I have long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd’s coffee-house; and commerce would be essentially served, if, during ’Change-hours at London, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, and Glasgow, communications could be interchanged relative to the state of markets, purchases, sales, and other transactions of business. How convenient too would be such a rapid intercourse between London and country bankers, in regard to balances, advances, and money transactions; how desirable in law business between London andcountry practitioners; and how important in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency! In family concerns, notices of deaths, births, accidents, progressive sickness, &c. it would often be deeply interesting. The state of elections, the issues of lawsuits, determinations of the legislature, questions for answers, and numberless events of more or less importance, would occur sufficient to keep telegraphs in constant requisition, and abundantly repay the cost of maintaining them. A guinea might be paid per hundred miles, for every five or six words, which, in matters of private concern, might, by pre-concert, be transmitted in cypher. Instead of sixty-four telegraphs, we might then require five hundred, and an establishment costing 100,000l.per annum; yet five hundred messages and replies per day, betweendifferentparts of the kingdom, taken at 2l.each, would in two hundred and fifty days produce 250,000l.or a net revenue of 150,000l.But to achieve so vast a purpose, and to confer on men a speciesof ubiquity, even if 50,000l.per annum were lost to the government, would it not be worth the sacrifice, thus to give to the people of England an advantage not possessed, and never likely to be possessed, by any other people on earth? What a triumph of civilization would be afforded by such an extension of the telegraphic system! The combinations of theTELESCOPEbegan what those of theTELEGRAPHwould complete. United, they would produce a kind offinite ubiquity, rendering the intercourse of an industrious community independent of time and distance, and binding the whole in ties of self-interest, by means which could be achieved only in a high state of civilization through fortunate combinations of human art.As I looked around me from this eminence, a multitude of ideas, sympathies, and affections, vibrated within me, which it would be impossible or tedious to analyse. The organ of the Eye was here played upon like that of the Ear in a musical concert. Nor was it the sensealone which was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and tone found a separate concord or discord, in innumerable associations and reminiscences. It was, in truth, a chorus to the eye, unattended by the noise and distraction produced by the laboured compositions ofHandel; while it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an effect like one of the tender symphonies ofHaydn. It was a Panorama, better adapted, however, to a poet than a painter; for it had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any eminences which raise the landscape above an angle of six or eight degrees; yet, to a poet, how rich it was in associations—how endless in pictures for the imagination!The north and north-east were still obscured by the dingy, irregular, and dense Smoke issuing from the volcano of the Metropolis; and, in looking upon it, how difficult it was to avoid tracing the now mingled masses back to their several sources, considering the happiness or misery which theyreflected from their respective fire-sides, and gaging the aspirations of hope, or the sighs of wretchedness, which a fertile imagination might conceive to be combined with this social atmosphere! Convenient alike to every condition of humanity, it might be considered as flowing at once from the dungeons of despairing convicts, the cellars and garrets of squalid poverty, the busy haunts of avarice, the waste of luxury, and the wantonness of wealth.Straight before me, the metropolis, like a devouring monster, exhibited its equivocal and meretricious beauties, its extensive manufactories, its aspiring churches and towers, and other innumerable edifices.Westminster Abbeystood prominent, at once reviving the recollection of its superstitious origin, and exciting deep veneration as the depository of the relics of so much renown. What topics for commentary, if they had not been recently exhausted in the classical stanzas of aMaurice! St.Paul’s, the monument ofWren, was but just visible through the haze, though the man at the Telegraph asserted, that he could sometimes tell the hour by its dial without the aid of a telescope! How characteristic is this structure become of the British metropolis, and how flat the mass of common spires and smoky chimneys would now seem without it! The Monument, recording the delusions of faction, 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 seven feet. Indeed, any wretch capable of setting his foot upon an ant-hill, and of destroying it, because it made no palpable appeals to his sympathy, might at this distance, by parity of feeling, let fall a mill-stone on this great city, and extinguish in an instant the hopes and cares of its inhabitants. On this spot then I behold an assemblage of the greatest wonders ofman’s creation, at a focal distance, which reduces them to the measure of anANT-HILL; and still further off they would be diminished even to aPOINT! 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 listening near the ground, the confused hum of the vast British metropolis could here be compared only to the buz of aBEE-HIVE, or the sound of aCONCH! What a lesson do these considerations afford to the pride of man, whose egotism represents 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, however, natural that the nearest object should fill the largest angle, whether viewed by the mind or the eye; though it is the business of wisdom and philosophy to correct such illusions of our intellectual or sensitive powers.Of the moral condition, and feelings, concentrated within a spot thus embracedby a glance of the eye, how impossible to form an estimate! Supposing 900,000 human beings are thus huddled together, in 150,000 houses, we may conclude, that 100,000 will always be lying on the bed of sickness, and that 30,000 are constantly afflicted by mortal diseases, eighty of whom expire every day, or three in every hour! Of the 150,000 house-keepers, above 50,000 are racked by poverty, or by the dread of its approach; other 50,000 maintain a precarious independence; 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 class are either already plunged, or predisposed to plunge, into vices and crimes unknown except in such a city; those of the second class maintain a virtuous struggle, but more frequently sink into the lower, than rise into the higher class; while, among the third class, there are found all degrees of virtue and worth, although mixed with an envious spirit ofrivalry, and an indulgence in expense and luxury that greatly reduce the number of truly happy families.On the north, north-west, and east, I still beheld the signs of this overgrown metropolis in villages, which branch, like luxuriant shoots, on every side. And it was only on the south and south-west, in the swelling downs and in the charms of Box-hill, Leith-hill, and Dorking, that I could discover the unsophisticated beauties of nature, which seemed to mock the toils of man, in the contrast they afforded to the scene in the opposite direction. Yet men, who never receive instruction except through their own experience, flock in tens of thousands to share in the lottery presented to their ambition in great cities, where thousands perish while in pursuit of the prize, where other thousands obtain nothing but blanks and disappointments, and whence the tens who achieve their object, gladly escape to enjoy their wealth, free from the disturbance of city passions, amid the placid and unchangeable beauties of nature.In looking around me from the windows of Hartley’s Fire-house, it was impossible to avoid reflecting on the wretchedness of Want existing in the sooty metropolis, and the waste of Means in the uncultivated country immediately around me. I had just been sympathizing with the forlorn inhabitants of the workhouse at Wandsworth, at the distance of only a mile; and half a dozen other such receptacles of misery invited commiseration within equal distances, in other directions; yet a radius of a few hundred yards round this spot would have included as much unappropriated and useless land as might have sufficed to confer independence and plenty on their hopeless inmates! In the north-eastern direction, within a distance of ten miles, at least twenty thousand families might be discovered pining in squalid misery; though here I found myself in an unpeopled and uncultivated tract, nearly four miles square, and containing above fifteen thousand acres of good soil, capable of affording independent subsistence to half as many families!I could not help exclaiming against the perversity of reason—the indifference of power—the complication of folly—and the ascendancy of turpitude, which, separately or conjointly, continue to produce circumstances so cruel and preposterous! Let it be recorded, said I, to the eternal disgrace of all modern statesmen, of many hundreds of ambitious legislators, and of our scientific economists, that in this luxuriant county of Surrey, there still exist, without productive cultivation, no less than 25,000 acres of open commons; 30,000 acres of useless parks, 48,000 acres of heaths, and 30,000 acres of chalk hills, serving but to subsist a few herds of deer and cattle, and to grow some unproductive trees, though at the very instant 10,000 families in the same county are dependent on the bounty of their respective parishes! Is this, said I, the vaunted age of reason? Are these the genuine fruits of civilization? Do such circumstances indicate the ascendency of benevolence? Do they not rather demonstratethat the principle of doing to others as we would be done unto, has little influence on the practices of our Statesmen and Legislators?I may be told, that the principle of enclosing waste lands has long been recognised in the prevailing system of economy, and that the Legislature is incessantly active in passing Bills for new enclosures. But, I ask, for whom, and for whose benefit, are these bills passed? Do they provide for the poor? Do they help those who require help? Do they, by augmenting the supply, make provisions cheaper? Do they increase the number of independent fire-sides?—Rather, do they not wantonly add to the means of monopolists? Do they not give where nothing is wanted, however much may be coveted? Do they not add to the number of vassals, and diminish the number of freemen? Do they not abridge the scanty means of the poor in the free use of their bare-cropt commons? And do they not transfer those means to others who do not want them,and who, without the aid of new laws could never have enjoyed them?Yet does reason afford no alternative? Is benevolence forced to prefer barren heaths from which cottagers may derive scanty meals, merely because those who have the power fail to reconcile the rights ©f others who want, with the benefit of the whole community? Is our wisdom confined in so narrow a circle? Has nature provided abundance, and do we create insuperable bars to its enjoyment? Is such the line of demarcation between the selfish ordinances of man, and the wise dispensations of Providence?Let me recommend our legislators for once to put their greedy, covetous, and inordinate Selves out of consideration. The poor may not be qualified to plead their rights, except by acts of rioting; but let them find clamorous advocates in the consciences of some of their law-makers. In spite, then, of the fees of parliament, I exhort the Legislature to pass aGENERAL ENCLOSURE BILL, not such a one, however,as would be recommended by the illustrious Board of Agriculture, but founded on such principles as might appropriately confer on it the title ofA BILL FOR THE EXTINCTION OF WANT!In discussing and enacting its provisions, let it be borne in mind, that the surface of the earth, like the atmosphere in which we breathe, and the light in which we see, is the natural and common patrimony of man. Let it be considered, that by nature we are tillers of the soil, and that all the artifices of society, and the employments of towns, are good and desirable in the degree only in which they promote the comforts of the country. Let it be felt, that the 10,000 destitute families in this county of Surrey, and the half million in England and Wales, are so, merely because servitude or manufactures have failed to sustain them; and that they 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 a nationalstock, 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 adjacent house, in 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 capabilities. Ah! thought I, perhaps in a less selfish age, this very heath, and all the adjoining heaths, waste tracts, and commons, from Bushy to Wimbledon, and from Barnes to Kingston, may be covered with cottages, each surrounded by its two or three acres of productive garden, orchard, and paddock! The healthful and happy inhabitants, emerged from the workhouses, the gaols, the cellars, the stews, the St. Giles’s, the loathsome courts,alleys, and lanes of the metropolis, would have reason to return thanksgivings to the wise Legislature, who had thus restored them to the condition of men, and enabled them to exhibit the moral effects of the change. Such, in the opinion of the writer, would be a radical cure for several of the complicated and deep-rooted diseases which now afflict British society; at least, it is a remedy without cost or sacrifice; and, as such, an homage due from affluence and power to indigence and misfortune. Such a plan would draw from the over-peopled towns, that destitute portion of the population, whose means of living have been reduced or superseded by shoals of adventurers from the country. It would render workhouses useless, except for the vicious or incorrigibly idle; would diminish the poor-rates, and deprive the inmates of gaols of the powerful excuse afforded to crime by the hopeless and galling condition of poverty.The house in which that darling of Fame, the late Mr.Pitt, lived a fewyears, and terminated his career, is a modest and irregularly-built mansion, surrounded by a few acres of pleasure-ground, and situated about a quarter of a mile from the paling of Richmond Park. My curiosity led me to visit the chamber in which this minister died, to indulge in the vivid associations produced by the contemplation 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 instant, 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 the 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: “Bonaparte, the child and champion of Jacobinism,”—“the preservation of social order in Europe,”—“the destruction of whatever is dear to our feelings as Englishmen,”—“thesecurity of our religion, liberties, and property,”—“indemnity for the past and security for the future,” with which he used to bewilder or terrify the plain country gentlemen, or the youths from Eton, Oxford, or Cambridge, who constitute a majority of that House. His 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 benefit, rendered him through life the subject of my aversion: but, in this chamber, reduced to the level of ordinary men, and sinking under the common infirmities of humanity, his person, character, and premature decease became objects of interesting 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, however, is but a poor apology for one who lent his powerful talents to wage wars thatinvolved 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 passion for public speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To gratify the former, he became the instrument of others, and thence the sophistry of his eloquence and the insincerity of his character; while, in the proud display of his acknowledged powers as an orator, he was stimulated not less by vanity, than by the virtuous rivalry of Fox. As a financier, he played the part of a nobleman who, having estates, worth 20,000l.per annum, mortgages them to enable him to spend 100,000l.and then plumes himself on his power, with the same freeholds, 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 inexperienced statesmen, why do I gravely discuss the measures and errors of onewho did not live long enough to prove his genuine character? No precocity of talents, no mechanical splendour of eloquence, can stand in the place of judgment founded on Experience. At forty-six, Pitt would have begun, like 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 within 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 energies. He was an actor on the stage, while he ought to have been in the closet studying his part; his errors, therefore, merit pity, and those alone are to be blamed for them who made a dishonest use of his precocious 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 room,told that it was heated to a very high and oppressive temperature; and that the deep voice of the dying minister, as he asked his valet a question, startled this visitor, who had been unused to it. He died calmly, and apparently under none of those political perturbations which, at the period, were mistakenly ascribed to his last moments. The Bishop of Lincoln, who acted the part of his friend and confessor, published an interesting account of his decease, the accuracy of which has never been questioned.It being my intention, on leaving this spot, to descend the hill to Barnes-Elms, and to proceed by that once classical resort through Barnes and Mortlake to Kew, I left Mr. Pitt’s house on the right, and crossed the common to the retired village of Roehampton.Opposite to me were the boundaries of Richmond Park; and, little more than half a mile from the house of Pitt, in one of the most picturesque situations of that beautiful demesne, stands the elegantmansion which was presented, it is said, to the then favourite minister, Mr.Addington. Thus it appears, that two succeeding ministers of England, in an age reputed enlightened, lived in a district possessing the described capabilities for removing the canker-worm of poverty, yet neither of them displayed sufficient 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 large 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 to apply the waste to their wants. If the same facts were related of a ruler in any foreign country, or in any remote age, what would be the inference of a modernEnglish 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 yetfounda line of distinction between inhabited and civilized, and uninhabited and barbarous countries. Does not the principle which converts a heath into pasturage and corn-fields, or a collection of furze-bushes or brambles into a fruit-garden, demand that all unproductive trees should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other trees which afford food to the inhabitants? 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 useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which now encumber our soil? It is true, that, when wood constituted the fuelof the country, the growth of lumber-tree was essential to the comforts of the inhabitants; but that is no longer our condition. 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 soil until fruit-trees were planted sufficient to supply the inhabitants with as much fruit as their wants or luxuries 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 advantages of an abundant supply of wholesome provisions in this cheap form. Nor does my plan terminate with the ornaments of forests, parks, and hedge-rows;but I ask, why many hedges themselves might not, in like manner, consist of gooseberry and currant trees in their most luxuriant varieties, intermingled with raspberries, 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 wheat, or expect grapes where we have planted only thorns. Let us, even in this point, condescend to borrow 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,by our forefathers, when they rendered indigenous the fruit-trees of warmer climates; and, feeling less solicitude in regard to the gross wants of animal subsistence, we should be enabled to employ our faculties more generally in improving our moral and social condition. We should thus extend the principle, and reduce the general 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 primitive barbarity of nature.The sequestered village of Roehampton consists of about thirty or forty small houses, in contact; and of a dozen monastic mansions, inhabited by noblemen and well-accredited traders. Each of the latter being surrounded by twenty or thirty acres of garden and pleasure-grounds, and bounded by high brick walls, which in every direction line the roads, Roehampton presents to a stranger a most cheerless aspect. As the plantations are old, thefull-grown oaks, elms, and chesnuts, within the walls, add to the gloom, 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 are 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 with 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 castellated mansions and circumvallated domains; and hence the vulgar association between such establishments and a presumed high rank in their occupiers. The state of the country and of modern society renders them no longer essential to security; yet they are maintained as the effect of a false association; and half the stimulus of avarice would be lost without the anticipated grandeur of a monastic establishment, buried in the centre of a wood,and cut off from the cheerful world, and the healthful circulation of the atmosphere, by damp and mouldering walls! It does not signify how apparently dull, how unappropriate to fixed habits, how unvarying the inanimate scene, how much the inmates may be visited by low fevers, agues, rheumatisms, and pulmonary affections; the manor-house, or the ancient monastery, which has for ages been the residence of nobility, becomes, in consequence, 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 inconveniences will have little weight in making the election.I confess it—and I make the declaration in the humble form of a confession, in the hope that those who think I have sinned, will be led to forgive my error—that I could not help thinking that the inhabitants of the humble cottages by the way-side, whose doors stood wide open,whose children were intermingling and playing before them, whose society is restricted by no formal reserve, whose means depend on their industry,WHO HAVE NOT LEISURE TO BE UNHAPPY, who cannot afford to stimulate their appetites 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 nature 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, however amiable, and however free from the common vices of rank and wealth, inhabit 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 fancies, with which power hopes tocheat itself into enjoyment, as an apology for its insatiable monopolies.The inefficacy of wealth to raise man above his cares and mortal feelings has, however, of late years been so honestly conceded, that the rich have begun, at least in external appearance, to assume the condition of the poor. Hence, few of those mansions are built, or even restored, on whose gloomy character I have been remarking; and our proudest nobility now 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 happiness, 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,—comprehended under the names of theFerme Ornée, orCottage Ornée, now constitute the favourite establishments of those who found so few comforts in marble porticoes,in walls hung with the works of the Gobelins or the Italian school, in retinues of servants, and extensive parks. What a concession of pride—what a homage rendered 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 enjoyment, equals the delight afforded by well-planned garden-grounds; and it is consequently the duty of the artist to unite these with the cheerful family mansion. Here, then, begin the obtrusion, and the alledged necessity of those boundary walls, against which I have been protesting. No such thing—such walls, thanks to the genius and good taste of aPilton, are become unnecessary. We may now, without walls, have secure boundaries—we may keep out trespassers without excludingthe fresh air—and we may circumscribe our limits without diminishing our external prospects. In that case, how different in appearance would be this village of Roehampton—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 ofPilton, 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 statuary from Italy and Greece, and with exquisite pictures of the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools. Adjoining, is the highly finished residence of the Marchioness 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 whichthere 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 Goldsmid, 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 prospect 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 cast-iron gates of singular beauty. But the object which more particularly calledto 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, all of Portland-stone; and on the near side is a spacious hermitage.In this house the late Mr. B. Goldsmid resided, while he balanced the finances of the British empire, and raised for the Pitt Administration those vast sums which enabled it to retard the progress of liberal opinions during the quarter of a century! After the instance of a Goldsmid, the reputed wealth of a Crœsus sinks into insignificance. The Jew broker, year after year, raised for the British government sums of twenty and thirty millions, while the Lydian monarch, with all his boasted treasures, would have been unable to make good even the first instalment! Such, however, is the talisman of credit in a commercial and banking country! In addition to their own funds, andto the funds permanently confided to their prudence from foreign correspondents, amounting to three or four millions, the brothers, Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid, commanded for many years, from day to day, the floating balances of the principal London bankers; and they were among bankers, what bankers are among private traders. It was their daily practice 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 on 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 wondered 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 could raise money on exchequer-bills!A paper circulation is, however, a vortex, out of which neither individuals nor governments ever escaped without calamity, and from whose fatal effects the prudence 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 agreed, first shook their credit; while some changes in the financial arrangements of government, 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 domestic history of nations. In this house Benjamin repeatedly gave banquets, worthyof his means, to the chief branches of the royal family, and most of the nobility 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 consequence of the misfortunes of her generous 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 year 1780 probably describe the details of these phenomena; but, happening to meet, on the premises, with a man who had witnessed the whole, I collected from him the following particulars:—He related, that, after a pleasant day in September, a sudden storm of thunder and lightning, accompanied by rain and wind, took place,which lasted not more than ten or fifteen minutes. That, believing “the world at an end, his master and family went to prayers;” but, on the noise abating, they found that their extensive barn, with various out-buildings, had been entirely carried away. Parts of them were found, on the following morning, on Barnes Common, 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 mowed 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 ofelectricity, I considered these facts as too interesting to be lost. It may be worth while to add, in elucidation, that the mischief 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.3The 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 antagonist properties, or peculiar relations to it, afford results which are mistakenly ascribed to the power itself, as propertiesper se. Are we warranted in calling in an independentagent to account for phenomena which are governed in their appearances by every differentsurfacein connexion with which they are exhibited, and which can be produced only in certain classes ofsurfacesin fixed relations to othersurfaces? Can the cause of phenomena, of which we have no knowledge but in the antagonist relations ofsurfacescalled conducting and non-conducting, be philosophically considered but asthe mere effectof those nicely-adjusted relations? Can that power be said to be distinct from the inherent properties of various matter, which can never be exhibited except in contrast, aspluson one surface, andminusin another, or, if positive on A. necessarily andsimultaneouslynegative on B.? Are the phenomena calledLIGHT,HEAT,GRAVITATION,COHESION,ELECTRICITY,GALVANISM, andMAGNETISM, produced 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?Do not the phenomena appear constantly to accompany the same bodies, and are they not therefore occasioned by the qualities 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 particular 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 antagonist 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 varying 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 accord 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 theintricate 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 approximate a plenum? May not certain varieties of these involved series of atoms constitute the several media which produce the several phenomena of matter?Prudence forbids me to extend these queries on subjects which will ever interest the speculative part of mankind, but on which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at certain and indubitable 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 surfaces towards each other; and that all the phenomena grow out of the motive quality of intervening bodies, whose surfaces are alternately attracted by the comprehendingexcited surfaces, or out of the want of perfect smoothness in the opposing or excited surfaces. Electricity is in fact the phenomena of surfaces, growing out of the sole property of their mutual mechanical attractions, which attractions are governed 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 theCAUSEofCAUSESoperates in the production of natural phenomena by the aid of such complicated machinery, and such involved powers, as men 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 their sensitive powers and the undiscovered relations of the agent and patient. Would it not, on the contrary, be more consistent with the proper views of philosophy to dismiss all occult powers, which are so many signs of our ignorance or superstition, and to search for theSECONDARYCAUSESof all phenomena, as well between the smallest as the largest masses, in the undeviating laws ofARITHMETIC,GEOMETRY, andMECHANICS; whose simplicity, sublimity, perfection, and immutability, accord with our deductions in regard to the attributes of anOMNISCIENT ARCHITECTandOMNIPOTENT DIRECTORof the universe?This, however, is certain, that such catastrophes as those described could never occur, if the imperfect conductors of which our buildings are generally composed, were encompassed by more perfect conductors. 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 effects that accompany its transition through air and other non-conductors. The rods of Franklinare toys, which were ingeniously contrived in the infancy of this branch of science, but they ought now to be forgotten.Before I dismiss this interesting topic, I would ask whether the transmission of the power calledelectric, 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 calledelectricis 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 conductors prepared to receive it, however deeply they may be concealed beneath the surface of the non-conducting or imperfectly-conducting soil and vegetable surface? If it were not so, would not the stroke always affect the higher objects, or prefer palpable conductors in moderatelyelevated sites? In this instance 200 degrees of the horizon were more elevated than the place attacked, while the destruction 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 most 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 Flat 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 foundin the world. Its picturesque beauty, and its general advantages as a place of residence, are attested by the preference given to it by ministers and public men, who select it as a retreat from the cares of ambition. On this ridge Pitt, Tooke, Addington, Burdett, Goldsmid, and Dundas, were recent contemporary residents. Here, amid the orgies of the latter, were probably concerted many of those political projects which have unfortunately desolated the finest portions of Europe, for the wicked, yet vain, purpose of destroying Truth by the sword! In an adjoining domain, Tooke beguiled, in philological 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 and shade, the spacious plain of Wimbledon served to display the ostentatious manœuvres of those servile agents of equivocal justice, whose permanent organization by an anti-human policy has been engraftedon modern society, but whose aid would seldom or never be necessary, 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 standsBarnes poor-house! Yes!—in this enlightened country—in the vicinage of the residence of many boasted statesmen—stands aPARISH POOR-HOUSE ON A WASTE! The unappropriated means of plenty and independence surrounding a mansion of hopeless poverty, maintained by collections of nearly 4000l.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 Richmond!—Did so monstrous an incongruitynever 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 properly supersede the paramount claims of the poor and the public?—From respect to any such right, ought so great a libel on our political economy to be suffered to exist, as a receptacle for the poor in the middle of an uncultivated and unappropriated waste? To dwell further on so mortifying a proof of the fallibility of human wisdom may, however, pique the pride of those who enjoy the power to organize a better system:—I therefore forbear!These and other considerations prompted me to visit the interior. I found it clean and airy, but the best rooms were not appropriated to the poor. The masterand matron were plain honest people, who, I have no doubt, do all the justice that is possible with a wretched pittance of 5s.6d.per head per week. Should 4s.6d.remain to provide each with twenty-one meals, this is but two-pence half-penny per meal! Think of this, ye pampered minions of wealth, who gorge turtle at a guinea a pound, whobeastializeyourselves 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 paupers, 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 properly applied to the wants and natural claims of the poor. It is too often pretended that these wastes are incapable of cultivation—but the fertile appearance of enclosed patches constantly falsifies such selfish and malignant assertions.I visited the community of these paupers, consisting in this small parish of only thirty men, women, and children, in one large room. Among them were some disgusting-looking idiots, a class of objects who seem to be the constant nuisance of every poor-house.4How 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. Surely, for the sake of these degraded specimens of our kind, 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 for 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 Barnes Common in a north-eastern direction,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.On this 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 freshwater formation, of comparatively modern date, created out of the rocky ruins which the rains, in a series of ages, have washed from the high grounds, and further augmented by the decay of local vegetation. 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 its perihelion during our summer 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 completion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defined the boundaries of theriver. 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 theNEVER-CEASING CREATION, and a means of giving greater equality to the face of the land. The sea, as it retired, either abruptly 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 during several thousand years. These downs, acted upon by rain, were mechanically, or in solution, carried off by the water to the lowest levels, the elevations beingthereby depressed, and the valleys proportionally raised. The low lands became of course the channels through which the rains returned to the sea, and the successive deposits on their sides, hardened by the wind and sun, have in five or six thousand years created such tracts of alluvial 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 hills whence it was washed; but, having been so pulverized and so divided by solution, 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 rain would so diffuse itself over the surface, that the fall and the evaporation would balance each other.Such are the unceasing works ofCREATION, constantly taking place on this exterior 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 whichNEVER CEASEto be exerted, 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 seems 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 aPRIMORDIAL CAUSE,—while thatCAUSEis inscrutableand incomprehensible to creatures possessing but a relative being, who live only inTIMEandSPACE, and who feel and act merely by theIMPULSEof limited senses and powers.A lane, in the north-west corner of the Common, brought me to Barnes’ Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker of London. The family were not at home; but, on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great simplicity, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Cat Club, as accustomed to assemble here; but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule; and I was told that no such Club was held there; but, perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the Club that assembles at the public-house on the Common. Knowing, however, 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 thespot—when one of them exclaimed, “I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher’s room.”—“Aye,” rejoined his comrade, “I remember somebody 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 remains of a gate-way in the garden-wall, to the door which opened into the building. 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 hall, filled with cobwebs, a fallenceiling, and accumulating rubbish. On the right, the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house! The door on the left led to a spacious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, filled 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 feeling of danger, to which the man would not expose himself;—but I was well requited for my pains. Here I found the Kit-Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed in 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 dry-rot.My attention was chiefly attracted by the faded cloth-hanging of the room,whose red colour once set off the famous 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! Thus was I, as it were, by these still legible names, brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with manyhereditarynobles, remembered, only because they were patrons of thosenaturalnobles!—I read their names aloud!—I invoked their departed spirits!—I was appalled by the echo of my own voice!—The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs in the windows, and a swallow’s nest in the corner of the ceiling, proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past age,—that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the anxious career of man! The blood of the reader of sensibility will thrill as mine thrilled! It was feeling without volition, and therefore incapable of analysis!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 before my eyes in so tangible a shape! I yielded to the unsophisticated sentiments which I could not avoid reading in thisVOLUMEof ruins; and felt, by irresistible association, that every object of our affections—that our affections themselves—and that all things that delight us, must soon pass away like this place and its former inhabitants!Beginning yesterday—flourishing to-day—ceasing to-morrow!—such is the sum of the history of all organized being! Certain combinations excite, and the creative 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 theunceasinginertia finally prevails over the original excitement andits accessary stimuli, and ultimately produces disorganization and dissolution! Such is the abstract view of the physical laws which, in the peculiar career of intellectual man, successively give rise toHOPEin youth—PRIDEin manhood—REFLECTIONin decay—andHUMILITYin 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!—He is thus taught to die—and, if in spite of his vices or follies he should live till his world has passed away before him, he will then contentedly await the termination of that vital action which, creating no passion, affords no enjoyment. Such, said I, is the scheme ofBenevolence, which, by depriving the prospect of death of its terrors, makes room, without suffering, for a succession of new generations, 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 alesson of moderation 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 should be suffered to go to decay for want of attention, he told me that his master intended to pull it down and unite it to an adjoining barn, so as to form of the two a riding-house; and 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 the 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;and, on his death, to the house of Mr. Baker, of Hertingfordbury, where they now remain, and where I lately saw them splendidly lodged and in fine preservation. It may be proper to observe, that the house of Mr. Hoare was not the house of Mr. Tonson, and that Mr. Tonson’s house stood nearer to the 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 high tides. It is, however, completely sequestered from vulgar approach, and on that account was, perhaps, preferred as the retreat of a man of business.AtBarnes’ Elmslived the virtuous minister of Elizabeth, SirFrancis Walsingham, and here he once entertained that chivalrous queen.Cowley, the poet, afterwards resided here; and, in a later ageHeydegger, the buffoon, who gave an eccentric entertainment to the second Guelph, and contrived to gratifyhis listless mind by an ingenious surprize, 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.In returning through the lane which led from the Kit-Cat Club-room to Barnes Common, the keenest emotions of the human mind were excited by an unforeseen cause. I was admiring the luxuriance and grandeur of the vegetation, in trees which from the very ground expanded in immense double trunks, and in the profusion of weeds and shrubs which covered every part of the untrodden surface—when, on a sudden, I caught the distant sound of a ring ofVILLAGE 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 feelings. I became the mere patient of these sounds; and I sank, as it were, under the force of gloomy impressions, which socompletely lulled and seduced me, that I suffered without being able to exert an effort to escape from their magic spell. Seldom had the power of sound acquired 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 I leaned upon a gate, partly to indulge the reverie, partly as an effect of lassitude, and partly to listen more attentively to the sounds which caused so peculiar a train of 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 sanctuary of the religion of peace, and outraging a land of freedom, to announce some bloody victory, gained by legions of trained slaves, over patriots who have been asserting the liberties and defending the independence of their country. Whichever might be the purpose, (for, alas! the latter, among my degeneratedcountrymen, is as likely as the former,) the recurring tones produced corresponding vibrations on my nerves, and I felt myself played upon like a concordant musical instrument. Presently, 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 them and some of the earliest and dearest objects in my remembrance. “Surely,” I exclaimed, “they areChiswick bells!—the very bells under the sound of which I received part of my early education, and, as a school-boy, passed the happiest days of my life!—Well may their tones vibrate to my inmost soul—and kindle uncommon 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 withthese 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,” exactly 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 numberless 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 gentry, and heads of families, whose orderlyattendance 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!—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 headdresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high crook’d canes, preceded 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! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, 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 pecuniary distress, created by the luxury ofcharity! 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! I remember scores of you;—how 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, I had leisure to reflect on therapid advance of the day, and on the consequent necessity of quickening my speed.At the end of this lane I crossed a road, which I found led to Chiswick Ferry. The opening gave increased effect 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 Church, 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 attention by the unusual object of a display of elegantRoses, which I afterwards learnt had been cultivated on the same spot about 150 years, to indulge the conceit of a person of the name ofRose, who was buried there, and left an acre of ground to the parish to defray the expence; but I found the gate locked, andwas told it was never opened, except during service. I confess I was not pleased with this regulation, because it appeared to sever the affections of the 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 relatives. Grief seeks to indulge itself unobserved; 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 beloved wife; and the tender mother seeks the spot endeared by the remains of her child: but they cannot submit to the formality of asking permission, or allow their griefs to be intruded upon by strange attendants. Such tributes to our unsophisticated feelings are, however, denied by the locks, bolts, and walls, of the metropolitan cemeteries. The practised grave-digger wonders at the indulgence ofunavailing woe—the unconscious tenants of his domain possess no peculiar claims on 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 apparent, than that of bewailing over a grave! Did it never occur, however, to the clergymen who superintend these depositories 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 resurrection-men, is it not due to the best feelings of our nature that the severest punishment should attach to the crime of stealing 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 therefore rather bury a detected resurrection-man alive with the body he mightbe stealing, than shut out the living from all communion with the dead, and from all the sympathies and lessons addressed to the heart and understanding by their unrestricted intercourse.
I have long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd’s coffee-house; and commerce would be essentially served, if, during ’Change-hours at London, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, and Glasgow, communications could be interchanged relative to the state of markets, purchases, sales, and other transactions of business. How convenient too would be such a rapid intercourse between London and country bankers, in regard to balances, advances, and money transactions; how desirable in law business between London andcountry practitioners; and how important in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency! In family concerns, notices of deaths, births, accidents, progressive sickness, &c. it would often be deeply interesting. The state of elections, the issues of lawsuits, determinations of the legislature, questions for answers, and numberless events of more or less importance, would occur sufficient to keep telegraphs in constant requisition, and abundantly repay the cost of maintaining them. A guinea might be paid per hundred miles, for every five or six words, which, in matters of private concern, might, by pre-concert, be transmitted in cypher. Instead of sixty-four telegraphs, we might then require five hundred, and an establishment costing 100,000l.per annum; yet five hundred messages and replies per day, betweendifferentparts of the kingdom, taken at 2l.each, would in two hundred and fifty days produce 250,000l.or a net revenue of 150,000l.But to achieve so vast a purpose, and to confer on men a speciesof ubiquity, even if 50,000l.per annum were lost to the government, would it not be worth the sacrifice, thus to give to the people of England an advantage not possessed, and never likely to be possessed, by any other people on earth? What a triumph of civilization would be afforded by such an extension of the telegraphic system! The combinations of theTELESCOPEbegan what those of theTELEGRAPHwould complete. United, they would produce a kind offinite ubiquity, rendering the intercourse of an industrious community independent of time and distance, and binding the whole in ties of self-interest, by means which could be achieved only in a high state of civilization through fortunate combinations of human art.
As I looked around me from this eminence, a multitude of ideas, sympathies, and affections, vibrated within me, which it would be impossible or tedious to analyse. The organ of the Eye was here played upon like that of the Ear in a musical concert. Nor was it the sensealone which was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and tone found a separate concord or discord, in innumerable associations and reminiscences. It was, in truth, a chorus to the eye, unattended by the noise and distraction produced by the laboured compositions ofHandel; while it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an effect like one of the tender symphonies ofHaydn. It was a Panorama, better adapted, however, to a poet than a painter; for it had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any eminences which raise the landscape above an angle of six or eight degrees; yet, to a poet, how rich it was in associations—how endless in pictures for the imagination!
The north and north-east were still obscured by the dingy, irregular, and dense Smoke issuing from the volcano of the Metropolis; and, in looking upon it, how difficult it was to avoid tracing the now mingled masses back to their several sources, considering the happiness or misery which theyreflected from their respective fire-sides, and gaging the aspirations of hope, or the sighs of wretchedness, which a fertile imagination might conceive to be combined with this social atmosphere! Convenient alike to every condition of humanity, it might be considered as flowing at once from the dungeons of despairing convicts, the cellars and garrets of squalid poverty, the busy haunts of avarice, the waste of luxury, and the wantonness of wealth.
Straight before me, the metropolis, like a devouring monster, exhibited its equivocal and meretricious beauties, its extensive manufactories, its aspiring churches and towers, and other innumerable edifices.Westminster Abbeystood prominent, at once reviving the recollection of its superstitious origin, and exciting deep veneration as the depository of the relics of so much renown. What topics for commentary, if they had not been recently exhausted in the classical stanzas of aMaurice! St.Paul’s, the monument ofWren, was but just visible through the haze, though the man at the Telegraph asserted, that he could sometimes tell the hour by its dial without the aid of a telescope! How characteristic is this structure become of the British metropolis, and how flat the mass of common spires and smoky chimneys would now seem without it! The Monument, recording the delusions of faction, 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 seven feet. Indeed, any wretch capable of setting his foot upon an ant-hill, and of destroying it, because it made no palpable appeals to his sympathy, might at this distance, by parity of feeling, let fall a mill-stone on this great city, and extinguish in an instant the hopes and cares of its inhabitants. On this spot then I behold an assemblage of the greatest wonders ofman’s creation, at a focal distance, which reduces them to the measure of anANT-HILL; and still further off they would be diminished even to aPOINT! 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 listening near the ground, the confused hum of the vast British metropolis could here be compared only to the buz of aBEE-HIVE, or the sound of aCONCH! What a lesson do these considerations afford to the pride of man, whose egotism represents 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, however, natural that the nearest object should fill the largest angle, whether viewed by the mind or the eye; though it is the business of wisdom and philosophy to correct such illusions of our intellectual or sensitive powers.
Of the moral condition, and feelings, concentrated within a spot thus embracedby a glance of the eye, how impossible to form an estimate! Supposing 900,000 human beings are thus huddled together, in 150,000 houses, we may conclude, that 100,000 will always be lying on the bed of sickness, and that 30,000 are constantly afflicted by mortal diseases, eighty of whom expire every day, or three in every hour! Of the 150,000 house-keepers, above 50,000 are racked by poverty, or by the dread of its approach; other 50,000 maintain a precarious independence; 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 class are either already plunged, or predisposed to plunge, into vices and crimes unknown except in such a city; those of the second class maintain a virtuous struggle, but more frequently sink into the lower, than rise into the higher class; while, among the third class, there are found all degrees of virtue and worth, although mixed with an envious spirit ofrivalry, and an indulgence in expense and luxury that greatly reduce the number of truly happy families.
On the north, north-west, and east, I still beheld the signs of this overgrown metropolis in villages, which branch, like luxuriant shoots, on every side. And it was only on the south and south-west, in the swelling downs and in the charms of Box-hill, Leith-hill, and Dorking, that I could discover the unsophisticated beauties of nature, which seemed to mock the toils of man, in the contrast they afforded to the scene in the opposite direction. Yet men, who never receive instruction except through their own experience, flock in tens of thousands to share in the lottery presented to their ambition in great cities, where thousands perish while in pursuit of the prize, where other thousands obtain nothing but blanks and disappointments, and whence the tens who achieve their object, gladly escape to enjoy their wealth, free from the disturbance of city passions, amid the placid and unchangeable beauties of nature.
In looking around me from the windows of Hartley’s Fire-house, it was impossible to avoid reflecting on the wretchedness of Want existing in the sooty metropolis, and the waste of Means in the uncultivated country immediately around me. I had just been sympathizing with the forlorn inhabitants of the workhouse at Wandsworth, at the distance of only a mile; and half a dozen other such receptacles of misery invited commiseration within equal distances, in other directions; yet a radius of a few hundred yards round this spot would have included as much unappropriated and useless land as might have sufficed to confer independence and plenty on their hopeless inmates! In the north-eastern direction, within a distance of ten miles, at least twenty thousand families might be discovered pining in squalid misery; though here I found myself in an unpeopled and uncultivated tract, nearly four miles square, and containing above fifteen thousand acres of good soil, capable of affording independent subsistence to half as many families!
I could not help exclaiming against the perversity of reason—the indifference of power—the complication of folly—and the ascendancy of turpitude, which, separately or conjointly, continue to produce circumstances so cruel and preposterous! Let it be recorded, said I, to the eternal disgrace of all modern statesmen, of many hundreds of ambitious legislators, and of our scientific economists, that in this luxuriant county of Surrey, there still exist, without productive cultivation, no less than 25,000 acres of open commons; 30,000 acres of useless parks, 48,000 acres of heaths, and 30,000 acres of chalk hills, serving but to subsist a few herds of deer and cattle, and to grow some unproductive trees, though at the very instant 10,000 families in the same county are dependent on the bounty of their respective parishes! Is this, said I, the vaunted age of reason? Are these the genuine fruits of civilization? Do such circumstances indicate the ascendency of benevolence? Do they not rather demonstratethat the principle of doing to others as we would be done unto, has little influence on the practices of our Statesmen and Legislators?
I may be told, that the principle of enclosing waste lands has long been recognised in the prevailing system of economy, and that the Legislature is incessantly active in passing Bills for new enclosures. But, I ask, for whom, and for whose benefit, are these bills passed? Do they provide for the poor? Do they help those who require help? Do they, by augmenting the supply, make provisions cheaper? Do they increase the number of independent fire-sides?—Rather, do they not wantonly add to the means of monopolists? Do they not give where nothing is wanted, however much may be coveted? Do they not add to the number of vassals, and diminish the number of freemen? Do they not abridge the scanty means of the poor in the free use of their bare-cropt commons? And do they not transfer those means to others who do not want them,and who, without the aid of new laws could never have enjoyed them?
Yet does reason afford no alternative? Is benevolence forced to prefer barren heaths from which cottagers may derive scanty meals, merely because those who have the power fail to reconcile the rights ©f others who want, with the benefit of the whole community? Is our wisdom confined in so narrow a circle? Has nature provided abundance, and do we create insuperable bars to its enjoyment? Is such the line of demarcation between the selfish ordinances of man, and the wise dispensations of Providence?
Let me recommend our legislators for once to put their greedy, covetous, and inordinate Selves out of consideration. The poor may not be qualified to plead their rights, except by acts of rioting; but let them find clamorous advocates in the consciences of some of their law-makers. In spite, then, of the fees of parliament, I exhort the Legislature to pass aGENERAL ENCLOSURE BILL, not such a one, however,as would be recommended by the illustrious Board of Agriculture, but founded on such principles as might appropriately confer on it the title ofA BILL FOR THE EXTINCTION OF WANT!
In discussing and enacting its provisions, let it be borne in mind, that the surface of the earth, like the atmosphere in which we breathe, and the light in which we see, is the natural and common patrimony of man. Let it be considered, that by nature we are tillers of the soil, and that all the artifices of society, and the employments of towns, are good and desirable in the degree only in which they promote the comforts of the country. Let it be felt, that the 10,000 destitute families in this county of Surrey, and the half million in England and Wales, are so, merely because servitude or manufactures have failed to sustain them; and that they 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 a nationalstock, 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 adjacent house, in 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 capabilities. Ah! thought I, perhaps in a less selfish age, this very heath, and all the adjoining heaths, waste tracts, and commons, from Bushy to Wimbledon, and from Barnes to Kingston, may be covered with cottages, each surrounded by its two or three acres of productive garden, orchard, and paddock! The healthful and happy inhabitants, emerged from the workhouses, the gaols, the cellars, the stews, the St. Giles’s, the loathsome courts,alleys, and lanes of the metropolis, would have reason to return thanksgivings to the wise Legislature, who had thus restored them to the condition of men, and enabled them to exhibit the moral effects of the change. Such, in the opinion of the writer, would be a radical cure for several of the complicated and deep-rooted diseases which now afflict British society; at least, it is a remedy without cost or sacrifice; and, as such, an homage due from affluence and power to indigence and misfortune. Such a plan would draw from the over-peopled towns, that destitute portion of the population, whose means of living have been reduced or superseded by shoals of adventurers from the country. It would render workhouses useless, except for the vicious or incorrigibly idle; would diminish the poor-rates, and deprive the inmates of gaols of the powerful excuse afforded to crime by the hopeless and galling condition of poverty.
The house in which that darling of Fame, the late Mr.Pitt, lived a fewyears, and terminated his career, is a modest and irregularly-built mansion, surrounded by a few acres of pleasure-ground, and situated about a quarter of a mile from the paling of Richmond Park. My curiosity led me to visit the chamber in which this minister died, to indulge in the vivid associations produced by the contemplation 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 instant, 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 the 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: “Bonaparte, the child and champion of Jacobinism,”—“the preservation of social order in Europe,”—“the destruction of whatever is dear to our feelings as Englishmen,”—“thesecurity of our religion, liberties, and property,”—“indemnity for the past and security for the future,” with which he used to bewilder or terrify the plain country gentlemen, or the youths from Eton, Oxford, or Cambridge, who constitute a majority of that House. His 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 benefit, rendered him through life the subject of my aversion: but, in this chamber, reduced to the level of ordinary men, and sinking under the common infirmities of humanity, his person, character, and premature decease became objects of interesting 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, however, is but a poor apology for one who lent his powerful talents to wage wars thatinvolved 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 passion for public speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To gratify the former, he became the instrument of others, and thence the sophistry of his eloquence and the insincerity of his character; while, in the proud display of his acknowledged powers as an orator, he was stimulated not less by vanity, than by the virtuous rivalry of Fox. As a financier, he played the part of a nobleman who, having estates, worth 20,000l.per annum, mortgages them to enable him to spend 100,000l.and then plumes himself on his power, with the same freeholds, 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 inexperienced statesmen, why do I gravely discuss the measures and errors of onewho did not live long enough to prove his genuine character? No precocity of talents, no mechanical splendour of eloquence, can stand in the place of judgment founded on Experience. At forty-six, Pitt would have begun, like 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 within 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 energies. He was an actor on the stage, while he ought to have been in the closet studying his part; his errors, therefore, merit pity, and those alone are to be blamed for them who made a dishonest use of his precocious 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 room,told that it was heated to a very high and oppressive temperature; and that the deep voice of the dying minister, as he asked his valet a question, startled this visitor, who had been unused to it. He died calmly, and apparently under none of those political perturbations which, at the period, were mistakenly ascribed to his last moments. The Bishop of Lincoln, who acted the part of his friend and confessor, published an interesting account of his decease, the accuracy of which has never been questioned.
It being my intention, on leaving this spot, to descend the hill to Barnes-Elms, and to proceed by that once classical resort through Barnes and Mortlake to Kew, I left Mr. Pitt’s house on the right, and crossed the common to the retired village of Roehampton.
Opposite to me were the boundaries of Richmond Park; and, little more than half a mile from the house of Pitt, in one of the most picturesque situations of that beautiful demesne, stands the elegantmansion which was presented, it is said, to the then favourite minister, Mr.Addington. Thus it appears, that two succeeding ministers of England, in an age reputed enlightened, lived in a district possessing the described capabilities for removing the canker-worm of poverty, yet neither of them displayed sufficient 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 large 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 to apply the waste to their wants. If the same facts were related of a ruler in any foreign country, or in any remote age, what would be the inference of a modernEnglish 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 yetfounda line of distinction between inhabited and civilized, and uninhabited and barbarous countries. Does not the principle which converts a heath into pasturage and corn-fields, or a collection of furze-bushes or brambles into a fruit-garden, demand that all unproductive trees should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other trees which afford food to the inhabitants? 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 useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which now encumber our soil? It is true, that, when wood constituted the fuelof the country, the growth of lumber-tree was essential to the comforts of the inhabitants; but that is no longer our condition. 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 soil until fruit-trees were planted sufficient to supply the inhabitants with as much fruit as their wants or luxuries 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 advantages of an abundant supply of wholesome provisions in this cheap form. Nor does my plan terminate with the ornaments of forests, parks, and hedge-rows;but I ask, why many hedges themselves might not, in like manner, consist of gooseberry and currant trees in their most luxuriant varieties, intermingled with raspberries, 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 wheat, or expect grapes where we have planted only thorns. Let us, even in this point, condescend to borrow 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,by our forefathers, when they rendered indigenous the fruit-trees of warmer climates; and, feeling less solicitude in regard to the gross wants of animal subsistence, we should be enabled to employ our faculties more generally in improving our moral and social condition. We should thus extend the principle, and reduce the general 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 primitive barbarity of nature.
The sequestered village of Roehampton consists of about thirty or forty small houses, in contact; and of a dozen monastic mansions, inhabited by noblemen and well-accredited traders. Each of the latter being surrounded by twenty or thirty acres of garden and pleasure-grounds, and bounded by high brick walls, which in every direction line the roads, Roehampton presents to a stranger a most cheerless aspect. As the plantations are old, thefull-grown oaks, elms, and chesnuts, within the walls, add to the gloom, 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 are 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 with 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 castellated mansions and circumvallated domains; and hence the vulgar association between such establishments and a presumed high rank in their occupiers. The state of the country and of modern society renders them no longer essential to security; yet they are maintained as the effect of a false association; and half the stimulus of avarice would be lost without the anticipated grandeur of a monastic establishment, buried in the centre of a wood,and cut off from the cheerful world, and the healthful circulation of the atmosphere, by damp and mouldering walls! It does not signify how apparently dull, how unappropriate to fixed habits, how unvarying the inanimate scene, how much the inmates may be visited by low fevers, agues, rheumatisms, and pulmonary affections; the manor-house, or the ancient monastery, which has for ages been the residence of nobility, becomes, in consequence, 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 inconveniences will have little weight in making the election.
I confess it—and I make the declaration in the humble form of a confession, in the hope that those who think I have sinned, will be led to forgive my error—that I could not help thinking that the inhabitants of the humble cottages by the way-side, whose doors stood wide open,whose children were intermingling and playing before them, whose society is restricted by no formal reserve, whose means depend on their industry,WHO HAVE NOT LEISURE TO BE UNHAPPY, who cannot afford to stimulate their appetites 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 nature 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, however amiable, and however free from the common vices of rank and wealth, inhabit 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 fancies, with which power hopes tocheat itself into enjoyment, as an apology for its insatiable monopolies.
The inefficacy of wealth to raise man above his cares and mortal feelings has, however, of late years been so honestly conceded, that the rich have begun, at least in external appearance, to assume the condition of the poor. Hence, few of those mansions are built, or even restored, on whose gloomy character I have been remarking; and our proudest nobility now 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 happiness, 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,—comprehended under the names of theFerme Ornée, orCottage Ornée, now constitute the favourite establishments of those who found so few comforts in marble porticoes,in walls hung with the works of the Gobelins or the Italian school, in retinues of servants, and extensive parks. What a concession of pride—what a homage rendered 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 enjoyment, equals the delight afforded by well-planned garden-grounds; and it is consequently the duty of the artist to unite these with the cheerful family mansion. Here, then, begin the obtrusion, and the alledged necessity of those boundary walls, against which I have been protesting. No such thing—such walls, thanks to the genius and good taste of aPilton, are become unnecessary. We may now, without walls, have secure boundaries—we may keep out trespassers without excludingthe fresh air—and we may circumscribe our limits without diminishing our external prospects. In that case, how different in appearance would be this village of Roehampton—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 ofPilton, 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 statuary from Italy and Greece, and with exquisite pictures of the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools. Adjoining, is the highly finished residence of the Marchioness 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 whichthere 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 Goldsmid, 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 prospect 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 cast-iron gates of singular beauty. But the object which more particularly calledto 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, all of Portland-stone; and on the near side is a spacious hermitage.
In this house the late Mr. B. Goldsmid resided, while he balanced the finances of the British empire, and raised for the Pitt Administration those vast sums which enabled it to retard the progress of liberal opinions during the quarter of a century! After the instance of a Goldsmid, the reputed wealth of a Crœsus sinks into insignificance. The Jew broker, year after year, raised for the British government sums of twenty and thirty millions, while the Lydian monarch, with all his boasted treasures, would have been unable to make good even the first instalment! Such, however, is the talisman of credit in a commercial and banking country! In addition to their own funds, andto the funds permanently confided to their prudence from foreign correspondents, amounting to three or four millions, the brothers, Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid, commanded for many years, from day to day, the floating balances of the principal London bankers; and they were among bankers, what bankers are among private traders. It was their daily practice 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 on 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 wondered 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 could raise money on exchequer-bills!A paper circulation is, however, a vortex, out of which neither individuals nor governments ever escaped without calamity, and from whose fatal effects the prudence 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 agreed, first shook their credit; while some changes in the financial arrangements of government, 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 domestic history of nations. In this house Benjamin repeatedly gave banquets, worthyof his means, to the chief branches of the royal family, and most of the nobility 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 consequence of the misfortunes of her generous 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 year 1780 probably describe the details of these phenomena; but, happening to meet, on the premises, with a man who had witnessed the whole, I collected from him the following particulars:—He related, that, after a pleasant day in September, a sudden storm of thunder and lightning, accompanied by rain and wind, took place,which lasted not more than ten or fifteen minutes. That, believing “the world at an end, his master and family went to prayers;” but, on the noise abating, they found that their extensive barn, with various out-buildings, had been entirely carried away. Parts of them were found, on the following morning, on Barnes Common, 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 mowed 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 ofelectricity, I considered these facts as too interesting to be lost. It may be worth while to add, in elucidation, that the mischief 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.3The 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 antagonist properties, or peculiar relations to it, afford results which are mistakenly ascribed to the power itself, as propertiesper se. Are we warranted in calling in an independentagent to account for phenomena which are governed in their appearances by every differentsurfacein connexion with which they are exhibited, and which can be produced only in certain classes ofsurfacesin fixed relations to othersurfaces? Can the cause of phenomena, of which we have no knowledge but in the antagonist relations ofsurfacescalled conducting and non-conducting, be philosophically considered but asthe mere effectof those nicely-adjusted relations? Can that power be said to be distinct from the inherent properties of various matter, which can never be exhibited except in contrast, aspluson one surface, andminusin another, or, if positive on A. necessarily andsimultaneouslynegative on B.? Are the phenomena calledLIGHT,HEAT,GRAVITATION,COHESION,ELECTRICITY,GALVANISM, andMAGNETISM, produced 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?Do not the phenomena appear constantly to accompany the same bodies, and are they not therefore occasioned by the qualities 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 particular 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 antagonist 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 varying 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 accord 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 theintricate 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 approximate a plenum? May not certain varieties of these involved series of atoms constitute the several media which produce the several phenomena of matter?
Prudence forbids me to extend these queries on subjects which will ever interest the speculative part of mankind, but on which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at certain and indubitable 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 surfaces towards each other; and that all the phenomena grow out of the motive quality of intervening bodies, whose surfaces are alternately attracted by the comprehendingexcited surfaces, or out of the want of perfect smoothness in the opposing or excited surfaces. Electricity is in fact the phenomena of surfaces, growing out of the sole property of their mutual mechanical attractions, which attractions are governed 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 theCAUSEofCAUSESoperates in the production of natural phenomena by the aid of such complicated machinery, and such involved powers, as men 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 their sensitive powers and the undiscovered relations of the agent and patient. Would it not, on the contrary, be more consistent with the proper views of philosophy to dismiss all occult powers, which are so many signs of our ignorance or superstition, and to search for theSECONDARYCAUSESof all phenomena, as well between the smallest as the largest masses, in the undeviating laws ofARITHMETIC,GEOMETRY, andMECHANICS; whose simplicity, sublimity, perfection, and immutability, accord with our deductions in regard to the attributes of anOMNISCIENT ARCHITECTandOMNIPOTENT DIRECTORof the universe?
This, however, is certain, that such catastrophes as those described could never occur, if the imperfect conductors of which our buildings are generally composed, were encompassed by more perfect conductors. 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 effects that accompany its transition through air and other non-conductors. The rods of Franklinare toys, which were ingeniously contrived in the infancy of this branch of science, but they ought now to be forgotten.
Before I dismiss this interesting topic, I would ask whether the transmission of the power calledelectric, 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 calledelectricis 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 conductors prepared to receive it, however deeply they may be concealed beneath the surface of the non-conducting or imperfectly-conducting soil and vegetable surface? If it were not so, would not the stroke always affect the higher objects, or prefer palpable conductors in moderatelyelevated sites? In this instance 200 degrees of the horizon were more elevated than the place attacked, while the destruction 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 most 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 Flat 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 foundin the world. Its picturesque beauty, and its general advantages as a place of residence, are attested by the preference given to it by ministers and public men, who select it as a retreat from the cares of ambition. On this ridge Pitt, Tooke, Addington, Burdett, Goldsmid, and Dundas, were recent contemporary residents. Here, amid the orgies of the latter, were probably concerted many of those political projects which have unfortunately desolated the finest portions of Europe, for the wicked, yet vain, purpose of destroying Truth by the sword! In an adjoining domain, Tooke beguiled, in philological 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 and shade, the spacious plain of Wimbledon served to display the ostentatious manœuvres of those servile agents of equivocal justice, whose permanent organization by an anti-human policy has been engraftedon modern society, but whose aid would seldom or never be necessary, 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 standsBarnes poor-house! Yes!—in this enlightened country—in the vicinage of the residence of many boasted statesmen—stands aPARISH POOR-HOUSE ON A WASTE! The unappropriated means of plenty and independence surrounding a mansion of hopeless poverty, maintained by collections of nearly 4000l.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 Richmond!—Did so monstrous an incongruitynever 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 properly supersede the paramount claims of the poor and the public?—From respect to any such right, ought so great a libel on our political economy to be suffered to exist, as a receptacle for the poor in the middle of an uncultivated and unappropriated waste? To dwell further on so mortifying a proof of the fallibility of human wisdom may, however, pique the pride of those who enjoy the power to organize a better system:—I therefore forbear!
These and other considerations prompted me to visit the interior. I found it clean and airy, but the best rooms were not appropriated to the poor. The masterand matron were plain honest people, who, I have no doubt, do all the justice that is possible with a wretched pittance of 5s.6d.per head per week. Should 4s.6d.remain to provide each with twenty-one meals, this is but two-pence half-penny per meal! Think of this, ye pampered minions of wealth, who gorge turtle at a guinea a pound, whobeastializeyourselves 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 paupers, 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 properly applied to the wants and natural claims of the poor. It is too often pretended that these wastes are incapable of cultivation—but the fertile appearance of enclosed patches constantly falsifies such selfish and malignant assertions.
I visited the community of these paupers, consisting in this small parish of only thirty men, women, and children, in one large room. Among them were some disgusting-looking idiots, a class of objects who seem to be the constant nuisance of every poor-house.4How 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. Surely, for the sake of these degraded specimens of our kind, 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 for 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 Barnes Common in a north-eastern direction,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.
On this 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 freshwater formation, of comparatively modern date, created out of the rocky ruins which the rains, in a series of ages, have washed from the high grounds, and further augmented by the decay of local vegetation. 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 its perihelion during our summer 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 completion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defined the boundaries of theriver. 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 theNEVER-CEASING CREATION, and a means of giving greater equality to the face of the land. The sea, as it retired, either abruptly 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 during several thousand years. These downs, acted upon by rain, were mechanically, or in solution, carried off by the water to the lowest levels, the elevations beingthereby depressed, and the valleys proportionally raised. The low lands became of course the channels through which the rains returned to the sea, and the successive deposits on their sides, hardened by the wind and sun, have in five or six thousand years created such tracts of alluvial 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 hills whence it was washed; but, having been so pulverized and so divided by solution, 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 rain would so diffuse itself over the surface, that the fall and the evaporation would balance each other.
Such are the unceasing works ofCREATION, constantly taking place on this exterior 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 whichNEVER CEASEto be exerted, 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 seems 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 aPRIMORDIAL CAUSE,—while thatCAUSEis inscrutableand incomprehensible to creatures possessing but a relative being, who live only inTIMEandSPACE, and who feel and act merely by theIMPULSEof limited senses and powers.
A lane, in the north-west corner of the Common, brought me to Barnes’ Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker of London. The family were not at home; but, on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great simplicity, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Cat Club, as accustomed to assemble here; but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule; and I was told that no such Club was held there; but, perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the Club that assembles at the public-house on the Common. Knowing, however, 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 thespot—when one of them exclaimed, “I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher’s room.”—“Aye,” rejoined his comrade, “I remember somebody 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 remains of a gate-way in the garden-wall, to the door which opened into the building. 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 hall, filled with cobwebs, a fallenceiling, and accumulating rubbish. On the right, the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house! The door on the left led to a spacious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, filled 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 feeling of danger, to which the man would not expose himself;—but I was well requited for my pains. Here I found the Kit-Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed in 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 dry-rot.
My attention was chiefly attracted by the faded cloth-hanging of the room,whose red colour once set off the famous 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! Thus was I, as it were, by these still legible names, brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with manyhereditarynobles, remembered, only because they were patrons of thosenaturalnobles!—I read their names aloud!—I invoked their departed spirits!—I was appalled by the echo of my own voice!—The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs in the windows, and a swallow’s nest in the corner of the ceiling, proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past age,—that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the anxious career of man! The blood of the reader of sensibility will thrill as mine thrilled! It was feeling without volition, and therefore incapable of analysis!
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 before my eyes in so tangible a shape! I yielded to the unsophisticated sentiments which I could not avoid reading in thisVOLUMEof ruins; and felt, by irresistible association, that every object of our affections—that our affections themselves—and that all things that delight us, must soon pass away like this place and its former inhabitants!Beginning yesterday—flourishing to-day—ceasing to-morrow!—such is the sum of the history of all organized being! Certain combinations excite, and the creative 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 theunceasinginertia finally prevails over the original excitement andits accessary stimuli, and ultimately produces disorganization and dissolution! Such is the abstract view of the physical laws which, in the peculiar career of intellectual man, successively give rise toHOPEin youth—PRIDEin manhood—REFLECTIONin decay—andHUMILITYin 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!—He is thus taught to die—and, if in spite of his vices or follies he should live till his world has passed away before him, he will then contentedly await the termination of that vital action which, creating no passion, affords no enjoyment. Such, said I, is the scheme ofBenevolence, which, by depriving the prospect of death of its terrors, makes room, without suffering, for a succession of new generations, 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 alesson of moderation 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 should be suffered to go to decay for want of attention, he told me that his master intended to pull it down and unite it to an adjoining barn, so as to form of the two a riding-house; and 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 the 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;and, on his death, to the house of Mr. Baker, of Hertingfordbury, where they now remain, and where I lately saw them splendidly lodged and in fine preservation. It may be proper to observe, that the house of Mr. Hoare was not the house of Mr. Tonson, and that Mr. Tonson’s house stood nearer to the 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 high tides. It is, however, completely sequestered from vulgar approach, and on that account was, perhaps, preferred as the retreat of a man of business.
AtBarnes’ Elmslived the virtuous minister of Elizabeth, SirFrancis Walsingham, and here he once entertained that chivalrous queen.Cowley, the poet, afterwards resided here; and, in a later ageHeydegger, the buffoon, who gave an eccentric entertainment to the second Guelph, and contrived to gratifyhis listless mind by an ingenious surprize, 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.
In returning through the lane which led from the Kit-Cat Club-room to Barnes Common, the keenest emotions of the human mind were excited by an unforeseen cause. I was admiring the luxuriance and grandeur of the vegetation, in trees which from the very ground expanded in immense double trunks, and in the profusion of weeds and shrubs which covered every part of the untrodden surface—when, on a sudden, I caught the distant sound of a ring ofVILLAGE 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 feelings. I became the mere patient of these sounds; and I sank, as it were, under the force of gloomy impressions, which socompletely lulled and seduced me, that I suffered without being able to exert an effort to escape from their magic spell. Seldom had the power of sound acquired 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 I leaned upon a gate, partly to indulge the reverie, partly as an effect of lassitude, and partly to listen more attentively to the sounds which caused so peculiar a train of 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 sanctuary of the religion of peace, and outraging a land of freedom, to announce some bloody victory, gained by legions of trained slaves, over patriots who have been asserting the liberties and defending the independence of their country. Whichever might be the purpose, (for, alas! the latter, among my degeneratedcountrymen, is as likely as the former,) the recurring tones produced corresponding vibrations on my nerves, and I felt myself played upon like a concordant musical instrument. Presently, 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 them and some of the earliest and dearest objects in my remembrance. “Surely,” I exclaimed, “they areChiswick bells!—the very bells under the sound of which I received part of my early education, and, as a school-boy, passed the happiest days of my life!—Well may their tones vibrate to my inmost soul—and kindle uncommon 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 withthese 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,” exactly 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 numberless 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 gentry, and heads of families, whose orderlyattendance 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!—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 headdresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high crook’d canes, preceded 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! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, 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 pecuniary distress, created by the luxury ofcharity! 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! I remember scores of you;—how 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, I had leisure to reflect on therapid advance of the day, and on the consequent necessity of quickening my speed.
At the end of this lane I crossed a road, which I found led to Chiswick Ferry. The opening gave increased effect 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 Church, 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 attention by the unusual object of a display of elegantRoses, which I afterwards learnt had been cultivated on the same spot about 150 years, to indulge the conceit of a person of the name ofRose, who was buried there, and left an acre of ground to the parish to defray the expence; but I found the gate locked, andwas told it was never opened, except during service. I confess I was not pleased with this regulation, because it appeared to sever the affections of the 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 relatives. Grief seeks to indulge itself unobserved; 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 beloved wife; and the tender mother seeks the spot endeared by the remains of her child: but they cannot submit to the formality of asking permission, or allow their griefs to be intruded upon by strange attendants. Such tributes to our unsophisticated feelings are, however, denied by the locks, bolts, and walls, of the metropolitan cemeteries. The practised grave-digger wonders at the indulgence ofunavailing woe—the unconscious tenants of his domain possess no peculiar claims on 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 apparent, than that of bewailing over a grave! Did it never occur, however, to the clergymen who superintend these depositories 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 resurrection-men, is it not due to the best feelings of our nature that the severest punishment should attach to the crime of stealing 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 therefore rather bury a detected resurrection-man alive with the body he mightbe stealing, than shut out the living from all communion with the dead, and from all the sympathies and lessons addressed to the heart and understanding by their unrestricted intercourse.