A variety of unpropitious circumstances gave rise to my journey to the East Indies, while domestic calamity marked my departure, and, at the very outset, gave me a foretaste of those miseries which Fate had reserved to let fall upon me in the sequel. The channels from which I drew the means of supporting my family in that style which their rank and connections obliged them to maintain, were clogged by a coincidence of events asunlucky as unexpected: the War in India had interrupted the regular remittance of my property from thence: a severe shock which unbounded generosity and beneficence had given to the affairs of my father, rendered him incapable of maintaining his usual punctuality in the payment of the income he had assigned me; and, to crown the whole, I had been deprived, by death, of two lovely children (your brother and sister), whom I loved not less than I have since loved you and your brother.
It was under the pressure of those accumulated afflictions, aggravated by the goading thought of leaving my family for such a length of time as must necessarily elapse before I could again see them, that I set out for India in the month of May, in the year 1781, with a heart overwhelmed with woe, and too surely predictive of misfortunes.
From the gloomy cave of depression in which my mind was sunk, I looked forward, to seek, in the future, a gleam of comfort——but in vain: not a ray appeared——Melancholy had thrown her sombre shadow on the whole. Even present affliction yielded up a share of my heart to an unaccountable dismal presentiment of future ill; and the disasters and disappointments I had passed, were lost and forgotten in ominous forebodings and instinctive presages of those that were to come.
Of all the weaknesses to which the human mind is subject, superstition is that against which I would have you guard with the utmost vigilance. It is the most incurable canker of the mind.Under its unrelenting dominion, happiness withers, the understanding becomes obscured, and every principle of joy is blasted. For this reason I wish to account for those presages, by referring them to their true physical causes, in order thereby to prevent your young mind from receiving, from what I have written, any injurious impression, or superstitious idea ofpresentiment, as it is fashionably denominated.
If the mind of Man be examined, it will be found naturally prone to the contemplation of the future——its flights from hope to hope, or fear to fear, leading it insensibly from objects present and in possession, to those remote and in expectation——from positive good to suppositious better, or from actual melancholy to imaginary misfortune. In these cases, the mind never fails to see the prospect in colours derived from the medium through which it is viewed and exaggerated by the magnifying power of fancy. Thus my mind, labouring under all the uneasiness I have described, saw every thing through the gloomy medium of melancholy, and, looking forward, foreboded nothing but misfortune: accident afterwards fulfilled those forebodings; but accident, nay, the most trifling change of circumstances, might possibly have so totally changed the face of my subsequent progress, that good fortune, instead of misadventure, might have been my lot, and so all my foreboding been as illusory and fallible as all such phantoms of the imagination really are. Thus I argue now——and I am sure I argue truly; but if reason be not timely called in, and made, as it were,an habitual inmate, it avails but little against the overbearing force of superstition, who, when she once gets possession of the mind, holds her seat with unrelenting tenacity, and, calling in a whole host of horrors, with despair at their head, to her aid, entrenches herself behind their formidable powers, and bids defiance to the assaults of reason.
Thus it fared with me——Under the dominion of gloomy presentiment, I left London; and my journey down to Margate, where I was to take shipping, was, asShakspeareemphatically says, “a phantasm, or a hideous dream——and my little state of Man suffered, as it were, the nature of an insurrection:”——the chaos within me forbade even the approach of discriminate reflection; and I found myself on board the Packet, bound to Ostend, without having a single trace left upon my mind, of the intermediate stages and incidents, that happened since I had left London.
It has been observed——and I wish you always to carry it in memory, as one of the best consolations under affliction——that human sufferings, like all other things, find their vital principle exhausted, and their extinction accelerated, by overgrowth; and that, at the moment when Man thinks himself most miserable, a benignant Providence is preparing relief, in some form or other, for him. So it, in some sort, happened with me; for I was fortunate enough to find in the Packet a fellow-passenger, whose valuable conversation and agreeable manners beguiled me insensiblyof the gloomy contemplation in which I was absorbed, and afforded my tortured mind a temporary suspension of pain. This Gentleman was GeneralLockhart: he was going to Brussels, to pay his court to the EmperorJosephthe Second, who was then shortly expected in the Low Countries, in order to go through the ceremonies of his Inauguration. As Brussels lay in my way, I was flattered with the hopes of having for a companion a Gentleman at once so pleasing in his manners and respectable in his character, and was much comforted when I found him as much disposed as myself to an agreement to travel the whole of the way thither together. Thus, though far, very far from a state of ease, I was, when landing at Ostend, at least less miserable than at my coming on board the Packet.
As this Letter is already spun to a length too great to admit of any material part of the description I am now to give you of Ostend, and the Country to which it belongs, I think it better to postpone it to my next, which I mean to devote entirely to that subject, and thereby avoid the confusion that arises from mixing two subjects in the same Letter, or breaking off the thread of one in order to make way for the other.
Adieu, my dear boy!——Forget not your brotherJohn. That you may both be good and happy, is all the wish now left to, &c.
That Country to which I am now to call your attention——I mean, the Netherlands——is marked by a greater number of political changes, and harrassed by a more continued train of military operations, than perhaps any Country in the records of Modern History. It may truly be called the Cockpit Royal of Europe, on which Tyrants, as ambition, avarice, pride, caprice, or malignity, prompted them, pitted thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of their fellow-creatures, to cut each other’s throats about some point, frivolous as regarding themselves, unimportant to Mankind, and only tending to gratify a diabolical lust for dominion: Yet, under all these disadvantages, (such are the natural qualities of this Country), it has, till lately, been in a tolerably flourishing state; and would, under good government and proper protection, equal any part of Europe for richness.
Flanders, Brabant, and the Country now called the United Netherlands, were in general known by the name of Netherlands, Low Countries, or Païs-bas, from their situation, as it is supposed, in respect of Germany. Anciently, they formed a part of Belgic Gaul, of which you may remember to have read an account inthe Commentaries ofJulius Cæsar, who describes the inhabitants as the most valiant of all the Gallic Nations——“Horum omnium Belgæ sunt fortissimi.”They afterwards were subject to petty Princes, and made part of the German Empire; and, in the sixteenth century, became subject toCharlesthe Fifth of the House of Austria; but, being oppressed beyond endurance by his son,Philipthe Second of Spain, (that blind and furious bigot), they openly revolted——flew to arms to assert their freedom; and, after a struggle as glorious in effect as virtuous in principle——after performing prodigies of valour, and exhibiting examples of fortitude, to which none but men fighting in the Godlike Cause ofLibertyare competent——led on by the wisdom and valour of thePrinceofOrange, and assisted by theSovereignofGreat Britain——they at length so far succeeded, that those now called the United Netherlands, entered into a solemn league, and forced the gloomy Tyrant to acknowledge their independence. But that part to which I am now particularly to allude, continued annexed to the House of Austria. In 1787, they revolted, and made a temporary struggle to disengage themselves from the dominion of theEmperor; but, owing to some cabals among themselves, and the temperate conduct of that Prince, they again returned to their allegiance, and were rewarded with a general amnesty. In 1792, they were over-run by the French Army under GeneralDumourier——opened their arms to those Republicans, and were rewarded for it by oppression, tyranny, andinjustice. The French, however, were driven back out of the Country; and, wonderful to relate, they again received their old Master, theEmperor, with strong demonstrations of joy, and manifested their loyalty and attachment to him by every expression that abject hypocrisy could suggest.
“O! how unlike their Belgic Sires of old!”
“O! how unlike their Belgic Sires of old!”
“O! how unlike their Belgic Sires of old!”
“O! how unlike their Belgic Sires of old!”
Here, could I stop with strict justice, I would——But, behold! the French again came; again they opened their gates to receive them; and again they were, with tenfold fury and rapacity, pillaged, oppressed, and insulted; and at the very time I am writing this, the Guillotine is doing its office——enforcing the payment of the most exorbitant and enormous contributions, and compelling, it is said, one hundred thousand of the ill-fated inhabitants to take the field, as soldiers of the Republic.
Human opinion is so chequered and uncertain, that two very honest men may in certain cases act in direct contradiction and hostility to each other, with the very best intentions——He, therefore, must have but a cold heart, and a contracted understanding, who cannot forgive the man that acts in such cases erroneously, when he acts from the exact dictates of his opinion, and upon the principle which he has conscientiously adopted: but when a whole People are seen whisking about with every gust of fortune, and making a new principle for every new point of convenience, wemust despise them even when they happen to act right, and can scarcely afford them so much as pity in their calamities. The Austrian Netherlands are now in that state; and, without presuming to say in which of their tergiversations they were right, I will venture to pronounce that they deserve punishment, and I believe they are in hands very likely to give them their due.
To return——Ostend is a sea-port of Austrian Flanders, and is situated in the Liberty of Bruges. It was, at one time, the strongest town in Flanders: but a double ditch and ramparts, which constituted its strength, are now destroyed; and in the place where the former stood, docks, or rather basons, extremely capacious and commodious, are formed, for the reception of shipping. The ground about the town is very low and marshy, and cut into a number of fine canals——into some of which, ships of the largest size may enter——and in one of which, vessels of great burthen may ride, even close to Bruges. The harbour here is so fortunately circumstanced, that it was once thought, by Engineers, entirely secure from a blockade; and its pristine strength can in no way be so well described, as by a relation of the defence it made in the four first years of the seventeenth century——though, near the close of the sixteenth, it was no better than an insignificant fishing town. It held out against the Spaniards for three years, two months and sixteen days. Eighty thousand men lost their lives before it, while fifty thousand were killed or died within. It at last surrendered, but on good terms; and not for want of men or provisions, butfor want of ground to stand on, which the enemy took from them, at an amazing loss, step by step, till they had not room left for men to defend it. Three hundred thousand cannon-balls, of thirty pounds weight each, were fired against it; and the besieged often filled up the breaches made in their ramparts with heaps of dead bodies.
Such, my dear boy, are the miracles that men, animated with the all-subduing spirit of Liberty, can perform——Liberty! that immediate jewel of the soul——that first moving principle of all the animal creation——which, with equal power, influences the bird to beat the cage with its wings, and the lion to tear the bars of his imprisonment——the infant to spring from the tender confinement of its nurse, and the lean and shrivelled pantaloon to crawl abroad, and fly the warmth and repose of his wholesome chamber——Liberty! which, for centuries enthralled by artifice and fraud, or lulled into a slumber by the witching spirit of Priest-craft, now rises like a giant refreshed with wine——in its great efforts for emancipation, destroys and overturns systems——but, when finding no resistance, and matured by time, will, I sincerely hope, sink appeased into a generous calm, and become the blessing, the guardian and protector of Mankind!
It is your good fortune, my dear children, to be born at a time when Liberty seems to be well understood in your own Country, and is universally the prevalent passion of men. It is almost needless, therefore, for me to exhort you to make it the groundworkof your political morality: but let me remind you to guard, above all, against the despotism of certain Tyrants, to whom many of the greatest advocates for Liberty are strangely apt to submit——I mean, your passions. Of all other Tyrants, they are the most subtle, the most bewitching, the most overbearing, and, what is worse, the most cruel. Beneath the domination of other Despots, tranquillity may alleviate the weight of your chains, and soften oppression; but when once you become the slave of your passions, your peace is for ever fled, and you live and die in unabating misery.
The pride of the English is remarked all over the globe, even to a proverb! But pride is a word of such dubious meaning, so undefined in its sense, and strained to such various imports, that you shall hear it violently execrated by one, and warmly applauded by another——this denouncing it as a sin of the first magnitude, and that maintaining it to be the most vigilant guardian of human virtue. Those differences in opinion arise not from any defect in the intellects of either, but from each viewing the subject in that one point in which it first strikes his eye, or best suits his taste, his feeling, or his prejudices. I have no doubt, however, but a fullconsideration of the subject would shew, that pride, as it is called, is only good or bad as the object from which it arises is mean or magnificent, culpable or meritorious. That noble pride which stimulates to extraordinary acts of generosity and magnanimity, such as, in many instances, has distinguished, above all others, the Nobility of Spain, exacts the homage and admiration of Mankind: But I fear very much that our English pride is of another growth, and smells too rankly of that overstrained commercial spirit which makes the basis of the present grandeur of Great Britain, but which, in my humble judgment, raises only to debase her——by slow, subtle degrees, poisons the national principle, enslaves the once bold spirit of the People, detracts from their real solid felicity, and, by confounding the idea of national wealth with that of national prosperity, leads it in rapid strides to its downfall. In short, we are approaching, I fear, with daily accelerated steps, to the disposition and sordid habits of the Dutch, of whom DoctorGoldsmithso very pertinently and truly speaks, when he says,
“Ev’n Liberty itself is barter’d here!”
“Ev’n Liberty itself is barter’d here!”
“Ev’n Liberty itself is barter’d here!”
“Ev’n Liberty itself is barter’d here!”
Without leading your mind through a maze of disquisition on this subject, which might fatigue with abstruseness and prolixity, I will bring you back to the point from which the matter started, and content myself with remarking, that the pride of the English, speaking of it as a part of the national character, is the meanest of all pride. The inflation of bloated, overgrown wealth, an overweeningaffection for money, an idolatrous worship of gain, have absolutely confounded the general intellect, and warped the judgment of the many to that excess, that, in estimating men or things, they refer always to “what is he worth?” or, “what will it fetch?” This sordid habit of thinking was finely hit off by a keen fellow, the native of a neighbouring Kingdom, who, for many years, carried on business in London, and failed:——Sitting one day in a coffee-house in the City, where some wealthy Citizens were discussing a subject not entirely unconnected with cash concerns, one of them observing him rather attentive to their conversation, turned to him, and said, “What is your opinion, Sir, of the matter?”—“’s blood, Sir!” returned he, peevishly, “what opinion can a man have in this Country, who has not a guinea in his pocket?”
Under the influence of all the various caprices inspired by this unhappy purse-pride, I am sorry to say our Countrymen do, when they go abroad, so play the fool, that they are universally flattered and despised, pillaged and laughed at, by all persons with whom they have any dealing. In France, Mi Lor Anglois is, or at least was, to have fix times as great a profusion of every thing as any other person, and pay three hundred per cent. more for it; and the worst of it was, that a Mi Lor was found so conducive to their interest, that they would not, if they could help it, suffer any Englishman to go without a title——nay, would sometimes, with kindly compulsion, force him to accept of it, whether he wouldor not: but if an Englishman be, above all others, the object of imposition in foreign countries, certainly none pillage him so unmercifully as his own Countrymen who are settled there. In all the places through which I have travelled, I have had occasion to remark (and the remark has been amply verified by every Gentleman I have ever conversed with on the subject), that the most extravagant houses of entertainment are those kept by Englishmen. At Ostend, as well as other places, it was so: therefore, as economy, when it does not trespass upon the bounds of genteel liberality, is the best security for happiness and respect, I advise you, whenever you shall have occasion to visit the Continent, in the first place to avoid all appearance of the purse-proud ostentation of John Bull; and, in the next place, to avoid all English houses of entertainment.
It is a singular circumstance, and belongs, I should suppose, peculiarly to Ostend, that the charity-children of the town are permitted to come on board the vessels arrived, to beg of the passengers, one day in the week.
Before I bid adieu to Ostend, I must remark one heavy disadvantage under which it labours——the want of fresh water; all they use being brought from Bruges. In going from Ostend to Bruges, a traveller has it in his choice to go by land, or water——If by land, he gets a good voiture for about ten shillings of our money; the road is about fourteen or fifteen miles——If by water (the mode which I adopted, as by far the cheapest and the pleasantest), hetravels in a vessel pretty much resembling our Lord Mayor’s barge, sometimes called a trackschuyt, but oftenla barquela barque, or barke: it is, in truth, fitted up in a style of great neatness, if not elegance; stored with a large stock of provisions and refreshments of all kinds, and of superior quality, for the accommodation of the passengers; and has, particularly, a very handsome private room between decks, for the company to retire to, in order to drink tea, coffee, &c. &c. or play at cards. In this comfortable, I might say, delightful vehicle, as perfectly at ease as lying on a couch in the best room in London, are passengers drawn by two horses, at the rate of about four miles an hour, for about ten pence, the same length of way that it would cost ten shillings to be jumbled in a voiture over a rough paved road.
The country between Ostend and Bruges is very level, and of course destitute of those charms to a mind of taste, which abound in countries tossed by the hand of Nature into hill, dale, mountain and valley: the whole face of it, however, is, or at least then was, in so high a state of cultivation, and so deeply enriched by the hands of art and industry, aided by the natural fertility of the soil, that its appearance, though far from striking or delightful, was by no means unpleasant; and on approaching the town of Bruges, we passed between two rows of trees, beautiful, shady, and of lofty size—forming, with the surrounding objects, a scene, which, if not romantic, was at least picturesque.
In passing through Countries groaning beneath the despotic scourge of unlimited Monarchy, where subsidies are raised, and taxes laid onad libitum——where guilty distrust and suspicion, with the eyes of a lynx and the fangs of a harpy, stand sentinels at every gate, to scrutinize the harmless passenger, awake him to the clanks of his fetters, and awe him into compliance, a free-born Briton feels a cold horror creep through his whole frame: his soul recoils at the gloomily ferocious and insolently strict examination, with which a sentinel, at the entry of a town, stops, investigates, demands a passport; and, in short, puts him,pro tempore, in a state of durance, with all its hideous formalities and appendages, its gates, its bars, its armed ruffians, its formal professions of laws, and its utter violation of reason and of justice. Entering the town of Bruges, we were stopped by a sentinel, who, with all the saucy, swaggering air of authority, of a slave in office, demanded to know, whether we had any contraband goods? whether we were in any military capacity? whence we came? and whither we were going? with a variety of other interrogatories, to my mind equally impertinent and detestable, but which seemed to make no greater impression on the good Flemings themselves, than demanding the toll at a turnpike-gate would make on an English waggoner.
Talking over this subject, since that time, with a Gentleman who is well acquainted with all those places, he informed me, that in the war between the Emperor and the States General, some French officers, travelling through Flanders to join CountMaillebois,were stopped at the gate of Bruges, and, by order of the Emperor, sent to his army, turned into the ranks, and obliged to do duty as common soldiers.—Here, my dearFrederick, was an act, not only despotic in itself, but aggravated by circumstances of collateral profligacy, of such enormous magnitude as bids defiance to all power of amplification, and leaves eloquence hopeless of describing it with greater force than it derives from a simple narration of the fact: on the one hand, the inroad upon the just personal rights of the individual; on the other, the rights of a Nation violated. Some men in England, judging from their own constitutional security, may disbelieve the fact: but let them consider, that the Marquis de laFayette, an alien, taken upon neutral ground, is now, even now, held in illegal, unjust thraldom and persecution——let them, I say, remember this, and let their incredulity cease.
Bless your stars, my dear boy, that you were born in a Country where such outrages as these can never be perpetrated by any, and will never be approved ofbut by a few.
In my last, I carried you past a ferocious, impertinent sentinel, into the town of Bruges; and now, having got you there, I must endeavour, from the loose materials I have been able to collect, to give you a short description of it.
I had heard much of Bruges, its grandeur and its opulence; you will guess my surprise then, when, on entering it, I found nothing but an old-fashioned, ill-built, irregular town; the streets, in general, narrow and dirty, and most of the houses strongly expressive of poverty and squalid wretchedness: yet this was anciently a most flourishing city. Did the difference between the town at this time, and its state as it is represented of old, consist only in its external appearance, we might readily account for that, in the great improvements made by the Moderns in the art of house-building; but its present inferiority goes deeper, and is the result of departed commerce——commerce, that fluctuating will-with-a-wisp, that leads States in hot pursuit after it, to entrap them ultimately into mires and precipices, and which, when caught, stays till itextinguishes the spirit of Freedom in a Nation, refines its People into feeble slaves, and there leaves them to poverty and contempt.
Perhaps there is no subject that affords an ampler field for a speculative mind to expatiate upon, than the various, and, I may say, incongruous revolutions which have chequered the progress of human society from the first records of History down to the present time. It is indeed a speculation which not only tends to improve the understanding, by calling in experience to correct the illusions of theory, but is highly instructive in a moral point of view, by pointing out the instability of the very best strictures of human wisdom, and teaching us how little reliance is to be placed upon human casualties, or earthly contingencies. Look to Greece, once, the fountain-head of Arts, Eloquence, and Learning, and the mother of Freedom——her Poets, her Legislators, her Soldiers, and her Patriots, even to this day considered thebrightestbrightestexamples of earthly glory!——see her now sunk in slavery, ignorance, sloth, and imbecillity, below any petty Nation of Europe. Look to Rome—in her turn, the queen of Arms and Arts, the land of Liberty, the nurse of Heroes—the stage on which inflexible Patriots, accomplished Philosophers, and a free People, acted for centuries a drama that elevated Man almost above his nature!——see her now reduced to the last stage of contemptibility——even below it, to ridicule and laughter——swayed by the most contemptible imposture, and sunk into the most despicableenslavement, both of person and opinion——the offices of her glorious Senate performed by a kind of heteroclite being, an hermaphroditical imposter, who, deducing his right from the very dregs and offscourings of superstition and fanaticism, and aided by a set of disciples worthy of such a master, rules the People, not with the terrors of the Tarpeian rock, nor yet with that which to a Roman bosom was more terrible, banishment——but with the horrors ofeternal damnation!——see her valiant, vigorous Soldiery converted into a band of feeble fidlers and music-masters, and the clangor of her arms into shrill concerts of squeaking castratoes; those places where herCiceropoured forth eloquence divine, and pointed out the paths that led to true morality——where herBrutusand herCatomarshalled the forces of Freedom, and raised the arm of Justice against Tyrants, over-run by a knavish host of ignorant, beggarly, bald-pated Friars, vomiting, to a crowd of gaping bigots, torrents of fanatical bombast, of miracles never performed, of Gods made of wood or copper, and of Saints, that, like themselves, lived by imposture and deception!——see her triumphs and military trophies changed into processions of Priests singing psalms round wafers and wooden crucifixes; and that code of Philosophy and Religion, which operated so effectually upon the morals of her People that there was none among them found so desperate or so base as to break an oath, exchanged for the Roman Catholic branch of the Christian Faith——for dispensations for incest, indulgences for murder, fines for fornication, and an exclusivepatent for adultery in their priesthood. Then look to England!——see her, who once stooped beneath the yoke of Rome, whose Chief,Caractacus, was carried there in chains to grace hisconquerorsconquerorstriumphs, while herself was made the meanest of the Roman Provinces, now holding the balance of the world, the unrivalled mistress of Arms, Arts, Commerce——every thing.
It was in this irresistible mutation of things, that Bruges sunk from the high state of a most flourishing city, where there are still (unless the French have destroyed them) to be seen the remains of seventeen palaces, anciently the residences of Consuls of different Nations, each of which had distinct houses, magnificently built and furnished, with warehouses for their merchandises: and such was the power and wealth of the Citizens in those days, that it is an indubitable fact, they kept their Sovereign, the ArchdukeMaximilian, prisoner, affronted his servants, and abused his officers; nor would they release him until he took an oath to preserve inviolate the laws of the State. Even so late as the time I was there, Bruges had some trade——indeed as good a foreign trade as most cities in Flanders. The people seemed cheerful and happy, and the markets were tolerably supplied.
Several fine canals run in a variety of directions from Bruges: by one of them, boats can go, in the course of a summer’s day, to Ostend, Nieuport, Furnes, and Dunkirk; and vessels of four hundred tuns can float in the bason of this town. Another canal leads to Ghent, another to Damme, and another to Sluys. Thewater of those canals is stagnant, without the least motion; yet they can, in half an hour, be all emptied, and fresh water brought in, by means of their well-contrived sluices. This water, however, is never used for drinking, or even for culinary purposes; a better sort being conveyed through the town by pipes from the two rivers Lys and Scheldt, as in London; for which, as there, every house pays a certain tax.
Although the trade of this city has, like that of all the Low Countries, been gradually declining, and daily sucked into the vortices of British and Dutch commerce, there were, till the French entered it, many rich Merchants there, who met every day at noon in the great market-place, to communicate and transact business, which was chiefly done in the Flemish language, hardly any one in it speaking French; a circumstance that by this time is much altered——for they have been already made, if not to speak French, at least to singCa-ira, and dance to the tune of it too, to some purpose.
The once-famed grandeur of this city consisted chiefly, like that of all grand places in the dark periods of Popery, of the gloomy piles, the ostentatious frippery andunwieldyunwieldymasses of wealth, accumulated by a long series of Monkish imposture——of Gothic structures, of enormous size and sable aspect, filled with dreary cells, calculated to strike the souls of the ignorant and enthusiastic with holy horror, to inspire awe of the places, and veneration for the persons who dared to inhabit them, and, by enfeebling thereason with the mixed operations of horror, wonder and reverence, to fit the credulous for the reception of every imposition, however gross in conception, or bungled in execution. Those are the things which constituted the greatness and splendor of the cities of Ancient Christendom; to those has the sturdiest human vigour and intellect been forced to bend the knees: they were built to endure the outrages of time; and will stand, I am sure, long, long after their power shall have been annihilated.
What a powerful engine has superstition been, in the cunning management of Priests! How lamentable it is to think, that not only all who believed, but all who had good sense enough not to believe, should, for so many centuries, have been kept in prostrate submission to the will and dominion of an old man in Rome!——My blushes for the folly and supineness of Mankind, however, are lost in a warm glow of transport at the present irradiation of the human mind; and though I can scarcely think with patience of that glorious, Godlike being,Henrythe Second of England, being obliged by the Pope to lash himself naked at the tomb of that saucy, wicked Priest,Thomas a Becket, I felicitate myself with the reflection, that the Pope is now the most contemptible Sovereign in Europe, and that the Papal authority, which was once the terror and the scourge of the earth, is now not only not recognised, but seldom thought of, and, when thought of, only serves to excite laughter or disgust.
The town of Bruges, although the streets be, as I have already described them, so mean, narrow, dirty and irregular in general, contains, nevertheless, some few streets that are tolerable, and a few squares also that are far from contemptible.——I should think it, nevertheless, not worth another letter of description, were it not that the Churches, and Church-curiosities, demand our attention; for you will observe, that in all rich Popish Countries, every Church is a holy toy-shop, or rather a museum, where pictures, statues, gold cups, silver candlesticks, diamond crucifixes, and gods, of various sorts and dimensions, are hoarded up, in honour of the Supreme Being. This city having been for centuries the See of a Bishop, who is Suffragan to the Archbishop of Mechlin, and at the same time Hereditary Chancellor of Flanders, it is not to be wondered at, if ecclesiastical industry should have amassed some of those little trinkets which constitute the chief or only value of their Church. The mitre of this place conveys to the head that wears it a diocese containing six cities, from the names of which you will be able to form some small judgment ofthe opulence of one poor son of abstinence and mortification.——Those cities are, in the first place, Bruges itself, then Ostend, Sluys, Damme, Middleburgh in Flanders, and Oudenberch——not to mention one hundred and thirty-three boroughs and villages; and if you could compute the number of inferior Clergy with which the streets and highways are filled, you would be thunder-struck. There, and in all those Popish Countries, they may be seen, with grotesque habits and bald pates, buzzing up and down like bees, in swarms, (a precious hive!)——and, with the most vehement protestations of voluntary poverty in their mouths, and eyes uplifted to Heaven, scrambling for the good things of the earth with the eagerness of a pack of hounds, and the rapacity of a whole roll of lawyers! With loaded thighs (I might say, loaded arms too, for they have large pockets even in their sleeves, for the concealment of moveables), they return to the great hive, where, contrary to the law of bees, the drone lives in idle state, and he plunders them: contrary, too, to the habits of those useful insects, they banish the queen-bee, and suffer no female to approach their cells, but keep them in contiguous hives, where, under cover of the night, they visit them, and fulfil in private that which they deny in public——the great command of Providence.
The first building in nominal rank, though by no means the first in value, is the great Cathedral, which has at least bulk, antiquity and gloominess enough to recommend it to the Faithful. It is by no means unfurnished within, though not in so remarkable amanner as to induce me to fill a Letter with it. In a word, it is an old Popish Cathedral, and cannot be supposed wanting in wealth: at the time I write, it has been standing no less a time than nine hundred and twenty-nine years, having been built in the year 865.
The next that occurs to me, as worthy of notice, is the Church of Notre Dame, or that dedicated toour Ladythe VirginMary. This is really a beautiful structure of the kind——indeed magnificent. Its steeple is beyond conception stupendous, being so very high as to be seen at sea off Ostend, although it is not elevated in the smallest degree by any rise in the ground; for, so very flat is the whole intermediate country, that I believe it would puzzle a skilful leveller to find two feet elevation from high-water-mark at Ostend up to this city. The contents of this Church are correspondent to its external appearance——being enriched and beautified with a vast variety of sacerdotal trinkets, and fine tombs and monuments. As to the former, the vestments of that sameThomas a Becketwhom I mentioned in my last, make a part of the curiosities deposited in this Church: this furious and inflexible impostor was Archbishop of Canterbury; and his struggles to enslave both the King and People of England, and make them tributary to the Pope, have canonized him, and obtained the very honourable depot I mention for his vestments. To do justice, however, to the spirit and sagacity of the Holy Fathers who have so long taken the pains to preserve them, it must be commemorated,that they are, or at least were set with diamonds, and other precious stones! Probably, among the many Priests who have, in so many centuries, had the custody of those divine relics, some one, more sagacious than the rest, might conceive, that, to lie in a Church, and be seen by the all-believing eyes of the Faithful, a little coloured glass was just as good as any precious stone, and wisely have converted the originals to some better purpose. If so, it will be some consolation to Holy Mother Church to reflect, that she has bilked theSans-culottes, who certainly have got possession of SaintThomas a Becket’ssacerdotal petticoats; and, if they have been sound enough to stand the cutting, have, by this time, converted them into comfortable campaigning breeches. O monstrous! wicked! abominable!——that the RoyalMary, sister to the great EmperorCharlesthe Fifth, should, so long ago as the Reformation, have bought at an immense price, and deposited in the treasury of the Church ofour Ladythe blessed VirginMary, the vestments of a Saint, only to make breeches, in the year 1794, for a French soldier! The time has been, that the bare suggestion of such sacrilege would have turned the brain of half the people of Christendom: but those things are now better managed.
Of the tombs in this Church, I shall only mention two, as distinguished from the rest by their costliness, magnificence and antiquity. They are made of copper, well guilt. One of them is the tomb ofMary, heiress to the Ducal House of Burgundy;and the other, that ofCharles(commonly calledthe Hardy), Duke of Burgundy, her father.
In Bruges there were four great Abbeys, and an amazing number of Convents and Nunneries. The buildings, I presume, yet stand; but there is little doubt that their contents, of every kind, have been, before this, putin requisition, and each part of them, of course, applied to its natural use.
The Church once belonging to the Jesuits, is built in a noble style of architecture: and that of the Dominicans has not only its external merits, but its internal value; for, besides the usual super-abundance of rich chalices, &c. it possesses some very great curiosities——
As, first, a very curious, highly wrought pulpit——beautiful in itself, but remarkable for the top being supported by wood, cut out, in the most natural, deceptive manner, in the form of ropes, and which beguile the spectator the more into a belief of its reality, because it answers the purposes of ropes.
Secondly, a picture——and so extraordinary a picture! Before I describe it, I must apprise you that your faith must be almost as great as that of a Spanish Christian to believe me——to believe that the human intellect ever sunk so low as, in the first instance, to conceive, and, in the next, to harbour and admire, such a piece. But I mistake——it has its merit; it is a curiosity——the Demon of Satire himself could not wish for a greater.
This picture, then, is the representation of a Marriage!——but of whom? why, truly, ofJesus Christwith SaintCatharineof Sienna. Observe the congruity——SaintCatharineof Sienna lived many centuries after the translation ofJesus Christto Heaven, where he is to sit, you know, till he comes to judge the quick and the dead!——But who marries them? In truth, SaintDominic, the patron of this Church! The VirginMaryjoins their hands——that is not amiss——But, to crown the whole, KingDavidhimself, who died so long beforeChristwas born, plays the harp at the wedding!
My dearFrederick, I shall take it as no small instance of your dutiful opinion of me to believe, that such a picture existed, and made part of the holy paraphernalia of a Temple consecrated to the worship of the Divinity: but I assure you it is a fact; and as I have never given you reason to suspect my veracity, I expect you to believe me in this instance, improbable though it seems: for such a farrago of absurdities, such a jumble of incongruities, impossibilities, bulls and anachronisms, never yet were compressed, by the human imagination, into the same narrow compass.
I protract this Letter beyond my usual length, on purpose to conclude my account of Bruges, and get once more upon the road.
The Monastery of the Carthusians, another Order of Friars, is of amazing size, covering an extent of ground not much less than a mile in circumference. The Carmelites, another Order,have a Church here, in which there is raised a beautiful monument, to the memory ofHenry Jermyn, Lord Dover, a Peer of England——But the Monastery called the Dunes, a sect of the Order of SaintBarnard, is by far the noblest in the whole city: the cloisters and gardens are capacious and handsome; the apartment of the Abbot is magnificent and stately, and those of the Monks themselves unusually neat. Those poor mortified penitents, secluded from the pomps, the vanities and enjoyments of life, and their thoughts, no doubt, resting alone on hereafter, keep, nevertheless, a sumptuous table, spread with every luxury of the season——have their country-seats, where they go a-hunting, or to refresh themselves, and actually keep their own coaches.
Among the Nunneries there are two English: one of Augustinian Nuns, who are all ladies of quality, and who entertain strangers at the grate with sweetmeats and wine; the other, called the Pelicans, is of a very strict Order, and wear a coarse dress.
To conclude——In the Chapel of SaintBasilis said to be kept, in perfect preservation, the blood whichJosephof Aremethea wiped off with a sponge from the dead body ofChrist.Finis coronat opus.
I fancy you have, by this time, had as much of miracles as you can well digest: I therefore leave you to reflect upon them, and improve.