Title: Letters from England - by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. Translated from the Spanish
Author: Southey, Robert
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Letters from England - by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. Translated from the Spanish" ***


produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)



Transcriber's note:

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

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

Small capitals have been replaced by full capitals. Italics are
indicated by _underscores_ and greek by +plus signs+.



 LETTERS
 FROM
 ENGLAND:

 BY
 DON MANUEL ALVAREZ ESPRIELLA.
 _TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH._

 IN THREE VOLUMES.
 VOL. III.

 THIRD EDITION.

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

 1814.

 EDINBURGH:
 Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.



 CONTENTS
 OF THE
 THIRD VOLUME.


LETTER LIV.
                                                                      Page
 The Bible.—More mischievous when first translated than it is at
 present: still hurtful to a few, but beneficial to many.—Opinion that
 the Domestic Use of the Scriptures would not be injurious in Spain
                                                                         1

LETTER LV.

 Curiosity and Credulity of the English.—The Wild Indian Woman.—The
 Large Child.—The Wandering Jew.—The Ethiopian Savage.—The Great High
 German Highter-Flighter.—The Learned Pig
                                                                        14

LETTER LVI.

 Newspapers.—Their Mode of falsifying Intelligence.—Puffs.—
 Advertisements.—Reviews, and their mischievous Effects.—
 Magazines.—Novels
                                                                        23

LETTER LVII.

 Account of the Quakers                                                 43


LETTER LVIII.

 Winter Weather.—Snow.—Christmas.—Old Customs gradually disused         67


LETTER LIX.

 Cards.—Whist.—Treatises upon this Game.—Pope Joan.—Cards never used on
 the Sabbath, and heavily taxed.—Ace of Spades
                                                                        75

LETTER LX.

 Growth of the Commercial Interest.—Family Pride almost extinct.—Effect
 of heavy Taxation.—Titles indiscriminately granted.—Increase of the
 House of Peers
                                                                        83

LETTER LXI.

 Despard's Conspiracy.—Conduct of the Populace on that Occasion.—War.—
 The Question examined whether England is in Danger of a
 Revolution.—Ireland
                                                                        95

LETTER LXII.

 Account of Swedenborgianism                                           113


LETTER LXIII.

 Jews in England                                                       141

LETTER LXIV.

 Infidelity.—Its Growth in England and little Extent.—Pythagoreans.—
 Thomas Tryon.—Ritson.—Pagans.—A Cock sacrificed.—Thomas Taylor
                                                                       155

LETTER LXV.

 Eagerness of the English to be at war with Spain                      168

LETTER LXVI.

 Excursion to Greenwich.—Watermen.—Patent Shot Tower.—Albion
 Mills.—Essex Marshes
                                                                       176

LETTER LXVII.

 Spanish Gravity the Jest of the English.—Sunday Evening
 described.—Society for the Suppression of Vice.—Want of
 Holidays.—Bull-baiting.—Boxing
                                                                       185

LETTER LXVIII.

 The Abbé Barruel.—Journey of two Englishmen to Avignon to join a
 Society of Prophets.—Extracts from their Prophetical Books
                                                                       195

LETTER LXIX.

 Account of Richard Brothers                                           223


LETTER LXX.

 Account of Joanna Southcott                                           236


LETTER LXXI.

 The Coxcomb.—Fashionables.—Fops.—Egyptian Fashions.—Dances.—
 Visiting.—Walkers.—The Fancy.—Agriculturists.—The Fat Ox.—
 The Royal Institution.—Metaphysics
                                                                       270

LETTER LXXII.

 Westminster Abbey on Fire—Frequency of Fires in England.—Means devised
 for preventing and for extinguishing them; but not in use
                                                                       288

LETTER LXXIII.

Remarks on the English Language                                        299


LETTER LXXIV.

 Departure from London.—West Kennet.—Use of the Words Horse and
 Dog.—Bath.—Ralph Allen.—The Parades.—Beau Nash.—Turnspits
                                                                       309

LETTER LXXV.

 Road from Bath to Bristol.—Cornu-Ammonis.—Bristol.—Exchange.—
 Market.—Cathedral.—The Brazen Eagle.—Clifton.—Bristol-Wells.—
 Anecdote of Kosciusko
                                                                       331

LETTER LXXVI.

 Journey from Bristol to Plymouth.—Advantages which the Army
 enjoys more than the Navy.—Sailors.—Journey to Falmouth
                                                                       350



 ESPRIELLA'S
 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND.



LETTER LIV.

 _The Bible.—More mischievous when first translated than it is at
 present: still hurtful to a few, but beneficial to many.—Opinion that
 the domestic Use of the Scriptures would not be injurious in Spain._


The first person who translated the Bible into English was Wickliffe,
the father in heresy of John Hus, Jerome of Prague, and the Bohemian
rebels, and thus the author of all the troubles in Germany. His bones
were, by sentence of the Council of Constance, dug up, and burnt, and
the ashes thrown into a river, near Lutterworth, in the province of
Leicestershire. The river has never from that time, it is said, flooded
the adjoining meadows: this is capable of a double construction; and
accordingly, while the heretics say that the virtue of his relics
prevents the mischief, the catholics on the other hand affirm that it is
owing to the merit of the execution.

It was translated a second time under Henry VIII. at the commencement of
the schism, and most of the translators, for many were engaged, suffered
in one place or another by fire. I would not be thought, even by
implication, to favour punishments so cruel, which our age, when zeal is
less exasperated and better informed, has disused; but that the workmen
came to such unhappy end may be admitted as some presumption that the
work was not good.[1] In fact, the translation of the scriptures
produced at first nothing but mischief. Then was fully exemplified what
St Jerome had said so many centuries ago. _Sola scripturarum ars est,
quam sibi omnes passim judicant. Hanc garrula anus, hanc delirus senex,
hanc sophista verbosus, hanc universi præsumunt, lacerant, docent, ante
quam discant._ There seemed to be no end to the multiplication of
heresies, and the divisions and subdivisions of schism. You remember
Feyjoo's story of the English house which contained within itself three
distinct churches, the whole family consisting of only father, mother,
and son. Bellarmine relates one equally curious which he heard from a
witness of the fact. The heretical priest was reading in his church, as
is customary, a portion of the English Bible, and it happened to be the
twenty-fifth chapter of Ecclesiasticus. "All wickedness is but little to
the wickedness of a woman. As the climbing up a sandy way is to the feet
of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a quiet man.—Of the woman
came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die.—Give the water no
passage; neither a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad." One of his
female auditors sate swelling with anger till she could bear no more.
"Do you call this the word of God?" said she. "I think it is the word of
the devil." And she knocked down the Bible and left the church.

But that the free use of a translation should do mischief at first, and
more especially in those unhappy times, is no argument against it in the
present day. You have asked me what is its effect at present. I reply to
the question with diffidence, and you must remember that what I say is
the result of enquiry, not of observation.

How little the unthinking and ignorant part of the community understand
their Scriptures, and they are the majority of every community, you may
judge by this example. The fungus which grows in circular groups, is
believed here to start up in the place where a diminutive race of beings
dance by night, whom they call Fairies, and who in many things,
particularly in their mischievous propensities, seem to resemble our
_Duendes_. A clergyman was one day walking with one of his parishioners
over his fields, and the man observed as he passed one of these rings,
that the fairies were never seen now, as they used to be in old
times.—"What do you mean by old times?"—"In the times of the
Scriptures."—"Nay," said the priest, "I am sure you never read of them
in the Scriptures."—"Yes, I do, and I hear you read of them almost every
Sunday at church."—You may conceive the priest's astonishment—"Hear me
read of them?" he exclaimed. The man persisted,—"It is no longer ago
than last Sunday you read about the Scribes and _Pharisees_."

There is another class to whom it is pernicious: these are they who
having zeal without knowledge think themselves qualified to explain
difficult texts, and meddle with the two-edged sword of theological
controversy. One man, reading that Christ said, "My Father is greater
than I," without further consideration becomes an Arian; the phrase "Son
of Man" makes another a Socinian; a third extracts Calvinism out of St
Paul.—There is a sect called Jumpers, who run out of their conventicles
into the streets and highways, shouting out "Glory! Glory!" and jumping
all the while with incessant vehemence till their strength is totally
exhausted. If you ask the reason of this frantic devotion, they quote
Scripture for it!—When Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary the most
Holy, the babe leaped in her womb: the lame man whom Peter and John
healed at the gate of the temple, leaped, and praised God: and David
danced before the Ark! These fanatics are confined to Wales, where the
people are half savages.

Many of the higher classes live, as you may suppose, so entirely without
God in the world, that to them it would be of no consequence if the
scriptures existed in no other language than the original Greek and
Hebrew. But in all ranks of society there are numbers of persons to whom
the perusal of God's own word is an inestimable comfort. No book of
devotion would so certainly fix their attention; not only because no
other can be regarded with such reverence, but also because none is in
itself so interesting. It is a pleasure to them, as well as a
consolation; and probably some important maxim, some striking example,
nay perhaps even some divine truth, may be thus more deeply imprest upon
the heart than it otherwise would be, especially in a land where the
priest imparts no domestic instructions,—his functions being confined to
the church, and the churchyard. In sickness, in sorrow, and in old age,
in resignation under sufferings inflicted, or in thankfulness for
blessings vouchsafed, they go to their Bible instead of their beads,
with humble hearts and perfect faith; fervently feeling all that they
understand, and devoutly believing all that is above their
comprehension. These persons are schismatics, because they were born so;
if it was not their misfortune, it would not be their crime; and I hope
I may be permitted to hope, that in their case the sins of the fathers
will not be visited upon the children. He who has threatened this has
promised also to show mercy unto thousands in them that love him,—and
England has been fruitful of saints and martyrs.

Do I then think, from what the domestic use of the Holy Scriptures
produces in England, that it would be beneficial in Spain? Speaking with
that diffidence which becomes me, and with perfect submission to the
Holy Church, I am of opinion that it would. St Jerome indeed has said,
_Melius est aliquid nescire, quam cum periculo discere_; and St Basil
has compared the effects of the Scriptures upon weak minds, to that of
strong meats upon a sickly stomach. But the days of Julian Hernandez and
Cypriano de Valera are happily over; we have an authorised translation,
free from perversion; and were it printed in a cheaper form, I think
much of the good which it does in England would be produced, and none of
the evil. It might also have the good effect of supplanting some of
those books of devotion which savour too much of credulity, and do
little service and less honour to religion. But in saying this I speak
humbly, and with the most perfect submission to authority.

The English Bible is regarded as one of the most beautiful specimens of
the language, which indeed it fixed. The privilege of printing it is
restricted to the two universities, and the king's printer, in order, I
suppose, to preserve the text correct; yet some impressions once got
abroad wherein the negative in the seventh commandment had been omitted,
and it was said Thou _shalt_ commit adultery. Means have been devised of
eluding this exclusive privilege, by printing a commentary with the
text; and in two magnificent Bibles (the price of one was above thirty
pieces of eight!) this was so plainly practised as a mere evasion, that
the commentary consisted in a single line, in every sheet, printed in
the smallest type, and so close to the bottom of the leaf that it must
be pared off in binding. These books are truly magnificent, and
honourable to the state of arts in the country. But there is a set of
booksellers in London, whose main business consists in publishing
worthless and catch-penny works for the ignorant in the country, and
these have always a great folio family Bible—as they call it—in course
of publication, ornamented with pitiful engravings, and published
periodically, because most of the deluded people who purchase it could
not afford to pay for it in any other manner. The cover of one of these
numbers was wrapt round some trifling article which I bought the other
day at a stationer's: it professed to render the most difficult passages
clear and familiar, to rectify mistranslations, reconcile the doubtful,
fix the wavering, confound the Infidel, establish the peace and
happiness of Christian families in this world, and secure their eternal
salvation in the next!

[1] D. Manuel and his confessor have forgotten that this miserable
argument, which the catholics are ready enough to advance when it serves
their purpose, is equally applicable to all their own martyrs, and to
the Apostles themselves. It may not be amiss to subjoin here the fine
account of the death of one of these men, John Rogers, prebend of St
Paul's, whose martyrdom is thus alleged as a proof of his having
deserved it:

"He might have escaped, and had many motives, as his wife and ten
children, his friends in Germany, where he could not want preferment,
&c. But being once called to answer in Christ's cause, he would not
depart, though to the hazard of his life: from his own house he was
removed by Bonner to Newgate amongst the thieves and murderers: he was
examined by the Lord Chancellor and the rest of the Councell, and by
them was recommitted to prison: he was much pressed to recant; but,
stoutly refusing, was first excommunicated and degraded, and then
condemned: after which he desired that his wife (to whom he had been
married eighteen years, and by whom he had ten children, and she being a
stranger) might be admitted to come to him whilst he lived: but Stephen
Gardner, then Lord Chancellor, would by no means suffer it. February the
fourth, Anno Christi 1555, he was warned to prepare for death before he
rose: 'If it be so,' said he, 'I need not tie my points:' and so he was
presently had away to Bonner to be degraded, of whom he earnestly
requested to be admitted to speake with his wife, but could not prevail.
From thence he was carried into Smithfield; where scarce being permitted
to speake to the people, he briefly persuaded them to perseverance in
that truth which he had taught them, which also he was now ready to
seale with his blood: then was a pardon profered to him, if he would
recant, but he utterly refused it: his wife, with nine small children,
and the tenth sucking at her breast, came to him; but this sorrowful
sight nothing moved him; but in the flames he washed his hands, and with
wonderfull patience took his death; all the people exceedingly rejoicing
at his constancy, and praising God for it,"—_Abel Redivivus._—TR.



LETTER LV.

 _Curiosity and Credulity of the English.—The Wild Indian Woman.—The
 large Child.—The wandering Jew.—The Ethiopian Savage.—The Great High
 German Highter-Flighter.—The Learned Pig._


My morning's walk has supplied me with two instances of English
credulity. Passing through St George's fields I saw a sort of tent
pitched, at the entrance of which a fellow stood holding a board in his
hand, on which was painted in large letters "_The Wild Indian
Woman_."—"What," said I to my companion, "do you catch the savages and
show them like wild beasts? This is worse than even the slave trade!"
"We will go in and see," said he. Accordingly we paid our sixpence each,
and, to our no small amusement, found one of the lowest order of the
worst kind of women, her face bedaubed with red and yellow, her hair
stuck with feathers, drest in cat-skins, and singing some unintelligible
gibberish in the true cracked voice of vulgar depravity. A few
passers-by, as idle and more ignorant than ourselves, who had in like
manner been taken in, were gazing at her in astonishment, and listening
open-mouthed to the rogue who told a long story how she came from the
wilds of America, where the people are heathen folk and eat one
another.—We had not gone a mile further before another showman, with a
printed paper on his show-board, invited our attention again—"_To be
seen here, the surprising Large Child_." This was a boy who seemed to be
about four years old; and because he was stupid, and could only
articulate a few words very imperfectly, his parents swore he was only
of eighteen months—and were showing him for a prodigy.

A few years ago there was a fellow with a long beard in London, who
professed himself to be the wandering Jew. He did not adhere to the
legend, which was of little consequence, as his visitors were not likely
to be better informed than himself,—but laid claim to higher antiquity
than the Jerusalem shoemaker, and declared that he had been with Noah in
the ark. Noah, he said, had refused to take him in; but he got in
secretly, and hid himself among the beasts, which is the reason why his
name is not mentioned in the Bible; and while he was there the he-goat
had given him a blow on the forehead, the mark of which was visible to
this day. Some persons asked him which country he liked best of all that
he had visited in his long peregrinations: he answered "Spain," as
perhaps a man would have done who had really seen all the world. But it
was remarked as rather extraordinary that a Jew should prefer the
country of the Inquisition. "God bless you, sir!" replied the ready
rogue, shaking his head and smiling at the same time, as if at the error
of the observation,—"it was long before Christianity that I was last in
Spain, and I shall not go there again till long after it is all over!"

Any thing in England will do for a show. At one of the provincial fairs
J. saw a shaved monkey exhibited for a Fairy; and a shaved bear in a
check waistcoat and trowsers sitting in an armed chair as an Ethiopian
savage. The unnatural position to which the poor animal had been
tortured, and the accursed brutality of his keeper, a woman, who sate
upon his lap, put her arm round his neck, and called him husband and
sweetheart and kissed him, made this, he says, the most hideous and
disgusting sight he had ever witnessed. A fellow at one of these fairs
once exhibited a large dragon-fly through a magnifying glass, as the
Great High German Highter-Flighter. But the most extraordinary distance
of witty impudence and blind curiosity which I have ever heard of,
occurred at Cirencester, in the province of Gloucestershire, where a man
showed for a penny apiece, the fork which belonged to the knife with
which Margaret Nicholson attempted to kill the King.

Nothing is too absurd to be believed by the people in this country. Some
time ago there was a woman who went about showing herself for money,
with a story that she had been pregnant three years. There was something
extraordinary concerning this impostor; for the house in which she
lived, which stood upon the shore in the province, or shire as it is
called, of Sussex, had no other walls or roof than laths and brown-paper
pitched over. It had stood three years without injury, when the person
who related this to me saw it. In the last reign[2] the whole kingdom
was astonished by a woman who pretended to breed rabbits, and the king's
surgeons were appointed by the state to examine her.—Many persons are
living who can remember when the people of London went to see a man get
into a quart bottle. This trick was practised for a wager, which some
one who knew the world ventured upon its credulity; but as impudent a
one was played off by a sharper in the city of Bristol at a later
period. He promised to make himself invisible, collected a company of
spectators, received their money for admittance, appeared on the stage
before them, and saying, "Now, gentlemen and ladies, you see me,"—opened
a trap-door and descended, and ran off with his gains.

Any thing that is strange, or that is called strange, a tall man or a
short man, a Goitre or an Albino, a white negro or a spotted negro,
which may be made at any time with little difficulty and no pain, a
great ox or a fat pig, no matter what the wonder be, and no matter how
monstrous or how disgusting, it will attract crowds in England. There
was a woman born without arms, who made a good livelihood by writing and
cutting paper with her toes. One family support themselves by living in
a travelling cart, made in the shape of the vessel wherein the English
boil water for their tea, the spout of which is the chimney. The learned
pig was in his day a far greater object of admiration to the English
nation than ever was Sir Isaac Newton. I met a person once who had lived
next door to the lodgings of this erudite swine, and in a house so
situated that he could see him at his rehearsals. He told me he never
saw the keeper beat him; but that, if he did not perform his lesson
well, he used to threaten to take off his red waistcoat,—for the pig was
proud of his dress. Perhaps even Solomon himself did not conceive that
vanity was so universal a passion.

Yet from this indiscriminate curiosity some general good arises. Natural
history has been considerably improved by the opportunities afforded of
examining rare animals, which would not have been brought from remote
countries for the mere purposes of science. Posture-masters and
stone-eaters have demonstrated strange and anomalous powers in the human
body; and the docility of animals, which has thus been practised upon
for the sake of immediate gain, may one day be applied to better and
more important purposes. Animals have no natural fear of man:—the birds
on a desert island are as fearless as they were in Paradise, and suffer
him to approach till he knocks them on the head. The power of the
Eastern jugglers, who by a song call forth the serpents from their
holes, is not more wonderful than that which has been acquired over bees
in England. The horse of the Arab is as well domesticated, and as
affectionately attached to his master, as the dog of the European. The
cattle from one end of Africa to the other are under the most perfect
obedience to their keeper; a boy will collect a herd of a thousand by
his whistle; by this easy language they are made to attack an armed
enemy as readily as to come to their milker; and they have thus
overthrown soldiers who had conquered the elephants of the East and the
cavalry of Europe. When man shall cease to be the tyrant of inferior
beings, he may truly become their lord.

[2] This circumstance happened in the latter end of the reign of
George I.—TR.



LETTER LVI.

 _Newspapers.—Their Mode of falsifying Intelligence.—Puffs.—
 Advertisements.—Reviews, and their mischievous Effects.—
 Magazines.—Novels._


I have adhered strictly to J.'s advice respecting the literature of this
country, and allowed myself to read nothing but contemporary
publications, and such works as relate to my objects of immediate
enquiry, most of which were as little known to him as to myself. He
smiles when I bring home a volume of Quaker history, or Swedenborgian
theology, and says I am come here to tell him what odd things there are
in England. It is therefore only of that contemporary and perishable
literature which affects and shows the character of the nation that I
shall speak.

Of this the newspapers form the most important branch. They differ in
almost every respect from our diaries, and as much in appearance as in
any thing, being printed in four columns upon a large folio sheet. Some
are published daily, some twice, some thrice a-week, some only on
Sundays. Some come out in the morning, some in the evening; the former
are chiefly for London, and one is regularly laid upon the breakfast
table, wet from the press. The revenue which they produce is almost
incredibly great. At the commencement of the American war the price was
twopence. Lord North laid on a tax of a halfpenny, observing, with his
characteristic good humour, that nobody would begrudge to pay a
halfpenny for the pleasure of abusing the minister. This succeeded so
well that another was soon imposed, making the price threepence, which
price Mr Pitt has doubled by repeated duties; yet the number printed is
at least four-fold what it was before they were taxed at all.

Of those papers for which there is the greatest sale, from four to five
thousand are printed. It is not an exaggerated calculation to suppose
that every paper has five readers, and that there are 250,000 people in
England who read the news every day and converse upon it. In fact, after
the 'How do you do?' and the state of the weather, the news is the next
topic in order of conversation, and sometimes it even takes place of
cold, heat, rain, or sunshine. You will judge then that the newspapers
must be a powerful political engine. The ministry have always the
greater number under their direction, in which all their measures are
defended, their successes exaggerated, their disasters concealed or
palliated, and the most flattering prospects constantly held out to the
people. This system was carried to a great length during the late war.
If the numbers of the French who were killed in the ministerial
newspapers were summed up, they would be found equal to all the males in
the country, capable of bearing arms. Nor were these manufacturers of
good news contented with slaying their thousands; in the true style of
bombast, they would sometimes assert that a Republican army had been not
merely cut to pieces,—but annihilated. On the other hand, the losses of
the English in their continental expeditions were as studiously
diminished. Truth was indeed always to be got at by those who looked for
it; the papers in the opposite interest told all which their opponents
concealed, and magnified on their side to gratify their partisans. The
English have a marvellous faculty of believing what they wish, and
nothing else; for years and years did they believe that France was on
the brink of ruin; now the government was to be overthrown for want of
gunpowder, now by famine, now by the stale of their finances. The
Royalists in La Vendée were a never-failing source of hope. A constant
communication was kept up with them from some of the little islands on
the coast which are in possession of the English, from whence they were
supplied with money and arms; and the Republican commander in the
district used to farm out the privilege of going to dine with the
English governor, and receiving subsidies from him! Constant
disappointment has as little effect upon an English politician as upon
an alchemist, _Quod vult, credit; quod non vult, non credit_; he chuses
to be deceived, not to be told what he does not wish to hear, and to
have all good news magnified, like the Hidalgo, who put on spectacles
when he ate cherries to make them seem the finer. A staunch
ministerialist believes every thing which his newspaper tells him, and
takes his information and his opinions with the utmost confidence from a
paragraph-writer, who is paid for falsifying the one and misleading the
other. _Cephaleonomancy_, or the art of divination by an ass's head, is
a species of art magic which still flourishes in England.

Public events, however, form but a small part of the English newspapers,
and the miscellaneous contents are truly characteristic of the freedom
and the follies of this extraordinary people. In the same paper wherein
is to be found a political essay, perhaps of the boldest character and
profoundest reasoning, you meet with the annals of the world of fashion;
the history of my lord's dinner and my lady's ball; a report that the
young earl is about to be married, and that the old countess is leaving
town; you have the history of horse-races, cock-fights, and
boxing-matches—information that the king has taken a ride, and the
princess an airing; a string of puns, and a paragraph of scandal. Then
come what are called the puffs; that is to say, advertisements inserted
in an unusual shape, so that the reader, who would else have passed them
over, is taken by surprise. Thus, for instance, my eye was caught this
morning with something about the mines of Potosi, beginning a sentence
which ended in the price of lottery tickets. Puff-writing is one of the
strange trades in London. A gentleman, who had just published a
magnificent work, was called upon one morning by a person whom he had
never seen before.—"Sir," said the stranger, "I have taken the liberty
of calling on you in consequence of your publication. A most magnificent
book indeed, sir!—truly superb!—honourable to the state of arts
in the country, and still more so, sir, to you!—But, sir, I perceive
that you are not quite well acquainted with the science of
advertising.—Gentlemen, sir, like you, have not leisure to study these
things. I make it my particular profession, sir. An advertisement ought
always to be in a taking form,—always; there should be three different
ones to be inserted alternately. Sir, I shall be happy to have the
honour of serving you,—nothing is to be done without hitting the fancy
of the public.—My terms, sir, are half-a-guinea for three."

Another professor called upon this same gentleman; and after he had run
through the whole rosary of compliments, opened his business to this
effect,—That a work so superb as the one in question must necessarily
have its chief sale among people of fashion.—"Now, sir," said he, "I
live very much in high life, and have the best opportunities of
promoting its success. I have done a good deal in this way for Dr ——. I
suppose, sir, you allow centage?"—It proved that he had done a great
deal for the doctor, for he had received above a hundred pounds for him,
and by way of centage kept the whole.

The advertisements fill a large part of the paper, generally two pages,
and it is from these that the main profits both of the revenue and the
proprietors arise. The expense of advertising is so great, that to
announce a new book in the regular way amounts to no less a sum than
thirty pounds. The greater the sale of a newspaper, the more numerous
these become: this renders the paper less amusing, its purchasers fall
off; the advertisers then lessen in their turn; and this sort of rising
and falling is always going on. A selection of these advertisements
would form a curious book, and exhibit much of the state of England.
Sometimes a gentleman advertises for a wife, sometimes a lady for a
husband. Intrigues are carried on in them, and assignations made between
A. B. and C. D. Sometimes a line of cyphers appears. Sometimes Yes, or
No,—the single word and nothing more. At this very time a gentleman is
offering a thousand pounds to any lady who can serve him in a delicate
affair; a lady has answered him, they have had their meeting, she does
not suit his purpose, and he renews the offer of his enormous bribe,
which in all probability is meant as the price of some enormous villainy.

Poetry also occasionally appears. I have copied from one lately an odd
epigram, which plays upon the names of the various papers.

  Alas! alas! the _World_ is ruined quite!
    The _Sun_ comes out in the evening
    And never gives any light.
    Poor _Albion_ is no more,
    The _Evening Star_ does not rise,
  And the _True Briton_ tells nothing but lies;
    Should they suppress the _British Press_
    There would be no harm done;
  There is no hope that the _Times_ will mend,
    And it would be no matter
    If the _Globe_ were at an end.[3]

Next in importance to the newspapers are the works of periodical
criticism, which are here called Reviews. Till of late years there were
only two of these, which, though generally in the interest of the
Dissenters, affected something like impartiality. During the late war
two others were set up to exercise a sort of inquisition over books
which were published, as the publication could not be prevented; to
denounce such as were mischievous, and to hold up their authors to
public hatred as bad subjects. Such zeal would be truly useful were it
directed by that wisdom which cannot err; but it is difficult to say
whether the infallible intolerance of these heretics be sometimes more
worthy of contempt or of indignation. Of late years it has become
impossible to place any reliance upon the opinions given by these
journals, because their party spirit now extends to every thing;
whatever be the subject of a book, though as remote as possible from all
topics of political dissension, it is judged of according to the
politics of the author:—for instance, one of these journals has
pronounced it to be jacobinical to read Hebrew without points. There are
other reasons why there is so little fair criticism. Many, perhaps the
majority, of these literary censors are authors themselves, and as such
in no very high estimation with the public. Baboons are said to have an
antipathy to men; and these, who are the baboons of literature, have the
same sort of hatred to those whose superiority they at once feel and
deny. You are not however to suppose that the general character of these
journals is that of undeserved severity: they have as many to praise as
to blame, and their commendations are dealt upon the same principle—or
want of principle—as their censures. England is but a little country;
and the communication between all its parts is so rapid, the men of
letters are so few, and the circulation of society brings them all so
often to London, as the heart of the system, that they are all directly
or indirectly known to each other;—a writer is praised because he is a
friend, or a friend's friend, or he must be condemned for a similar
reason. For the most part the praise of these critics is milk and water,
and their censure sour small-beer.[4] Sometimes indeed they deal in
stronger materials; but then the oil which Flattery lays on is
train-oil, and it stinks: and the dirt which Malevolence throws is
ordure, and it sticks to her own fingers.

Such journals, even if they were more honourably and more honestly
conducted, must from their very nature be productive rather of evil than
of good, both to the public and to the persons concerned in them. Many
are the readers who do not know, and few are they who will remember,
when they are perusing a criticism delivered in the plural language of
authority, that it is but the opinion of one man upon the work of
another. The public are deceived by this style. This however is a
transitory evil: the effect of the praise or censure which they can
bestow is necessarily short, and time settles the question when they are
forgotten. A more lasting mischief is, that they profess to show the
reader that short cut to wisdom and knowledge, which is the sure road to
conceit and ignorance. Criticism is to a large class of men what Scandal
is to women,—and women not unfrequently bear their part in it;—it is
indeed Scandal in masquerade. Upon an opinion picked up from these
journals, upon an extract fairly or unfairly quoted,—for the reviewers
scruple not at misquotations, at omissions which alter the meaning, or
mispunctuations which destroy it—you shall hear a whole company talk as
confidently about a book as if they had read it, and censure it as
boldly as if they had bestowed as much thought upon the subject as the
author himself, and were qualified, as his peers, to sit in judgment
upon him. The effect which these journals have produced is,—that as all
who read newspapers are politicians, so all who read books are critics.

This species of criticism is injurious to the writer; because, it being
understood that the business of a critic is to pass censure, he assumes
a superiority both of information and ability, which it is not likely
that he possesses in either; except over such authors as are too
insignificant to deserve notice, and whom it is cruel to murder when
they are dying. The habit of searching for faults, by the exposure of
which he is to manifest this superiority, must inevitably injure such a
man's moral character; he will contemplate his own powers with
increasing complacency, he will learn to take pleasure in inflicting
pain, he will cease to look for instruction, he will cease to reverence
genius, he will cease to love truth. Meantime he disguises both from
himself and the public his injustice to the living, by affecting for the
dead an admiration which it is not possible he can feel; just as the
Arian persecutors of old worshipped the saints, while they made martyrs.

Perhaps the greatest evil which this vile custom has occasioned is, that
by making new books one of the most ordinary topics of conversation, it
has made people neglect all other literature; so that the public, as
they call themselves, deriving no benefit from the wisdom of their
forefathers, applaud with wonder discoveries which are pilfered from old
authors on whom they suffer the dust to lie lightly, and are deluded by
sophisms which have been a hundred times confuted and exposed.

The Magazines are more numerous than the Reviews, and are more
interesting, because their use is not so temporary, and men appear in
them in their own characters; it is indeed interesting to see the
varieties of character which they exhibit. The Monthly and the
Gentleman's are the most popular: the latter has been established about
seventy years, and has thereby acquired a sort of hereditary rank of
which it is not likely soon to be dispossessed. The greater part of this
odd journal is filled with antiquarian papers,—and such papers!—One
gentleman sends a drawing of his parish church,—as mean a building
perhaps as can be made of stone and mortar, which is drawn in a most
miserable manner, and engraved in a way quite worthy of the subject.
With this he sends all the monumental inscriptions in the church; this
leads to a discussion concerning the families of the persons there
mentioned, though they never should have been heard of before out of the
limits of their own parish;—who the son married,—whether the daughter
died single, and other matter of equal interest and equal importance. If
there be a stone in the church with half a dozen Gothic letters legible
upon it, and at respectful distances from each other, he fills up the
gaps by conjecture: a controversy is sure to follow, which is continued
till the opponents grow angry, cavil at each other's style, and begin to
call names; when the editor interferes, and requests permission to close
the lists against them. The only valuable part is a long list of deaths
and marriages, wherein people look for the names of their acquaintance,
and which frequently contains such singular facts of human character and
human eccentricity, that a very curious selection might be made from it.
The Monthly is more miscellaneous in its contents, and its
correspondents aim at higher marks. Some discuss morals and metaphysics,
others amuse the world with paradoxes; all sorts of heretical opinions
are started here, agricultural hints thrown out, and queries propounded
of all kinds, wise and foolish. The best part is a sort of literary and
scientific newspaper, to which every body looks with interest. There are
many inferior magazines which circulate in a lower sphere, and are
seldom seen out of it. The wheat from all these publications should from
time to time be winnowed, and the chaff thrown away.

Literature is, like every thing else, a trade in England,—I might almost
call it a manufactory. One main article is that of Novels;—take the word
in its English sense, and understand it as extending to four volumes of
one continued tale of love. These are manufactured chiefly for women and
soldier-officers. To the latter they can do no harm; to the former a
great deal. The histories of chivalry were useful, because they carried
the imagination into a world of different manners; and many a man
imbibed from them Don Quixote's high-mindedness and emulation, without
catching his insanity. But these books represent ordinary and
contemporary manners, and make love the main business of life, which
both sexes at a certain age are sufficiently disposed to believe it.
They are doubtless the cause of many rash engagements and unhappy
marriages. Nor is this the only way in which they are mischievous: as
dram-drinkers have no taste for wine, so they who are accustomed to
these stimulating stories, yawn over a book of real value. And there is
as much time wasted in talking of them as in reading them. I have heard
a party of ladies discuss the conduct of the characters in a new novel,
just as if they were real personages of their acquaintance.

The circulating libraries consume these publications. In truth, the main
demand for contemporary literature comes from these libraries, or from
private societies instituted to supply their place, books being now so
inordinately expensive that they are chiefly purchased as furniture by
the rich. It is not a mere antithesis to say that they who buy books do
not read them, and that they who read them do not buy them. I have heard
of one gentleman who gave a bookseller the dimensions of his shelves, to
fit up his library; and of another, who, giving orders for the same kind
of furniture, just mentioned that he must have Pope, and Shakespere and
Milton. "And hark'ye," he added, "if either of those fellows should
publish any thing new, be sure to let me have it, for I choose to have
all their works."

[3] The rhymes in this epigram are so defective that the translator
supposes it must be inaccurately printed, but he can only copy it as he
finds it, not knowing where to recur to the original.—TR.

[4] In the original _aguapie_, which is to generous wine what small-beer
is to ale. As this word could not be translated, the equivalent one has
been used.—TR.



LETTER LVII.

_Account of the Quakers._


The most remarkable sect in this land of sectaries is unquestionably
that of the Quakers. They wear a peculiar dress, which is in fashion
such as grave people wore in the time of their founder, and always of
some sober colour. They never uncover their heads in salutation, nor in
their houses of worship; they have no form of worship, no order of
priests, and they reject all the Sacraments. In their meeting-houses
they assemble and sit in silence, unless any one should be disposed to
speak, in which case they suppose him to be immediately moved by the
Spirit; and any person is permitted to speak, women as well as men.
These, however, are only a few of their peculiarities. They call the
days of the week and the months according to their numerical order,
saying that their common names are relics of idolatry. The English,
instead of addressing each other in the second person singular, use the
second plural. This idiom the Quakers reject as the language of flattery
and falsehood, and adhere to the strict grammatical form. They will not
take an oath; and such is the opinion of their moral character, that
their affirmation is admitted in courts of justice to have the same
force. They will not pay tithes; the priest therefore is obliged to
seize their goods for his due. They will not bear arms, neither will
they be concerned in any branch of trade or manufactory which is
connected with war, nor in any which is so dependent upon accident as to
partake of the nature of gaming. They prohibit cards and other games,
music, dancing, and the theatre. A drunken Quaker is never seen, nor a
criminal one ever brought to the bar. Their habits of patient and
unhazarding industry ensure success; and accordingly they are, in
proportion to their numbers, wealthier than any other set of people.
They support their own poor, and take the lead in every public charity.
What is truly extraordinary is, that though they seem to have advanced
to the utmost limits of enthusiasm as well as of heresy, so far from
being enthusiastic, they are proverbially deliberate and prudent: so far
from being sullen and gloomy, as their prohibitions might induce you to
suppose, they are remarkably cheerful: they are universally admitted to
be the most respectable sect in England; and though they have a church
without a priesthood, and a government without a head, they are perhaps
the best organized and most unanimous society that ever existed.

Were it not for their outrageous and insufferably heretical opinions, it
might be thought that any government would gladly encourage so
peaceable, so moral, and so industrious a people. On the contrary,
though they are at present peculiarly favoured by the English laws,
there was a time when they were the objects of especial persecution. I
will endeavour briefly to sketch their history;—it contains some
interesting facts, and may furnish some important inferences. One of the
many remarkable circumstances belonging to this remarkable body is, that
though they are now the least literate of all the English sects, they
possess more ample collections of their own church history than any
other Christian church, or even than any monastic order. If the acts of
the Apostles had been as fully and faithfully recorded as the acts of
the Quakers, what a world of controversy and confusion would have been
prevented.

George Fox, their founder, began his career during the great rebellion.
There never was a time in which it could be more excusable to go astray.
The heretical church of England, by attempting to assimilate itself to
the church of Rome, in a few forms, while it pertinaciously differed
from it in essentials, and by persecuting those who refused to submit to
those forms, had provoked a resistance which ended in its own overthrow.
It was an age of ecclesiastical anarchy. Hypocrisy was the reigning
vice; the least sincere were the most zealous: discordant doctrines were
preached every where, and pious and humble-minded men, puzzled by this
confusion of errors, knew not which to chuse. They who in this
perplexity stood aloof from any community were so many, that they were
distinguished by the name of _Seekers_. George Fox seems to have
possessed much of the zeal, the simplicity and tenderness of the
seraphic St Francis, (if I may be allowed to compare a heretic with so
glorious a saint in his human qualities,)—but, having no better guide to
follow than his own nature, no wonder that he was misled. His mind ran
upon religious things when he was but a youth, and he had leisure to
think of them in the solitary employment of keeping sheep. At length,
unable to bear the burthen of his thoughts, he went to one of the
heretical priests and laid open to him the state of his mind. The
priest's advice was, that he should take tobacco and sing psalms.

In this uneasy state he abandoned all other pursuits, and wandered about
the country in search of truth, which at last, by following wholly the
feelings of his own heart, he thought he had attained. During his
wanderings he met with many persons of a similar state of uneasiness;
and, being thus emboldened, began to fancy himself divinely commissioned
to call men to repentance,—a commission which he and his followers soon
thought proper to put in execution. Their zeal was not at first
accompanied with discretion; they went into the churches and interrupted
the preachers;—there needed not this imprudence to provoke men who were
already sufficiently irritated by their doctrines. The priests became
their cruel enemies, and often instigated the people to fall upon them.
The heretics even in their churches used their Bibles to knock down
these enthusiasts with; they were beaten down with clubs, stoned, and
trampled upon, and some of them lost their lives.

The Presbyterians during their short tyranny treated them with great
rigour, but their greatest sufferings were after the restoration of the
monarchy. No sooner had the heretical hierarchy recovered its power,
than it began to persecute the dissenters with such bitterness as the
rancorous remembrance of its own injuries excited. Charles willingly
permitted this, because he dreaded the political opinions of these
sectarians; it is probable, too, that as he had been secretly reconciled
to the true faith, he was not displeased to see a church which dared not
pretend to be infallible, pursuing measures which nothing but
infallibility can justify, thus accustoming the people to intolerance,
and weakening heresy: so he protected the Catholics from the false
bishops, and left the sectarians to their tender mercy. Other sectarians
made use of every artifice to escape; but it was contrary to the
principles of the Quakers to avail themselves of any subterfuge; and
their dress, language, and manner made it impossible for them to pass
unnoticed. The prisons were filled with them; the prisons were then
dreadful places; filth, cold, and wet brought on diseases which were
aggravated by the uniform brutality of the jailors; and in this manner
numbers were destroyed by the cowardly cruelty of those who were ashamed
openly to put them to death.

Erroneous as the principles of these people are, it was impossible that
any men could lead more blameless lives, and display more admirable
integrity or more heroical self-devotement. George Fox was more than
once set at liberty on his bare promise of appearing upon a certain day
to take his trial, no other security being thought needful;—more than
once opportunities of escaping from prison were avowedly given him, of
which he would not avail himself; and a pardon from the king offered
him, which he refused to accept, saying, that to accept a pardon, would
imply that he had committed a crime which needed it. The usual snare for
them was to tender the oath of supremacy, a test enacted against the
Catholics. It was in vain that they declared their full assent to the
vile heresy of this oath, and that they affirmed its substance in other
words; the act of swearing was insisted upon, and for refusing this
their property was confiscated, and themselves sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment. No injustice, no cruelty, ever provoked them to anger;
they exhorted their persecutors, but never reproached them. Instances
often occurred of one man's offering to suffer confinement for another.
The principle of selfishness seemed to be extinguished among them. Even
the instincts of resentment and self-defence, perhaps the most powerful
and deeply-rooted in our nature, they had subdued. Men who had borne
arms and approved their courage in battle, not only submitted to insults
and blows themselves, but saw their wives and daughters insulted,
beaten, and trampled upon, without lifting a hand to protect or revenge
them. It was in vain to block up their meeting-houses; they met in the
open streets, and in open day, though sure that soldiers would be there
to arrest, and a rabble to assault them; and when the parents were cast
into prison, the children voluntarily followed their example, held their
meetings in the like manner, and submitted to the same sufferings, with
the same quiet and unconquerable endurance.

It is worthy of remark, that these excellent people (as assuredly they
were in every thing not appertaining to the articles of their faith),
while they were thus persecuted by their brother heretics, were treated
by the true church with a tenderness which it has never shown towards
any others. Two female preachers who went to Malta to promulgate their
opinions, were seized there by the Holy Office and confined, that they
might not pervert others; but when it was found impossible to reclaim
them, they were set at liberty, and sent out of the island. A man in his
way from visiting them landed at Gibraltar, which was then in our
possession, and went on Holy Thursday into the church, while the priest
was celebrating mass; he took off his cloak and rent it, and appeared in
sackcloth; cried out repentance thrice in a loud voice, and then
returned unmolested to his ship. One man went to Jerusalem to bear his
testimony against pilgrimages at the Holy Sepulchre! Several went to
Rome to convert the pope, for whom they seemed to be particularly
concerned;—they were safely lodged in the Holy Office, permitted to
write as many memorials as they pleased to his holiness and the
cardinals; and when they had said all that they had to say, they were
sent out of Italy. With this tenderness did the church behave to them,
while in England they were whipt and imprisoned, and in America put to
death by the Calvinists.

Even the infidels respected them. A woman left her family in the hope of
converting the Grand Turk:—he received her in his camp, gave her
audience, listened to her respectfully, and dismissed her with a safe
conduct through his dominions. A ship, of which the master and the mate
were Quakers, was taken by the Algerines, who put a party of Moors on
board to carry her into Algiers. The crew thought themselves strong
enough to recover the vessel, and would have attempted to kill the
Moors; but these men, true to their principle of not fighting, and not
hazarding human life, refused to assist in regaining their liberty,
except by such means as they could conscientiously approve. They
contrived to secure their weapons, and took possession of the ship.
These people profess also to act up to the Gospel precept of returning
good for evil; and in conformity to this the master promised the Moors
that they should not be sold as slaves. They put into Majorca, where the
islanders to their great astonishment found that the prisoners were not
to be sold: they were proceeding to take them by force, but these
Quakers actually set the Moors loose from their confinement, that they
might assist in working the ship out of port and escaping. The rascally
infidels, not in the slightest degree influenced by this example,
attempted twice or thrice to become masters again, and it required all
the authority and exertions of the Quakers to prevent their men from
knocking them on the head. At the imminent risque of being recaptured,
they stood over to the Barbary coast, and landed their prisoners in
their own country. King Charles was dining in his palace at Greenwich
when the vessel came up, and news was brought him that a Quaker ship was
just arrived which they had won from the Algerines without fighting. The
king went himself to see it, and when he had heard the story, told the
Quakers they were fools for letting the Moors go,—"You should have
brought them to me," he said. "I thought it better for them," replied
the quaker, "to be in their own country."

One of their tenets is, that man, when truly born again of the Spirit,
is restored to the state of Adam before the fall; an error which
approximates nearer to truth, than the diabolical heresy of the
Calvinists and Gnostics. It might lead to a perilous confidence in those
who presumed they had attained to this state; but it must needs produce
the best effect upon the feelings and lives of such as are aspiring to
it. The doctrine of inspiration is more dangerous, but the tenet which
forbids all violence prevents those evil consequences which it might
else occasion.—The Quakers were always ready to carry a message from the
Lord, but they never thought of delivering it upon the point of a
dagger. An individual now and then appeared in sackcloth, crying
Repentance, in the streets. One man in Ireland went into a Catholic
church, naked above the waist, and burning brimstone in a chafing-dish,
as a token to the congregation of what they were to expect unless they
repented of their errors. Such extravagancies exposed none but
themselves to danger.

They lay claim to miracles; and it is good proof of the fidelity of
their chronicler that none of these miracles can be considered as
impossible, nor even unlikely. George Fox came into a house at a time
when they had bound a madwoman, and were attempting to bleed her. He
addressed her with his wonted gentleness, quieted her fears, soothed
her, persuaded the people to unbind her, and converted her to his own
opinions. Her phrensy never returned; it had found its proper channel. A
few of their numerous persecutors came to untimely ends. One in
particular, who had been active in torturing and putting them to death
in New England, was thrown from his horse and killed upon the place of
their execution: it was natural and perhaps not erroneous to ascribe
this to divine vengeance. In the days of their persecution they often
denounced a visitation of pestilence against London:—a tremendous plague
made its appearance and carried off 100,000 of its inhabitants. As they
had announced it, they naturally thought it came upon their account. One
Thomas Ibbitt went about the streets of the metropolis denouncing a
judgment by fire. On the very next day the fire of London broke out,
which consumed thirteen thousand houses. The effect which this produced
upon the prophet authenticates the story. So utterly was he astonished
at beholding the accomplishment of his prediction, that his character
was totally changed; he immediately conceived himself to be something
more than human, advanced to meet the conflagration, holding out both
his arms to stay its progress, and would infallibly in this delirium
have rushed into the flames, if he had not been carried away by force.

The sufferings of the Quakers ceased upon the accession of James II.,
who would willingly have purchased toleration for the true faith by
granting it to all others. He favoured them also for the sake of one of
their great leaders, whose father had been his personal friend. It is
related of this king, whom the English themselves acknowledge to have
been the best of his family, that when one of this sect was one day
addressing him in the palace, with his hat on as usual, the king took
off his own; upon which the Quaker observed that the king need not be
uncovered on his account. "My friend," replied James, "you don't know
the custom of this place;—only one hat at a time must be worn here."

That these people should have borne up against persecution is not
wonderful.—There is a stubborn principle in human nature, which in a
good cause is virtue, and even in an erroneous one is akin to it. Indeed
without persecution, or at least without opposition, the enthusiasm of a
sect cannot be kept up,—it is its food and fuel; and without it, it must
starve and be extinguished. From the time of their legal recognition the
enthusiasm of the Quakers ceased. No prophecies have since been uttered
by them in the streets, no testimony borne in sackcloth and ashes; the
Grand Turk has been abandoned to his misbelief, and the Pope,
notwithstanding their concern for him, given up as irreclaimable. Yet
such is the admirable œconomy of this extraordinary sect, that they
continue to flourish, if not to spread.

So pure a system of democracy was never elsewhere exhibited as that of
the internal government of this society. Each parish regulates its own
affairs in a monthly meeting, each diocese or district in a quarterly
one, the whole body in a yearly one, which is held in the
metropolis.—Deputies go from the lesser to the larger assemblies; but
every member of the society, who can conveniently, is expected to
attend. The women have their meetings in like manner; the equality of
the sexes in all things being practically acknowledged. In all other
collective bodies the will of the majority is the law. The Quakers admit
no such principle: among them nothing is determined upon unless it is
the sense of the whole; and as the good of the whole is their only
possible motive, (for no member of the society receives any emolument
for discharging any office in it,) they never fail, whatever difference
of opinion may at first have existed, to become unanimous.

Their preaching strikes a stranger as ludicrous. You may conceive what
it must needs be, when the preacher imagines himself to be the organ of
inspiration, and, instead of thinking what he shall say, watches for
what he believes to be internally dictated to him. Nothing in fact can
be more incoherent than their discourses, and their manifest inferiority
to those of any other sect ought to convince them of the fallacy of the
opinion upon which they proceed. That the admonition of the spirit, in
other words the faculty of conscience, when it be wisely and earnestly
cultivated, is an infallible guide of conduct, may and must be admitted;
but that which will make a good man act well, will not always make him
talk wisely. It is not however the matter of these discourses which
impresses those who are disposed to be impressed: knowing the speaker to
be seriously affected, they partake his feelings, and become seriously
affected also. Their history affords a curious illustration of this. The
mother of their chronicler was a Dutchwoman, who being moved, as she
believed, by the Spirit, came to preach in England in the days of
persecution. She understood no English, and therefore delivered herself
through an interpreter. One day it happened that the interpreter was not
at hand when the call came upon her, and the person who attempted to
translate her meaning found that he could not understand her. The
congregation, however, called upon her to proceed, affirming that the
religious feeling which she impressed upon them could not be stronger if
they had understood her. In the hands of a lying chronicler this would
have been magnified into a gift of tongues. The story is not the less
valuable, though it may provoke a smile.

The chief cause which exasperated the clergy so greatly against them,
was their obstinate refusal to pay tithes, and this is now operating to
diminish the sect. Could they be content to pay, and salve their
consciences by protesting against it, all would go on smoothly; instead
of this, they suffer their goods to be distrained and sold upon the
spot; by which they sustain a loss themselves, and tempt others to
profit fraudulently at their expense. The consequence is, that the
Quakers have very generally forsaken the country and taken up their
abode in cities. This is doubly detrimental to them. Those who remain in
the country are left as insulated families, and zeal even more than
gaiety requires the stimulus of fellowship. By their laws, anyone who
marries out of the pale of the society is dismissed from it; but these
families who live apart from their fellows are likely to fall off on
this account for want of neighbourhood. They who are collected in
cities, are lessened by another cause. Their principles exclude them
from all professions except that of physic, in which few only can find
employment; commerce therefore may be considered as their sole pursuit;
their plain and moderate habits lessen expense, and their industry
insures success; they grow rich, and their children desert the society.
The children of the rich find its restraints irksome, and are
converted—not by strong argument, not by incontrovertible authority, not
by any honourable and worthy sense of duty, but by the pleasures of the
card-table, the ballroom, and the theatre. But the great agents in
converting young Quakers to the established Church of England are the
tailors. The whole works of Bellarmine could not produce such an effect
upon them as a pattern-book of forbidden cloths and buttons. Nor could
any reason be urged to them so forcible as the propriety of appearing
like other people, and conforming to the strict orthodoxy of fashion.

Odd as it may seem, this feeling has far more influence among the men
than among the women of the society. The women who quit it usually
desert for love, for which there is this good reason, that the Quakers
have too much neglected the education of their sons. Women are easily
converted in their youth; they make amends for this pliancy as they
advance in life, and become the most useful diffusers of their own faith.

The diminution of the sect is not very manifest; and it is kept up by
proselytes who silently drop in, for they no longer seek to make
converts, and are even slow in admitting them. Perhaps these new
members, if they are sufficiently numerous, may imperceptibly bring them
nearer to the manners of the world in their appearance, and thus lessen
the main cause of their decline.



LETTER LVIII.

 _Winter Weather.—Snow.—Christmas.—Old Customs gradually disused._


Jan. 2, 1808.

"If you would live in health," says the proverb, "wear the same garment
in summer which you wear in winter." It seems as if the English had some
such fool's adage, by the little difference there is between their
summer and their winter apparel. The men, indeed, when they go abroad
put on a great coat, and the women wear muffs, and fur round the neck;
but all these are laid aside in the house. I no longer wonder why these
people talk so much of the weather; they live in the most inconstant of
all climates, against which it is so difficult to take any effectual
precaution, that they have given the matter up in despair, and take no
precautions at all. Their great poet, Milton, describes the souls of the
condemned as being hurried from fiery into frozen regions: perhaps he
took the idea from his own feelings on such a day as this, when, like
me, he was scorched on one side and frost-bitten on the other; and, not
knowing which of the two torments was the worst, assigned them to the
wicked both in turn. "Why do you not warm your rooms like the Germans,"
I say to them, "and diffuse the heat equally on all sides?" "Oh," the
reply, "it is so dismal not to see the fire!" And so for the sake of
seeing the fire, they are contented to be half starved and half roasted
at the same time, and to have more women and children burnt to death in
one year than all the heretics who ever suffered in England in the days
when heresy was thought a crime.

I happened to sleep in the country when the first snow fell; and in the
morning when I looked out of window every thing was white, and the snow
flakes like feathers floating and falling with as endless and
ever-varying motions as the dance of musquitos in a summer evening. And
this mockery of life was the only appearance of life; and indeed it
seemed as if there could be nothing living in such a world. The trees
were clothed like the earth, every bough, branch, and spray; except that
side of the bark which had not been exposed to the wind, nothing was to
be seen but what was perfectly and dazzingly white; and the evergreens
in the garden were bent beneath the load. White mountains in the
distance can give no idea of this singular effect. I was equally
delighted with the incrustation upon the inside of the windows. Nothing
which I have ever seen equals the exquisite beauty of this frost-work.
But when I returned to London the scene was widely different.—There the
atmosphere is so full of soot from the earth-coal, that the snow is
sullied as it falls; men were throwing it from the top of every house by
shovels full, lest it should soak through the roof;—and when it began to
melt, the streets were more filthy and miserable than I could have
conceived possible. In wet weather women wear a clog, which is raised
upon an iron ring about two inches from the ground; they clatter along
the streets like horses.

The cold in this country is intense; and because it is not quite severe
enough to nip off a man's nose if he puts it out of doors, they take no
precautions against it, and therefore suffer more than the Germans or
Russians. Nay, the Russian soldiers who were in England during the late
war died of the cold; they had been accustomed to their stoves and their
furs, for which regimentals and English barracks were such bad
substitutes, that they sickened and died off like rotten sheep. Liquids
freeze in the house. My water-bottle burst last night with a loud
report. An exorcist would have taken it for a signal gun of the enemy,
and have discharged a volley of anathemas in return. I was startled, and
could not divine the cause till day-light explained it.

I happened to go into a pastrycook's shop one morning, and enquired of
the mistress why she kept her window open during this severe
weather—which I observed most of the trade did. She told me, that were
she to close it, her receipts would be lessened forty or fifty shillings
a-day;—so many were the persons who took up buns or biscuits as they
passed by and threw their pence in, not allowing themselves time to
enter. Was there ever so indefatigable a people!—I may here mention,
that the first confectioner who ever carried on the trade in England was
a Spaniard, by name Balthezar Sanchez, who founded a hospital near
London at the close of the sixteenth century. Some of the English
sweetmeats exceed ours: the currant and the raspberry, fruits which
flourish in a cold climate, form delicious preserves. Their iced creams
also are richer than our iced waters; but these northern people do not
understand the management of southern luxuries; they fill their cellars
with ice instead of snow, though it is procured with more difficulty and
greater expense, and must be broken to the consistency of compressed
snow before it can be used.

Just at this time these shops are filled with large plum-cakes, which
are crusted over with sugar, and ornamented in every possible way. These
are for the festival of the kings, it being part of an Englishman's
religion to eat plum-cake on this day, and to have pies at Christmas
made of meat and plums. This is the only way in which these festivals
are celebrated; and if the children had not an interest in keeping it
up, even this would soon be disused. All persons say how differently
this season was observed in their fathers' days, and speak of old
ceremonies and old festivities as things which are obsolete. The cause
is obvious. In large towns the population is continually shifting; a new
settler neither continues the customs of his own province in a place
where they would be strange, nor adopts those which he finds, because
they are strange to him, and thus all local differences are wearing out.
In the country, estates are purchased by new men, by the manufacturing
and mercantile aristocracy who have no family customs to keep up, and by
planters from the West Indies, and adventurers from the East, who have
no feeling connected with times and seasons which they have so long
ceased to observe.

Perhaps no kingdom ever experienced so great a change in so short a
course of years without some violent state convulsion, as England has
done during the present reign. I wish I could procure materials to show
the whole contrast:—A metropolis doubled in extent; taxes quintupled;
the value of money depreciated as rapidly as if new mines had been
discovered; canals cut from one end of the island to the other;
travelling made so expeditious that the internal communication is
tenfold what it was; the invention of the steam-engine, almost as great
an epocha as the invention of printing; the manufacturing system carried
to its utmost point; the spirit of commerce extended to every thing; an
empire lost in America, and another gained in the East; these would be
parts of the picture. The alteration extends to the minutest things,
even to the dress and manners of every rank of society.



LETTER LIX.

 _Cards.—Whist.—Treatises upon this Game.—Pope Joan.—Cards never used on
 the Sabbath, and heavily taxed.—Ace of Spades._


The English cards are, like the French, fifty-two in number. They differ
from them in the figured cards, which are whole-length, and in the
clumsiness of their fabric, being as large again, thick in proportion,
and always plain on the back. Our names for the suits are retained in
both countries; and as only with us the names and the figures
correspond, and our words for cards (_naypes_) is unlike that in any
other European language, we either invented or first received them from
the Orientals.

Gambling, dancing, and hunting are as favourite pastimes among the
English as among savages. The latter of the sports must of course be
almost exclusively the amusement of men; dancing requires youth, or at
least strength and agility; but old and young, hale and infirm, can
alike enjoy the stimulus of the dice-box or the card-table.

Fashion, which for a long time appointed the games in this country, as
it does every thing else, seems here at last to have lost its
fickleness. Ombre, Basset, and Quadrille had their day; but Whist is as
much the favourite now as when it was first introduced. Casino came in
from Italy, like the opera, and won over many females; but, like the
opera, though it became fashionable it never was fairly naturalized, and
whist still continues peculiarly the game of the English people. It
suits the taciturnity and thoughtfulness of the national character;
indeed its name is derived from _whish_, a word, or rather sound, which
they make when they would enjoin silence.[5] Not a word is spoken during
the deal, unless one of the party, happening to be of irascible temper,
should find fault with his partner—for people of the politest manners
sometimes forget their politeness and their manners at cards. The time
of dealing, if silence be broken, is employed in discussing the politics
of the last deal. Whatever the stake may be, the men usually increase it
by betting with some by-stander upon the issue of the rubber, the single
game, and sometimes the single deal; and thus the lookers-on take as
much interest in the cards as the players themselves.

A certain person of the name of Hoyle wrote a treatise upon the game,
about half a century ago, and laid down all its laws. These laws, which,
like those of the Medes and the Persians, alter not, are constantly
appealed to. Few books in the language, or in any language, have been so
frequently printed, still fewer so intently studied. Compendiums have
been made of a pocket-size for the convenience of ready reference; these
are very numerous; the most esteemed is by Short.[6] But though these
laws are every where received as canonical, an old Welsh baronet who
used to play cards six days in the week, and take physic on the seventh,
chose some few years since to set up a heresy of his own in opposition.
It consisted in reducing the number of points from ten to six, allowing
no honours to be counted, and determining the trump by drawing a card
from the other pack, so that the dealer had no advantage, and all chance
was as far as possible precluded. Whether this was considered as
savouring too much of equality and Jacobinism I know not, but he made
few proselytes, and the schism expired with him. He himself called it
Rational Whist; his friends, in a word of contemptuous fabrication,
denominated it his _whimsy-whamsy_.

Of the minor games I have only noticed two as remarkable, the one for
its name, which is Pope Joan; a curious instance of the mean artifices
by which the heretics still contrive to keep up a belief in this
exploded fable. They call her the curse of Scotland; so the legend,
fabulous as it is, has been still more falsified. The other game is
called _a fear_;[7] each person stakes a certain sum, a card is named,
and the pack spread upon the table; each draws one in succession, and he
who draws the lot loses and retires: this is repeated till the last
survivor remains with the pool. The pleasure of the game consists in the
_fear_ which each person feels of seeing the fatal card turned up by
himself, and hence its name.

Their great poet[8] speaks of an old age of cards as the regular and
natural destiny of his countrywomen,—what they all come to at last. This
is one of the effects of their general irreligion. When I have seen a
palsied old woman nodding over these Devil's-books, as the puritans call
them, I could not but think how much better her withered and trembling
hands would be employed in telling a bead-string, than in sorting clubs
and spades; and it has given me melancholy thoughts, to think that the
human being whom I beheld there with one foot in the grave, had probably
never a serious thought upon any other subject. The more rigid
dissenters, and especially the Quakers, proscribe cards altogether; some
of the old church people, on the contrary, seem to ascribe a sort of
sacredness to this method of amusement, and think that a Christmas-day
cannot be duly celebrated without it. But a general and unaccountable
prejudice prevails against the use of them on Sundays. I believe that
half the people of England think it the very essence of sabbath-breaking.

Nothing is taxed more heavily than cards and dice, avowedly for the
purpose of discouraging gambling. Yet the lottery is one of the regular
Ways and Means of government; and as men will gamble, in some shape or
other, it should seem that the wisest thing a government can do, is to
encourage that mode of gambling which is most advantageous to itself,
and least mischievous to the people. If cards were lightly taxed, so as
to be sold as cheaply here as they are in our country, the amusement
would, as with us, descend to the lowest class of society, and the
consumption be increased in proportion. The revenue would be no loser,
and the people would be benefited, inasmuch as some little degree of
reflection is necessary to most games; and for those who now never think
at all, it would be advancing a step in intellect and civilization, to
think at their sports. Besides this, cards are favourable to habits of
domestication, and the mechanic would not so often spend his evenings in
the chimney corner of the alehouse, if he could have this amusement by
his own fire-side.

All the insignia of taxation are conferred upon the ace of spades, which
is girt with the garter, encircled with laurels, and surmounted with the
crown, the king's name above, and his motto beneath; but under all, and
over all, and around all, you read every where "sixpence, additional
duty!" which said sixpences have been laid on so often, that having no
room for their increase upon the card, they now ornament the wrapper in
which the pack is sold with stamps. Once in a farm-house where cards
were so seldom used that a pack lasted half a century, I saw an ace of
spades, plain like the other aces: they told me it was always made so in
former times; a proof that when it was chosen to bear these badges of
burthensome distinction, quadrille, or some one of its family, was the
fashionable game.

[5] It seems, by this etymology, as if some person had been fooling the
author's curiosity.—TR.

[6] The author has mistaken Bob Short for a real name.—TR.

[7] _Un espanto_ is the original phrase. Not knowing the game, the
translator suspects he has not hit upon the right name.—TR.

[8] Alexander Pope.



LETTER LX.

 _Growth of the Commercial Interest.—Family Pride almost extinct.—Effect
 of heavy Taxation.—Titles indiscriminately granted.—Increase of the
 House of Peers._


The commercial system has long been undermining the distinction of ranks
in society, and introducing a worse distinction in its stead. Mushrooms
are every day starting up from the dunghill of trade, nobody knows how,
and family pride is therefore become a common subject of ridicule in
England; the theatres make it the object of a safe jest, sure to find
applause from the multitude, who are ever desirous of depreciating what
they do not possess; and authors, who are to themselves, as one of their
own number says,

  "A whole Welsh genealogy alone,"

continue to attack as a prejudice a feeling, which, as philosophers, it
is now time for them to defend. That the new gentry of the country
should join in this ridicule ought not to be wondered at. He who has no
paternal oaks has reason to prefer the poplars of his own planting, and
may well like to expatiate upon the inconvenience of an old family
house, long galleries, huge halls, and windows which none but the
assessor can count, in his own villa, which is built to the pattern of
the last tax upon light, and where the stucco upon the walls is hardly
dry. But that the true gentlemen of England should so readily yield up
their own precedency to vulgar opinion is indeed extraordinary. Nothing,
however, is now valued for being old. The windows and the whole front of
the mansion must be modernized; the old avenues of elms, which two
centuries have just brought to their full perfection, are sacrificed to
a hatred of uniformity; and the yew hedges, which have been clipt year
after year till they formed a thick and impenetrable wall, are levelled
and shorn smooth away. The fashion of the furniture must be changed;
even the old plate must be melted down, and recast in the newest shape;
and an English Esquire would as soon walk abroad in his grandfather's
wedding suit, as suffer the family Tree to be seen in his hall.

This degeneracy of feeling is confined to the English, and has not yet
extended to the Scotch, or Welsh, or Irish. That it is not necessarily
and unavoidably produced by commerce seems to be proved by the instances
of Genoa and Venice; but the commercial spirit was never so universal in
those states as it is in England, where it extends to every thing, and
poisons every thing:—literature, arts, religion, government, are alike
tainted; it is a _lues_ which has got into the system of the country,
and is rotting flesh and bone.

In the celestial hierarchy, we are told, the gradations, though
infinite, are imperceptible; so gradual is the ascent, and so beautiful
and perfect is order in heaven. Experience shows that something like
this is desirable in civil society; at least, where the limits of rank
are most strongly marked, there is there the worst tyranny and the most
abject misery, as among the casts of Hindostan. Towards this evil the
English are tending; the commercial system encroaches on the one hand
upon the aristocracy, and on the other it treads down the peasants, and
little landholders, the yeomanry as they were called, who were once the
strength of England. Half a century ago the country was divided into
small farms; here was a race of men above the labourers, though
labourers themselves; not superior to their hinds in manners or
education, and living at the same table with them, but still in
independence, and with that feeling of independence which was the pride
of the country, and which has made the country what it is. These men
have disappeared since agriculture has become a trading speculation:
field has been joined to field; a moneyed farmer comes, like Aaron's
rod, and swallows up all within his reach. Agriculture is certainly
materially improved; whether the markets be better supplied or not is
disputed; there is less competition, and the rich cultivator can
withhold produce which his poorer predecessor must have brought to sale.
In this point perhaps the advantages and disadvantages may be equal. But
the evil is, that there is one gradation the less in society; that the
second step in the ladder is taken away. And this evil is felt and
acknowledged: the race of domestic servants were formerly the children
of these little farmers; they were decently and religiously educated;
and because they were of respectable parentage, they possessed a sort of
family pride which made them respectable themselves. But the labouring
and manufacturing poor have no leisure to breed up their children
religiously, and no means to do it decently, and a very general
depravity of the servants is complained of.

The gentry of small fortune have also disappeared. The colonial war bore
hard upon them, but the last has crushed them. Inheriting what to their
forefathers had been an ample subsistence, they have found themselves
step by step curtailed of the luxuries and at last of the comforts of
life, without a possibility of helping themselves. For those who were
arrived at manhood it was too late to enter into any profession; and to
embark what they possessed in trade was hazarding all, and putting
themselves at the mercy of a partner. Meantime year after year the price
of every article of necessary consumption has increased with
accelerating rapidity: education has become more costly, and at the same
time more indispensable; and taxation year after year falls heavier,
while the means of payment become less. In vain does he whose father has
lived in opulence, and whom the villagers with hereditary respect still
address hat in hand, or bow to as they pass,—in vain does he put down
the carriage, dismiss the footman, and block up windows even in the
house front. There is no escape. Wine disappears from his side-board;
there is no longer a table ready for his friend; the priest is no longer
invited after service;—all will not do: his boys must out to sea, or
seek their fortune in trade; his girls sink lower, and become dependants
on the rich, or maintain themselves by the needle, while he mortgages
the land, for immediate subsistence, deeper and deeper as the burthen of
the times presses heavier and heavier;—and happy is he if it lasts long
enough to keep him from absolute want before he sinks into the grave.

While one part of the community is thus depressed by the effects of war,
and the commercial system, and the diminished value of money, they who
are in the lucky scale rise as others sink; and merchants and bankers
and contractors make their way by wealth even into the ranks of
nobility. James I., whom we compelled to cut off the head of the
Raleigh, being perpetually at his shifts to supply the extravagance of
his infamous favourites, invented the title of baronet, and offered
fifty of these titles for sale at a thousand pounds each,—in those days
a weighty sum. This title has never indeed since been publicly put up to
sale, yet it is still to be purchased; and as one of the expedients
during the American war, it is known that the then minister, having no
readier means of rewarding one of his adherents, gave him the blank
patent of a baronetcy, to make the most of, and fill up with what name
he pleased. It is true that the title confers no power, the holder still
continuing a commoner; but when honorary distinctions are thus disposed
of, they cease to be honourable. Knighthood is here bestowed
indiscriminately upon the greatest and the meanest occasions: it was
conferred upon Sir Sidney Smith, who stopt the progress of Bonaparte in
Syria and drove him from Acre; and it is lavished upon every provincial
merchant who comes up with an address from his native city to the king
upon any subject of public congratulation. This title, which consists in
affixing Sir to the proper name (a word equivalent in its common
acceptation to _Senor_), differs from the baronetcy in not being
hereditary; but, as I have before said, whoever chooses to pay the price
may entail it upon his children.

The indiscriminate admission to nobility is a practice which produces
the same mischievous effect upon public opinion. They must be
short-sighted politicians who do not see that, if they would have
nobility respected, they should reserve it as the reward of great and
signal services; that it is monstrous to give the same honours and
privileges to a man because he has the command of three or four
boroughs, as to Nelson for the battle of the Nile. This however is not
all the evil; the political system of the country is altered by it, and
the power of the old nobles gradually transferred to a set of new men,
to an aristocracy of wealth. The Lords in England form the second power
in the stale, and no law can be enacted till it has received their
approbation. About a century ago the party in opposition to the crown
was known to be the strongest in the house of lords, and the queen,
knowing that her measures would else be outvoted, created twelve new
peers, who turned the scale. This open and undisguised exertion of the
prerogative, to the actual subversion of the constitution as it then
stood, provoked nothing more than a sarcasm. When the first of these new
peers gave his vote upon the question, one of the old nobles addressed
himself to the rest, and said, "I suppose, gentlemen, you all vote by
your foreman," alluding to their number, which was the same as that of a
common jury. This practice of granting peerages has been more frequent
during the present reign than at any former period, not less than
three-fifths of the house of lords having been created, and the number
is every year increased. But to the old aristocracy of the country every
new creation is a diminution of their power and weight in the political
scale. This evil will eventually occasion its own remedy; the lords will
become at last too numerous for one assembly, and sooner or later some
mode of election for seats must be resorted to for the younger peers, as
is now the case in Scotland.

Agur prayed to the Almighty to give him neither poverty nor riches, and
the wisest of mankind recorded his prayer for its wisdom. That which is
wisdom for an individual must be wisdom for a nation, for wisdom and
morality are not variable. There are too much riches and too much
poverty in England; and were there less of the one there would be less
of the other. Taxation might be so directed as to break down the great
properties, and counteract the law of primogeniture.—Without that law no
country can emerge from barbarism, (unless, as in Peru, no right of
individual property be acknowledged,) and, in small estates, it seems
advisable that it should always hold good; but when a nation has
attained to that state of improvement which England has, the operation
of the law is mischievous. Society has outgrown it. But thus it is that,
retaining institutions after their utility has ceased, man is crippled
on his march, by fettering, like the Chinese women, the feet of maturity
with the shoes of childhood.



LETTER LXI.

 _Despard's Conspiracy.—Conduct of the Populace on that Occasion.—
 War.—The Question examined whether England is in Danger of a
 Revolution.—Ireland._


A most extraordinary conspiracy to kill the king and to overthrow the
government has been detected. A certain Colonel Despard and a few
soldiers were the only persons concerned. This man had for many years
been the object of suspicion, and had at different times been confined
as a dangerous person. Whether his designs were always treasonable, or
whether he was goaded on by a frantic desire of revenge for what he had
suffered, certain it is that he corrupted some of the king's guards to
fire at him in his carriage, from a cannon which always stands by the
palace. If it missed, the others were to be ready to dispatch him with
their swords. The scheme had spread no further than this handful of
associates; and they trusted to the general confusion which it would
occasion, and to the temper of the mob. These facts have been proved by
the testimony of some of the parties concerned. Despard on his trial
steadily denied them, and laid a not unreasonable stress upon the
absurdity of the scheme. The jury who pronounced him guilty
unaccountably recommended him to mercy; he, however, and some of his
accomplices have suffered death. The rest, it is supposed, will be
pardoned.[9] With such lenity are things conducted in England. No
arrests have followed, no alarm has been excited; the people are
perfectly satisfied of his guilt, and only say What a blessing that it
did not happen under Pitt!—Never had a nation a more perfect confidence
in the rectitude of their minister.

The execution was after the ordinary manner, with this difference only,
that the criminal after he was dead was beheaded, and the head held up
with this proclamation, "This is the head of a traitor." He addressed
the people from the scaffold, solemnly protested that he was innocent,
and that he died a martyr to the zeal with which he had ever been the
friend of their liberties. If revenge were the rooted passion of his
soul, never was that passion more strongly exemplified than by this calm
declaration of a dying man, which was so well calculated to do
mischief,—and had it been under Mr Pitt's administration, a great part
of the nation would have believed him. What is most extraordinary is,
that the mob applauded him while he spoke, took off their hats as if in
respect when he suffered, and hissed the executioner when he held up his
bloody head. They burnt one of the witnesses in effigy,—and attended the
body to the grave, as if they had been giving him the honours of a
public funeral.

       *       *       *       *       *

The English are going to war. To the utter astonishment of every body
the king has informed parliament, that formidable armaments are fitting
out in the French ports, and that it is necessary to prepare against
them. There is not a syllable of truth in this, and every body knows it;
but every thing in this country is done by a fiction; the lawyers have
as complete a mythology of their own as the old poets, and every trial
has as regular a machinery as the Iliad. That war will be the result is
not doubted, because it is well known that the ministry are disposed to
be at peace. They have given a decisive proof of this by prosecuting M.
Peltier for a libel upon the first consul; it is therefore reasonably
supposed, that after a measure so repugnant as this to English feelings,
and to English notions of the freedom of the press, has been adopted to
gratify the first consul, nothing but necessity could induce them to
abandon their pacific system.

This sudden turn of political affairs has greatly raised the reputation
of Lord Grenville and his party. It now appears that he prophesied as
truly of the peace as Mr Fox did of the war. The curse of Cassandra lay
upon both; and it seems as if the English, like the Jews of old, always
were to have prophets, and never to believe them. The peace, however,
short as its duration has been, has been highly beneficial. The English
are no longer a divided people. They are ready and almost eager for the
commencement of hostilities, because they are persuaded that war is
unavoidable. The tremendous power of France seems rather to provoke than
alarm them: volunteers are arming every where; and though every man
shakes his head when he hears the taxes talked of, it is evident that
they are ready to part with half they have, if the national exigencies
call for it.

Still the circumstances which occurred upon Despard's execution may give
the English government matter for serious reflection. There is no longer
a party in the country who are desirous of a revolution, and as eager as
they were able to disseminate the perilous principles of Jacobinism.
Bonaparte has extinguished that spirit; he has destroyed all their
partiality for the French government, and Mr Addington has conciliated
them to their own. Never was there a time when the English were so
decidedly Anti-Gallican, those very persons being the most so who
formerly regarded France with the warmest hopes. Whence then can have
arisen this disposition in the populace, unless it be from the weight of
taxation which affects them in the price of every article of life,—from
a growing suspicion that their interest and the interest of their rulers
are not the same, and a disposition to try any change for the chance
there is that it may be for the better?

Two causes, and only two, will rouse a peasantry to rebellion;
intolerable oppression, or religious zeal either for the right faith or
the wrong; no other motive is powerful enough. A manufacturing poor is
more easily instigated to revolt. They have no local attachments; the
persons to whom they look up for support they regard more with envy than
respect, as men who grow rich by their labour; they know enough of what
is passing in the political world to think themselves politicians; they
feel the whole burthen of taxation, which is not the case with the
peasant, because he raises a great part of his own food: they are aware
of their own numbers, and the moral feelings which in the peasant are
only blunted, are in these men debauched. A manufacturing populace is
always ripe for rioting,—the direction which this fury may take is
accidental; in 1780 it was against the Catholics, in 1790 against the
Dissenters. Governments who found their prosperity upon manufactures
sleep upon gunpowder.

Do I then think that England is in danger of revolution? If the
manufacturing system continues to be extended, increasing as it
necessarily does increase the number, the misery, and the depravity of
the poor, I believe that revolution inevitably must come, and in its
most fearful shape. But there are causes which delay the evil, and some
which may by an easy possibility avert it, if government should aid them.

The spread of Methodism in its various shapes tends immediately to make
its converts quiet and orderly subjects, though its ultimate
consequences cannot be doubted. The army may as yet be depended upon,
the volunteers are fully equal to any service which may be required of
them, and the English people, by which denomination I mean, as
distinguishing them from the populace, that middle class from whom an
estimate of the national character is to be formed, have that wonderful
activity and courage, that unless the superiority of numbers against
them were more than tenfold, they would put out an insurrection, as they
put out a fire. They are a wonderful people. There is no occasion to cry
out _Aqui del Rey!_ (_Here for the king!_) in England. Should one man
draw his knife upon another in the streets, the passers-by do not shrug
up their shoulders and say, "It is _their_ business," and pass on,
letting murder be committed and the murderer escape. Every man in
England feels that it is _his_ business both to prevent a crime, and to
deliver up a criminal to justice.

The people then are the security of England against the populace; but
the tendency of the present system is to lessen the middle class and to
increase the lower ones; and there is also some danger that the people
may become dissatisfied with their rulers. There is no œconomy in the
administration of public affairs; prodigal governments must be needy,
and needy ones must be oppressive. The sum paid in taxation is beyond
what any other people ever paid to the state; the expenditure of the
state is almost incredible—for the last years of the war it exceeded a
million of English money per week. The peculation is in proportion to
the expenditure. They are now enquiring into these abuses; many have
been pointed out in the department of the admiralty, and no person
entertains a doubt but that they exist in every other department in an
equal degree. It is almost as dangerous to touch these abuses as to let
them continue;—but the alarm has been given, and upon this ground any
member of parliament, however little his influence and however despised
his talents, would, even if he stood alone, prove a far more formidable
opponent to any ministry, than ever Fox has been with all the great
families of the country, and all his own mighty powers. Any member who
should boldly and pertinaciously cry out that the public money was
peculated, bring forward his proofs, and perseveringly insist upon
investigation, would not long be without supporters. The people would
take up the cause: they can bear to have their money squandered, and can
even be made to take a pride in the magnitude of the expenditure, as
something magnificent, but they would not bear to have it pilfered;—and
should they be convinced that it is pilfered, which these examinations
if they be carried on must needs convince them of—should they be
provoked so far as to insist upon having all the ways and windings of
corruption laid open, and all the accounts well examined before the
bills are paid, I know not what lure would be strong enough to draw them
from the scent; and their governors would have reason to apprehend the
fate of Actæon.

The causes which may prevent revolution chiefly arise from France.
France expects to ruin England by its finances, forgetful with what
result that recipe for ruining an enemy has lately been tried by England
upon herself. The French do not know this wonderful people. It was
supposed that the existence of the English government depended upon the
bank, and that the bank would be ruined by an invasion: the thing was
tried; men were landed in Wales, away ran the Londoners to the bank to
exchange their bills for cash, and the stock of cash was presently
exhausted. What was the consequence? Why, when the Londoners found there
was no cash to be had, they began to consider whether they could not do
without it, mutually agreed to be contented with paper—and with paper
they have been contented ever since. The bank is infinitely obliged to
France for the experiment, and no persons suffer by it except the poor
sailors, who, when they receive their pay, put these bills in their
tobacco-boxes, and spoil them with a wet quid.

It is certain that the English government must adopt a strict system of
œconomy, thereby effectually preventing revolution by reform, or that
sooner or later a national bankruptcy must ensue—and to this France
hopes to drive them. But what would be the effect of national
bankruptcy?—not a revolution. The English have no fits of insanity: if
they saw the evil to be inevitable, they would immediately begin to
calculate and to compound, and see how it might be brought about with
the least mischief. Thousands would be ruined; but they who would be
benefited by the reduction of the taxes would be tens of thousands; so
that the majority would be satisfied at the time, and government begin
its accounts afresh, strong enough to take credit, if the people were
not disposed to give it. For this fact is apparent from all
history,—that the tendency of all political changes is ultimately to
strengthen the executive power. Forms may be altered—they who play for
authority may win and lose as rapidly as other gamesters, and perhaps at
more desperate stakes, but the uniform result is, that the government
becomes stronger. The National Convention carried decrees into effect
which Louis XIV. would not have dared to attempt—and Bonaparte has all
the strength of that convention rendered permanent by military power.
Whatever be the external form, the effect is the same; the people submit
implicitly to the directions of a single man, till he has riveted the
yoke upon their necks; or cheerfully obey the more rigid tyranny of
laws, because they conceive them to be of their own making.—A government
therefore with the forms of freedom, which could persuade the people
that it had no other object than their good, would be the strongest in
the world. The Spartans called themselves free, and boasted of their
obedience to institutions which changed the very nature of man.

In the language of modern politics a ministry has been considered as
synonymous with government, and government as synonymous with nation.
England made this error with regard to France, and France is now making
it with regard to England. Admit that the pressure of taxation should
occasion a national bankruptcy, and that this in its consequence should
bring about a revolution—England would be miserable at home; but would
she be less formidable abroad? She would not have a ship nor a sailor
the less; and if any circumstances were to awaken a military spirit in
the land of the Plantagenets, France, mighty as she is, might tremble
for her conquests. I do not believe that the fall of the funds would
produce any violent change in the government; and whether it did or not,
the enemies of England would do well to remember, that it would finally
strengthen the nation.

Bonaparte, whether at war or at peace, will endeavour to ruin the
commerce of England. As for what he can do by war, the English laugh at
him. The old saying of the cat and the adulterer holds equally true of
the smuggler; and a large portion of the world is out of reach of his
armies, but not out of reach of their merchant-ships. He will take the
surer method of establishing manufactories at home:—they smile at this
too. Manufactories are not to be created by edicts; and if they were, if
he could succeed in this, he would do precisely the best possible thing
which could be done for England in the best possible way:—first check
and then destroy a system, which there is now nothing to check, which
cannot be suddenly destroyed without great evil, and which, if it
continues to increase, will more effectually tend to ruin England than
all the might and all the machinations of its enemies, were they ten
times more formidable than they are.

That system certainly threatens the internal tranquillity, and
undermines the strength of the country. It communicates just knowledge
enough to the populace to make them dangerous, and it poisons their
morals. The temper of what is called the mob, that is, of this class of
people, has been manifested at the death of Despard, and there is no
reason to suppose that it is not the same in all other great towns as in
London. It will be well for England when her cities shall decrease, and
her villages multiply and grow; when there shall be fewer streets and
more cottages. The tendency of the present system is to convert the
peasantry into poor; her policy should be to reverse this, and to
convert the poor into peasantry, to increase them, and to enlighten
them; for their numbers are the strength, and their knowledge is the
security of states.

Ireland is the vulnerable part of the British empire: and till that
empire be restored to the true faith, it will always be vulnerable
there. Another conspiracy has just been formed there; the plan was to
seize the seat of government, and if the insurgents had not stopped to
perpetrate a useless murder upon the way, they would in all likelihood
have succeeded; the mails would that night have scattered their
proclamations over the whole island, and nine-tenths of the population
would have been instantly in rebellion. The exemplary attachment of the
Irish to the religion of their fathers is beyond all praise, and almost
beyond all example. Nothing but the complete re-establishment of that
religion can ever conciliate them to the English government, or reclaim
them from their present savage state, and the false hierarchy is too
well aware of the consequences ever to consent to this. Dagon knows what
would happen if the Ark of Truth were to be set up so near.

[9] One of these men has just been transported (Dec. 1806), having
remained in the Tower since his conviction, upon the allowance of a
state prisoner. His expences, it is to be hoped, are charged to the
nation among the _Extraordinaries_.—TR.



LETTER LXII.

 _Account of Swedenborgianism._


I found my way one Sunday to the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian chapel.
It is singularly handsome, and its gallery fitted up like boxes at a
theatre. Few or none of the congregation belonged to the lower classes,
they seemed to be chiefly respectable tradesmen. The service was
decorous, and the singing remarkably good: but I have never in any other
heretical meeting heard heresy so loudly insisted upon. Christ in his
_divine_, or in his _glorified human_, was repeatedly addressed as the
only God; and the preacher laboured to show that the profane were those
who worshipped three Gods, and that their prayers, instead of a
sweet-smelling savour ascending to the throne of God, were an obscene
stink which offended his nostrils.

This is little remarkable in the civil, or, as his disciples would call
it, the human and terrestrial part of Emanuel Swedenborg's history. He
was born in 1689, at Stockholm, and was son of the bishop of
Ostrogothia. Charles XII. favoured him; Queen Ulrica ennobled him,
dignifying his name by elongation, as if in the patriarchal fashion,
from Swedberg to Swedenborg. It is certain that he was a man of science,
having been assessor of the Metallic College, and having published a
_Regnum Minerale_ in three volumes folio; but he abandoned the mineral
kingdom for a spiritual world of his own, the most extraordinary that
ever a crazy imagination created.[10]

His celestial history is more out of the common. I am copying from the
books of his believers when I tell you—that his interiors were opened by
the Lord; that he conversed with the dead, and with the very worst
devils without danger; that he spoke the angelic language, and respired
the angels' atmosphere; that for twenty-six years he was in the spirit,
and at the same time in the body; that he could let his spirit into the
body or out of the body at pleasure; that he had been in all the
planets, and in all the heavens, and had even descended into hell; that
the twelve apostles used to visit him; that a conspiracy of spirits was
formed against him; and that he was seized with a deadly disease in
consequence of a pestilential smoke which issued from Sodom and Egypt in
the spiritual world.

Enough of this. Let me try if it be possible to make his mythology
intelligible, and to draw out a map of his extra-mundane discoveries.

_Omnia quæ in cœlis, sunt in terris, terrestri modo; omnia quæ in
terris, sunt in cœlis, cœlesti modo._ All things which are in heaven are
upon earth, after an earthly manner; all things which are upon earth are
in heaven, after a heavenly manner.[11] So says Trismegistos, and who
will dispute the authority of the thrice-greatest Hermes?—The Scriptures
therefore cannot be understood without the science of correspondences; a
knowledge which the patriarchs possessed intuitively in the golden age,
which was preserved only scientifically in the silver age, became merely
speculative in the copper age, and in our iron generation has been
wholly lost. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are to be explained by this key,
which opens also all the mysteries of the ritual law. Job was the last
writer who possessed it, till it was revealed to the Swedish teacher.

There is nothing new in this, you tell me; it is the old notion of a
double meaning, the external and the internal, the literal and the
allegorical, the letter and the spirit. Not so, my good Father!
"Correspondence is the appearance of the internal in the external, and
its representation therein; there is a correspondence between all things
in heaven and all things in man; without correspondence with the
spiritual world nothing whatever could exist or subsist." You are
growing impatient!—I must give you a specimen of common language
interpreted by this science. Two legs stand for the will of God; by a
small piece of the ear we are to understand the will of truth; the son
of a she-ass denotes rational truth; and an ass, without any mention of
his pedigree, signifies the scientific principle—certainly no ill-chosen
emblem of such principles and such science as this. This is stark
nonsense, you say! My good father Antonio; "No distinct idea can be had
of correspondence without a previous knowledge concerning heaven as the
Great Man," or _Maximus Homo_, as we must call him, in the Master's own
words.

In sober serious explanation, Swedenborg seems to have thought upon one
text and dreamt upon it, till he mistook his dreams and his delirium for
revelation. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.—So God
created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." His
system is a wild comment upon this passage, as monstrous as any of the
Rabinical reveries. Accordingly he lays it down as an axiom, that the
whole of divine order was imaged in man at the creation, insomuch that
he was divine order itself in a human form, and so Heaven in epitome.
Upon this he has built up a creed of the strangest anthropomorphism,
teaching that the divinity of the deity constitutes heaven, and that
heaven itself is in a human form, Deity and heaven thus identified being
the _Maximus Homo_, the Grand or Divine Man.

It has been one of the many fancies of hypothetical philosophers, that
all bodies are aggregates of living atoms. Admit this notion, and it
explains all the mysterious operations of life with perfect facility;
the little inhabitants of the secretory organs take each what they like
best, and thus manufacture all the animal materials. This is analogous
to the celestial system of Swedenborg, but with this difference, that
each constituent part and particle of his _Maximus Homo_ resembles the
whole in form, every society in this body corporate, and every
individual of each society being in the human shape divine.

Heaven is to be considered under the threefold distinction of general,
special, and particular—for Swedenborg had learnt to classify in his
earthly studies. Generally it is divided into two kingdoms, celestial
and spiritual; but I am sorry to add that, though I have studied the
anatomy of the Grand Man with some attention, I cannot discover where or
how these regions are separated. The specific division into three
heavens is more intelligible; the first is in the extremities, the
second or middle in the trunk, the third and highest in the head. The
particular division is into the societies of angels, who form the
constituent monads of this divine aggregate.

Every part, however, of the _Maximus Homo_ is not Heaven; at least the
inhabitants of every part are neither possessed of celestial goodness,
nor in that state of celestial enjoyment which seems essential to our
ideas of paradise. For instance, the parishioners of the kidneys, the
ureters, and the bladder, consist of such persons as in their mortal
state took a cruel delight in bringing others to justice; these people
speak with a harsh chattering voice, like magpies whose tongues have
been slit. They who have despised virtue and religion are in the
gall-bladder, a bitter destination no doubt! They also who dwell about
the _sphincter vesicæ_, amuse themselves by tormenting the evil spirits.
Whether they are purged of this malignant disposition by the secretions
and excretions which are going on in their vicinity, this new Emanuel
sayeth not. A purgatory indeed there is, and a truly curious one! They
who are still unclean in thoughts and affections are stationed in the
colon; not as component parts of the Grand Man—of that honour they are
not yet worthy; they are there as his aliment, to be concocted and
digested, and after the gross fæces have been cast out, filtered through
lacteals and arteries into chyle and blood, till they are taken up into
the system and embodied. They who are defiled with earthly dregs are in
the small-guts; the most impure of all in the neck of the bladder and in
the rectum, both which have below them a most dreadful and filthy hell,
ready to receive their contents,

  E recolher o mais sobejo e impuro
  Da immundicia de toda a obra lançada.[12]

This +Ouranos+, or _Maximus Homo_, seems to be the body of Deity; and
the Divine Life or Spirit, like the gifted spirit of Swedenborg himself,
can be in or out, separate from, or identified with it, at pleasure.
Accordingly, though the angels are in him, and actually are he, yet they
visibly behold him, as the sun of their world. Now the Lord in person
being the sun, the light and heat which proceed from him must
necessarily partake of divinity; accordingly light in Heaven is divine
truth, and heat is divine love: a thin and transparent vapour, which
surrounds the angels like an atmosphere, enables them to sustain this
influx of Deity. An atmosphere of this kind, which is called the Sphere
of Life, exhales from every man, spirit and angel; it is the emanation
of the vital affections and thoughts. In Heaven, of course, it is
volatile essence of love, and each angel is sensibly affected when he
gets within the sphere of another. We on earth feel the same influence,
though unconscious of the cause, for this hypothesis physically accounts
for the sympathies of dislike and of affection.—The Deity is also the
celestial moon, and this sun and moon are seen at the same time, one
before the right eye, and the other before the left. Let an angel turn
his face which way he will, this sun is always before him, and he always
fronts the east; yet at the same time he can see the other quarters by
an inward kind of vision, like that of thought. A precious olla podrida
this of allegorical riddles and downright nonsense!

The œconomy of the angels is more rationally imagined, and is better
suited to our worldly habits, or suited to better worldly habits than
Elysium, or Valhalla, or the Sorgon, the Paradise of Mohammed, or the
ever-blessed state of Nireupan to which the Yogue approximates when he
has looked at nothing for seven years but the tip of his own nose. You
are not to conceive of angels as of disembodied spirits; they are
material beings, though of a finer matter. They wear garments white, or
flame-coloured, or shining, with which they are supplied by the Deity;
only the angels of the third Heaven, being in the state of innocence
made perfect, are naked. They dwell in houses, which are arranged in
streets and squares, like our cities on earth; but every thing there is
on a nobler scale, and of more magnificence. Swedenborg frequently
walked through these cities, and visited the inhabitants; he saw palaces
there, the roofs of which glittered as if with pure gold, and the floors
as if with precious stones: the gardens are on the south side, where
trees with leaves like silver produce fruits resembling gold, and the
flowers are so arranged as by their colours to represent rainbows.—There
is no space in Heaven, or, more accurately speaking, no such thing as
distance: where angels wish to be, there they are; locomotion is
accomplished by the mere act of volition; and, what is better still, if
one angel earnestly desires the company of another, the wish attracts
him, and he immediately appears.

There is a room in the southern quarter of the spiritual world the walls
of which shine like gold; and in this room is a table, and on this table
lies the Bible, set with jewels. Whenever this book is opened a light of
inexpressible brilliancy flows from it, and the jewels send forth rays
which arch it over with a rainbow. When an angel of the third Heaven
comes and opens it, the ground of this rainbow appears crimson; to one
from the second Heaven it is blue; to one of the first or lowest Heaven
the light is variegated and veined like marble. But if one approaches
who has ever falsified the word, the brightness disappears, and the book
itself seems covered with blood, and warns him to depart, lest he suffer
for his presumption.

There is public worship in Heaven, which Swedenborg attended, and heard
sermons: they have books both written and printed; he was able to read
them, but could seldom, he says, pick out any meaning; from which I
conclude that he has successfully copied their style. Writing flows from
the thoughts of the angels, or with their thoughts, appearing so
coinstantaneously as if thought cast itself upon the paper; but as this
writing is not permanent, it seems that pen and ink might usefully be
introduced among them. The language of Heaven is like the writing,
connate with thought, being indeed nothing more than thinking audibly.
Its construction is curiously explained; the vowels express the
affections; the consonants the particular ideas derived from the
affections, and the words the whole sense of the matter. The angelic
alphabet resembles the Chinese, for every letter signifies a complete
thing,—which is the reason why the hundred and nineteenth psalm is
alphabetically divided;—and every letter, and every flexure and
curvature of every letter, contains some secret of wisdom. Different
dialects of this language are spoken in the celestial and spiritual
kingdoms; the celestials chiefly using the vowels U and O, the
spirituals preferring E and I; the speech of the former resembles a
smooth flowing water, that of the latter the sound of a running stream
broken on its way. But the most enviable power connected with expression
which the angels possess, is, that they represent their ideas in a thin
undulating circumfluent fluid or ether, so that they can make thought
visible.

In like manner as our human form goes on with us to our heavenly state,
so also will our human affections. The ruling passion, whatever it be,
not only lasts till death, but continues after death. Woe therefore to
those whose whole aspirations are after things that are earthly, for
they cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven! This truth is neither the less
true, nor the less important, because it is found in the pages of a
madman. Marriage also is not dissolved by death:—when one of the wedded
couple dies, the spirit of the deceased cohabits with the spirit of the
living spouse, till that also be released; they then meet again, and
reunite with a tenderer and more perfect union. On no subject does
Swedenborg dilate with more pleasure than upon this. The sphere of
conjugal love, he tells us, is that which flows from the Creator into
all things; from the Creator it is received by the female, and
transferred through her to the male. It makes man more and more man; it
is a progressive union of minds, for ever rejuvenescent, continuing to
old age and to eternity; it is the foundation and germ of all spiritual
and all celestial love; it is in Heaven, and it is Heaven, yea even the
inmost Heaven, the Heaven of Heavens. It dwells in the supreme region of
the Mind, in the conclave of the Will, amidst the perceptions of Wisdom,
in the marriage chamber of the Understanding. Its origin is from the
divine nuptials of Goodness and Truth, consequently from the Lord
himself. After this it is ridiculous enough to see him trace the
progress of this sphere or essence of love into the soul of man, thence
into the mind, thence into the interior affections, from whence it finds
its way through the breast into the genital region.

Do not, however, suppose that there are any births in Heaven. All
spirits both in Heaven and Hell were born on earth; from which, it
seems, a puzzling argument against the system itself might be brought:
_Ex nihilo nihil fit_—Of nothing nothing is made; where then was the
Grand Man before all the parts of which he is composed were in
existence?—Heaven is supplied with children by those who die in infancy;
happy are they, for they are given to virgins whose maternal feelings
find in them an object, and under their tuition they grow up in the
gardens of Paradise. They advance to the full bloom of youth, not beyond
it; the old, who arrive in Heaven with all the marks of age, grow
younger till they also arrive at the same perfection: to grow old in
Heaven is to increase in beauty.

There are many mansions in Heaven, and infinite degrees of happiness,
yet is there no envy nor discontent; every one is happy to the utmost
measure of his capacity; the joys of a higher state would be no joys to
him: his cup is full. But the longer he has been in Heaven, the happier
he becomes, his capacity of enjoyment increasing as he is progressive in
virtue and goodness, that is, in divine love.

As all Heaven is one Grand Man, or Divinity, so is all Hell one Grand
Devil, and the wicked are literally to become members of Satan. The road
from one to the other is through the _Maximus Homo's_ Port Esquiline; it
opens immediately into the mouth of Hell, and the two-and-thirty white
millers who sit in the gateway, receive all they have to grind through
that channel.[13] Hell fire is no torment to the damned: it imparts no
other sensation to them than an irascible heat; for in truth the fire of
Hell is nothing more than their evil passions, which appear to good
spirits in flame and smoke. This is the only light they have, proceeding
from themselves, and resembling that which is given out by red-hot
coals. The Hell of Swedenborg is what earth would be if all virtue were
destroyed, if the salt of the earth were taken away, and its corruptions
left to putrefy. There are cities inhabited only by the profligate,
where they are abandoned to their own vices, and to the inevitable
miseries which those vices produce. They have even their places of
public amusement; he saw the dragons holding their abominable diversions
in an amphitheatre. Deserts, fields laid waste, and houses and towns in
ruins which have been destroyed by fire, fill up the picture.

Of all the heretics who have sprung from the spawn of Luther, Swedenborg
is the only one who admits a purgatory.—You will not expect a rational
one;—in this intermediate world, as the good are purified from their
imperfections, so are the wicked divested of what little goodness they
may possess, and thus the one are fitted for Heaven, and the other for
Hell. The state of maturity for Heaven is known by the appearance of the
regenerate, which is not altogether consistent with our earthly ideas of
beauty, for the cuticle appears like a fine lace-work of bright blue.
Here the wicked follow their accustomed vices, till, after they have
been repeatedly warned in vain, their cities are shaken with
earthquakes, the foundations yawn under them, they sink into the gulf,
and there grope their way into their respective Hells.

Hypocrites who still preserved an exterior of piety were permitted to
remain in the intermediate world, and make to themselves fixed
habitations. This constitutes one of the wildest and absurdest parts of
all this strange mythology; for Swedenborg teaches that these residents,
by the abuse of correspondences and help of phantasies, built Heavens
for themselves, which became at last so many and so extensive, that they
intercepted the spiritual light and heat, that is, divine love, in their
way from Heaven to Earth. At length this eclipse became total; there was
no faith in the Christian church, because there was no charity, and the
Last Judgment was then executed; which consisted in destroying these
imaginary Heavens, like the tower of Babel, stripping the hypocrites of
their cloak, and casting them into Hell. This consummation took place in
the year of our Lord 1757; and there is no other Last Judgment to come,
except what every individual will experience for himself singly, after
death.

Nothing now remains but to apply the science of correspondences to this
scheme of the _Maximus Homo_ and the Grand Satan. Spirits act upon men
in those parts which correspond to their own anatomical situation: thus
impulses and affections of good come from the agency of good angels
operating by influx on their corresponding region, whether head or foot,
heart, pancreas, or spleen; they, for instance, who inhabit the brain
watch over us when we sleep. On the contrary, diseases are the work of
the devils; hypocritical devils occasion belly-ache; and spirits who are
ripening for Hell, and take delight in putridity, get into our insides
and manufacture for us indigestion, hypochondriasis, and dyspepsy; so
that in all cases exorcism must be more applicable than medicine.

One word more:—they who have loved infants with most tenderness are in
the province of the neck of the uterus and of the ovaries. By some
unaccountable oversight the inference has been overlooked. There is
therefore a Grand Woman also! It is not good for man to be alone, not
even for the Grand Man. I have found a wife for him! The discovery, for
it is a discovery, is at least equal in importance to any in the eight
quarto volumes of the Arcana Cœlestia, and entitles me to be ranked with
Swedenborg himself; if, indeed, as I modestly beg leave to hint, the
honour of having perfected his discoveries and finished his system, be
not fairly my due.[14]

[10] The author seems to have looked for no other account of Swedenborg
than what his ignorant believers could furnish. At the age of twenty he
published a collection of Latin poems under the title of _Ludus
Heliconius, sive Carmina Miscellanea quæ variis in locis cecinit, &c._
Charles XII. valued him for his scientific knowledge, and profited by
it. He took him with him to the siege of Frederickshall; the roads were
impassable for artillery, and Swedenborg made a canal, cutting through
mountains and raising valleys, by which his battering pieces were
conveyed. He was a great favourite with Charles, and deservedly so; for
it is said that no person, except Linnæus, ever did so much in so short
a time. In all the North of Europe he was held in the highest
estimation, till, in the year 1743, he abandoned science to print his
waking dreams, and become the founder of a new church.

Swedenborg died at London in 1772, and after lying in state was buried
at the Swedish church near Radcliffe Highway.—TR.

[11]

                                What if Earth
  Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
  Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought?

MILTON.—TR.

[12] And to receive the superfluous and impure uncleannesses which are
cast out from the whole work.—TR.

[13]

  Das portas para dentro logo entrando,
    De grande fábrica hum moinho tinha,
  O qual moendo estava, e preparando
    Tudo o que havia de ir para a cozinha;

  Moido, e brando dentro assi mandando
    O mantimento, que de fóra vinha,
  Com esta proporçaõ conveniente
  Se repartia, e hia a toda a gente.

  Neste moinho junto os dous porteiros,
    Estando juntamente em seu officio,
  Duros e rijos trinta e dous moleiros,
    De grande força, e util exercicio;
  Daqui tirados fóra outros primeiros
    Foram por grão fraqueza, e vicio;
  E os que agora moiam com destreza
  Todos branco vestiam por limpeza.

  Tinha cada hum delles sua morada
    Em dous lanços de penedo, que havia;
  Entre elles huma Dona exprimentada,
    Esperta andava, e prompta, noite e dia:
  E della era approvada ou reprovada
    A farinha de quanto se moia,
  Provando se era saborosa, e alva,
  Porque era ella gentil mestra de salva.

_Da Creaçaõ e Composiçaõ do Homen._

_Immediately upon entering the gates there was a mill of great fabric,
which was grinding and preparing all that was to go to the kitchen;
sending on, thus ground and softened, the provisions which came from
without, to be distributed in convenient proportions to all the people.
Near the two porters in this mill, and equally employed in their
business, were two-and-thirty sturdy millers, of great strength and
useful exercise. Others, who had held this place before them, had been
turned out for their weakness; and these, who now ground skilfully, were
all clothed in white for cleanliness. Each of these had his dwelling in
two pieces of wall, and between them was an experienced dame, who was
awake and ready night and day; all the corn which was ground was
approved or rejected by her, she trying if it was white and savoury, for
she was a gentle housekeeper.—Author's note._

The reader need not be apprised that the situation of these Millers is
in the Mouth gate of the town of Mansoul, according to Bunyan's
allegory.—TR.

[14] Their Creed and Pater-noster may be added as curiosities.

I believe that Jehovah God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, is one in
Essence and in Person, in whom is a Divine Trinity, consisting of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and that the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
is that God.

I believe that Jehovah God himself came down from Heaven as Divine
Truth, which is the Word, and took upon him Human Nature, for the
purpose of removing Hell from Man, of restoring the Heavens to Order,
and of preparing the way for a New Church upon Earth: and that herein
consists the true Nature of Redemption, which was effected solely by the
Omnipotence of the Lord's DIVINE HUMANITY.

I believe in the Sanctity of the Word, and that it containeth a
threefold Sense, namely, Celestial, Spiritual, and Natural, which are
united by Correspondences; and that in each sense it is Divine Truth,
accommodated respectively to the Angels of the Three Heavens, and also
to Men on Earth.

I believe that evil Actions ought not to be done, because they are of
the Devil, and from the Devil.

I believe that good actions ought to be done, because they are of God,
and from God; and that they should be done by Man, as of himself;
nevertheless under this Acknowledgment and Belief, that they are from
the Lord, operating in him and by him.

I believe, that immediately on the Death of the material Body (which
will never be reassumed,) Man rises again as to his spiritual or
substantial Body, wherein he existeth in a perfect Human Form; and thus
that Death is only a Continuation of Life.

I believe that the Last Judgment is accomplished in the Spiritual World,
and that the former Heaven and the former Earth, or the Old Church, are
passed away, and that all Things are become New.

I believe that now is the Second Advent of the Lord, which is a coming,
not in person, but in the Power and Glory of the spiritual Sense of his
holy Word, which is Himself. And I believe that the Holy City, New
Jerusalem, is now descending from God out of Heaven, prepared as a Bride
adorned for her Husband.

Their Pater-noster is of more curious complexion.

Father of us, who in the Heavens; let be sanctified the Name of Thee.
Let come the Kingdom of Thee. Let be done the Will of Thee, as in
Heaven, and upon the Earth. The Bread of us the daily give to us this
Day. And remit to us the Debts of us, as and we remit to the Debtors of
us. And not bring us into Temptation, but keep us from the Evil. Because
of Thee is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory into the Ages. Amen.

This, they say, is perhaps too literal to be used in public worship _as
yet_. It will, however, serve to give the English reader an idea of the
idiom of that language which the Lord made use of, when he was pleased
to teach us how to pray. And it may also, by the arrangement of the
words themselves, in some measure point out the order of influx from the
Fountain of all Life; for the first word in this divine prayer, viz.
_Father_, is the Universal that flows into and fills all the succeeding
parts, just as the soul flows into, and fills every part of the human
body derived from it.



LETTER LXIII.

 _Jews in England._


I went yesterday evening to the Synagogue. Never did I see a place of
worship in which there was so little appearance of devotion. The women
were in a gallery by themselves, the men sate below, keeping their hats
on, as they would have done in the street. During the service they took
from behind their altar, if that word may be thus applied without
profanation, certain silver—utensils they cannot be called, as they
appeared to be of no possible use,—silver ornaments rather, hung with
small rattle bells, and these they jingled as they carried them round
the room, then replaced them in the receptacle. This was the only
ceremony. It is impossible to describe the strange and uncouth tone in
which the priest sung out a portion of the Pentateuch from a long roll.
The language was so intolerably harsh, and the manner in which it was
chaunted so abominably discordant, that they suited each other to a
miracle; and the larynx of the Rabbi seemed to have been made expressly
to give both their full effect.

In former times the toleration of the Jews gave occasion to the same
disturbances here as in the rest of Europe. They cheated the people, and
the people in return took advantage of every tumult to plunder them. The
famous King John, who offered to turn Mohammedan if the Miramamolin
would assist him against his rebellious subjects, extorted a large sum
from a Jew of Bristol by a new and ingenious kind of torture: he
condemned him to have a tooth drawn every day till he consented to lend
the money; and the Jew parted with six grinders before he submitted.
After the schism, as the Heretics began first to persecute the
Catholics, and then one another, the misbelievers were forgotten.
Cromwell even favoured them; in one respect he differed from all his
contemporary fanatics, for he willingly allowed to other sects the
toleration which he claimed for his own. Under his protection Manasses
Ben Israel printed three editions of the Bible in Hebrew. This Rabbi is
generally supposed to have been a Spaniard, but the Portugueze claim
him, and I think we shall not be disposed to contend with them for the
honour,—especially as most persons would decide in their favour, without
examination.

During the last reign an attempt was made to naturalize them, in a body;
and the measure would have been effected had it not been for the
indignant outcry of the people, who very properly regarded it as an act
of defiance, or at least of opposition, to the express language of
prophecy. But this feeling has abated, and were the attempt to be
renewed it would meet with little opposition. In Catholic countries our
pictures and crucifixes perpetually set before the Christian's eyes the
sufferings of his Redeemer, and there is no possibility of his
forgetting the history of his religion. Even the most trifling ceremony
is of use. At one of the public schools here, the boys on Easter Sunday
rush out of the chapel after prayers, singing

  He is risen, he is risen,
  All the Jews must go to prison.

This custom is certainly very old, though I cannot learn that it was
ever usual to imprison this wretched people upon this festival. Some of
these boys cut the straps of a Jew's box one day, and all his
gingerbread-nuts fell into the street. Complaint was made to the master;
and when he questioned the culprits what they could say in their
defence, one of them stepped forward and said, "Why, sir, did not they
crucify our Lord!" Without admitting the plea in excuse, it may be
remarked that if the boy had not remembered his Easter rhymes, he would
have been as indifferent to the crime of the Jews as the rest of his
countrymen.

Some years ago one of the best living dramatists wrote a comedy for the
purpose of representing the Jewish character in a favourable light. The
play was very successful, and the Jews were so well pleased that they
presented the author with a handsome gratuity[15]. A farce was brought
forward at another time called the Jew Boy; and the fraternity knowing
that it was impossible to represent this class favourably, assembled in
great numbers, and actually damned the piece. This single fact is
sufficient to prove that the liberty which they enjoy is unbounded. It
is not merely the open exercise of their religion which is permitted
them, they are even suffered to write and publish against Christianity.
If the permission of blasphemy were no sin, there would be little evil
in this licence, so little are they able to make proselytes. The only
apostate whom they have made within the memory of man is the very person
who occasioned the insurrection against the Catholics in 1780, and who
afterwards lost his senses, renounced his faith, and, though of noble
family, died in a public prison, a lamentable instance of divine
vengeance.

In Rome these misbelievers are obliged to hear a sermon once a-week;
here a sermon attracts them as a novelty. One of the Methodist
itinerants, some few years ago, fancying that, like St Vicente Ferrer,
he had a special gift for converting this stiff-necked generation,
undertook to confute their errors, and invited them to attend his
preaching. The place appointed was the great Methodist Chapel in
Tottenham Court Road; and they assembled in such crowds as to fill the
chapel and the court in which it is built. One of the windows was taken
out, and the orator taking his stand in the opening, addressed the
congregation both within and without at the same time. There can be no
reason to suppose that they came with hearts more accessible to
conviction than usual; but, had it been the case, the method which this
fanatic took was little likely to be successful; for he began by telling
them that he was not yet twenty years old, that he had no human learning
whatever, and that for all he was about to say to them he trusted to the
immediate impulse of the Lord. The rest of his discourse was in
character with the beginning, and the Jews returned, the greater number
ridiculing his folly, the more thoughtful remembering their own law
against him who presumes to speak in the name of the Lord, what the Lord
hath not commanded him to speak. Yet from the readiness with which they
assembled to hear him, it does not appear impossible, that if some true
Christian, inspired with the zeal of our St Vicente, were to collect
them together, their curiosity might be made use of to the triumph of
the faith and the salvation of souls.

The English church has no zeal for souls. At the beginning of the last
century the daughter of a rich Jew, by name Jacob Mendes de Breta, was
at her own instance publicly baptized. The father ran into the church
like a madman, charged the officiating clergyman to desist, and, when he
perceived that this was in vain, cursed his child with the bitterest
imprecations, and prayed to his God that the church might fall in, and
crush all who were concerned in the ceremony. After this he utterly
disowned her:—the law had made no provision for such cases, and the
parish were obliged to support her; which, to their honour, they did in
a manner suitable to her former situation in life. At their petition,
however, a bill was enacted compelling the Jews to provide decently for
their converted children. This much was done upon the emergency of the
case, and nothing more. Not the slightest effort is made for their
conversion, nor the slightest impediment opposed to the public
celebration of ceremonies, which the Gospel has expressly abrogated. The
Jews have nothing to complain of, except that they pay tithes to the
clergy, and that they are liable to the trouble of parish offices—the
law even allowing them to be made churchwardens. Any person may be
excused from serving this office if he chooses to pay a fine amounting
to about ten pieces of eight: it is not long since a parish in London
nominated a Jew for the sake of getting this money; he, however, was
determined to disappoint them by taking the situation;—the profanation
was theirs, not his:—and accordingly the church affairs for the year
were actually managed by this son of the Synagogue.

It may well be supposed that when Bonaparte was in Syria his movements
were anxiously watched by the Jews. There was a great stir among them,
and it is probable that if he had invited them by proclamation, and
promised to give them Palestine, armies would have been raised to take
and keep possession of that Holy Land, to which they look, individually
and collectively, as their destined gathering place. Individually, I
say, because it is taught by many Rabbis, that the children of Israel,
wherever buried, can rise again at the coming of the Messiah, nowhere
except in the Promised Land; and they, therefore, who are interred in
any other part of the world, will have to make their way there through
the caverns of the earth; a long and painful journey, the difficulty and
fatigue of which are equivalent to purgatory. I know not whether this is
believed by the English Rabbis; but that the English Jews attach as
devout a reverence to the very soil of Jerusalem as we do to the Holy
Sepulchre itself, is certain. One of the wealthiest among them, in late
times, made a pilgrimage there; and brought back with him boxes full of
the earth to line his grave. Unhappy people! whose error is the more
inveterate because it is mingled with the noblest feelings, and whose
obstinate hope and heroic perseverance we must condemn while we admire.

No particular dress is enjoined them by law, nor indeed is any such mark
of distinction necessary: they are sufficiently distinguished by a cast
of complexion and features, which, with leave of our neighbours,[16] I
will call a Portugueze look.—Some of the lowest order let their beards
grow, and wear a sort of black tunic with a girdle; the chief ostensible
trade of this class is in old clothes, but they deal also in stolen
goods, and not unfrequently in coining. A race of Hebrew lads who infest
you in the streets with oranges and red slippers, or tempt school-boys
to dip in a bag for gingerbread nuts, are the great agents in uttering
base silver; when it is worn too bare to circulate any longer they buy
it up at a low price, whiten the brass again, and again send it abroad.
You meet Jew pedlars every where, travelling with boxes of haberdashery
at their backs, cuckoo clocks, sealing-wax, quills, weather-glasses,
green spectacles, clumsy figures in plaister of Paris, which you see
over the chimney of an alehouse parlour in the country, or miserable
prints of the king and queen, the four seasons, the cardinal virtues,
the last naval victory, the prodigal son, and such like subjects, even
the Nativity and the Crucifixion; but when they meet with a likely
chapman, they produce others of the most obscene and mischievous kind.
Any thing for money, in contempt of their own law us well as of the law
of the country:—the pork-butchers are commonly Jews. All these low
classes have a shibboleth of their own, as remarkable as their
physiognomy; and in some parts of the city they are so numerous, that
when I strayed into their precincts one day, and saw so many Hebrew
inscriptions in the shop windows, and so many long beards in the
streets, I began to fancy that I had discovered the ten tribes.

Some few of the wealthiest merchants are of this persuasion; you meet
with none among the middle order of tradesmen, except sometimes a
silversmith, or watchmaker; ordinary profits do not content them. Hence
they are great stock-jobbers, and the business of stock-broking is very
much in their hands. One of these Jew brokers was in a coffee-house
during the time of the mutiny in the fleet, when tidings arrived that
the sailors had seized Admiral Colpoys, and had actually hanged him. The
news (which afterwards proved to be false) thunderstruck all present. If
it were true, and so it was believed to be, all hopes of accommodation
were at an end; the mutineers could only be supprest by force, and what
force would be able to suppress them? While they were silent in such
reflections, the Jew was calculating his own loss from the effect it
would produce upon the funds, and he broke the silence by exclaiming, in
Hebrew-English, _My Gott! de stokes!_ articulated with a deep sigh, and
accompanied with a shrug of shoulders, and an elevation of eyebrows, as
emphatic as the exclamation.

England has been called the hell of horses, the purgatory of servants,
and the paradise of women: it may be added that it is the heaven of the
Jews,—alas, they have no other heaven to expect!

[15] This was publicly asserted at the time, but untruly.—TR.

[16] This is not the only instance in which the author discovers a
disposition to sneer at the Portugueze, with the same kind of
illiberality in which the English too frequently indulge themselves
against the Scotch.—TR.



LETTER LXIV.

 _Infidelity.—Its Growth in England, and little Extent.—Pythagoreans.—
 Thomas Tryon.—Ritson.—Pagans.—A Cock sacrificed.—Thomas Taylor._


From Jew to Infidel—an easy transition, after the example of Acosta and
Spinosa.

When the barriers of religion had been broken down by the schism, a way
was opened for every kind of impiety. Infidelity was suspected to exist
at the court of the accursed Elizabeth; it was avowed at her successor's
by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; a man unfortunate in this deadly error, but
otherwise, for his genius and valour and high feelings of honour, worthy
to have lived in a happier age and country. His brother was a religious
poet, famous in his day: had they been Spaniards, the one would have
been a hero, the other a saint; but the good seed fell among thorns, and
the thorns sprung up with it and choked it. During the great Rebellion,
a small party of the leaders were Deists; fanaticism was then the
epidemic; they made no attempt to spread their principles, and were
swept away at the Restoration, which, after it had destroyed rebellion
and fanaticism, struck at the root of liberty and morals. An open
profligacy of manners had shewn itself under the reign of the first
James; it disappeared during the subsequent struggles, when all the
stronger passions and feelings were called into action: but when once
the country felt itself settled in peace, this spirit revived, and the
court of Charles exhibited a shameless indecency, of which Europe had
seen no example since the days of the Roman emperors. Yet, perhaps, the
most shocking blasphemy of this blasphemous age is the canonization of
King Charles the Martyr; for such they style him, in mockery, as it
might seem, of martyrdom, if we did not know the impudence of adulation.
His office, for his festival is regularly celebrated, applies to this
heretical king those texts of Scripture which most pointedly allude to
the sufferings and death of Christ. A poet of that reign even dared to
call him Christ the Second!—It is not true that the prayers to the most
Holy Virgin were ever addressed in the churches to Elizabeth, as
Ribadaneyra has said: but this impiety, not less shocking, and not less
absurd, is continued to this day,—and the breviary which contains it, in
the vulgar tongue, is in every person's hands.

From the time of the Revolution, in 1688, the Deists became bolder, and
ventured to attack Christianity from the press. They did it, indeed,
covertly and with decency. The infidelity of these writers bears no
resemblance to the irreligious profligacy of Charles's courtiers, in
whom disbelief was the effect of a vicious heart. It proceeded in these
from an erring reason; their books were suppressed as soon as the
tendency was discovered, and the authors sometimes punished, so that
they did little mischief. Condorcet has mentioned some of them as the
great philosophers of England; but the French are ridiculously ignorant
of English literature, and the truth is that they have no reputation,
nobody ever thinking either of them or their works. Bolingbroke alone is
remembered for his political life, so mischievous to his own country and
to Europe; his literary fame has died a natural death,—he was equally
worthless as a writer and a man.

Voltaire infected this island as he did the continent—of all authors the
most mischievous and the most detestable. His predecessors had
disbelieved Christianity, but he hated Christ; their writings were
addressed to studious men; he wrote for the crowd, for women and boys,
addressing himself to their vilest and basest passions, corrupting their
morals that he might destroy their faith. Yet notwithstanding the
circulation of his worst works on dirty paper and in worn types by
travelling auctioneers and at country fairs; notwithstanding the atheism
with which the Scotch universities have spawned since the days of Hume;
and notwithstanding the union between infidelity and sedition during the
late war, which ruined the democratic party, it is remarkable how
trifling an effect has been produced. An attempt was made some twenty
years ago to establish a deistical place of worship; it fell to the
ground for want of support.—The Theophilanthropists never extended to
England. A few clerks and prentices will still repeat the jests of
Paine, and the blasphemies of Voltaire; and a few surgeons and
physicians will continue in their miserable physics or metaphysics to
substitute Nature in the place of God; but this is all. Even these, as
they grow older, conform to some of the many modes of worship in the
country, either from conviction, or for interest, or because, whatever
they may think of the importance of religion to themselves, they feel
that it is indispensable for their families. Judaism can be dangerous
nowhere unless where a large proportion of the people are concealed
Jews: but that infidelity, unrestrained as it is in this land of error,
should be able to produce so little evil, is indeed honourable to the
instincts of our nature, and to the truth of a religion, which,
mutilated and corrupted as it is, can still maintain its superiority.

Where every man is allowed to have a faith of his own, you will not
wonder if the most ludicrous opinions should sometimes be started, if
any opinions in so important a matter may be called ludicrous without
impiety. The strangest which I have yet heard is that of an
extraordinary man who had passed great part of his life in Spain. It was
his opinion that there is no God now, but that there would be one by and
by; for the organization of the universe, when it became perfect, would
produce a universal Mind or common Sensorium. A sailor, who published
the History of his Voyages, expresses his abhorrence of a watery grave,
because it would be out of reach of the sun, which else, he thought,
would revivify him in the shape of some plant or animal, such perhaps as
he might have had a sympathetic affection for while he lived.
Pythagoreans in diet have been rather more common than in faith. A
certain Thomas Tryon attempted to form a sect of such about a century
ago; the disciple who wrote his epitaph says that he almost worked his
body up into soul. But, though almost every folly seems to strike root
in England as in a congenial soil, this never could be naturalized. The
pulse diet of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, would hardly become
popular in a country where Beef-eater is a title of honour, where the
soldiers march to battle with a song about roast-beef in their mouths,
instead of a prayer, and where the whole nation personify themselves by
the name of John the Bull.[17] This Tryon published a few books in his
lifetime: his sect, if he ever formed any, died with him—and he is so
nearly forgotten, that, when I heard him spoken of lately, a new book
upon the same principle being the topic of conversation, the rest of the
company were as ignorant of his existence as myself. The new book which
led to this is the work of Ritson, one of the most learned English
antiquarians, but of so unhappy a temper, that it is generally believed
he is deranged. We should think him possessed, from the evidence of this
essay, every page and almost every line of which teems with
blasphemy;—it is full of open and avowed hatred of Religion and of
Nature, and declarations that if there be a God, he must be a Being who
delights in malignity. God have mercy upon this poor wretched man, who
seems to find a heavier punishment in the wickedness of his own heart,
than earthly laws could inflict upon him!

The principle of abstaining from animal food is not in itself either
culpable or ridiculous, if decently discussed. _We_ know that in many
cases where indulgence is not sinful, abstinence is meritorious. There
is therefore nothing irreligious in the opinion, and certainly it is
favourable in some of its consequences to morality. But ultimately it
resolves itself into the political question, Whether the greater
population can be maintained upon animal or vegetable diet? It is to be
wished the Pythagoreans in England were numerous and philosophical
enough to carry on a series of experiments upon this subject, and upon
the physical effects of their system.

We who acknowledge fasting to be a duty at stated times, and an act of
devotion at others, and who have the example of the more rigid monastic
orders, shall think these people less absurd than their own countrymen
think them, and perhaps less than they really are, as the principles of
religion have nothing to do with their speculations. But what will you
say when I tell you, that there are also Pagans in the country, actual
worshippers of Jupiter and Juno, who believe in Orpheus instead of
Christ, Homer and Hesiod instead of the prophets, Plato and Plotinus
instead of the apostles? There is a story of an Englishman at Rome who
pulled off his hat to a statue of Jupiter, saying, "I beg, sir, if ever
you get into power again, you will remember that I paid my respects to
you in your adversity." Those whom I now speak of are more serious in
their faith. I have heard of one who sacrificed a cock to Esculapius, at
midnight, and upon a high place, in the midst of a large city.

The great apostle of the Heathen gods is one Thomas Taylor. He openly
avows his belief, saying, in a page prefixed to one of his works, which
he dedicates to the Sacred Majesty of Truth,—"Mr Thomas Taylor, the
Platonic philosopher, and the modern Plethon, consonant to that
philosophy, professes polytheism." For many years he has been labouring
indefatigably to propagate this faith by the most unexceptionable means,
that of translating the Heathen philosophers, and elucidating their most
mysterious parts. His doctrines have made little or no progress, not
because they are too nonsensical, for in these cases the more nonsense
the better, but because they are too obscure, and require too much
attention to be understood, if, indeed, they be not altogether
unintelligible. His fame, however, has reached the Continent. Early in
the French Revolution the Marquis Valedi came over to visit him: he
called at his house, dressed in white like an aspirant; fell at his feet
to worship the divine restorer of the Platonic philosophy; rose up to
put a bank note of twenty pounds in his hand as an offering, and
insisted upon being permitted to live in the house with him, that he
might enjoy every possible opportunity of profiting by his lessons. In
vain did the philosopher represent the want of room in his house, his
method of living, the inconvenience to himself and to his pupil. Nothing
would satisfy the marquis,—if there was no other room, he would have a
bed put up in the study where they were conversing:—away he went to
order it, and was immediately domesticated.—After some little time it
was discovered that he was disposed to worship the wife instead of the
husband, and here ended the Platonism. They parted, however, in
friendship. Valedi had left France to escape from a young wife, because,
he said, she had no soul: he went back to take a part in the Revolution.
Taylor saw him in the diligence as he was setting off; he was in
complete regimentals, with a fierce cocked hat,—and his last words were,
"I came here Diogenes, and I return Alexander." His fate was like that
of many wiser and better men; he perished by the guillotine, being one
of the twenty-two who suffered with Brissot.

Transmigration forms a part of this Pythagorean Platonist's creed. He
says of Julian the Apostate, "The greatness of his soul is so visible in
his writings, that we may safely believe what he asserted of himself,
that he had formerly been Alexander the Great."

[17] _Juan el Toro._ It is needless to comment upon this passage; there
may, however, be some readers who do not know that Beef-eater is a
corruption of _Buffetier_, _Buffet_ is a cup-board—or side-board
displayed. _Beau-fait._—TR.



LETTER LXV.

 _Eagerness of the English to be at war with Spain._


It is amusing enough to hear these people talk of the pride of the
Spaniards, when they themselves are as proud as the Portugueze. The
Dons, as they call us, are, in their conception, very haughty, jealous
to excess, and terribly revengeful, but honourable and right rich;
therefore they like to deal with us in time of peace, and the slightest
rumour of war makes every sailor in the service think he is infallibly
about to make his fortune. So whenever the government begin by going to
war with France, it is calculated upon that war with Spain will follow.
They reserve it as a sweetener for the nation; when the people begin to
be weary of their burthens, and to suspect that no good can come of a
contest carried on without vigour, without system, and in fact without
object or means, a declaration against Spain puts them in good humour,
the seamen come from their hiding-places, and pirates swarm out from
every sea-port.

There is certainly nothing like national enmity between England and
Spain, each nation is too honourable not to do justice to the character
of the other. They speak of our weakness with a contemptuous pride,
which sometimes excites a Spaniard's shame, but more frequently his
indignation; but in their sober and settled judgment they avow that it
is the interest of England to see us strengthened rather than
humiliated, and that their wishes accord with their true policy. They
say, and say truly, that Spain and Portugal, united and in health, would
form an excellent counterpoise to the power of France; that our
peninsula seems made by Nature to be a powerful empire, and that it
would be to the advantage of Europe that it should again become so. Yet
upon the slightest pretext for quarrelling with us all this would be
forgotten; the prospect of plunder would intoxicate the people, the
government would do any thing to gratify the sailors, and the
buccaneering would begin again. They forget that in proportion as they
weaken Spain they derange still more the balance of power: they forget
that by cutting off the communication between the two countries, they
compel us to use our own manufactures instead of theirs, thus teaching
us to become independent of them, and doing for us what we ought to do
for ourselves; and they forget also that war forces us to become again a
military nation, and disciplines a navy, which only wants discipline to
contend once more for the sovereignty of the seas.

After all, if a balance were struck, England would find little reason
for triumph. Our gunboats have injured the commerce of England more than
the navy of England can hurt the trade of Spain. A galleon in the course
of a seven years' war is but a poor compensation for Gibraltar seven
years blockaded, and the straights lined with armed vessels, like a
defile, which came out like greyhounds upon every merchant ship, and
insulted and endangered their three-deckers.

But never were a people so easily duped. They believe one and all that
their last war with us was exceedingly glorious, because, by the
cowardice of some of our captains and the insubordination of others, our
fleet suffered that unfortunate defeat off Cape St Vincent. They do not
remember how we beat their famous Nelson from Teneriffe, where he left a
limb behind him as a relic to show that he had been there. They forget
their disgraceful repulse at Ferrol, and their still more disgraceful
attempt upon Cadiz, when, in spite of the governor's admirable letter,
which stated the situation of the town, and in spite of the destructive
consequences of victory to themselves, if they had been victorious,
their troops were actually embarked in the boats for the purpose of
inflicting the curse of war upon a people then suffering pestilence and
famine. England ought to regard it as the happiest event of the war that
the commander recalled his orders in time, either for shame or humanity,
or more truly under the impulse of a merciful Providence; for had the
disease once found way into that fleet, powerful as it was, all
discipline would have been at an end; no port could have refused
admittance to such an armament, and the pestilence would have been
spread from one extremity of the Mediterranean to the other, and to
England herself at last.

They wonder that no expedition was sent against our American
possessions; not in the least doubting that Mexico and Peru would have
fallen into their hands—as if we had not sent back their Drake and their
Raleigh with shame, and as if the age of their Raleighs and Drakes was
not over! After the overthrow of Dumouriez and his party in France,
Miranda came over to England, hoping to be employed in some such wise
project against his native country. As quacks of every kind, political
as well as physical, flourish in this island, it is surprising that his
tales were not listened to as well as those of the French emigrants; for
the ignorance of this nation with respect to the history and present
state of our colonies is profound. They do not know that after having
destroyed the bloody and execrable idolatry of the American Indians, we
imparted to them our arts, our language, and our religion; and that the
spiritual conquests of our missionaries were not less rapid, nor less
extraordinary, than the victories of Cortes and Pizarro. In the
sixteenth century, the language, history, and customs of Mexico and Peru
were elucidated in books printed in the country, and now, in the
nineteenth, nothing issues from the press in Jamaica and the other
English islands, except a few miserable newspapers; every number of
which contains something disgraceful to the English character and to
human nature. I have seen some of these precious publications. They
abound with notices which show with what propriety these islanders cry
out against the cruelty of the Spanish conquerors. Pompey, or Oroonoko,
or Quashee, (for these heretics never baptise their slaves!) is
advertised as a run-away: he is to be known by the brand of a hot iron
upon his breast or forehead, the scars of the whip, and perhaps the mark
of his fetters;—and it is sometimes added that he is supposed to be
harboured by his wife—harboured by his wife! This phrase alone is
sufficient for national infamy.

It amuses me to hear these people talk of their West Indian possessions.
England has as great an idea of her own importance and power, as a
one-eyed man has of the magnitude of his nose, when the candle is on his
blind side.



LETTER LXVI.

 _Excursion to Greenwich.—Watermen.—Patent Shot Tower.—Albion
 Mills.—Essex Marshes._


The English say that their palaces are like hospitals, and their
hospitals like palaces; and the exterior of St James's and of Greenwich
justifies the saying. I have seen this magnificent asylum for old
seamen, which is so justly the boast of the nation.

As it was my wish to see the whole course of the river through the
metropolis, I breakfasted at the west end of the town with W. who had
promised to accompany me, and we took boat at Westminster bridge. From
no part of the river are so many fine objects to be seen as from this.
On one side are the groves and palace of the Primate at Lambeth; on the
other, the residence of the Speaker, which is now repairing in
collegiate style; the abbey; and Westminster-Hall, the great court of
justice, whose prodigious size and greater antiquity render it an object
not less venerable and impressive than the minster. The boats which ply
upon the Thames are admirably constructed; long, light, and sharp, they
almost fly through the water. They are numbered and registered; the
watermen wear a badge, and have a particular costume—any deviation from
the ordinary English dress is an improvement;—the fares, like those of
the hackney coachmen, are regulated by law, and it is the cheapest as
well as the pleasantest mode of conveyance. On Sundays they are
forbidden to ply[18]—one of the stupid and superstitious interdictions
this of Calvinism—for Sunday is the very day on which they would find
the most employ. They sit idly upon the bench before the alehouse-door
by the water-side, cursing the regulation which keeps them idle; and the
unlucky person whose way lies along the river must toil through dust and
heat, a double distance perhaps, because forsooth no manner of work is
to be done upon the sabbath day.

The banks of the river are not made ornamental to the city: a few
streets come down to it at right angles, but none are built parallel
with the water. The first remarkable object below the bridge is a tower
constructed for making shot by a new process: the history of its
invention is curious. About five-and-twenty years ago a Mr Watts was
engaged in this trade: his wife dreamt that she saw him making shot in a
new manner, and related her dream to him: he thought it worth some
attention, made the experiment, and obtained a patent for the invention,
which he afterwards sold for ten thousand pounds. A range of buildings
called the Adelphi, which are the handsomest in London, because they are
faced with a composition having the appearance of stone,—Somerset House,
a magnificent public building, of which the work goes on so slowly, that
one half the edifice will in the natural course of decay become a ruin
before the other is finished,—and the gardens of the Temple, one of the
law-colleges or inns of court as they are called, give some interest to
this part of the river: the shores are every where choaked with barges,
of which a great number are laden with earth-coal.

A fine sweep of steps ascends from the river to Blackfriars—the second
of the three bridges, close by which the common sewers discharge
themselves, and blacken the water round about. There is a strong echo
under this bridge. On the Southwark side are the ruins of a large
building called the Albion Mills, which was erected for the purpose of
securing to the metropolis a certain supply of flour. A great capital
was vested in this useful undertaking; but perhaps in no country are
clamours so easily raised by the interested, and so greedily believed by
the ignorant, as in England. The very axioms of commercial policy are
not understood by      people, and it required all the firmness and all
the influence of Mr Pitt, during the scarcity, to save the country from
the inevitable miseries which a maximum would have occasioned. The
millers themselves, best aware of what roguery might be practised in
their own trade, spread abroad reports that the flour was adulterated
with all sorts of base mixtures. The Albion Mills took fire; whether by
accident or not is doubtful: but the mob, who on all such occasions
bestir themselves to extinguish a fire with that ready and disinterested
activity which characterizes the English, stood by now as willing
spectators of the conflagration; and before the engines had ceased to
play upon the smoking ruins, ballads of rejoicing were printed and sung
upon the spot. The fire broke out during the night, a strong breeze was
blowing from the east, and the parched corn fell in a black shower above
a league distant: even fragments of wood still burning, fell above
Westminster-bridge. There is a floating mill upon the river thus
constructed: a gun-boat is moored head and stern, with a house built on
it, and a wheel on each side which works with the tide.

The passage of the third bridge is considered as an achievement of some
little risque: our boat shot through it like an arrow. Close to the
bridge are the great water-works by which the city is supplied. When it
is considered that all the filth of this prodigious metropolis is
emptied into the river, it is perfectly astonishing that any people
should consent to drink it. One week's expenses of the late war would
have built an aqueduct from the Surry hills, and an hundred fountains to
have distributed its stores. The Thames water ferments and purifies
itself: in its state of fermentation it is inflammable. St Paul's and
the Monument are the main objects in this reach. Below the bridges is
the Tower of London, and a forest of shipping: here indeed we saw how
truly this city may be called the modern Tyre. Wharfs and warehouses
extend in this direction, far beyond any part of the eastern city which
I had explored. New docks upon a great scale are nearly completed in a
marsh, called the Isle of Dogs, so named, it is said, because the body
of a man who had been murdered, and buried there, was discovered by the
fidelity of a dog.[19]

At length we came in sight of green fields and trees. The marshes of
Essex, from whence London is so often covered with fogs, were on one
side; the Kentish hills, not far distant, on the other; the famous
observatory of Greenwich, from whence the English calculate their
longitude; and the hospital, a truly noble building, worthy of the
nation which has erected it, and of the purpose to which it is
consecrated. The palace of the Tudors stood here.—Charles II. began to
rebuild it, and William appropriated it to its present use. About 2000
disabled seamen are supported here, and boys are educated for the navy.
We saw the refectory and the church: but, as in a Relicario, the place
excited too much feeling to obtain much attention: we were in the asylum
of those sailors, whose skill and courage are unrivalled, a race of men
without fear, and as generous as they are brave. What volumes might be
compiled from the tales which these old chroniclers could tell! There is
not a shore in the habitable world but has been visited by some or other
of these men, nor a hardship incident to human nature which some of them
have not sustained.

We walked into the Park, and up the hill, where the rabble of London
assemble on Easter Monday, and roll down its green side, men and women
promiscuously. From hence we had a noble prospect of the river, the
distant shipping, and the pestilential marshes of the opposite coast. A
story is told of an old native of these marshes, who carried on a
thriving trade in wives. He chose them from the hill-country, and within
a few years married and buried eight, all of whom he brought home upon
one horse.

[18] A certain number of watermen are permitted to ply on Sundays; they
pay an annual acknowledgment on that account to the Watermen's Company!
Religion and profit are thus combined!—TR.

[19] The king's hounds were kept there when there was a royal palace at
Greenwich.—TR.



LETTER LXVII.

 _Spanish Gravity the Jest of the English.—Sunday Evening
 described.—Society for the Suppression of Vice.—Want of
 Holidays.—Bull-Baiting.—Boxing._


One of the great philosophers here has advanced a theory that the
nervous and electric fluids are the same, both being condensed light. If
this be true, sunshine is the food of the brain; and it is thus
explained why the southern nations are so much more spiritual than the
English, and why they in their turn rank higher in the scale of
intellect than their northern neighbours.

Spanish gravity is the jest of this people. Whenever they introduce a
Spaniard upon the stage, it is to ridicule him for his pride, his
jealousy, and his mustachios. According to their notions, all our women
who are not locked up in convents, are locked up at home; guarded by
duennas as vigilant as dragons, and husbands, every one of whom is as
fierce as the Grand Turk. They believe, also, that a Spaniard thinks it
beneath his dignity ever to laugh, except when he is reading Don
Quixote; then, indeed, his muscles are permitted to relax.

I am writing upon Sunday evening, at the hour when in our cities the
people are at the theatre or the bull-fight; when in every street and
village the young are dancing with their castanets, and at every door
you hear the viola. What is the scene in England at this time? All
public amusements are prohibited by the dæmon of Calvinism; and for
private ones,—half the people seriously believe that were they to touch
a card on a Sunday, they should immediately find the devil under the
table, who is said to have actually appeared upon such an occasion to an
old lady at Bath. The Savoyard, who goes about with his barrel-organ,
dares not grind even a psalm-tune upon the sabbath. The old woman who
sells apples at the corner of the street has been sent to prison for
profanation of the Lord's day, by the Society for the Suppression of
Vice; the pastry-cook, indeed, is permitted to keep his shop-window half
open, because some of the society themselves are fond of iced creams.
Yonder goes a crowd to the Tabernacle, as dismally as if they were going
to a funeral; the greater number are women;—enquire for their husbands
at the alehouse, and you will find them besotting themselves there,
because all amusements are prohibited as well as all labour, and they
cannot lie down like dogs, and sleep. Ascend a step higher in
society,—the children are yawning, and the parents agree that the clock
must be too slow, that they may accelerate supper and bed-time. In the
highest ranks, indeed, there is little or no distinction of days, except
that there is neither theatre nor opera for them, and some among them
scruple at cards. Attempts have even been made to shut up the public
ovens on this day, and convert the sabbath into a fast for the poor. And
these are the people who ridicule Spanish gravity, and think they have
reformed religion, because they have divested it of all that is
cheerful, all that is beautiful, and all that is inviting.

Our peasantry have a never-failing source of amusement in the dance and
the viola. Here the poor never dance; indeed, illegal dancing is a
punishable crime, and if they do not dance illegally they cannot dance
at all. This requires some explanation. Partly from custom, still more
from the nature of the climate, there is no dancing here in the open
air; the houses of the poor are too small for this diversion; they must
therefore meet at some public house where there is a room large enough.
The rich do this also; but dancing at a peso-duro a-head, and dancing at
two reales, are very different things—the one is called a ball, the
other a sixpenny hop. The rich may take care of their own morals—the
police must look after the poor. These public dancing-rooms are
excellent preparatory schools for the brothel, and the magistrates very
properly endeavour to suppress them,—or should endeavour,—for the recent
institution of a society for the suppression of vice, seems to imply
that the laws are not executed without such assistance. Here I must
remark, that if there be one thing by which the English are peculiarly
distinguished from all other people in the world, it is by their passion
for exercising authority and enacting laws. When half a score or a dozen
men combine for any common purpose, whether to establish an
insurance-office, to cut a canal, or even to set spies upon apple-women
on a Sunday, they embody themselves into a company, choose out a
representative committee and a president, and issue their resolutions
with all the forms of a legislative body. It will be well if the slate
does not one day feel the inconvenience of this taste for legislation.

Music is as little the amusement of the people as dancing. Never was a
nation so unmusical. Perhaps the want of leisure may be the cause. They
reproach the Catholic religion with the number of its holidays, never
considering how the want of holidays breaks down and brutalizes the
labouring class, and that where they occur seldom they are uniformly
abused. Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, the only seasons of festival
in England, are always devoted by the artificers and the peasantry to
riot and intoxication.

You may well conceive of what character the popular amusements needs
must be, in a country where there is nothing to soften the manners or
ameliorate the condition of the poor. The practice of bull-baiting is
not merely permitted, it is even enjoined by the municipal law in some
places. Attempts have twice been made in the legislature to suppress
this barbarous custom: they were baffled and ridiculed, and some of the
most distinguished members were absurd enough, and hard-hearted enough,
to assert, that if such sports were abolished, there would be an end of
the national courage. Would to Heaven that this were true! that English
courage had no better foundation than brutal ferocious cruelty! We
should no longer be insulted in our ports, and our ships might defy
their buccaneering cruisers. Do not suppose that this bull-baiting has
any the smallest resemblance to our bull-feasts.—Even these I should
agree with the Conde de Norana, and with the Church, in condemning as
wicked and inhuman; but there is a splendour in the costume, a gaiety in
the spectacle, a skill and a courage displayed in the action, which
afford some apology for our countrymen, whereas this English sport is
even more cowardly than the bull-fights of the Portugueze.[20] The men
are exposed to no danger whatever; they fasten the animal to a ring, and
the amusement is to see him toss the dogs, and the dogs lacerate his
nostrils, till they are weary of torturing him, and then he is led to
the slaughter-house to be butchered after their clumsy and cruel method.
The bear and the badger are baited with the same barbarity; and if the
rabble can get nothing else, they will divert themselves by worrying
cats to death.

But the great delight of the English is in boxing, or pugilism, as it is
more scientifically denominated. This practice might easily be
suppressed; it is against the laws; the magistrates may interfere if
they please; and its frequency therefore, under such circumstances, is
an irrefragable proof of national barbarity. Cudgel-playing,
quarter-staff, broad-sword, all of which, brutal as such gladiatorial
exhibitions are, might have given to the soldiers a serviceable
dexterity, have yielded to this more brutal sport, if that may be called
sport which sometimes proves fatal. When a match is made between two
prize-fighters, the tidings are immediately communicated to the public
in the newspapers; and paragraphs occasionally appear, saying the rival
are in training, what exercise they take, and what diet, for some of
them feed upon raw beef as a preparative.—Meantime, the amateurs and the
gamblers choose their party, and the state of the betts appears also in
the public newspapers from time to time: not unfrequently the whole is a
concerted scheme, that a few rogues may cheat a great many fools.—When
the combat at length takes place, as regular a report is prepared for
the newspapers as if it were a national victory—the particulars are
recorded with a minuteness at once ridiculous and disgraceful; for every
movement has its technical or slang name, and the unprecedented science
of the successful combatant becomes the theme of general admiration.

Yet, notwithstanding all the attention which these people bestow upon
this savage art, for which they have public schools, they are outdone by
savages. When one of the English squadrons of discovery was at
Tongataboo, several of the natives boxed with the sailors for love, as
the phrase is, and in every instance the savage was victorious.

[20] The horns of the bull are tipt in Portugal, to preserve the horse.
In Spain, where no such precaution is taken, it is not unusual to see
the horse's entrails trailing along the ground.—TR.



LETTER LXVIII.

 _The Abbé Barruel.—Journey of two Englishmen to Avignon to join a
 Society of Prophets.—Extracts from their prophetical Books._


I had prepared for you an account of a pseudo-prophet who excited much
attention in London here at the beginning of the last war, when, almost
by accident, I was made acquainted with some singular circumstances
which are in some manner connected with him, and which therefore should
previously be told. These circumstances are as authentic as they are
extraordinary, and supply a curious fact for the history of the French
Revolution.

We were talking one evening of the Abbé Barruel's proofs of a conspiracy
against the governments, religion, and morality of Christendom. A friend
of J.'s said, there was about as much truth in it as in one of Madame
Scudery's romances; the characters introduced were real persons, to whom
false motives and manners were imputed; a little of what was ascribed to
them had really occurred, but the whole plot, colouring, and costume of
the book, were fictitious. It was a work, said he, written to serve the
purposes of a party, with the same spirit and the same intent as those
which in old times led to such absurd and monstrous calumnies against
the Jews; and, had its intent succeeded, there would have been a
political St Bartholomew's day in England. True it was that a society
had existed, whose object was to change or to influence the governments
of Europe; it was well organized and widely extended, but enthusiasm,
not infidelity, was the means which they employed.

In proof of this, he stated the sum of what I shall relate more at
length from the book to which he referred as his authority, and which I
obtained from him the next morning. Its title is this,—_A revealed
Knowledge of some Things that will speedily be fulfilled in the World,
communicated to a Number of Christians brought together at Avignon, by
the Power of the Spirit of God from all Nations; now published by his
Divine Command, for the Good of all Men, by John Wright his Servant, and
one of the Brethren. London, printed in the Year of Christ 1794_. It is
one of those innumerable pamphlets, which, being published by inferior
booksellers, and circulating among sectarians and fanatics, never rise
into the hands of those who are called the public, and escape the notice
of all the literary journals. They who peruse them do it with a zeal
which may truly be called consuming; they are worn out like a
schoolboy's grammar; the form in which they are sent abroad, without
covers to protect them, hastens their destruction, and in a few years
they disappear for ever.

John Wright, the author of this narrative, was a working carpenter of
Leeds, in Yorkshire; a man of strong devotional feelings, who seems,
like the first Quakers, to have hungered and thirsted after religious
truth in a land where there was none to impart it. Some travelling
Swedenborgian preachers having heated his imagination, he was desirous
of removing to London, to find out the New Jerusalem Church. It was no
easy thing for a labouring man with a large family to remove to such a
distance: however, by working over hours, he saved money enough to
effect it. The New Jerusalem Church did not satisfy him; every thing was
too definite and formal, too bodily and gross for a mind of his
complexion. But it so happened that at this place of worship he entered
into talk with a converted Jew, who, when he learnt his state of mind,
and that he expected the restoration of the Jews would shortly be
accomplished, said to him, I will tell you of a man who is just like
yourself;—his name is William Bryan, and he lives in such a place.

Bryan was a journeyman copper-plate-printer. J.'s friend saw him once at
the house of one of the Brotherists; he says that before he saw him he
had heard of his resemblance to the pictures of our Lord, but that it
was so striking as truly to astonish him. These features, his full clear
and gentle eye, the beauty of his complexion, which would have been
remarkable even in a girl, and the voice, in which words flowed from him
with such unaffected and natural eloquence, as to remind the hearer of
the old metaphorical descriptions of oratory, united to produce such an
effect upon his believers as you may conceive, considering that they
were credulous, and he himself undoubtedly sincere. Wright had now found
a man after his own heart. They were both Quietists, whom, for want of a
guide, their own good feelings led astray, and their experiences, he
says, operated with each other, as face answers face in a glass.

Bryan told him of a society of prophets at Avignon, assembled there from
all parts of the world. This was in the autumn of 1788. In the January
of the ensuing year, Wright mistook strong inclination for inspiration,
and thought the Spirit directed him to join them. The same spirit very
naturally sent him to communicate this to Bryan, whom he found possessed
with the same impression. Neither of them had money to leave with their
families, or to support themselves upon the journey, and neither of them
understood a word of French. Both were determined to go—Bryan that
night, Wright the following morning—such being their implicit obedience
to the impulse within them, that the one would not wait, nor the other
hasten. Before his departure Bryan called upon a friend, who said to
him, "William, I have had it in my mind to ask if thou wert not
sometimes in want of money?" He acknowledged that it was this want which
now brought him there; and the friend gave him four guineas. If this
same friend was the person who first told him of the society at Avignon,
as may reasonably be suspected, the whole collusion will be clear. One
guinea he left with his wife, who was at that time in child-bed, gave
half-a-guinea to Wright to carry him to Dover, and set off.

Bryan's wife, not being in a state of belief, was greatly offended with
Wright, thinking that if it had not been for him her husband would not
have left her. His own wife was in a happier temper of mind, and
encouraged him to go. She had a son by a former husband who was some
little support to her, and who acquiesced in the necessity of this
journey. He seems indeed to have communicated something of his own
fervour to all about him. A young man with whom he was intimate, bought
him several things for his journey, and gave him a guinea; this same
person befriended his family during his absence. At three in the morning
he rose to depart: his son-in-law prepared breakfast, and they made the
watchman who had called him partake of it, for it was severely cold. "I
then," says Wright, "turned to my children, who were all fast asleep,
and kissed them, and interceded with the great and merciful God,
relating to him their situation, in which, for his sake, they were going
to be left without any outward dependence;—and at that time some of them
were lying on a bed of shavings that I used to bring from my shop; at
the same time imploring him that he would be pleased to bless them, and
if one friend failed, another might be raised up, as I did not know
whether I ever should see them any more; for, although our first journey
was to Avignon, we did not know it would end there."

He then went to Bryan's wife, whom his own was nursing in child-bed. The
poor woman's resentment had now given way, the quiet self-devotion of
her husband and his friend had almost persuaded her to believe also; she
burst into tears when she saw him, and saluted him, as he says, in the
fear and love of God, in which she bade him remember her to her husband.
Wright then went to the coach. Soon after they left London it began to
rain and snow, and he was on the outside. He was of a sickly habit,
always liable to take cold, and had at this time a bad cough. A doubt
came upon him, that if the Lord had sent him he would certainly have
caused it to be fine weather. Besides this, he began to fear that Bryan
would already have crost the channel, in which case, when he got to
Dover, he should have no money to pay his passage. Was it not better
therefore to turn back? But the testimony of God's power in his heart,
he says, was greater than all these thoughts.

The wind had been contrary, and detained Bryan. They crossed over to
Calais, took some food at an inn there, and got their money changed,
enquired the names of bread, wine, and sleeping, in the language of the
country, and which way they were to go, and then set off on their
journey. They travelled on foot to Paris. Wright's feet were sorely
blistered; but there was no stopping, for his "mind was bound in the
spirit to travel on." They carried their burthen by turns when both were
able, but it generally fell upon Bryan as the stronger man. Change of
climate, however, aided probably by the faith which was in him, removed
Wright's cough. Their funds just lasted to Paris; here Bryan had an
acquaintance, to whose house they went. This man had received a letter
to say who were coming, and that they were bad men, Wright in
particular, whom it advised him to send back. As you may suppose, he was
soon fully satisfied with them—he entertained them three days, and then
dismissed them, giving them five _louis d'ors_ to bear them on. The
whole journal of their way is interesting: it relates instances of that
subsiding of overwrought feelings which bodily exhaustion produces, and
which enthusiasts call desertion; of natural thoughts and fears
recurring, remembrances of home, and depression which sometimes
occasioned self-suspicion and half-repentance:—with these symptoms the
church is well acquainted, as common to the deluded, and to those who
are in truth under the influence of divine inspiration, and they prove
the sincerity of this narrative.

At length they came in sight of Avignon. They washed some linen in the
river, sat down under the bushes till it was dry, then put it on; and,
having thus made their appearance as decent as they could, proceeded to
the house of the prophets, to which, as it appears, they had brought
with them a sufficient direction. The door was opened by one of the
brethren, and by a person who could speak English, and who had arrived
there a day or two before from another part of the world. After they had
washed and shaved, they were taken across the street to another house,
and shown into a large room, where there was a table spread, nearly the
whole length; they were told that table was provided by the Lord, and
when they wanted any thing to eat or to drink they were to go there, and
they would find a servant ready to wait upon them. The brethren also
provided them with clothes and whatever else they needed, and with money
to give to the poor, saying they had orders from the Lord to do so. In a
short time their Paris friend arrived, and was admitted a member of the
society before them, that he might be their interpreter. I wish the form
of initiation had been given. They met every evening to commemorate the
death of our Lord by eating bread and drinking wine. Very often, says
Wright, when we have been sitting together, the furniture in the room
has been shaken as though it were all coming to pieces; and upon
enquiring what was the cause, we were told that it announced the
presence of angels; and when these were not heard, the brethren were
always afraid that something was amiss, and so enquired at the Word of
the Lord.

You will easily suppose that they had orders to keep the society secret
till the appointed time. I much wish that the book had stated how their
answers from the Lord were received, but on this it is silent. The drift
and charter of the society are, however, sufficiently manifested by the
Extracts which Wright has published from their Journals, and of which I
here subjoin enough to satisfy you:

"You will soon see the pride of the Mahometan in the field; several
sovereigns will unite to lay it low. It is then that the great light
will appear. These perfidious enemies of the name of God will keep
themselves up for a time in their obstinacy, and in the mean time will
grow up he who shall destroy them. Before the end of this year they will
begin to show their fierceness, and you will hear of extraordinary
things and memorable feats. You will hear that the world is filled with
trouble and dissension; father, son, relations, friends, all will be in
motion; and it is in this year (1789) that all will have its beginning.

"Remember that the face of the world will be changed, and you shall see
it restored to its first state. The thrones shall be overturned, the
earth shall be furrowed and change its aspect. They who shall be alive
at that time will envy the fate of the dead.

"The world will very soon be filled with trouble. Every where people
will experience misfortunes. I announce it to you before-hand. The
shepherd will forsake his flock; the sheep will be dispersed. He will
oppress another land, and the nations will rise up in arms.

"You will learn very soon that a part of the world is in confusion; that
the chiefs of nations are armed one against another. The earth will be
overflowed with blood. You will hear of the death of several sovereigns;
they give themselves up to luxury, they live in pleasures, but at last
one of them will fall and make an unhappy end.

"All the events of this century have been foreseen, and no century has
been distinguished by so many prodigies, but the ensuing will be filled
with much greater still.

"The fire is kindled, the moment is come, the Mahometan is going to
fall. Asia and Africa are staggering; fear pursues them, and they have a
glimpse of the fate that awaits them.

"The cross of Jesus Christ shall be set up and triumph in those vast
countries where it has been so long despised. Then Palestine will become
again the most fortunate country on the earth; it shall be the centre of
that faith of which it was the cradle, and from thence faith will spread
itself all over the earth. All the people will embrace it. The world
will become again what it was in the beginning. The enlightened Jews
will embrace the Catholic faith. All people will acknowledge God, the
only true God. They will be guided by one only Pastor, and governed by
one sole Master.

"The second Zion has contributed the most to misguide the spirits of
men. She has introduced new Gentiles still more monstrous than those who
have reigned upon the earth. She only wants the statues of the Gods to
resemble the ancient times. Yea, they have been replaced by these carnal
divinities to which they render a sacrilegious adoration, and lavish an
incense to them which they refuse to God.

"The end of this century will be a series of calamities for the people.
Very few men are struck with the rapid decline of the present age. All
the nations will be enlightened to see their dangerous errors. They will
acknowledge how much they have been deceived by the masters who have
instructed them, and they will be desolated at the thoughts of having
lost so precious a treasure, for having believed such rascals. But at
the marked time how many errors will they not abjure, when our children
every where, in the name of God, shall make their impious and monstrous
errors disappear!—And thou, Crescent, who so much at this day applaudest
thyself, the lustre with which thou shinest is soon to be eclipsed;—thy
unjust conquests have long enough spun out the time of thy empire, and
thy power from one pole to another is far enough extended. Thou dost not
suspect that thy ruin is so near, and thou dost not know him who is
growing up to operate it.

"Here is the time in which God will break the laws made by the children
of the earth. Here is the time wherein he will reprove the science of
men, and here is the time of his justice. This is the time that we must
believe all those who announce the new reign of the Lord, for his spirit
is with them.

"The ages have not now long to linger for the accomplishment of the
promises of the Eternal.—The Eternal calls the times which walk in the
shadows and days of darkness, without light and without strength, to
come and change the face of the world, and commence his new reign. This
is the time of the new Heavens and the new Earth.

"The Eternal has spoken, I shall simplify all things for the happiness
of my elect. The moment is at hand when the confusion of languages shall
no more be an obstacle to the knowledge of the truth.

"When the impious and his superb eagle in his fury will dare to declare
war against the God of Heaven, every thing will give way immediately to
his pride. He will dare to make victims for himself among the saints
whom Heaven has chosen; he will dare to profane their asylums, to
appropriate to himself the gifts of the Eternal by the blackest of
crimes, and by his success strengthening his pride he will believe
himself master of the world. Then—then—Heaven will stop him: a feeble
child will subdue his valour, and his fall will testify that in the
sight of the Eternal there is no other power but the power of his arm.

"Already the measure is filled; already the times are accomplished, and
the reign of the Word is at hand. Terror will precede to enlighten the
blind who go astray, to humble the obstinate high-minded men, and to
punish the impious."

These are no common prophecies. Honest fanaticism has had no share in
manufacturing them. Vague as the language necessarily is, there is an
end and aim in it not to be mistaken; and it is almost startling to
observe how much of what was designed has taken place, and how much may
still be applied to these immediate times.

Among these communications "For the Benefit and Instruction of all
Mankind," are others which are addressed to Wright and Bryan, and to
those who, like them, were the unsuspecting tools of the society. I copy
them with their cyphers and forms.

 _Question._
 February 9, 1789.

H. W. We supplicate thee to give us thy orders about the two Englishmen
B. and W. who arrived here on Thursday the 19th instant.

 _Answer._

O thou who walkest before them to show them the way, Son of the Voice,
tell them that very soon the instruction will grow in their souls; they
will believe it and love it. Then, Son of the Voice, I shall let thee
know what Heaven ordains about their fate.

 _Question._
 March 18, 1789.
 By 2. l. 9.

H. W. Let me know the moment in which B. and W. should be consecrated.

 _Answer._

Son of the Voice, fidelity and happiness will in the first instance be
the fruit of their union, the second will fill them with love and zeal.
The moment hastens that is to call them near to us and to you.

Some things seem to have been inserted in their journal in condescension
to the weaker brethren, who required to be amused. Such as the following
instances:—

In the month of June, 1789, we received a letter from the Union at Rome,
which informed us that the weather was as cold there as it is in England
in the month of January, and the Archangel Raphael asked the brethren
and sisters if the cold made them uneasy, and said, Have a little
patience, and the weather will be warm enough.

"The 17th of June, 1789, we received a letter from the Union at Rome, in
which they informed us of a sister, the daughter of a Turk, whom Brother
Brimmore baptized at Silesia, in the dominions of the king of Prussia,
between ten and fifteen years ago; after having lived some time in the
enjoyment of the Christian faith, she was suddenly taken by her father,
and carried to Alexandria in Egypt,[21] which is in the dominions of the
Turk, where she lived with her father in much sorrow and trouble. After
her father was dead, she was ordered by the Archangel Raphael to dress
herself in a soldier's dress, and fly into a Christian country; which
she did, and got aboard a Spanish ship, and from this date has been
between two and three months at sea."

But though the society occasionally accommodated itself to the capacity
of the weaker brethren, its oracles were more frequently delivered to
correct troublesome credulity, or repress more troublesome doubts.

 _Question._
 April 12, 1789.

H. W. The three knocks which l. 4. 7. heard in the night, was it any
thing supernatural?

 _Answer._
 To 2. l. 9.

Ask no more questions, if thou hast none to make of more importance.

 _Question._
 April 14, 1789.

H. W. If it please thee, l. 4. 7. would be glad to know if the offering
which he made on the mountain was acceptable to the Lord his God?

 _Answer._

If Wisdom hath called thee, if Wisdom hath been thy guide, my son, why
dost thou stop? Leave to thy God the care of thy conduct; forget—forget
thyself in approaching to him, and his light will enlighten thy soul,
and thy spirit shall no more make the law. Believe—believe, my son, that
docility is the way which leadeth to knowledge; that with love and
simplicity thou shalt have nothing to fear from the snares of Hell, and
that Heaven cannot lead thee astray, for it is Heaven which hath marked
to thee thy route.

  _Question._
 July 8, 1789.

H. W. l. 4. 7. prays to know if it is the will of Heaven that he should
cause his wife to come with Duche to be consecrated?

 _Answer._

Heaven sees thy motives, my son, and approves thy zeal; but in order
that it may take place ************* do not think of it; thy hope is
vain.

 _Question._
 April 16, 1789.

l. 2. 3. prays the H. W. to let him know if the Eternal has accepted of
his incense?

 _Answer._

Raphael is the spirit which thy heart followed, my son, when thou camest
into these countries to seek for science and rest: but the spirit which
confuses thy idea is not the spirit of Raphael. Mistrust, son that art
called, the father of lies. Submit thy spirit to my voice.
Believe—believe, my son, and thy God forgives thee, and then thy incense
is accepted, and thy return will cover thee with glory.

 August 11, 1789.
 for the B. 12 April, 1756. Of l. 2. 3.
 C. 24 March.
 April 1.

If the ardour which animates thee gives at last to thy heart over thy
spirit the victory and the empire; if thy desire renounces to discover,
before the time, the secret of the mysteries which simple reason is not
able to conceive, nothing can, my son, convey an obstacle to that
happiness which awaits thee.

Walk without fear, and chase from thy soul the deceiving
spirit who wants to lead thee astray. Believe—believe,
my son, every thing that I reveal to
our elect in the name of the Eternal, and the Eternal
will make thee the forerunning instrument of his
glory in the places where his clemency wants to pardon
those of thy nation whom the enemy seduces
by his prestiges.

 _Question._
 August 21, 1789.

[22] l. 4. 7. prays the H. W. to inform him if it is the will of Heaven
for him also to return with l. 2. 3.

 _Answer._

Yes. Son called, thou canst yet hearken to what I have to say unto thee.
Thy fate is in thy hands. It will be great if thou makest haste to offer
to thy God, who chuseth thee, the vain efforts of a useless knowledge,
when it is only necessary to obey. Forget—forget thy knowledge: it
fatigues thy spirits, it hurts thy heart, and retards from thy soul the
influence of Heaven. Renounce, in fine, to search into the sublime
mysteries of thy God. Believe—believe, and the Eternal will bless thy
return, and thy simplicity will confound the knowledge, the pride, and
the prepossession of the senseless man, who believeth in his own wisdom
much more than in the wisdom of his God.

The subject is so curious that I think you will be pleased to see the
character of this mysterious society further exemplified by a few of the
sentences, moral maxims, and spiritual instructions, which they
delivered as from Heaven. The first is sufficiently remarkable:—

"Woe to him who dares to cover a lie with the sacred name of the Eternal!

"One ray of light is not the entire light.

"A wise man is silent when he ought to be so.

"It is to the simple of heart that the Eternal will grant the wisdom of
the Spirit.

"The night was before the day, the day is before the night.

"When God commands, he who consulteth does not obey.

"He who walketh alone easily goes astray.

"To doubt, Is that believing? and to tremble, Is that to hope?

"He who thinks himself wise lies to himself deceives himself, goeth
astray, and knoweth nothing.

"Shall man tremble when God supports him?

"The repentance of the wise is in his works, that of the fool in his
tears.

"The child of man thinks of man, the child of God thinks of God; he must
forget every thing else.

"Fear leads our spirit astray; by laying a weight upon our days it
overturns wisdom, it intimidates nature, and the painful seeds of
uneasiness and anguish take part in our hearts.

"Heaven explains itself sufficiently when it inspires.

"Wilt thou never hear my word with the ears of thy soul, and wilt thou
never overturn the idol of mistrust that is in thy heart?

"The Lord has placed the key of his treasure under the cup of bitterness.

"The ark of God conveys death to those who make use of false keys.

"Who is that man, saith the Lord, that will not abandon his heart to me
when I have promised to guide it?

"I am One, and all that is in me is One.

"Remember, and remember well, that the Word is but One for him who
desires to comprehend; and there would be no more mysteries for man but
for the vanity of his heart, and the folly of his understanding.

"Is it in the tumult of the world that the voice of the Most High can
enter into the heart?

"Do not attach any importance to your opinions: Of what avail to your
fate are your very weak ideas?

"Forget all, O our friends, except Heaven and yourselves, to obey only
what Heaven prescribes to you."

This narrative, and these extracts, require no comment. They prove
incontestably the existence of a society of political Jesuits; they
prove also, that however little may have been the religion of these men
themselves, they were convinced how indispensably necessary it was for
mankind; and that, instead of plotting to break up the system of social
order by destroying faith and morals, faith was the engine which they
employed to prepare society for some imaginary amelioration, forgetting
that nothing which is founded upon delusion can be permanent.

The two Englishmen remained at Avignon six months, and were then
informed by the Spirit that they might return. The brethren supplied
them with money, so that they went back with more comfort than they
came, and had a handsome sum left when they landed in England, where
they both returned to their former employments, expecting the
accomplishment of the mighty changes which had been foretold. The
Revolution brake out.—They who had raised the storm could not direct it:
they became its victims—and knavery reaped what fanaticism had sown, as
they who lag in the assault enter the breach over the bodies of the
brave who have won the passage for them. What became of the Avignon
society Heaven knows. The honest dupes whom they had sent abroad, fully
prepared to welcome any novelty as the commencement of the Millennium,
were left to their own direction. A king of the Hebrews appeared in
England, and Wright and Bryan were, as you may suppose, among the first
to acknowledge him. They imagined that the appointed time was come, and
published these secrets of the society which they had been ordered to
keep concealed. Of the King of the Hebrews in my next.

[21] Alexandria would naturally be thus distinguished at Avignon—this,
therefore, is good proof of the authenticity of the book.

[22] l. 4. 7. and l. 2. 3. seem to mean the two Englishmen. H. W. is
evidently _Holy Word_.



LETTER LXIX.

_Account of Richard Brothers._


My former letters must have shown you that these English, whom we are
accustomed to consider as an unbelieving people, are in reality
miserably prone to superstition; yet you will perhaps be surprised at
the new instance which I am about to relate.

There started up in London, about the beginning of the late war, a new
pseudo-prophet, whose name was Richard Brothers, and who called himself
King of the Hebrews, and Nephew of God. He taught, that all existing
souls had been created at the same time with Adam, and his system was,
that they had all lived with him in Paradise, and all fallen with him in
consequence of their joint transgression; for all things which they saw
and knew were in God, and indeed were God, and they desired to know
something besides God, in which desire they were indulged, fatally for
themselves, for the only thing which is not God is Evil. Evil was thus
introduced, and they for their punishment cast into hell, that is to
say, upon this present earth; and in this hell they have remained from
that time till now, transmigrating from one human body to another. But
the term of their punishment is now drawing towards its close: the
consummation of all things is at hand, and every one will then recover
the recollection of all the scenes and changes through which he has
passed. This knowledge has already been vouchsafed in part to Brothers
himself, and it is thus that he explained the extraordinary relationship
to the Almighty which he laid claim to, asserting that in the days of
our Lord, he was the son of James, the Brother of Christ. You know the
heretics in their hatred to virginity and to Mary the most pure,
maintain that when Christ's brethren are mentioned in the Gospels, the
word is to be understood in its literal and carnal sense; consequently
he was then the Nephew of the second Person in the Trinity.

Human fancy, it has been said, cannot imagine a monster whose
constituent parts are not all already in existence; it is nearly as
impossible for a new heresy to be now devised, so prolific has human
error been. This metempsychosis not only bears a general resemblance to
that doctrine as held by the Orientals and by Pythagoras, but has been
held in this peculiar heretical form by the old heretic Barules, and by
the Flagellants of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Brothers had been a lieutenant in the navy, and was known to be insane;
but when a madman calls himself inspired, from that moment the disorder
becomes infectious. The society at Avignon had unintentionally trained
up apostles for this man. Wright and Bryan had now for some years been
looking for the kingdom of Christ, and teaching all within the circle of
their influence to expect the same promised day. Of what had been
announced to them, much had been too truly accomplished. The world was
indeed filled with troubles and dissension, the fire was kindled, the
thrones of Europe were shaken, and one of its kings had been brought to
an unhappy end, according to the prediction. The laws made by the
children of the earth were broken, the reign of terror was begun, and
the times disastrous to the full measure of their prophecies. They had
been instructed to look for a miraculous deliverer and Lord of the
earth, and here was one who laid claim to the character. There were,
however, some difficulties. At Avignon they had been informed, that he
who was to be the Leader of the Faithful, and to overthrow the kingdoms
of the world, was at that time twelve years old, and living at Rome;
even his name had been revealed.[23] Neither in this, nor in age, nor
country, did Brothers answer the prophecy. One of these men therefore
decided in his own mind that he was an impostor; he went to see him,
with a full belief that whether he was so or not would be revealed to
him during the interview, and he took a knife with him, with which, if
his suspicions had been confirmed, he was resolved to deliver him such a
message from the Lord as Ehud carried to the king of Eglon. Luckily for
both parties, Brothers, who little knew the dangerous trial he was
undergoing, supported his part so well, that the desperate fanatic was
converted.

The new King of the Hebrews had not perhaps a single Jew among his
believers. These people, who have in old times suffered well nigh as
severely for their credulity in false Messiahs, as for their rejection
of the true one, are less disposed to lend ear to such delusions now
than in any former time, and here than in any other country. Here they
have no amelioration of their condition to wish for; the free exercise
of their religion is permitted, what they gain they enjoy in security,
and are protected by the state without the trouble of self-defence. The
flesh pots of England are not less delicious than those of Egypt, and a
land flowing with milk and honey not so attractive for the sons of the
Synagogue, as one which abounds with old clothes for the lower order,
and loans and contracts for their wealthier brethren. The land of
promise offers nothing so tempting to them as scrip and omnium. The King
of the Hebrews therefore was not acknowledged by any of his own people;
his scheme of pre-existence helped him out of this difficulty. He could
tell if any person had been a Jew in any former stage of being, and even
of what tribe: that of Judah, as the most favoured, he bestowed
liberally upon his believers, and those whom he hoped to convert. He
informed Mr Pitt by letter that he was a Jew, some of the royal family
were in like manner declared to be Jews, and J.'s friend received from
Bryan the same flattering assurance.

Besides the prophets from Avignon, Brothers succeeded in making two
other useful and extraordinary disciples. The one, an engraver of
first-rate skill in his art, who published a masterly portrait of him,
with these words underneath, _Fully believing this to be the man whom
God hath appointed, I engrave his likeness_. This was to be seen in all
the print-shops. Mr Halhed was the other of these converts, a member of
the house of commons, and one of the profoundest oriental scholars then
living. This gentleman was in the early part of his life an unbeliever,
and had attempted to invalidate the truths of holy writ by arguments
deduced from Indian chronology. The study of Indian mythology brought
him back to Christianity, and by a strange perversion of intellect, the
Trimourtee of the Hindoos convinced him of the doctrine of the Trinity;
and as he recovered his faith he lost his wits. To the astonishment of
the world he published a pamphlet avowing his belief that Richard
Brothers was the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and that in him the
prophecies were speedily to be fulfilled.

Brothers wrote letters to the king, and to all the members of both
houses of parliament, calling upon them to give ear to the word of God,
and prepare for the speedy establishment of his kingdom upon earth. He
announced to his believers his intention of speedily setting out for
Jerusalem to take possession of his metropolis, and invited them to
accompany him. Some of these poor people actually shut up their shops,
forsook their business and their families, and travelled from distant
parts of the country to London to join him, and depart with him whenever
he gave the word. Before he went, he said, he would prove the truth of
his mission by a public miracle; he would throw down his stick in the
Strand at noon-day, and it should become a serpent; and he affirmed that
he had already made the experiment and successfully performed it in
private. A manifest falsehood this, but not a wilful one; in like manner
he said that he had seen the Devil walking leisurely up
Tottenham-Court-road;—the man was evidently in such a state of mind that
his waking dreams were mistaken for realities. He threatened London with
an earthquake because of its unbelief, and at length named the day when
the city should be destroyed. Many persons left town to avoid this
threatened calamity; the day passed by, he claimed the merit of having
prevailed in prayer and obtained a respite, and fixed another.

The business was becoming serious: all the madmen and enthusiasts in
England, a land wherein there is never any lack of them, made a common
cause with this King of the Hebrews. Pamphlets in his favour swarmed
from the press; the prophecy of some old heretic was raked up, which
fixed the downfall of the church as destined now to be accomplished; and
the number of the Beast was explained by Ludovicus XVI. One madman
printed his dreams, another his day-visions; one had seen an angel come
out of the sun with a drawn sword in his hand, another had seen fiery
dragons in the air, and hosts of angels in battle array: these signs and
tokens were represented in rude engravings, and the lower classes of
people, to whose capacity and whose hungry superstition they were
addressed, began to believe that the seven seals were about to be
opened, and all the wonders in the Apocalypse would be displayed.
Government at last thought fit to interfere, and committed Brothers to
the national hospital for madmen. Mr Halhed made a speech in parliament
upon this occasion, the most extraordinary perhaps that ever was
delivered to a legislative assembly. It was a calm and logical
remonstrance against the illegality and unreasonableness of their
proceedings. They had imprisoned this person as a madman, he said,
because he announced himself as a prophet; but it was incumbent upon
them to have fairly examined his pretensions, and ascertained their
truth or falsehood, before they had proceeded against him in this
manner. Brothers had appealed to the Holy Scriptures, the divine
authority of which that house acknowledged; he appealed also to certain
of his own predictions as contained in the letters which he had
addressed to the king and his ministers;—let them be produced, and the
question solemnly investigated as its importance deserved. According to
the rules of the house of commons, no motion can be debated or put to
the vote, unless it be seconded; Mr Halhed found no one to second him,
and his proposal was thus silently negatived.

Thus easily and effectually was this wild heresy crushed. Brothers
continued to threaten earthquakes, fix days for them, and prorogue them
after the day was past; but his influence was at an end. The people had
lost sight of him; and being no longer agitated by signs and tokens,
dreams and denunciations, they forgot him. A few of his steadier
adherents persisted in their belief, and comforted him and themselves by
reminding him of Daniel in the lions' den, and of Jeremiah in the
dungeon. He was lucky enough to find out better consolation for himself.
There was a female lunatic in the same hospital, whom he discovered to
be the destined Queen of the Hebrews; and as such announced her to the
world. At present he and his chosen partner of the throne of David are
in daily expectation of a miraculous deliverance, after which they are
to proceed to Jerusalem to be crowned, and commence their reign. Plans
and elevations of their palace and of the new Temple have been made for
them, and are now being engraved for the public; and in these dreams
they will probably continue as long as they live. Upon madmen of this
stamp, experience has as little effect as hellebore. Their thoughts of
the future are so delightful that they forget the past, and are well
nigh insensible to the present, just as all other objects near or
distant appear darkened to him who has been looking at the sun. Their
hope has neither fear nor doubt to allay it, and its intensity gives
them a joy which could scarcely be exceeded by its accomplishment.

[23] At the ninth year, the children shall be solemnly offered to the
Mother of God at Genatzans; at that time you will already have made the
barbarians feel the blows that you are to give them. Yes; at that age,
so very tender, united to you two and to others, Charles will take up
for the first time his arms; the glory of his name shall spread every
where.



LETTER LXX.

 _Account of Joanna Southcott._


In the early part of the thirteenth century there appeared an English
virgin in Italy, beautiful and eloquent, who affirmed that the Holy
Ghost was incarnate in her for the redemption of women, and she baptized
women in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of herself. Her
body was carried to Milan and burnt there. An arch-heretic of the same
sex and country is now establishing a sect in England, founded upon a
not dissimilar and equally portentous blasphemy. The name of this woman
is Joanna Southcott; she neither boasts of the charms of her forerunner,
nor needs them. Instead of having an eye which can fascinate, and a
tongue which can persuade to error by glossing it with sweet discourse,
she is old, vulgar, and illiterate. In all the innumerable volumes which
she has sent into the world, there are not three connected sentences in
sequence, and the language alikes violates common sense and common
syntax. Yet she has her followers among the educated classes, and even
among the beneficed clergy. "If Adam," she says, "had refused listening
to a foolish ignorant woman at first, then man might refuse listening to
a foolish ignorant woman at last!"—and the argument is admitted by her
adherents. When we read in romance of enchanted fountains, they are
described as flowing with such clear and sparkling waters as tempt the
traveller to thirst; here, there may be a magic in the draught, but he
who can taste of so foul a stream must previously have lost his senses.
The filth and the abominations of demoniacal witchcraft are emblematical
of such delusions; not the golden goblet and bewitching allurements of
Circe and Armida.

The patient and resolute obedience with which I have collected for you
some account of this woman and her system, from a pile of pamphlets half
a yard high, will, I hope, be imputed to me as a merit. Had the heretics
of old been half as voluminous, and half as dull, St Epiphanius would
never have persevered through his task.

She was born in Devonshire about the middle of the last century, and
seems to have passed forty years of her life in honest industry,
sometimes as a servant, at others working at the upholsterers' business,
without any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was
zealously attached to the Methodists. These people were equally well
qualified to teach her the arts of imposture, or to drive her mad; or to
produce in her a happy mixture of craziness and knavery, ingredients
which in such cases are usually found in combination. She mentions in
her books a preacher who frequented her master's house, and, according
to her account, lived in habits of adultery with the wife, trying at the
same time to debauch the daughter, while the husband vainly attempted to
seduce Joanna herself. This preacher used to terrify all who heard him
in prayer, and make them shriek out convulsively. He said that he had
sometimes, at a meeting, made the whole congregation lie stiff upon the
floor till he had got the evil spirits out of them; that there never was
a man so highly favoured of God as himself; that he would not thank God
to make him any thing, unless he made him greater than any man upon
earth, and gave him power above all men; and he boasted, upon hearing
the death of one who had censured him, that he had fasted and prayed
three days and three nights, beseeching God to take vengeance upon that
man and send him to eternity. Where such impious bedlamites as this are
allowed to walk abroad, it is not to be wondered at that madness should
become epidemic. Joanna Southcott lived in a house which this man
frequented, and where, notwithstanding his infamous life, his
pretensions to supernatural gifts were acknowledged, and he was
accustomed to preach and pray. The servants all stood in fear of him.
She says he had no power over her, but she used to think the room was
full of spirits when he was in prayer; and he was so haunted that he
never could sleep in a room by himself, for he said his wife came every
night to trouble him: she was perplexed about him, fully believing that
he wrought miracles, and wondering by what spirit he wrought them. After
she became a prophetess herself, she discovered that this Sanderson was
the false prophet in the Revelations, who is to be taken with the Beast,
and cast alive with him into a lake of burning brimstone.

Four persons have written to Joanna upon the subject of her pretended
mission, each calling himself Christ! One Mr Leach, a Methodist
preacher, told her to go to the Lord in _his name_, and tell the Lord
that _he said_ her writings were inspired by the Devil. These
circumstances show how commonly delusion, blasphemy, and madness are to
be found in this country, and may lessen our wonder at the phrenzy of
Joanna and her followers. Her own career began humbly, with prophecies
concerning the weather, such as the popular English almanacks contain,
and threats concerning the fate of Europe and the successes of the
French, which were at that time the speculations of every newspaper, and
of every alehouse politician. Some of these guesses having chanced to be
right, the women of the family in which she then worked at the
upholstering business began to lend ear to her, and she ventured to
submit her papers to the judgment of one Mr Pomeroy, the clergyman whose
church she attended in Exeter. He listened to her with timid curiosity,
rather wanting courage than credulity to become her disciple; received
from her certain sealed prophecies which were at some future time to be
opened, when, as it would be seen that they had been accomplished, they
would prove the truth of her inspiration; and sanctioned, or seemed to
sanction, her design of publishing her call to the world. But in this
publication his own named appeared, and that in such a manner as plainly
to imply, that if he had not encouraged her to print, he had not
endeavoured to prevent her from so doing. His eyes were immediately
opened to his own imprudence, whatever they may have been to the nature
of her call, and he obtained her consent to insert an advertisement in
the newspaper with her signature, stating that he had said it was the
work of the Devil. But here the parties are at issue: as the
advertisement was worded, it signifies that Mr Pomeroy always said her
calling was from the Devil; on the other hand, Joanna and her witnesses
protest that what she had signed was merely an acknowledgment that Mr
Pomeroy had said, after her book was printed, the Devil had instigated
her to print his name in it. This would not be worthy of mention, if it
were not for the very extraordinary situation into which this gentleman
has brought himself. Wishing to be clear of the connection in which he
had so unluckily engaged, he burnt the sealed papers which had been
entrusted to his care. From that time all the Joannians, who are now no
inconsiderable number, regard him as the arch-apostate. He is the
Jehoiakim who burnt Jeremiah's roll of prophecies; he is their Judas
Iscariot, a second Lucifer, son of the Morning. They call upon him to
produce these prophecies, which she boldly asserts, and they implicitly
believe, have all been fulfilled, and therefore would convince the world
of the truth of her mission. In vain does Mr Pomeroy answer that he has
burnt these unhappy papers:—in an unhappy hour for himself did he burn
them! Day after day long letters are dispatched to him, sometimes from
Joanna herself, sometimes from her brother, sometimes from one of her
four-and-twenty elders, filled with exhortation, invective, texts of
scripture, and denunciations of the Law in this world and the Devil in
the next; and these letters the prophetess prints, for this very
sufficient reason—that all her believers purchase them. Mr Pomeroy
sometimes treats them with contempt, at other times he appeals to their
compassion, and beseeches them, if they have any bowels of Christian
charity, to have compassion on him, and let him rest, and no longer add
to the inconceivable and irreparable injuries which they have already
occasioned him. If he is silent, no matter, on they go, printing copies
of all which they write, and when he is worried into replying, his
answers also serve to swell Joanna's books. In this manner is this poor
man, because he has recovered his senses, persecuted by a crazy
prophetess, and her four-and-twenty crazy elders, who seem determined
not to desist, till, one way or other, they have made him as ripe for
Bedlam as they are themselves.

The books which she sends into the world are written partly in prose,
partly in rhyme, all the verse, and the greater part of the prose, being
delivered in the character of the Almighty! It is not possible to convey
any adequate idea of this unparalleled and unimaginable nonsense by any
other means than literal transcript.[24] Her hand-writing was illegibly
bad, so that at last she found it convenient to receive orders to throw
away the pen, and deliver her oracles orally; and her words flow from
her faster than her scribes can write them down. This may be well
believed, for they are mere words, and nothing else: a rhapsody of
texts, vulgar dreams, and vulgar interpretations, vulgar types and
vulgar applications:—the vilest string of words in the vilest doggerel
verse, which has no other connection than what the vilest rhymes have
suggested, she vents, and her followers receive, as the dictates of
immediate inspiration. A herd, however, was ready to devour this garbage
as the bread of life. Credulity and Vanity are foul feeders.

The clergy in her own neighbourhood were invited by her, by private
letters, to examine her claims, but they treated her invitation with
contempt: the bishop also did not choose to interfere;—of what avail,
indeed, would it have been to have examined her, when they had no power
to silence her blasphemies! She found believers at a distance. Seven men
came from different parts of the country to examine—that is—to believe
in her; these were her seven stars; and when at another time seven more
arrived upon the same wise errand, she observed, in allusion to one of
those vulgar sayings from which all her allusions are drawn, that her
seven stars were come to fourteen. Among these early believers were
three clergymen, one of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble
family. It is not unlikely that the woman at first suspected the state
of her own intellects: her letters appear to indicate this; they express
a humble submission to wiser judgments than her own; and could she have
breathed the first thoughts of delusion into the ear of some pious
confessor, it is more than probable that she would have soon
acknowledged her error at his feet, and the phrensy which has now
infected thousands would have been cut off on its first appearance. But
when she found that persons into whose society nothing else could ever
have elevated her, listened to her with reverence, believed all her
ravings, and supplied her with means and money to spread them abroad, it
is not to be wondered at if she went on more boldly;—the gainfulness of
the trade soon silencing all doubts of the truth of her inspiration.

Some of her foremost adherents were veterans in credulity: they have
been initiated in the mysteries of animal magnetism, had received
spiritual circumcision from Brothers, and were thus doubly qualified for
the part they were to act in this new drama of delusion. To accommodate
them, Joanna confirmed the authenticity of this last fanatic's mission,
and acknowledged him as King of the Hebrews,—but she dropt his whole
mythology. Her heresy in its main part is not new. The opinion that
redemption extended to men only and not to women, had been held by a
Norman in the sixteenth century, as well as by the fair English heretic
already mentioned. This man, in a book called _Virgo Veneta_, maintained
that a female Redeemer was necessary for the daughters of Eve, and
announced an old woman of Venice of his acquaintance as the Saviour of
her sex. Bordonius, a century ago, broached even a worse heresy. In a
work upon miracles, printed at Parma, he taught that women did not
participate in the atonement, because they were of a different species
from man, and were incapable of eternal life. Joanna and her followers
are too ignorant to be acquainted with these her prototypes in
blasphemy, and the whole merit of originality in her system must be
allowed her, as indeed she has exceeded her forerunners in the audacity
of her pretensions. She boldly asserts that she is the Woman in the
Revelations, who has the Moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of
twelve stars: the twelve stars being her twelve apostles, who with the
second dozen of believers make up her four-and-twenty elders. In her
visitation it was told her that the angels rejoiced at her birth,
because she was born to deliver both men and angels from the insults of
the Devil. Let it be lawful for me to repeat these blasphemies, holding
them up to merited abhorrence. The scheme of redemption, she says, is
completed in her, and without her would be imperfect; by woman came the
fall of man, by woman must come his redemption: woman plucked the evil
fruit, and woman must pluck the good fruit; if the Tree of Knowledge was
violated by Eve, the Tree of Life is reserved for Joanna. Eve was a bone
from Adam, she is a bone from Christ the second Adam. She is the Bride,
the promised seed who is to bruise the Serpent's head; she it is who
claims the promise made at the creation, that woman should be the
helpmate of man, and by her the Creator fulfils that promise, and
acquits himself of the charge of having given to man the woman in vain.
The evening star was placed in the firmament to be her type. While she
arrogates so much to herself, she is proportionately liberal to her
followers: they have been appointed to the four-and-twenty elderships:
and to one of them, when he died, a higher character was more
blasphemously attributed: she assured his relations, that he was gone to
plead the promises before the Lord; that to him was to be given the key
of the bottomless pit, and that the time was at hand when he should be
seen descending in the air,—for they knew not the meaning of our
Saviour's words when he said, "Ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the
clouds, in power and great glory!"

The immediate object of her call is to destroy the Devil: of this the
Devil was aware, and that it might not be said he had had foul play, a
regular dispute of seven days was agreed on between him and Joanna, in
which she was to be alone, and he to bring with him as many of the
Powers of Darkness as he pleased: but he was not to appear visibly; for,
as he did not choose to make his appearance on a former occasion, when
some of her elders went to give him the meeting, but had disappointed
them, he was not to be permitted to manifest himself bodily now. The
conditions were, that if she held out with argument against him for
seven days, the Woman should be freed, and he fall; but if she yielded,
Satan's kingdom was to stand, and a second fall of the human race would
be the consequence. Accordingly, she went alone into a solitary house
for this conference. Joanna was her own secretary upon this occasion,
and the process-verbal of the conference has been printed, as literally
taken down; for she was ordered to set down all his blasphemies, and
show to the world what the language of Hell is. It is by no means a
polite language;—indeed the proficiency which Satan displays in the
vulgar tongue is surprising.

Of all Joanna's books this is the most curious. Satan brought a friend
with him, and they made up a story for themselves which has some
ingenuity. "It is written," said they, "Be still, and know that I am
God;" this still worship did not suit Satan; he was a lively cheerful
spirit, full of mirth and gaiety, which the Lord could not bear, and
therefore cast him out of Heaven. This, according to Apollyon's account
of Heaven, could have been no great evil. "Thou knowest," he says, "it
is written of God, he is a consuming fire, and who can dwell in
everlasting burnings? Our backs are not brass, nor our sinews iron, to
dwell with God in Heaven." The Heaven therefore which men mistakingly
desire, is in its nature the very Hell of which they are so much afraid;
and it is sufficient proof of the truth of all this, that the Devil
invites them to make themselves happy and lead a gay life, agreeably to
his own cheerful disposition, whereas religion enjoins self-denial,
penitence, and all things which are contrary to our natural
inclinations. Satan accounted to Joanna for her inspiration by this
solution: An evil spirit had loved her from her youth up, he found there
was no other access to her heart than by means of religion; and, being
himself able to foresee future events, imparted this knowledge to her in
the character of a good spirit. This spirit, he said, was one which she
had been well acquainted with; it was that of one Mr Follart, who had
told her if she would not have him for a husband he should die for her
sake, and accordingly he had died. But this deception had now been
carried so far that Satan was angry, and threatened, unless she broke
her seals and destroyed her writings, he would tear her in pieces.

The conference terminated like most theological disputes. Both parties
grew warm. Apollyon interfered, and endeavoured to accommodate matters,
but without effect, and Joanna talked Satan out of all patience. She
gave him, as he truly complained, ten words for one, and allowed him no
time to speak. All men, he said, were tired of her tongue already, and
now she had tired the Devil. This was not unreasonable; but he proceeded
to abuse the whole sex, which would have been ungracious in any one, and
in him was ungrateful. He said no man could tame a woman's tongue—the
sands of an hour-glass did not run faster—it was better to dispute with
a thousand men than one woman. After this dispute she fasted forty days;
but this fast, which is regarded by her believers as so miraculous, was
merely a Catholic Lent, in which she abstained from fish as well as
flesh.

The Moon which is under her feet in the Revelations, typifies the Devil:
for the moon, it seems, having power to give light by night but not by
day, is Satan's kingdom, and his dwelling-place; he, I conclude, being
the very person commonly called the Man in the Moon; a conjecture of my
own, which, you must allow, is strongly confirmed by his horns. Once,
when the Lord made her the same promise as Herod had done to Herodias,
she requested that Satan might be cut off from the face of the earth as
John the Baptist had been. This petition she was instructed to write,
and seal it with three seals, and carry it to the altar when she
received the sacrament! and a promise was returned that it should be
granted. Her dreams are usually of the Devil. Once she saw him like a
pig with his mouth tied; at another time skinned his face with her nails
after a fierce battle; once she bit off his fingers, and thought the
blood sweet,—and once she dreamt she had fairly killed him. But neither
has the promise of his destruction been as yet fulfilled, nor the dream
accomplished.

This phrensy would have been speedily cured in our country; bread and
water, a solitary cell, and a little wholesome discipline are specifics
in such cases. Mark the difference in England. No bishop interferes; she
therefore boldly asserts that she has the full consent of the bishops to
declare that her call is from God, because, having been called upon to
disprove it, they keep silent. She who was used to earn her daily bread
by daily labour, is now taken into the houses of her wealthy believers,
regarded as the most blessed among women, carried from one part of
England to another, and treated every where with reverence little less
than idolatry. Meantime dictating books as fast as her scribes can write
them down, she publishes them as fast as they are written, and the
Joannians buy them as fast as they are published. Nor is this her only
trade. The seals in the Revelations furnished her with a happy hint. She
calls upon all persons "to sign their names for Christ's glorious and
peaceable kingdom to be established, and to come upon earth, and his
will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven, and for Satan's
kingdom to be destroyed, which is the prayer and desire of Joanna
Southcott." They who sign this are to be sealed. Now if this temporal
sealing, which is mentioned by St John in the Revelations, had been
understood before this time, men would have begun sealing themselves
without the visitation of the spirit; and if she had not understood it
and explained it now, it would have been more fatal for herself and for
all mankind than the fall of Eve was. The mystery of sealing is this:
whosoever signs his name receives a sealed letter containing these
words: _The Sealed of the Lord, the Elect, Precious, Man's Redemption,
to inherit the Tree of Life, to be_ _made Heirs of God, and Joint-heirs
with Jesus Christ._ Signed _Joanna Southcott_. I know not what the price
of this initiation is; but she boasts of having sealed above eight
thousand persons, so that the trade is a thriving one.

And these things are believed in England! in England, where Catholic
Christians are so heartily despised for superstition; in England, where
the people think themselves so highly enlightened,—in this country of
reason and philosophy, and free enquiry! It is curious to observe how
this age in which we live is denominated by every writer just as its
temper accords with his own views: with the Infidel, it is the Age of
Reason; with the Churchman, the Age of Infidelity; with the Chemist, the
Age of Philosophy; with Rulers, the Age of Anarchy; with the People, the
Age of Oppression,—every one beholding the prospect through a coloured
glass, and giving it sunshine or shade, frost or verdure, according to
his own fancy, none looking round him, and seeing it fairly as it is.
Yet surely if we consider the ignorance of the great majority of the
English, the want of anchorage for their faith, the want of able
directors for their souls, the rapidity with which novelties of any kind
are circulated throughout the country, the eagerness with which the
credulous listen to every new blasphemy, the contemptuous indifference
of the clergy to any blasphemy, provided it does not immediately
threaten themselves, the unlimited toleration shown to Jews, Gentiles,
and Heretics of every description,—above all, if we remember that every
person has the power of comparing these delusive books with the Bible,
of which they are instructed to consider themselves competent
expounders,—we must acknowledge that there never was any age or any
country so favourable to the success of imposture, and the growth of
superstition, as this very age and this very England.


I have to add concerning Joanna, that she prophesies how she and her
believers are to be tried in the ensuing year, and that this awful trial
will be only second to that of our blessed Lord at Pilate's bar! What
new juggle is in preparation I pretend not to divine. Thus much is
certain, that her believers are proof against conviction, and you will
agree with me in thinking no further trial necessary to prove that she
and her abettors ought either to be punished as impostors, or silenced
as lunatics.[25]

[24] See note at the end of the letter.

[25] The Translator has been curious enough to enquire the event of this
trial, which may be related in few words. None but her believers
assembled; they provided an attorney to give their proceedings some of
the ceremonials of legality, examined witnesses to prove the good
character of the prophetess, signed a profession of belief in her,—and
afterwards published an account of all this folly under the title of The
Trial of Joanna Southcott. Joanna had predicted that at this trial she
was to be cast into a trance;—not thinking this convenient when the time
appointed came, she had a revelation to say, that if any of her judges
required it, the Lord would still entrance her, but that it would
certainly be her death: and thus throwing herself upon the mercy of her
own accomplices, it will easily be guessed that none among them insisted
upon the proof. One of the company enquired whether Satan knew he was
cast by this trial; as, in that case, it was to be presumed he would
rage against her and her friends with the utmost of his fury. This
gentleman would have been a good subject for a night-mare.

D. Manuel might well say that nothing but literal transcript could
convey an idea of this woman's vulgarity and nonsense; witness the
passages which he has selected.—TR.

  So, learned men, no more contend,
    Till you have seen all clear,
  The Woman clothed with the Sun
    A wonder to you here.
  So, in amaze, you all may gaze,
    As Adam did at first,
  To see the bone to him unknown,
    The woman there was placed.
  The woe you see, she brought on he,
    And the first woe for man;—
  But how shall Satan now get free,
    She casts her woe on man.—
  Though 'twas not she, I must tell ye,
    Did cast the woe on man;
  The serpent was condemned by she,
    And there her woe must come.

It is speaking within compass, to say that she has sent into the world
above twenty thousand of such verses as these, as the dictates of the
Spirit!

What follows is in the words of one of her chosen disciples:—"On Monday
morning Joanna received a letter from Exeter, which informed her she
would have Mr Jones's answer about Mr Pomeroy in the evening; and her
fears for him flung her into a violent agitation; every nerve in her
shook, and she fell sick as though she would have fainted away. She
could not keep in her bed, but laid herself on the floor in agonies, and
said she knew not whether to pity or condemn him; but at last got up in
a rage against the Devil, and said her revenge would be sweet to see the
Devil chained down, and she should like, with a sharp sword to cut him
in pieces. She then got into bed, exclaiming against the clergy, and
asked for a glass of wine; but she brought it up immediately. Soon after
the bason was set upon the bed, she took it up and dashed it violently
across the room, and broke it to pieces. After that she had some lamb
brought up for her dinner; she tried to swallow a mouthful but could
not, but spit it into another bason, and said she could neither swallow
the wine nor the lamb, but found the fury of the Lord break in upon her,
and she dashed the second bason on the floor. She then said she felt
herself happier and easier since she had broken both the basons; for so
would the Lord, in his anger, break the clergy."

This is from a book with the following curious title:

 MR JOSEPH SOUTHCOTT,
 THE BROTHER OF
 JOANNA SOUTHCOTT,
 WILL NOW COME FORWARD AS DINAH'S BRETHREN DID,
 THAT THEY SHALL NOT DEAL WITH HIS SISTER
 AS THEY WOULD WITH A HARLOT,
 FOR SO THEY ARE NOW DEALING WITH HER.
 AND HE WILL PROVE TO THE WORLD WHERE THE
 ADULTERY IS COMMITTED, BY MEN WHO ARE
 UNCIRCUMCISED IN HEART AND LIFE:
 AND NOW HE WILL EXPEND ALL THAT HE HAS
 IN THE WORLD, IF REQUIRED, IN THE HONEST
 DEFENCE OF HER CHARACTER, TILL HE HAS SLAIN
 THE UNCIRCUMCISED PHILISTINES,
 AND ENTIRELY FREED HIS SISTER FROM THE
 REPROACHES OF THEIR ADULTERY.

A few flowers of infernal eloquence should be added from The Dispute
with the Powers of Darkness. Satan says to her, "Thou infamous b—ch!
thou hast been flattering God that he may stand thy friend. Such low
cunning art I despise.—Thou wheening devil! stop thy d—mn'd eternal
tongue; thou runnest on so fast all the Devils in Hell cannot keep up
with thee.—God hath done something to chuse a b—ch of a woman that will
down-argue the Devil, and scarce give him room to speak."—It may truly
be said, in Joanna's own words, "_If the woman is not ashamed of
herself, the Devil cannot shame her_."

If the language of Joanna herself is grovelling in the very mud and mire
of baseness and vulgarity, one of her elders has soared into the sublime
of frenzy. The passage is long, but deserves insertion, as, perhaps,
there does not exist elsewhere so complete a specimen of a prophet
rampant. The gentleman begins in some plain prose reflections upon the
Fall, and goes on addressing the Devil, till he has worked himself up,
and begins thus to rave in rhythm.

"—Then where's thy ground on earth? receive thy doom, the pit, there
twist in flames, and there thy like deceive!—Then Cain receive thy doom
from Abel's blood. Then where is Pharaoh and his host?—Judge then, need
Moses fear! Where is the Lion fallen? and the pit has oped its
mouth,—the covering's dropt;—the Lamb has nought to fear—then roar no
more to shake the earth and sea. Where now's the eagle and vultur'd
host—thy wings are pluck'd on earth, she stands defenceless, the fatal
net beneath.—The Dove now has protection; she ranges earth and sea, and
soars aloft unhurt, unfeared, to carry peace to all.—The Ark is opened
now, she brings the olive branch,—the floods are past, where's now the
giant race?—Who pressed on Lot? 'Twas thee the proud oppressor! Where
art thou now?—Where is thy pride and city? Knowest thou the words, come
out! come out! let Sodom feel its doom. Where now is Lot? At Zoar safe!
Where is his wife? Is she not salt all?—The writing's on the wall.—Thou
lewdly revellest with the bowls of God.—Thy kingdom's past away—Now see
my Daniel rise—Who cast him in the den?—'Twas thee—Thou rolledst the
stone, thou sealedst his doom—the roaring Lion thee! Then let the stone
return, the seal be broke, and go thou in his stead. Where is the image
gold and Bel? Where is proud Babel's builder? Confusion is thy name:
confusion is thy doom! Let Bel asunder burst! the pitch, and tar, and
walls of wood expose thy make, deceit and craft, and pass in flames
away. The God of Daniel stands—Daniel, rise up!—Six days are past—the
seventh now is here—seven times refined and purified—in innocency
come.—The emerald, unhurt in fire, displays great Judah's son.—Let
Urim's Light and Thummim shine in bright perfection's day. The twelve
men stand upon the plate—the fourth denotes great Judah's son, who is
the rightful heir. The stones denote old Jacob's sons, their light and
quality—they shine as stars in Jesus' crown upon the Woman's head.—The
sun unveil'd shall now arise—The Moon from scarlet shall emerge—The
stars from darkness now appear to light the midnight hour—Then where art
thou, O Satan! Where are thy heads, and horns, and dragon's tail, which
slew and hurt the living stars? Where are thy rays of fire—thy watery
floods—behold they are past away—The woman's fears of thee are o'er—the
wilderness receives her child, whose iron rod now feel. The pit has oped
its mouth—thou now art cast, shut up and sealed—the saints now judge the
earth. The Omnipotent is here in power and spirit in the word—The sword,
white horse, and King of Kings has drawn the flaming sword! Rejoice, ye
saints, rejoice! The Beast and Dragon, mountain, tree, no more shall
hurt, devour, becloud, the Saint, the gold, and vine. The gold and gems
appear—The mighty earthquake now displays the hidden Son of God. The rod
and smitten rock gush forth, and smite and slay, and make alive, now
saves and now destroys. The cloud and glory, Jonah's sign, display the
virtues of the word, the light and darkness shews. The Gospel brings the
light, and life, and death—and death as men obey or mock. The six
denotes the suffering time to shew the Son of Man—The sign within the
Sun—The fowls now feast on thee! Then where's thy former reign? Beneath
the rod of Moses see thy fall from Heaven's height. Son of the Morning,
Lucifer, no more oppress—be thou a fallen star! Great Gog and Agag,
where are ye? The walls of Jericho art thou; fall flat! Joshua's ram's
horns, the seven and twelve, pass Jordan's stream.—Where is the Lion,
Bear, Goliath huge, but in the centre thee. David appears, a stripling
youth, now tears, and slays, and slings the stone, and smites thy
dragon's head. Now see great David's reign—The temple's stones, unhewed
by man in those days, unite, the King of Peace amidst the seven in oil
unite, and in a stone with seven eyes appears. The stately fabric now is
laid, founded and topped with gems of every hue. The ark of Moses now is
built—The words, the laws, the sceptre, all unite, and Aaron's budded
rod—He now is chosen; eat the bread, prepare the sacrifice. John eats
the book which sweet and bitter is—He prophesies; the temple metes, and
stands before the Lamb. The temple measures, and anoints, and Moses's
tabernacle. The witnesses, Matthew and John, as olive trees appear.—The
broken stones of Moses now uplift, renewed in books arise from death—The
Lord's anointed reigns—The rods, or laws, of Ephraim ten, unite in one
and hold by Judah's skirt—The Son of Man o'er Israel reigns—The dry
bones now arise—Here ends thy earthly reign—The bond of union now is
come—The marriage ring appears—The Bride is come—The Bridegroom now
receives the marriage seal—The Law and Gospel now unite—The Moon and Sun
appear—Caleb and Joshua pass the stream in triumph to restore. Where
now, thou Canaanite, art thou? Where all thy maddened crew?—

  "Hittites, be gone! no more appear to hurt or to annoy:
  Now Israel's sons in peace succeed, and Canaan's land enjoy.
  Behold from Edom I appear with garments dipt in blood;
  My sons are freed and saved, and wash'd amidst the purple flood.
  The law, or moon, imperfect was to save—
  But now the star points dead men to the grave.

"Mercy benign appears—The Gospel Son embraces all—The Spirit and the
Bride invite, and offer wine and milk—but not to mockers here. Infinity
of love and grace! Gentiles and Jews unite, no more from love to part.
Six days are past—Peter, and James, and John, behold my glory in my word.

  "The Law and Prophets now are seen with Jesus' word to shine,
  But what hast thou, thou serpent here, to do with love benign?

"Tremble and flee,'tis done. The seals are burst—the vials pour and end
thy destiny.

"These are a small part of the thoughts of the judgments of God
pronounced on Satan," concludes the writer, who is a gentleman of vast
respectability.

One of her books has the title printed on the last page, because it was
ordered that the book should contain neither more nor less than
forty-eight pages. Another has a seal in the middle of it, bearing the
letters J. C.—the J., it is said, being meant for Jesus and Joanna!!



LETTER LXXI.

 _The Coxcomb.—Fashionables.—Fops—Egyptian Fashions.—Dances.—Visiting.—
 Walkers.—The Fancy.—Agriculturists.—The Fat Ox.—The Royal Institution.—
 Metaphysics._


Whether the Coxcomb be an animal confined to Europe I know not, but in
every country in Christendom he is to be found with the same generic
character.

  Pien di smorfiose grazie,
    E mastro assai profondo
    Nelle importanti inezie,
    Nei nulli del bel mondo;
  E in quella soavissima
    Arte tanto eloquente,
    Che sa si lungo spazio
    Parlar senza dir niente.

  Con tratti di malizia,
    A spese altrui festivo;
    Sempre in bocca risuonagli
    Quel tuono decisivo,
  Quell' insolenza amabile,
    Che con egual franchezza
    Con un' occhiata rapida
    O tutto loda, o sprezza.[26]

There is however no country in which there are so many varieties of the
animal as in England, none where he flourishes so successfully, makes
such heroic endeavours for notoriety, and enjoys so wide a sphere of it.

The highest order is that of those who have invented for themselves the
happy title of Fashionables. These gentlemen stand highest in the scale
of folly, and lowest in that of intellect, of any in the country,
inasmuch as the rivalry between them is which shall excel his
competitors in frivolity. There was a man in England half a century ago
well known for this singular kind of insanity, that he believed his soul
had been annihilated within him, while he was yet living. What this poor
maniac conceived to have been done by his soul, these gentlemen have
successfully accomplished for themselves with their intellect. Their
souls might be lodged in a nutshell without incommoding the maggot who
previously tenanted it; and if the whole stock of their ideas were
transferred to the maggot, they would not be sufficient to confuse his
own. It is impossible to describe them, because no idea can be formed of
infinite littleness: you might as reasonably attempt to dissect a
bubble, or to bottle moonshine, as to investigate their characters: they
prove satisfactorily the existence of a vacuum: the sum total of their
being is composed of negative quantities.

One degree above or below these are the fops who appear in a tangible
shape; they who prescribe fashions to the tailor, that the tailor may
prescribe them to the town; who decide upon the length of a
neck-handkerchief, and regulate the number of buttons at the knees of
their breeches. One person has attained the very summit of ambition by
excelling all others in the jet varnish of his boots. Infinite are the
exertions which have been made to equal him,—the secret of projection
could not be more eagerly desired than the receipt of his blacking; and
there is one competitor whose boots are allowed to approach very near to
the same point of perfection;—still they only approach it. This
meritorious rival loses the race of fame by half a neck, and in such
contests it is _aut Cæsar, aut nihil_. To have the best blacked boots in
the world, is a worthy object of successful emulation,—but to have only
the second-best, is to be Pompey in the Pharsalia of Fashion.

During one period of the French Revolution the Brutus head-dress was the
mode, though Brutus was at the same time considered as the Judas
Iscariot of political religion, being indeed at this day to an orthodox
Anti-Jacobin what Omar is to the Persians; that is, something a great
deal worse than the Devil. "I suppose, sir," said a London hair-dresser
to a gentleman from the country,—"I suppose, sir, you would like to be
dressed in the Brutus style." "What style is that?" was the question in
reply. "All over frizzley, sir, like the Negers,—They be Brutes you
know." If Apollo be the model of the day, these gentlemen wear stays; if
Hercules, the tailor supplies breasts of buckram, broad shoulders, and
brawny arms. At present, as the soldiers from Egypt have brought home
with them broken limbs and ophthalmia, they carry an arm in a sling, or
walk the streets with a green shade over the eyes. Every thing now must
be Egyptian: the ladies wear crocodile ornaments, and you sit upon a
sphinx in a room hung round with mummies, and with the long black
lean-armed long-nosed hieroglyphical men, who are enough to make the
children afraid to go to bed. The very shopboards must be metamorphosed
into the mode, and painted in Egyptian letters, which, as the Egyptians
had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are
simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion
by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should
be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis.

Men are tempted to make themselves notorious in England by the ease with
which they succeed. The newspapers, in the dearth of matter for filling
their daily columns, are glad to insert any thing,—when one lady comes
to town, when another leaves it, when a third expects her
_accouchement_; the grand dinner of one gentleman, and the grand supper
of another are announced before they take place; the particulars are
given after the action, a list of the company inserted, the parties who
danced together exhibited like the characters of a drama in an English
bill of the play, and the public are informed what dances were called
for, and by whom. There is something so peculiarly elegant and
appropriate in the names of the fashionable dances, that it is proper to
give you a specimen. Moll in the Wad is one;—you must excuse me for not
translating this, for really I do not understand it. Drops of Brandy,
another; and two which are at present in high vogue are, The Devil among
the Tailors, and Go to the Devil and shake yourself. At these balls, the
floors are chalked in colours in carpet patterns, a hint taken from the
lame beggars who write their petitions upon the flag-stones in the
street. This is so excellently done, that one should think it would be
painful to trample on and destroy any thing so beautiful, even though
only made to be destroyed. These things indicate the same sort of want
of feeling as the ice-palaces of Russia, and the statue of snow made by
Michel Angelo at Pietro de Medici's command. We are surrounded in this
world with what is perishable, that we may be taught to set our hearts
and hopes upon the immutable and everlasting;—it is ill done, then, to
make perishableness the food of pride.

The system of visiting in high life is brought to perfection in this
country. Were a lady to call in person upon all the numerous
acquaintance whom she wishes sometimes to crowd together at her Grand
Parties, her whole time would be too little to go from door to door.
This, therefore, being confessedly impossible, the card-currency of
etiquette was issued, and the name dropt by a servant, allowed to have
the same saving virtue of civility as the real presence. But the
servants began to find this a hard duty, and found out that they were
working like postmen without any necessity for so doing; so they agreed
at last to meet at certain pot-houses, and exchange cards, or leave them
there as at a post-office, where each in turn calls to deposit all with
which he is charged, and to receive all which are designed for him.

I have spoken elsewhere of the Turf, a road to fame always, and
oftentimes to ruin; but for this so large a fortune is required, that
the famous must always be few. A man, however, of moderate, or of no
fortune, may acquire great glory by riding a score of horses almost or
quite to death, for the sake of showing in how short a time he can go
fifty leagues. Others, with a nobler ambition, delight in displaying
their own speed. I know not whether Christoval de Mesa would have said
of this sort of walking or of running, as he did of the game of _pelota_:

    Es el que mas a la virtud se llega,
  que ni entorpece, ni el ingenio embota,
    antes da ligereza y exercita,
  y pocos que la juegan tienen gota.[27]

I know not whether he would have said this of their exercise; but this I
know, that some of the English gentlemen would make the best running
footmen in the world.

Another school—to borrow a term from the Philosophers—is that of the
Amateurs of Boxing, who call themselves _the Fancy_. They attend the
academies of the two great professors Jackson and Mendoza, the Aristotle
and Plato of pugilism,—bring up youths of promise from the country to be
trained, and match them according to their wind, science, and bottom.
But I am writing to the uninitiated,—bottom means courage, that sort of
it which will endure a great deal. Too much vivacity is rather against a
man; if he indulges in any flourishes or needless gesticulations he
wastes his wind, and though he may be admitted to be _a pleasant
fighter_, this is considered as a disadvantage. When the champion comes
off victor, after suffering much in the contest, he is said to be _much
punished_. There is something to be attended to besides science, which
is the body: it is expedient to swallow raw eggs for the wind, and to
feed upon beef as nearly raw as possible: they who do this, and practise
with weights in their hands, are said to _cultivate the muscles_. Upon
the brutality of this amusement I have already said something, nor is it
needful to comment upon what is so apparent;—but it is just that I
should now state what may truly be said in its defence. It is alleged,
that in consequence of this custom, no people decide their quarrels with
so little injury to each other as the English. The Dutch slice each
other with their snickersnees; we know how deadly the knife is employed
in our country;—the American twists the hair of his enemy round his
thumb, and scoops out an eye with his finger;—but in England a
boxing-match settles all disputes among the lower classes, and when it
is over they shake hands, and are friends. Another equally beneficial
effect is the security afforded to the weaker by the laws of honour,
which forbid all undue advantages; the man who should aim a blow below
the waist, who should kick his antagonist, strike him when he is down,
or attempt to injure him after he had yielded, would be sure to
experience the resentment of the mob, who, on such occasions, always
assemble to see what they call fair play, which they enforce as rigidly
as the Knights of the Round Table did the laws of chivalry.

The next persons to be noticed are those who seek notoriety by more
respectable means; but, following wise pursuits foolishly, live in a
sort of intellectual limbo between the worlds of Wisdom and Folly. The
fashionable agriculturists are of this class: men who assume, as the
creed of their philosophical belief, a foolish saying of some not very
wise author, "That he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one
grew before, is the greatest benefactor to his species." With these
persons, the noblest employment of human intellect is to improve the
size of turnips and cabbages, and for this they lay aside all other
studies. "When my friends come to see me in the summer," said one of
these gentlemen, "I like to hear them complain that they have not been
able to sleep in their beds for heat, because then I know things are
growing out of doors." _Quicquid amat valde amat_, may truly be said of
the Englishman; his pursuit always becomes his passion; and, if great
follies are oftentimes committed in consequence of this ardour, it must
not be forgotten that it leads also to great actions, and to important
public benefits.

Of this class the breeders are the most remarkable, and least useful.
Their object is to improve the cattle of the country, for which purpose
they negotiate with the utmost anxiety the amours of their cows and
sheep. Such objects, exclusively pursued, tend little to improve either
the intellect or the manners:—these people will apply to a favourite
pig, or a Herefordshire bull, the same epithets of praise and
exclamations of delight, which a sculptor would bestow upon the Venus de
Medici, or the Apollo Belvidere. This passion is carried to an
incredible degree of folly: the great object of ambition is to make the
animal as fat as possible, by which means it is diseased and miserable
while it lives, and of no use to any but the tallow-chandler when dead.
At this very time there is a man in London belonging to a fat ox, who
has received more money for having fattened this ox than Newton obtained
for all his discoveries, or Shakspeare for all his works. Crowds go to
see the monster, which is a shapeless mass of living fat. A picture has
been painted both of man and beast, a print engraved from it in order
that the one may be immortalized as the fattest ox that ever was seen,
and the other, as the man that fed him to that size; and two thousand
persons have subscribed for this at a guinea each. A fat pig has been
set up against him, which, I know not why, does not seem to take. The
pig is acknowledged to be a pig of great merit, but he is in a manner
neglected, and his man complains of the want of taste in the public.

To end the list of fashions, what think you of philosophy in fashion?
You must know that though the wise men of old could find out no royal
road to the mathematics, in England they have been more ingenious, and
have made many short cuts to philosophy for the accommodation of ladies
and gentlemen. The arts and sciences are now taught in lectures to
fashionable audiences of both sexes; and there is a Royal Institution
for this purpose, where some of the most scientific men in the kingdom
are thus unworthily employed. I went there one morning with J. and his
wife,—whom you are not to suspect of going for any other purpose than to
see the place. Part of the men were taking snuff to keep their eyes
open, others more honestly asleep, while the ladies were all upon the
watch, and some score of them had their tablet and pencils, busily
noting down what they heard, as topics for the next conversation party.
"Oh!" said J. when he came out, in a tone which made it half groan half
interjection, "the days of tapestry hangings and worked chair-bottoms
were better days than these!—I will go and buy for Harriet the Whole
Duty of Woman, containing the complete Art of Cookery."

But even oxygen and hydrogen are not subjects sufficiently elevated for
all. Mind and matter, free will and necessity, are also fashionable
topics of conversation; and you shall hear the origin of ideas
explained, the nature of volition elucidated, and the extent of space
and the duration of time discussed over a tea-table with admirable
volubility. Nay, it is well if one of these orators does not
triumphantly show you that there is nothing but misery in the world,
prove that you must either limit the power of God or the goodness, and
then modestly leave you to determine which. Another effect this of the
general passion for distinction: the easiest way of obtaining access
into literary society, and getting that kind of notoriety, is by
professing to be a metaphysician, because of such metaphysics a man may
get as much in half an hour as in his whole life.

At present the English philosophers and politicians, both male and
female, are in a state of great alarm. It has been discovered that the
world is over-peopled, and that it always must be so, from an error in
the constitution of nature; that the law which says "Increase and
multiply," was given without sufficient consideration; in short, that He
who made the world does not know how to manage it properly, and
therefore there are serious thoughts of requesting the English
Parliament to take the business out of his hands.

[26] Full of affected graces, and a master sufficiently profound of the
important inanities, the nothings of the fine world; and of that
sweetest art so eloquent, which can talk so long and say nothing; with
traits of malice, mirthful at another's expense: always in his mouth
that decisive tone, that amiable insolence, which, with equal freedom at
a glance, praises or condemns by wholesale.—TR.

[27] It is that which most approaches to virtue, which neither
stupifies, nor degrades the understanding, but, on the contrary,
exercises it and gives agility, and few who play at it have the gout.—TR.



LETTER LXXII.

 _Westminster Abbey on Fire.—Frequency of Fires in England.—Means
 devised for preventing and for extinguishing them; but not in Use._


I was fortunate enough this morning to witness a very grand and
extraordinary sight. As D. and I were walking towards the west end of
the town, we met an acquaintance who told us that Westminster Abbey was
on fire. We lost no time in going to the spot; the roof was just smoking
sufficiently to show us that the intelligence was true, but that the
building was no longer in danger.

The crowd which had collected was by no means so great as we had
expected.—Soldiers were placed at the doors to keep out idle intruders,
and admit such only as might properly be admitted. The sight when we
entered was truly striking. Engines were playing in the church, and the
long leathern pipes which conveyed the water stretched along the
pavement. The roof at the joint of the cross, immediately over the
choir, had fallen in, and the huge timbers lay black and smoking, in
heaps, upon the pews which they had crushed. A pulpit, of fine
workmanship, stood close by unhurt. Smaller fragments, and sparks of
fire, were from time to time falling down; and the water which was still
spouted up in streams, fell in showers, and hissed upon the hot ruins
below. We soon perceived that no real injury was done to the church,
though considerable damage was inflicted upon the funds of the
chapter.—The part which was thus consumed had not been finished like the
rest of the building; instead of masonry, it had been from some paltry
motives of parsimony made of wood, and lined on the inside with painted
canvas, in a miserable style. All this patchwork was now destroyed, as
it deserved to be; and the light coming in from above, slanted on the
fretted roof, the arches and pillars, which stood unhurt and perfectly
secure.

The Westminster boys were working an engine in the cloisters with hearty
goodwill. D., who had been educated at Westminster himself, said they
were glad at the fire; indeed, he confessed that he did not himself look
without satisfaction upon the ruins of the pew, where he had formerly
been compelled to sit so many hours in the cold.

The pavement in that part of the abbey which is called Poet's Corner
sunk considerably in consequence of the water, the earth in the graves
probably sinking when wet: so much so that the stones must be taken up
and laid anew. What an opportunity of examining the skulls of so many
celebrated men! If professor Blumenbach were but an Englishman, or if
the dean and chapter were physiologists, these relics would now be
collected and preserved.

One of the graves would exhibit curious contents, if any such curiosity
should be indulged. An old countess, who died not long since after a
very singular life, gave orders in her will that she should be buried in
Poets' Corner, as near as possible to Shakspeare's monument, dressed in
her wedding suit, and with a speaking trumpet in her coffin. These
orders her executors were obliged to perform to the letter. Accordingly,
a grave was solicited and granted for a due consideration in this holy
ground; the old lady was equipped in her bridal array, packed up for the
journey, and ready to set off, when it was discovered that the
speaking-trumpet had been forgotten. What was to be done? This was in a
remote part of the country; there was not such a thing to be purchased
within a dozen leagues, and the will was not to be trifled with. Luckily
some person there present recollected that a gentleman in the
neighbourhood had a speaking-trumpet, which had been left him by a
sea-captain as a memorial of an old friend, and which for that reason he
particularly valued. A messenger was immediately dispatched to borrow
this; of course he was careful not to say for what it was wanted: as
soon as it was brought, it was put by her side in the coffin, the coffin
was soldered down, off posted the funeral for London, and if the
rightful owner does not look after his trumpet now, he will have no
other opportunity till he hears the old lady flourish upon it at the
resurrection, for which purpose it is to be presumed, she chose to have
it at hand.

This mischief, which might have been in its consequences so deplorable,
was occasioned by the carelessness of some plumbers, who were at work
upon the roof. Old St Paul's was destroyed just in this way: it is
surprising how many accidents of this kind have happened from the same
cause, and provoking to think, that so great and venerable a work of
piety and human genius, and human power, should have been so near
destruction by the stupid negligence of a common labourer! They burn in
the hand for accidental homicide in this country;[28] a little
application of hot iron for accidental church-burning would be a
punishment in kind for a neglect of duty, so dangerous, that it ought
not to be unpunished. When carelessness endangers the life or welfare of
another, it ought to be regarded as a crime.

A fire is the only ordinary spectacle in this great metropolis which I
have not seen; for this cannot be called such, though in its effect
finer than any conflagration.—Fires are so frequently happening, that I
may consider myself as unfortunate. The traveller who is at London
without seeing a fire, and at Naples without witnessing an eruption of
Vesuvius, is out of luck.

The danger of fire is one to which the Londoners are more exposed than
any people in the world, except, perhaps, the inhabitants of
Constantinople. Their earth-coal must be considered as one main
cause—pieces of this are frequently exploded into the room. The
carelessness of servants is another; for nothing but candles are used to
give light for domestic purposes, and accidents happen from a candle
which could not from a lamp. The accumulation of furniture in an English
house is so much fuel in readiness; all the floors are boarded, all the
bedsteads are of wood, all the beds have curtains. I have heard of a
gentleman who set the tail of his shirt on fire as he was stepping into
bed, the flames caught the curtains, and the house was consumed. You may
easily suppose this adventure obtained for him the name of The Comet.

Means have been devised for preventing fires, for extinguishing them,
and for escaping from them. David Hartley, son to a great English
philosopher of the same name, proposed to line every room with plates of
metal, and Lord Stanhope invented a kind of mortar for the same purpose.
Both methods have been tried with complete success; but they will never
be adopted unless a law be passed to compel the adoption. For houses in
London, and indeed in all large towns, are built for sale, and the
builder will not incur the expense of making them fire-proof, because,
if they are burnt, he is not the person who is to be burnt in them. And
if he who builds for himself in the country, were disposed to avail
himself of these inventions, should he have heard of them, the
difficulty of instructing labourers in the use of any thing which they
have not been used to, is such, that rather than attempt it, he submits
to the same hazard as his neighbours.

You would suppose, however, that there could be no objection to the use
of any means for extinguishing fires. Balls for this purpose were
invented by Mr Godfrey, son to the inventor of a famous quack-medicine;
but the son's fire-balls did not succeed so well as the father's
cordial.—Succeed, indeed, they did, in effecting what was intended; for,
when one of them was thrown into a room which had been filled with
combustibles and set on fire for the purpose of experiment, it exploded,
and instantly quenched it. But there was an objection to the use of
these balls which Mr Godfrey had not foreseen. It is a trade in England
to put out fires, and the English have a proverb that "All trades must
live;" which is so thoroughly admitted by all ranks and degrees, that if
the elixir of life were actually to be discovered, the furnishers of
funerals would present a petition to parliament, praying that it might
be prohibited, in consideration of the injury they must otherwise
sustain; and in all probability, parliament would permit their plea. The
continuance of the slave trade, in consideration of the injury which the
dealers in human flesh would sustain by its abolishment, would be a
precedent. The firemen made a conspiracy against Godfrey; and when he or
any of his friends attended at a fire, and mounted a ladder to throw the
balls in, the ladder was always thrown down; so that, as the life of
every person who attempted to use them was thus endangered, the thing
was given up.

The machine for escaping is a sort of iron basket, or chair, fixed in a
groove on the outside of the house. I have never seen one at any other
place than at the inventor's warehouse. The poet, Gray, was notoriously
fearful of fire, and kept a ladder of ropes in his bed-room. Some
mischievous young men at Cambridge knew this, and roused him from below,
in the middle of a dark night, with the cry of Fire! The staircase, they
said, was in flames. Up went his window, and down he came by his
rope-ladder, as fast as he could go, into a tub of water which they had
placed to receive him.

[28] Don Manuel confounds homicide and manslaughter.—TR.



LETTER LXXIII.

_Remarks on the English Language._


He who ventures to criticise a foreign language should bear in mind that
he is in danger of exposing his own ignorance. "What a vile language is
yours!" said a Frenchman to an Englishman;—"you have the same word for
three different things! There is ship, _un vaisseau_; ship (sheep)
_mouton_; and ship (cheap) _bon marché_."—Now these three words, so
happily instanced by Monsieur, are pronounced as differently as they are
spelt. As I see his folly, it will be less excusable should I commit the
same myself.

The English is rather a hissing than a harsh language, and perhaps this
was the characteristic to which Charles V. alluded, when he said it was
fit to speak to birds in. It has no gutturals like ours, no nasal twang
like the Portugueze and French; but the perpetual sibilance is very
grating. If the Rabbis have not discovered in what language the Serpent
tempted Eve, they need not look beyond the English; it has the true mark
of his enunciation. I think this characteristic of the language may be
accounted for by the character of the nation. They are an active busy
people, who like to get through what they are about with the least
possible delay, and if two syllables can be shortened into one it is so
much time saved. What we do with _Vmd._ they have done with half the
words in their language. They have squeezed the vowel out of their
genitives and plurals, and compressed dissyllables into monosyllables.
The French do the same kind of thing in a worse way; they in speaking
leave half of every word behind them in a hurry; the English pack up
theirs close, and hasten on with the whole.

It is a concise language, though the grievous want of inflections
necessitates a perpetual use of auxiliaries. It would be difficult to
fill eight lines of English, adhering closely to the sense, with the
translation of an octave stanza. Their words are shorter; and though in
many cases they must use two and sometimes three, where we need but one,
still if the same meaning requires more words, it is contained in fewer
syllables, and costs less breath. Weight for weight, a pound of
_garvanzos_[29] will lie in half the compass of a pound of chesnuts.

Frenchmen always pronounce English ill; Germans, better; it is easier
for a Spaniard than for either. The _th_, or theta, is their shibboleth;
our _z_ has so nearly the same sound that we find little or no
difficulty in acquiring it. In fact, the pronunciation would not be
difficult if it were not capricious; but the exceptions to any general
rule are so numerous, that years and years of practice are hardly
sufficient to acquire them. Neither is the pronunciation of the same
word alike at all times, for it sometimes becomes the fashion to change
the accent. The theatre gives the law in these cases. What can have been
the cause of this preposterous and troublesome irregularity is beyond my
knowledge. They acknowledge the defect, and many schemes have been
devised by speculative writers for improving the orthography, and
assimilating it to the oral tongue: but they have all so disfigured the
appearance of the language, and so destroyed all visible traces of
etymology, that they have only excited ridicule, and have deserved
nothing better.

It is difficult to acquire, yet far less so than the German and its
nearer dialects; the syntax is less involved, and the proportion of
Latin words far greater. Dr Johnson, their lexicographer, and the most
famous of all their late writers, introduced a great number of
sesquipedalian Latinisms, like our Latinists of the seventeenth century.
The ladies complain of this, and certainly it was done in a false
taste,—but it facilitates a foreigner's progress. I find Johnson for
this very reason the easiest English author; his long words are always
good stepping-stones, on which I get sure footing.

If the size of his dictionary, which is the best and largest, may be
regarded as a criterion, the language is not copious. We must not
however forget that dictionaries profess to give only the written
language, and that hundreds and thousands of words, either preserved by
the peasantry in remote districts, or created by the daily wants and
improvements of society, by ignorance or ingenuity, by whim or by wit,
never find their way into books, though they become sterling currency.
But that it is not copious may be proved by a few general remarks. The
verb and substantive are often the same; they have few diminutives and
no augmentatives; and their derivatives are few. You know how many we
have from _agua_; the English have only one from _water_, which is the
adjective _watery_; and to express the meaning of ours, they either use
the simple verb in different senses, or form some composite in the
clumsy Dutch way of sticking two words together; _agua_, water;
_aguaza_, water; _aguar_, to water; _hazer aguada_, to water;
_aguadero_, a water-man; _aguaducho_, a water-pipe; _aguado_, a
water-drinker, &c. &c. And yet, notwithstanding these deficiencies, they
tell me it is truly a rich language. Corinthian brass would not be an
unapt emblem for it,—materials base and precious melted down into a
compound still precious, though debased.

They have one name for an animal in English, and another for its
flesh;—for instance, cow-flesh is called beef; that of the sheep,
mutton; that of the pig, pork. The first is of Saxon, the latter of
French origin; and this seems to prove that meat cannot have been the
food of the poor in former times. The cookery books retain a technical
language from the days when carving was a science, and instruct the
reader to _cut up_ a turkey, to _rear_ a goose, to _wing_ a partridge,
to _thigh_ a woodcock, to _unbrace_ a duck, to _unlace_ a rabbit, to
_allay_ a pheasant, to _display_ a crane, to _dismember_ a hern, and to
_lift_ a swan.

Their early writers are intelligible to none but the learned, whereas a
child can understand the language of the Partidas, though a century
anterior to the oldest English work. This late improvement is easily
explained by their history: they were a conquered people: the languages
of the lord and the subject were different; and it was some ages before
that of the people was introduced at court, and into the law
proceedings, and that not till it had become so amalgamated with the
Norman French, as in fact to be no longer Saxon. We, on the contrary,
though we lost the greater part of our country, never lost our
liberty—nor our mother tongue. What Arabic we have we took from our
slaves, not our masters.

I can discover, but not discriminate, provincial intonations, and
sometimes provincial accentuation; but the peculiar words, or phrases,
or modes of speech which characterize the different parts of the
country, a foreigner cannot perceive. The only written dialect is the
Scotch. It differs far more from English than Portugueze from Castilian,
nearly as much as the Catalan, though the articles and auxiliars are the
same. Very many words are radically different, still more so differently
pronounced as to retain no distinguishable similarity; and as this
difference is not systematic, it is the more difficult to acquire. No
Englishman reads Scotch with fluency, unless he has long resided in the
country—I have looked into the poems of Burns, which are very famous,
and found them almost wholly unintelligible; a new dictionary and new
grammar were wanted, and on enquiring for such I found that none were in
existence.

The English had no good prose writers till the commencement of the last
century, indeed with a very few exceptions till the present reign; but
no book now can meet with any success unless it be written in a good
style. Their rhymed poetry is less sonorous, less euphonous, less
varied, than ours; their blank verse, on the other hand, infinitely more
rhythmical than the _verso suelto_. But their language is incapable of
any thing between the two; they have no _asonantes_, nor would the
English ear be delicate enough to feel them. In printing poetry they
always begin the line with a capital letter, whether the sentence
requires it or not: this, which is the custom with all nations except
our own, though at the expense of all propriety, certainly gives a sort
of architectural uniformity to the page. No mark of interrogation or
admiration is ever prefixed; this they might advantageously borrow from
us. A remarkable peculiarity is, that they always write the personal
pronoun I with a capital letter. May we not consider this great I as an
unintended proof how much an Englishman thinks of his own consequence?

[29] A species of lupin used as food.—TR.



LETTER LXXIV.

 _Departure from London.—West Kennet.—Use of the Words Horse and
 Dog.—Bath.—Ralph Allen.—The Parades.—Beau Nash.—Turnspits._


Sept. 16.

The last day of my abode in London was the most painful of my life. To
part from dear friends, even for a transitory absence, is among the
evils of life; but to leave them with a certainty of never meeting
again, was a grief which I had never till now endured. Sixteen months
had I been domesticated with J., as if I had been a brother of the
family. When the children, as they went to bed last night, came to kiss
me for the last time, I wished I had never seen them, and all night I
remained wakeful—not in that state of feverish startlishness which the
expectation of an early call occasions, but in melancholy thoughts and
unavailing regret, which all the recollections of my own country, and my
father's house, could not dissipate. Never shall I remember my friends
in England without gratitude and love.

The coach was to start at five. I was ready at four, expecting the
porter from the inn. To my surprise, rather than satisfaction, Mrs J.
and her husband had risen, and prepared chocolate for me. The
preparations for a departure are always mournful: even animals know and
dislike them: the dog is uneasy when he sees you packing up, and the cat
wanders disturbedly from room to room, aware that some change is
preparing, and dreading all change. The smell of cords and matting
becomes associated with unsettled and uneasy feelings;—you rise by
candle-light;—every thing is unusual, unnatural, enough to depress even
joyful hope—and my departure was for ever. Mrs J. said, she trusted we
should meet again in a better world, if not in this:—"Heretic as I am,"
said she, striving to force a smile through her tears, "I am sure you
will join in the hope." Excellent woman—it cannot be heresy to believe
it.

For the first time I was now to travel alone in this country: at
Bristol, however, D. was to meet me, and this was a consolation, and a
pleasure in store. We breakfasted at Maidenhead, and then entered upon a
road which was new to me, through a level country, with easy hills on
either side in the distance, full of villages and villas: this was its
character for fifteen leagues. We passed through Reading, a town of
consequence in old times, and still flourishing. Speenhamland was the
next stage, a street connected with the town of Newbury.

On an eminence to the right of the town stand the remains of Donnington
castle, built by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, who was
contemporary with king Don Juan I. We passed through Hungerford, and
through Marlborough forest, the only one which I have seen in England;
then came to the town of the same name, an old place, in which many of
the houses are faced with tiles in the shape of fish-scales. At the end
of the town is one of the largest inns in the kingdom, the house having
formerly been a duke's palace, with an artificial mound of remarkable
size in the garden.

There is something as peculiar as it is pleasing in the character of
this country: the villages, with their churches, are all seated in the
bottom, which is intersected by numberless little streams, in every
respect unlike the mountain rivers of the north, but still beautiful;
they flow slowly over weedy beds, sometimes through banks of oziers,
sometimes through green fields. Beyond, and on both hands, lie the
Downs, and patches of brown stubble show the advance of cultivation up
their sides; for, wherever there are neither hedges nor trees, it is a
certain mark that the land has not long been cultured. The soil is
chalky. The stage stopped at a little, clean, low alehouse, and the
coachman opened the door and asked if we would please to alight. "By all
means," said one of my fellow-travellers; and then, addressing himself
to me, he said, "If you have ever travelled this road before, sir, you
will alight of course; and if you have not, you must not pass by without
tasting the best beer in England." When I had done so, I fairly
confessed to him that if I had left England without tasting it, I should
not have known what beer was. The good woman was so well pleased with
this praise from a foreigner, that she invited me to walk into the
cellar, and, in a room on the same floor with the kitchen into which we
were introduced, (there being no other apartment for us,) she showed me
fifty barrels of beer, that quantity being always kept full. I wrote
down the name of the village, which is West Kennet, in my tablets, that
I might mention it with due honour; and also, that if ever I should
graduate in art magic in the caves of Salamanca, I might give the imp in
attendance a right direction where to go fill my glass every day at
dinner.

Near this village, and close by the road side, is the largest tumulus in
the island. As we crossed the Downs, we saw on our left the figure of a
huge white horse cut in the side of the chalk hill, so large, and in
such a situation, that in a clear day it is visible above four leagues
off. There are other such in different parts of the country, and all are
regularly weeded on a holiday appointed in each parish for the purpose.
It is perhaps a relic of Saxon superstition. I may here notice a
remarkable use which the English make of the word _horse_. They employ
it in combination to signify any thing large and coarse, as in
horse-beans, horse-chesnut, horse-radish;—sometimes it is prefixed to a
man's name as an epithet of ridicule: they say also horse-ant, and
horse-leech: and, by a still stronger compound, I have heard a woman of
masculine appearance called a horse godmother.[30] Dog is used still
more strangely in almost every possible sense: the wild rose is called
dog-rose; the scentless violet, dog-violet. Jolly dog is the highest
convivial encomium which a man can receive from his companions; honest
dog is when he superadds some good qualities to conviviality; sad dog is
when he is a reprobate: dog is the word of endearment which an
Englishman uses to his child, and it is what he calls his servant when
he is angry: puppy is the term of contempt for a coxcomb; and bitch the
worst appellation which can be applied to the worst of women. A
flatterer is called a spaniel, a ruffian is called a bull-dog, an
ill-looking fellow an ugly hound; whelp, cur, and mongrel, are terms of
contemptuous reproach to a young man; and if a young woman's nose turns
upward, she is certainly called pug.

Having passed through the towns of Calne and Chippenham, the light
failed us, and thus deprived me of the sight, as I was told, of a
beautiful country. About nine we entered Bath. My fellow-travellers all
left me, and I was landed at a good inn, for the first time without a
companion, and never more in need of one. I have been writing with a
heavy heart, lest my heart should be heavier, were I unemployed.
Wherever we go we leave something behind us to regret, and these causes
of sorrow are continually arising. Even the best blessings of life are
alloyed by some feeling of separation: the bride leaves her father's
house, when she goes to her husband's; and the anxieties of infancy are
hardly overpast, when the child goes from his mother to commence his
career of labour and of pain. It is assuredly delightful to have
travelled, but not to travel:—Oh, no! Fatigue, and the sense of
restlessness, are not all that is to be endured;—the feeling that you
are a stranger and alone comes upon you in a gloomy day, when the
spirits fall with the barometer, or when they are exhausted at evening
or at night. We paint angels with wings, and fancy that it will be part
of our privileges in heaven to move from place to place with accelerated
speed. It would be more reasonable to suppose that Satan keeps
stage-coaches, and has packets upon the Styx; that locomotion ceases
when we become perfect, and beatified man either strikes root like a
zoophyte, or is identified with his house like a tortoise.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sept. 17. Bath.

If other cities are interesting as being old, Bath is not less so for
being new. It has no aqueduct, no palaces, no gates, castle, or city
walls, yet it is the finest and most striking town that I have ever seen.

According to the fabulous History of England, the virtues of the hot
springs here were discovered long before the Christian æra, by Bladud, a
British prince, who, having been driven from his father's house because
he was leprous, was reduced like the Prodigal Son to keep swine. His
pigs, says the story, had the same disease as himself: in their
wanderings they came to this valley, and rolled in the warm mud where
these waters stagnated;—they were healed by them. Bladud, perceiving
their cure, tried the same remedy with the same success, and when he
became king he built a city upon the spot. It is certain that the Romans
were acquainted with these springs, and had a station here; and it must
have been a place of some consequence some centuries ago when the
cathedral was built, yet not of much, or the diocese would not, at the
time of the schism, have been united under one bishop with that of
Wells. Within the memory of old persons, Bath consisted of a few narrow
streets in the bottom:—invalids came at that time for the benefit of its
waters; and wherever there are such places of resort, many, who have no
real complaints, will either fancy or feign them, for the sake of going
there to meet company. As the wealth of the country increased, and
habits of dissipation with it, these visitors became more numerous, and
accommodations were wanting for them.

Close to the town, between the springs and the river, was a morass. The
ground belonged to Ralph Allen, the Allworthy in Tom Jones, one of the
few English works which we have naturalized in our language. This
excellent man was of low parentage, and had in his youth been employed
in carrying letters from a post town across the country, for there was
at that time no regular communication from one town to another, except
along the direct road to London. During these solitary journeys the
thought occurred to him that it would be far better that such a
communication should be regularly established by the state, than that it
should be left to poor individuals like himself, who were neither always
to be found, nor always to be trusted: accordingly, he shaped a plan for
this purpose; government adopted it; and, in consequence, his fortune
was made. He fixed his residence on a hill about half an hour's walk
from Bath, and, carrying with him into retirement the same active mind
which had been the means of his advancement from obscurity, willingly
listened to any plan which could be devised for the improvement of the
city. There was then in the city an architect of real genius, by name
Wood; and upon this morass of Mr Allen's he erected two rows of houses,
one fronting the north, the other the south; connected them by two
transverse streets, of which the houses were built upon the same plan;
and left in front a magnificent paved terrace, about thirty paces in
breadth, raised upon arches, and open to the country. The houses were
designed for lodgers; they are large and lofty, and are certainly the
finest range of private buildings in the whole kingdom, and, perhaps, in
the whole world.

About the same time a townsman, who had amassed some fortune in trade,
built a theatre just of that size in which the voice could be heard in
all parts of the house without being strained, and the movements of the
countenance seen without being distorted. While the town was thus
improved by the enterprising liberality of its inhabitants, it derived
no less advantage from the humour of one of those men who are contented
to exhibit strong sense, in playing the fool well all the days of their
lives. By this time more persons visited Bath in search of pleasure than
of health, and these persons, among other amusements, had their public
dances.—Now, though Englishmen have proved that they can go on
peaceably, orderly, and well, under a free government, it was found
utterly impossible to keep English women in order by any thing short of
an absolute monarchy. Precedency, in these public meetings, was
furiously contested,—because, in most instances, there was no criterion
of rank whereby it could be decided; and points which are most doubtful,
and, it may be added, most insignificant, are oftentimes the most warmly
disputed: a perpetual Dictator for the realm of Fashion was necessary,
and this person was the second who held the office. Nash was his name,
and his fitness for the office is attested by the title of Beau, which
is always prefixed to it;—Charlemagne, the Venerable Bede, and Beau
Nash, being the only three persons whose names are always accompanied
with the epithets which characterize them.

Beau Nash was as great as Charlemagne in his way, and in this respect
greater, that the system which he established became permanent, and he
transmitted an empire to his successors which has become yearly more and
more extensive. He made laws to regulate when the company should
assemble, and when they should separate; arranged the tactics of the
dance; enacted the dress in which ladies should appear; and, if they
ventured to disobey and come in without the wedding garment, made no
scruple, whatever might be their rank, of turning them out. His strong
sense and sarcastic humour kept them in awe. Such a man would in old
times have been selected for the king's fool; he seems to have
considered himself as standing in some such capacity to the Bath
visitors, and made use of the privilege which the character allowed him.
The follies of mankind were his food. He gambled, and his profits were
such as enabled him to live expensively, and keep an equipage and a
large retinue. This life terminated in its natural and righteous way. He
became old and helpless, lived to stand in need of that charity which he
had never withheld from the needy, but which none extended to him, and
died poor, neglected, and miserable; the inhabitants of Bath rewarding
his genius after the usual manner in which genius of a higher character
is rewarded, by erecting a statue to the honour of the man whom they had
suffered almost to starve.

Once, after his death, his loss was exemplified in a very remarkable
manner. Two ladies of quality quarrelled in the ballroom. The rest of
the company took part, some on one side, some on the other; Beau Nash
was gone, and they stood in no awe of his successor: they became
outrageous, a real battle-royal took place, and the floor was strewn
with caps, lappets, curls and cushions, diamond pins and pearls.

Since the Parades were built every addition to the town has been made
upon system, and with a view to its beauty: hence it presents the
singular spectacle of a city of which the parts are uniform, yet the
whole irregular;—a few old streets still remaining to make the others
more remarkable by contrast. The adjoining hills supply a soft
freestone, which is easily worked, and becomes harder when exposed to
the air: its colour is very beautiful when fresh, but it is soon
blackened by the soot from the earth-coal fires, which is indeed
exceedingly annoying in all the large towns. Still, blackened stones
produce a far better effect than blackened bricks. There is a Square of
which the sides resemble so many palaces; ascend a handsome street from
this, and you come into a Circus of like beauty, and near this is a
Crescent built with equal, or even more magnificence, and overlooking
the country. There are three of these crescents on the hills; one of
them remains unfinished, because the ground in front has not been well
secured, but in situation it is the finest of the three. A fourth in the
valley remains one of the melancholy new ruins, which the projectors
were unable to complete, and so were ruined themselves, a sudden check
having been given to all such speculations when the last war broke out.
It is plain that Bath has outgrown its beauty. Long suburbs extend now
on every side of the city, and the meads on the opposite side of the
river, which, when the Parades were built, justified the motto upon one
of the houses, _Rus in Urbe_, are now covered with another town. It must
have been in its perfection when there was nothing beyond the new bridge
nor above the old Crescent.

I passed the whole morning in perambulating the town, seeing it in all
its parts. The cathedral is small but beautiful; it has suffered much
from the fanatics. The Pump-room is a handsome building, and hears above
the entrance the words of Pindar, +Ariston men hydôr+, here used in a
sense concerning which there can be no dispute. I found my way into the
market, which for its excellent order and abundance surpasses any thing
in London, and is as surprising a sight as any in the place. There being
in some places no carriage road, and in others so wide a pavement that
in wet weather there would be no getting at the carriage, sedan chairs
are used instead. They are very numerous, and with the chairmen, who all
wear large coats of dark blue, form another distinguishing peculiarity
of this remarkable town. There are two public ball-rooms, and two
masters of the ceremonies, Beau Nash's empire having been divided,
because it was grown too large for the superintendance of any
individual: these rooms are handsome, and lighted with splendid
chandeliers of cut glass, but they want that light ornamental festive
character which southern taste would have given them. Some sober
Englishmen in the anti-chambers were silently busied at whist, though it
was noon-day,—some of them, it seems, make it the study of their lives,
and others their trade. It is a fine place for gamblers, and for that
species of men called fortune-hunters, a race of swindlers of the worst
kind, who are happily unknown in Spain. They make it their business to
get a wife of fortune, having none themselves: age, ugliness, and even
idiocy, being no objections. They usually come from Ireland, and behave
as ill to the women whom they have trepanned, after marriage, as the
women deserve for trusting them. It is also the Canaan of Physicians;
for it abounds with wealthy patients, many of whom will have any disease
which the doctor will be pleased to find out for them: but even Canaan
may be overstocked, and, it seems, more of Death's advanced guard have
assembled here than can find milk and honey.

The enormous joints of meat which come to an English table are always
roasted upon a spit as long as the old two-handed sword;[31] these spits
are now turned by a wheel in the chimney which the smoke sets in motion,
but formerly by the labour of a dog who was trained to run in a wheel.
There was a peculiar breed for the purpose, called turnspits from their
occupation, long-backed and short-legged; they are now nearly extinct.
The mode of teaching them their business was more summary than humane:
the dog was put in the wheel, and a burning coal with him; he could not
stop without burning his legs, and so was kept upon the full gallop.
These dogs were by no means fond of their profession; it was indeed hard
work to run in a wheel for two or three hours, turning a piece of meat
which was twice their own weight. Some years ago a party of young men at
Bath hired the chairmen on a Saturday night to steal all the turnspits
in town, and lock them up till the following evening. Accordingly on
Sunday, when every body has roast meat for dinner, all the cooks were to
be seen in the streets,—"Pray have you seen our Chloe?" says one. "Why,"
replies the other, "I was coming to ask you if you had seen our Pompey:"
up came a third, while they were talking, to enquire for her Toby,—and
there was no roast meat in Bath that day.

It is told of these dogs in this city, that one Sunday, when they had as
usual followed their mistresses to church, the lesson for the day
happened to be that chapter in Ezekiel, wherein the self-moving chariots
are described. When first the word wheel was pronounced, all the curs
pricked up their ears in alarm; at the second wheel they set up a
doleful howl; and when the dreaded word was uttered a third time, every
one of them scampered out of church as fast as he could, with his tail
between his legs.

[30] _Cavallo comadre._ The meaning of the words cannot be mistaken, but
the expression is not known to the translator: neither does he know that
men are called horses in England as well as asses, unless, indeed, that
a man with a long face is said to be like a horse.—TR.

[31] Estoque.



LETTER LXXV.

 _Road from Bath to Bristol.—Cornu-Ammonis.—Bristol.—Exchange.—
 Market.—Cathedral.—The Brazen Eagle.—Clifton.—Bristol-Wells.—
 Anecdote of Kosciusko._


From Bath to Bristol is three leagues; the road crosses the river Avon
by an old bridge, and continues for some way along its banks, or at
little distance from them. Half a league from Bath is the house wherein
Fielding is said to have written Tom Jones; it stands by the way side,
in a village called Twyverton, and I did not look at it without respect.
We had a fine view of the river winding under a hill which is covered
with old trees, and has a mansion on its brow, opposite to which, on our
side the water, was the largest and finest meadow I have seen in
England, in which an immense herd was feeding, as in a savannah. A
little dirty town, called Keynsham, stands about half way. I noticed the
Cornu-Ammonis built up in the walls of many of the houses, or, if it
happened to be a fine specimen, placed over the door-way, as an
ornament. This, I find, has given rise to a fabulous legend, which says
that St Keyna, from whom the place takes its name, resided here in a
solitary wood full of venomous serpents, and her prayers converted them
into these stones, which still retain their shape. Beyond this there is
a fantastic building, more like a castle than any thing else: I could
neither guess for what it was intended, nor of what it was built. It
proved to be the stables belonging to a great house on the opposite side
of the road, from which there is a subterranean passage, and the
materials were the scoria from some neighbouring iron-works, with which
I soon perceived that the walls by the road side were capt: for this it
is excellently adapted, as nothing will vegetate upon it, and it is
undecomposable by the weather. Here we once more approached the river,
which was now a dirty stream, flowing through wide banks of mud. Bristol
was presently in sight,—a huge city in the bottom, and extending up all
the adjoining hills, with many steeples, one of which inclines so much
from the perpendicular, that I should be sorry to live within reach of
its fall,—and the black towers of many glass-houses rolling up black
smoke. We entered through a gate of modern and mean architecture into a
street which displayed as much filth, and as much poverty, as I have
seen in any English town. Here, for the first time, I saw something like
a public fountain, with a painted statue of Neptune above it, which is
as little creditable to the decency of the magistrates as to the state
of arts in the city. The entrance into Bristol is, however, the worst
part of it. We crossed the bridge, where there is a fine opening, and
full in view a modern church and spire, so beautifully proportioned, and
therefore so fine, that you do not at first perceive that the whole
building is perfectly plain and unornamented.

D. was awaiting my arrival. He had secured our places for Exeter in
to-morrow's coach, and I lost no time in seeing what he, as being
acquainted with the place, thought most worthy to be seen. The exchange,
a fine edifice, about half a century old, was opposite to the inn-door
at which the stage had stopped: its inclosed square is exceedingly
beautiful, more so than any thing of the kind which I have seen
elsewhere:—yet, it seems, the citizens choose to assemble in the street,
in front, where some friend to the city, in old times, erected four
brazen tables, on which his town's-folk might count out their money in
their public dealings. On one of these a man was selling newspapers, on
another a cage of goldfinches was exposed to sale. Behind the exchange
is the market, which is even finer than that of Bath. It contains three
market-houses, to which cheese, butter, pork, poultry, &c. are brought
by women from the country. The shambles stand in another part; and
another is appropriated for vegetables, secured from the weather by a
range of slated sheds. I never saw, even at a fair, a busier or more
crowded scene, and every thing was going on with that order and dispatch
which characterize this extraordinary nation.

We crossed a wooden draw-bridge over the bed of a river, where the ships
were lying on a bed of mud, and the water was not wider than a common
street gutter: it was full of small craft; the view on one side extended
down the river into the country: there was the bustle of business along
the quays and in the streets; one church tower of singular beauty
was in sight, and the whole scene was fine and rememberable. The
cathedral stands in a place with old trees in front; it is a poor
building,—excepting Chester, the least interesting in England. The
entrance is disfigured by a door-way in the very worst style of modern
architecture. A fine cross, which formerly stood in the square, has been
sold by the corporation to a gentleman, who has re-erected it at his
country-seat, and thus rescued it from destruction! This was about
thirty years ago; the person who told me this, said he did not remember
it, but had often in his childhood eaten it in gingerbread. Instead of
ascending, you descend into this church, by several steps; the pavement
is therefore necessarily damp, and, what is truly abominable, stinks of
the abominations which are, in contempt of all decency, committed
against the doors, and find their way down.

It is, as I have elsewhere mentioned, a part of the service of the
English Church to read a portion of the Scriptures, one chapter from the
Old Testament, and another from the New. In common parochial churches,
the whole of the service is performed by the officiating priest, and he
does this in his desk: but, in cathedrals, one of the minor priests
takes this part of the duty, and performs it in the middle of the choir:
here the bible is usually placed upon the outspread wings of a brazen
eagle, the handsomest of all their church ornaments. Such an eagle they
had in this cathedral, and a remarkably handsome one it was; but last
year the dean and chapter thought proper to sell it, for the sake of
applying the paltry sum which it would produce as old brass in ornaments
for the altar.—So the eagle went as the cross had gone before it. There
happened to be a man in the city whose humour it is to attend service
whenever it is performed in this cathedral: on week days this is
considered by the priests as a mere matter of form; and having few or
none to attend them, they omit parts of the liturgy, and hurry over the
rest, to get through their task as speedily as possible. During many
years it had been the main business of this person to watch them, and
endeavour to bring them to a sense of their duty; for which purpose he
wrote to them whenever he found them offending, and also to the dean and
to the bishop, calling upon them to interfere, and see that the service
of the church was duly performed. He missed the eagle, enquired for it,
traced it to the brazier's, and rescued it from the furnace. Here was a
fine subject for his zeal! He wrote a circular letter to all the
bishops, of which they took no notice; offered the eagle again to the
cathedral at the price which he had paid for it, which they refused,
being, as might have been expected, obstinate in their misconduct—and,
lastly, put it up to sale,[32] in the hope that it might be purchased
for some other church, and not utterly desecrated. What has been its
fate I know not; but it seems that the respect which the English pay to
their cathedrals is confined to the buildings, and does not extend to
any thing in them. At one time all the monumental figures and
inscriptions were cut in brass:—a large collection of these, which were
taken up from another cathedral while it was repaired, have gone the way
of the eagle, and been cast into candlesticks and warming-pans.

The monuments in the church are numerous; that nearest the entrance is
the finest and the most remarkable, as being Mrs Draper's, the Eliza of
Sterne and of the Abbé Raynal. The rhapsody about her, in the latter's
work, is as excellent a specimen of every thing that is absurd, as it
would be easy to find even in his Histoire Philosophique. Some parts of
the architecture are beautiful in their kind. At a little distance from
the church is a Saxon gateway: the upper part is in admirable
preservation—the bottom has been corroded by a practice as indecent as
it is sacrilegious—the more to be regretted, as this is one of the
finest specimens of the style.

The views in the neighbourhood of this city are singularly pleasing. The
adjoining village of Clifton was once the most beautiful village in
England, and may now be said to be the finest suburb. Here too, as well
as at Bath, is the dismal sight of streets and crescents which have
never been finished, the most dolorous of all ruins. It stands upon a
hill above the river, which runs between high rocks and a hanging wood;
a scene truly magnificent, and wanting nothing but clearer water; the
stream consists of liquid mud, and the banks are hideous unless the tide
be full, for the tide rises here not less than forty English feet. The
beauty of this scene is yearly diminishing; the rocks which formerly
rose so immediately from the river side, as only to allow room for a
path, are used as quarries. The people of Bristol seem to sell every
thing that can be sold. They sold their cross,—by what species of weight
or measurement I know not,—they sold their eagle by the pound, and here
they are selling the sublime and beautiful by the boat-load! One grand
crag which has been left untouched shows what mischief has already been
done. There is a cavern near the summit of this, of which the arch
appeared remarkably fine as we looked up to it from the side of the
river.

I tasted their famous medicinal water which rises at the foot of these
rocks; it is tepid, and so completely without any medicinal flavour, as
to be excellent water. In cases of diabetes it possesses some virtue;
for consumption, which it is usually prescribed for, none whatsoever.
Several unhappy patients, who had been sent here to die at a distance
from home, were crawling out upon the parade as if to take their last
gasp of sunshine. It was shocking to see them, and it is shocking to
hear how thoroughly the people here regard death as a matter of trade.
The same persons who keep the hotels furnish the funerals; entertain
patients while they are living, and then, that they may accommodate them
all through, bury them when they die. There came here a young man from
the North, dying, with his sister to attend him. The disease sometimes,
when it assumes its gentlest form, seems to terminate suddenly; and one
morning, when the sister rose to breakfast and enquired for him, she
found he was dead. He had expired during the night; the people of the
house said they thought they might as well not disturb her, so they had
laid out the body, dressed it in the shroud, measured it for the coffin,
and given all the orders—to take all trouble off her hands. You will
think it scarcely possible that this scene of disease and death should
be a place of amusement, where idlers of fashion resort to spend the
summer, mingle in the pump-room and in the walks with the dying, and
have their card-parties and dances within hearing of every passing bell.

Half a century ago Bristol was in size the second city in England.
Manchester now holds that rank, and several other towns have outstripped
it in population. There is less mercantile enterprise here than in any
other trading English city: like the old Italians, the Bristol merchants
go on in the track of their fathers, and, succeeding to enormous
fortunes, find the regular profits so great that they have no temptation
to deviate from the beaten way. The port is therefore yielding its
foreign trade to bolder competitors; but it will always remain the
centre of a great commerce with the Welsh coast, with Ireland, and all
those inland counties which communicate with the Severn, a river
navigable into the very heart of the kingdom.

There is in the streets nothing like the bustle of London, nor like the
business of Liverpool on the quays. The quay, however, is still a busy
as well as a striking scene, and remains a noble monument of the old
citizens, who made it in the thirteenth century. On one side, the
shipping, the bridges, the church-towers, and the neighbouring hill,
which overlooks the town of which it now makes a part, form a fine
picture; on the other, there is the cathedral with the old trees in its
front, and the distant country. A third view has a wider foreground,
with cranes and trees, and piles of goods intermingled, shipping of
larger size, a fine row of houses upon a high terrace on the opposite
side, and apart from them the church of St Mary Redclift, which is the
finest parochial church in the kingdom, and is indeed far more beautiful
than the cathedral. It is remarkable also, on this account, that it is
the place wherein certain poems were said to have been found, attributed
to a priest in the fifteenth century, which have occasioned as great a
controversy as the Granada Relicks, and with as little reason. It is now
admitted that they were the production of Chatterton, the son of the
sexton of the church, who poisoned himself at the age of eighteen, and
is considered by the English as the most extraordinary genius that has
ever appeared among them.

A few years ago, when Kosciusko came to this city on his way to America,
great marks of honour were shown him, and many presents made him, both
by the municipality, and by individuals.—Among others, an honest
gingerbread-baker thought, as he was going to sea, nothing could be more
acceptable to him than a noble plum-cake for the voyage: he made him the
very best which could be made, and a valiant one it was. It was as big
as he could carry; and on the top, which was as usual covered with a
crust of sugar, was written in coloured sugar-plums—To the gallant
Kosciusko. With this burthen the good man proceeded to the house of the
American consul, where Kosciusko was lodged, and enquired for the
general. He was told that he was lying on the sofa (for his wounds were
not at that time healed,) and was too much fatigued and too unwell to
see any one. "Oh!" said the gingerbread-baker, "he won't be angry at
seeing me, I warrant, so show me the way up;" and pushing the servant
forward, he followed him up stairs into the room. When however he saw
the great man whom he was come to honour, lying on a couch, with his
countenance pale, painful, and emaciated, yet full of benevolence, the
sight overpowered him; he put down his cake, burst into tears like a
child, and ran out of the room without speaking a single word.

Having set out on my return, a natural impatience hurries me forward; I
should else regret that I have not procured letters to Bristol, and
allowed myself sufficient time to see thoroughly a city which contains
many interesting objects of curiosity, and of which the vicinity is so
exceedingly beautiful.

[32] As the notice for this sale is not less curious than the occasion,
I have transcribed it from the city newspaper. One of the many
conveniences attending the English coffee-houses is, that the newspapers
are regularly filed in them, so that they may always be referred to:—

 THE EAGLE,
 FROM THE BRISTOL CATHEDRAL.
 TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION,
 At the Exchange Coffee-room, in this City,
 On Thursday, the 2d of September, 1802, between the
 hours of one and two o'clock in the afternoon,
 (unless previously disposed of by private contract,)
 A BEAUTIFUL
 BRAZEN SPREAD EAGLE,
 _With a Ledge at the Tail_,
 Standing on a brass pedestal,
 Supported by four lions, one at each corner.

This elegant piece of workmanship was sold, last June, by the dean and
chapter of the cathedral church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of
Bristol, or their agents or servants, as old brass, and weighed 6 cwt.
20lb. or 692lb. and has since been purchased at an advanced price, by a
native of this city, in order to prevent it being broken up, and to give
the inhabitants a chance of buying it.

It was given to the cathedral, in the reign of Charles II. by one of the
prebendaries, who had been there 40 years; and is supposed, by the
following Latin inscription, (_which was engraved_ on the pillar or
pedestal,) to have stood in the choir 119 years:

 "Ex Dono Georgij Williamson, S. T. B. Hujus
 Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Bristoll: Vice-Decani, 1683."

That is,

"The Gift of George Williamson, Bachelor of Divinity, Sub-Dean of this
Cathedral Church of Bristol, 1683."

The whole of the inscription, except the figures 1683, has been taken
off the pedestal, without the consent of the buyer; which he has since
had re-engraved.

This piece of antiquity, which is of the most exquisite shape, is made
of the best and purest brass, and well worth the attention of _ministers
and churchwardens_, or any gentleman or lady who would wish to make a
present of it to their parish church: traders, also, to foreign parts,
may find it worth their while to purchase, _as a like opportunity may
never offer again_.

Such a handsome bird would be, as it has hitherto been, a very great
ornament to the middle aisle of a church. It for many years stood in the
choir of the Bristol cathedral, and _upheld with its wings the Sacred
Truths of the Blessed Gospel_. The minor-canons formerly read the
lessons on it, and in most cathedrals the custom is kept up to this day.

This superb image is _now_ at King-street Hall, and may be inspected
three days previous to the day of sale.

N. B. The purchaser offered, previous to any advertisement, to re-sell
the eagle at the price he paid for it, provided it were replaced in the
_choir_; which offer was rejected.

THOMAS KIFT, BROKER.



LETTER LXXVI.

 _Journey from Bristol to Plymouth.—Advantages which the Army enjoys
 more than the Navy.—Sailors.—Journey to Falmouth._


We took our seats on the coach roof at five in the morning, and before
we got out of the city received positive and painful proof that the
streets of Bristol are worse paved than those of any other city in
England. The road passes by the church of St Mary Redclift, which is
indeed wonderfully fine; it is built upon broken ground, and there are
steps ascending to it in several directions. I remember nothing equal to
the effect which this produces. Women were filling their pitchers below
it from a fountain, the water of which passes through the cemetery!—The
houses formed a continued street for nearly half a league; then the
views became very striking: behind us was the city, on one side the
rocks of Clifton, and as we advanced, we came in sight of the Bristol
Channel. We breakfasted five leagues on the way at Cross, a little
village of inns; and then entered upon the marshes, the great grazing
country of these parts.

Our next stage was to Bridgewater, where we crossed the Parrot by a
hideous iron bridge. This river is remarkable, because the tide, instead
of rising gradually, flows in in a head,—a phænomenon of which no
satisfactory explanation has yet been discovered. From hence we
proceeded to Taunton through a tract of country which for its fertility
and beauty is the boast of the island. "Ah, sir," said a countryman who
was on the coach beside us, and heard us admiring it, "we have a saying
about these western parts,

  "Cornwall's as ugly as ugly can be;
  Devonshire's better certainly;
  But Somersetshire is the best of the three,
  And Somersetshire is the country for me."

Taunton is a singularly pretty town, with a church of uncommon beauty.
It was the great scene of cruelty after Monmouth's insurrection against
his uncle James II., the greater number of the insurgents being of this
county. One of the prisoners who was noted for being fleet of foot, was
promised his life, if he would entertain Kirke the general with a
display of his speed. He stripped himself naked; one end of a rope was
fastened round his neck, the other round the neck of a horse, and they
ran half a mile together, the horse going full speed. When the general
had been sufficiently amused, and had gratified his curiosity, he sent
the man to be hanged. Judge Jefferies, whose name is become proverbially
infamous, went round to finish his work, and condemn all whom the
soldiers had spared. The rebel peasantry were hanged up by scores, their
quarters boiled in pitch, and set up in the streets and highways. James
would not perhaps so easily have lost his crown, if he had not alienated
the hearts of the people by these merciless executions. Kirke escaped
all other earthly punishment than that of having his name handed down
from father to son for everlasting execration, by abandoning the master
whom he had served so wickedly, and joining William. The judge received
a part of his reward in this world: after the flight of the king, he
attempted to escape in sailor's clothes, and the mob discovered him.
They were prevented from pulling him to pieces upon the spot, but before
he was rescued they had so handled him that he just lived to be three
days in dying. Popular fury has, like lightning, more frequently struck
the innocent than the guilty; but when it does strike the guilty it
comes like lightning, as God's own vengeance, and leaves behind a more
holy and wholesome awe, than any legal execution, how solemn soever it
be made.

After dinner we advanced a league and half to Wellington, where I saw a
fine lad who had lost both legs by the frost in 1798,—a melancholy proof
of the severity of the climate, even in the mildest part of England.
Collumpton, a poorer and smaller town, is three leagues farther, and
another stage of the same length brought me once more to Exeter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whoever has once travelled the straight road from Exeter to Falmouth
will have no inclination to travel it again. Plymouth lay about ten
leagues out of the way, and it would always have been a subject of
regret to me if I had not now lengthened my journey for the sake of
seeing so famous a place. The stage was full: luckily a naval officer
was enquiring for a place at the same time, so we took chaise together.

Chudleigh was the first stage: about three hundred French prisoners were
crowded here into a temporary prison, on their way to Bristol. We saw
them looking through some wooden bars at what was passing. Ashburton the
next. Devonshire is certainly a fine country, but by no means deserving
of the encomiums which are passed upon it; those travellers who praise
it so highly must either have come from Cornwall, or have slept through
Somersetshire. Its rivers indeed are beautiful, clear, vocal, stony
streams, with old bridges dangerously narrow, and angles in them, like
the corners of an English mince-pie, for the foot-passenger to take
shelter in. From Ashburton we reached Ivy Bridge by another easy stage:
this is a very celebrated spot for its picturesque beauty, but why it
should be so would be difficult to say.—A common little bridge, over a
beautiful brook, which runs down a little glen, on the banks of which
are town-looking houses instead of cottages,—that kind of scene, of
which, if you had never heard of it, you would just say it is
pretty,—but which, if it has been previously praised, cannot but be seen
with disappointment.

From hence to Plymouth was 11 miles, the latter part through a beautiful
country. There are two distinct towns here, Plymouth and Plymouth Dock,
connected by a causey, and both places as ugly as can well be imagined.
They are so called from the river Plym, which rises in the Devonshire
hills; and, as an English author says, baptizing Plymston and Plymstock
by the way, empties itself here into the sea. I know not whether there
be any more interesting anecdote connected with the neighbourhood than
the story of a dog, who daily carried food to an old blind mastiff which
lay hid in a thicket without the town, regularly on Sundays conveyed him
to his master's house to dinner, and as regularly afterwards escorted
him back to his covert.

I could not see the docks.—This jealousy on the part of government I
could not blame, though it deprived me of some gratification. The
streets are swarming with sailors. This extraordinary race of men hold
the soldiers in utter contempt, which, with their characteristic force,
they express by this scale of comparison,—Mess-mate before ship-mate,
ship-mate before a stranger, a stranger before a dog, and a dog before a
soldier.

There are however some things, as I learnt from our fellow-traveller, in
which the army enjoy advantages which are not extended to the navy.
Wherever the soldiers go, each regiment takes with it its paymaster; but
sailors and marines are never paid any where except in England, however
long they may be absent. Upon the marines this is particularly hard, as
there is a practice of drafting them out of vessels which are going home
into those which are to remain upon the foreign station. This is done to
keep up the complement, because no men are forced into this, as they are
into the navy service, and no addition is made to it abroad, unless any
prisoners should enter, which the Dutch soldiers frequently do. "I
knew," said this officer, "a private marine who had been nine years on a
foreign station, and never received one farthing of pay; and he would
have been drafted again into another ship still to remain there, if the
captain had not stated to the commander-in-chief that he was quite blind
at night, a common disease within the tropics." This is one reason why
so many men in those seas desert from the English ships to the American.

If a regiment loses its baggage, the officers are allowed a sum for it
in proportion to their rank; and the allowance is so liberal, that in
many instances their loss is a great gain. No such indulgence is granted
in the navy, though there is more cause for it, the baggage of a
navy-officer being far more valuable. The ship is his house and home; it
is not with him merely the loss of a travelling portmanteau; he has his
books, his charts, his instruments, and his cabin furniture, and it
would require many years of economy before these could be replaced from
the savings of his pay.

In another instance the English are strangely parsimonious to their
navy. Other nations supply their men of war with charts, made for the
express purpose; but when an English ship is ordered abroad, it not
unfrequently happens, that no good charts of the place where it is going
are on board, and the master is obliged to buy such as he can find, and
such as he can afford. Neither are time-pieces provided for ships of
war; though few valuable merchantmen are without them.—This is strange
parsimony in so enlightened a government;—assuredly it ought to provide
every thing which is necessary for the ship's safety.

The organization of this tremendous navy is a subject of great interest
to other maritime powers. No person can receive a commission till he has
passed six years in actual service as a midshipman, and gone through an
examination before a board of officers in London; who certainly reject
him, if he is not well acquainted with his duty. Of late years such
prodigious glory has been obtained in the English navy, and such large
fortunes rapidly accumulated, that the higher classes destine their
children to this profession, which was formerly left almost wholly to
the people, and have well nigh monopolized it. This is not detrimental
to the service in any other way than that they are appointed to a
command at too early an age. The severe education which is required, and
never dispensed with, makes them necessarily understand their
profession, and gives them, whatever may have been their former habits
of life, the true sailor character. Hence it is that they are so
infinitely superior to the army officers, who are in general ignorant of
any thing more than the common routine of the parade.

After the midshipman has passed his examination, if he has any interest,
(without which nothing is now to be obtained in England,) he is made
lieutenant; from this rank he may at any time be promoted to that of
commander, or of post-captain, without the intermediate step. The
post-captains become admirals according to seniority. This system of
seniority ought to be reversed, to hold good in the inferior steps, and
not above them. It should seem more equitable, and more wise, that every
officer should be sure of reaching the rank of commander, because,
having passed his youth in the service, the nation owes him the means of
a comfortable subsistence in his age. On the other hand, admirals should
be chosen from those only of distinguished ability.

Every body regrets the necessity of impressing men for the navy. I have
seen it asserted, that when Lord Keppel was at the head of the
Admiralty, it was officially calculated and ascertained, that every
prest man cost above 100_l._ such was the expense of press-gangs,
cutters, tenders, &c. Surely, if this statement approached even to
truth, the evil would have been remedied.

Voltaire has the merit of having discovered the physical cause of the
superiority of the English at sea. The natives of the South of Europe
navigate smooth seas,—those of the North are frozen up during winter;
but the English seas are open all the year, and are navigated in long
dark stormy nights, when nothing but great skill and incessant exertion
can preserve the vessel. Hence arises a degree of confidence in their
sailors, which is almost incredible; the greater the danger, the greater
is their activity: instead of shrinking from toil, every man is at his
post;—having no faith in miracles for their deliverance, they almost
work miracles to deliver themselves, and, instead of preparing for
death, strain every sinew to avoid it. Added to this confidence, they
have also in war that which arises from constant success. The English
sailor feels that he is master of the seas. Whatever he sees is to do
him homage. He is always on the look-out, not with the fear of an enemy
before his eyes, but, like a strong pirate, with the hope of gain; and
when going into action, with an equal, or even a superior force, he
calculates his profits as certainly as if the enemy were already
taken.—"There," said the master of a frigate, when the captain did not
choose to engage a superior French force, because he had a convoy in
charge—"There," said he with a groan, "there's seven hundred pounds lost
to me for ever."—As for fear, it is not in their nature. One of these
men went to see a juggler exhibit his tricks: there happened to be a
quantity of gunpowder in the apartment underneath, which took fire and
blew up the house. The sailor was thrown into a garden behind, where he
fell without being hurt—He stretched his arms and legs, got up, shook
himself, rubbed his eyes, and then cried out,—conceiving what had
happened to be only a part of the performance, and perfectly willing to
go through the whole,—"D—n the fellow, I wonder what the devil he'll do
next!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A slow and uncomfortable stage-coach carried us from Tor-point, which is
on the western side of Plymouth harbour, to Falmouth, through the towns
of Liskeard, Lostwithiel, a pretty place with its slated roofs and its
singular church tower, St Austel, and Truro. We are now at the same inn
and in the same room in which I was lodged with J. on our arrival. I had
then the delightful and stirring pleasure of expectation; I have now a
deeper joy in the hope of soon setting foot in my own country, and being
welcomed in my father's house. But I have left dear friends whom I shall
never behold again, and am departing from a land in which I have enjoyed
as much happiness as man can possibly enjoy in any other state than that
of domestic tranquillity.


THE END.


EDINBURGH:
Printed by James Ballantyne and Co.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Letters from England - by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. Translated from the Spanish" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.