture be drawn of virtuous exertion ? Why have our poets failed to colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their favourite Shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls ! For beauty, symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs of Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia ! Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the work- house 1 In keen suffering, they endure all that the imagination of a poet could desire; they live hard, they sleep oa straw in hovels and barns, and they often burst an artery, or drop down dead from FROM LONDON TO KEW. 229 the effect of heat and over-exertion ! Yet, «uch is the state of one portion of our female popalation, at a time when we are calling ourselves the most polished nation on earth, and pretending to be so wealthy that we give away millions a-year to fo- reigners unsolicited, and for no intelligible purpose! And such too is their dire ne- cessity, that it would be most cruel to suggest or recommend any invention that mio^ht serve as a substitute for their sla- very', and thereby deprive them of its wretched annual produce ! The transit from Barnes to Mordake Is but a few paces; a small elbow in the road forming their point of separation. Both of them contain some handsome villas, and they are pleasantly situated on the banks of the Thames; yet they are less beautiful than they might be rendered, by very slender attentions. There is no public taste, no love of natal soil, no pride of emulation apparent, though the scite is one of the finest in England; A few mansions of the opulent adorn ci3 it30 A morning's walk both villages, and the country fascinates in spite of the inhabitants ; but the third and fourth rate houses have a slovenly, and often a kind of pig-sty character, dis- gusting to those who, in the beautiful towns and villages of Essex, have seen what may be done, to improve the habi- tations even of humble life. Lovely Witham, and Kelvedon, and Cogge- shali ! what examples you set to all other towns in your neatly painted and whitened houses — unostentatious, though cheerfulT-r- and inviting, though chaste and modest ! What a contrast do you present to the towns and villages in Middlesex and Surrey, and even in Kent ! If poverty forbids a stuccoed or plastered wall, the cleanly and oft-repeated whitewash proves .the generous public spirit of the occupant, while the outside seldom has occasion to blush for the inside. A spirit of harmony runs through the whole, and a pure ha- bitation is indicative of pure inhabitants; thus, cleanliness in the house leads to neat- ness of apparel— both require order, and FROM LONDON TO KEW. 231 out of order grow moral habits, domestic happiness, and the social virtues. Nor is this theory fanciful; Witham, Kelve- don, and Coggeshall, form a district which is at once the most beautiful, the least vicious, and the happiest, in the kingdom. One virtue is doubtless con- sequent on another, and one good habit generates another; the result is the harmonious triumph of virtue! If it be doubted whether the white- washed exte- rior is more than '^ an outward and visible sign" of the purity within, I reply — that virtue is so much the effect of habit, that whatever improves the habits improves the character ; and that, if a house were frequently white-washed within and with- out, it could scarcely fail to banish per- sonal filth from the inmates ; while habits of cleanliness, which call for habits of in- dustry, would produce the rest. I have, indeed, often thought that it would be an efficacious means of bettering the morals, as well as the health, of the London poor, if St. Giles's, Hockly-in-the-hole, Fleet- 232 A morning's WAL^ lane, Saffron-hill, and other dens of vice and misery, were by law lime- washed inside and outside twice in every year. But, in whatever degree this doctrine may be just, let me hope these observations will meet the eye of some active philan- thropists, who, being thus taught to con- sider cleanliness as an auxihary of morak and happiness, will be induced so to paint and whiten our dusky-coloured villages and dirty towns, as to render them wor- thy of virtuous residents, in the hope that, by reciprocation, they may render them- selves worthy of their purified habitations. I do not charge on Barnes and Mortlake exclusively the characteristics of filth — they are not inferior to other villages within ten miles ; but the whole require improve- ment, and I recommend Witham, Kel- vedon, and other places in that district of Essex, to their imitation. Mortlake church-yard and its ancient church stand pleasantly on the north side of a large field, across which is a pic^ turesque foot-path to East Sheep. 1 in- i FROM LONDON TO KEW. ^35 quired eagerly for the tomb of Partridge, the almanack-maker and astrologer, and found it in the south-east corner, in a tot- tering condition. Relics so famous would, it might have been supposed, have ex- torted from the Parish Vestry a single hod of mortar, and an hour's labour of a mason, to sustain it: yet thus it is, not only at Mortlake, but every where. No- thing is conceded to public feeling, and the most venerable monuments are suf- fered to fall to decay for want of the most trifling repairs. The following in- scription is still legible on the slab of the tomb : — Johannes Partridge, AstrologusetMedicinae Doctor, natus est apud East-Sheen, in comitatu Surrey, 8*^ die Januarii, anno 1644, et mortuus est Londini 24° die Junii, anno 1715. Medicinam fecit duobus Regibus unique Reginse; Carolo scilicet Secundo, Willielmo Tertio, Reginaeque Mariae. Creatus Medicinae Doctor Lugduni Batavorum. How many are the associations which grow out of this name of Partridge! He was one of the last of the learned votaries of Astrology, the mother of the 534 A morning's WALK sciences, though herself the daughter of superstition. His works. on genitures, and on the errors of his favourite science, are specimens of acute reasoning, not ex- ceeded by the ablest disquisitions on more worthy subjects. Yet he was held up by Swift as an impostor, though Swift him- self lived by a show of faith in other mys- teries, for which his reverence is very doubtful. Not so Partridge ; he evi- dently believed sincerely that the stars were indices of fate, and he wrote and acted in that belief, however much he may have been deceived by appearances. He found, as all students in astrology find, that every horoscope enabled him to foretel with precision a certain number of events; and, if his prognostics failed in some cases, he ascribed the failure to no defect of his celestial intelligencers, but to the errors or short-sightedness of his art. Good, and even wise men have, in all ages, been deceived by the same appear- ances. They found that the planets fore- told some events; they thence inferred FROM LONDON TO KEW, 235 that the planets ruled those and all events; and, if the science often disappointed them, they found an apology for it in their own mistaken judgments, or in the errors introduced into it by different authors. Astrologers were therefore not impostors, as they are often described by the over-righteous, the hasty, or the igno - rant. They found a science reared on the observations and experience of the remotest antiquity, and their prognosti- cations were deduced from its established laws. Its practices were directed by the unerring motions of the earth, moon, and planets; and it possessed characteristics of grandeur and sublimity, aiising from the magnitude and solemnity of its sources^ and from the eternal laws which regulated them. , The errors on whicli this science was reared, were not, however, peculiar to astrologers. They were engendered by ignorance, and nurtured by superstition and priestcraft. Every event happens in 236 A MORNING'S WALK its own way, and cannot happen iii any other way than that in which it has actually happened ; or, in other words, an event cannot happen and not happen, or a thing cannot be and not be. This ne- cessary determination of every event in a single manner, the consequence of com- mensurate proximate causes, which it is' often difficult to analyse, served as a fruitful source of superstitious feeling, and as a handle for the priests among the early nations of antiquity. In whatever way an event happened, that was said to he its Fate, notwithstanding a slight ex- ercise of reason would have shewn that what has happened in one way could not, at the same time, happen in another way. But, as it did happen in one way rather than another, the way in which it did happen was said to be predetermined; the kind of cause was not examined which determined it to happen as it did happen ; the effect was even said to rule the causes; and all the causes, remote FROM LONDON TO KEW. 237 and proximate, were said to be operative merely for the sake of producing the ulti- mate effect ! As every event must happen in the way in which it has happened, a description of it, is but an expression of the certainty y that it has happened in such or such a particular manner. If this result be fortu- nate, then all the circumstances which led to it, however remote, are deemed to have been lucky ; though, if it prove unfortu- nate, the same train of causes are then called unlucky. There was, however, neither luck nor ill-luck in these trains, because the remote or necessary physical causes did not determine the proximate and fluctuate ing mental ones. There existed no neces- sary connexion between these trains, be- sides the necessity or certainty that some result must be consequent on every train of events growing out of human life and ac- tion. These trains must, in all cases, pro- duce some result, that is to say, a result of some kind, and not necessarily any parti- cular result. 23S A morning's walk In considering the curious enigma in regard to fatality, men err in con- ceiving that all the remote causes which lead to an event, operate and combine for the sake of some particular result, in- stead of considering every personal or social event as the necessary single effect of the proximate causes; and they also confound the species of causes which pro- duce events. There are tw^o distinct sets of causes, the one physical and the other mental. The physical are determined by fixed, and often by known law^s, and hence we are enabled to foretel the places of the planets and the moment when eclipses of the Sun and Moon will happen for a thousand years to come. The men*' tal are governed by the varying expe- rience, caprice, and self-love, generated within animal minds ; and, being therefore measured by no fixed laws, produce rer= suits which cannot be anticipated, except in their proximate operation. These- mental causes, so to speak, cross each other in every direction, and at one time 1 FROM LONDON TO KE\y. 239 may accelerate, though at another tinje they may retard, or give novel directions to physical causes ; and, as they are generated in every successive moment by the errors and passions of fallible beings, and often have an extensive influence on the affairs of mankind, so they constitute an infinity variety of original causes, which, as no law creates them, no law leads to their effects; of course, therefore, their effects are not necessary, and no knowledge can exist, enabling men to anticipate that which is generated by no fixed laws, and wdiich therefore is not necessary. I lately met a friend, who justly passes for a philosopher. He mentioned the distress of a family which he had just been relieving ; ''and, would you believe it," said he- — '' if I had not passed along a street where I seldom go, and met a child of the family, I should have known nothing of their situation? Was it not evidently pre-ordained, therefore, that I should walk along that street, at that tioaie, for the purpose of relieving that fa- 240 A morning's WALI^ mily ?" ^' So, then," said I, "you make the consequence determine the cause, rather than take the trouble to examine whether the causes were not equal to the effect, without being themselves necessary or irre- sistible." '' But then," he replied, '' there was such an aptness, such a coincidence, such a final purpose !" — '* Ah 1" I rejoined, *^ you cheat yourself by not extending your vocabulary — why not say there was suffi- cient affluence, guided by a benevolent heart ^ — and such distress, that they were called into prompt exertion? Is it to be re- garded as a miracle, that a benevolent heart proved the sufficient cause of a good action, and that distress was an ex- citement equivalent to the effect which you describe ? The street was a medium or stage of action, as capable of leading to evil as to good. You could not be in two places at the same time; nor could the result be and not be. ^ Had you been in another place, some other family might have been relieved from the collision of the same causes ; and each event would;^ FROM LONDON TO KEW. 241 m like manner, have appeared to have determined the causes, instead of being a single consequence of the causes. Nor '■^nere these causes more necessary than the result. Your feelings were spontaneous, put you may in luture change the result by "hardening your heart, hke other rich men." '^* I will do neither," said he, quickly. — - ^l No," said I, *' I know you won't — -you will not violate vour habitual inclinations. Til future, however, do them justice; and, when you perform a kind action, do not ihake the consequence the cause."* ' ' i sat on the tomb of Partridge, and ^ to * As doctrines about fate and necessity involve a numerous class of mischievous superstitions, and ^»;;e the bases of the success of endless impostures, it aeems worth while to turn aside for a moment from the high road of my narrative to examine ihem. Some philosophers assert, that we are the 'inert patients of necessary causes: others, that we ^0 what we list, without any cause, on the sponta- neous impulse of our will : while nine- tenths of the Jiuman race maintain that we are governed by an unalterable fate, which is predestined, and that al| the events of life take place for the sake of dccoiii- plishing some end ! What is our real cooditiou r \^4^ A morning's WALE thought it a fit place in which to rumi- nate on these involved poinls. Do the We exist on a globe' which, by a balance of rae- elianicar powers, moves round a centre of gravity bet\*een it and the- cenise of the sun; and also ►*oondi its: own eenta^e of gravity, cofflmonicating its sfggFegate motions t© HI the particles that cempm^ it, and thereby exciting them into various mod^?»f action, producing and sustaining ail the phenomena mhich we witness. The entire mass then is the patient of these arrangements, and every fliing oa. the earth is physicaFFy subservieirf to them, Bat, ifi smimal or^mzations^ we find a set of poweis dif- ferent from those which characterize inert mkieralft lor plants. An a«iraal has his own powers of I'oco- motion — he moves on his own centre of gravity — and, though the earth is his stage and the place of his origin, yet he is an independent Mieroeosm. To assist his loco-motion, to enable him to determine his course, to preserve his being, and to choose between what is good for him, and what is evil to him; be is provided with senses, with whieh he sees, bears, smells, tastes, and feels; with memory; and with powers of reasoning hy analogy, or hi? senses and his experience would be useless : and yet Mjen say, that such a creature is as much the patient of physical causes, as a stone or a plant ! On th^ contrary, is it not evident, that an animal possesses peculiar powers of sense and reason, in order that he may not be the patient and victim of physical' circum- IfR0M LONDOI^ to &EW. 24B astrologers (said I) consider the stars a& mere indices of pretended fates, or as th^^ causes of the events which they are en- 5tances 1 But, say they, his actions are determined by his motives, and these are governed by causes over which he has no control; those causes are neces- sary, and, therefore, his actions are necessary* Triie — but these exterior causes (granting that flley afe always neCessSLfy Knks of a chain,) operate e^tf ft ihiin ori!y according to his estimiilfe of them, irt'iiicti vaiies iii different men, arid in the sfime in^U ^t difFefent times. The causes, at least as far tfe i^egards beings which are really their patients, mity be regarded as necessary, and they may govertt passive existences with absolute dominion; but ihf fell animals they have to encounter the printiple of individuality, the feeling of independence, the de- i6 A mqrnjng's walk viduals in all countries. The doctrine that tb^ planets are secondary causes, is, therefore, not supported by t^e cirqum- stances of the phenomena. But the astrologers are not cQutent with fiatur^l positions, but, like the eastern priests with their gods, they assign dif- ferent parts of the heavens, and ditferent countries, to each planet ; and then found prognostics on these locail positions of tht? pjanels. It is evident, however, that the apparent position of a planet depends on the varying ppsition of the earth, and that an inferior planet may be in exactly ih^ same point of space, and yet be seen from the earth in every sign of the zodiac ; though, according to the astrologers, it -tvQuld in that same place have very dif- ferent powers ! This doctrine was ad- missible when the earth was considered as the centre of the universe ; when the geocentric phenomena were considered as a,bsolute; and vvhen the apparently quick and slow motions, the retrogradations, and the stationary positions,, wcrv ascribed to ^FROM l^Of^nvm TO KEW. 24T !ea prices Q\i be free from the in- fluence of corrupt patronage, or the force of numerous prejudices, while an abject conformity to the opinions of each previous age is the passport to all scholastic digni- ties? Does any established or endowed school, and do any number even of private schools, make it part of their professed course to teach their pupils the value of freedom, the duties of freemen, and the free principles of the British constitution ? Is the system of the public schools, where our statesmen and legislators are educated, addressed to the heart as well as the HEAD ? Is poverty any where more de- graded ; cruelty to the helpless animal creation any where more remorselessly practised ; or the pride of pedantry, and the vain-glory of human learning, any where 296 A morning's walk more vaunted ? In short, are the vices of gluttony, drunkenness, pugilispj, and pro- digality, any where more indulged? Yet, may we not sa}^, as in the days of William of Wykeham, that " Maimers make the manT — and, on the subject of public du- ties, might we not derive a lesson even from the ancient institutions of Lycurgus? The best hopes of society are the pro- gressive improvement of succeeding gene- rations, and the prospect that each will add something to the stock of knowledjie to that which went before it. But gloomy is the perspective, if the science of educa- tion be rendered stationary or retrograde by the iron hand of power and bigotry, and if errors by these means are propagated from age to age with a species of acce- lerated force. Yet, what signs t>f improve- ment are visible in our public schools, wherein are educated those youths who are destined to direct the fortunes of Bri- tain in each succeeding age ? Most of these schools were endowed at the epoch of the revival of learning* yet the exact FROM LONDON TO KEW. 297 course of instruction which was prescribed by the narrow poUcy of that comparatively dark age, is slavishly followed even to this hour ! Instead of knowledge, moral and physical, being taught in them, as the true end of all education, — those dead languages, which in the 15th and \6th centuries were justly considered as the fountains of wis- dom, are still exclusively taught ; as though the English language, now, as then, con- tained no works of taste and information on a par with those of the ancients ; and as though such writers as Bacon, Shake- speare, Milton, Newton, Locke, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Blackstone, Hume, Ro- bertson, and Blair, had never lived ! Is it not to mistake the means for the end, to teach any language, except as the medium of superior philosophy? And is it .not a false inference, to ascribe exclusively to the study of languages, those habits of indus- trious application, which would grow with equal certainty out of the study of the useful sciences, if pursued with the same system, and for a similar period of time ? 298 A MORmNG's WALK : Reason demands, however, on this sub- ject, those concessions from the pride of PEDANTRY which that pride will never yield. We seem, therefore, to be des- tined, by the force of circumstances, to make slow or inconsiderable advances in civilization; and it remains for other na- tions, the bases of whose institutions are less entangled in prejudices, to raise the condition of man higher in the scale of improvement than can be expected in Britain. We may, as a result of geogra-^c^i phical position, attain a certain degree of national distinction ; but, if our system of public education cannot be made to keep pace with knowledge, and is not calculated to generate a succession of patriots, who ^re qualified to Sustain liberty at home and justice abroad, we cannot fail to sink in our turn to the level of modern Egypt, Greece, and Italy, Those hotbeds of human genius were ultimately degraded by the triumph of prejudices ovei' princi- ples, by the extinction of public sf>irit, by the preference of despotism over liberty, FROM LONDON TO KEW. W9. and by the glare of foreign conquests. The countries, the soil, and even the cities remain ; but, as their youth are no longer trained in the love of truth and liberty, they exist but as beacons to warn other people of their fall and its causes. I turned aside to view a manufactory of Delft and Stone ware, for which, among potters, Mortlake is famous. A silly air of mystery veiled these work-shops from public view ; and, as I professed mine to be a visit of mere curiosity, the conduc- tor's taciturnity increased with the variety of my unsatisfied questions. It was in vain I assured him that I was no potter- that experimental philosophy and chemis-' try had stript empiricism of its garb — and thkt ho secret, worth preserving, could long be kept in a manufactory which em- ployed a dozen workmen, at 20^. a week. The principal articles made here are* those brown stone jugs, of which the song tells us, one was made of the clay of Toby Filpot; and I could not help remarking, that the groups on these jugs are precisely those 300 A MOR]^ING*S WALK on the common pottery of the Romans. I learnt, however, that the patterns em- ployed here are not copied from the antique, but from those used at Delft, of which this manufactory is a successful imitation in every particular : and perhaps the Delft manufactory itself is b'ut a continua- tion of a regular series of stone or earthen- ware manufactories, from the age of the Romans. Each may have continued to imitate the approved ornaments of its predecessors, till we trace in the produc- tions of this contemporary pottery, the patterns used by the nations of anti- quity when just emerging from barbarism. Hunting, the most necessary of arts to the vagrant and carnivorous savage, is the em- ployment celebrated on all these vessels. A stag, followed by ferocious quadrupeds and hungry bipeds, forms their general ornament. I have picked up the same groups among Roman ruins, have often contemplated them in the cabinets of the curious, and here I was amused at view^ ing them in creations but a week old. FROM LONDON TO KEW. 301 To take off ornamental impressions on plastic clay, was a contrivance vvhich would present itself to the first potters — but perhaps it was the foundation of all our proud arts of sculpture, painting, hieroglyphic design, writing, seal-engrav- ing, and, finally, of printing and copper- plate engraving ! What an interesting series! — But I solemnly put the question, Have we arrived at the last of its terms ? Is the series capable of no further applica- tion, extension, or variation? Have we conceived the utmost limits of its abstrac- tions? Have we examined the powers of all its terms with equal care ? In one sense, we may never get beyond a Phidias or a Canova — in another, beyond a Woollet or a Bartolozzi — or, in a third, beyond a Corregio or a David ; — but have we suffi- ciently examined and husbanded the ab- stractions of Thoth or Cadmus? — Outrht not the signs of ideas, ere this, to have become abstract representations, as univer- sal in their signification as ideas them- selves? — Ought we to be obliged to study S02 A morning's walk all languages and many characters, in order to comprehend the ideas which are common to the whole human race? Are ideas moi*e numerous than musical sounds, and tones, and tunes? .Do not the powers of musical characters and of the telegraph prove the facility and capacity of very sim- ple combinations? Does not the Christ- mas game of Twenty indicate the narrow f ange of all our ideas ? And is not a fact thereby ascertained, from which we may conceive the practicability of so combining hieroglyphic with arbitrary characters, as to be able to read men's ideas without the intervention of a hundred tongues? J On leaving this manufactory, I pro- ceeded about a hundred yards, through the main street ; and, turning a corner on the right, beheld the ancient gateway, now bricked up, and the ruined walls of an enclosure, sanctified, during five centuries, as the residence of thirty-four successors to the see of Canterbury. Learning that the enclosure was occupied by a market- gardener, I could not avoid observing, 1 FROM LONDON TO KEW. 303 as a proof of the sagacity of gardeners, and of the luxury which manured these sites, that I have seldom visited decayed religious houses without finding them in possession of market - gardeners ! Ah ! thought I, as I stopped before the gate, how many thousands of rich donations used to be brought to that portico by super- stitious votaries, who considered it as the emblem of the gate of St. Peter, and be- lieved that, if welcomed at the one, they should be equally welcomed at the other ! Poor souls— they and their spiritual pro- tectors have alike passed away — and we can now look with the eye of Philosophy bh the impotent impostures of one party, and on the unsuspecting credulity of the other ! I was in haste — yet I could not avoid stopping five minutes — yes, reader, and it is a lesson to human pomp^ — I could wait but five minutes to contemplate the gate through which had passed thirty-four suc- cessive Archbishops of Canterbury, from Anselm; in the time of William the Nor- 304 A morning's walk man, to Warham and Cranmer, the pliant tools of the tyrant Tudor. As leaders of the Catholic Church, we may now, in this Protestant country, speak, without of- fence, of their errors and vices. Ambi- tion and the exercise of power were doubt- less the ruling passions of the majority, who have shovt^n themselves little scrupu- lous as to the means by which those pas- sions might be gratified ; — yet it would be uncandid not to admit that many men, like the present amiable Protestant archbishop, have filled this See, whose eminent virtue, liberality, and piety, were their principal recommendations — and who doubtless be- lieved all those articles of the Church's faith which they taught to others. They were, in truth, wheels of a machine which existed before their time ; and they honest- ly performed the part assigned them, with- out disputing its origin or the sources of its powers ; prudently considering that, if they endeavoured to pull it in pieces, they were hkely themselves to become the first victims of their temerity. Thus doubtless it FROM LONDON TO KEW. 305 was with Cicero and the philosophers of antiquity; they found theological machinery powerful enough to govern society; and though, on the subject of the Gods, they prudently conformed, or were silent, yet we are not at this day warranted in sup- posing that they obsequiously reverenced the absurd theology of the romance of Homer. Of the archbishops who have passed this gate, St. Thomas a Becket was perhaps the greatest bigot ; but the exaltation of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power was the fashion of his day ; and obedience and allegiance could scarcely be expected of a clergy who, owing all their dignities to the Pope, owned no authority superior to that of the keeper of Peter's Keys to the Gates of Heaven ! I could not,, even in thus transiently glancing at these meagre remains, avoid the interesting recollection, that this por- tico once served as a sanctuary for the con- trition of guilt against the unsparing ma- lignity of law. In those days, when bi-^ 306 A mobning's walk gotry courted martyrdom as a passport to eternal glory, and when, in consequence, the best principle of religion was enabled to triumph over the malice of weak princes and the tyranny of despots, this gate (said I) served as one of many avenues to the emblem of that Divinity to whom the in- terior was devoted. It justly asserted the authority of the religion of charity, whose Founder ordered his disciples to pardon offences, though multiplied seventy times seven times. Yet, alas ! in our days, how much is this divine precept forgotten ! Is not the sanguinary power of law suffered to devour its victims iovjirst relapses from virtue, as unsparingly as for any number of repetitions ? Do not its sordid agents exult in the youth or inexperience of of- fenders, and often receive contrition and confession as aggravating proofs of more deliberate turpitude ? Has not the modern sanctuary of Mercy long been shut, by forms of state, against the personal sup- plications of repentance, and against hum- ble representations of venial errors of cri- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 307 liilnal courts? If sinners would approach that gate, are they not stopped at the very threshold, and obliged to rely on the in- tercession of some practised minister, or seek the good offices of illiberal clerks ? Is this Christendom, the volume of whose faith tells its votaries to knock without fear at the gate of Mercy, and it shall be opened by an Heavenly Father ? — or Eng- land, where a solemn law enacts, that it is the right of the subject to petition the King, and that all commitments and pro- secutions for such petitioning are illegal ? — or civilized Europe, where it has so often been asserted that the receiving of peti- tions, and granting their prayer, is the most enviable branch of royal preroga- tive? Alas ! will the golden mean of rea- son never govern the practices of men ? Must we for ever be the dupes of super- stition, or the slaves of upstart authority ? Are we doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies, a medium between the bigotry of the Crozier, the pride of the Sceptre, and the cruelty of the Sword ? 30$ A morning's walk Nor ought it to be forgotten, that the benevolence which flowed from this por- tico, served as a substitute for the poor's- rates, throughout the adjoining district. Thus Food, as well as Mercy, appear- ed to flow from Heaven, through the agency of the Romish priesthood ! Thus they softened the effects of the monopolies of w^ealth, and assuaged the severities of power 1 And thus, duration was conferred on a system which violated common sense in its tenets ; but, in its practices, exhibit- ed every claim on the atlections and gra- titude of the people ! At this gate, and at a thousand others spread over the land, no poor man sougnt to satisfy his hunger in vain. He was not received by any grim- visaged overseer; not called on for equivo- cal proofs of legal claims ; not required to sell his liberty in the workhouse as the price of a single med ; not terrified by the capricious justice of a vulgar consta- ble ; nor in fear of the infernal machine, called a pass- cart — but it was sufficient that he was an hungered, and they gave FROM LONDON TO KEW. 309 ,hiai to eat — or that he was sick, and they gave him medicine ! Such was the system of those times; not more perfect for being ancient, but worthy of being remember- ed, because justified by long experience. Thrice the relative wealth, and as much active benevolence, are at this day exerted to relieve the still unsatisfied wants of the poor, simply because our workhouses are not regularly provided with an hospitable monastic portico, where temporary wants might be supplied with a wholesome meal, without the formality of regular admission, without proofs of settlement, without the terrors of the House of Correction, or ths horrors of a middle-passage in the pass- cart ! The tenderest sympathy would then be able to excuse itself from the obligation of granting eleemosynary aid — the act of begging might be justly punished as a crime — and crimes themselves could never be palliated by pleas of urgent want. This entire site was too much consecrated by historical associations to be passed without further examination. A slight X 3 310 A morning's walk expression of my feelings procured every attention from Penley, the gardener, who told me that his family had occupied it since the revolution, and that he remem- bered every part above fifty years. He took me to a summer-house, on the wall next the water, the ruins of which were of the architecture of the time of the Plan- tagenets; and, indeed, the entire wall, above half a mile in circuit, w^as of that age. Of the ancient palace no vestige re- mained; and he could guess its precise site only by means of the masses of brick- work which he discovered by digging in certain parts of the garden. If I vvas, however, litde gratified by remains of the labours of man, I was filled with astonishment at certain specimens of vegetation, unquestionably as ancient as the last Catholic archbishops. Among these were two enormous walnut-trees, twelve feet round the trunk, the boughs of which were themselves considerable trees, spreading above tvventy-six yards across. FROM LONDON TO KEW. 311 Each tree covered above a rood of ground ; and so massy were the lower branches, that it has been found necessary to support them with props. Their height is equal to their breadth, or about seventy feet; and I was surprised to find, that, notwith- standing their undoubted age, they still bear abundance of fine fruit. Mr. Penley assured me, that in his time he had seen no variation in them; they had doubtless attained their full growth in his J^oyhood, but since then they had maintained a steady maturity. At present they must be considered as in a state of slow decay; but I have no doubt that in the year I916 they will continue grand and prod uctiv© trees. I was equally struck with some box- trees, probably of far greater antiquity. They were originally planted in a semicir- cle to serve as an arbour ; but in the pro- gress of centuries they have grown to the prodigious height of thirty feet, and their trunks are from six to nine inches in dia- X 4 312 A MORNING S WALK meter. * And what was strikingly curious, in the area which they enclose is seen the oval table of the arbour, evidently of the same age. It is of the species of stone called Plymouth marble, — massy, and so well-wrought as to prove that it was not placed there at the cost of private reve- nues. It was interesting, and even affect- ing, to behold these signs of comfort and good cheer still remaining, so many ages after those who enjoyed them have passed away like exhalations or transient meteors ! I w^ould have sat down, and, with a better conscience than Don Juan, have invoked * The box-wood used in England by the engravers on wood is often twelve inches in diameter ; this, how- ever, is not of English growth, but comes from Turkey, where it is held in slight estimation. Of course, when engravings on wood are larger than twelve inches in diameter, two blocks are joined together, for it is onljr the transverse section that can be wrought for this purpose. The most famous plantations of box ia England are on the White-hill^ near Dorking; but the trees there are mere sticks and shrubs compared with those at Mortlake; yet many of them are known to be two hundred years old» FROM LONDON TO KEW. 31^ their ghosts over a bottle of the honest gardener's currant-wine ; but he had filled up the elliptical area of the trees with a pile of fagots, of which the old table serves* as a dry basement. What was less wonderful, though to the full as interesting — was the circumstance that the gardener has, at different times, ia digging up the roots of his old fruit-trees^ found them imbedded in skeletons of per^ sons who w^ere interred in or near the chapel of the archbishops. He told me, that a short time before my visit, in remove ing a pear-tree, he had taken up three perfect skeletons ; and that one of them was pronounced by a surgeon in the neigh- bourhood to be the frame- work of a man full seven feet high. This probably was an accidental circumstance ; for it is not to. be supposed that any of the interments on this spot took place in those rude ages when bulk and stature led to rank and distinction, and, by consequence, to cost- ly funerals and encasements of stone, which often surprize us with specimens of 314 A morning's walk an apparently gigantic race. Doubtless, however, here were interred hundreds of pious persons, who calculated, in their last moments, on the protection of this consecrated ground till '^ the Earth should be called to give up its Dead ;" and now, owing to the unsatisfied passion which the first '' Defender of the Faith" felt for Anna Boleyn, this consecrated spot, and a thou- sand similar ones, have been converted into cabbage-gardens ! Perhaps more than one archbishop, many bishops, and scores of deans, ange- lic doctors, and other reverend person- ages, lie in this now profaned and disho- noured spot 1 So great an outrage might, one would have supposed, have led them, according to ordinary notions, again to walk the earth, to despoil the garden, and disturb the gardener's rest 1 I expressed my fears on this point to the worthy man ; but he assured me, these good gentlefolks lie very quiet; and that, if they produced any visible effect, it was as manure, in rendering the part where they lie a little FROM LONDON TO KEW. 315 more productive than the other parts. I shuddered at this lesson of humiUty — Alas ! thought 1, is it for such ends that we pam- per ourselves — that some of us boast of being better than others — that we seek splendid houses and superfine clothing— and render our little lives wretched by hunting after rank, and titles, and riches I After all, we receive a sumptuous funeral, and are affectionately laid in what is called consecrated ground, which some pohtical revolution, or change of religion, con- verting into a market-garden, our bodies then serve but as substitutes for vulgar manure ! If such an end of the illustrious and proud men, whose remains now fer- tilize this garden, had been contemplated by them, how truly would they have be- come disciples of the humble Jesus— and how horror-struck would they have been at the fantastic airs which, in their lives, they were giving themselves 1 — Yet, is there a reader of these pages, the end of whose mortal career may not be similar to theirs ? T-rand ought he not to apply to him- ol6 A morning's walk self the lesson thus taught by the known fate of the former inhabitants of the archi- episcopal palace of Mortlake? I shook my head at Penley, and told him, that he was a terrible '' leveller," and that, in making manure of archbishops and bishops, he was one of the most effec- tive moralists T had ever conversed with ! In walking round this garden, every part proved that its soil had been enriched from all the neighbouring lands. Whether, according to Dr. Creighton, there are classes of organic particles adapted to form vegetables and animals over and over again; or whether, according to the mo- dern chemistry, all organized bodies consist of carbonaceous, metallic, and gaseous substances in varied combinations; it is certain, that the well-fed priesthood, who formerly dwelt within these walls, drew together for ages such a supply of the pabulum of vegetation, as will require ages to exhaust. All the trees of this garden are of the most luxuriant size : gooseberries and currants in other gardens FROM LONDON TO KEW. 317 grow as shrubs ; but here they form trees of four or five feet in height, and a cir- cumference of five or six yards. In short, a luxuriance approaching to rank- ness, and a soil remarkable for its depth of colour and fatness, characterize every part. The abundant produce, as is usual through all this neighbourhood, is conveyed to Covent- Garden market in the night, and there disposed of by salesmen that attend on behalf of the gardeners. I took my departure from this inclosure with emotions that can only be felt. I looked again and again across the space which, during successive ages, had given birth to so many feelings, and nurtured so many anxious passions; but which now, for many ages, has, among bustling gene- rations, lost all claim to sympathy or no- tice; and displays, at this day, nothing but the still mechanism of vegetable life. There might be little in the past to rouse the af- fections; but, in the difference of manners, there was much to amuse the imagination. It had been the focus, if not of real 318 A MORNING S WALK piety, at least of ostensible religion ; and,, dead as the spot now appeared, its mouldering walis^ some of those gigantic trees, and, above all, the box- tree arbour, had, in remote ages, echoed from hour to hour the melodious chaunts and imposing ceremonials of the Romish Church. Here moral habits sanctified the routine of life, and conferred happiness as a necessary result of restraint and decorum — and here Vice never disgraced Reason by public ex- hibitions; but, if lurking in any breast, confessed its own deformity by its disguises and its secresy. In surveying such a spot, the hand of Time softens down even the asperities of superstition, and the shade of this gloomy site, contrasted with the bright da37s of its prosperity, inclined me to forget the intolerant policy which was wont to emanate from its spiritual coun- cils. Under those fruit-trees, I exclaimed, lie all that remains of the follies, hopes, and superstitions of the former occupants; for, of them, I cannot remark as of the torpid remains in Mordake church-yard, i FROM LONDON TO KEW. 31^ that they hve in the present generation. — No I these dupes of clerical fraud devoted themselves to celibacy as a service to the procreative Cause of causes, and be- came withered limbs of their family trees. We can, however, now look on their re- mains, and presume to scan their errors: — but let us recollect, that, though we are gazers to-day, we shall be gazed upon to- morrow — and that, though we think our* selves wise, we are, perhaps, fated to be commiserated in our turn by the age which follows. Alas ! said I, when will the ge- neration arrive that will not merit as much pity from succeeding generations as those poor monks ? Yet how wise, how infalli- ble, and how intolerant, is every sect of religion — every school of philosophy- -every party of temporary politicians — and every nation in regard to every other nation! Do not these objects, and all exertions of reasoning, prove, that the climax of human wisdom is humility? Commending the bones of the monks to the respect of the gardener, whose feelings, S 320 A morning's walk to do him justice, were in unison with my own, I proceeded, by the side of the wall, towards the banks of the Thames. The relics of exploded priestcraft which I had just contemplated in the adjoining garden, led me into an amusing train of thought on the origin and progress of superstition, I felt that the various mytho- logies which the world has witnessed, grow out of mistakes in regard to the phenomena of SECONDARY CAUSES; all natural phe- nomena, accordingly as they were jit or unjit to the welfare or caprices of men, being ascribed, by the barbarous tribes who subsequently became illustrious na- tions, to the agency of gootf and e^?27 spirits. However absurd might be the follies of these superstitions, they becauie in*- grafted on Society, and were implanted in the opening minds of every successive gene- ration. Of course, the age never arrived which did not inherit the greater part of the prejudices of the preceding age. Rea- son and philosophy might in due time illumine a few individuals ; yet even these. tROM LONDON TO KEW. 321 influenced by early prejudices, and a pru* dent regard for their fortunes and personal safety, would rather support, or give ^ beneficial direction to, mythological super* stitions, than venture to expose and oppose them. Hence it was that the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, continued polytheist^ through the most brilliant epochs of their history; and hence their philosophers, as Pythagoras, Plato, and others, gave to the whole the plausibility of system, by effecting to demonstrate that the first Cause necessarily and proximately giene- rates immortal gods ! Hence too it is that philosophers have, in different past ages, ■undertaken to demonstrate the verity of all religions, and according to the religion of the government under which they lived, they have either supported Polytheism, Theism, Sabinism, Judaism, Popery, or Mahomedan- ism. The fate of Socrates has never been forgotten by any philosopher who pos- sessed the chief attribute of wisdom — « prudence; and no benevolent man will ©ver seek to disturb a public faith which 322 A MORNING'S WALK promotes public virtue, because the me- morials of history prove that no discords have been so bloody as those which ha^^e been generated by attempts to change reli- gious faith. This class of human errors can indeed be corrected only by establishing in civilized countries practical and unequi- vocal systems of toleration; because, in that case, truth and reason are sure, in due time, to establish themselves, while falsehood and fraud must sink into merited contempt. - The fleeting, wild, and crude notions of savages, constituted therefore the first stage in the progress of mythological super- stition. Their invisible agencies would however soon have forms conferred upon them by weak or fertile imaginations, and be personified as men or animals, according to the nature of their deeds. To pray to them for benefits, and to deprecate their wrath, would constitute the second stage. In the mean time, individuals who might, by ehance or design, become connected with some of these supernatural agencies, would FROM LONDON TO KEW. 323 be led, by vivid or gloomy imaginations, to deceive even themselves by notions of election or inspiration; and, then super* adding ceremonials to worship, they would form a select class, living, without manual labour, on the tributes offered by the peo- ple to satisfy or appease the unseen agen- cies. This would constitute a third stage. Each priest would then endeavour to extol the importance of the god, of whom he believed himself to be the minister; and he would give to his deity a visible form, cause a temple to be built for him, deliver from it his oracles or prophecies, and affect to work miracles in his name. This would constitute the fourth stage. The terror of unseen powers would now be found to be a convenient engine of usurped human authority, and hence an association would be formed between the temporal and invi- sible powers, the latter being exalted bv the former in having its temples enlarged and its priests better provided for. This would constitute the Jifth stage; or the consummation of the system as it has Y 2 524 been witnessed in India, Persia, Egypt^ Greece, and Italy. — Hence among the Hindoos, those personified agencies have been systematized under the titles of Brah- ma, Vishnu, Siva, Crishna, &c. Among the Egyptians, they were worshipped in the forms of living animals, and called Osiris, Amnion^ Oris, Typhon, Isis, &c. Among the Chaldeans, and, after them^ among the Jews, they were classed in principalities, powers, and dominions of angels and devils, under chiefs, who bore the names of Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Moloch, Legion, Satan, Beelzebub, &c. Among the Greeks, the accommodating Plato flattered the priests and the vulgar, by pretending to demonstrate that their per- sonifications were necessary emanations from THE ONE ; and he, and others, arranged the worship of them under the names of Jupiter, Neptune, Minerva, Ve- nus, Pluto, Mars, &c. Among the nor- thern NATIONS, they assumed the names of Woden, Sleepner, Hela, Fola, &c. Every town and village had^^ more- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 325 ^ver, its protecting divinity, or guardian saint, under some fantastical name, or the name of some fantastical fanatic ; and, even every man, every house, every plant, every brook, every day, and every hour, according to most of those systems, had their accompanying genius ! In a word, the remains of these superstitions are still so mixed with our habits and language, that, although we pity the hundreds of wretched victims of legal wisdoniy who under Elizabeth and the Stuarts were burnt to death for witchcraft; and abhor the ghosts of Shakespeare, his fairies, and his enchantments; yet we still countenance the system in most of the personifications of language, and practise it when we speak even of the spirit of Philosophy and the genius of Truth, Nor have philosophers themselves, either in their independent systems, or in the systems of the schools, steered clear of the vulgar errors of mythologists. They have in every age introduced into nature active causes without contact, continuity, or proxi- Y 3 S26 A morning's walk mity; and, even in our days, continue to extort worship towards the unseen and occult powers of attraction or sympathy, and of repulsion or antipathy ! It is true, they say that such words only express re- sults or phenomena, and others equivocate by saying there is in no case any contact : — but I reply, that to give names to proxi- mate causes does not correspond with my notions of the proper business of phi- losophy; and that, in thousands of in- stances, there is sensible contact, and in all nature some contact of intermediate media, in the affections of which, may be traced the laws governing the pheno- mena of distant bodies. At the hour in which I write, the recognized philosophical divinities are called Space, Matter, Inertia, Caloric, Expansion, Mo- tion, Impulse, Clustering Power, Elasticity, Atomic FoRxMS^ Ato- mic Proportions, Oxygen, Hydro- gen, Nitrogen, Chlorine, Iodine, Electricity, Light, Excitabili- ty, Irritability, &c. All these have FROM LONDON TO KEW. 327 their priests, worshippers, propagandists, and votaries, among some of whom may be found as intolerant a spirit of bigotry as ever disgraced any falling church. As governments do not, however, ally them- selves to Philosophy, there is happily no danger that an heretical or reforming Philosopher will, as such, ever incur the hazard of martyrdom ; and, as reason de- cides all disputes in the court of Philoso- phy, there can be no doubt, but, in this court at least, Truth will finally prevail. Hail, Genius of Philosophy 1 Hail, thou poetical personification of wisdom ! Hailj thou logical abstraction of all experimental knowledge ! I hail thee, as thou art re- presented in the geniuses of Pythagoras, Thales, Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Columbus, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, Euler, Buffon, Franklin, Beccaria, Priestley, Lavoisier, Cavendish, Condorcet, Laplace, Herschel, Berzelius, Jenner, Dalton, Cuvier, and Davy; and I hail thee, as thou excitest the ambition y 4 S28 A morning's WALfe of the solitary student of an obscure vil* lage, to raise himself among those gods of the human race ! How many privations must thy votaries suffer in a sordid world; and how many human passions must they subdue, before they can penetrate thy mazy walks, or approach the hidden sanc- tuaries of thy temple of Truth ! Litde thinks the babbhng politician, the pedantic linguist, or the equivocating metaphysician, of the watchful hours which thy wor- shippers must pass, — of the never-ending patience which they must exert, -^of the concurring circumstances which must favour their enthusiasm ! Whether we consider the necessary magnitude of the library, the ascending intricacy of the books, the multitude of the instruments, or the variety of the experimental apparatus in the use of which the searchers into thy mysteries must be familiar ; we are compelled to re- verence the courage of him who seeks pre- eminence through thee, and to yield to those mortals who have attained thy fa^ FROM LONDON TO KEW. 32*> ▼ours, our wonder, admiration, and gra- titude!* «. jj * The system of Physics which 1 have for many years inculcated, in tiie hope of removing from Phi- losophy the equivocal word attraction, supposes that space is filled with an elastic medium, — that this medium permeates bodies in proportion to their quantities of matter, — that resistance or re-action takes place between the universal medium of space and the novel arrangements of matter in bodies,-^ — that this action and re-action diverge in the medium of space from the surfaces of bodies, — and that, like all diverging forces, they act inversely as the squares of the distances. That, if there were but one body in the universe, it would remain stationary by the uniform action of the surrounding medium, — that the creation of another body would produce phenomena between them, owing to each intercept- ing the action of the medium of space on the other, in proportion to the angles mutually presented by their bulks, — ^that two such bodies so acted upon by an universal medium must necessarily fall together> owing to the difference between the finite pressure on their near sides, and the infinite pressure on their outsides,^ — that a stone falls to the earth, because, with regard to it, the earth intercepts an angle of 1 80° of the medium of space on its near or under side ; while, with regard to the earth, the stone in- tercepts but a small proportion of a second, — tha^ 330 A morning's walk Overtaking three or four indigent chil- dren, whose darned stockings and carefully- patched clothes bespoke some strong mo- these actual centripetal forces are very slighi, be- tween such distant bodies as the planets, — and, that the law of the forces is necessarily as their bulks directly, and as the squares of their distances in- versely. That the centrifugal forces result from the same pressure or impulse, — that the varied densities of the opposite sides of the masses, as land and water, occasion a uniform external pressure to pro- duce rotation on an axis, — that the action or oscil- lation of the fluid surfaces, a consequence of the rotation, constantly changes the mechanical centre of the mass, so as thereby to drive forward the ma- thematical centre in an orbit, — and that this is the purpose and effect of the tides, increased by the action and reaction of the fluid and solid parts. That centripetal and centrifugal forces so created, are necessarily varied by the diverse arrangements of the solid and fiuid parts of planetary bodies, as we see in the northern and southern hemispheres of the earth, — and that hence arise the varied motions, the elliptical orbits, and all the peculiar phenoniena. Attached as the moderns are to the terms attraction and repulsion^ I produce this theory with due de- ference to their prejudices ; and I venture to pre- sume, that, on examination, it will be found to be FROM LONDON TO KEW. 331 tive for attention in their parents, I was induced to ask them some questions. They said they had been to Mordake School; and I collected from them, that they were part of two or three hundred who attend a fair induction from the phenomena, and also in perfect accordance with all the laws of motion. It accounts for the uniform direction and moderate exertion of the centripetal force towards the largest body of a system ; for the mutual actions of a system of bodies, or of many systems, on each other; and for the constantly varying direction of the centrifugal force, by shewing that it is generated within the mass. The term repulsion is even more disgraceful to Philosophy than that of attraction; all repulsion being in truth but a relative phenomenon between at least three bodies ; and its most palpable appearance in electricity being but a stronger mechanical action towards opposite surfaces. The local impulses of magnets, and of bodies going into chemical union, are not better explained by Kepler's gravitating sympathy, than by this doctrine of mechanical inter- ception ; but, I have no doubt that the former of these will, in due time, be traced to the difference between the rotary motion of the Equatorial and Polar regions; and the latter to some laws of the atomic theory, arising out of the shape and arrange- ment of the component particles, with reference to those of surrounding bodies. 332 A morning's walk one of Dr. Bell's schools, which had lately been established for the instruction of poor children in this vicinity. I found that, until this establishment had been formed, these children attended no school regularly — and, in reply to a question, one of them said, '*Our father could not afford to pay /Mr. sixpence a week for us, so we could not go at all ; but novv we go to this school, and it costs father nothing." This was as it should be ; the social state ought to supply a preparatory education of its members — or, how can a government ex- pect to find moral agents in an ignorant population — how can it presume to inflict punishments on those who have not been enabled to read the laws which they are bound to respect — and how can the professors of religion consider themselves as performing their duty, if they have not enabled all children to peruse the volume of Christian Revelation? We are assured by Mr. Lancaster, that George THE Third expressed the benevolent wish that every one of his subjects should be enabled to read the Bible; and his sue- FROM LONDON TO EEW. 33S eessors will, it is to be hoped, not lose sight of so admirable a principle. But a few ages ago, to be able to read conferred the privileges of the clerical character, and exempted men from capital punishmentif — how improved, therefore, is the present state of society, and how different may it yet become, as prejudices are dispelled,v and as liberal feelings acquire their jusS ascendancy among the rulers of nations! These boys spoke of their school with evi* dent satisfaction ; and one of them, who proved to be -a monitor, seemed not a little proud of the distinction. Whether the system of Mr. Lancaster or of Dr. Bell enjoy the local ascendancy; or whether these public seminaries be *' schools for all," or schools in which the dogmas of some particular faith are taught, I am indifferent, provided there are some such schools, and that all children are enabled to read the Bible, and '* the Catechism of their Social Rights and Duties,*' Seeing several respectable houses facing the meadow which led to the Thames, I inquired of a passing female the names of 354" A morning's walk their owners, and learnt that they were chiefly occupied by widow ladies, to whom she gave the emphatic title of Madam-^ though she called one of them Mistress, It appeared that those who were denomi- nated Madams were widows of gentlemen who, in their lives, bore the title of Esquires ; but that the Mistress was an old maid, whom her neighbours were ashamed longer to call by the juvenile appellation of Aliss, Madam — — , whose name I ought not to have forgotten, has devoted a paddock of four or five acres to the comfortable provision of two super- annuated coach-horses. One of them, I was assured, was thirty-five years old, and the other nearly thirty; and their venerable appearance and pleasant pasture excited a strong interest in favour of their kind- hearted mistress. Such is the influence of good example, that I found her paddock was opposite the residence of the equally amiable Valentine Morris, who so liberally provided for all his live-stock about thirty years ago, and whose oldest FROM LONDON TO KEW. 33S horse died lately, after enjoying his master's legacy above twenty-four 3-ears. I now descended towards a rude space near the Thames, which appeared to be in the state in which the occasional overflow* ings and gradual retrocession of the rive? had left it. It was one of those wastes which the lord of the manor had not yet enabled some industrious cultivator to dis* guise; and in large tracts of which Great Britain still exhibits the surface of the earth in the pristine state in which it was left by the secondary causes that have given it form. The Thames, doubtless, in a remote age, covered the entire site; but it is the tendency of rivers to narrow themselves, by promoting prohfic vegetable creations on their consequently increasing and encroaching banks, though the vari- ous degrees of fall produce every variety of currents, and consequently every variety of banks, in their devious course. In due time, the course of the river becomes choaked where a flat succeeds a rapid, and the detained waters then form lakes in the interior. These lakes likewise generate 6B6 a morning's walk enGroaching banks, which finally fill up their basins, when new rivers are formed on higher levels. These, in their turn, become interrupted, and repetitions of the former circle of causes produce one class of those elevations of land above the level of the sea, which have so much puzzled geologists. The only condition which a surface of dry land requires to increase and raise itself, is the absence of salt wa- ter, consequent on which is an accumula- tion of vegetable and animal remains. The Thames has not latterly been allowed to produce its natural effects, because for two thousand years the banks have been inhabited by man, who, unable to appre- ciate the general laws by which the phe- nomena of the earth are produced, has sedulously kept open the course of the river, and prevented the formation of interior lakes. The Caspian Sea, and all similar inland seas and lakes, were, for the most part, formed from the choaking up of rivers, which once constituted their out- lets. If the course of nature be not inter- rupted by the misdirected industry of man^ FHOM LONDON TO KEW. 337 the gradual desiccation of all such collec- tions of water will, in due time, produce land of higher levels on their sites. In like manner, the great lakes of North America, if the St. Lawrence be not sedu- lously kept open, will, in the course of ages, be filled up by the gradual encroach- ment of their banks, and the raising of their bottoms with strata of vegetable and animal remains. New rivers would then flow over these increased elevations, and the ultimate effect would be to raise that part of the continent of North America several hundred feet above its present level. Even the very place on which I stand was, according to Webster, once a vast basin, extending from the Nore to near Reading, but now filled up with ve- getable and animal remains ; and the illus- trious CuviER has discovered a similar basin round the site of Paris. These once were Caspians, created by the choak- ing and final disappearance of some mighty rivers — they have been filled up by gra- dual encroachments, and now the Thames 33^ A Morning's walk: arid the Seine flow over them';— -but thes^y if left to themselves, will, in their turn, generate new lakes or basins — and the successive recurrence of a similar series of causes will continue to produce similar effects, till interrupted by superior causes. This situation was so sequestered, and therefore so favourable to contemplation, that I could not avoid indulging myself. What then are those superior causes, I exclaimed, which will interrupt this series of natural operations to which man is indebted for the enchanting visions- of, hill and dale, and for the elysiam of beauty and plenty in which he finds himself? Alas 1 facts prove, however, that all things are transitory, and that change of condition is the constant and necessary result of that motion which is the chief instrument of eternal causation, but which, in causing all phenomena, wears out existing organi- zations while it is generating new ones. In the m>otions of the earth as a planet, doubtless are to be discovered the supe- rior causes which convert seas into coati- IFROM LONDON TO KEW. 339 nents, and continents into seas. These sublime changes are occasioned by the progress of the perihelion point of the earth's orbit through the echptic, which passes from extreme northern to extreme southern declination, and vice versa, every 10,450 years; and the maxima of the central forces in the perihelion occasion the waters to accumulate alternatively upon either hemisphere. During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually re- tiring and encroaching in both hemi- spheres: — hence all the varieties of ma- rine appearances and accumulations of marine remains in particular situations; and hence the succession of layers or strata, one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. It is evident, from obser- vation of those strata, that the periodical changes have occurred at least three times ; or, in other words, it appears that the site on which I now stand has been three times covered by the ocean, and three times has afforded an asylum for vegeta- bles and animals! How sublime — how z 25 34>0 A moKning's walk interesting — how affecting is such a con* templation ! How transitory, therefore, must be the local arrangements of man, and how puerile the study of the science mis- called Antiquities ! How foolish the pride which vaunts itself on splendid buildings and costly mausoleums ! How vain the ostentation of large estates, of extensive boundaries, and of great empires f — All — all — will, in due time, be swept away and effaced by the unsparing ocean; and, if recorded in the frail memorials of humaft science, will be spoken of like the lost Atalantis, and remembered only as a phi- losophical dream ! Yet, how different, thought I, is the rich scene of organized existence within my view, from that which presented itself On this spot when our planet first took its station in the solar system. The sur- face, judging from its present materials, was then probably of the same inorganic form and structure as the primitive rocks which still compose the Alps and Andes ; 9T like those indurated coral islands. FROM LONDON TO KEW. 541 which are daily raising their sterile heads above the level of the great ocean, aad teaching by analogy the process of fertili- zation. At that period, so remote and so obscure, all must have been silent, barren, and relatively motionless 1 But, the atmo- sphere and the rains having, by decom- position and solution, pulverized the rocks, and reduced them into the various earths which now fertilize the surface, from the inorganic soon sprung the vegetable, and from the vegetable, in due time, sprung the animal; till the whole was resolved into the interesting assemblage of organized existences, which now present themselves to our endless wonder and gratification. I looked around me on this book of na- ture, which so eloquently speaks all lan- guages, and which, for every useful purpose, may be read without translation or com- mentary, by the learned and unlearned in every age and clime. But my imagination was humbled on considering my relative and limited powers, when I desired to proceed from phenomena to causes, and to z 3 342 A morning's walk penetrate the secrets of nature below, the surfaces of things, I desire, said I, to know more than my intellectual vision enables me to see in this volume of un- erring truth. I can discover but the mere surfaces of things by the accidents of light. I can feel but the same surfaces in the contact of my body, and my conclu^ sions are governed by their reciprocal relations. In like manner, I can hear, taste, and smell, only through the acci- dents of other media, all distinct from the nature of the substances which produce those accidents. In truth, I am the mere patient of certain illusions of my senses, and I can know nothing beyond what I derive from my capacity of receiving im- pressions from those illusions 1 Alas I thought I, I am sensible how little I know; yet how much is there which I do not, and can never, know ? How much more am I incapable of knowings with my limit- ed organs of sense, than I might know if their capacity or their number were en- larged } How can a being, then, of such FROM LONDON TO KEW. 3.43 limited powers presume to examine nature beyond the jiiere surface? How can he measure unseen powers, of which he has no perception, but in the phenomena visible to his senses? How can he reason on the causes of effects by means of im- plements which reach no deeper than the accidents produced by the surfaces of things on the media which affect his senses, and which come not into contact with the powers that produce the phenomena? Ultimate causation is, therefore, hidden for ever froQi man ; and his knowledge can reach no deeper or higher than to register mechanical phenomena, and determine their mutual relations. But there is yet enough for man to learn, and to gratify the researches of his curiosity ; for, bounds ed as are his powers, he has always found that art is too long and life too short. He may nevertheless feel that his mmd, in a certain sense, is within a species of inr leliectual prison; but, like the terrestrial prison which confines his body to one pla- net^ no man ever lived long enough to 344 A morning's walk exhaust the variety of subjects presented > to his contemplation and curiosity by the intellectual and natural world. We seem, however, said 1, to be better qualified to investigate the external laws which govern inorganic matter, than the subtle and local powers which govern organized bodies. We appear (so to speak) to be capable of looking down upon mere matter as matter; but incapa- ble, like the eye in viewing itself, of re- tiring to such a focal distance as to be able accurately to examine ourselves. It is not difldcult to conceive that planetary bodies, and other masses of inorganic matter, may appear to act on each other by mutually intercepting the pressure of the elastic medium which fills space; and the pressure intercepted by each on the inner surface of the other, may, by the un* intercepted external pressure on each, produce the phenomena of mutual gravi* tation: nor is it improbable that the curvilinear and rotatory motions of such masses may be governed by the arrange* I FROM LONDON TO KEW. S4S nient and mutual action of their fixed and their fluid parts ; nor impracticable for the geometrician, when the phenomena are determined, to measure the mechanical relations of the powers that produce those phenomena ; nor wonderful that a system of bodies so governed by general laws, should move and act in a dependent, con- sequent, and necessary harmony. Thus far the intellect of an organized being may reason safely on the mechanical relations of inorganic masses, because an unequal balance of forces produces their motions, and from combined motions re- sult the phenomena; but, in the principle, of organic life, and in the duration ancj final purpose of the powers of vegetables and animals, there are mysteries which baffle the ^penetration of limited observa-- tion and reason. I behold vegj:table$ with roots fixed in the ground, and through them raising fluids mechanically; but my understanding is overpowered with uiir satisfied wonder, when I consider tli© -animating principle of the meanest vegeta.-^ 3l6 A morning's WALK bl€, which constitutes a selfish individu- ality, and enables it to give new quahties to those fluids by peculiar secretions, and to appropriate them to its own nourish- ment and growth. My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence; whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing agency which originates each successive germ ; and the independent, but coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and, correcting aberrations, secures tlie continuity of every species — both acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the giowth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom ! On these several subjects, my mind renders the profoundest homage to the mysterious power which created and continues such mira- cles; and, being unable to reason upon them from the analogy of other experience, I am forced to refer such sublime results to agency not mechanical; or, if in any FROM LONDON TO KEW. 347 sense mechanieal, so arranged and so moved as to exceed my means of conception. Looking once more upon the volume of nature which lay before me, I behold a superior class of organized beings, each individual of which, constituting an inde- pendent microcosm, is qualified to move from place to place, by bodily adaptation and nervous sensibility. This kingdom of Loco-MOTiVE BEINGS ascends, in grada- tions of power and intellect, from the hydatid to the sympathetic and benevolent philo- sopher ; and rises in the scale of being as fiiuch above the organization of vegetables, as vegetables themselves are superior to the inorganic particles in which they flou- rish. That tliey may subsist while they move, their roots, instead of being fixed in the soil, are turned within a cavity, or re- ceptacle, called the stomach, into which, appropriate soil^ or aliment, is introduced by the industry of the creature; and, that their powers of loco- motion may be exerted with safety and advantage, they are provided with senses for smelhng, tasting, feeling, and 348 A morning's walk seeing their food ; and with a power of hear- ing dangers which they cannot see. They are, for the same purpose, enabled to profit by experience in powers of association, of reasoning by analogy, and of willing accord- ing to their judgments; and they are go- verned by an habitual desire to associate in species, accompanied by moral feelings, resulting from obligations of mutual de- ference and convenience. Here again, humanly speaking, we have a series of na- tural miracles— a permanent connexion between external objects and the sensa- tions, reasoning, and conduct of the or- ganized being. We trace the animal frame to two constituent parts — the one mechanical, the other sensitive ; the me- chanical consisting of bones, skin, stomach, blood-vessels, glands, and intestines, pro- vided with muscles and sinews for volun- tary motion ; and the sensitive, consisting of nerves and brain, which direct the motions by the feelings of the organs of feose— the results of the union constituting creatures whose essence is perception, FROFM LONDON TO KEW. 34^ springing from a system of bram and nerves, which, being nourished by the energies of circulating fluids, moved by a contrivance of muscles, and strengthened by an apparatus of bones, produce all those varieties of feeling, durable, moving, and powerful beings, whose functions con- tinue as long as the original expansive powers balance the unceasing inertia of their materials. But, of that subtle PRINCIPLE which distinguishes organic life from inej^t matter — of that princi- ple of individuality which generates the passion of self-love, and leads each indi- vidual to preserve and sustain its own exist- ence — of that principle which gives pecu- liar powers of growth, and maturity, to germs of vegetables and animals — and of that principle which, being stopped, sus* pended, or destroyed, in the meanest or greatest of them, produces the awful dif- ference between the living and the dead — we have no knowledge, and we seem incapable of acquiring any, by the limited powers of our senses. Whether this prin- ciple of vitality is a principle of its owo S50 A morning's walk kind, imparted from parent plants and animals to their germs ; or whether it is the result of the totality of the being, like the centre of a sphere, — are questions which must perhaps for ever remain un- determined by the reasoning powers of man. The creature of an hour, whose chief care it is to live and indulge his self-love, who cannot see without light, nor distinctly above a few inches from the eye, is wholly incompetent to determine those questions which have so long agitated philosophy ; as, Whether the phenomena of the crea- tion could be made to exist without action and re-action, and without space?— Whe- ther, consequently, there are three Eter- nals, or ONE Eternal? — Whether the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE, MATTER void of fortn, and space containing it, were all eternal — or whether the supreme intelligence alone was eternal, and matter and space created ? — W^hether the supreme intelligence has only been exerted proxi- mately or remotely on inorganic matter; FROM LONDON TO KEW. 5^1 space being the necessary medium of crea- tion, and organization being the result ?-— Whether the globe of the earth, in form, is eternal, or, according to Her.'^chel, the effect of **a clustering power" in the mat- ter of space, beginning and ending, accor- ding to the general analogy of organized beings? — Whether the earth was a comet, the elliptical ity of whose orbit has been re- duced ; and, if so, what was the origin of the comet? — How the secondary moun- tains were liquefied — whether by fire or by water — and what were the then rela- tions of the earth to the sun?— How and when that Hquefaction ceased ; and how, and when, and in what order of time, the several organizations arose upon them ? — How those organizations, at least those DOW existing, received the powers of se- condary causes for continuing their kind ? ■' — How^ every species now lives, and grovvs, and maintains an. eternal succession of personal identities?— How these things were before we were, and how they now aje on ^very side of U3-— are topics which '552 A morning's walk have made so much learning ridiculcms, that, if I were to discuss them, in the best forms prescribed by the schools, I might but imitate in folly the crawling myriads, who luxuriate for an hour on a ripening peach; and who, like ourselves, may be led by their vanity to discuss questions ia regard to the eternity, and other attributes, of the prodigious globe, which they have inherited from their remote ancestry, and of which the early history is lost in the obscure traditions of their countless gene- rations ! Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in re- gard to the world in which we are placed, that all things which do exist, owe their existence to their compatibility with other existences; to the necessary fit- ness of all existing things; and to the HARMONY which is essential to the exist- "ence of any thing in the form and mode in which it does exist: for, without reci- procal COMPATIBILITY; without indivi- i IfROM LONDON TO KEW. 35^ dual FITNESS, and without universal HARMONY, nothing could continue TO EXIST which DOES exist; andji therefore, what does exist, is for the time necessarily compatible with other existences, fit or not incompatible, and in harmony with the whole of co- existent being. Every organized ex- istence affords, therefore, indubitable evidence of final causes or pur* POSES, competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations of fitness to other beings; of compatibility with other existences; and of harmony in regard to the whole. And every case of de- struction affords evidence, that cer- tain FINAL CAUSES havc bccome un- equal to their usual office ; that the being is UNFIT to exist simultaneously with some other beings ; that its existence i3 INCOMPATIBLE with Certain circum- stances, or that it is contrary to the gene- ral harmony of co-existent being. May not tlie fifty thousand species of beings now discoverable, be all the species whose A a 354 . . A MORIS INGS WALK existences have continued to be fit, com- patible, and harmonious? May not the Jcnown extinction of many species be re- ceived as evidence, therefore, of the gra- dual decay of the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not -the extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit, by diminish- ing the number of final causes ? And/ may not the successive breaking or wearing out of these hnks of final causes ultimately lead to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called, the end of P\JR WORLD ? As I approached a sequestered mansion- house, and some other buildings, which together bear the name of Brick- stables, I crossed a corner of the mea- dow towards an angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames, which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, "and, running a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced edge of that phy- sical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 355 pendulum which creates the earth's cen- trifugal power, varies the centre of its forces, and holds in equilibrium that deli- cately adjusted pressure of the medium of space, which pressure, without such ba- lance, would, by its clustering poxver, drive together the isolated masses of suns and planets. — In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine ori- gin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty priesthood to consider a bene- ficent river as a tangible branch of the Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, are but a portion of the rains and snows which, Aa2 35€ A MORNING^S WAB.«t having fallen near its source, are reti^rn- ing to the ocean, there to rise again and re-perform the same circle t)f vapours, clouds, rains, and rivers. What a pro- cess of fertilization, and how still more luxuriant would have been this vicinity, if man had not levelled the trees and carried away the crops of vegetation T What a place of shelter would thus have beert afforded to tribes of araphibiae, whose ac- cumulated remains often surprise geolo* gists, though necessarily consequent on the fall of crops of vegetation on eacb other, near undistttrbed banks of rivers* Happily, in Britain, our coal-pits, or mi- neralized forests, have supplied the place* of our living woods; or man, regardless of the fitness of all the parts to the perfectioa of every natural result, might here, as m other long-peopled countries, ignorantly have thwarted the course of Nature by cutting down the timber, which, acting on the electricity of the clouds, affects their density, and causes them to fall in fertili- zing showers, Such has been tbe fate of FROM LOlfDON TO KEW. 357 all the countries famous in antiquity. Persia, Syria, Arabia, parts of Turkey, and the Barbary coast, have been rendered arid deserts by this inadvertency. The clouds from the Western Ocean would long since have passed over England without disturbance from the conducting powers of leaves of trees, or blades of grass, if our coal-works had not saved our natural con- ductors; while this Thames, the agent of so much abundance and so much wealth, might, in that case, have become a shallow brook, like the once equally famed Jordan, Granicus, or Ilyssus, The dingy atmosphere of London smoke, which I had measured so accu- rately on Putney Heath, presented itself again over the woods of Chiswick Grove, reminding me of the cares of the busy world, and producing a painful contrast to the tranquillity of nature, to the silently gliding Thames, and to the unimpassioned simphcity of the vegetable creation. Man*, 1 reflected, brings upon himself a thousand calamities as consequences of his artifices A a 3 358 A morning's walk and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls evil: — He compromises every natural pleasure, to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death ; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feelr ing — HE deprives himself, and all around him, of every passing enjoyment, to accur mulate wealth, that he may purchase other men's labour, in the vain hope of adding their happiness to his own — he omits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being thQ victim of his own neglect and injustice — he arms himself with murderous weapons, and on the lightest instigations practises murder as a science, follows this science as a regular profession, and honours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers, in propor- FROM LONDON TO KEW. 359 tion to the quantity of blood they have shed, or the raisehiefs they have perpetrated - — HE diss^iises the most worthless of the people in showy liveries, teaches them the use of destructive weapons, and then ex- cites them to murder men whom they never saw, by the fear of being killed if they will ROt kill, or of being shot for cowardice — HE revels in luxury and gluttony, and then complains of the diseases which result from repletion — he tries in all things to counteract, or improve, the pro- yisions of nature, and then afflicts himself at his disappointments — he multiplies the chances against his own health and life, by his numerous artifices, and then wonder^ at the frequency of their fatal results— h e shuts his eyes against the volume of truth, presented by nature, and, vainly consi- dering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation — HE interdicts the enjoyments of all other creatures, and, regarding the world as his property, in ipere wantonness destroys lay S5o A morning's walk riads on whom have been lavished beauties and perfections — he is the selfish and merciless tyrant of all animated nature, no considerations of pity or sympathy restrain- ing, or even qualifying, his antipathies, his caprices, or his gluttonies; while, more unhappy than his victims, he is constantly arraigning that system in which he is the chief cause of more misery than all other causes joined together — he forgets, that to live and let live, is a maxim of univer- sal justice, extending not only to all man's relations with his fellow-men, but to infe- rior creatures, to whom his moral obhga- tions are the greater, because their lives ^nd happiness are often within his power • — HE is the patient of the unalterable pro- gress of universal causation, yet makes a difficulty of submitting to the impartial distribution of the provisions which sustain all other beings — he afflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, thouglv he sees all organized being decay around him, and though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him — he repines FROM LONDON TO KEW. S6l at the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts; and, though be began to exist but yesterday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever — HE sees no benevolence in the scheme of Nature which provides eternal youth to partake of the pleasures of existence; and which, destroying those pleasures by satiety of enjoyment, produces the blunted feel- ings of disease and old age — he mars all his perceptions of well-being by anticipa- ting the cessation of his vital functions, though, before that event, he necessarily ceases to be conscious or to suffer — he seeks indulgences unprovided for by the course of Nature, and then anxiously era- ploys himself in endeavouring to cheat others of the labour requisite to procure them — HE desires to govern others, but^ regardless of their dependence on his be- nevolence, is commonly gratihed in dis- playing the power entrusted to him, by a tyrannical abuse of it — he professes to love wisdom, yet in all his establishments^ 362 A MORNII^g's WALK for promoting it he sets up false standards of truth; and persecutes, even with reli^ gious intolerance^ all attempts to swerve from them — -he makes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty, but as shields to crafty wealth — he renders justice unat- tainable by its costliness; and personal rights uncertain by the intricacy and fic- I^leness of legal decisions — he possesses means of diffusing knowledge, in the sub- lime art of Printing; but, by suffering wealth and power to corrupt its agents, he has allowed it to become subservient to the gratification of personal malignity and political turpitude — he acknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing rather than their social du- ties in the political state in which they live -^he adopts the customs of barbarous ages as precedents of practice, and founds on them codes for the government of en- lightened nations — in a word, he makes false and imperfect estimates of his own bejng, of his duties to his fellow-beings. FROM LONDON TO KEW. 3^3 and of his relations to all being; and then passes his days in questioning the provi- dence of Nature, in ascribing Evil to supernatural causes, and in feverish expec- tations of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world ! I was thus employed in drawing a spe- cies of Indictment against the errors, fol- lies, selfishness, and vices of my fellow-men, while I passed along a pleasant foot-path, which conducted me from Brick-stables to the carriage-road from Mordake to Kew. On arriving at the stile, I saw a colony of the people called Gipsies, and, gratified at falling in with them, I seated myself upon it, and, hailing the eldest of the men in terms of civility, he approached me courteously; and I promised myself, from the interview, a fund of information rela- tive to the economy of those people. Policy so singular, manners so different, and passions so varied, have for so many ages characterized the race of Gipsies, that the incident of meeting with one of their litUe camps agreeably roused m^ 564 A morning's walk from that reverie on Matter and its modi- fications, into which I had fallen. What can be more strongly marked than the gipsy physiognomy? Their lively jet-black eyes — their small features — their tawny skins — their small bones — and their shrill voices, bespeak them to be a distinct tribe of the human race, as different from the English nation as the Chinese, the North- American Indians, or the woolly-headed Africans. They seem, in truth, as dif- ferent in their bodies, and in their instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propen- sities, or fit and necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores; theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of nature; — we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habi^ tations; and they, like the deer, range from pasture to pasture; — we, with aa instinct all our own, cultivate arts; they f:pntent themselves with picking up our FROM LONDON TO KEW. 26$. superfluities; — we make laws and arrange governments ; they know no laws but those of personal convenience, and no govern- ment beyond that of muscular force grow- ing out of the habits of seniority; — and we chensh passions of ambition and domina- tion, consequent on our other arrange- ments, to which they are utter strangers. Thus, we indulge our propensities, and they indulge theirs. Which are the hap- piest beings, might be made a question-^ but I am led to decide in favour of the arts and comforts of civilized life. These people appear to possess the natural fee- bleness and delicacy of man, without the power of shielding themselves from the accidents of nature. Their darhng object appears to be, to enjoy practical personal liberty. They possess less, and they en- joy fewer, luxuries than others; but they escape slavery in all the Protean shapes by which it ensnares the rest of mankind. They do not act as menial servants, and obey the caprice of a master; nor do they work as labourers for a tythe of the advan^ 366 ^ A MORNrNc/s WALK tages of their industry. They do not; as tenants of land, pay half the produce in rentals; nor do they, as anxious traders, pay half their profits to usurers or capitalists. They are not liable to the conscriptions of a militia-ballot: nor to be dratrged from their families by the frightful tyranny of the impress. And, in fine, they are not compelled to contribute a large portion of their earnings in taxes to support folly or prodigality ; nor are they condemned to pay, through their successive genera- tions, the interest of money lent for the hire of destroyers of men, who vvere, like them- selves, guilty only of resolving to be free. Yet, if they are exempt from the torture of civilized man, of having the comforts he enjoys torn from him by the sophistry of law, or the tyranny of governments ; they suffer from hour to hour the torments of want, and the apprehension of not meet- ing with renewed supplies. If they are gayer than civilized man, it is because their wants are fewer, and therefore fewer of them are unsatisfied; and probably the 2 FROM LONDON TO KEW. S^f gaiety which they assume before strangers may result from their constitution, which, under the same circumstances, may render them gayer than others, just as a French- man is gayer than an EngUshman, or an EngUshman than a North-American Indian. In a word, in looking upon this race, and upon the other recorded varieties of our species, from the woolly-headed Afri- can to the long-haired Asiatic, from the blue-eyed and white-haired Goth to the black-eyed and black-haired North Ame- rican, and from the gigantic Patagonian to the dwarfish Laplander ; we are led to believe, that the human species must radi- cally have been as various as any other species of animated beings ; and it seems as unphilosophical as impious, to limit the powers of creation to pairs of one kind, and to ascribe their actual varieties to the operations of chance. As I proceeded from the stile towards their tents, the apparent chief of the gang advanced withja firm step, holding a large knife in one hand, and some eatables in ^Ss A morning's walk ihe otLer ; and he made many flourishes with his knife, seemingly in the hope of intimidating me, if I proved an enemy. I civilly begged his pardon for intruding upon their camp, and assured him that mine was a mere visit of curiosity ; that I was not a justice of the peace, and had no desire to disturb them. He then told me I was very welcome, and 1 advanced ta their chief tent. "But," said I to this man, ''you have not the gipsy colour and features?" *' O, no," he replied, ''lam no gipsy — the people call us all gipsies—-' but I am by trade a tinker — I hve in— Court, Shoreditch, in the winter ; and during the summer I travel the country, and get my livelihood by my trade." Looking at others of the group, who were sitting at the entrance of two tents, I traced two sets of features among them, one plainly English, and the other evidently Gipsy ; and, mentioning this circumstance, he replied, "O yes — though I am not a gipsy, my wife is, and so is her old mo- ther there — they are true gipsies, ever^ FROM LONDON TO KEW. 569 inch of 'em. This man, my wife's brother, is a gipsy — we are useful to one another in this way of Hfe — and the old woman there is as knowing a gipsy as any in the country, and can tell your fortune, sir, if you like to hear it." — His character of the elder gipsy, who resembled Munden's witch in Macbeth, produced considerable mirth in the whole party ; and the old wo- man, who was engaged in smoking her pipe, took it from her mouth, and said : ''I ayn't told so many gentlefolks their fortunes to no purpose, and I'll tell your's, sir, if you'll give me something to fill my pipe." I smiled, and told her I thanked her; but, as I was not in love, I felt no anxiety to hear my fortune. — '^Aye, sir," said she, **many's the lover I've made happy, and inany's the couple that I've brought toge- ther." — Recollecting Farquhar's incident in the Recruiting Officer, I remarked: — ^^You tell the ladies what their lovers hire you to tell them, I suppose — and the gentlemen what the ladies request you to tell them?"— ''Why, yes," said she, fib 370 A morning's walk '^something like it;" and laughing — ''aye, sir, I see you're in the secret!" — *'And then you touch golden fees, I suppose?" — ''Yes," interrupted the first man, **IVe known her get five or six guineas on a wedding-day, part from the lady, and part from the gentleman ; and she never wants a shilling, and a meal's victuals, when she passes many houses that I could name." — *' True, "exclaimed the old beldame, ''that's ^11 true; and I've made many fine folks happy in my time, and so did my mother before me — she was known far and near!" I had no occasion to remark on the silly dupes on whom they practised these impo- sitions, for the whole party expressed their sentiments by bursts of laughter while the old vToman was speaking : but I could not help exclaiming, that I thought she ought to make the fools pay well who gave cre- dit to her prophecies. — "Aye," said she, "1 see you don't believe in our art — but we tell all by the handT — I felt of course that the hand was as good a key to deter- mine the order of probable events as pla- FROM LONDON TO KEW, 371 nets, cards, or tea-sediments ; and there- fore, concluding that gipsies, like astrolo- gers and other prophets, are imposed on by the doctrine of chances, I dropped the conversation; but felt it my duty to give the old woman a shilling to buy some tobacco for her pipe. I now surveyed the entire party, and ii> three tents found there were three men, two women, besides the old woman, four girls, and two boys. One of the tents was placed at a little distance from the others, and in that resided a young married cou- ple. — *^And pray," sai4|I, ''where and bow do you marry?" — ''Why," said the first man, "we marry like other folks — they were married at Shoreditch Church —I was married to my old woman here at Hammersmith Church — and my brother- in-law here was married at Acton Church. " — "Then," said I, " you call yourselves Christians?"— At this question they all laughed; and the first man said, that, " If it depends on our going to church, we Can't say much about it; but, as we do B b s; 372 A morning's walk nobody any harm, and work for our living, some in one way, and some in another, we suppose we are as good Christians as many other folks." While this conversation passed, I heard them speaking to each other in a language somewhat resembling Irish, but it had tones more shrill ; and the first man, not- withstanding his English physiognomy, as well as the others, spoke with a foreign accent, not unlike that of half-anglicized Hindoos. I mentioned this peculiarity; but he assured me that neither he nor any of the party had been out of England. I now inquired about their own language, when one of them said it \M2i.% Maltese ; but the other said it was their cant language. I asked their names for various objects which I pointed out ; but, after half a do- zen words, the first man inquired, if I had "ever heard of one Sir Joseph Banks — for," said he, "that gentleman once paid me a guinea for telling him twenty words in our language." Perceiving, therefore, that he rated this species of information FROM LONDON TO KEVV. 373 very high, and aware that the subject has been treated at large by many authors, I forbore to press him further. The ground served them for a table, and the grass for a table-cloth. The mixture of their viands with dirty rags, and other disgusting objects, proved that they pos- sess no sentiment, in regard to cleanliness, superior to lower animals. Like philoso- phical chemists, they evidently admitted the elementary analogy of what the delicate sense of society classes under contrasted heads of dirty and clean. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling which actu- ates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a pole at each end, with a ridge pole, co- vered with blanketing, which was stretch- fid obliquely to the ground by wooden jB b 3 374 A morning's walk pegs. Such rudeness, and such sirapHcity, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous array of oriental splendour in the palaces of Royalty; and to the varied magnificence displayed in those warehouses whence an Oakley, or a Bullock, supplies the mansions of wealth and grandeur. Indeed, as I stood conversing with these people, how could 1 help marvelling that, in the most polished district of the most ci- vihzed of nations, with the grand pagoda of Kew-Gardens in full view on one hand, and the towers of the new Bastile Palace in sight on the other, I should thus have presented under my eyes a family of eleven persons in no better condition than the Hottentots in their kraals, the Americans in their wig- wams, or the Tartars in their equally rude tents. 1 sighed, however, to think that difference of natural constitution and varied propensities were in England far from being the only causes of the proxi- mity of squalid misery to ostentatious pomp. I felt too that the manners of these gipsies were assimilated to those of 3 FROM LONDON TO KEW. 375 the shepherd tribes of the remotest anti- quity, and that in truth I saw before me a family of the pastoral ages, as described in the Book of Genesis. They wanted their flocks and herds ; but the possession of these neither accorded with their own po- hcy, nor with that of the country in which they reside. Four dogs attached to their tents, and two asses grazing at a short dis- tance, completed such a grouping as a painter would, I have no doubt, have found in the days of Abraham in every part of Western Asia, and as is now to be found among the same people, at this day, in every country in Europe. They exhi- bit that state of man in which thousands of years might pass away without record or improvement: and, whether they are Egyptians, Arabs, Hindoos, Tartars, or a peculiar variety of our species ; whether they exhibit man in the rude state which, according to Lord Montboddo, most nearly approximates to the ourang-outang of the oriental forests ; or whether they are consi- dered in their separated character — they 37b A morning's waek form an interesting study for the philoso- pher, the economist, and the antiquary. In a few minutes after I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive alarm. '* O, sir," said she, **I'm so glad to come up with you--- I'm so frightened — I've been standing this quarter of an hour on the other side of the stile, vvaiting for somebody to come by." — '' And what has so frightened you ?" said I.—*' O, sir," said the still terrified girl, looking behind her, and increasing her pace, ** those gipsies and witches — they frighten every body; and I wo'dn't have come this way for all the world if I'd known they'd been there." — ^'But," said I, '*what are you frightened at? have you heard that they have done harm to any one?"— *'0 dear! yes, sir, I've heard my mother say they bewitches people ■; and, one summer, two of them beat my father dreadfully." — ''But what did he do to them?" — "Why, he was a little tipsy, to be sure ; but he says be only called 'era a FROiM LONDON TO KEW. 577 pack of fortune-tellers." — ^' And are all the children in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you ?" — " O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they'll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?" The poor girl asked this ques- tion with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that 1 had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened na- tion I Let me hope that the tutors in the schools of Bell and Lancaster will consi- der it as part of their duties, to destroy the vulgar faith in ghosts, omens, fortune- teUing, fatality, and witchcraft. On my right, my attention was attracted by the battlements of a new Gothic build- ing, which I learnt, from the keeper of an adjoining turnpike, was called Kew Priory, and is a summer retreat of a wealthy Catholic maiden lady, Miss Doughty, of Richmond- Hill ; after whom a street has recently been named in Loii- 378 A MORNING S WALK don. Learning that the lady was not there, I turned aside to take a nearer view ; and, ringing at the gate, in the hope of seeing the interior, a female, who opened it, told me that it was a rule of the place, that no man could be admitted be- sides the Rev. Mr. , the Catholic priest. 1 learnt that the Priory, a beauti- ful structure on a lawn, consisted merely of a chapel, a room for refreshments, and a library; and that the lady used it for a change of scene in the long afternoons of the summer season. The enclosed space contained about 24 acres, on the banks of the Thames, and is subdivided by Pilton's invisible fences. Behind the priory, there is a house for the bailiff and his wife, a ca- pacious pheasantry, an aviary, and exten- sive stables. Nothing can be more taste- ful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth ; but it is exposed to the incon- venience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a con- siderable depth. Another quarter of a mile, along a dead FKOM LONDON TO KEW. 379 flat, brought me upon Kew-Green. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent fohage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the hori- zon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green. As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my left, the long boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens ; on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk the effigies of the whole British navy, and over each representation appears the name of the vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or six feet long, and extending, with intervening distances, above a mile and a half. As the labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary per- formance; and I was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency from passing travellers. Kew-Green is a triangular area of about thirty acres. Nearly in the centra SSO A morning's walk is the chapel of St. Anne. On the eastern side is a row of family houses ; on the north-western side a better row, the backs of which look to the Thames ; and on the south side stand the boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens, some buildings for soldiery, ^nd the plain house of Ernest, duke of Cumberland. Among other persons of note and interest who reside here, are the two respectable daughters of Stephen Duck, ^the poet, who deserve to-be men- tioned as relics of a former age. In the western corner stand the buildings called Kew Palace, in which George III. passed many of the early years of his reign, and near which he began a new structure a few years before his confirmed malady — which I call the Bastile Palace, from its resem- blance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen. On a former occa- sion, I have viewed its interior, and I am at loss to conceive the motive for pre- ferring an external form, which rendered it impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large closets, boudoirs, FROM LONDON TO KEW. 381 and rooms like oratories. Ttie works have, however, been suspended since the unhappy seclusion of the Royal Architect ; and it is improbable, at least in this gene- ration, that they will be resumed. The foundation is in a bog close to the Thames, and the principal object within its view is the dirty town of Brentford, on the oppo- site side of the river. I had intended to prolong my route to the western corner of the Green; but, in passing St. Anne's Chapel, 1 found the pew-openers engaged in wiping the pews and washing the aisles. I knew that that child of Genius, Gainsborough, the painter, lay interred here ; and, desirous of paying my homage to his grave, I in- quired for the spot. As is usual in regard to this class of people, they could give me no information ; yet one of them fancied she had heard such a name before. I was therefore obliged to wait while the sexton or clerk was fetched, and in the interim 1 walked into the chapel. I was, in truth, well re -paid for the time it cost 382 A morning's walk me ; for I never saw any thing prettier, ex- cept Lord Le Despencer's exquisite struc- ture at West Wycombe. As the royal ^ family usually attend here when they re- side at Kew, it is superbly fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. The seats for the family fill the gallery, and on the ground-floor there are forty-eight pews of brown oak, adapted for four and six persons each. Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls; but the record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank and tide. It was a marble slab, to the memory of Meyer, the painter, — with lines by the amiable poet. Hay ley ; and I was led, by respect for painter and poet, to copy the whole : — Jeremiah Meyer, R.A. Painter in Miniature and Enamel to his Majesty Geo. III. Died January 19, 1789. Meyer I in tliy works, the world will ever see How great the loss of Art in losing thee ; But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak. Nature's keen sufferings 011 thy death to speak: FROM LONDON TO KEW. 383 Through all her duties, what a heart was thine ; In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine I Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal. What most we love in life, and, losing, feel ; Age after age may not one artist yield Equal to thee, iu Painting's ample field; And ne'er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven coramenci ,A fonder parent, or a firmer friend. William Hayley, 1789. From hence I strolled into the vestry, where I found a table of fees, draw a with a degree of precision which merits imita- tion. It appears, that the fees for mar-» iiiAGES with a licence are \0s, 6d,, an4 by banns 5s, That those for burials, to the minister, if the prayers are said in the church, are 5s. ; if only at the grave, 2s, 6d, The graves are six feet deep; and, in the church, the coffin must be of lead. The clerk is entitled to kaif, and the sexton to about a third more. A vault in the church is charged 21/., and in the church-yard 10/. 10^.; with 51, 5s, and 2/. 2<^. respectively for each time of opening. To non-residents they are dour ble.— I had scarcely finished this extract, 381 A morning's walk ivhen the clerk's or sexton's assistant made his appearance ; and on the south side of the church-yard he brought me to the tomb of Gainsborough. **Ahl friend/' said I, ''this is a hal- lowed spot— here lies one of Britain's favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her among the nations of the earth." — ''Perhaps it was so," said the man, "but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their mo- numents, if the family pay ; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this family; if so, I'll tell you how much is due." — "Yes, truly, friend," said I, "I am one of the great family bound to preserve the monument of Gainsborough; but, if you take me for one of his relatives, you are mistaken." — "Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not included in the Will, there- fore are not obligated." I could not now avoid looking with scorn at the fellow ; but, as the spot claimed better feelings, I gave him a trifle for his trouble, and mildly told him 1 would not detain him. FROM LONDON TO KEW. 385 The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar ad^ miration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death as in life, if you would excite the notice of the multitude, you must in the grave have a splendid mauso- leum, or in walking the streets you must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains of t pie first painter OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL, in faucy- pictures, and one of the first in the classes of landscape and portrait ; — a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius ; as much by the mode in which his genius was deve- loped, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his amiable private charac^ ter as by his eminence in thechief of Fancy's Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter — that the poet only ex- hibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is called C c 386 upon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but the suc- cessful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his hand as well as con- ceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composi- tion, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons — but far more so a great painter, who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Crea- tor. Yet such a man was Thomas Gainsborough, before whose modest tomb I stood ! FROM LONDt)N TO KEW. 387 The following are the words engraven on the stone: — Thomas Gainsborough, esq. died August 2, 1788. Also the body of Gainsborough Dupont, esq. who died Jan. 20, 1797, aged 42 years. Also, Mrs. Margaret Gainsborough, wife of the above Thomas Gainsborough, esq. who died Dec. 17, 1798, in the 72d year of her age. A little to the eastward lie the remains of another illustrious son of art, the mo- . dest ZoFFANY, whose Florence Gallery, Portraits of the Royal Family, and other pictures, will always raise him among the highest class of painters. He long resided on this Green, and, like Michael Angelo, Titian, and our own West, produced master-pieces at four-score. The words on the monument are: Sacred to the Memory of John Zoffany, R.A. who died Nov, 11, 1810, aged 87 years. E. East-Sheen, its pleasant sights, 232, 278, Earth, the, its primative state, 340. Economy of a workhouse, 109. , political, its primary law, 139. Education, obligation to make it universal, 332. — — — — , ■ to teach public duties, 362: Egyptians, their absurd mythology, 324. Ellenborough, Lord, his residence, 178. Electricity, illustrations of, 183 to 191. Election at Garrat, described, 81. Eloquence of Pitt, recollections of, 162. England, its exemplary road system, 122. Enclosure Bill proposed, 158. Enclosing parks, objections to, 172. Entrails of animals, no prognostics, 249. End of the world, phenomena leading to it, 354* Erasmus, his character, 39. Essex, cleanliness of its towns, 230. Eiernals, what are so, 350. External species infinite in number, 353. Excise system, its mischievous effects, 255. Experience, a transcendent quality in a statesman, 165. , a chief test of truth, 268. Eye, concert played on it, 148, Family group in a workhouse, 110. Farming out the poor, its inhumanity, 113. Fate and fatality, discussion on, 235 to 244. Family of man, its necessarj' co-mixture, 259. Fever of the brain, its mental hallucinations, 71, 271. Fertility, means of preserving, 314. Ferdinand, cost of his restoration, 42. Female education, discussion respecting, 292, F^ar, its operation on the mind, 70. INDEX. JFemales on fire, mode of extinguishing, 139. Ferme ornee, described, 175. Final causes, their nature, 353. Fitness in nature, the primary law, 200, 352. Fires, mode of preventing, 135, 138. Fire-house, Hartley's, 135. — ^ — , interesting prospect from, 145, Finance, Pitt's absurd system, 164. Flame, when ungovernable, 139. Food of a labouring family, 105. Foot-paths, necessity for good ones, 125. Fortune-telling, its errors exposed, 369, Fox, Charles James, his patriotic character, 164. — .^ , his death, 218. Food distributed from religious houses, 308, French Encyclopaedists, their oversight, 1. France, its improvements under Napoleon, 121, 170- Free agency demonstrated, 241, 7iote, Fruit-trees, their general plantation recommended, 168. Franklin, Dr. his electrical rods, 189. Gainsborough, his tomb and character, 383. Garrat, mock mayor of, 77. Galilean telescopes, preferred for telegraphs, 146. Gardeners, their habits and slavery, 224. Geometry, its connexion with nature, 189. Geocentric phenomena, error relative, 246. Generations, the law of their mixture, 260, &c. George III. his liberal views on education, 332. Geological changes, their causes traced, 339. Ghosts, vulgar belief in, 68, 269. Gipsies, interview with, 363- Gluttony, lesson to, 195. Goldsmid, Mr. his seat, character and history, 272. Goodbehere, Alderman, his character, 256. God, attributes of, 272. Greeks, their mythological personification, 324. Gravitation, its causes, 185. Grief, its luxury described, 216. Greatness, how best sustained, 17. Grammars of Philosophy, &c. their merits, 294. INDEX, Great building^, uo standard of locality, 24'. — men, their opinions no test of truth, 40. Griffiths, Dr. anecdote of, 213. Gradation of organized beings, 346. Guelph, the Second, anecdote of, 208. H. Happiness, its production the test of worth, 8. — — — — produced by employment, 174. Haunted house, anecdotes of one, 66. Harmony of relative existences, 352, 363. Harper, Sir John, mayor of Garrat, 78. Hartley, David, Esq. his fire-house described, 135. Hayley, Mr. his epitaph on Meyer, 381. Handel and Haydn compared, 149. Hamilton, Lady, her distresses, 182. Hedge-rows ought to be productive?, 170. Heat, its causes, 185. Heydegger, his entertainment, 208. Herschell, Dr. his clustering power, 351. Historical justice, no atonement for suffering, 9. Hindoos, their absurd mythology, 324. Houses, method of securing them against fire, 139. Home Tourist, his expected modesty, 2. Howard, Mr. his exemplary character, 1 16. Horses, cruelty of tight-reining them, 1 23. House of Commons, character of its majorities, 163. Hoare, Mr. bis residence, 201 . Hogarth, Mrs. anecdote of, 213. , Mr. his tomb and character, 388. Horoscope, its supposed powers, 234. House of God, its inadequacy, 271. Ignorance, the basis of superstition, 73. Impress, its frightful tyranny, 366. Infatuated nations characterized, 90. Ingenuity superseded by taxation, 89. Inclination of roads, determined, 121. Instructors, clerical, their errors, 265. Intellectual powers, their limited nature, 342. ■ ' — — philosophy, its indestructibility, 321. INDEX. Instincts of men compared, 364. Iroii-foundery. description of one, 86. Isle of St. Peter's, its ancient boundaries and modem splendor^ 19. J. Jews, their superstitious demonology, 324. Juries, Special, their disgraceful character, 255* K. Kelvedon, its cleanliness, 230. Kew Priory, described, 376. ■ Green, ditto, 378. Kit-Cat Club, its house at Barnes Elms, 201, 204. — — , pictures, 207. Language, its means of improvement, 298. Land, the patrimony of man, 159. Lancaster, Mr. his system recommended, 333. Lakes of North America, their probable fate, 327. Law, its malignity and perversion, 362. Legislation, summary of its duties, 104. Life, compared to a morning's walk, 390. Living errors, corrected too late, 28. Liberty, taught in popular elections, 84. Life of man, described, 205, 256. Lincoln, Bishop of, his attendance on Pitt, 166. Lightning, destructive effects of, 182. -, means of security from, 189. London, its features of ingress and egress, 13. , reflection suggested by its distant prospect, 150. < , its population characterized, 153. ■ smoke, described, 130. • , its moral suggestions, 149. Loco-motion, means of producing, 124. Loco-motive beings, their peculiar economy, 347.^ Lovers, the dupes of gipsies, 369. Lumber trees, unfit for a civilized country, 169. Luck and ill-luck, relative terms, 237. D d INDEX. M. Matron of a workhouse, her character, 109. Manners of the Londoners, 11. Mall in St. James's Park, its ancient splendor, 15. ^Manufactory of pitch and turpentine, 56. Manners, effects of a change of, 16. Marsh of Westminster, reflection on, 20. Madam and Mistress, distinction between, 212. Machinery, ought not to injure workmen, 50. Maurice, Mr. his merits as a Poet, 150. Manufactory, a country one described, 85. Matter, inorganic, laws governing, 344. • , whether eternal, 350. Manual labour, its economy in manufactories, 8&» Maternal feelings in a workhouse, 112. Man, his false assumption, 60, 359. , his pride, 60, 358. — — , his unsociable character, 95, , his uncharitabteness, 102. , his numerous wants, 1 17. < , his vanity, 152. , his monopolizing spirit, 155, 360. , opposes himself to Providence, 158. , his proper employment, 159. , his true happiness, 174. , his transitory state, 205, 361. . , his origin, progress, and decay, 205, 256. I , his common nature, 262, 360r , his definite existence, 272. , general views of his social state, 357. »^ , his cruelty to inferior creatures, 360. Mercy, an engine of priestcraft, 307. Mechanics, their relation to nature, 189. Meyer, his tomb, 381. Milk-fair, description of, 5. Military education reprobated, 3^ Mile-stone and marme cottages recommended, 127, Middleton, Mr. his estimates of Middlesex, 224. Misery, dense mass of, 155. Ministers of England, their narrow views, 167. MoDks, disiuterineat of their bones, 313. INDEX. Morris, Valentine, Esq. bis benevolent cbaracter, 218, 300. Moral deduced from the state of St. James's palace, 15. rule against great mischiefs, 28. More, Sir Thomas, his residence and character, 38, Motion, terrestrial, its geseral cause, 242, note. Mortlake Church-jard, reflect ons on, 232, 263, Moral condition of London, 152. Mortlake Churoh, reflections within, 363, 280. Music, its abuse in war, 10. Mutilated Soldiers at Chelsea Hospital, 27. Mussulmen, their exemplary sobriety, 65. Mysteries, religious, then' origin, 265. Mythology, its origin and progress, 320« N. Natural feelings violated in workhouses, 110. Nature superior to art, 118, 154. , its operalious uncomplicated, 188. , its governing principle, 200. Napoleon, his improvements of France, 121, 170. Nell Gwin, founder of Chelsea Hospital, 26. Necessity, doctrine of, investigated, 235, 244, Novels, characterized, 98. Obligations of the rich to the poor, 1 03. Oil mills, description of one, 84. Organic life, difficulty of conceiving its principle, 349. Organized beings, intricacy of the laws governing, 345. Origin of organized beings, its philosophical obscuritv, 346. ■ ■ ■ f Jf P. Painting and Poetry, compared, 384. Palace of the Regent, its costly fitting, 6. Partridge, John, his tomb and errors, 233. Parks of London, their utility and capability, 17. , noblemen's, their inutility, 133. Patronage, cause of war, 29. Parish allowances to the poor, 1 J 3. INDEX. Pauorama from Wimbledon Common, 149. Paper Circulation always ruinous, 181. Parish poor-houses described, 109, 193. Peace, its security, 33. Peach, its crawling mjriads, 352. Peter the Hermit, his fanaticism, 39. Perihelion point, importance of its place in prodaciDg terrestrial changes, 339. Peuley, Mr. his garden at Mortlake, 310. Philosophy, modern, its divinities, 324. ■ ■ -, address to, 327. Philosophical speculations on unseen powers, 185. Pilton's fences recommended, 176. Pitt, Mr. his death and character, 162. Planetary influences, examined, 234, 252. Poetr}- and Painting, compared, 384. Poor, diseased, provision for, 5. Pottery, observations on its antiquity and application, 300. Pope, Mr. his parlour at Battersea, 53. Popular elections, their importance, 82. Policy, wicked, its features, 7. Poverty and wealth, contiasted, 102. Priestcraft, its origin and progress, 320. Probabilities, their connexion with fortune-telling, 247. Productive powers, their intricacy, 346. Promenades, evening ones proposed, 90. Prosperity, national, its true signs, 129. Principals in trade, their cares, 12. Promenade in St. James's Park, its ancient splendor, 15. Pride, lessons to correct, 60, 358. Printing, its abuse, 362. Public Debt, how has it been expended, 41. Putney-Heath, objects upon it described, 137, 166. Pubhc purse, a necessary stimulus to candidates, 81. R. Ranelagh, its scite described, 21. Railways, proposal for extending them, 75. Religious houses turned into market- gardens, 303. Reformation of Religion, 267. Retreats of men of business, 101. INDEX. Repton, Mr. his powers of arrangement, 133. Rivers, absurd worship of, 355. . , phenomena of their banks, 63, 356. , agents of never-ceasing changes, 192, Richmond Park, notice of, 166. Rights of man, intrigues against, 219. Road Police, suggested, 123. Royal Family, fond of Chelsea bunns, 26. Rome sunk and London exalted, 36. Roads, principle of constructing them, 121. Roehampton, its cheerless aspect, 171. Ruins, without antiquity, 23. Saws, circular, their wonderful powers, 46. Self-knowledge, neglect of, 1, 362. Secondary causes, their general nature, 189. Senses, animal, their limited powers, 342. Slioe-making machinery, account of, 47. Show, policy of, among princes, 6. Shropshire girls, their industry and beauty, 226. Slavery, its protean shapes, 365. Sloane, Sir Hans, his statue, 37 — tomb, 40. Smoke, improperly emitted, 21. * of London, its remarkable phenomena, 130. • , plans for consuming, 132. Soldiery, their specious character, 10. Society, state of, in England, 90. Soldiers, why and for what they are killed and wound- ed, 27. Soldier, who had lost both arms, 29. Spontaneous combustion, productive of superstition, 73. Spencer, Lord, his park, 133. Space, whether eternal, 350. Stage-coach horses, mismanagement of, 123. Standard of truth defined, 268. Sterility of ancient countries, cause of, 356. Statesmen, their mistaken policy, 4. St. James's palace, its ruined state, 14. St. Paul's Cathedral, 151. St. Lawrence, the, its probable fate, 337. Surfaces, the residence of electric power, 185. Surrey, its disgraceful wastes, 156. INDEX. Supernatural appearances, refen-ed to their causes, 70, "** Survivors in regiments, their small numbers, 33. Subjects for painters, 108. Superstition, instances of, 69, 222. , its origin and progress, 320. Symmachus, his bigotry, 39. T. Taxes, not tlie sole business of governments, 18. Tart-ball, account of, 18. Taxation, its pernicious effects, 89. Telegraphs, particulars of, 141, 146. ■ — , their application to domestic purposes, 146. Terror, vulgar, instances of, 68, 375. Thames, its phenomena and changes, 355. Thomson, the Poet, his town and character, 388. Tides, their nature explained, 354. Time and space characterized, 201, 256, 272. Tooke, Mr. Hornc, his character, 192. Tonson, Jacob, his house at Barnes Elms, 201. Trees, their importance in fertilization, 356. Treasury, British, its pernicious powers, 9. Transitory state of man, 16, 24, 52, 59, 312. Treaty-breakers, appeal to them, 31. Tragedies, in real life, 117, 140. Ty bourn, its present course, IQ. V. Vegetables, their organization, 343. Vital principle, its incomprehensible nature, 349. Virtue, its worth, 350. Virtuous exertion entitled to support, 104. Village promenades, proposal for, 96. Villages round London, their want of society, 100. Villas, no signs of public wealth, 129. Village bells, cause of their peculiar effect, 209. Virtue, promoted by cleanliness, 231. Vulcan, his residence, 86. W. Washington, the great, his character and glory, T. AVar-office, British, its equivocal merit, 9. INDElt. Water, the cause of change, 64. War, its improper duration, 255. , its horrors, associated with British grandeur, 11. Want, the seat of its empire, 155. ■ , means of extinguishing, 159. Wandsworth, its population, &c. 74. ■ workhouse, a \isit to, 107. Wages of labour, 105. Walnut-trees, prodigious ones, 310. Waithman, Mr. his patriotic character, 256. Waste lands, a libel on political economy, 156. Wealth, its personal consequences, 12. , its relative nature, 103. Welding Hammer, described, 86. Westminster Abbey, characterized, 150. Webb, Mr. his benevolent character, 116. Wesley, Mr. his godlike zeal, 1 17. - ■ his mode of riding, 135. Webster, Mr. his geological discoveries, 337. Welch girls, their industry and beauty, 226, 228. Witham, its exemplary cleanliness, 230. Winchester palace, notice of, 38. Wimbledon Common, its elevation, 119. — — , its misuse, 192. Workmen, entitled to indemnity on the introduction of machinery, 49. WooUet, Mr. his skill as an engraver, 134. Workhouses, obligation to visit them, 105. World, its end explained, 354. Wood, Alderman, his patriotic character, 256. Wordsworth, Mr. his poetical merit, 270, Women, an employment worthy of them, 117. Y. York-house, the residence of Wolsey, 57. Z. Zofifany, Mr. his tomb and character, 386. ERRATA. At page 65, five lines from bottom, insert three commas after " beastly, vicious, and diseased,"— and at page 168, UnQ 8, for found vend formed. Lately were puhlisJied, By the same Author, I. A LETTER to tlie LIVERY of LONDOI>r, on the OFFICE of SHERIFF; price 7s. II. A TREATISE on tlie POWERS and DUTIES of JURIES; price 8s. IIL /« Sheets, for posting in Public Places, price Sixpence each, 1. GOLDEN RULES for JURYMEN. S. GOLDEN RULES for ELECTORS. 3. GOLDEN RULES for MAGISTRATES and SHERIFFS. J. Adlakd, Printer, 25, Bariholomew Close, London. ^,