Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in regard to the world in which we are placed, that all things whichDO EXIST, owe their existence to theirCOMPATIBILITYwith other existences; to the necessaryFITNESSof all existing things; and to theHARMONYwhich is essential to the existence of any thing in the form and mode in which it does exist: for, without reciprocalCOMPATIBILITY, without individualFITNESS, and without universalHARMONY, nothing couldCONTINUE TO EXISTwhichDOES EXIST; and, therefore, what does exist, is for the timeNECESSARILY COMPATIBLEwith other existences,FITorNOT INCOMPATIBLE, and inHARMONYwith the whole ofCO-EXISTENT BEING. Every organizedEXISTENCEaffords, therefore, indubitable evidence ofFINAL CAUSESorPURPOSES, competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations ofFITNESSto other beings; ofCOMPATIBILITYwith other existences; and ofHARMONYin regard to the whole. And every case ofDESTRUCTIONaffords evidence, that certainFINAL CAUSEShave become unequal to their usual office; that the being isUNFITto exist simultaneously with some other beings; that its existence isINCOMPATIBLEwith certain circumstances, or that it is contrary to the generalHARMONYof co-existent being. May not the fifty thousand species of beings now discoverable, be all the species whoseexistences have continued to be fit, compatible, and harmonious? May not the known extinction of many species be received as evidence, therefore, of the gradual decay of the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not the extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit, by diminishing the number of final causes? And, may not the successive breaking or wearing out of these links of final causes ultimately lead to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called,THE END OF OUR WORLD?As I approached a sequestered mansion-house, and some other buildings, which together bear the name ofBrick-stables, I crossed a corner of the meadow towards an angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames, which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, and, running a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced edge of that physical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid-pendulumwhich creates the earth’s centrifugal power, varies the centre of its forces, and holds in equilibrium that delicately adjusted pressure of the medium of space, which pressure, without such balance, would, by itsclustering power, drive together the isolated masses of suns and planets.—In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine origin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty priesthood to consider a beneficent river as a tangible branch of the Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, are but a portion of the rains and snows which,having fallen near its source, are returning to the ocean, there to rise again and re-perform the same circle of vapours, clouds, rains, and rivers. What a process of fertilization, and how still more luxuriant would have been this vicinity, if man had not levelled the trees and carried away the crops of vegetation! What a place of shelter would thus have been afforded to tribes of amphibiæ, whose accumulated remains often surprise geologists, though necessarily consequent on the fall of crops of vegetation on each other, near undisturbed banks of rivers. Happily, in Britain, our coal-pits, or mineralized forests, have supplied the place of our living woods; or man, regardless of the fitness of all the parts to the perfection of every natural result, might here, as in other long-peopled countries, ignorantly have thwarted the course of Nature by cutting down the timber, which, acting on the electricity of the clouds, affects their density, and causes them to fall in fertilizing showers. Such has been the fate ofall the countries famous in antiquity. Persia, Syria, Arabia, parts of Turkey, and the Barbary coast, have been rendered arid deserts by this inadvertency. The clouds from the Western Ocean would long since have passed over England without disturbance from the conducting powers of leaves of trees, or blades of grass, if our coal-works had not saved our natural conductors; while this Thames, the agent of so much abundance and so much wealth, might, in that case, have become a shallow brook, like the once equally famed Jordan, Granicus, or Ilyssus.The dingy atmosphere of London smoke, which I had measured so accurately on Putney Heath, presented itself again over the woods of Chiswick Grove, reminding me of the cares of the busy world, and producing a painful contrast to the tranquillity of nature, to the silently gliding Thames, and to the unimpassioned simplicity of the vegetable creation.Man, I reflected, brings upon himself a thousand calamities as consequences of his artificesand pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he callsEVIL:—Hecompromises every natural pleasure, to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feeling—HEdeprives himself, and all around him, of every passing enjoyment, to accumulate wealth, that he may purchase other men’s labour, in the vain hope of adding their happiness to his own—HEomits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice—HEarms himself with murderous weapons, and on the lightest instigations practises murder as a science, follows this science as a regular profession, and honours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers, in proportionto the quantity of blood they have shed, or the mischiefs they have perpetrated—HEdisguises the most worthless of the people in showy liveries, teaches them the use of destructive weapons, and then excites them to murder men whom they never saw, by the fear of being killed if they will not kill, or of being shot for cowardice—HErevels in luxury and gluttony, and then complains of the diseases which result from repletion—HEtries in all things to counteract, or improve, the provisions of nature, and then afflicts himself at his disappointments—HEmultiplies the chances against his own health and life, by his numerous artifices, and then wonders at the frequency of their fatal results—HEshuts his eyes against the volume of truth, presented by nature, and, vainly considering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation—HEinterdicts the enjoyments of all other creatures, and, regarding the world as his property, in mere wantonness destroys myriadson whom have been lavished beauties and perfections—HEis the selfish and merciless tyrant of all animated nature, no considerations of pity or sympathy restraining, or even qualifying, his antipathies, his caprices, or his gluttonies; while, more unhappy than his victims, he is constantly arraigning that system in which he is the chief cause of more misery than all other causes joined together—HEforgets, that to live and let live, is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to all man’s relations with his fellow-men, but to inferior creatures, to whom his moral obligations are the greater, because their lives and happiness are often within his power—HEis the patient of the unalterable progress of universal causation, yet makes a difficulty of submitting to the impartial distribution of the provisions which sustain all other beings—HEafflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, though he sees all organized being decay around him, and though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him—HErepinesat the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts; and, though he began to exist but yesterday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever—HEsees no benevolence in the scheme of Nature which provides eternal youth to partake of the pleasures of existence; and which, destroying those pleasures by satiety of enjoyment, produces the blunted feelings of disease and old age—HEmars all his perceptions of well-being by anticipating the cessation of his vital functions, though, before that event, he necessarily ceases to be conscious or to suffer—HEseeks indulgences unprovided for by the course of Nature, and then anxiously employs himself in endeavouring to cheat others of the labour requisite to procure them—HEdesires to govern others, but, regardless of their dependence on his benevolence, is commonly gratified in displaying the power entrusted to him, by a tyrannical abuse of it—HEprofesses to love wisdom, yet in all his establishmentsfor promoting it he sets up false standards of truth; and persecutes, even with religious intolerance, all attempts to swerve from them—HEmakes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty, but as shields to crafty wealth—HErenders justice unattainable by its costliness; and personal rights uncertain by the intricacy and fickleness of legal decisions—HEpossesses means of diffusing knowledge, in the sublime art of Printing; but, by suffering wealth and power to corrupt its agents, he has allowed it to become subservient to the gratification of personal malignity and political turpitude—HEacknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing rather than their social duties in the political state in which they live—HEadopts the customs of barbarous ages as precedents of practice, and founds on them codes for the government of enlightened nations—in a word,HEmakes false and imperfect estimates of his own being, of his duties to his fellow-beings,and of his relations to all being; and then passes his days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing Evil to supernatural causes, and in feverish expectations of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world!I was thus employed in drawing a species of Indictment against the errors, follies, selfishness, and vices of my fellow-men, while I passed along a pleasant foot-path, which conducted me from Brick-stables to the carriage-road from Mortlake to Kew. On arriving at the stile, I saw a colony of the people calledGipsies, and, gratified at falling in with them, I seated myself upon it, and, hailing the eldest of the men in terms of civility, he approached me courteously; and I promised myself, from the interview, a fund of information relative to the economy of those people.Policy so singular, manners so different, and passions so varied, have for so many ages characterized the race of Gipsies, that the incident of meeting with one of their little camps agreeably roused mefrom that reverie on Matter and its modifications, into which I had fallen. What can be more strongly marked than the gipsy physiognomy? Their lively jet-black eyes—their small features—their tawny skins—their small bones—and their shrill voices, bespeak them to be a distinct tribe of the human race, as different from the English nation as the Chinese, the North-American Indians, or the woolly-headed Africans. They seem, in truth, as different in their bodies, and in their instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propensities, or fit and necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores; theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of nature;—we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habitations; and they, like the deer, range from pasture to pasture;—we, with an instinct all our own, cultivate arts; they content themselves with picking up oursuperfluities;—we make laws and arrange governments; they know no laws but those of personal convenience, and no government beyond that of muscular force growing out of the habits of seniority;—and we cherish passions of ambition and domination, consequent on our other arrangements, to which they are utter strangers. Thus, we indulge our propensities, and they indulge theirs. Which are the happiest beings, might be made a question—but I am led to decide in favour of the arts and comforts of civilized life. These people appear to possess the natural feebleness and delicacy of man, without the power of shielding themselves from the accidents of nature. Their darling object appears to be, to enjoy practical personal liberty. They possess less, and they enjoy fewer, luxuries than others; but they escape slavery in all the Protean shapes by which it ensnares the rest of mankind. They do not act as menial servants, and obey the caprice of a master; nor do they work as labourers for a tythe of the advantagesof their industry. They do not, as tenants of land, pay half the produce in rentals; nor do they, as anxious traders, pay half their profits to usurers or capitalists. They are not liable to the conscriptions of a militia-ballot; nor to be dragged from their families by the frightful tyranny of the impress. And, in fine, they are not compelled to contribute a large portion of their earnings in taxes to support folly or prodigality; nor are they condemned to pay, through their successive generations, the interest of money lent for the hire of destroyers of men, who were, like themselves, guilty only of resolving to be free. Yet, if they are exempt from the torture of civilized man, of having the comforts he enjoys torn from him by the sophistry of law, or the tyranny of governments; they suffer from hour to hour the torments of want, and the apprehension of not meeting with renewed supplies. If they are gayer than civilized man, it is because their wants are fewer, and therefore fewer of them are unsatisfied; and probably thegaiety which they assume before strangers may result from their constitution, which, under the same circumstances, may render them gayer than others, just as a Frenchman is gayer than an Englishman, or an Englishman than a North-American Indian. In a word, in looking upon this race, and upon the other recorded varieties of our species, from the woolly-headed African to the long-haired Asiatic, from the blue-eyed and white-haired Goth to the black-eyed and black-haired North American, and from the gigantic Patagonian to the dwarfish Laplander; we are led to believe, that the human species must radically have been as various as any other species of animated beings; and it seems as unphilosophical as impious, to limit the powers of creation to pairs of one kind, and to ascribe their actual varieties to the operations of chance.As I proceeded from the stile towards their tents, the apparent chief of the gang advanced with a firm step, holding a large knife in one hand, and some eatables inthe other; and he made many flourishes with his knife, seemingly in the hope of intimidating me, if I proved an enemy. I civilly begged his pardon for intruding upon their camp, and assured him that mine was a mere visit of curiosity; that I was not a justice of the peace, and had no desire to disturb them. He then told me I was very welcome, and I advanced to their chief tent. “But,” said I to this man, “you have not the gipsy colour and features?” “O, no,” he replied, “I am no gipsy—the people call us allgipsies—but I am by trade a tinker—I live in —— Court, Shoreditch, in the winter; and during the summer I travel the country, and get my livelihood by my trade.” Looking at others of the group, who were sitting at the entrance of two tents, I traced two sets of features among them, one plainly English, and the other evidently Gipsy; and, mentioning this circumstance, he replied, “O yes—though I am not a gipsy, my wife is, and so is her old mother there—they are true gipsies, everyinch of ’em. This man, my wife’s brother, is a gipsy—we are useful to one another in this way of life—and the old woman there is as knowing a gipsy as any in the country, and can tell your fortune, sir, if you like to hear it.”—His character of the elder gipsy, who resembled Munden’s witch in Macbeth, produced considerable mirth in the whole party; and the old woman, who was engaged in smoking her pipe, took it from her mouth, and said: “I ayn’t told so many gentlefolks their fortunes to no purpose, and I’ll tell your’s, sir, if you’ll give me something to fill my pipe.” I smiled, and told her I thanked her; but, as I was notin love, I felt no anxiety to hear my fortune.—“Aye, sir,” said she, “many’s the lover I’ve made happy, and many’s the couple that I’ve brought together.”—Recollecting Farquhar’s incident in the Recruiting Officer, I remarked:—“You tell the ladies what their lovers hire you to tell them, I suppose—and the gentlemen what the ladies request you to tell them?”—“Why, yes,” said she,“something like it;” and laughing—“aye, sir, I see you’re in the secret!”—“And then you touch golden fees, I suppose?”—“Yes,” interrupted the first man, “I’ve known her get five or six guineas on a wedding-day, part from the lady, and part from the gentleman; and she never wants a shilling, and a meal’s victuals, when she passes many houses that I could name.”—“True,” exclaimed the old beldame, “that’s all true; and I’ve made many fine folks happy in my time, and so did my mother before me—she was known far and near!” I had no occasion to remark on the silly dupes on whom they practised these impositions, for the whole party expressed their sentiments by bursts of laughter while the old woman was speaking: but I could not help exclaiming, that I thought she ought to make the fools pay well who gave credit to her prophecies.—“Aye,” said she, “I see you don’t believe in our art—but we tell all bythe hand!”—I felt of course thatthe handwas as good a key to determine the order ofprobableevents as planets,cards, or tea-sediments; and therefore, concluding that gipsies, like astrologers and other prophets, are imposed on by the doctrine of chances, I dropped the conversation; but felt it my duty to give the old woman a shilling to buy some tobacco for her pipe.I now surveyed the entire party, and in three tents found there were three men, two women, besides the old woman, four girls, and two boys. One of the tents was placed at a little distance from the others, and in that resided a young married couple.—“And pray,” said I, “where and how do you marry?”—“Why,” said the first man, “we marry like other folks—they were married at Shoreditch Church—I was married to my old woman here at Hammersmith Church—and my brother-in-law here was married at Acton Church.”—“Then,” said I, “you call yourselves Christians?”—At this question they all laughed; and the first man said, that, “If it depends on our going to church, we can’t say much about it; but, as we donobody any harm, and work for our living, some in one way, and some in another, we suppose we are as good Christians as many other folks.”While this conversation passed, I heard them speaking to each other in a language somewhat resembling Irish, but it had tones more shrill; and the first man, notwithstanding his English physiognomy, as well as the others, spoke with a foreign accent, not unlike that of half-anglicized Hindoos. I mentioned this peculiarity; but he assured me that neither he nor any of the party had been out of England. I now inquired about their own language, when one of them said it wasMaltese; but the other said it was theircantlanguage. I asked their names for various objects which I pointed out; but, after half a dozen words, the first man inquired, if I had “ever heard of one Sir Joseph Banks—for,” said he, “that gentleman once paid me a guinea for telling him twenty words in our language.” Perceiving, therefore, that he rated this species of informationvery high, and aware that the subject has been treated at large by many authors, I forbore to press him further.The ground served them for a table, and the grass for a table-cloth. The mixture of their viands with dirty rags, and other disgusting objects, proved that they possess no sentiment, in regard to cleanliness, superior to lower animals. Like philosophical chemists, they evidently admitted the elementary analogy of what the delicate sense of society classes under contrasted heads ofdirtyandclean. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling which actuates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a pole at each end, with a ridge pole, covered with blanketing, which was stretched obliquely to the ground by woodenpegs. Such rudeness, and such simplicity, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous array of oriental splendour in the palaces of Royalty; and to the varied magnificence displayed in those warehouses whence an Oakley, or a Bullock, supplies the mansions of wealth and grandeur.Indeed, as I stood conversing with these people, how could I help marvelling that, in the most polished district of the most civilized of nations, with the grand pagoda of Kew-Gardens in full view on one hand, and the towers of the new Bastile Palace in sight on the other, I should thus have presented under my eyes a family of eleven persons in no better condition than the Hottentots in their kraals, the Americans in their wigwams, or the Tartars in their equally rude tents. I sighed, however, to think that difference of natural constitution and varied propensities were in England far from being the only causes of the proximity of squalid misery to ostentatious pomp. I felt too that the manners of these gipsies were assimilated to those ofthe shepherd tribes of the remotest antiquity, and that in truth I saw before me a family of the pastoral ages, as described in the Book of Genesis. They wanted their flocks and herds; but the possession of these neither accorded with their own policy, nor with that of the country in which they reside. Four dogs attached to their tents, and two asses grazing at a short distance, completed such a grouping as a painter would, I have no doubt, have found in the days of Abraham in every part of Western Asia, and as is now to be found among the same people, at this day, in every country in Europe. They exhibit that state of man in which thousands of years might pass away without record or improvement: and, whether they are Egyptians, Arabs, Hindoos, Tartars, or a peculiar variety of our species; whether they exhibit man in the rude state which, according to Lord Montboddo, most nearly approximates to the ourang-outang of the oriental forests; or whether they are considered in their separated character—theyform an interesting study for the philosopher, the economist, and the antiquary.In a few minutes after I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive alarm. “O, sir,” said she, “I’m so glad to come up with you—I’m so frightened—I’ve been standing this quarter of an hour on the other side of the stile, waiting for somebody to come by.”—“And what has so frightened you?” said I.—“O, sir,” said the still terrified girl, looking behind her, and increasing her pace, “those gipsies and witches—they frighten every body; and I wo’dn’t have come this way for all the world if I’d known they’d been there.”—“But,” said I, “what are you frightened at? have you heard that they have done harm to any one?”—“O dear! yes, sir, I’ve heard my mother say they bewitches people; and, one summer, two of them beat my father dreadfully.”—“But what did he do to them?”—“Why, he was a little tipsy, to be sure; but he says he only called ’em apack of fortune-tellers.”—“And are all the children in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?”—“O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they’ll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?” The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened nation! Let me hope that the tutors in the schools of Bell and Lancaster will consider it as part of their duties, to destroy the vulgar faith in ghosts, omens, fortune-telling, fatality, and witchcraft.On my right, my attention was attracted by the battlements of a new Gothic building, which I learnt, from the keeper of an adjoining turnpike, was calledKew Priory, and is a summer retreat of a wealthy Catholic maiden lady, Miss Doughty, of Richmond-Hill; after whom a street has recently been named in London.Learning that the lady was not there, I turned aside to take a nearer view; and, ringing at the gate, in the hope of seeing the interior, a female, who opened it, told me that it was a rule of the place, thatno mancould be admitted besides the Rev. Mr. ——, the Catholic priest. I learnt that the Priory, a beautiful structure on a lawn, consisted merely of a chapel, a room for refreshments, and a library; and that the lady used it for a change of scene in the long afternoons of the summer season. The enclosed space contained about 24 acres, on the banks of the Thames, and is subdivided by Pilton’s invisible fences. Behind the priory, there is a house for the bailiff and his wife, a capacious pheasantry, an aviary, and extensive stables. Nothing can be more tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a considerable depth.Another quarter of a mile, along a deadflat, brought me uponKew-Green. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green.As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my left, the long boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens; on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk the effigies of the whole British navy, and over each representation appears the name of the vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or six feet long, and extending, with intervening distances, above a mile and a half. As the labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary performance; and I was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency from passing travellers.Kew-Greenis a triangular area of about thirty acres. Nearly in the centreis the chapel of St. Anne. On the eastern side is a row of family houses; on the north-western side a better row, the backs of which look to the Thames; and on the south side stand the boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens, some buildings for soldiery, and the plain house of Ernest, duke of Cumberland. Among other persons of note and interest who reside here, are the two respectable daughters of Stephen Duck, the poet, who deserve to be mentioned as relics of a former age. In the western corner stand the buildings called Kew Palace, in which George III. passed many of the early years of his reign, and near which he began a new structure a few years before his confirmed malady—which I call theBastile Palace, from its resemblance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen. On a former occasion, I have viewed its interior, and I am at loss to conceive the motive for preferring an external form, which rendered it impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large closets, boudoirs,and rooms like oratories. The works have, however, been suspended since the unhappy seclusion of the Royal Architect; and it is improbable, at least in this generation, that they will be resumed. The foundation is in a bog close to the Thames, and the principal object within its view is the dirty town of Brentford, on the opposite side of the river.I had intended to prolong my route to the western corner of the Green; but, in passing St. Anne’s Chapel, I found the pew-openers engaged in wiping the pews and washing the aisles. I knew that that child of Genius,Gainsborough, the painter, lay interred here; and, desirous of paying my homage to his grave, I inquired for the spot. As is usual in regard to this class of people, they could give me no information; yet one of them fancied she had heard such a name before. I was therefore obliged to wait while the sexton or clerk was fetched, and in the interim I walked into the chapel. I was, in truth, well re-paid for the time it costme; for I never saw any thing prettier, except Lord Le Despencer’s exquisite structure at West Wycombe. As the royal family usually attend here when they reside at Kew, it is superbly fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. The seats for the family fill the gallery, and on the ground-floor there are forty-eight pews of brown oak, adapted for four and six persons each. Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls; but the record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank and title. It was a marble slab, to the memory ofMeyer, the painter,—with lines by the amiable poet,Hayley; and I was led, by respect for painter and poet, to copy the whole:—Jeremiah Meyer, R.A.Painter in Miniature and Enamel tohis Majesty Geo. III.Died January 19, 1789.Meyer! in thy works, the world will ever seeHow great the loss of Art in losing thee;But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak,Nature’s keen sufferings on thy death to speak;Through all her duties, what a heart was thine;In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine!Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal,What most we love in life, and, losing, feel;Age after age may not one artist yieldEqual to thee, in Painting’s ample field;And ne’er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven commendA fonder parent, or a firmer friend.William Hayley, 1789.From hence I strolled into the vestry, where I found a table of fees, drawn with a degree of precision which merits imitation. It appears, that the fees forMARRIAGESwith a licence are 10s.6d., and by banns 5s.That those forBURIALS, to the minister, if the prayers are said in the church, are 5s.; if only at the grave, 2s.6d.The graves are six feet deep; and, in the church, the coffin must be of lead. The clerk is entitled tohalf, and the sexton to about athirdmore. A vault in the church is charged 21l., and in the church-yard 10l.10s.; with 5l.5s.and 2l.2s.respectively for each time of opening. To non-residents they are double.—I had scarcely finished this extract,when the clerk’s or sexton’s assistant made his appearance; and on the south side of the church-yard he brought me to the tomb ofGainsborough.“Ah! friend,” said I, “this is a hallowed spot—here lies one of Britain’s favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her among the nations of the earth.”—“Perhaps it was so,” said the man, “but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their monuments, if the family pay; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this family; if so, I’ll tell you how much is due.”—“Yes, truly, friend,” said I, “I am one of the great family bound to preserve the monument of Gainsborough; but, if you take me for one of his relatives, you are mistaken.”—“Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not included in the Will, therefore are not obligated.” I could not now avoid looking with scorn at the fellow; but, as the spot claimed better feelings, I gave him a trifle for his trouble, and mildly told him I would not detain him.The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death as in life, if you would excite the notice of the multitude, you must in the grave have a splendid mausoleum, or in walking the streets you must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains ofTHE FIRST PAINTER OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL, in fancy-pictures, and oneOF THE FIRSTin the classes of landscape and portrait;—a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was developed, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his amiable private character as by his eminence in the chief of Fancy’s Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter—that the poet only exhibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is calledupon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but the successful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his hand as well as conceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons—but far more so a great painter, who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man wasThomas Gainsborough, before whose modest tomb I stood!The following are the words engraven on the stone:—Thomas Gainsborough, esq.died August 2, 1788.Also the body ofGainsborough Dupont, esq.who died Jan. 20, 1797,aged 42 years.Also, Mrs.Margaret Gainsborough,wife of the aboveThomas Gainsborough, esq,who died Dec. 17, 1798,in the 72d year of her age.A little to the eastward lie the remains of another illustrious son of art, the modestZoffany, whose Florence Gallery, Portraits of the Royal Family, and other pictures, will always raise him among the highest class of painters. He long resided on this Green, and, like Michael Angelo, Titian, and our ownWest, produced master-pieces at four-score. The words on the monument are:Sacred to the MemoryofJohn Zoffany, R.A.who died Nov. 11, 1810,aged 87 years.It was a remarkable coincidence, that the bones ofGainsboroughandZoffanyshould thus, without premeditation, have been laid side by side; and that, but a few weeks before I paid my visit to this spot, delighted crowds had been daily drawn together to view their principal works, combined with those ofWilsonandHogarth, in forming an attractive metropolitan exhibition. On that occasion every Englishman felt proud of the native genius of ourGainsborough. It was ably opposed in one line by aWilson, and in another by aZoffany; yet the works of the untutoredGainsboroughandHogarthserved to prove that every great artist must be born such; and that superiority in human works is the result of original aptitude, and cannot be produced by any servile routine of education, however specious, imposing, sedulous, or costly.This valley of the Thames is, however, sanctified every-where by relics which call for equal reverence. But a mile distant on my right, in Chiswick Church-yard, liethe remains of the painting moralistHogarth; who invented a universal character, or species of moral revelation, intelligible to every degree of intellect, in all ages and countries; who opened a path to the kindred genius of aBurnettand aWilkie; and who conferred a deathless fame on the manners, habits, and chief characters of his time. And, but a mile on my left, in Richmond Church, lie the remains ofThomson, the poet of nature, of liberty, and of man—who displayed his powers only for noble purposes; who scorned, like the vile herd of modern rhymesters, to ascribegloryto injustice,heroismto the assassins of the champions of liberty, orwisdomto the mischievous prejudices of weak princes; and who, by asserting in every line the moral dignity of his art, became an example of poetical renown, which has been ably followed byGlover,Akenside,Cowper,Robinson,Burns,Barlow,Barbauld,Wolcot,Moore, andByron.The fast-declining Sun, and my weariedlimbs here reminded me that I was the slave of nature, and of nature’s laws; and that I had neither time, nor power, to excurse or go farther. My course, therefore, necessarily terminated on this spot; and here I must take leave of the reader, who has been patient, or liberal enough, to accompany me.For my own part, I had been highly gratified with the great volume, ten or twelve miles long, by two or three broad, in the study of which I had employed the lengthened morning; though this volume of my brief analysis the reader will doubtless find marked by the short-sightedness and imperfections which attend every attempt of human art to compress an infinite variety into a finite compass.In looking back at the incidents of the day, which the language of custom has, with reference to our repasts, denominatedTHE MORNING, I could not avoid feeling the strong analogy which exists between such an excursion as that which I have here described andTHE LIFE of MAN. Like that, and all things measured byTIMEandSPACE, it had had itsBEGINNING—its eventfulCOURSE—and itsENDdetermined by physical causes.On emerging in the morning, I foresaw as little as the child foresees his future life, what were to be the incidents of my journey. I proceeded in each successive hour even as he proceeds in each year. I jostled no one, and no one disturbed me. My feelings were those of peace, and I suffered from no hostility. My inclinations were virtuous, and I have experienced the rewards of virtue. Every step had therefore been productive of satisfaction, and I had no-where had cause to look behind me with regret.In this faithful journal, I have ventured to smile at folly; I have honestly reprehended bad passions, and I have sincerely sympathized with their victims. May all my readers be led to smile, reprehend, and sympathize with me; and I solicit this result—for their sakes—for the sake of truth—and in the hope that, if our feelings have been reciprocal, our mutual labours will not have been wasted! At theend of my short career, I conscientiously looked back on the incidents of my course with the complacency with which all may look back in old-age on the incidents of well-spent lives. Let no one sneer at the comparison, for, when human life has passed away, in what degree are its multiplied cares and chequered scenes more important than the simple events which attend a morning’s walk? Look on the graves of that church-yard, and see inTHEMthe representations of hundreds of anxious lives! Are not those graves, then, said I, the end of thousands of busy cares and ambitious projects? Was not life theMERE DREAMof their now senseless tenants—like the trackless path of a bird in the air, or of a fish in the waters? Were they notthe Phantasmagoriawhich, in their day, filled up the shifting scene of the world,—and are we not, in our several days, similar shadows, which modify the light for a season, and then disappear to make room for others like ourselves? May not the events of amorning which slides away, and leaves no traces behind it, be correctly likened therefore to the entire course of human life? The one, like the other, may be well or ill spent—idly dissipated or beneficially employed;—and the chequered incidents will be found to be similar to those which mark the periods of the longest life.In conclusion, I cannot avoid wishing that my example may be followed, in other situations, by minds variously stored and directed by different inquiries. Like the day which has just been recorded, the incidents of every situation, and the thoughts which pass without intermission through every mind, would, in a similar portion of time, fill similar volumes, which, as indices of man’s intellectual machinery, might serve the purpose of the dial of a clock, or the gnomon of a sun-dial, and prove agreeable sources of amusement, as well as efficacious means of disseminating valuable principles and useful instruction.
Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in regard to the world in which we are placed, that all things whichDO EXIST, owe their existence to theirCOMPATIBILITYwith other existences; to the necessaryFITNESSof all existing things; and to theHARMONYwhich is essential to the existence of any thing in the form and mode in which it does exist: for, without reciprocalCOMPATIBILITY, without individualFITNESS, and without universalHARMONY, nothing couldCONTINUE TO EXISTwhichDOES EXIST; and, therefore, what does exist, is for the timeNECESSARILY COMPATIBLEwith other existences,FITorNOT INCOMPATIBLE, and inHARMONYwith the whole ofCO-EXISTENT BEING. Every organizedEXISTENCEaffords, therefore, indubitable evidence ofFINAL CAUSESorPURPOSES, competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations ofFITNESSto other beings; ofCOMPATIBILITYwith other existences; and ofHARMONYin regard to the whole. And every case ofDESTRUCTIONaffords evidence, that certainFINAL CAUSEShave become unequal to their usual office; that the being isUNFITto exist simultaneously with some other beings; that its existence isINCOMPATIBLEwith certain circumstances, or that it is contrary to the generalHARMONYof co-existent being. May not the fifty thousand species of beings now discoverable, be all the species whoseexistences have continued to be fit, compatible, and harmonious? May not the known extinction of many species be received as evidence, therefore, of the gradual decay of the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not the extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit, by diminishing the number of final causes? And, may not the successive breaking or wearing out of these links of final causes ultimately lead to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called,THE END OF OUR WORLD?
As I approached a sequestered mansion-house, and some other buildings, which together bear the name ofBrick-stables, I crossed a corner of the meadow towards an angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames, which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, and, running a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced edge of that physical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid-pendulumwhich creates the earth’s centrifugal power, varies the centre of its forces, and holds in equilibrium that delicately adjusted pressure of the medium of space, which pressure, without such balance, would, by itsclustering power, drive together the isolated masses of suns and planets.—In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine origin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty priesthood to consider a beneficent river as a tangible branch of the Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, are but a portion of the rains and snows which,having fallen near its source, are returning to the ocean, there to rise again and re-perform the same circle of vapours, clouds, rains, and rivers. What a process of fertilization, and how still more luxuriant would have been this vicinity, if man had not levelled the trees and carried away the crops of vegetation! What a place of shelter would thus have been afforded to tribes of amphibiæ, whose accumulated remains often surprise geologists, though necessarily consequent on the fall of crops of vegetation on each other, near undisturbed banks of rivers. Happily, in Britain, our coal-pits, or mineralized forests, have supplied the place of our living woods; or man, regardless of the fitness of all the parts to the perfection of every natural result, might here, as in other long-peopled countries, ignorantly have thwarted the course of Nature by cutting down the timber, which, acting on the electricity of the clouds, affects their density, and causes them to fall in fertilizing showers. Such has been the fate ofall the countries famous in antiquity. Persia, Syria, Arabia, parts of Turkey, and the Barbary coast, have been rendered arid deserts by this inadvertency. The clouds from the Western Ocean would long since have passed over England without disturbance from the conducting powers of leaves of trees, or blades of grass, if our coal-works had not saved our natural conductors; while this Thames, the agent of so much abundance and so much wealth, might, in that case, have become a shallow brook, like the once equally famed Jordan, Granicus, or Ilyssus.
The dingy atmosphere of London smoke, which I had measured so accurately on Putney Heath, presented itself again over the woods of Chiswick Grove, reminding me of the cares of the busy world, and producing a painful contrast to the tranquillity of nature, to the silently gliding Thames, and to the unimpassioned simplicity of the vegetable creation.Man, I reflected, brings upon himself a thousand calamities as consequences of his artificesand pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he callsEVIL:—Hecompromises every natural pleasure, to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feeling—HEdeprives himself, and all around him, of every passing enjoyment, to accumulate wealth, that he may purchase other men’s labour, in the vain hope of adding their happiness to his own—HEomits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice—HEarms himself with murderous weapons, and on the lightest instigations practises murder as a science, follows this science as a regular profession, and honours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers, in proportionto the quantity of blood they have shed, or the mischiefs they have perpetrated—HEdisguises the most worthless of the people in showy liveries, teaches them the use of destructive weapons, and then excites them to murder men whom they never saw, by the fear of being killed if they will not kill, or of being shot for cowardice—HErevels in luxury and gluttony, and then complains of the diseases which result from repletion—HEtries in all things to counteract, or improve, the provisions of nature, and then afflicts himself at his disappointments—HEmultiplies the chances against his own health and life, by his numerous artifices, and then wonders at the frequency of their fatal results—HEshuts his eyes against the volume of truth, presented by nature, and, vainly considering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation—HEinterdicts the enjoyments of all other creatures, and, regarding the world as his property, in mere wantonness destroys myriadson whom have been lavished beauties and perfections—HEis the selfish and merciless tyrant of all animated nature, no considerations of pity or sympathy restraining, or even qualifying, his antipathies, his caprices, or his gluttonies; while, more unhappy than his victims, he is constantly arraigning that system in which he is the chief cause of more misery than all other causes joined together—HEforgets, that to live and let live, is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to all man’s relations with his fellow-men, but to inferior creatures, to whom his moral obligations are the greater, because their lives and happiness are often within his power—HEis the patient of the unalterable progress of universal causation, yet makes a difficulty of submitting to the impartial distribution of the provisions which sustain all other beings—HEafflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, though he sees all organized being decay around him, and though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him—HErepinesat the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts; and, though he began to exist but yesterday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever—HEsees no benevolence in the scheme of Nature which provides eternal youth to partake of the pleasures of existence; and which, destroying those pleasures by satiety of enjoyment, produces the blunted feelings of disease and old age—HEmars all his perceptions of well-being by anticipating the cessation of his vital functions, though, before that event, he necessarily ceases to be conscious or to suffer—HEseeks indulgences unprovided for by the course of Nature, and then anxiously employs himself in endeavouring to cheat others of the labour requisite to procure them—HEdesires to govern others, but, regardless of their dependence on his benevolence, is commonly gratified in displaying the power entrusted to him, by a tyrannical abuse of it—HEprofesses to love wisdom, yet in all his establishmentsfor promoting it he sets up false standards of truth; and persecutes, even with religious intolerance, all attempts to swerve from them—HEmakes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty, but as shields to crafty wealth—HErenders justice unattainable by its costliness; and personal rights uncertain by the intricacy and fickleness of legal decisions—HEpossesses means of diffusing knowledge, in the sublime art of Printing; but, by suffering wealth and power to corrupt its agents, he has allowed it to become subservient to the gratification of personal malignity and political turpitude—HEacknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing rather than their social duties in the political state in which they live—HEadopts the customs of barbarous ages as precedents of practice, and founds on them codes for the government of enlightened nations—in a word,HEmakes false and imperfect estimates of his own being, of his duties to his fellow-beings,and of his relations to all being; and then passes his days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing Evil to supernatural causes, and in feverish expectations of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world!
I was thus employed in drawing a species of Indictment against the errors, follies, selfishness, and vices of my fellow-men, while I passed along a pleasant foot-path, which conducted me from Brick-stables to the carriage-road from Mortlake to Kew. On arriving at the stile, I saw a colony of the people calledGipsies, and, gratified at falling in with them, I seated myself upon it, and, hailing the eldest of the men in terms of civility, he approached me courteously; and I promised myself, from the interview, a fund of information relative to the economy of those people.
Policy so singular, manners so different, and passions so varied, have for so many ages characterized the race of Gipsies, that the incident of meeting with one of their little camps agreeably roused mefrom that reverie on Matter and its modifications, into which I had fallen. What can be more strongly marked than the gipsy physiognomy? Their lively jet-black eyes—their small features—their tawny skins—their small bones—and their shrill voices, bespeak them to be a distinct tribe of the human race, as different from the English nation as the Chinese, the North-American Indians, or the woolly-headed Africans. They seem, in truth, as different in their bodies, and in their instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propensities, or fit and necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores; theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of nature;—we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habitations; and they, like the deer, range from pasture to pasture;—we, with an instinct all our own, cultivate arts; they content themselves with picking up oursuperfluities;—we make laws and arrange governments; they know no laws but those of personal convenience, and no government beyond that of muscular force growing out of the habits of seniority;—and we cherish passions of ambition and domination, consequent on our other arrangements, to which they are utter strangers. Thus, we indulge our propensities, and they indulge theirs. Which are the happiest beings, might be made a question—but I am led to decide in favour of the arts and comforts of civilized life. These people appear to possess the natural feebleness and delicacy of man, without the power of shielding themselves from the accidents of nature. Their darling object appears to be, to enjoy practical personal liberty. They possess less, and they enjoy fewer, luxuries than others; but they escape slavery in all the Protean shapes by which it ensnares the rest of mankind. They do not act as menial servants, and obey the caprice of a master; nor do they work as labourers for a tythe of the advantagesof their industry. They do not, as tenants of land, pay half the produce in rentals; nor do they, as anxious traders, pay half their profits to usurers or capitalists. They are not liable to the conscriptions of a militia-ballot; nor to be dragged from their families by the frightful tyranny of the impress. And, in fine, they are not compelled to contribute a large portion of their earnings in taxes to support folly or prodigality; nor are they condemned to pay, through their successive generations, the interest of money lent for the hire of destroyers of men, who were, like themselves, guilty only of resolving to be free. Yet, if they are exempt from the torture of civilized man, of having the comforts he enjoys torn from him by the sophistry of law, or the tyranny of governments; they suffer from hour to hour the torments of want, and the apprehension of not meeting with renewed supplies. If they are gayer than civilized man, it is because their wants are fewer, and therefore fewer of them are unsatisfied; and probably thegaiety which they assume before strangers may result from their constitution, which, under the same circumstances, may render them gayer than others, just as a Frenchman is gayer than an Englishman, or an Englishman than a North-American Indian. In a word, in looking upon this race, and upon the other recorded varieties of our species, from the woolly-headed African to the long-haired Asiatic, from the blue-eyed and white-haired Goth to the black-eyed and black-haired North American, and from the gigantic Patagonian to the dwarfish Laplander; we are led to believe, that the human species must radically have been as various as any other species of animated beings; and it seems as unphilosophical as impious, to limit the powers of creation to pairs of one kind, and to ascribe their actual varieties to the operations of chance.
As I proceeded from the stile towards their tents, the apparent chief of the gang advanced with a firm step, holding a large knife in one hand, and some eatables inthe other; and he made many flourishes with his knife, seemingly in the hope of intimidating me, if I proved an enemy. I civilly begged his pardon for intruding upon their camp, and assured him that mine was a mere visit of curiosity; that I was not a justice of the peace, and had no desire to disturb them. He then told me I was very welcome, and I advanced to their chief tent. “But,” said I to this man, “you have not the gipsy colour and features?” “O, no,” he replied, “I am no gipsy—the people call us allgipsies—but I am by trade a tinker—I live in —— Court, Shoreditch, in the winter; and during the summer I travel the country, and get my livelihood by my trade.” Looking at others of the group, who were sitting at the entrance of two tents, I traced two sets of features among them, one plainly English, and the other evidently Gipsy; and, mentioning this circumstance, he replied, “O yes—though I am not a gipsy, my wife is, and so is her old mother there—they are true gipsies, everyinch of ’em. This man, my wife’s brother, is a gipsy—we are useful to one another in this way of life—and the old woman there is as knowing a gipsy as any in the country, and can tell your fortune, sir, if you like to hear it.”—His character of the elder gipsy, who resembled Munden’s witch in Macbeth, produced considerable mirth in the whole party; and the old woman, who was engaged in smoking her pipe, took it from her mouth, and said: “I ayn’t told so many gentlefolks their fortunes to no purpose, and I’ll tell your’s, sir, if you’ll give me something to fill my pipe.” I smiled, and told her I thanked her; but, as I was notin love, I felt no anxiety to hear my fortune.—“Aye, sir,” said she, “many’s the lover I’ve made happy, and many’s the couple that I’ve brought together.”—Recollecting Farquhar’s incident in the Recruiting Officer, I remarked:—“You tell the ladies what their lovers hire you to tell them, I suppose—and the gentlemen what the ladies request you to tell them?”—“Why, yes,” said she,“something like it;” and laughing—“aye, sir, I see you’re in the secret!”—“And then you touch golden fees, I suppose?”—“Yes,” interrupted the first man, “I’ve known her get five or six guineas on a wedding-day, part from the lady, and part from the gentleman; and she never wants a shilling, and a meal’s victuals, when she passes many houses that I could name.”—“True,” exclaimed the old beldame, “that’s all true; and I’ve made many fine folks happy in my time, and so did my mother before me—she was known far and near!” I had no occasion to remark on the silly dupes on whom they practised these impositions, for the whole party expressed their sentiments by bursts of laughter while the old woman was speaking: but I could not help exclaiming, that I thought she ought to make the fools pay well who gave credit to her prophecies.—“Aye,” said she, “I see you don’t believe in our art—but we tell all bythe hand!”—I felt of course thatthe handwas as good a key to determine the order ofprobableevents as planets,cards, or tea-sediments; and therefore, concluding that gipsies, like astrologers and other prophets, are imposed on by the doctrine of chances, I dropped the conversation; but felt it my duty to give the old woman a shilling to buy some tobacco for her pipe.
I now surveyed the entire party, and in three tents found there were three men, two women, besides the old woman, four girls, and two boys. One of the tents was placed at a little distance from the others, and in that resided a young married couple.—“And pray,” said I, “where and how do you marry?”—“Why,” said the first man, “we marry like other folks—they were married at Shoreditch Church—I was married to my old woman here at Hammersmith Church—and my brother-in-law here was married at Acton Church.”—“Then,” said I, “you call yourselves Christians?”—At this question they all laughed; and the first man said, that, “If it depends on our going to church, we can’t say much about it; but, as we donobody any harm, and work for our living, some in one way, and some in another, we suppose we are as good Christians as many other folks.”
While this conversation passed, I heard them speaking to each other in a language somewhat resembling Irish, but it had tones more shrill; and the first man, notwithstanding his English physiognomy, as well as the others, spoke with a foreign accent, not unlike that of half-anglicized Hindoos. I mentioned this peculiarity; but he assured me that neither he nor any of the party had been out of England. I now inquired about their own language, when one of them said it wasMaltese; but the other said it was theircantlanguage. I asked their names for various objects which I pointed out; but, after half a dozen words, the first man inquired, if I had “ever heard of one Sir Joseph Banks—for,” said he, “that gentleman once paid me a guinea for telling him twenty words in our language.” Perceiving, therefore, that he rated this species of informationvery high, and aware that the subject has been treated at large by many authors, I forbore to press him further.
The ground served them for a table, and the grass for a table-cloth. The mixture of their viands with dirty rags, and other disgusting objects, proved that they possess no sentiment, in regard to cleanliness, superior to lower animals. Like philosophical chemists, they evidently admitted the elementary analogy of what the delicate sense of society classes under contrasted heads ofdirtyandclean. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling which actuates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a pole at each end, with a ridge pole, covered with blanketing, which was stretched obliquely to the ground by woodenpegs. Such rudeness, and such simplicity, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous array of oriental splendour in the palaces of Royalty; and to the varied magnificence displayed in those warehouses whence an Oakley, or a Bullock, supplies the mansions of wealth and grandeur.
Indeed, as I stood conversing with these people, how could I help marvelling that, in the most polished district of the most civilized of nations, with the grand pagoda of Kew-Gardens in full view on one hand, and the towers of the new Bastile Palace in sight on the other, I should thus have presented under my eyes a family of eleven persons in no better condition than the Hottentots in their kraals, the Americans in their wigwams, or the Tartars in their equally rude tents. I sighed, however, to think that difference of natural constitution and varied propensities were in England far from being the only causes of the proximity of squalid misery to ostentatious pomp. I felt too that the manners of these gipsies were assimilated to those ofthe shepherd tribes of the remotest antiquity, and that in truth I saw before me a family of the pastoral ages, as described in the Book of Genesis. They wanted their flocks and herds; but the possession of these neither accorded with their own policy, nor with that of the country in which they reside. Four dogs attached to their tents, and two asses grazing at a short distance, completed such a grouping as a painter would, I have no doubt, have found in the days of Abraham in every part of Western Asia, and as is now to be found among the same people, at this day, in every country in Europe. They exhibit that state of man in which thousands of years might pass away without record or improvement: and, whether they are Egyptians, Arabs, Hindoos, Tartars, or a peculiar variety of our species; whether they exhibit man in the rude state which, according to Lord Montboddo, most nearly approximates to the ourang-outang of the oriental forests; or whether they are considered in their separated character—theyform an interesting study for the philosopher, the economist, and the antiquary.
In a few minutes after I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive alarm. “O, sir,” said she, “I’m so glad to come up with you—I’m so frightened—I’ve been standing this quarter of an hour on the other side of the stile, waiting for somebody to come by.”—“And what has so frightened you?” said I.—“O, sir,” said the still terrified girl, looking behind her, and increasing her pace, “those gipsies and witches—they frighten every body; and I wo’dn’t have come this way for all the world if I’d known they’d been there.”—“But,” said I, “what are you frightened at? have you heard that they have done harm to any one?”—“O dear! yes, sir, I’ve heard my mother say they bewitches people; and, one summer, two of them beat my father dreadfully.”—“But what did he do to them?”—“Why, he was a little tipsy, to be sure; but he says he only called ’em apack of fortune-tellers.”—“And are all the children in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?”—“O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they’ll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?” The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened nation! Let me hope that the tutors in the schools of Bell and Lancaster will consider it as part of their duties, to destroy the vulgar faith in ghosts, omens, fortune-telling, fatality, and witchcraft.
On my right, my attention was attracted by the battlements of a new Gothic building, which I learnt, from the keeper of an adjoining turnpike, was calledKew Priory, and is a summer retreat of a wealthy Catholic maiden lady, Miss Doughty, of Richmond-Hill; after whom a street has recently been named in London.Learning that the lady was not there, I turned aside to take a nearer view; and, ringing at the gate, in the hope of seeing the interior, a female, who opened it, told me that it was a rule of the place, thatno mancould be admitted besides the Rev. Mr. ——, the Catholic priest. I learnt that the Priory, a beautiful structure on a lawn, consisted merely of a chapel, a room for refreshments, and a library; and that the lady used it for a change of scene in the long afternoons of the summer season. The enclosed space contained about 24 acres, on the banks of the Thames, and is subdivided by Pilton’s invisible fences. Behind the priory, there is a house for the bailiff and his wife, a capacious pheasantry, an aviary, and extensive stables. Nothing can be more tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a considerable depth.
Another quarter of a mile, along a deadflat, brought me uponKew-Green. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green.
As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my left, the long boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens; on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk the effigies of the whole British navy, and over each representation appears the name of the vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or six feet long, and extending, with intervening distances, above a mile and a half. As the labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary performance; and I was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency from passing travellers.
Kew-Greenis a triangular area of about thirty acres. Nearly in the centreis the chapel of St. Anne. On the eastern side is a row of family houses; on the north-western side a better row, the backs of which look to the Thames; and on the south side stand the boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens, some buildings for soldiery, and the plain house of Ernest, duke of Cumberland. Among other persons of note and interest who reside here, are the two respectable daughters of Stephen Duck, the poet, who deserve to be mentioned as relics of a former age. In the western corner stand the buildings called Kew Palace, in which George III. passed many of the early years of his reign, and near which he began a new structure a few years before his confirmed malady—which I call theBastile Palace, from its resemblance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen. On a former occasion, I have viewed its interior, and I am at loss to conceive the motive for preferring an external form, which rendered it impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large closets, boudoirs,and rooms like oratories. The works have, however, been suspended since the unhappy seclusion of the Royal Architect; and it is improbable, at least in this generation, that they will be resumed. The foundation is in a bog close to the Thames, and the principal object within its view is the dirty town of Brentford, on the opposite side of the river.
I had intended to prolong my route to the western corner of the Green; but, in passing St. Anne’s Chapel, I found the pew-openers engaged in wiping the pews and washing the aisles. I knew that that child of Genius,Gainsborough, the painter, lay interred here; and, desirous of paying my homage to his grave, I inquired for the spot. As is usual in regard to this class of people, they could give me no information; yet one of them fancied she had heard such a name before. I was therefore obliged to wait while the sexton or clerk was fetched, and in the interim I walked into the chapel. I was, in truth, well re-paid for the time it costme; for I never saw any thing prettier, except Lord Le Despencer’s exquisite structure at West Wycombe. As the royal family usually attend here when they reside at Kew, it is superbly fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. The seats for the family fill the gallery, and on the ground-floor there are forty-eight pews of brown oak, adapted for four and six persons each. Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls; but the record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank and title. It was a marble slab, to the memory ofMeyer, the painter,—with lines by the amiable poet,Hayley; and I was led, by respect for painter and poet, to copy the whole:—
Jeremiah Meyer, R.A.Painter in Miniature and Enamel tohis Majesty Geo. III.Died January 19, 1789.Meyer! in thy works, the world will ever seeHow great the loss of Art in losing thee;But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak,Nature’s keen sufferings on thy death to speak;Through all her duties, what a heart was thine;In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine!Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal,What most we love in life, and, losing, feel;Age after age may not one artist yieldEqual to thee, in Painting’s ample field;And ne’er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven commendA fonder parent, or a firmer friend.William Hayley, 1789.
Jeremiah Meyer, R.A.Painter in Miniature and Enamel tohis Majesty Geo. III.Died January 19, 1789.
Meyer! in thy works, the world will ever seeHow great the loss of Art in losing thee;But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak,Nature’s keen sufferings on thy death to speak;Through all her duties, what a heart was thine;In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine!Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal,What most we love in life, and, losing, feel;Age after age may not one artist yieldEqual to thee, in Painting’s ample field;And ne’er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven commendA fonder parent, or a firmer friend.
Meyer! in thy works, the world will ever see
How great the loss of Art in losing thee;
But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak,
Nature’s keen sufferings on thy death to speak;
Through all her duties, what a heart was thine;
In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine!
Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal,
What most we love in life, and, losing, feel;
Age after age may not one artist yield
Equal to thee, in Painting’s ample field;
And ne’er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven commend
A fonder parent, or a firmer friend.
William Hayley, 1789.
From hence I strolled into the vestry, where I found a table of fees, drawn with a degree of precision which merits imitation. It appears, that the fees forMARRIAGESwith a licence are 10s.6d., and by banns 5s.That those forBURIALS, to the minister, if the prayers are said in the church, are 5s.; if only at the grave, 2s.6d.The graves are six feet deep; and, in the church, the coffin must be of lead. The clerk is entitled tohalf, and the sexton to about athirdmore. A vault in the church is charged 21l., and in the church-yard 10l.10s.; with 5l.5s.and 2l.2s.respectively for each time of opening. To non-residents they are double.—I had scarcely finished this extract,when the clerk’s or sexton’s assistant made his appearance; and on the south side of the church-yard he brought me to the tomb ofGainsborough.
“Ah! friend,” said I, “this is a hallowed spot—here lies one of Britain’s favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her among the nations of the earth.”—“Perhaps it was so,” said the man, “but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their monuments, if the family pay; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this family; if so, I’ll tell you how much is due.”—“Yes, truly, friend,” said I, “I am one of the great family bound to preserve the monument of Gainsborough; but, if you take me for one of his relatives, you are mistaken.”—“Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not included in the Will, therefore are not obligated.” I could not now avoid looking with scorn at the fellow; but, as the spot claimed better feelings, I gave him a trifle for his trouble, and mildly told him I would not detain him.
The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death as in life, if you would excite the notice of the multitude, you must in the grave have a splendid mausoleum, or in walking the streets you must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains ofTHE FIRST PAINTER OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL, in fancy-pictures, and oneOF THE FIRSTin the classes of landscape and portrait;—a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was developed, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his amiable private character as by his eminence in the chief of Fancy’s Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter—that the poet only exhibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is calledupon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but the successful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his hand as well as conceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons—but far more so a great painter, who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man wasThomas Gainsborough, before whose modest tomb I stood!The following are the words engraven on the stone:—
Thomas Gainsborough, esq.died August 2, 1788.Also the body ofGainsborough Dupont, esq.who died Jan. 20, 1797,aged 42 years.Also, Mrs.Margaret Gainsborough,wife of the aboveThomas Gainsborough, esq,who died Dec. 17, 1798,in the 72d year of her age.
Thomas Gainsborough, esq.died August 2, 1788.Also the body ofGainsborough Dupont, esq.who died Jan. 20, 1797,aged 42 years.Also, Mrs.Margaret Gainsborough,wife of the aboveThomas Gainsborough, esq,who died Dec. 17, 1798,in the 72d year of her age.
A little to the eastward lie the remains of another illustrious son of art, the modestZoffany, whose Florence Gallery, Portraits of the Royal Family, and other pictures, will always raise him among the highest class of painters. He long resided on this Green, and, like Michael Angelo, Titian, and our ownWest, produced master-pieces at four-score. The words on the monument are:
Sacred to the MemoryofJohn Zoffany, R.A.who died Nov. 11, 1810,aged 87 years.
Sacred to the MemoryofJohn Zoffany, R.A.who died Nov. 11, 1810,aged 87 years.
It was a remarkable coincidence, that the bones ofGainsboroughandZoffanyshould thus, without premeditation, have been laid side by side; and that, but a few weeks before I paid my visit to this spot, delighted crowds had been daily drawn together to view their principal works, combined with those ofWilsonandHogarth, in forming an attractive metropolitan exhibition. On that occasion every Englishman felt proud of the native genius of ourGainsborough. It was ably opposed in one line by aWilson, and in another by aZoffany; yet the works of the untutoredGainsboroughandHogarthserved to prove that every great artist must be born such; and that superiority in human works is the result of original aptitude, and cannot be produced by any servile routine of education, however specious, imposing, sedulous, or costly.
This valley of the Thames is, however, sanctified every-where by relics which call for equal reverence. But a mile distant on my right, in Chiswick Church-yard, liethe remains of the painting moralistHogarth; who invented a universal character, or species of moral revelation, intelligible to every degree of intellect, in all ages and countries; who opened a path to the kindred genius of aBurnettand aWilkie; and who conferred a deathless fame on the manners, habits, and chief characters of his time. And, but a mile on my left, in Richmond Church, lie the remains ofThomson, the poet of nature, of liberty, and of man—who displayed his powers only for noble purposes; who scorned, like the vile herd of modern rhymesters, to ascribegloryto injustice,heroismto the assassins of the champions of liberty, orwisdomto the mischievous prejudices of weak princes; and who, by asserting in every line the moral dignity of his art, became an example of poetical renown, which has been ably followed byGlover,Akenside,Cowper,Robinson,Burns,Barlow,Barbauld,Wolcot,Moore, andByron.
The fast-declining Sun, and my weariedlimbs here reminded me that I was the slave of nature, and of nature’s laws; and that I had neither time, nor power, to excurse or go farther. My course, therefore, necessarily terminated on this spot; and here I must take leave of the reader, who has been patient, or liberal enough, to accompany me.
For my own part, I had been highly gratified with the great volume, ten or twelve miles long, by two or three broad, in the study of which I had employed the lengthened morning; though this volume of my brief analysis the reader will doubtless find marked by the short-sightedness and imperfections which attend every attempt of human art to compress an infinite variety into a finite compass.
In looking back at the incidents of the day, which the language of custom has, with reference to our repasts, denominatedTHE MORNING, I could not avoid feeling the strong analogy which exists between such an excursion as that which I have here described andTHE LIFE of MAN. Like that, and all things measured byTIMEandSPACE, it had had itsBEGINNING—its eventfulCOURSE—and itsENDdetermined by physical causes.
On emerging in the morning, I foresaw as little as the child foresees his future life, what were to be the incidents of my journey. I proceeded in each successive hour even as he proceeds in each year. I jostled no one, and no one disturbed me. My feelings were those of peace, and I suffered from no hostility. My inclinations were virtuous, and I have experienced the rewards of virtue. Every step had therefore been productive of satisfaction, and I had no-where had cause to look behind me with regret.
In this faithful journal, I have ventured to smile at folly; I have honestly reprehended bad passions, and I have sincerely sympathized with their victims. May all my readers be led to smile, reprehend, and sympathize with me; and I solicit this result—for their sakes—for the sake of truth—and in the hope that, if our feelings have been reciprocal, our mutual labours will not have been wasted! At theend of my short career, I conscientiously looked back on the incidents of my course with the complacency with which all may look back in old-age on the incidents of well-spent lives. Let no one sneer at the comparison, for, when human life has passed away, in what degree are its multiplied cares and chequered scenes more important than the simple events which attend a morning’s walk? Look on the graves of that church-yard, and see inTHEMthe representations of hundreds of anxious lives! Are not those graves, then, said I, the end of thousands of busy cares and ambitious projects? Was not life theMERE DREAMof their now senseless tenants—like the trackless path of a bird in the air, or of a fish in the waters? Were they notthe Phantasmagoriawhich, in their day, filled up the shifting scene of the world,—and are we not, in our several days, similar shadows, which modify the light for a season, and then disappear to make room for others like ourselves? May not the events of amorning which slides away, and leaves no traces behind it, be correctly likened therefore to the entire course of human life? The one, like the other, may be well or ill spent—idly dissipated or beneficially employed;—and the chequered incidents will be found to be similar to those which mark the periods of the longest life.
In conclusion, I cannot avoid wishing that my example may be followed, in other situations, by minds variously stored and directed by different inquiries. Like the day which has just been recorded, the incidents of every situation, and the thoughts which pass without intermission through every mind, would, in a similar portion of time, fill similar volumes, which, as indices of man’s intellectual machinery, might serve the purpose of the dial of a clock, or the gnomon of a sun-dial, and prove agreeable sources of amusement, as well as efficacious means of disseminating valuable principles and useful instruction.