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LETTERS
FROM
ENGLAND

BY

DON MANUEL ALVAREZ ESPRIELLA.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND

BROWN, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1814.

Edinburgh:

Printed by James Ballantyne and Co.

PREFACE
BY THE TRANSLATOR.

The remarks of Foreign Travellers upon our own country have always been so well received by the Public, that no apology can be necessary for offering to it the present Translation, The Author of this work seems to have enjoyed more advantages than most of his predecessors, and to have availed himself of them with remarkable diligence. He boasts also of his impartiality: to this praise, in general, he is entitled; but there are some things which he has seen with a jaundiced eye. It is manifest that he is bigotted to the deplorable superstitions of his country; and we may well suppose that those parts of the work in which this bigotry is most apparent, have not been improved by the aid for which he thanks his Father Confessor. The Translator has seldom thought it necessary to offer any comments upon the palpable errors and mis-statements which this spirit has sometimes occasioned: the few notes which he has annexed are distinguished by the letters Tr.

PREFACE.

A volume of Travels rarely or never, in our days, appears in Spain: in England, on the contrary, scarcely any works are so numerous. If an Englishman spends the summer in any of the mountainous provinces, or runs over to Paris for six weeks, he publishes the history of his travels; and if a work of this kind be announced in France, so great a competition is excited among the London booksellers, that they import it sheet by sheet as it comes from the press, and translate and print it piece-meal. The greater number of such books must necessarily be of little value: all, however, find readers, and the worst of them adds something to the stock of general information.

We seldom travel; and they among us who do, never give their journals to the public. Is it because literature can hardly be said to have become a trade among us, or because vanity is no part of our national character? The present work, therefore, is safe from comparison, and will have the advantage of novelty. If it subject me to the charge of vanity myself, I shall be sorry for the imputation, but not conscious of deserving it. I went to England under circumstances unusually favourable, and remained there eighteen months, during the greater part of which I was domesticated in an English family. They knew that it was my intention to publish an account of what I saw, and aided me in my enquiries with a kindness which I must ever remember. My remarks were communicated, as they occurred, in letters to my own family, and to my Father Confessor; and they from time to time suggested to me such objects of observation as might otherwise perhaps have been overlooked. I have thought it better to revise these letters, inserting such matter as further research and more knowledge enabled me to add, rather than to methodize the whole; having observed in England, that works of this kind wherein the subjects are presented in the order wherein they occurred, are always better received than those of a more systematical arrangement: indeed, they are less likely to be erroneous, and their errors are more excusable, in those letters which relate to the state of religion, I have availed myself of the remarks with which my Father Confessor instructed me in his correspondence. He has forbidden me to mention his name; but it is my duty to state, that the most valuable observations upon this important subject, and, in particular, those passages in which the Fathers are so successfully quoted, would not have enriched these volumes, but for his assistance.

In thus delineating to my countrymen the domestic character and habits of the English, and the real state of England, I have endeavoured to be strictly impartial; and, if self-judgment may in such a case be trusted, it is my belief that I have succeeded. Certainly, I am not conscious of having either exaggerated or extenuated any thing in any the slightest degree—of heightening the bright or the dark parts of the picture for the sake of effect—of inventing what is false, nor of concealing what is true, so as to lie by implication. Mistakes and misrepresentations there may, and, perhaps, must be: I hope they will neither be found numerous nor important, as I know they are not wilful; and I trust that whatever may be the faults and errors of the work, nothing will appear in it inconsistent with that love of my country, which I feel in common with every Spaniard; and that submission, which, in common with every Catholic, I owe to the Holy Church.

CONTENTS
OF THE
FIRST VOLUME.

LETTER I.

LETTER II.

LETTER III.

LETTER IV.

LETTER V.

LETTER VI.

LETTER VII.

LETTER VIII.

LETTER IX.

LETTER X.

LETTER XI.

LETTER XII.

LETTER XIII.

LETTER XIV.

LETTER XV.

LETTER XVI.

LETTER XVII.

LETTER XVIII.

LETTER XIX.

LETTER XX.

LETTER XXI.

LETTER XXII.

LETTER XXIII.

LETTER XXIV.

LETTER XXV.

LETTER XXVI.

LETTER XXVII.

LETTER XXVIII.

LETTER XXIX.

LETTER XXX.

LETTER XXXI.

ESPRIELLA’S

LETTERS FROM ENGLAND.

LETTER I.

Arrival at Falmouth.—Custom House.—Food of the English.—Noise and Bustle at the Inn.

Wednesday, April 21, 1802.

I write to you from English ground. On the twelfth morning after our departure from Lisbon we came in sight of the Lizard, two light-houses on the rocks near the Land’s End, which mark a dangerous shore. The day was clear, and showed us the whole coast to advantage; but if these be the white cliffs of England, they have been strangely magnified by report: their forms are uninteresting, and their heights diminutive; if a score such were piled under Cape Finisterre, they would look like a flight of stairs to the Spanish mountains. I made this observation to J—, who could not help acknowledging the truth, but he bade me look at the green fields. The verdure was certainly very delightful, and that not merely because our eyes were wearied with the gray sea: the appearance was like green corn, though approaching nearer I perceived that the colour never changed; for the herb, being kept short by cattle, does not move with the wind.

We passed in sight of St Maurs, a little fishing-town on the east of the bay, and anchored about noon at Falmouth. There is a man always on the look-out for the packets; he makes a signal as soon as one is seen, and every woman who has a husband on board gives him a shilling for the intelligence. I went through some troublesome forms upon landing, in consequence of the inhospitable laws enacted at the beginning of the war. There were then the vexatious ceremonies of the custom-house to be performed, where double fees were exacted for passing our baggage at extraordinary hours. J— bade me not judge of his countrymen by their sea-ports: it is a proverb, said he, “that the people at these places are all either birds of passage, or birds of prey”; it is their business to fleece us, and ours to be silent.—Patience where there is no remedy!—our own aphorism, I find, is as needful abroad as at home. But if ever some new Cervantes should arise to write a mock heroic, let him make his hero pass through a custom-house on his descent to the infernal regions.

The inn appeared magnificent to me; my friend complained that it was dirty and uncomfortable. I cannot relish their food: they eat their meat half raw; the vegetables are never boiled enough to be soft; and every thing is insipid except the bread, which is salt, bitter, and disagreeable. Their beer is far better in Spain, the voyage and the climate ripen it. The cheese and butter were more to my taste; manteca indeed is not butter, and the Englishman[^[1]] who wanted to call it so at Cadiz was as inaccurate in his palate as in his ideas. Generous wines are inordinately dear, and no others are to be procured; about a dollar a bottle is the price. What you find at the inns is in general miserably bad; they know this, and yet drink that the host may be satisfied with their expences: our custom of paying for the house-room is more economical, and better.

[1]. This blunder has been applied to the French word eau. Which ever may be original, it certainly ought not to be palmed upon an Englishman.—Tr.

Falmouth stands on the western side of the bay, and consists of one long narrow street which exhibits no favourable specimen either of the boasted cleanliness or wealth of the English towns. The wealthier merchants dwell a little out of the town upon the shore, or on the opposite side of the bay at a little place called Flushing. The harbour, which is very fine, is commanded by the castle of Pendennis; near its mouth there is a single rock, on which a pole is erected because it is covered at high tide. A madman not many years ago carried his wife here at low water, landed her on the rock, and rowed away in sport; nor did he return till her danger as well as fear had become extreme.

Some time since the priest of this place was applied to to bury a certain person from the adjoining country. “Why, John,” said he to the sexton, “we buried this man a dozen years ago:” and in fact it appeared on referring to the books of the church that his funeral had been registered ten years back. He had been bed-ridden and in a state of dotage during all that time; and his heirs had made a mock burial, to avoid certain legal forms and expenses which would else have been necessary to enable them to receive and dispose of his rents. I was also told another anecdote of an inhabitant of this town, not unworthy of a stoic:—His house was on fire; it contained his whole property; and when he found it was in vain to attempt saving any thing, he went upon the nearest hill and made a drawing of the conflagration:—an admirable instance of English phlegm!

The perpetual stir and bustle in this inn is as surprising as it is wearisome. Doors opening and shutting, bells ringing, voices calling to the waiter from every quarter, while he cries “Coming,” to one room, and hurries away to another. Every body is in a hurry here; either they are going off in the packets, and are hastening their preparations to embark; or they have just arrived, and are impatient to be on the road homeward. Every now-and-then a carriage rattles up to the door with a rapidity which makes the very house shake. The man who cleans the boots is running in one direction, the barber with his powder-bag in another; here goes the barber’s boy with his hot water and razors; there comes the clean linen from the washer-woman; and the hall is full of porters and sailors bringing in luggage, or bearing it away;—now you hear a horn blow because the post is coming in, and in the middle of the night you are awakened by another because it is going out. Nothing is done in England without a noise, and yet noise is the only thing they forget in the bill!

LETTER II.

Mode of Travelling.—Penryn.—Truro.—Dreariness of the Country.—Bodmin.—Earth-Coal the common Fuel.—Launceston.—Excellence of the Inns and Roads.—Okehampton.—Exeter.

Thursday, April 22.

Early in the morning our chaise was at the door, a four-wheeled carriage which conveniently carries three persons. It has glass in front and at the sides, instead of being closed with curtains, so that you at once see the country and are sheltered from the weather. Two horses drew us at the rate of a league and a half in the hour;—such is the rapidity with which the English travel. Half a league from Falmouth is the little town of Penryn, whose ill-built and narrow streets seem to have been contrived to make as many acute angles in the road, and take the traveller up and down as many steep declivities as possible in a given distance. In two hours we reached Truro, where we breakfasted: this meal is completely spoilt by the abominable bitterness of the bread, to which I shall not soon be able to reconcile myself. The town is clean and opulent; its main street broad, with superb shops, and a little gutter stream running through it. All the shops have windows to them; the climate is so inclement that it would be impossible to live without them. J— showed me where some traveller had left the expression of his impatience written upon the wainscot with a pencil—“Thanks to the Gods another stage is past”—for all travellers are in haste here, either on their way home, or to be in time for the packet. When we proceeded the day had become dark and overclouded;—quite English weather:—I could scarcely keep myself warm in my cloak: the trees have hardly a tinge of green, though it is now so late in April. Every thing has a coarse and cold appearance: the heath looks nipt in its growth, and the hedge-plants are all mean and insignificant: nettles, and thistles, and thorns, instead of the aloe, and the acanthus, and the arbutus, and the vine. We soon entered upon a track as dreary as any in Estremadura; mile after mile the road lay straight before us; up and down long hills, whose heights only served to show how extensive was the waste.

Mitchel-Dean, the next place to which we came, is as miserable as any of our most decayed towns; it is what they call a rotten borough: that is, it has the privilege of returning two members to parliament, who purchase the votes of their constituents, and the place has no other trade:—it has indeed a very rotten appearance. Even the poorest houses in this country are glazed: this, however, proves rather the inclemency of the climate than the wealth of the people. Our second stage was to a single house called the Indian Queens, which is rather a post-house than an inn. These places are not distinguished by a bush, though that was once the custom here also, but by a large painting swung from a sort of gallows before the door, or nailed above it, and the house takes its name from the sign. Lambs, horses, bulls, and stags, are common; sometimes they have red lions, green dragons, or blue boars, or the head of the king or queen, or the arms of the nearest nobleman. One inconvenience attends their mode of travelling, which is, that at every stage the chaise is changed, and of course there is the trouble of removing all the baggage.

The same dreary country still lay before us; on the right there was a wild rock rising at once from the plain, with a ruin upon its summit. Nothing can be more desolate than the appearance of this province, where most part of the inhabitants live in the mines. “I never see the greater part of my parishioners,” said a clergyman here, “till they come up to be buried.” We dined at Bodmin, an old town which was once the chief seat of religion in the district, but has materially suffered since the schism; ill-built, yet not worse built than situated, being shadowed by a hill to the south; and to complete the list of ill contrivances, their water is brought through the common burial-place. They burn earth-coal every where; it is a black shining stone, very brittle, which kindles slowly, making much smoke, and much ashes: but as all the houses are built with chimneys, it is neither unwholesome nor disagreeable. An Englishman’s delight is to stir the fire; and I believe I shall soon acquire this part of their manners, as a means of self-defence against their raw and chilly atmosphere. The hearth is furnished with a round bar to move the coals, a sort of forceps to arrange them, and a small shovel for the cinders; all of iron, and so shaped and polished as to be ornamental. Besides these, there is what they call the fender, which is a little moveable barrier, either of brass or polished steel, or sometimes of wire painted green and capt with brass, to prevent the live embers from falling upon the floor. The grates which confine the fire are often very costly and beautiful, every thing being designed to display the wealth of the people; even the bars, though they are necessarily blackened every day by the smoke, are regularly brightened in the morning, and this work is performed by women. In good houses the chimneys have a marble frontal, upon the top of which vases of alabaster or spar, mandarins from China, flower-stands, or other ornaments, are arranged.

After dinner we proceeded to Launceston; the country improved upon us, and the situation of the place as we approached, standing upon a hill, with the ruins of the castle which had once commanded it, reminded me of our Moorish towns. We arrived just as the evening was closing; our chaise wheeled under the gateway with a clangor that made the roof ring; the waiter was at the door in an instant; by the time we could let down the glass, he had opened the door and let the steps down. We were shown into a comfortable room; lights were brought, the twilight shut out, the curtains let down, the fire replenished. Instead of oil, they burn candles made of tallow, which in this climate is not offensive; wax is so dear that it is used by only the highest ranks.

Here we have taken our tea; and in the interval between that and supper, J— is reading the newspaper, and I am minuting down the recollections of the day. What a country for travelling is this! such rapidity on the road! such accommodations at the resting-places! We have advanced fourteen leagues to-day without fatigue or exertion. When we arrive at the inn there is no apprehension lest the apartments should be pre-occupied; we are not liable to any unpleasant company; we have not to send abroad to purchase wine and seek for provisions; every thing is ready; the larder stored, the fire burning, the beds prepared; and the people of the house, instead of idly looking on, or altogether neglecting us, are asking our orders and solicitous to please. I no longer wonder at the ill-humour and fastidiousness of Englishmen in Spain.

Friday, April 23.

Launceston castle was formerly used as a state prison. There were lazar-houses here and at Bodmin when leprosy was common in England. They attributed this disease to the habit of eating fish, and especially the livers; the fresher they were the more unwholesome they were thought. Whatever has been the cause, whether change of diet, or change of dress, it has totally disappeared.

The Tamar, a clear shallow and rapid stream, flows by Launceston, and divides Cornwall from Devonshire. The mountainous character of the river, the situation of the town rising behind it, its ancient appearance, and its castle towering above all, made so Spanish a scene, that perhaps it pleased me the more for the resemblance; and I would willingly for a while have exchanged the chaise for a mule, that I might have loitered to enjoy it at leisure. The English mode of travelling is excellently adapted for every thing, except for seeing the country.

We met a stage-waggon, the vehicle in which baggage is transported, for sumpter-beasts are not in use. I could not imagine what this could be; a huge carriage upon four wheels of prodigious breadth, very wide and very long, and arched over with cloth, like a bower, at a considerable height: this monstrous machine was drawn by eight large horses, whose neck-bells were heard far off as they approached; the carrier walked beside them, with a long whip upon his shoulder, as tall again as himself, which he sometimes cracked in the air, seeming to have no occasion to exercise it in any other manner; his dress was different from any that I had yet seen, it was a sort of tunic of coarse linen, and is peculiar to this class of men. Here would have been an adventure for Don Quixote! Carrying is here a very considerable trade: these waggons are day and night upon their way, and are oddly enough called flying waggons, though of all machines they travel the slowest, slower than even a travelling funeral. The breadth of the wheels is regulated by law, on account of the roads, to which great attention is paid, and which are deservedly esteemed objects of national importance. At certain distances gates are erected and toll-houses beside them, where a regular tax is paid for every kind of conveyance in proportion to the number of horses and wheels; horsemen and cattle also are subject to this duty. These gates are rented by auction; they are few or frequent, as the nature of the soil occasions more or less expense in repairs: no tax can be levied more fairly, and no public money is more fairly applied. Another useful peculiarity here is, that where the roads cross or branch off a directing post is set up, which might sometimes be mistaken for a cross, were it in a Catholic country. The distances are measured by the mile, which is the fourth of a league, and stones to mark them are set by the way-side, though they are often too much defaced by time or by mischievous travellers to be of any use.

The dresses of the peasantry are far less interesting than they are in our own land; they are neither gay in colour, nor graceful in shape; that of the men differs little in make from what the higher orders wear. I have seen no goats; they are not common, for neither their flesh nor their milk is in use; the people seem not to know how excellent the milk is, and how excellent a cheese may be made from it. All the sheep are white, and these also are never milked. Here are no aqueducts, no fountains by the way-side.

Okehampton, which we next came to, stands in the county of Devonshire; here also is a ruined castle on its hill, beautifully ivyed, and standing above a delightful stream. There was in our room a series of prints, which, as they represented a sport peculiar to England, interested me much: it was the hunting the hare. The first displayed the sportsmen assembled on horseback, and the dogs searching the cover: in the second they were in chace, men and dogs full speed, horse and horseman together leaping over a high gate,—a thing which I thought impossible, but J— assured me that it was commonly practised in this perilous amusement: in the third they were at fault, while the poor hare was stealing away at a distance: the last was the death of the hare, the huntsman holding her up and winding his horn, while the dogs are leaping round him.

This province appears far more fertile than the one we have quitted; the wealth of which lies under ground. The beauty of the country is much injured by inclosures, which intercept the view, or cut it into patches; it is not, however, quite fair to judge of them in their present leafless state. The road was very hilly, a thick small rain came on, and prevented us from seeing any thing. Wet as is the climate of the whole island, these two western provinces are particularly subject to rain; for they run out between the English and Bristol channels, like a peninsula; in other respects their climate is better, the temperature being considerably warmer; so that sickly persons are sent to winter here upon the south coast. Much cyder is made here: it is a far pleasanter liquor than their beer, and may indeed be considered as an excellent beverage by a people to whom nature has denied the grape. I ought, perhaps, to say, that it is even better than our country wines; but what we drank was generous cyder, and at a price exceeding that which generous wine bears with us; so that the advantage is still ours.

We only stopped to change chaises at our next stage; the inn was not inviting in its appearance, and we had resolved to reach Exeter to a late dinner. There were two busts in porcelain upon the chimney-piece, one of Buonaparte, the other of John Wesley, the founder of a numerous sect in this land of schismatics; and between them a whole-length figure of Shakespeare, their famous dramatist. When J— had explained them to me, I asked him which of the three worthies was the most popular. “Perhaps,” said he, “the Corsican just at present; but his is a transient popularity; he is only the first political actor of the day, and, like all other stage-players, must one day give way to his successors, as his predecessors have given way to him. Moreover, he is rather notorious than popular; the king of Prussia was a favourite with the people, and they hung up his picture as an alehouse sign, as they had done prince Eugene before him, and many a fellow gets drunk under them still; but no one will set up Buonaparte’s head as an invitation. Wesley, on the contrary, is a saint with his followers, and indeed with almost all the lower classes. As for Shakespeare, these people know nothing of him but his name; he is famous in the strictest sense of the word, and his fame will last as long as the English language; which by God’s blessing will be as long as the habitable world itself.” “He is your saint!” said I, smiling at the warmth with which he spake.

At length we crossed the river Exe by a respectable bridge, and immediately entered the city of Exeter, and drove up a long street to an inn as large as a large convent. Is it possible, I asked, that this immense house can ever be filled by travellers? He told me in reply, that there were two other inns in the city nearly as large, besides many smaller ones; and yet, that the last time he passed through Exeter, they were obliged to procure a bed for him in a private dwelling, not having one unoccupied in the house.

LETTER III.

Exeter Cathedral and Public Walk.—Libraries.—Honiton.—Dangers of English Travelling, and Cruelty with which it is attended.—Axminster.—Bridport.

Saturday, April 24.

If the outside of this New London Inn, as it is called, surprised me, I was far more surprised at the interior. Excellent as the houses appeared at which we had already halted, they were mean and insignificant compared with this. There was a sofa in our apartment, and the sideboard was set forth with china and plate. Surely, however, these articles of luxury are misplaced, as they are not in the slightest degree necessary to the accommodation of a traveller, and must be considered in his bill.

Exeter is an ancient city, and has been so slow in adopting modern improvements that it has the unsavoury odour of Lisbon. One great street runs through the city from east to west; the rest consists of dirty lanes. As you cross the bridge, you look down upon a part of the town below, intersected by little channels of water. The cathedral is a fine object from those situations where both towers are seen, and only half the body of the building, rising above the city. It cannot be compared with Seville, or Cordova, or Burgos; yet certainly it is a noble pile. Even the heretics confess that the arches, and arched windows, and avenues of columns, the old monuments, the painted altar, and the coloured glass, impress them with a feeling favourable to religion. For myself, I felt that I stood upon ground, which, desecrated as it was, had once been holy.

Close to our inn is the entrance of the Norney or public walk. The trees are elms, and have attained their full growth: indeed I have never seen a finer walk; but every town has not its Norney[^[2]] as with us its alameda. I was shown a garden, unique in its kind, which has been made in the old castle ditch. The banks rise steeply on each side; one of the finest poplars in the country grows in the bottom, and scarcely overtops the ruined wall. Jackson, one of the most accomplished men of his age, directed these improvements; and never was accident more happily improved. He was chiefly celebrated as a musician; but as a man of letters, his reputation is considerable; and he was also a painter: few men, if any, have succeeded so well in so many of the fine arts. Of the castle itself there are but few remains; it was named Rougemont, from the colour of the red sandy eminence on which it stands, and for the same reason the city itself was called by the Britons The Red City.

[2]. The author seems to have mistaken this for a general name.—Tr.

In most of the English towns they have what they call circulating libraries: the subscribers, for an annual or quarterly payment, have two or more volumes at a time, according to the terms; and strangers may be accommodated on depositing the value of the book they choose. There are several of these in Exeter, one of which, I was told, was considered as remarkably good, the bookseller being himself a man of considerable learning and ability. Here was also a literary society of some celebrity, till the French revolution, which seems to have disturbed every town, village, and almost every family in the kingdom, broke it up. The inhabitants in general are behindhand with their countrymen in information and in refinement. The streets are not flagged, neither are they regularly cleaned, as in other parts of the kingdom; the corporation used to compel the townspeople to keep their doors clean, as is usual in every English town; but some little while ago it was discovered, that, by the laws of the city, they had no authority to insist upon this; and now the people will not remove the dirt from their own doors, because they say they cannot be forced to do it. Their politics are as little progressive as their police: to this day, when they speak of the Americans, they call them the rebels. Everywhere else, this feeling is extinguished among the people, though it still remains in another quarter. When Washington died, his will was published in the newspapers; but in those which are immediately under ministerial influence, it was suppressed by high authority. It was not thought fitting that any respect should be paid to the memory of a man whom the Sovereign considered as a rebel and a traitor.

The celebrated Priestley met with a singular instance of popular hatred in this place. A barber who was shaving him heard his name in the midst of the operation;—he dropt his razor immediately, and ran out of the room exclaiming, “that he had seen his cloven foot.”

I bought here a map of England, folded for the pocket, with the roads and distances all marked upon it. I purchased also a book of the roads, in which not only the distance of every place in the kingdom from London, and from each other, is set down, but also the best inn at each place is pointed out, the name mentioned of every gentleman’s seat near the road, and the objects which are most worthy a traveller’s notice. Every thing that can possibly facilitate travelling seems to have been produced by the commercial spirit of this people.

As the chief trade of Exeter lies with Spain, few places have suffered so much by the late war. We departed about noon the next day; and as we ascended the first hill, looked down upon the city and its cathedral towers to great advantage. Our stage was four leagues, along a road which, a century ago, when there was little travelling, and no care taken of the public ways, was remarkable as the best in the West of England. The vale of Honiton, which we overlooked on the way, is considered as one of the richest landscapes in the kingdom: it is indeed a prodigious extent of highly cultivated country, set thickly with hedges and hedge-row trees; and had we seen it either in its full summer green, or with the richer colouring of autumn, perhaps I might not have been disappointed. Yet I should think the English landscape can never appear rich to a southern eye: the verdure is indeed beautiful and refreshing, but green fields and timber trees have neither the variety nor the luxuriance of happier climates. England seems to be the paradise of sheep and cattle; Valencia of the human race.

Honiton, the town where we changed chaises, has nothing either interesting or remarkable in its appearance, except that here, as at Truro, a little stream flows along the street, and little cisterns or basons, for dipping places, are made before every door. Lace is manufactured here in imitation of the Flanders lace, to which it is inferior because it thickens in washing; the fault is in the thread. I have reason to remember this town, as our lives were endangered here by the misconduct of the innkeeper. There was a demur about procuring horses for us; a pair were fetched from the field, as we afterwards discovered, who had either never been in harness before, or so long out of it as to have become completely unmanageable. As soon as we were shut in, and the driver shook the reins, they ran off—a danger which had been apprehended; for a number of persons had collected round the inn door to see what would be the issue. The driver, who deserved whatever harm could happen to him, for having exposed himself and us to so much danger, had no command whatever over the frightened beasts; he lost his seat presently, and was thrown upon the pole between the horses; still he kept the reins, and almost miraculously prevented himself from falling under the wheels, till the horses were stopped at a time when we momently expected that he would be run over and the chaise overturned. As I saw nothing but ill at this place, so have I heard nothing that is good of it: the borough is notoriously venal; and since it has become so the manners of the people have undergone a marked and correspondent alteration.

This adventure occasioned considerable delay. At length a chaise arrived; and the poor horses, instead of being suffered to rest, weary as they were, for they had just returned from Exeter, were immediately put-to for another journey. One of them had been rubbed raw by the harness. I was in pain the whole way, and could not but consider myself as accessory to an act of cruelty: at every stroke of the whip my conscience upbraided me, and the driver was not sparing of it. It was luckily a short stage of only two leagues and a quarter. English travelling, you see, has its evils and its dangers. The life of a post-horse is truly wretched:—there will be cruel individuals in all countries, but cruelty here is a matter of calculation: the post-masters find it more profitable to overwork their beasts and kill them by hard labour in two or three years, than to let them do half the work and live out their natural length of life. In commerce, even more than in war, both men and beasts are considered merely as machines, and sacrificed with even less compunction.

There is a great fabric of carpets at Axminster, which are woven in one entire piece. We were not detained here many minutes, and here we left the county of Devonshire, which in climate and fertility and beauty is said to exceed most parts of England: if it be indeed so, England has little to boast of. Both their famous pirates, the Drake and the Raleigh, were natives of this province; so also was Oxenham, another of these early Buccaneers, of whose family it is still reported, that before any one dies a bird with a white breast flutters about the bed of the sick person, and vanishes when he expires.

We now entered upon Dorsetshire, a dreary country. Hitherto I had been disposed to think that the English inclosures rather deformed than beautified the landscape, but I now perceived how cheerless and naked the cultivated country appears without them. The hills here are ribbed with furrows, just as it is their fashion to score the skin of roast pork. The soil is chalky and full of flints: night was setting-in, and our horses struck fire at almost every step. This is one of the most salubrious parts of the whole island: it has been ascertained by the late census, that the proportion of deaths in the down-countries to the other parts is as 65 to 80,—a certain proof that inclosures are prejudicial to health.[^[3]] After having travelled three leagues we reached Bridport, a well-built and flourishing town. At one time all the cordage for the English navy was manufactured here; and the neighbourhood is so proverbially productive of hemp, that when a man is hanged, they have a vulgar saying, that he has been stabbed with a Bridport dagger. It is probable that both hemp and flax degenerate in England, as seed is annually imported from Riga.

[3]. The dryness of soil is a more probable cause.—Tr.

Here ends our third day’s journey. The roads are better, the towns nearer each other, more busy and more opulent as we advance into the country; the inns more modern though perhaps not better, and travelling more frequent. We are now in the track of the stage-coaches; one passed us this morning, shaped like a trunk with a rounded lid placed topsy-turvy. The passengers sit sideways; it carries sixteen persons withinside, and as many on the roof as can find room; yet this unmerciful weight, with the proportionate luggage of each person, is dragged by four horses, at the rate of a league and a half within the hour. The skill with which the driver guides them with long reins, and directs these huge machines round the corners of the streets, where they always go with increased velocity, and through the sharp turns of the inn gateways, is truly surprising. Accidents, nevertheless, frequently happen; and considering how little time this rapidity allows for observing the country, and how cruelly it is purchased, I prefer the slow and safe movements of the calessa.

LETTER IV.

Dorchester.—Gilbert Wakefield.—Inside of an English Church.—Attempt to rear Silkworms.—Down-country.—Blandford.—Salisbury.—Execrable Alteration of the Cathedral.—Instance of public Impiety.

Sunday, April 25.

We started early, and hurried over four leagues of the same open and uninteresting country, which brought us to Dorchester, the capital of the province, or county town, as it is called, because the provincial prison is here, and here the judges come twice a-year to decide all causes civil and criminal. The prison is a modern building: the height and strength of its walls, its iron-grated windows, and its strong gateway, with fetters hanging over the entrance, sufficiently characterise it as a place of punishment, and render it a good representation of a giant’s castle in romance.

When J— passed through this town on his way to Spain, he visited Gilbert Wakefield, a celebrated scholar, who was confined here as a favourer of the French Revolution. One of the bishops had written a book upon the state of public affairs, just at the time when the minister proposed to take from every man the tithe of his income: this the bishop did not think sufficient; so he suggested instead, that a tenth should be levied of all the capital in the kingdom; arguing, that as every person would be affected in the same proportion, all would remain relatively as before, and in fact no person be affected at all. This curious argument he enforced by as curious an illustration; he said, “That if the foundation of a great building were to sink equally in every part at the same time, the whole pile, instead of suffering any injury, would become the firmer.”—“True,” said Wakefield in his reply, “and you, my lord bishop, who dwell in the upper apartments, might still enjoy the prospect from your window;—but what would become of me and the good people who live upon the ground floor?”

Wakefield was particularly obnoxious to the government, because his character stood very high among the Dissenters for learning and integrity, and his opinions were proportionately of weight. They brought him to trial for having in his answer to the bishop’s pamphlet applied the fable of the Ass and his Panniers to existing circumstances. Had it indeed been circulated among the poor, its tendency would certainly have been mischievous; but in the form in which it appeared it was evidently designed as a warning to the rulers, not as an address to the mob. He was, however, condemned to two years confinement in this prison, this place being chosen as out of reach of his friends, to make imprisonment more painful. The public feeling upon this rigorous treatment of so eminent a man was strongly expressed, and a subscription was publicly raised for him which amounted to above fifteen hundred pieces-of-eight, and which enabled his family to remove to Dorchester and settle there. But the magistrates, whose business it was to oversee the prison, would neither permit them to lodge with him in his confinement, nor even to visit him daily. He was thus prevented from proceeding with the education of his children, an occupation which he had ever regarded as a duty, and which had been one of his highest enjoyments. But, in the midst of vexations and insults, he steadily continued to pursue both his literary and christian labours; affording to his fellow prisoners what assistance was in his power, endeavouring to reclaim the vicious, and preparing the condemned for death. His imprisonment eventually proved fatal. He had been warned on its expiration to accustom himself slowly to his former habits of exercise, or a fever would inevitably be the consequence; a fact known by experience. In spite of all his precautions it took place; and while his friends were rejoicing at his deliverance he was cut off. As a polemical and political writer he indulged an asperity of language which he had learnt from his favourite philologists, but in private life no man was more generally or more deservedly beloved, and he had a fearless and inflexible honesty which made him utterly regardless of all danger, and would have enabled him to exult in martyrdom. When J— had related this history to me, I could not but observe how far more humane it was to prevent the publication of obnoxious books than to permit them to be printed and then punish the persons concerned. “This,” he said, “would be too open a violation of the liberty of the press.”

By the time we had breakfasted the bells for divine service were ringing, and I took the opportunity to step into one of their churches. The office is performed in a desk immediately under the pulpit, not at the altar: there were no lights burning, nor any church vessels, nor ornaments to be seen. Monuments are fixed against the walls and pillars, and I thought there was a damp and unwholesome smell, perhaps because I involuntarily expected the frankincense. They have an abominable custom of partitioning their churches into divisions which they call pews, and which are private property; so that the wealthy sit at their ease, or kneel upon cushions, while the poor stand during the whole service in the aisle.

An attempt was made something more than a century ago to rear silkworms in this neighbourhood by a Mr Newberry; a man of many whimsies he was called, and whimsical indeed he must have been; for the different buildings for his silkworms and his laboratories were so numerous that his house looked like a village, and all his laundry and dairy work was done by men, because he would suffer no women servants about him.

The road still lay over the downs; this is a great sheep country, above 150,000 are annually sold from Dorsetshire to other parts of England; they are larger than ours, and I think less beautiful, the wool being more curled and less soft in its appearance. It was once supposed that the thyme in these pastures was so nourishing as to make the ewes produce twins, a story which may be classed with the tale of the Lusitanian foals of the wind; it is however true that the ewes are purchased by the farmers near the metropolis, for the sake of fattening their lambs for the London market, because they yean earlier than any others. The day was very fine, and the sight of this open and naked country, where nothing was to be seen but an extent of short green turf under a sky of cloudless blue, was singular and beautiful. There are upon the downs many sepulchral hillocks, here called barrows, of antiquity beyond the reach of history. We past by a village church as the people were assembling for service, men and women all in their clean Sunday clothes; the men standing in groups by the church-yard stile, or before the porch, or sitting upon the tombstones, a hale and ruddy race. The dresses seem every where the same, without the slightest provincial difference: all the men wear hats, the least graceful and least convenient covering for the head that ever was devised. I have not yet seen a cocked hat except upon the officers. They bury the dead both in town and country round the churches, and the church-yards are full of upright stones, on which the name and age of the deceased is inscribed, usually with some account of his good qualities, and not unfrequently some rude religious rhyme. I observe that the oldest churches are always the most beautiful, here as well as every where else; for as we think more of ourselves and less of religion, more of this world and less of the next, we build better houses and worse churches. There are no storks here: the jackdaw, a social and noisy bird, commonly builds in the steeples. Little reverence is shown either to the church or the cemetery; the boys play with a ball against the tower, and the priest’s horse is permitted to graze upon the graves.

At Blandford we changed chaises; a wealthy and cheerful town. The English cities have no open centre like our plazas; but, in amends for this, the streets are far wider and more airy: indeed they have never sun enough to make them desirous of shade. The prosperity of the kingdom has been fatal to the antiquities, and consequently to the picturesque beauty of the towns. Walls, gates, and castles have been demolished to make room for the growth of streets. You are delighted with the appearance of opulence in the houses, and the perfect cleanliness every where when you are within the town; but without, there is nothing which the painter would choose for his subject, nothing to call up the recollections of old times, and those feelings with which we always remember the age of the shield and the lance.

This town and Dorchester, but this in particular, has suffered much from fire; a tremendous calamity which is every day occurring in England, and against which daily and dreadful experience has not yet taught them to adopt any general means of prevention. There are large plantations about Blandford:—I do not like the English method of planting in what they call belts about their estates; nothing can be more formal or less beautiful, especially as the fir is the favourite tree, which precludes all variety of shape and colour. By some absurdity which I cannot explain, they set the young trees so thick that unless three-fourths be weeded out, the remainder cannot grow at all; and when they are weeded, those which are left, if they do not wither and perish in consequence of the exposure, rarely attain to any size or strength.

Our next stage was to the episcopal city of Salisbury; here we left the down-country, and once more entered upon cultivated fields and inclosures. The trees in these hedge-rows, if they are at all lofty, have all their boughs clipt to the very top; nothing can look more naked and deplorable. When they grow by the way-side, this is enjoined by law, because their droppings after rain injure the road, and their shade prevents it from drying. The climate has so much rain and so little sun, that over-hanging boughs have been found in like manner injurious to pasture or arable lands, and the trees, therefore, are every where thus deformed. The approach to Salisbury is very delightful;—little rivers or rivulets are seen in every direction; houses extending into the country, garden-trees within the city, and the spire of the cathedral over-topping all; the highest and the most beautiful in the whole kingdom.

We visited this magnificent building while our dinner was getting ready: like all such buildings, it has its traditional tales of absurdity and exaggeration—that it has as many private chapels as months in a year, as many doors as weeks, as many pillars as days, as many windows as hours, and as many partitions in the windows as minutes: they say also, that it is founded upon wool-packs, because nothing else could resist the humidity of the soil. It has lately undergone, or, I should rather say, suffered a thorough repair in the true spirit of reformation. Every thing has been cleared away to give it the appearance of one huge room. The little chapels, which its pious founders and benefactors had erected in the hope of exciting piety in others, and profiting by their prayers, are all swept away! but you may easily conceive what wild work a protestant architect must make with a cathedral, when he fits it to his own notions of architecture, without the slightest feeling or knowledge of the design with which such buildings were originally erected. The naked monuments are now ranged in rows between the pillars, one opposite another, like couples for a dance, so as never monuments were placed before, and, it is to be hoped, never will be placed hereafter. Here is the tomb of a nobleman, who, in the reign of our Philip and Mary, was executed for murder, like a common malefactor, with this difference only, that he had the privilege of being hanged in a silken halter; a singularity which, instead of rendering his death less ignominious, has made the ignominy more notorious. The cloisters and the chapter-house have escaped alteration. I have seen more beautiful cloisters in our own country, but never a finer chapterhouse; it is supported, as usual, by one central pillar, whose top arches off on all sides, like the head of a spreading palm. The bishop’s palace was bought during the reign of the presbyterians by a rich tailor, who demolished it and sold the materials.

The cemetery has suffered even more than the church, if more be possible, from the abominable sacrilege, and abominable taste of the late bishop and his chapter. They have destroyed all memorials of the dead, for the sake of laying it down as a smooth well-shorn grass plat, garnished with bright yellow gravel walks! This suits no feeling of the mind connected with religious reverence, with death, or with the hope of immortality; indeed it suits with nothing except a new painted window at the altar, of truly English design, (for England is not the country of the arts,) and an organ, bedecked with crocketed pinnacles, more than ever was Gothic tower, and of stone colour, to imitate masonry! This, however, it should be added, was given in a handsome manner by the King. A subscription was raised through the diocese to repair the cathedral, the King having enquired of the bishop how it succeeded, proceeded to ask why he himself had not been applied to for a contribution. The prelate, with courtly submission, disclaimed such presumption as highly improper. I live at Windsor, said the King, in your diocese, and, though I am not rich, can afford to give you an organ, which I know you want; so order one in my name, and let it be suitable to so fine a cathedral.

The soil here abounds so much with water, that there are no vaults in the churches, nor cellars in the city; a spring will sometimes gush up when they are digging a grave. Little streams flow through several of the streets, so that the city has been called the English Venice; but whoever gave it this appellation, either had never seen Venice, or grossly flattered Salisbury. Indeed, till the resemblance was invented, these streamlets were rather thought inconvenient than beautiful; and travellers complained that they made the streets not so clean and not so easy of passage, as they would have been otherwise. The place is famous for the manufactory of knives and scissars, which are here brought to the greatest possible perfection. I am sorry it happened to be Sunday; for the shops, which form so lively a feature in English towns, are all fastened up with shutters, which give the city a melancholy and mourning appearance. I saw, however, a priest walking in his cassock from the church,—the only time when the priests are distinguished in their dress from the laity.

A remarkable instance of insolent impiety occurred lately in a village near this place. A man, in derision of religion, directed in his will, that his horse should be caparisoned and led to his grave, and there shot, and buried with him, that he might be ready to mount at the resurrection, and start to advantage. To the disgrace of the country this was actually performed; the executors and the legatees probably thought themselves bound to obey the will; but it is unaccountable why the clergyman did not interfere, and apply to the bishop.

LETTER V.

Old Sarum.—Country thinly peopled,—Basingstoke.—Ruins of a Catholic Chapel.—Waste Land near London.—Staines.—Iron Bridges.—Custom of exposing the dead Bodies of Criminals.—Hounslow.—Brentford.—Approach to London.—Arrival.

Monday, April 26.

Half a league from Salisbury, close on the left of the London road, is Old Sarum, the Sorbiodunum of the Romans, famous for many reasons. It covered the top of a round hill, which is still surrounded with a mound of earth and a deep fosse. Under the Norman kings it was a flourishing town, but subject to two evils; the want of water, and the oppression of the castle soldiers. The townsmen, therefore, with one consent, removed to New Sarum, the present Salisbury, where the first of these evils is more than remedied; and the garrison was no longer maintained at Old Sarum when there was nobody to be pillaged. So was the original city deserted, except by its right of representation in parliament; not a soul remaining there. Seven burgage tenures, in a village westward of it, produce two burgesses to serve in parliament for Old Sarum; four of these tenures (the majority) were sold very lately for a sum little short of 200,000 peso-duros.

From this place Salisbury Plain stretches to the north, but little of it is visible from the road which we were travelling: much of this wide waste has lately been inclosed and cultivated. I regretted that I could not visit Stonehenge, the famous druidical monument, which was only a league and a half distant: but as J— was on his way home, after so long an absence, I could not even express a wish to delay him.

Stockbridge and Basingstoke were our next stages: the country is mostly down, recently enclosed, and of wonderfully thin population in comparison of the culture. Indeed harvest here depends upon a temporary emigration of the western clothiers, who come and work during the harvest months. The few trees in this district grow about the villages which are scattered in the vallies—beautiful objects in an open and naked country. You see flints and chalk in the fields, if the soil be not covered with corn or turnips. Basingstoke is a town which stands at the junction of five great roads, and is of course a thriving place. At the north side is a small but beautiful ruin of a chapel once belonging to a brotherhood of the Holy Ghost. J— led me to see it as a beautiful object, in which light only all Englishmen regard such monuments of the piety of their forefathers and of their own lamentable apostasy. The roof had once been adorned with the history of the prophets and the holy apostles; but the more beautiful and the more celebrated these decorations, the more zealously were they destroyed in the schism. I felt deeply the profanation, and said a prayer in silence upon the spot where the altar should have stood. One relic of better times is still preserved at Basingstoke: in all parishes it is the custom, at stated periods, to walk round the boundaries; but here, and here only, is the procession connected with religion: they begin and conclude the ceremony by singing a psalm under a great elm which grows before the parsonage-house.

Two leagues and a half of wooded country reach Hertford Bridge, a place of nothing but inns for travellers: from hence, with short and casual interruptions, Bagshot Heath extends to Egham, not less than fourteen miles. We were within six leagues of London, a city twice during the late war on the very brink of famine, and twice in hourly dread of insurrection from that dreadful cause:—and yet so near it is this tract of country utterly waste! Nothing but wild sheep, that run as fleet as hounds, are scattered over this dreary desert: flesh there is none on these wretched creatures; but those who are only half-starved on the heath produce good meat when fatted: all the flesh and all the fat being laid on, as graziers speak, anew, it is equivalent in tenderness to lamb, and in flavour to mutton, and has fame accordingly in the metropolis.

At Staines we crost the Thames,—not by a new bridge, now for the third time built, but over a crazy wooden one above a century old. We enquired the reason, and heard a curious history. The river here divides the counties of Middlesex and Surrey; and the magistrates of both counties, having agreed upon the necessity of building a bridge, did not agree exactly as to its situation; neither party would give way, and accordingly each collected materials for building a half-bridge from its respective bank, but not opposite to the other. Time at length showed the unfitness of this, and convinced them that two half bridges would not make a whole one: they then built three arches close to the old bridge; when weight was laid on the middle piers, they sunk considerably into an unremembered and untried quicksand, and all the work was to be undone. In the meanwhile, an adventurous iron bridge had been built at Sunderland, one arch of monstrous span over a river with high rocky banks, so that large ships could sail under. The architect of this work, which was much talked of, offered his services to throw a similar but smaller bridge over the Thames. But, alas! his rocky abutments were not there, and he did not believe enough in mathematics to know the mighty lateral pressure of a wide flat arch. Stone abutments, however, were to be made; but, from prudential considerations, the Middlesex abutment, of seeming solidity, was hollow, having been intended for the wine-cellar of a large inn; so as soon as the wooden frame-work was removed, the flat arch took the liberty of pushing away the abutment—alias the wine-cellar—and after carriages had passed over about a week, the fated bridge was once more closed against passage.

I know not how these iron bridges may appear to an English eye, but to a Spaniard’s they are utterly detestable. The colour, where it is not black, is rusty, and the hollow, open, spider work, which they so much praise for its lightness, has no appearance of solidity. Of all the works of man, there is not any one which unites so well with natural scenery, and so heightens its beauty, as a bridge, if any taste, or rather if no bad taste, be displayed in its structure. This is exemplified in the rude as well as in the magnificent; by the stepping stones or crossing plank of a village brook, as well as by the immortal works of Trajan: but to look at these iron bridges which are bespoken at the foundries, you would actually suppose that the architect had studied at the confectioner’s, and borrowed his ornaments from the sugar temples of a desert. It is curious that this execrable improvement, as every novelty is called in England, should have been introduced by the notorious politician, Paine, who came over from America, upon this speculation, and exhibited one as a show upon dry ground in the metropolis.[^[4]]

[4]. The great Sunderland bridge has lately become liable to tremendous vibrations, and thereby established the unfitness of building any more such.—Tr.

Staines was so called, because the boundary stone which marked the extent of the city of London’s jurisdiction up the river formerly stood here. The country on the London side had once been a forest; but has now no other wood remaining than a few gibbets; on one of which, according to the barbarous custom of this country, a criminal was hanging in chains. Some five-and-twenty years ago, about a hundred such were exposed upon the heath; so that from whatever quarter the wind blew, it brought with it a cadaverous and pestilential odour. The nation is becoming more civilized; they now take the bodies down after reasonable exposure; and it will probably not be long before a practice so offensive to public feeling, and public decency, will be altogether discontinued. This heath is infamous for the robberies which are committed upon it, at all hours of the day and night, though travellers and stage-coaches are continually passing: the banditti are chiefly horsemen, who strike across with their booty into one of the roads, which intersect it in every direction, and easily escape pursuit; an additional reason for inclosing the waste. We passed close to some powder-mills, which are either so ill-contrived, or so carelessly managed, that they are blown up about once a-year: then we entered the great Western road at Hounslow; from thence to the metropolis is only two leagues and a half.

Three miles further is Brentford, the county town of Middlesex, and of all places the most famous in the electioneering history of England. It was now almost one continued street to London. The number of travellers perfectly astonished me, prepared as I had been by the gradual increase along the road; horsemen and footmen, carriages of every description and every shape, waggons and carts and covered carts, stage-coaches, long, square, and double, coaches, chariots, chaises, gigs, buggies, curricles, and phaetons; the sound of their wheels ploughing through the wet gravel was as continuous and incessant as the roar of the waves on the sea beach. Evening was now setting in, and it was dark before we reached Hyde Park Corner, the entrance of the capital. We had travelled for some time in silence; J—’s thoughts were upon his family, and I was as naturally led to think on mine, from whom I was now separated by so wide a tract of sea and land, among heretics and strangers, a people notoriously inhospitable to foreigners, without a single friend or acquaintance, except my companion. You will not wonder if my spirits were depressed; in truth, I never felt more deeply dejected; and the more I was surprised at the length of the streets, the lines of lamps, and of illuminated shops, and the stream of population to which there seemed to be no end,—the more I felt the solitariness of my own situation.

The chaise at last stopped at J—’s door in ——. I was welcomed as kindly as I could wish: my apartment had been made ready: I pleaded fatigue, and soon retired.

LETTER VI.

Watchmen.—Noise in London Night and Morning.—An English Family.—Advice to Travellers.

Tuesday, April 27, 1802.

The first night in a strange bed is seldom a night of sound rest;—one is not intimate enough with the pillow to be quite at ease upon it. A traveller, like myself, indeed, might be supposed to sleep soundly any where; but the very feeling that my journey was over was a disquieting one, and I should have lain awake thinking of the friends and parents whom I had left, and the strangers with whom I was now domesticated, had there been nothing else to disturb me. To sleep in London, however, is an art which a foreigner must acquire by time and habit. Here was the watchman, whose business it is, not merely to guard the streets and take charge of the public security, but to inform the good people of London every half hour of the state of the weather. For the three first hours I was told it was a moonlight night, then it became cloudy, and at half past three o’clock was a rainy morning; so that I was as well acquainted with every variation of the atmosphere as if I had been looking from the window all night long. A strange custom this, to pay men for telling them what the weather is, every hour during the night, till they get so accustomed to the noise, that they sleep on and cannot hear what is said.

Besides this regular annoyance, there is another cause of disturbance. The inhabitants of this great city seem to be divided into two distinct casts,—the Solar and the Lunar races,—those who live by day, and those who live by night, antipodes to each other, the one rising just as the others go to bed. The clatter of the night coaches had scarcely ceased, before that of the morning carts began. The dustman with his bell, and his chaunt of dust ho! succeeded to the watchman; then came the porter-house boy for the pewter-pots which had been sent out for supper the preceding night; the milkman next, and so on, a succession of cries, each in a different tune, so numerous, that I could no longer follow them in my enquiries.

As the watchman had told me of the rain, I was neither surprised nor sorry at finding it a wet morning: a day of rest after the voyage and so long a journey is acceptable, and the leisure it allows for clearing my memory, and settling accounts with my journal, is what I should have chosen. More novelties will crowd upon me now than it will be easy to keep pace with. Here I am in London, the most wonderful spot upon this habitable earth.

The inns had given me a taste of English manners; still the domestic accommodations and luxuries surprised me. Would you could see our breakfast scene! every utensil so beautiful, such order, such curiosity! the whole furniture of the room so choice, and of such excellent workmanship, and a fire of earth-coal enlivening every thing. But I must minutely describe all this hereafter. To paint the family group is out of my power; words may convey an adequate idea of deformity, and describe with vivid accuracy what is grotesque in manner or costume; but for gracefulness and beauty we have only general terms. Thus much, however, may be said; there is an elegance and a propriety in the domestic dress of English women, which is quite perfect, and children here and with us seem almost like beings of different species. Their dress here bears no resemblance to that of their parents; I could not but feel the unfitness of our own manners, and acknowledge that our children in full dress look like colts in harness. J—’s are fine, healthy, happy-looking children; their mother educates them, and was telling her husband with delightful pride how they had profited, how John could spell, and Harriet tell her letters. She has shown me their books, for in this country they have books for every gradation of the growing intellect, and authors of the greatest celebrity have not thought it beneath them to employ their talents in this useful department. Their very playthings are made subservient to the purposes of education; they have ivory alphabets with which they arrange words upon the table, and dissected maps which they combine into a whole so much faster than I can do, that I shall not be ashamed to play with them, and acquire the same readiness.

J— has a tolerable library; he has the best Spanish authors; but I must not keep company here with my old friends. The advice which he has given me, with respect to my studies, is very judicious. Of our best books, he says, read none but such as are absolutely necessary to give you a competent knowledge of the land you are in; you will take back with you our great authors, and it is best to read them at leisure in your own country, when you will more thoroughly understand them. Newspapers, Reviews, and other temporary publications will make you best acquainted with England in its present state; and we have bulky county histories, not worth freight across the water, which you should consult for information concerning what you have seen, and what you mean to see. But reserve our classics for Spain, and read nothing which you buy.[^[5]]

[5]. Having taken his advice, I recommend it to future travellers.—Author’s note.

The tailor and shoemaker have made their appearance. I fancied my figure was quite English in my pantaloons of broad-striped fustian, and large coat buttons of cut steel; but it seems that although they are certainly of genuine English manufacture, they were manufactured only for foreign sale. To-morrow my buttons will be covered, and my toes squared, and I shall be in no danger of being called Frenchman in the streets.

LETTER VII.

General Description of London.—Walk to the Palace.—Crowd in the Streets.—Shops.—Cathedral of St Paul.—Palace of the Prince of Wales.—Oddities in the Shop Windows.

Wednesday, April 28.

My first business was to acquire some knowledge of the place whereof I am now become an inhabitant. I began to study the plan of London, though dismayed at the sight of its prodigious extent,—a city a league and a half from one extremity to the other, and about half as broad, standing upon level ground. It is impossible ever to become thoroughly acquainted with such an endless labyrinth of streets; and, as you may well suppose, they who live at one end know little or nothing of the other. The river is no assistance to a stranger in finding his way. There is no street along its banks, and no eminence from whence you can look around and take your bearings.

London, properly so called, makes but a small part of this immense capital, though the focus of business is there. Westminster is about the same size. To the east and the north is a great population included in neither of these cities, and probably equal to both. On the western side the royal parks have prevented the growth of houses, and form a gap between the metropolis and its suburb. All this is on the north side of the river. Southwark, or the Borough, is on the other shore, and a town has grown at Lambeth by the Primate’s palace, which has now joined it. The extent of ground covered with houses on this bank is greater than the area of Madrid. The population is now ascertained to exceed nine hundred thousand persons, nearly a twelfth of the inhabitants of the whole island.

Having studied the way to the palace, I set off. The distance was considerable: the way, after getting into the main streets, tolerably straight. There were not many passers in the by-streets; but when I reached Cheapside the crowd completely astonished me. On each side of the way were two uninterrupted streams of people, one going east, the other west. At first I thought some extraordinary occasion must have collected such a concourse; but I soon perceived it was only the usual course of business. They moved on in two regular counter currents, and the rapidity with which they moved was as remarkable as their numbers. It was easy to perceive that the English calculate the value of time. Nobody was loitering to look at the beautiful things in the shop windows; none were stopping to converse, every one was in haste, yet no one in a hurry; the quickest possible step seemed to be the natural pace. The carriages were numerous in proportion, and were driven with answerable velocity.

If possible, I was still more astonished at the opulence and splendour of the shops: drapers, stationers, confectioners, pastry-cooks, seal-cutters, silver-smiths, booksellers, print-sellers, hosiers, fruiterers, china-sellers,—one close to another, without intermission, a shop to every house, street after street, and mile after mile; the articles themselves so beautiful, and so beautifully arranged, that if they who passed by me had had leisure to observe any thing, they might have known me to be a foreigner by the frequent stands which I made to admire them. Nothing which I had seen in the country had prepared me for such a display of splendour.

My way lay by St Paul’s church. The sight of this truly noble building rather provoked than pleased me. The English, after erecting so grand an edifice, will not allow it an open space to stand in, and it is impossible to get a full view of it in any situation. The value of ground in this capital is too great to be sacrificed to beauty by a commercial nation: unless, therefore, another conflagration should lay London in ashes, the Londoners will never fairly see their own cathedral. The street which leads to the grand front has just a sufficient bend to destroy the effect which such a termination would have given it, and to obstruct the view till you come too close to see it. This is perfectly vexatious! Except St Peter’s, here is beyond comparison the finest temple in Christendom, and it is even more ridiculously misplaced than the bridge of Segovia appears, when the mules have drank up the Manzanares. The houses come so close upon one side, that carriages are not permitted to pass that way lest the foot-passengers should be endangered. The site itself is well chosen on a little rising near the river; and were it fairly opened as it ought to be, no city could boast so magnificent a monument of modern times.

In a direct line from hence is Temple Bar, a modern, ugly, useless gate, which divides the two cities of London and Westminster. There were iron spikes upon the top, on which the heads of traitors were formerly exposed: J— remembers to have seen some in his childhood. On both sides of this gate I had a paper thrust into my hand, which proved to be a quack doctor’s notice of some never-failing pills. Before I reached home I had a dozen of these. Tradesmen here lose no possible opportunity of forcing their notices upon the public. Wherever there was a dead wall, a vacant house, or a temporary scaffolding erected for repairs, the space was covered with printed bills. Two rival blacking-makers were standing in one of the streets, each carried a boot, completely varnished with black, hanging from a pole, and on the other arm a basket with the balls for sale. On the top of their poles was a sort of standard, with a printed paper explaining the virtue of the wares;—the one said that his blacking was the best blacking in the world; the other, that his was so good you might eat it.

The crowd in Westminster was not so great as in the busier city. From Charing Cross, as it is still called, though an equestrian statue has taken place of the cross, a great street opens toward Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament. Most of the public buildings are here: it is to be regretted that the end is not quite open to the abbey, for it would then be one of the finest streets in Europe. Leaving this for my return, I went on to the palaces of the Prince of Wales, and of the King, which stand near each other in a street called Pall Mall. The game from whence this name is derived is no longer known in England.

The Prince of Wales’s palace is no favourable specimen of English architecture. Before the house are thirty columns planted in a row, two and two, supporting nothing but a common entablature, which connects them. As they serve for neither ornament nor use, a stranger might be puzzled to know by what accident they came there; but the truth is, that these people have more money than taste, and are satisfied with any absurdity if it has but the merit of being new. The same architect was employed[^[6]] to build a palace, not far distant, for the second prince of the blood, and in the front towards the street he constructed a large oven-like room completely obscuring the house to which it was to serve as an entrance-hall. These two buildings being described to the late Lord North, who was blind in the latter part of his life, he facetiously remarked, Then the Duke of York, it should seem, has been sent to the round-house, and the Prince of Wales is put into the pillory.[^[7]]

[6]. The author must have been misinformed in this particular, for the Duke of York’s house at Whitehall, now Lord Melbourne’s, was not built by his Royal Highness; but altered, with some additions, of which the room alluded to made a part.—Tr.

[7]. There is an explanation of the jest in the text which the translator has thought proper to omit, as, however necessary to foreign readers, it must needs seem impertinent to an English one.—Tr.

I had now passed the trading district, and found little to excite attention in large brick houses without uniformity, and without either beauty or magnificence. The royal palace itself is an old brick building, remarkable for nothing, except that the sovereign of Great Britain should have no better a court; but it seems that the king never resides there. A passage through the court-yard leads into St James’s Park, the Prado of London. Its trees are not so fine as might be expected in a country where water never fails, and the sun never scorches; here is also a spacious piece of water; but the best ornament of the park are the two towers of Westminster Abbey. Having now reached the proposed limits of my walk, I passed through a public building of some magnitude and little beauty, called the Horse Guards, and again entered the public streets. Here, where the pavement was broad, and the passengers not so numerous as to form a crowd, a beggar had taken his seat, and written his petition upon the stones with chalks of various colours, the letters formed with great skill, and ornamented with some taste. I stopped to admire his work, and gave him a trifle as a payment for the sight, rather than as alms. Immediately opposite the Horse Guards is the Banqueting House at Whitehall; so fine a building, that if the later architects had had eyes to see, or understandings to comprehend its merit, they would never have disgraced the opposite side of the way with buildings so utterly devoid of beauty. This fragment of a great design by Inigo Jones is remarkable for many accounts; here is the window through which Charles I. came out upon the scaffold; here also, in the back court, the statue of James II. remains undisturbed, with so few excesses was that great revolution accompanied; and here is the weathercock which was set up by his command, that he might know every shifting of the wind when the invasion from Holland was expected, and the east wind was called Protestant by the people, and the west Papist.

My way home from Charing Cross was varied, in as much as I took the other side of the street for the sake of the shop windows, and the variety was greater than I had expected. It took me through a place called Exeter Change, which is precisely a Bazar, a sort of street under cover, or large long room, with a row of shops on either hand, and a thoroughfare between them; the shops being furnished with such articles as might tempt an idler, or remind a passenger of his wants,—walking-sticks, implements for shaving, knives, scissars, watch-chains, purses, &c. At the further end was a man in splendid costume, who proved to belong to a menagerie above stairs, to which he invited me to ascend; but I declined this for the present, being without a companion. A maccaw was swinging on a perch above him, and the outside of the building hung with enormous pictures of the animals which were there to be seen.

The oddest things which I saw in the whole walk were a pair of shoes in one window floating in a vessel of water, to show that they were water-proof; and a well-dressed leg in another, betokening that legs were made there to the life. One purchase I ventured to make, that of a travelling caissette; there were many at the shop-door, with the prices marked upon them, so that I did not fear imposition. These things are admirably made and exceedingly convenient. I was shown some which contained the whole apparatus of a man’s toilet, but this seemed an ill assortment, as when writing you do not want the shaving materials, and when shaving as little do you want the writing desk.

In looking over the quack’s notices after my return, I found a fine specimen of English hyperbole. The doctor says that his pills always perform, and even exceed whatever he promises, as if they were impatient of immortal and universal fame.

LETTER VIII.

Proclamation of Peace.—The English do not understand Pageantry.—Illumination.—M. Otto’s House.—Illuminations better managed at Rome.

Friday, April 30.

The definitive treaty has arrived at last; peace was proclaimed yesterday, with the usual ceremonies, and the customary rejoicings have taken place. My expectations were raised to the highest pitch. I looked for a pomp and pageantry far surpassing whatever I had seen in my own country. Indeed every body expected a superb spectacle. The newspaper writers had filled their columns with magnificent descriptions of what was to be, and rooms or single windows in the streets through which the procession was to pass, were advertised to be let for the sight, and hired at prices so extravagant, that I should be suspected of exaggeration were I to say how preposterous.

The theory of the ceremony, for this ceremony, like an English suit at law, is founded upon a fiction, is, that the Lord Mayor of London, and the people of London, good people! being wholly ignorant of what has been going on, the king sends officially to acquaint them that he has made peace: accordingly the gates at Temple Bar, which divide London and Westminster, and which stand open day and night, are on this occasion closed; and Garter king at arms, with all his heraldic peers, rides up to them and knocks loudly for admittance. The Lord Mayor, mounted on a charger, is ready on the other side to demand who is there. King Garter then announces himself and his errand, and requires permission to pass and proclaim the good news; upon which the gates are thrown open. This, which is the main part of the ceremony, could be seen only by those persons who were contiguous to the spot, and we were not among the number. The apartment in which we were was on the Westminster side, and we saw only the heraldic part of the procession. The heralds and the trumpeters were certainly in splendid costume; but they were not above twenty in number, nor was there any thing to precede or follow them. The poorest brotherhood in Spain makes a better procession on its festival. In fact, these functions are not understood in England.

The crowd was prodigious. The windows, the leads, or unrailed balconies which project over many of the shops, the house tops, were full, and the streets below thronged. A very remarkable accident took place in our sight. A man on the top of a church was leaning against one of the stone urns which ornament the balustrade; it fell, and crushed a person below. On examination it appeared that the workmen, instead of cramping it with iron to the stone, or securing it with masonry, had fitted it on a wooden peg, which having become rotten through, yielded to the slightest touch. A Turk might relate this story in proof of predestination.

If, however, the ceremony of the morning disappointed me, I was amply rewarded by the illuminations at night. This token of national joy is not, as with us, regulated by law; the people, or the mob, as they are called, take the law into their own hands on these occasions, and when they choose to have an illumination, the citizens must illuminate to please them, or be content to have their windows broken; a violence which is winked at by the police, as it falls only upon persons whose politics are obnoxious. During many days, preparations had been making for this festivity, so that it was already known what houses and what public buildings would exhibit the most splendid appearance. M. Otto’s, the French ambassador, surpassed all others, and the great object of desire was to see this. Between eight and nine the lighting-up began, and about ten we sallied out on our way to Portman Square, where M. Otto resided.

In the private streets there was nothing to be remarked, except the singular effect of walking at night in as broad a light as that of noon-day, every window being filled with candles, arranged either in straight lines, or in arches, at the fancy of the owner, which nobody stopped to admire. None indeed were walking in these streets except persons whose way lay through them; yet had there been a single house unlighted, a mob would have been collected in five minutes, at the first outcry. When we drew near Pall Mall, the crowd, both of carriages and of people, thickened; still there was no inconvenience, and no difficulty in walking, or in crossing the carriage road. Greater expense had been bestowed here. The gaming-houses in St James’s street were magnificent, as they always are on such occasions; in one place you saw the crown and the G. R. in coloured lamps; in another the word Peace in letters of light; in another some transparent picture, emblematical of peace and plenty. Some score years ago, a woman in the country asked a higher price than she had used to do for a basket of mushrooms, and when she was asked the reason, said, it was because of the American war. As war thus advances the price of every thing, peace and plenty are supposed to be inseparably connected; and well may the poor think them so. There was a transparency exhibited this night at a pot-house in the city, which represented a loaf of bread saying to a pot of porter, I am coming down; to which the porter-pot made answer, So am I.

The nearer we drew the greater was the throng. It was a sight truly surprising to behold all the inhabitants of this immense city walking abroad at midnight, and distinctly seen by the light of ten thousand candles. This was particularly striking in Oxford-street, which is nearly half a league in length;—as far as the eye could reach either way the parallel lines of light were seen narrowing towards each other. Here, however, we could still advance without difficulty, and the carriages rattled along unobstructed. But in the immediate vicinity of Portman square it was very different. Never before had I beheld such multitudes assembled. The middle of the street was completely filled with coaches, so immoveably locked together, that many persons who wished to cross passed under the horses’ bellies without fear, and without danger. The unfortunate persons within had no such means of escape; they had no possible way of extricating themselves, unless they could crawl out of the window of one coach into the window of another; there was no room to open a door. There they were, and there they must remain, patiently or impatiently; and there, in fact, they did remain the greater part of the night, till the lights were burnt out, and the crowd clearing away left them at liberty.

We who were on foot had better fortune, but we laboured hard for it. There were two ranks of people, one returning from the square, the other pressing on to it. Exertion was quite needless; man was wedged to man, he who was behind you pressed you against him who was before; I had nothing to do but to work out elbow room that I might not be squeezed to death, and to float on with the tide. But this tide was frequently at a stop; some obstacle at the further end of the street checked it, and still the crowd behind was increasing in depth. We tried the first entrance to the square in vain; it was utterly impossible to get in, and finding this we crossed into the counter current, and were carried out by the stream. A second and a third entrance we tried with no better fortune; at the fourth, the only remaining avenue, we were more successful. To this, which is at the outskirts of the town, there was one way inaccessible by carriages, and it was not crowded by walkers, because the road was bad, there were no lamps, and the way was not known. By this route, however, we entered the avenue immediately opposite to M. Otto’s, and raising ourselves by the help of a garden wall, overlooked the crowd, and thus obtained a full and uninterrupted sight, of what thousands and tens of thousands were vainly struggling to see. To describe it, splendid as it was, is impossible; the whole building presented a front of light. The inscription was Peace and Amity; it had been Peace and Concord, but a party of sailors in the morning, whose honest patriotism did not regard trifling differences of orthography, insisted upon it that they were not conquered, and that no Frenchman should say so; and so the word Amity, which can hardly be regarded as English, was substituted in its stead.

Having effected our object, meaner sights had no temptation for us, and we returned. It was three in the morning before we reached home; we extinguished our lights and were retiring to bed, believing ourselves at liberty so to do. But it did not please the mob to be of the same opinion; they insisted that the house should be lit up again, and John Bull was not to be disobeyed. Except a few such instances of unreasonableness, it is surprising how peaceably the whole passed off. The pickpockets have probably made a good harvest; but we saw no quarrelling, no drunkenness, and, what is more extraordinary, prodigious as the crowd was, have heard of no accident.

So famous is this illumination of M. Otto, that one of the minor theatres has given notice to all such persons as were not fortunate enough to obtain sight of it, that it will be exactly represented upon the stage for their accommodation, and that the same number of lamps will be arranged precisely in the same manner, the same person being employed to suspend them. Hundreds will go to see this, not recollecting that it is as impossible to do it upon a stage of that size, as it is to put a quart of water into a pint cup.

Illuminations are better managed at Rome. Imagine the vast dome of St Peter’s covered with large lamps so arranged as to display its fine form; those lamps all kindled at the same minute, and the whole dome emerging, as it were, from total darkness, in one blaze of light. After this exhibition has lasted an hour, the dome as rapidly assumes the shape of a huge tiara, a change produced by pots of fire so much more powerful than the former light as at once to annihilate it. This, and the fireworks from St Angelo, which, from the grandeur, admit of no adequate description, as you may well conceive, effectually prevent those persons who have beheld them from enjoying the twinkling light of half-penny-candles scattered in the windows of London, or the crowns and regal cyphers which here and there manifest the zeal, the interest, or emulation of individuals.

LETTER IX.

Execution of Governor Wall.

Nothing is now talked of in London but the fate of Governor Wall, who has just been executed for a crime committed twenty years ago. He commanded at that time the English settlement at Goree, an inactive and unwholsome station, little reputable for the officers, and considered as a place of degradation for the men. The garrison became discontented at some real or supposed mal-practices in the distribution of stores; and Wall seizing those whom he conceived to be the ringleaders of the disaffected, ordered them, by his own authority, to be so dreadfully flogged, that three of them died in consequence; he himself standing by during the execution, and urging the executioner not to spare, in terms of the most brutal cruelty. An indictment for murder was preferred against him on his return to England; he was apprehended, but made his escape from the officers of justice, and got over to the Continent, where he remained many years. Naples was at one time the place of his residence, and the countenance which he received there from some of his countrymen of high rank perhaps induced him to believe that the public indignation against him had subsided. Partly, perhaps, induced by this confidence, by the supposition that the few witnesses who could have testified against him were dead, or so scattered about the world as to be out of reach, and still more compelled by the pressure of his circumstances, he at length resolved to venture back.

It is said, that some years before his surrender he came to Calais with this intent, and desired one of the king of England’s messengers to take him into custody, as he wished to return and stand his trial. The messenger replied, that he could not possibly take charge of him, but advised him to signify his intention to the Secretary of State, and offered to carry his letter to the office. Wall was still very solicitous to go, though the sea was at that time so tempestuous that the ordinary packets did not venture out; and the messenger, whose dispatches would not admit of delay, had hired a vessel for himself: finding, however, that this could not be, he wrote as had been suggested; but when he came to subscribe his name, his heart failed him, his countenance became pale and livid, and in an agony of fear or of conscience he threw down the pen and rushed out of the room. The messenger put to sea; the vessel was wrecked in clearing out of the harbour, and not a soul on board escaped.

This extraordinary story has been confidently related with every circumstantial evidence; yet it seems to imply a consciousness of guilt, and a feeling of remorse, noways according with his after conduct. He came over to England about twelve months ago, and lived in London under a fictitious name: here also a circumstance look place which touched him to the heart. Some masons were employed about his house, and he took notice to one of them that the lad who worked with him appeared very sickly and delicate, and unfit for so laborious an employment. The man confessed that it was true, but said that he had no other means of supporting him, and that the poor lad had no other friend in the world, “For his father and mother,” said he, “are dead, and his only brother was flogged to death at Goree, by that barbarous villain Governor Wall.”

It has never been ascertained what were his motives for surrendering himself; the most probable cause which can be assigned is, that some property had devolved to him, of which he stood greatly in need, but which he could not claim till his outlawry had been reversed. He therefore voluntarily gave himself up, and was brought to trial. One of the persons whom he had summoned to give evidence in his favour dropped down dead on the way to the court; it was, however, known that his testimony would have borne against him. Witnesses appeared from the remotest parts of the island whom he had supposed dead. One man who had suffered under his barbarity and recovered, had been hanged for robbery but six months before, and expressed his regret at going to the gallows before Governor Wall, as the thing which most grieved him, “For,” said he, “I know he will come to the gallows at last.”

The question turned upon the point of law, whether the fact, for that was admitted, was to be considered as an execution, or as a murder. The evidence of a woman who appeared in his behalf, was that which weighed most heavily against him: his attempt to prove that a mutiny actually existed failed; and the jury pronounced him guilty. For this he was utterly unprepared; and, when he heard the verdict, clasped his hands in astonishment and agony. The Bench, as it is called, had no doubt whatever of his guilt, but they certainly thought it doubtful how the jury might decide; and as the case was so singular, after passing sentence in the customary form, they respited him, that the circumstances might be more fully considered.

The Governor was well connected, and had powerful friends: it is said also, that as the case turned upon a question of discipline, some persons high in the military department exerted themselves warmly in his favour. The length of time which had elapsed was no palliation, and it was of consequence that it should not be considered as such; but his self-surrender, it was urged, evidently implied that he believed himself justifiable in what he had done. On the other hand, the circumstances which had appeared on the trial were of the most aggravating nature; they had been detailed in all the newspapers, and women were selling the account about the streets at a half-penny each, vociferating aloud the most shocking parts, the better to attract notice. Various editions of the trial at length were published; and the publishers, most unpardonably, while the question of his life or death was still under the consideration of the privy council, stuck up their large notices all over the walls of London, with prints of the transaction, and “Cut his liver out,” the expression which he had used to the executioner, written in large letters above. The popular indignation had never before been so excited. On the days appointed for his execution (for he was repeatedly respited) all the streets leading to the prison were crowded by soldiers and sailors chiefly, every one of whom felt it as his own personal cause: and as the execution of the mutineers in the fleet was so recent, in which so little mercy had been shown, a feeling very generally prevailed among the lower classes, that this case was to decide whether or not there was law for the rich as well as for the poor. The deliberations of the privy council continued for so many days that it was evident great efforts were made to save his life; but there can be little doubt, that had these efforts succeeded, either a riot would have ensued, or a more dangerous and deeply-founded spirit of disaffection would have gone through the people.

Wall, meantime, was lying in the dungeon appointed for persons condemned to death, where, in strict observance of the letter of the law, he was allowed no other food than bread and water. Whether he felt compunction may be doubted:—we easily deceive ourselves:—form only was wanting to have rendered that a legal punishment which was now called murder, and he may have regarded himself as a disciplinarian, not a criminal; but as his hopes of pardon failed him, he was known to sit up in his bed during the greater part of the night, singing psalms. His offence was indeed heavy, but never did human being suffer more heavily! The dread of death, the sense of the popular hatred, for it was feared that the mob might prevent his execution and pull him to pieces; and the tormenting reflection that his own vain confidence had been the cause,—that he had voluntarily placed himself in this dreadful situation,—these formed a punishment sufficient, even if remorse were not superadded.

On the morning of his execution, the mob, as usual, assembled in prodigious numbers, filling the whole space before the prison, and all the wide avenues from whence the spot could be seen. Having repeatedly been disappointed of their revenge, they were still apprehensive of another respite, and their joy at seeing him appear upon the scaffold was so great, that they set up three huzzas,—an instance of ferocity which had never occurred before. The miserable man, quite overcome by this, begged the hangman to hasten his work. When he was turned off they began their huzzas again; but instead of proceeding to three distinct shouts, as usual, they stopped at the first. This conduct of the mob has been called inhuman and disgraceful; for my own part, I cannot but agree with those who regard it in a very different light. The revengeful joy which animated them, unchristian as that passion certainly is, and whatever may have been its excess, was surely founded upon humanity; and the sudden extinction of that joy, the feeling which at one moment struck so many thousands, stopped their acclamations at once, and awed them into a dead silence when they saw the object of their hatred in the act and agony of death, is surely as honourable to the popular character as any trait which I have seen recorded of any people in any age or country.

The body, according to custom, was suspended an hour: during this time the Irish basket-women who sold fruit under the gallows were drinking his damnation in mixture of gin and brimstone! The halter in which he suffered was cut into the smallest pieces possible, which were sold to the mob at a shilling each. According to the sentence, the body should have been dissected; it was just opened as a matter of form, and then given to his relations; for which indulgence they gave 100l. to one of the public hospitals. One of the printed trials contains his portrait as taken in the dungeon of the condemned; if it be true that an artist was actually sent to take his likeness under such dreadful circumstances, for the purpose of gain, this is the most disgraceful fact which has taken place during the whole transaction.

A print has since been published called The Balance of Justice. It represents the mutineers hanging on one arm of a gallows, and Governor Wall on the other.

LETTER X.

Martial Laws of England.—Limited Service advised.—Hints for Military Reform.

The execution of Governor Wall is considered as a great triumph of justice. Nobody seems to recollect that he has been hanged, not for having flogged three men to death, but for an informality in the mode of doing it.—Yet this is the true state of the case. Had he called a drum-head court-martial, the same sentence might have been inflicted, and the same consequences have ensued, with perfect impunity to himself.

The martial laws of England are the most barbarous which at this day exist in Europe. The offender is sometimes sentenced to receive a thousand lashes;—a surgeon stands by to feel his pulse during the execution, and determine how long the flogging can be continued without killing him. When human nature can sustain no more, he is remanded to prison; his wound, for from the shoulders to the loins it leaves him one wound, is dressed, and as soon as it is sufficiently healed to be laid open again in the same manner, he is brought out to undergo the remainder of his sentence. And this is repeatedly and openly practised in a country where they read in their churches, and in their houses, that Bible, in their own language, which saith, “Forty stripes may the judge inflict upon the offender, and not exceed.”

All savages are cruel, and nations become humane only as they become civilized. Half a century ago, the most atrocious punishments were used in every part of Christendom;—such were the executions under Pombal in Portugal, the tortures inflicted upon Damiens in France; and the practice of opening men alive in England. Our own history is full of shocking examples, but our manners[^[8]] softened sooner than those of our neighbours. These barbarities originated in barbarous ages, and are easily accounted for; but how so cruel a system of martial law, which certainly cannot be traced back to any distant age of antiquity, could ever have been established is unaccountable; for when barbarians established barbarous laws, the soldiers were the only people who were free; in fact, they were the legislators, and of course would never make laws to enslave themselves.

[8]. More truly it might be said, that the Spaniards had no traitors to punish. In the foreign instances here stated, the judges made their court to the crown by cruelty;—in our own case, the cruelty was of the law, not of the individuals. Don Manuel also forgets the Inquisition.—Tr.

Another grievous evil in their military system is, that there is no limited time of service. Hence arises the difficulty which the English find in recruiting their armies. The bounty money offered for a recruit during the war amounted sometimes to as much as twenty pieces of eight, a sum, burthensome indeed to the nation when paid to whole regiments, but little enough if it be considered as the price for which a man sells his liberty for life. There would be no lack of soldiers were they enlisted for seven years. Half the peasantry in the country would like to wear a fine coat from the age of eighteen till five-and-twenty, and to see the world at the king’s expense. At present, mechanics who have been thrown out of employ by the war, and run-away apprentices, enlist in their senses, but the far greater number of recruits enter under the influence of liquor.

It has been inferred, that old Homer lived in an age when morality was little understood, because he so often observes, that it is not right to do wrong. Whether or not the same judgement is to be passed upon the present age of England, posterity will decide; certain it is that her legislators seem not unfrequently to have forgotten the commonest truisms both of morals and politics. The love of a military life is so general, that it may almost be considered as one of the animal passions; yet such are the martial laws, and such the military system of England, that this passion seems almost annihilated in the country. It is true, that during the late war volunteer companies were raised in every part of the kingdom; but, in raising these, the whole influence of the landed and moneyed proprietors was exerted; it was considered as a test of loyalty; and the greater part of these volunteers consisted of men who had property at stake, and believed it to be in danger, and of their dependants; and the very ease with which these companies were raised, evinces how easy it would be to raise soldiers, if they who became soldiers were still to be considered as men, and as freemen.

The difficulty would be lessened if men were enlisted for a limited term of years instead of for life. Yet that this alteration alone is not sufficient, is proved by the state of their provincial troops, or militia as they are called. Here the men are bound to a seven-years service, and are not to be sent out of the kingdom; yet, unexceptionable as this may appear, the militia is not easily raised, nor without some degree of oppression. The men are chosen by ballot, and permitted to serve by substitute, or exempted upon paying a fine. On those who can afford either, it operates, therefore, as a tax by lottery; the poor man has no alternative, he must serve, and, in consequence, the poor man upon whom the lot falls considers himself as ruined: and ruined he is; for, upon the happiest termination of his term of service, if he return to his former place of abode, still willing, and still able, to resume his former occupation, he finds his place in society filled up. But seven years of military idleness usually incapacitate him for any other trade, and he who has once been a soldier is commonly for ever after unfit for every thing else.

The evil consequences of the idle hours which hang upon the soldiers’ hands are sufficiently understood, and their dress seems to have been made as liable to dirt as possible, that as much time as possible may be employed in cleaning it. This is one cause of the contempt which the sailors feel for them, who say that soldiers have nothing to do but to whiten their breeches with pipe-clay, and to make strumpets for the use of the navy. Would it not be well to follow the example of the Romans, and employ them in public works? This was done in Scotland, where they have cut roads through the wildest part of the country; and it is said that the soldiery in Ireland are now to be employed in the same manner. In England, where no such labour is necessary, they might be occupied in digging canals, or more permanently in bringing the waste[^[9]] lands into cultivation, which might the more conveniently be effected, as it is becoming the system to lodge the troops in barracks apart from the people, instead of quartering them in the towns. Military villages might be built in place of these huge and ugly buildings, and at far less expense; the adjoining lands cultivated by the men, who should, in consequence, receive higher pay, and the produce be appropriated to the military chest. Each hut should have its garden, which the tenant should cultivate for his own private amusement or profit. Under such a system the soldier might rear a family in time of peace, the wives of the soldiery would be neither less domestic nor less estimable than other women in their own rank of life, and the infants, who now die in a proportion which it is shocking to think of, would have the common chance for life.

[9]. In this and what follows, the author seems to be suggesting improvements for his own country, and to mean Spain when he speaks of England.—Tr.

But the sure and certain way to secure any nation for ever from alarm, as well as from danger, is to train every school-boy to the use of arms: boys would desire no better amusement, and thus, in the course of the next generation, every man would be a soldier. England might then defy, not France alone, but the whole continent leagued with France, even if the impassable gulph between this happy island and its enemy were filled up. This will be done sooner or later, for England must become an armed nation. How long it will be before her legislators will discover this, and how long when they have discovered it, before they will dare to act upon it, that is, before they will consent to part with the power of alarming the people, which they have found so convenient, it would be idle to conjecture. Individuals profit slowly by experience, associations still more slowly, and governments the most slowly of all associated bodies.

LETTER XI.

Shopmen, why preferred to Women in England.—Division of London into the East and West Ends.—Low State of domestic Architecture.—Burlington-House.

I have employed this morning in wandering about this huge metropolis with an English gentleman, well acquainted with the manners and customs of foreign countries, and therefore well qualified to point out to me what is peculiar in his own. Of the imposing splendour of the shops I have already spoken; but I have not told you that the finest gentlemen to be seen in the streets of London are the men who serve at the linen-drapers’ and mercers’. Early in the morning they are drest cap-a-pied, the hair feathered and frosted with a delicacy which no hat is to derange through the day; and as this is a leisure time with them, they are to be seen after breakfast at their respective shop-doors, paring their nails, and adjusting their cravats. That so many young men should be employed in London to recommend laces and muslins to the ladies, to assist them in the choice of a gown, to weigh out thread and to measure ribbons, excited my surprise; but my friend soon explained the reason. He told me, that in countries where women are the shopkeepers, shops are only kept for the convenience of the people, and not for their amusement. Persons there go into a shop because they want the article which is sold there, and in that case a woman answers all the purposes which are required; the shops themselves are mere repositories of goods, and the time of year of little importance to the receipts. But it is otherwise in London; luxury here fills every head with caprice, from the servant-maid to the peeress, and shops are become exhibitions of fashion. In the spring, when all persons of distinction are in town, the usual morning employment of the ladies is to go a-shopping, as it is called; that is, to see these curious exhibitions. This they do without actually wanting to purchase any thing, and they spend their money or not, according to the temptations which are held out to gratify and amuse. Now female shopkeepers, it is said, have not enough patience to indulge this idle and fastidious curiosity; whereas young men are more assiduous, more engaging, and not at all querulous about their loss of time.

It must be confessed, that these exhibitions are very entertaining, nor is there any thing wanting to set them off to the greatest advantage. Many of the windows are even glazed with large panes of plate glass, at a great expense; but this, I am told, is a refinement of a very late date; indeed glass windows were seldom used in shops before the present reign, and they who deal in woollen cloth have not yet universally come into the fashion.

London is more remarkable for the distribution of its inhabitants than any city on the continent. It is at once the greatest port in the kingdom, or in the world, a city of merchants and tradesmen, and the seat of government, where the men of rank and fashion are to be found; and though all these are united together by continuous streets, there is an imaginary line of demarkation which divides them from each other. A nobleman would not be found by any accident to live in that part which is properly called the City, unless he should be confined for treason or sedition in Newgate or the Tower. This is the Eastern side; and I observe, whenever a person says that he lives at the West End of the Town, there is some degree of consequence connected with the situation: For instance, my tailor lives at the West End of the Town, and consequently he is supposed to make my coat in a better style of fashion: and this opinion is carried so far among the ladies, that, if a cap was known to come from the City, it would be given to my lady’s woman, who would give it to the cook, and she perhaps would think it prudent not to enquire into its pedigree. A transit from the City to the West End of the Town is the last step of the successful trader, when he throws off his exuviæ and emerges from his chrysalis state into the butterfly world of high life. Here are the Hesperides whither the commercial adventurers repair, not to gather but to enjoy their golden fruits.

Yet this metropolis of fashion, this capital of the capital itself, has the most monotonous appearance imaginable.—The streets are perfectly parallel and uniformly extended brick walls, about forty feet high, with equally extended ranges of windows and doors, all precisely alike, and without any appearance of being distinct houses. You would rather suppose them to be hospitals, arsenals, or public granaries, were it not for their great extent. Here is a fashion, lately introduced from better climates, of making varandas;—varandas in a country where physicians recommend double doors and double windows as precautions against the intolerable cold! I even saw several instances of green penthouses, to protect the rooms from the heat or light of the sun, fixed against houses in a northern aspect. At this I expressed some surprise to my companion: he replied, that his countrymen were the most rational people in the world when they thought proper to use their understandings, but that when they lost sight of common sense they were more absurd than any others, and less dexterous in giving plausibility to nonsense. In confirmation of this opinion, he instanced another strange fashion which happened to present itself on the opposite side of the street; a brick wall up to the first story decorated with a range of Doric columns to imitate the façade of the Temple of Theseus at Athens, while the upper part of the house remained as naked as it could be left by the mason’s trowel.

After walking a considerable time in these streets, I enquired for the palaces of the nobility, and was told that their houses were such as I had seen, with a few exceptions, which were shut up from public view by high blank walls; but that none of them had any pretensions to architecture, except one in Piccadilly, called Burlington-House, which is inhabited by the Duke of Portland. Lord Burlington, who erected it, was a man whose whole desire and fortune were devoted to improve the national taste in architecture: and this building, though with many defects, is considered by good judges to be one of the best specimens of modern architecture in Europe, and even deserves to be ranked with the works of Palladio, whom Lord Burlington made the particular object of his imitation. W—— added, that this building, it is expected, will in a few years be taken down, to make room for streets. From the very great increase of ground-rent, it is supposed that the site of the house and garden would produce 8,000l. a-year. Every thing here is reduced to calculation. This sum will soon be considered as the actual rent; and then, in the true commercial spirit of the country, it will be put to sale. This has already been done in two or three instances; and in the course of half a century, it is expected that the bank will be the only building of consequence in this emporium of trade.

The merchants of this modern Tyre, are indeed princes in their wealth, and in their luxury; but it is to be wished that they had something more of the spirit of princely magnificence, and that when they build palaces they would cease to use the warehouse as their model.

LETTER XII.

Causes of the Change of Ministry not generally understood.—Catholic Emancipation.—The Change acceptable to the Nation.—State of Parties.—Strength of the new Administration.—Its good Effects.—Popularity of Mr Addington.

The change of ministry is considered as a national blessing. The system of terror, of alarm, and of espionage, has been laid aside, the most burthensome of the taxes repealed, and a sincere desire manifested on the part of the new minister to meet the wishes of the nation.

It must nevertheless be admitted, that, however unfortunately for their country, and for the general interests of Europe, the late administration may have employed their power, the motives which induced them to withdraw, and the manner in which they retired, are highly honourable to their personal characters. The immediate cause was this:—They had held out the promise of emancipation to the Irish Catholics as a means of reconciling them to the Union. While the two countries were governed by separate legislatures, it was very possible, if the catholics were admitted to their rights, that a majority in the Irish House might think proper to restore the old religion of the people, to which it is well known with what exemplary fidelity the great majority of the Irish nation still adhere. But when once the representatives of both countries should be united in one parliament, no such consequence could be apprehended; for, though all the Irish members should be catholics, they would still be a minority. The old ministry had thus represented the Union as a measure which would remove the objection to catholic emancipation, and pledged themselves to grant that emancipation, after it should have been effected—this act of justice being the price which they were to pay for it to the people of Ireland. But they had not calculated upon the king’s character, whose zeal, as the Defender of the Faith, makes it greatly to be lamented that he has not a better faith to defend. He, as head of the Church of England, conceives himself bound by his coronation oath to suffer no innovation in favour of popery, as these schismatics contemptuously call the religion of the Fathers and of the Apostles, and this scruple it was impossible to overcome. The bishops, who might have had some influence over him, were all, as may well be imagined, decidedly hostile to any measure of favour or justice to the true faith, and the ministry had no alternative but to break their pledged promise or to resign their offices. That this is the real state of the case, I have been assured on such authority that I cannot entertain the slightest doubt: it is, however, by no means generally believed to be so by the people; but I cannot find that they have any other reason for their disbelief, than a settled opinion that statesmen always consider their own private interest in preference to every thing else; in plain language, that there is no such virtue in existence as political honesty. And they persist in supposing that there is more in this resignation than has yet been made public, though the change is now of so long standing, and though they perceive that the late ministers have not accepted either titles or pensions, as has been usual on such occasions, and thus sufficiently proved that disinterestedness of which they will not believe them capable.

But it is commonly said, They went out because they could not decently make peace with Buonaparte—Wait a little while and you will see them in again. This is confuted by the conduct of the former cabinet, all the leading members of which, except Mr Pitt, have violently declared themselves against the peace. They cry out that it is the most foolish, mischievous, and dishonourable treaty that ever was concluded: that it cannot possibly be lasting, and that it will be the ruin of the nation. The nation, however, is very well persuaded that no better was to be had, very thankful for a respite from alarm, and a relief of taxation, and very well convinced, by its own disposition to maintain the peace, that it is in no danger of being broken.—And the nation is perfectly right. Exhausted as France and England both are, it is equally necessary to one country as to the other. France wants to make herself a commercial country, to raise a navy, and to train up sailors; England wants to recover from the expenses of a ten-years war, and they are miserable politicians who suppose that any new grounds of dispute can arise, important enough to overpower these considerations.

Pitt, on the other hand, defends the peace; and many persons suppose that he will soon make his appearance again in administration. This is not very likely, on account of the catholic question, to which he is as strongly pledged as the Grenville party; but the present difference between him and that party seems to show that the inflexibility of the former cabinet is not to be imputed to him. Peace, upon as good terms as the present, might, beyond all doubt, have been made at any time during the war; and as he is satisfied with it, it is reasonable to suppose that he would have made it sooner if he could. His opinion has all the weight that you would expect; and as the old opposition members are equally favourable to the measures of the new administration, the ministry may look upon themselves as secure. The war-faction can muster only a very small minority, and they are as thoroughly unpopular as the friends of peace and good order could wish them to be.

I know not how I can give you a higher opinion of the present Premier than by saying, that his enemies have nothing worse to object against him than that his father was a physician. Even in Spain we have never thought it necessary to examine the pedigree of a statesman, and in England such a cause of complaint is indeed ridiculous. They call him The Doctor on this account;—a minister of healing he has truly been; he has poured balm and oil into the wounds of the country, and the country is blessing him. The peace with France is regarded by the wiser persons with whom I have conversed as a trifling good, compared to the internal pacification which Mr Addington has effected. He immediately put a stop to the system of irritation; there was an end of suspicion, and alarm, and plots; conspiracies were no longer to be heard of, when spies were no longer paid for forming them. The distinction of parties had been as inveterately marked as that between new and old Christians a century ago in Spain, and it was as effectually removed by this change of ministry, as if an act of forgetfulness had been enforced by miracle. Parties are completely dislocated by the peace; it has shaken things like an earthquake, and they are not yet settled after the shock. I have heard it called the great political thaw,—happily in Spain we do not know what a great frost is sufficiently to understand the full force of the expression.

Thus much, however, may plainly be perceived. The whig party regard it as a triumph to have any other minister than Pitt, and their antagonists are equally glad to have any other minister than Fox. A still larger part of the people, connected with government by the numberless hooks and eyes of patronage and influence, are ready to support any minister whatsoever, in any measures whatsoever: and others more respectable, neither few in number, nor feeble in weight, act with the same blind acquiescence from a sense of duty. All these persons agree in supporting Mr Addington, who is attacked by none but the violent enemies of the popular cause, now, of course, the objects of popular hatred and obloquy themselves. Some people expect to see him take Fox into the administration, others think he will prefer Pitt; it is not very likely that he should venture to trust either, for he must know that if either should[^[10]] enter at the sleeve, he would get out at the collar.

[10]. Entraria por la manga, y saldria por el cabezon.

To the eloquence of his predecessor, the present Premier makes no pretensions, and he is liked the better for it. The English say they have paid quite enough for fine speeches; he tells them a plain story, and gains credit by fair dealing. His enemies naturally depreciate his talents: as far as experience goes, it confutes them. He has shown talents enough to save the country from the Northern confederacy, the most serious danger to which it was exposed during the whole war; to make a peace which has satisfied all the reasonable part of the nation, and to restore unanimity at home, and that freedom of opinion which was almost abrogated. From all that I can learn, Mr Addington is likely long to retain his situation; and sure I am that were he to retire from it, he would take with him the regret and the blessings of the people.

LETTER XIII.

Dress of the English without Variety.—Coal-heavers.—Post-men.—Art of knocking at the Door.—Inscriptions over the Shops.—Exhibitions in the Shop-windows.—Chimney-sweepers.—May-day.—These Sports originally religious.

Tuesday, May 4, 1802.

The dress of Englishmen wants that variety which renders the figures of our scenery so picturesque. You might think, from walking the streets of London, that there were no ministers of religion in the country; J— smiled at the remark, and told me that some of the dignified clergy wore silk aprons; but these are rarely seen, and they are more generally known by a huge and hideous wig, once considered to be as necessary a covering for a learned head as an ivy bush is for an owl, but which even physicians have now discarded, and left only to schoolmasters and doctors in divinity. There is, too, this remarkable difference between the costume of England and of Spain, that here the national dress is altogether devoid of grace, and it is only modern fashions which have improved it: in Spain, on the contrary, nothing can be more graceful than the dresses both of the clergy and peasantry, which have from time immemorial remained unchanged; while our better ranks clothe themselves in a worse taste, because they imitate the apery of other nations. What I say of their costume applies wholly to that of the men; the dress of English women is perfect, as far as it goes; it leaves nothing to be wished,—except that there should be a little more of it.

The most singular figures in the streets of this metropolis are the men who are employed in carrying the earth-coal, which they remove from the barge to the waggon, and again from the waggon to the house, upon their backs. The back of the coat, therefore, is as well quilted as the cotton breastplate of our soldiers in America in old times: and to protect it still more, the broad flap of the hat lies flat upon the shoulders. The head consequently seems to bend unusually forward, and the whole figure has the appearance of having been bowed beneath habitual burthens. The lower classes, with this exception, if they do not wear the cast clothes of the higher ranks, have them in the same form. The post-men all wear the royal livery, which is scarlet and gold; they hurry through the streets, and cross from side to side with indefatigable rapidity. The English doors have knockers instead of bells, and there is an advantage in this which you would not immediately perceive. The bell, by whomsoever it be pulled, must always give the same sound, but the knocker may be so handled as to explain who plays upon it, and accordingly it has its systematic set of signals. The post-man comes with two loud and rapid raps, such as no person but himself ever gives. One very loud one marks the news-man. A single knock of less vehemence denotes a servant or other messenger. Visitors give three or four. Footmen or coachmen always more than their masters; and the master of every family has usually his particular touch, which is immediately recognised.

Every shop has an inscription above it expressing the name of its owner, and that of his predecessor, if the business has been so long established as to derive a certain degree of respectability from time. Cheap Warehouse is sometimes added; and if the tradesman has the honour to serve any one of the royal family, this is also mentioned, and the royal arms in a style of expensive carving are affixed over the door. These inscriptions in large gilt letters, shaped with the greatest nicety, form a peculiar feature in the streets of London. In former times all the shops had large signs suspended before them, such as are still used at inns in the country; these have long since disappeared; but in a few instances, where the shop is of such long standing that it is still known by the name of its old insignia, a small picture still preserves the sign, placed instead of one of the window panes.

If I were to pass the remainder of my life in London, I think the shops would always continue to amuse me. Something extraordinary or beautiful is for ever to be seen in them. I saw, the other day, a sturgeon, above two varas in length, hanging at a fishmonger’s. In one window you see the most exquisite lamps of alabaster, to shed a pearly light in the bedchamber; or formed of cut glass to glitter like diamonds in the drawing-room; in another, a convex mirror reflects the whole picture of the street, with all its moving swarms, or you start from your own face magnified to the proportions of a giant’s. Here a painted piece of beef swings in a roaster to exhibit the machine which turns it; here you have a collection of worms from the human intestines, curiously bottled, and every bottle with a label stating to whom the worm belonged, and testifying that the party was relieved from it by virtue of the medicine which is sold within. At one door stands a little Scotchman taking snuff,—in one window a little gentleman with his coat puckered up in folds, and the folds filled with water to show that it is proof against wet. Here you have cages full of birds of every kind, and on the upper story live peacocks are spreading their fans; another window displays the rarest birds and beasts stuffed, and in glass cases; in another you have every sort of artificial fly for the angler, and another is full of busts painted to the life, with glass eyes, and dressed in full fashion to exhibit the wigs which are made within, in the very newest and most approved taste. And thus is there a perpetual exhibition of whatever is curious in nature or art, exquisite in workmanship, or singular in costume; and the display is perpetually varying as the ingenuity of trade, and the absurdity of fashion, are ever producing something new.

Yesterday, I was amused by a spectacle which you will think better adapted to wild African negroes than to so refined a people as the English. Three or four boys of different ages were dancing in the street; their clothes seemed as if they had been dragged through the chimney, as indeed had been the case, and these sooty habiliments were bedecked with pieces of foil, and with ribbons of all gay colours, flying like streamers in every direction as they whisked round. Their sooty faces were reddened with rose-pink, and in the middle of each cheek was a patch of gold leaf, the hair was frizzed out, and as white as powder could make it, and they wore an old hat cocked for the occasion, and in like manner ornamented with ribbons, and foil, and flowers. In this array were they dancing through the streets, clapping a wooden plate, frightening the horses by their noise, and still more by their strange appearance, and soliciting money from all whom they met.

The first days of May are the Saturnalia of these people,—a wretched class of men, who exist in no other country than England, and it is devoutly to be hoped, for the sake of humanity, will not long continue to exist there. The soot of the earth-coal, which, though formerly used by only the lower classes, is now the fuel of rich and poor alike, accumulates rapidly in the chimneys: and instead of removing it by firing a gun up, or dragging up a bush, as is sometimes practised in the country, and must have been in former times the custom every where, they send men up to sweep it away with a brush. These passages are not unfrequently so crooked and so narrow, that none but little children can crawl up them; and you may imagine that cruel threats and cruel usage must both be employed before a child can be forced to ascend places so dark, so frightful, and so dangerous.

No objects can be more deplorable than these poor children. You meet them with a brush in the hand, a bag upon the shoulders, and a sort of woollen cap, or rather bandage swathed round the head; their skin, and all their accoutrements, equally ingrained with soot, every part being black except the white of the eyes and the teeth, which the soot keeps beautifully clean. Their way of life produces another more remarkable and more melancholy effect; they are subject to a dangerous species of hydrocele, which is peculiar to them, and is therefore called the chimney-sweeper’s disease.

The festival of these poor people commences on May-day: it was perhaps the day of their patron saint, in times of yore, before the whole hierarchy of saints and angels were proscribed in England by the levelling spirit of a diabolical heresy. They go about in parties of four or five, in the grotesque manner which I have described. A more extraordinary figure is sometimes in company, whom they call Jack-in-the-Bush; as the name indicates, nothing but bush is to be seen, except the feet which dance under it. The man stands in a frame-work, which is supported upon his shoulders, and is completely covered with the boughs of a thick and short-branched shrub: the heat must be intolerable, but he gets paid for his day’s purgatory, and the English will do any thing for money. The savages of Virginia had such a personage in one of their religious dances, and indeed the custom is quite in savage taste.

May-day is one of the most general holydays in England. High poles, as tall as the mast of a merchant ship, are erected in every village, and hung with garlands composed of all field flowers, but chiefly of one which is called the cowslip: each has its King and Queen of the May chosen from among the children of the peasantry, who are tricked out as fantastically as the London chimney-sweepers; but health and cleanliness give them a very different appearance. Their table is spread under the May-pole; their playmates beg with a plate, as our children for the little altar which they have drest for their saint upon his festival, and all dance round the pole hand in hand.

Without doubt, these sports were once connected with religion. It is the peculiar character of the true religion to sanctify what is innocent, and make even merriment meritorious; and it is as peculiarly the character of Calvinism to divest piety of all cheerfulness, and cheerfulness of all piety, as if they could not co-exist; and to introduce a graceless and joyless system of manners suitable to a faith which makes the heresy of Manes appear reasonable. He admitted that the Evil Principle was weaker than the Good one, but in the mythology of Calvin there is no good one to be found.

LETTER XIV.

Description of the Inside, and of the Furniture, of an English House.

One of the peculiarities in this country is, that every body lives upon the ground floor, except the shopkeepers. The stable and coach-house either adjoin the house, or more frequently are detached from it, and the kitchen is either at the back of the house on the ground floor, or underground, which is usually the case in large towns, but never, as with us, above stairs. They wonder at our custom of living on the higher floors, and call it troublesome: I, on my part, cannot be reconciled to the inconvenience of living on a level with the street: the din is at your very ear, the window cannot be thrown open for the dust which showers in, and it is half darkened by blinds that the by-passers may not look in upon your privacy.

One room on the first floor is reserved for company, the rest are bed-rooms, for the beds, instead of standing in recesses, are placed in rooms as large as those in which we dwell. This occasions a great waste of space, the more remarkable, as ground is exceedingly valuable in the towns, and is rented by the square foot of front at a prodigious price. Nothing surprised me more at first, than the excellent workmanship of the doors and windows; no jarring with the wind, no currents of air, and the windows, which are all suspended by pulleys, rise with a touch. This is not entirely and exclusively owing to the skill of the English workmen, but in great measure also to the climate. When the wood has once been seasoned, neither the heat nor humidity of the atmosphere is ever sufficient to affect it materially. In good houses the doors have a strip of open brass work above the handle, that the servants may not soil them with their fingers.

An Englishman delights to show his wealth; every thing in his house, therefore, is expensive: a whole dwelling in our country is furnished at less cost than is bestowed here upon a single apartment. The description of our common sitting-room may be considered as a fair specimen. The whole floor is fitted with carpeting, not of the costliest kind, but both in texture and design far superior to what is usually seen in Spain. This remains down summer and winter, though in summer our matting would be far more suitable, if the fashion were once introduced. Before the fire is a small carpet of different fabric, and fleecy appearance, about two varas long, and not quite half as broad; a fashion of late years, which has become universal, because it is at once ornamental, comfortable, and useful, preserving the larger one, which would else soon be worn out in that particular part. Of the fire-places I have already spoken; here the frontal is marble, and above is a looking-glass the whole length of the mantle-piece, divided into three compartments by gilt pillars, which support a gilt architrave. On each side hang bell-ropes of coloured worsted, about the thickness of a man’s wrist, the work of Mrs J— and her sister, which suspend knobs of polished spar. The fender is remarkable; it consists of a crescent basket work of wire painted green, about a foot in height, topt with brass, and supporting seven brazen pillars of nearly the same height, which also are surmounted by a band of brass. This also is a late fashion, introduced in consequence of the numberless accidents occasioned by fire. Almost every newspaper contains an account that some woman has been burnt to death, and they are at last beginning to take some means of precaution.

The chairs and tables are of a wood brought from Honduras, which is in great request here, of a fine close grain, and a reddish brown colour, which becomes more beautiful as it grows darker with age. The history of this wood, of which all the finer articles of furniture exclusively are made, is rather singular. A West Indian captain, about a century ago, brought over some planks as ballast, and gave them to his brother, Dr Gibbons, a physician of great eminence, who was then building a house. The workmen, however, found the wood too hard for their tools, and it was thrown aside. Some time afterwards his wife wanted a box to hold candles, the doctor thought of the West Indian wood, and, in spite of the difficulty which was still found in working it, had the box made. He admired its colour and polish so much, that he had a bureau made of it also; and this was thought so beautiful, that it was shown to all his friends. Among others, the Duchess of Buckingham came to see it, and begged enough of the wood to make her a bureau also. From that moment the demand was so great, that it became a regular article of trade, and as long as the woods of Honduras last it is likely to continue so. There is reason to believe that the tree would grow in England, as there are some flourishing plants in the neighbourhood of London which have been raised from seed. Formerly the tables were made of the solid plank; but English ingenuity has now contrived to give the same appearance at a far less cost of materials, by facing common deal with a layer of the fine wood not half a barley-corn in thickness. To give you an idea of the curiosity with which all these things are executed, is impossible; nothing can be more perfect.

Our breakfast table is oval, large enough for eight or nine persons, yet supported upon one claw in the centre. This is the newest fashion, and fashions change so often in these things, as well as in every thing else, that it is easy to know how long it is since a house has been fitted up, by the shape of the furniture. An upholder just now advertises Commodes, Console-tables, Ottomans, Chaiselongès, and Chiffoniers;—what are all these? you ask. I asked the same question, and could find no person in the house who could answer me; but they are all articles of the newest fashion, and no doubt all will soon be thought indispensably necessary in every well-furnished house. Here is also a nest of tables for the ladies, consisting of four, one less than another, and each fitting into the one above it; you would take them for play-things, from their slenderness and size, if you did not see how useful they find them for their work. A harpsichord takes up the middle of one side of the room, and in the corners are screens to protect the face from the fire, of mahogany, with fans of green silk, which spread like a flower, and may be raised or lowered at pleasure. A book-case, standing on a chest of drawers, completes the heavy furniture; it has glazed doors, and curtains of green silk within.

But I should give you a very inadequate idea of an English room were I to stop here. Each window has blinds to prevent the by-passers from looking in; the plan is taken from the Venetian blinds, but made more expensive, as the bars are fitted into a frame and move in grooves. The shutters fit back by day, and are rendered ornamental by the gilt ring by which they are drawn open: at night you perceive that you are in a land of housebreakers by the contrivances for barring them, and the bells which are fixed on to alarm the family, in case the house should be attacked. On one side of the window the curtains hang in festoons, they are of rich printed cotton, lined with a plain colour and fringed, the quantity they contain is very great. Add to this a sconce of the most graceful form, with six prints in gilt frames, and you have the whole scene before you. Two of these are Noel’s views of Cadiz and Lisbon; the others are from English history, and represent the battles of the Boyne and of La Hogue, the death of General Wolfe at Quebec, and William Penn treating with the Indians for his province of Pennsylvania.

Let us proceed to the dining-room.—Here the table is circular, but divides in half to receive a middle part which lengthens it, and this is so contrived that it may be made to suit any number of persons from six to twenty. The side-board is a massier piece of furniture; formerly a single slab of marble was used for this purpose, but now this is become one of the handsomest and most expensive articles. The glasses are arranged on it ready for dinner, and the knives and forks in two little chests or cabinets, the spoons are be tween them in a sort of urn; every thing being made costly and ornamental.

The drawing-room differs chiefly from the breakfast parlour in having every thing more expensive, a carpet of richer fabric, sconces and mirrors more highly ornamented, and curtains of damask like the sofas and chairs. Two chandeliers with glass drops stand on the mantle-piece; but in these we excel the English; they have not the brilliancy of those from the royal fabric at St Ildefonso. In this room are the portraits of J— and his wife, by one of the best living artists, so admirably executed as to make me blush for the present state of the arts in Spain.

Having proceeded thus far, I will go through the house. J— took me into his kitchen one day to show me what is called the kitchen-range, which has been constructed upon the philosophical principles of Count Rumford, a German[^[11]] philosopher, the first person who has applied scientific discoveries to the ordinary purposes of life. The top of the fire is covered with an iron plate, so that the flame and smoke, instead of ascending, pass through bars on the one side, and there heat an iron front, against the which food may be roasted as well as by the fire itself; it passes on, heating stoves and boilers as it goes, and the smoke is not suffered to pass up the chimney till it can no longer be of any use. On the other side is an oven heated by the same fire, and vessels for boiling may be placed on the plate over the fire. The smoke finally sets a kind of wheel in motion in the chimney, which turns the spit. I could not but admire the comfort and cleanliness of every thing about the kitchen; a dresser as white as when the wood was new, the copper and tin vessels bright and burnished, the chain in which the spit plays, bright; the plates and dishes ranged in order along the shelves, and I could not but wish our dirty Domingo were here to take a lesson of English cleanliness. There is a back-kitchen in which all the dirty work is done, into which water is conveyed by pipes. The order and cleanliness of every thing made even this room cheerful, though under-ground, where the light enters only from an area, and the face of the sky is never seen.

[11]. This is a mistake of the author’s. Count Rumford is an American.—Tr.

And now for my own apartment, where I am now writing. It is on the second floor, the more, therefore, to my liking, as it is less noisy, and I breathe in a freer atmosphere. My bed, though neither covered with silk nor satin, has as much ornament as is suitable; silk or satin would not give that clean appearance which the English always require, and which I have already learnt to delight in. Hence, the damask curtains which were used in the last generation have given place to linens. These are full enough to hang in folds; by day they are gathered round the bed-posts, which are light pillars of mahogany supporting a frame-work, covered with the same furniture as the curtains; and valances are fastened round this frame, both withinside the curtains and without, and again round the sides of the bedstead. The blankets are of the natural colour of the wool, quite plain; the sheets plain also. I have never seen them flounced nor laced, nor ever seen a striped or coloured blanket. The counterpane is of all English manufactures the least tasteful; it is of white cotton, ornamented with cotton knots, in shapes as graceless as the cut box in a garden. My window-curtains are of the same pattern as the bed; a mahogany press holds my clothes, an oval looking-glass swung lengthways stands on the dressing-table. A compact kind of chest holds the bason, the soap, the toothbrush, and water-glass, each in a separate compartment; and a looking-glass, for the purpose of shaving at (for Englishmen usually shave themselves,) slips up and down behind, the water-jug and water-bottle stand below, and the whole shuts down a-top, and closes in front, like a cabinet. The room is carpeted; here I have my fire, my table, and my cassette; here I study, and here minute down every thing which I see or learn—how industriously you will perceive, and how faithfully, you who best know me, will best know.

My honoured father will say to all this, How many things are there here which I do not want?—But you, my dear mother,—I think I see you looking round the room while you say, How will Manuel like to leave these luxuries and return to Spain? How anxiously I wish to leave them, you will not easily conceive, as you have never felt that longing love for your own country, which absence from it renders a passion, and almost a disease. Fortunate as I am in having such rare advantages of society and friendship, and happy as I am in the satisfaction wherewith I reflect every night that no opportunity of enquiry or observation has been lost during the day, still my greatest pleasure is to think how fast the days and weeks are passing on, and that every day I am one day nearer the time of my return. I never longed half so earnestly to return from Alcalá, as I now do to enter my native place, to see the shield over the door-way, to hear the sound of our own water-wheel, of the bells of St Claras, of Domingo’s viola at evening, to fondle my own dogs, to hear my own language, to kneel at mass in the church where I was baptized, and to see once more around me the faces of all whom I have known from infancy, and of all whom I love best.

¡Ay[^[12]] Dios de mi alma!

¡Saqueisme de aquí!

¡Ay! que Inglaterra

Ya no es para mí.