CONTENTS. (continued 4)

The solemn tick of the parish-clock reminding me of the progress of the day, I hastened down the worn stairs, which indicated the busy steps of generations long returned to their gazeous elements, into the church-yard. The all-glorious sun, mocking the fate of mortals, still shed a fascinating lustre on the southern fields, and reminded me, that the village on my left was the eastern Sheen, so called from the very effect which I witnessed. Several pretty mansions skirted the fields, and the horizon was beautifully filled by the well-grown woods of Richmond Park, the walls of which were but half a mile distant. The path across the meadow would have tempted me to enjoy its rare beauty; but my course lay westward, and I turned from this brilliant scenery of Nature to the homely creations of man in the village street.

Contemptibly as I think of the morals of Dee, yet, as an able mathematician and an extraordinary character, I could not resist my curiosity to view the house in which he resided. It is now a Ladies’ boarding-school; and, on explaining the purpose of my visit, I was politely shown through the principal rooms. In two hundred years, it has of course undergone considerable alterations: yet parts of it still exhibit the architecture of the sixteenth century. From the front windows I was shown Dee’s garden, on the other side of the road, still attached to the house; down the central path of which, through iron gates, yet standing, Queen Elizabeth used to walk from her carriage in the Sheen road, to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of love and war.

I found the gouvernante of this establishment perfectly intelligent on the subject of her proper business. Her unaffected politeness induced me to take a chair and recruit my strength with a glass of water and a crust of bread. We talked on Education, and particularly on that of females. She agreed that a female pedant is at best a ridiculous character, and that retired graces, personal accomplishments, and useful domestic acquirements, are best adapted to the destiny of woman. We approved of dancing, because it affords social recreation and wholesome exercise; and of music, for its own sake, and as a means of relieving the monotony of the domestic circle in long evenings and bad weather. She considered the study of a foreign language to be partly necessary, as a means of acquiring exact ideas of the science of language generally; and we agreed in preferring the French, for its conversational powers and its universality as a living tongue. Nor did we differ in our views of the necessity of making the future companions of well-educated men intimately acquainted with the leading facts of geography and history, and with the general principles of natural philosophy and chemistry. I ventured to suggest, that the great objection to female boarding-schools, the neglect of the arts of housewifery might be obviated, by causing two of the pupils, of a certain age, to assist in the management of the store-room and kitchen for a week in rotation, during which they should fill up the items of the house-keeper’s account-book, and make purchases of the family tradesmen. At this the good lady smiled—Ah, sir, (said she,) yours is a plausible theory, but not one mother in ten would tolerate a practice which they would consider as a degradation of their daughters.—But, (said I,) is not household economy the chief pursuit of nine of every ten of the sex; and is not the system of education incomplete, if not a waste of time, which does not embrace that pursuit as part of the plan? And just for that reason, (said she,) that one in every ten may not have occasion to concern herself in household affairs, the whole avoid them as degrading—each looks for the prize in the lottery of fortune, and therefore all pitch themselves too high—and it would be offensive to the pride and vanity of parents, to suppose that their daughter might have occasion to know any thing of the vulgar employments of the house and the kitchen.—It is the parents, then, (said I, in conclusion,) who require instruction as much as their children.—We agreed, however, in our estimate of the superior advantages which children of both sexes enjoy in the present day, from the improved and extended views of the authors of school-books. She was warm in her praises of the Interrogative System of some recent authors; and I found she was no stranger to the merits of the Universal Preceptor, and of the elementary Grammars of Geography, History, and Natural Philosophy.

As I continued my course towards the site of the ancient residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, which lies at the western extremity of the village, I could not avoid asking myself, how, in a country abounding in such means of instruction, political fraud has continued so successful? Has education yet effected nothing for mankind, owing to its servility to power? Is the press but a more effective engine for promulgating sophistry, owing to its ready corruption? Is religion in the pulpit but a plausible means of palliating the crimes of statesmen, owing to the ambition of its professors? Would it now be possible to poison Socrates, banish Aristides, and crucify Jesus, for teaching truth and practising virtue? Alas! a respect for that same truth compelled me to say, Yes!—Yes, said I, there never was a country, nor an age, in which artful misrepresentation could be more successfully practised than at this day in Britain! Can the press effectually sustain truth, while no penal law prevents the purse and patronage of ministers and magistrates from poisoning its channels of communication with the people? Can the pulpit be expected to advocate political truth, while the patronage of the Church is in the hands of the Administration of the day? Can education itself be free from the influence of corrupt patronage, or the force of numerous prejudices, while an abject conformity to the opinions of each previous age is the passport to all scholastic dignities? Does any established or endowed school, and do any number even of private schools, make it part of their professed course to teach their pupils the value of freedom, the duties of freemen, and the free principles of the British constitution? Is the system of the public schools, where our statesmen and legislators are educated, addressed to the HEART as well as the HEAD? Is poverty any where more degraded; cruelty to the helpless animal creation any where more remorselessly practised; or the pride of pedantry, and the vain-glory of human learning, any where more vaunted? In short, are the vices of gluttony, drunkenness, pugilism, and prodigality, any where more indulged? Yet, may we not say, as in the days of William of Wykeham, that “Manners make the man!”—and, on the subject of public duties, might we not derive a lesson even from the ancient institutions of Lycurgus?

The best hopes of society are the progressive improvement of succeeding generations, and the prospect that each will add something to the stock of knowledge to that which went before it. But gloomy is the perspective, if the science of education be rendered stationary or retrograde by the iron hand of power and bigotry, and if errors by these means are propagated from age to age with a species of accelerated force. Yet, what signs of improvement are visible in our public schools, wherein are educated those youths who are destined to direct the fortunes of Britain in each succeeding age? Most of these schools were endowed at the epoch of the revival of learning; yet the exact course of instruction which was prescribed by the narrow policy of that comparatively dark age, is slavishly followed even to this hour! Instead of knowledge, moral and physical, being taught in them, as the true end of all education,—those dead languages, which in the 15th and 16th centuries were justly considered as the fountains of wisdom, are still exclusively taught; as though the English language, now, as then, contained no works of taste and information on a par with those of the ancients; and as though such writers as Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Locke, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Blackstone, Hume, Robertson, and Blair, had never lived! Is it not to mistake the means for the end, to teach any language, except as the medium of superior philosophy? And is it not a false inference, to ascribe exclusively to the study of languages, those habits of industrious application, which would grow with equal certainty out of the study of the useful sciences, if pursued with the same system, and for a similar period of time?

Reason demands, however, on this subject, those concessions from the PRIDE of PEDANTRY which that pride will never yield. We seem, therefore, to be destined, by the force of circumstances, to make slow or inconsiderable advances in civilization; and it remains for other nations, the bases of whose institutions are less entangled in prejudices, to raise the condition of man higher in the scale of improvement than can be expected in Britain. We may, as a result of geographical position, attain a certain degree of national distinction; but, if our system of public education cannot be made to keep pace with knowledge, and is not calculated to generate a succession of patriots, who are qualified to sustain liberty at home and justice abroad, we cannot fail to sink in our turn to the level of modern Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Those hotbeds of human genius were ultimately degraded by the triumph of prejudices over principles, by the extinction of public spirit, by the preference of despotism over liberty, and by the glare of foreign conquests. The countries, the soil, and even the cities remain; but, as their youth are no longer trained in the love of truth and liberty, they exist but as beacons to warn other people of their fall and its causes.

I turned aside to view a manufactory of Delft and Stone ware, for which, among potters, Mortlake is famous. A silly air of mystery veiled these work-shops from public view; and, as I professed mine to be a visit of mere curiosity, the conductor’s taciturnity increased with the variety of my unsatisfied questions. It was in vain I assured him that I was no potter—that experimental philosophy and chemistry had stript empiricism of its garb—and that no secret, worth preserving, could long be kept in a manufactory which employed a dozen workmen, at 20s. a week. The principal articles made here are those brown stone jugs, of which the song tells us, one was made of the clay of Toby Filpot; and I could not help remarking, that the groups on these jugs are precisely those on the common pottery of the Romans. I learnt, however, that the patterns employed here are not copied from the antique, but from those used at Delft, of which this manufactory is a successful imitation in every particular: and perhaps the Delft manufactory itself is but a continuation of a regular series of stone or earthenware manufactories, from the age of the Romans. Each may have continued to imitate the approved ornaments of its predecessors, till we trace in the productions of this contemporary pottery, the patterns used by the nations of antiquity when just emerging from barbarism. Hunting, the most necessary of arts to the vagrant and carnivorous savage, is the employment celebrated on all these vessels, A stag, followed by ferocious quadrupeds and hungry bipeds, forms their general ornament. I have picked up the same groups among Roman ruins, have often contemplated them in the cabinets of the curious, and here I was amused at viewing them in creations but a week old.

To take off ornamental impressions on plastic clay, was a contrivance which would present itself to the first potters—but perhaps it was the foundation of all our proud arts of sculpture, painting, hieroglyphic design, writing, seal-engraving, and, finally, of printing and copper-plate engraving! What an interesting series!—But I solemnly put the question, Have we arrived at the last of its terms? Is the series capable of no further application, extension, or variation? Have we conceived the utmost limits of its abstractions? Have we examined the powers of all its terms with equal care? In one sense, we may never get beyond a Phidias or a Canova—in another, beyond a Woollet or a Bartolozzi—or, in a third, beyond a Corregio or a David;—but have we sufficiently examined and husbanded the abstractions of Thoth or Cadmus?—Ought not the signs of ideas, ere this, to have become abstract representations; as universal in their signification as ideas themselves?—Ought we to be obliged to study all languages and many characters, in order to comprehend the ideas which are common to the whole human race? Are ideas more numerous than musical sounds, and tones, and tunes? Do not the powers of musical characters and of the telegraph prove the facility and capacity of very simple combinations? Does not the Christmas game of Twenty indicate the narrow range of all our ideas? And is not a fact thereby ascertained, from which we may conceive the practicability of so combining hieroglyphic with arbitrary characters, as to be able to read men’s ideas without the intervention of a hundred tongues?

On leaving this manufactory, I proceeded about a hundred yards, through the main street; and, turning a corner on the right, beheld the ancient gateway, now bricked up, and the ruined walls of an enclosure, sanctified, during five centuries, as the residence of thirty-four successors to the see of Canterbury. Learning that the enclosure was occupied by a market-gardener, I could not avoid observing, as a proof of the sagacity of gardeners, and of the luxury which manured these sites, that I have seldom visited decayed religious houses without finding them in possession of market-gardeners! Ah! thought I, as I stopped before the gate, how many thousands of rich donations used to be brought to that portico by superstitious votaries, who considered it as the emblem of the gate of St. Peter, and believed that, if welcomed at the one, they should be equally welcomed at the other! Poor souls—they and their spiritual protectors have alike passed away—and we can now look with the eye of Philosophy on the impotent impostures of one party, and on the unsuspecting credulity of the other!

I was in haste—-yet I could not avoid stopping five minutes—yes, reader, and it is a lesson to human pomp—I could wait but five minutes to contemplate the gate through which had passed thirty-four successive Archbishops of Canterbury, from Anselm, in the time of William the Norman, to Warham and Cranmer, the pliant tools of the tyrant Tudor. As leaders of the Catholic Church, we may now, in this Protestant country, speak, without offence, of their errors and vices. Ambition and the exercise of power were doubtless the ruling passions of the majority, who have shown themselves little scrupulous as to the means by which those passions might be gratified;—yet it would be uncandid not to admit that many men, like the present amiable Protestant archbishop, have filled this See, whose eminent virtue, liberality, and piety, were their principal recommendations—and who doubtless believed all those articles of the Church’s faith which they taught to others. They were, in truth, wheels of a machine which existed before their time; and they honestly performed the part assigned them, without disputing its origin or the sources of its powers; prudently considering that, if they endeavoured to pull it in pieces, they were likely themselves to become the first victims of their temerity. Thus doubtless it was with Cicero and the philosophers of antiquity; they found theological machinery powerful enough to govern society; and though, on the subject of the Gods, they prudently conformed, or were silent, yet we are not at this day warranted in supposing that they obsequiously reverenced the absurd theology of the romance of Homer. Of the archbishops who have passed this gate, St. Thomas à Becket was perhaps the greatest bigot; but the exaltation of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power was the fashion of his day; and obedience and allegiance could scarcely be expected of a clergy who, owing all their dignities to the Pope, owned no authority superior to that of the keeper of Peter’s Keys to the Gates of Heaven!

I could not, even in thus transiently glancing at these meagre remains, avoid the interesting recollection, that this portico once served as a sanctuary for the contrition of guilt against the unsparing malignity of law. In those days, when bigotry courted martyrdom as a passport to eternal glory, and when, in consequence, the best principle of religion was enabled to triumph over the malice of weak princes and the tyranny of despots, this gate (said I) served as one of many avenues to the emblem of that Divinity to whom the interior was devoted. It justly asserted the authority of the religion of charity, whose Founder ordered his disciples to pardon offences, though multiplied seventy times seven times. Yet, alas! in our days, how much is this divine precept forgotten! Is not the sanguinary power of law suffered to devour its victims for first relapses from virtue, as unsparingly as for any number of repetitions? Do not its sordid agents exult in the youth or inexperience of offenders, and often receive contrition and confession as aggravating proofs of more deliberate turpitude? Has not the modern sanctuary of Mercy long been shut, by forms of state, against the personal supplications of repentance, and against humble representations of venial errors of criminal courts? If sinners would approach that gate, are they not stopped at the very threshold, and obliged to rely on the intercession of some practised minister, or seek the good offices of illiberal clerks? Is this Christendom, the volume of whose faith tells its votaries to knock without fear at the gate of Mercy, and it shall be opened by an Heavenly Father?—or England, where a solemn law enacts, that it is the right of the subject to petition the King, and that all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal?—or civilized Europe, where it has so often been asserted that the receiving of petitions, and granting their prayer, is the most enviable branch of royal prerogative? Alas! will the golden mean of reason never govern the practices of men? Must we for ever be the dupes of superstition, or the slaves of upstart authority? Are we doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies, a medium between the bigotry of the Crozier, the pride of the Sceptre, and the cruelty of the Sword?

Nor ought it to be forgotten, that the benevolence which flowed from this portico, served as a substitute for the poor’s-rates, throughout the adjoining district. Thus Food, as well as Mercy, appeared to flow from Heaven, through the agency of the Romish priesthood! Thus they softened the effects of the monopolies of wealth, and assuaged the severities of power! And thus, duration was conferred on a system which violated common sense in its tenets; but, in its practices, exhibited every claim on the affections and gratitude of the people! At this gate, and at a thousand others spread over the land, no poor man sought to satisfy his hunger in vain. He was not received by any grim-visaged overseer; not called on for equivocal proofs of legal claims; not required to sell his liberty in the workhouse as the price of a single meal; not terrified by the capricious justice of a vulgar constable; nor in fear of the infernal machine, called a pass-cart—but it was sufficient that he was an hungered, and they gave him to eat—or that he was sick, and they gave him medicine! Such was the system of those times; not more perfect for being ancient, but worthy of being remembered, because justified by long experience. Thrice the relative wealth, and as much active benevolence, are at this day exerted to relieve the still unsatisfied wants of the poor, simply because our workhouses are not regularly provided with an hospitable monastic portico, where temporary wants might be supplied with a wholesome meal, without the formality of regular admission, without proofs of settlement, without the terrors of the House of Correction, or the horrors of a middle-passage in the pass-cart! The tenderest sympathy would then be able to excuse itself from the obligation of granting eleemosynary aid—the act of begging might be justly punished as a crime—and crimes themselves could never be palliated by pleas of urgent want.

This entire site was too much consecrated by historical associations to be passed without further examination. A slight expression of my feelings procured every attention from Penley, the gardener, who told me that his family had occupied it since the revolution, and that he remembered every part above fifty years. He took me to a summer-house, on the wall next the water, the ruins of which were of the architecture of the time of the Plantagenets; and, indeed, the entire wall, above half a mile in circuit, was of that age. Of the ancient palace no vestige remained; and he could guess its precise site only by means of the masses of brickwork which he discovered by digging in certain parts of the garden.

If I was, however, little gratified by remains of the labours of man, I was filled with astonishment at certain specimens of vegetation, unquestionably as ancient as the last Catholic archbishops. Among these were two enormous walnut-trees, twelve feet round the trunk, the boughs of which were themselves considerable trees, spreading above twenty-six yards across. Each tree covered above a rood of ground; and so massy were the lower branches, that it has been found necessary to support them with props. Their height is equal to their breadth, or about seventy feet; and I was surprised to find, that, notwithstanding their undoubted age, they still bear abundance of fine fruit. Mr. Penley assured me, that in his time he had seen no variation in them; they had doubtless attained their full growth in his boyhood, but since then they had maintained a steady maturity. At present they must be considered as in a state of slow decay; but I have no doubt that in the year 1916 they will continue grand and productive trees.

I was equally struck with some box-trees, probably of far greater antiquity. They were originally planted in a semicircle to serve as an arbour; but in the progress of centuries they have grown to the prodigious height of thirty feet, and their trunks are from six to nine inches in diameter.7 And what was strikingly curious, in the area which they enclose is seen the oval table of the arbour, evidently of the same age. It is of the species of stone called Plymouth marble,—massy, and so well-wrought as to prove that it was not placed there at the cost of private revenues. It was interesting, and even affecting, to behold these signs of comfort and good cheer still remaining, so many ages after those who enjoyed them have passed away like exhalations or transient meteors! I would have sat down, and, with a better conscience than Don Juan, have invoked their ghosts over a bottle of the honest gardener’s currant-wine; but he had filled up the elliptical area of the trees with a pile of fagots, of which the old table serves as a dry basement.

What was less wonderful, though to the full as interesting—was the circumstance that the gardener has, at different times, in digging up the roots of his old fruit-trees, found them imbedded in skeletons of persons who were interred in or near the chapel of the archbishops. He told me, that a short time before my visit, in removing a pear-tree, he had taken up three perfect skeletons; and that one of them was pronounced by a surgeon in the neighbourhood to be the frame-work of a man full seven feet high. This probably was an accidental circumstance; for it is not to be supposed that any of the interments on this spot took place in those rude ages when bulk and stature led to rank and distinction, and, by consequence, to costly funerals and encasements of stone, which often surprize us with specimens of an apparently gigantic race. Doubtless, however, here were interred hundreds of pious persons, who calculated, in their last moments, on the protection of this consecrated ground till “the Earth should be called to give up its Dead;” and now, owing to the unsatisfied passion which the first “Defender of the Faith” felt for Anna Boleyn, this consecrated spot, and a thousand similar ones, have been converted into cabbage-gardens!

Perhaps more than one archbishop, many bishops, and scores of deans, angelic doctors, and other reverend personages, lie in this now profaned and dishonoured spot! So great an outrage might, one would have supposed, have led them, according to ordinary notions, again to walk the earth, to despoil the garden, and disturb the gardener’s rest! I expressed my fears on this point to the worthy man; but he assured me, these good gentlefolks lie very quiet; and that, if they produced any visible effect, it was as manure, in rendering the part where they lie a little more productive than the other parts. I shuddered at this lesson of humility—Alas! thought I, is it for such ends that we pamper ourselves—that some of us boast of being better than others—that we seek splendid houses and superfine clothing—and render our little lives wretched by hunting after rank, and titles, and riches! After all, we receive a sumptuous funeral, and are affectionately laid in what is called consecrated ground, which some political revolution, or change of religion, converting into a market-garden, our bodies then serve but as substitutes for vulgar manure! If such an end of the illustrious and proud men, whose remains now fertilize this garden, had been contemplated by them, how truly would they have become disciples of the humble Jesus—and how horror-struck would they have been at the fantastic airs which, in their lives, they were giving themselves!—Yet, is there a reader of these pages, the end of whose mortal career may not be similar to theirs?—and ought he not to apply to himself the lesson thus taught by the known fate of the former inhabitants of the archiepiscopal palace of Mortlake?

I shook my head at Penley, and told him, that he was a terrible “leveller,” and that, in making manure of archbishops and bishops, he was one of the most effective moralists I had ever conversed with!

In walking round this garden, every part proved that its soil had been enriched from all the neighbouring lands. Whether, according to Dr. Creighton, there are classes of organic particles adapted to form vegetables and animals over and over again; or whether, according to the modern chemistry, all organized bodies consist of carbonaceous, metallic, and gaseous substances in varied combinations; it is certain, that the well-fed priesthood, who formerly dwelt within these walls, drew together for ages such a supply of the pabulum of vegetation, as will require ages to exhaust. All the trees of this garden are of the most luxuriant size: gooseberries and currants in other gardens grow as shrubs; but here they form trees of four or five feet in height, and a circumference of five or six yards. In short, a luxuriance approaching to rankness, and a soil remarkable for its depth of colour and fatness, characterize every part. The abundant produce, as is usual through all this neighbourhood, is conveyed to Covent-Garden market in the night, and there disposed of by salesmen that attend on behalf of the gardeners.

I took my departure from this inclosure with emotions that can only be felt. I looked again and again across the space which, during successive ages, had given birth to so many feelings, and nurtured so many anxious passions; but which now, for many ages, has, among bustling generations, lost all claim to sympathy or notice; and displays, at this day, nothing but the still mechanism of vegetable life. There might be little in the past to rouse the affections; but, in the difference of manners, there was much to amuse the imagination. It had been the focus, if not of real piety, at least of ostensible religion; and, dead as the spot now appeared, its mouldering walls, some of those gigantic trees, and, above all, the box-tree arbour, had, in remote ages, echoed from hour to hour the melodious chaunts and imposing ceremonials of the Romish Church. Here moral habits sanctified the routine of life, and conferred happiness as a necessary result of restraint and decorum—and here Vice never disgraced Reason by public exhibitions; but, if lurking in any breast, confessed its own deformity by its disguises and its secresy. In surveying such a spot, the hand of Time softens down even the asperities of superstition, and the shade of this gloomy site, contrasted with the bright days of its prosperity, inclined me to forget the intolerant policy which was wont to emanate from its spiritual councils. Under those fruit-trees, I exclaimed, lie all that remains of the follies, hopes, and superstitions of the former occupants; for, of them, I cannot remark as of the torpid remains in Mortlake church-yard, that they live in the present generation.—No! these dupes of clerical fraud devoted themselves to celibacy as a service to the procreative Cause of CAUSES, and became withered limbs of their family trees. We can, however, now look on their remains, and presume to scan their errors:—but let us recollect, that, though we are gazers to-day, we shall be gazed upon to-morrow—and that, though we think ourselves wise, we are, perhaps, fated to be commiserated in our turn by the age which follows. Alas! said I, when will the generation arrive that will not merit as much pity from succeeding generations as those poor monks? Yet how wise, how infallible, and how intolerant, is every sect of religion—every school of philosophy—every party of temporary politicians—and every nation in regard to every other nation! Do not these objects, and all exertions of reasoning, prove, that the climax of human wisdom is HUMILITY?

Commending the bones of the monks to the respect of the gardener, whose feelings, to do him justice, were in unison with my own, I proceeded, by the side of the wall, towards the banks of the Thames.

The relics of exploded priestcraft which I had just contemplated in the adjoining garden, led me into an amusing train of thought on the origin and progress of superstition. I felt that the various mythologies which the world has witnessed, grow out of mistakes in regard to the phenomena of SECONDARY CAUSES; all natural phenomena, accordingly as they were fit or unfit to the welfare or caprices of men, being ascribed, by the barbarous tribes who subsequently became illustrious nations, to the agency of good and evil spirits. However absurd might be the follies of these superstitions, they became ingrafted on Society, and were implanted in the opening minds of every successive generation. Of course, the age never arrived which did not inherit the greater part of the prejudices of the preceding age. Reason and philosophy might in due time illumine a few individuals; yet even these, influenced by early prejudices, and a prudent regard for their fortunes and personal safety, would rather support, or give a beneficial direction to, mythological superstitions, than venture to expose and oppose them. Hence it was that the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, continued polytheists through the most brilliant epochs of their history; and hence their philosophers, as Pythagoras, Plato, and others, gave to the whole the plausibility of system, by affecting to demonstrate that the FIRST CAUSE necessarily and proximately generates immortal gods! Hence too it is that philosophers have, in different past ages, undertaken to demonstrate the verity of all religions, and according to the religion of the government under which they lived, they have either supported Polytheism, Theism, Sabinism, Judaism, Popery, or Mahomedanism. The fate of Socrates has never been forgotten by any philosopher who possessed the chief attribute of wisdom—PRUDENCE; and no benevolent man will ever seek to disturb a public faith which promotes public virtue, because the memorials of history prove that no discords have been so bloody as those which have been generated by attempts to change religious faith. This class of human errors can indeed be corrected only by establishing in civilized countries practical and unequivocal systems of toleration; because, in that case, truth and reason are sure, in due time, to establish themselves, while falsehood and fraud must sink into merited contempt.

The fleeting, wild, and crude notions of savages, constituted therefore the first stage in the progress of mythological superstition. Their invisible agencies would however soon have forms conferred upon them by weak or fertile imaginations, and be personified as men or animals, according to the nature of their deeds. To pray to them for benefits, and to deprecate their wrath, would constitute the second stage. In the mean time, individuals who might, by chance or design, become connected with some of these supernatural agencies, would be led, by vivid or gloomy imaginations, to deceive even themselves by notions of election or inspiration; and, then superadding ceremonials to worship, they would form a select class, living, without manual labour, on the tributes offered by the people to satisfy or appease the unseen agencies. This would constitute a third stage. Each priest would then endeavour to extol the importance of the god, of whom he believed himself to be the minister; and he would give to his deity a visible form, cause a temple to be built for him, deliver from it his oracles or prophecies, and affect to work miracles in his name. This would constitute the fourth stage. The terror of unseen powers would now be found to be a convenient engine of usurped human authority, and hence an association would be formed between the temporal and invisible powers, the latter being exalted by the former in having its temples enlarged and its priests better provided for. This would constitute the fifth stage; or the consummation of the system as it has been witnessed in India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.—Hence among the Hindoos, those personified agencies have been systematized under the titles of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Crishna, &c. Among the Egyptians, they were worshipped in the forms of living animals, and called Osiris, Ammon, Oris, Typhon, Isis, &c. Among the Chaldeans, and, after them, among the Jews, they were classed in principalities, powers, and dominions of angels and devils, under chiefs, who bore the names of Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Moloch, Legion, Satan, Beelzebub, &c. Among the Greeks, the accommodating Plato flattered the priests and the vulgar, by pretending to demonstrate that their personifications were necessary emanations from THE ONE; and he, and others, arranged the worship of them under the names of Jupiter, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Pluto, Mars, &c. Among the NORTHERN NATIONS, they assumed the names of Woden, Sleepner, Hela, Fola, &c. Every town and village had, moreover, its protecting divinity, or guardian saint, under some fantastical name, or the name of some fantastical fanatic; and, even every man, every house, every plant, every brook, every day, and every hour, according to most of those systems, had their accompanying genius! In a word, the remains of these superstitions are still so mixed with our habits and language, that, although we pity the hundreds of wretched victims of legal wisdom, who under Elizabeth and the Stuarts were burnt to death for witchcraft; and abhor the ghosts of Shakespeare, his fairies, and his enchantments; yet we still countenance the system in most of the personifications of language, and practise it when we speak even of the spirit of Philosophy and the genius of Truth.

Nor have philosophers themselves, either in their independent systems, or in the systems of the schools, steered clear of the vulgar errors of mythologists. They have in every age introduced into nature active causes without contact, continuity, or proximity; and, even in our days, continue to extort worship towards the unseen and occult powers of attraction or sympathy, and of repulsion or antipathy! It is true, they say that such words only express results or phenomena, and others equivocate by saying there is in no case any contact:—but I reply, that to give names to proximate causes does not correspond with my notions of the proper business of philosophy; and that, in thousands of instances, there is sensible contact, and in all nature some contact of intermediate media, in the affections of which, may be traced the laws governing the phenomena of distant bodies. At the hour in which I write, the recognized philosophical divinities are called Space, Matter, Inertia, Caloric, Expansion, Motion, Impulse, Clustering Power, Elasticity, Atomic Forms, Atomic Proportions, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Chlorine, Iodine, Electricity, Light, Excitability, Irritability, &c. All these have their priests, worshippers, propagandists, and votaries, among some of whom may be found as intolerant a spirit of bigotry as ever disgraced any falling church. As governments do not, however, ally themselves to Philosophy, there is happily no danger that an heretical or reforming Philosopher will, as such, ever incur the hazard of martyrdom; and, as reason decides all disputes in the court of Philosophy, there can be no doubt, but, in this court at least, Truth will finally prevail.

Hail, Genius of Philosophy! Hail, thou poetical personification of wisdom! Hail, thou logical abstraction of all experimental knowledge! I hail thee, as thou art represented in the geniuses of Pythagoras, Thales, Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Columbus, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, Euler, Buffon, Franklin, Beccaria, Priestley, Lavoisier, Cavendish, Condorcet, Laplace, Herschel, Berzelius, Jenner, Dalton, Cuvier, and Davy; and I hail thee, as thou excitest the ambition of the solitary student of an obscure village, to raise himself among those gods of the human race! How many privations must thy votaries suffer in a sordid world; and how many human passions must they subdue, before they can penetrate thy mazy walks, or approach the hidden sanctuaries of thy temple of Truth! Little thinks the babbling politician, the pedantic linguist, or the equivocating metaphysician, of the watchful hours which thy worshippers must pass,—of the never-ending patience which they must exert,—of the concurring circumstances which must favour their enthusiasm! Whether we consider the necessary magnitude of the library, the ascending intricacy of the books, the multitude of the instruments, or the variety of the experimental apparatus in the use of which the searchers into thy mysteries must be familiar; we are compelled to reverence the courage of him who seeks preeminence through thee, and to yield to those mortals who have attained thy favours, our wonder, admiration, and gratitude!8

Overtaking three or four indigent children, whose darned stockings and carefully-patched clothes bespoke some strong motive for attention in their parents, I was induced to ask them some questions. They said they had been to Mortlake School; and I collected from them, that they were part of two or three hundred who attend one of Dr. Bell’s schools, which had lately been established for the instruction of poor children in this vicinity. I found that, until this establishment had been formed, these children attended no school regularly—and, in reply to a question, one of them said, “Our father could not afford to pay Mr. —— sixpence a week for us, so we could not go at all; but now we go to this school, and it costs father nothing.” This was as it should be; the social state ought to supply a preparatory education of its members—or, how can a government expect to find moral agents in an ignorant population—how can it presume to inflict punishments on those who have not been enabled to read the laws which they are bound to respect—and how can the professors of religion consider themselves as performing their duty, if they have not enabled all children to peruse the volume of Christian Revelation? We are assured by Mr. Lancaster, that George the Third expressed the benevolent wish that every one of his subjects should be enabled to read the Bible; and his successors will, it is to be hoped, not lose sight of so admirable a principle. But a few ages ago, to be able to read conferred the privileges of the clerical character, and exempted men from capital punishments—how improved, therefore, is the present state of society, and how different may it yet become, as prejudices are dispelled, and as liberal feelings acquire their just ascendancy among the rulers of nations! These boys spoke of their school with evident satisfaction; and one of them, who proved to be a monitor, seemed not a little proud of the distinction. Whether the system of Mr. Lancaster or of Dr. Bell enjoy the local ascendancy; or whether these public seminaries be “schools for all,” or schools in which the dogmas of some particular faith are taught, I am indifferent, provided there are some such schools, and that all children are enabled to read the Bible, and “the Catechism of their Social Rights and Duties.”

Seeing several respectable houses facing the meadow which led to the Thames, I inquired of a passing female the names of their owners, and learnt that they were chiefly occupied by widow ladies, to whom she gave the emphatic title of Madam—though she called one of them Mistress. It appeared that those who were denominated Madams were widows of gentlemen who, in their lives, bore the title of Esquires; but that the Mistress was an old maid, whom her neighbours were ashamed longer to call by the juvenile appellation of Miss. Madam ——, whose name I ought not to have forgotten, has devoted a paddock of four or five acres to the comfortable provision of two super-annuated coach-horses. One of them, I was assured, was thirty-five years old, and the other nearly thirty; and their venerable appearance and pleasant pasture excited a strong interest in favour of their kind-hearted mistress. Such is the influence of good example, that I found her paddock was opposite the residence of the equally amiable Valentine Morris, who so liberally provided for all his live-stock about thirty years ago, and whose oldest horse died lately, after enjoying his master’s legacy above twenty-four years.

I now descended towards a rude space near the Thames, which appeared to be in the state in which the occasional overflowings and gradual retrocession of the river had left it. It was one of those wastes which the lord of the manor had not yet enabled some industrious cultivator to disguise; and in large tracts of which Great Britain still exhibits the surface of the earth in the pristine state in which it was left by the secondary causes that have given it form. The Thames, doubtless, in a remote age, covered the entire site; but it is the tendency of rivers to narrow themselves, by promoting prolific vegetable creations on their consequently increasing and encroaching banks, though the various degrees of fall produce every variety of currents, and consequently every variety of banks, in their devious course. In due time, the course of the river becomes choaked where a flat succeeds a rapid, and the detained waters then form lakes in the interior. These lakes likewise generate encroaching banks, which finally fill up their basins, when new rivers are formed on higher levels. These, in their turn, become interrupted, and repetitions of the former circle of causes produce one class of those elevations of land above the level of the sea, which have so much puzzled geologists. The only condition which a surface of dry land requires to increase and raise itself, is the absence of salt water, consequent on which is an accumulation of vegetable and animal remains. The Thames has not latterly been allowed to produce its natural effects, because for two thousand years the banks have been inhabited by man, who, unable to appreciate the general laws by which the phenomena of the earth are produced, has sedulously kept open the course of the river, and prevented the formation of interior lakes. The Caspian Sea, and all similar inland seas and lakes, were, for the most part, formed from the choaking up of rivers, which once constituted their outlets. If the course of nature be not interrupted by the misdirected industry of man, the gradual desiccation of all such collections of water will, in due time, produce land of higher levels on their sites. In like manner, the great lakes of North America, if the St. Lawrence be not sedulously kept open, will, in the course of ages, be filled up by the gradual encroachment of their banks, and the raising of their bottoms with strata of vegetable and animal remains. New rivers would then flow over these increased elevations, and the ultimate effect would be to raise that part of the continent of North America several hundred feet above its present level. Even the very place on which I stand was, according to Webster, once a vast basin, extending from the Nore to near Reading, but now filled up with vegetable and animal remains; and the illustrious Cuvier has discovered a similar basin round the site of Paris. These once were Caspians, created by the choaking and final disappearance of some mighty rivers—they have been filled up by gradual encroachments, and now the Thames and the Seine flow over them;—but these, if left to themselves, will, in their turn, generate new lakes or basins—and the successive recurrence of a similar series of causes will continue to produce similar effects, till interrupted by superior causes.

This situation was so sequestered, and therefore so favourable to contemplation, that I could not avoid indulging myself. What then are those superior causes, I exclaimed, which will interrupt this series of natural operations to which man is indebted for the enchanting visions of hill and dale, and for the elysium of beauty and plenty in which he finds himself? Alas! facts prove, however, that all things are transitory, and that change of condition is the constant and necessary result of that motion which is the chief instrument of eternal causation, but which, in causing all phenomena, wears out existing organizations while it is generating new ones. In the motions of the earth as a planet, doubtless are to be discovered the superior causes which convert seas into continents, and continents into seas. These sublime changes are occasioned by the progress of the perihelion point of the earth’s orbit through the ecliptic, which passes from extreme northern to extreme southern declination, and vice versa, every 10,450 years; and the maxima of the central forces in the perihelion occasion the waters to accumulate alternatively upon either hemisphere. During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually retiring and encroaching in both hemispheres:—hence all the varieties of marine appearances and accumulations of marine remains in particular situations; and hence the succession of layers or strata, one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. It is evident, from observation of those strata, that the periodical changes have occurred at least three times; or, in other words, it appears that the site on which I now stand has been three times covered by the ocean, and three times has afforded an asylum for vegetables and animals! How sublime—how interesting—how affecting is such a contemplation! How transitory, therefore, must be the local arrangements of man, and how puerile the study of the science miscalled Antiquities! How foolish the pride which vaunts itself on splendid buildings and costly mausoleums! How vain the ostentation of large estates, of extensive boundaries, and of great empires!—All—all—will, in due time, be swept away and effaced by the unsparing ocean; and, if recorded in the frail memorials of human science, will be spoken of like the lost Atalantis, and remembered only as a philosophical dream!

Yet, how different, thought I, is the rich scene of organized existence within my view, from that which presented itself on this spot when our planet first took its station in the solar system. The surface, judging from its present materials, was then probably of the same inorganic form and structure as the primitive rocks which still compose the Alps and Andes; or like those indurated coral islands, which are daily raising their sterile heads above the level of the great ocean, and teaching by analogy the process of fertilization. At that period, so remote and so obscure, all must have been silent, barren, and relatively motionless! But, the atmosphere and the rains having, by decomposition and solution, pulverized the rocks, and reduced them into the various earths which now fertilize the surface, from the inorganic soon sprung the vegetable, and from the vegetable, in due time, sprung the animal; till the whole was resolved into the interesting assemblage of organized existences, which now present themselves to our endless wonder and gratification.

I looked around me on this book of nature, which so eloquently speaks all languages, and which, for every useful purpose, may be read without translation or commentary, by the learned and unlearned in every age and clime. But my imagination was humbled on considering my relative and limited powers, when I desired to proceed from phenomena to causes, and to penetrate the secrets of nature below the surfaces of things. I desire, said I, to know more than my intellectual vision enables me to see in this volume of unerring truth. I can discover but the mere surfaces of things by the accidents of light. I can feel but the same surfaces in the contact of my body, and my conclusions are governed by their reciprocal relations. In like manner, I can hear, taste, and smell, only through the accidents of other media, all distinct from the nature of the substances which produce those accidents. In truth, I am the mere patient of certain illusions of my senses, and I can know nothing beyond what I derive from my capacity of receiving impressions from those illusions! Alas! thought I, I am sensible how little I know; yet how much is there which I do not, and can never, know? How much more am I incapable of knowing, with my limited organs of sense, than I might know if their capacity or their number were enlarged? How can a being, then, of such limited powers presume to examine nature beyond the mere surface? How can he measure unseen powers, of which he has no perception, but in the phenomena visible to his senses? How can he reason on the causes of effects by means of implements which reach no deeper than the accidents produced by the surfaces of things on the media which affect his senses, and which come not into contact with the powers that produce the phenomena? Ultimate causation is, therefore, hidden for ever from man; and his knowledge can reach no deeper or higher than to register mechanical phenomena, and determine their mutual relations. But there is yet enough for man to learn, and to gratify the researches of his curiosity; for, bounded as are his powers, he has always found that art is too long and life too short. He may nevertheless feel that his mind, in a certain sense, is within a species of intellectual prison; but, like the terrestrial prison which confines his body to one planet, no man ever lived long enough to exhaust the variety of subjects presented to his contemplation and curiosity by the intellectual and natural world.

We seem, however, said I, to be better qualified to investigate the external laws which govern INORGANIC MATTER, than the subtle and local powers which govern organized bodies. We appear (so to speak) to be capable of looking down upon mere matter as matter; but incapable, like the eye in viewing itself, of retiring to such a focal distance as to be able accurately to examine ourselves. It is not difficult to conceive that planetary bodies, and other masses of inorganic matter, may appear to act on each other by mutually intercepting the pressure of the elastic medium which fills space; and the pressure intercepted by each on the inner surface of the other, may, by the un-intercepted external pressure on each, produce the phenomena of mutual gravitation: nor is it improbable that the curvilinear and rotatory motions of such masses may be governed by the arrangement and mutual action of their fixed and their fluid parts; nor impracticable for the geometrician, when the phenomena are determined, to measure the mechanical relations of the powers that produce those phenomena; nor wonderful that a system of bodies so governed by general laws, should move and act in a dependent, consequent, and necessary harmony.

Thus far the intellect of an organized being may reason safely on the mechanical relations of inorganic masses, because an unequal balance of forces produces their motions, and from combined motions result the phenomena; but, in the principle of organic life, and in the duration and final purpose of the powers of vegetables and animals, there are mysteries which baffle the penetration of limited observation and reason. I behold VEGETABLES with roots fixed in the ground, and through them raising fluids mechanically; but my understanding is overpowered with unsatisfied wonder, when I consider the animating principle of the meanest vegetable, which constitutes a selfish individuality, and enables it to give new qualities to those fluids by peculiar secretions, and to appropriate them to its own nourishment and growth. My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence; whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing agency which originates each successive germ; and the independent, but coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and, correcting aberrations, secures the continuity of every species—both acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the growth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom! On these several subjects, my mind renders the profoundest homage to the MYSTERIOUS POWER which created and continues such miracles; and, being unable to reason upon them from the analogy of other experience, I am forced to refer such sublime results to agency not mechanical; or, if in any sense mechanical, so arranged and so moved as to exceed my means of conception.

Looking once more upon the volume of nature which lay before me, I behold a superior class of organized beings, each individual of which, constituting an independent microcosm, is qualified to move from place to place, by bodily adaptation and nervous sensibility. This kingdom of LOCO-MOTIVE BEINGS ascends, in gradations of power and intellect, from the hydatid to the sympathetic and benevolent philosopher; and rises in the scale of being as much above the organization of vegetables, as vegetables themselves are superior to the inorganic particles in which they flourish. That they may subsist while they move, their roots, instead of being fixed in the soil, are turned within a cavity, or receptacle, called the stomach, into which, appropriate soil, or aliment, is introduced by the industry of the creature; and, that their powers of loco-motion may be exerted with safety and advantage, they are provided with senses for smelling, tasting, feeling, and seeing their food; and with a power of hearing dangers which they cannot see. They are, for the same purpose, enabled to profit by experience in powers of association, of reasoning by analogy, and of willing according to their judgments; and they are governed by an habitual desire to associate in species, accompanied by moral feelings, resulting from obligations of mutual deference and convenience. Here again, humanly speaking, we have a series of natural miracles—a permanent connexion between external objects and the sensations, reasoning, and conduct of the organized being. We trace the animal frame to two constituent parts—the one mechanical, the other sensitive; the mechanical consisting of bones, skin, stomach, blood-vessels, glands, and intestines, provided with muscles and sinews for voluntary motion; and the sensitive, consisting of nerves and brain, which direct the motions by the feelings of the organs of sense—the results of the union constituting creatures whose essence is perception, springing from a system of brain and nerves, which, being nourished by the energies of circulating fluids, moved by a contrivance of muscles, and strengthened by an apparatus of bones, produce all those varieties of feeling, durable, moving, and powerful beings, whose functions continue as long as the original expansive powers balance the unceasing inertia of their materials. But, of that SUBTLE PRINCIPLE which distinguishes organic life from inert matter—of that principle of individuality which generates the passion of self-love, and leads each individual to preserve and sustain its own existence—of that principle which gives peculiar powers of growth, and maturity, to germs of vegetables and animals—and of that principle which, being stopped, suspended, or destroyed, in the meanest or greatest of them, produces the awful difference between the living and the dead—we have no knowledge, and we seem incapable of acquiring any, by the limited powers of our senses. Whether this principle of vitality is a principle of its own kind, imparted from parent plants and animals to their germs; or whether it is the result of the totality of the being, like the centre of a sphere,—are questions which must perhaps for ever remain undetermined by the reasoning powers of man.

The creature of an hour, whose chief care it is to live and indulge his self-love, who cannot see without light, nor distinctly above a few inches from the eye, is wholly incompetent to determine those questions which have so long agitated philosophy; as, Whether the phenomena of the creation could be made to exist without action and re-action, and without space?—Whether, consequently, there are THREE Eternals, or ONE Eternal?—Whether the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE, MATTER void of form, and SPACE containing it, were all eternal—or whether the supreme intelligence alone was eternal, and matter and space created?—Whether the supreme intelligence has only been exerted proximately or remotely on inorganic matter; space being the necessary medium of creation, and organization being the result?—Whether the globe of the earth, in form, is eternal, or, according to Herschel, the effect of “a clustering power” in the matter of space, beginning and ending, according to the general analogy of organized beings?—Whether the earth was a comet, the ellipticality of whose orbit has been reduced; and, if so, what was the origin of the comet?—How the secondary mountains were liquefied—whether by fire or by water—and what were the then relations of the earth to the sun?—How and when that liquefaction ceased; and how, and when, and in what order of time, the several organizations arose upon them?—How those organizations, at least those now existing, received the powers of secondary causes for continuing their kind?—How every species now lives, and grows, and maintains an eternal succession of personal identities?—How these things were before we were, and how they now are on every side of us—are topics which have made so much learning ridiculous, that, if I were to discuss them, in the best forms prescribed by the schools, I might but imitate in folly the crawling myriads, who luxuriate for an hour on a ripening peach; and who, like ourselves, may be led by their vanity to discuss questions in regard to the eternity, and other attributes, of the prodigious globe, which they have inherited from their remote ancestry, and of which the early history is lost in the obscure traditions of their countless generations!

Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in regard to the world in which we are placed, that all things which DO EXIST, owe their existence to their COMPATIBILITY with other existences; to the necessary FITNESS of all existing things; and to the HARMONY which is essential to the existence of any thing in the form and mode in which it does exist: for, without reciprocal COMPATIBILITY, without individual FITNESS, and without universal HARMONY, nothing could CONTINUE TO EXIST which DOES EXIST; and, therefore, what does exist, is for the time NECESSARILY COMPATIBLE with other existences, FIT or NOT INCOMPATIBLE, and in HARMONY with the whole of CO-EXISTENT BEING. Every organized EXISTENCE affords, therefore, indubitable evidence of FINAL CAUSES or PURPOSES, competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations of FITNESS to other beings; of COMPATIBILITY with other existences; and of HARMONY in regard to the whole. And every case of DESTRUCTION affords evidence, that certain FINAL CAUSES have become unequal to their usual office; that the being is UNFIT to exist simultaneously with some other beings; that its existence is INCOMPATIBLE with certain circumstances, or that it is contrary to the general HARMONY of co-existent being. May not the fifty thousand species of beings now discoverable, be all the species whose existences have continued to be fit, compatible, and harmonious? May not the known extinction of many species be received as evidence, therefore, of the gradual decay of the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not the extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit, by diminishing the number of final causes? And, may not the successive breaking or wearing out of these links of final causes ultimately lead to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called, THE END OF OUR WORLD?

As I approached a sequestered mansion-house, and some other buildings, which together bear the name of Brick-stables, I crossed a corner of the meadow towards an angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames, which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, and, running a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced edge of that physical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid-pendulum which creates the earth’s centrifugal power, varies the centre of its forces, and holds in equilibrium that delicately adjusted pressure of the medium of space, which pressure, without such balance, would, by its clustering power, drive together the isolated masses of suns and planets.—In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine origin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty priesthood to consider a beneficent river as a tangible branch of the Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, are but a portion of the rains and snows which, having fallen near its source, are returning to the ocean, there to rise again and re-perform the same circle of vapours, clouds, rains, and rivers. What a process of fertilization, and how still more luxuriant would have been this vicinity, if man had not levelled the trees and carried away the crops of vegetation! What a place of shelter would thus have been afforded to tribes of amphibiæ, whose accumulated remains often surprise geologists, though necessarily consequent on the fall of crops of vegetation on each other, near undisturbed banks of rivers. Happily, in Britain, our coal-pits, or mineralized forests, have supplied the place of our living woods; or man, regardless of the fitness of all the parts to the perfection of every natural result, might here, as in other long-peopled countries, ignorantly have thwarted the course of Nature by cutting down the timber, which, acting on the electricity of the clouds, affects their density, and causes them to fall in fertilizing showers. Such has been the fate of all the countries famous in antiquity. Persia, Syria, Arabia, parts of Turkey, and the Barbary coast, have been rendered arid deserts by this inadvertency. The clouds from the Western Ocean would long since have passed over England without disturbance from the conducting powers of leaves of trees, or blades of grass, if our coal-works had not saved our natural conductors; while this Thames, the agent of so much abundance and so much wealth, might, in that case, have become a shallow brook, like the once equally famed Jordan, Granicus, or Ilyssus.

The dingy atmosphere of London smoke, which I had measured so accurately on Putney Heath, presented itself again over the woods of Chiswick Grove, reminding me of the cares of the busy world, and producing a painful contrast to the tranquillity of nature, to the silently gliding Thames, and to the unimpassioned simplicity of the vegetable creation. Man, I reflected, brings upon himself a thousand calamities as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls EVIL:—He compromises every natural pleasure, to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feeling—HE deprives himself, and all around him, of every passing enjoyment, to accumulate wealth, that he may purchase other men’s labour, in the vain hope of adding their happiness to his own—HE omits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice—HE arms himself with murderous weapons, and on the lightest instigations practises murder as a science, follows this science as a regular profession, and honours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers, in proportion to the quantity of blood they have shed, or the mischiefs they have perpetrated—HE disguises the most worthless of the people in showy liveries, teaches them the use of destructive weapons, and then excites them to murder men whom they never saw, by the fear of being killed if they will not kill, or of being shot for cowardice—HE revels in luxury and gluttony, and then complains of the diseases which result from repletion—HE tries in all things to counteract, or improve, the provisions of nature, and then afflicts himself at his disappointments—HE multiplies the chances against his own health and life, by his numerous artifices, and then wonders at the frequency of their fatal results—HE shuts his eyes against the volume of truth, presented by nature, and, vainly considering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation—HE interdicts the enjoyments of all other creatures, and, regarding the world as his property, in mere wantonness destroys myriads on whom have been lavished beauties and perfections—HE is the selfish and merciless tyrant of all animated nature, no considerations of pity or sympathy restraining, or even qualifying, his antipathies, his caprices, or his gluttonies; while, more unhappy than his victims, he is constantly arraigning that system in which he is the chief cause of more misery than all other causes joined together—HE forgets, that to live and let live, is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to all man’s relations with his fellow-men, but to inferior creatures, to whom his moral obligations are the greater, because their lives and happiness are often within his power—HE is the patient of the unalterable progress of universal causation, yet makes a difficulty of submitting to the impartial distribution of the provisions which sustain all other beings—HE afflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, though he sees all organized being decay around him, and though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him—HE repines at the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts; and, though he began to exist but yesterday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever—HE sees no benevolence in the scheme of Nature which provides eternal youth to partake of the pleasures of existence; and which, destroying those pleasures by satiety of enjoyment, produces the blunted feelings of disease and old age—HE mars all his perceptions of well-being by anticipating the cessation of his vital functions, though, before that event, he necessarily ceases to be conscious or to suffer—HE seeks indulgences unprovided for by the course of Nature, and then anxiously employs himself in endeavouring to cheat others of the labour requisite to procure them—HE desires to govern others, but, regardless of their dependence on his benevolence, is commonly gratified in displaying the power entrusted to him, by a tyrannical abuse of it—HE professes to love wisdom, yet in all his establishments for promoting it he sets up false standards of truth; and persecutes, even with religious intolerance, all attempts to swerve from them—HE makes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty, but as shields to crafty wealth—HE renders justice unattainable by its costliness; and personal rights uncertain by the intricacy and fickleness of legal decisions—HE possesses means of diffusing knowledge, in the sublime art of Printing; but, by suffering wealth and power to corrupt its agents, he has allowed it to become subservient to the gratification of personal malignity and political turpitude—HE acknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing rather than their social duties in the political state in which they live—HE adopts the customs of barbarous ages as precedents of practice, and founds on them codes for the government of enlightened nations—in a word, HE makes false and imperfect estimates of his own being, of his duties to his fellow-beings, and of his relations to all being; and then passes his days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing Evil to supernatural causes, and in feverish expectations of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world!

I was thus employed in drawing a species of Indictment against the errors, follies, selfishness, and vices of my fellow-men, while I passed along a pleasant foot-path, which conducted me from Brick-stables to the carriage-road from Mortlake to Kew. On arriving at the stile, I saw a colony of the people called Gipsies, and, gratified at falling in with them, I seated myself upon it, and, hailing the eldest of the men in terms of civility, he approached me courteously; and I promised myself, from the interview, a fund of information relative to the economy of those people.

Policy so singular, manners so different, and passions so varied, have for so many ages characterized the race of Gipsies, that the incident of meeting with one of their little camps agreeably roused me from that reverie on Matter and its modifications, into which I had fallen. What can be more strongly marked than the gipsy physiognomy? Their lively jet-black eyes—their small features—their tawny skins—their small bones—and their shrill voices, bespeak them to be a distinct tribe of the human race, as different from the English nation as the Chinese, the North-American Indians, or the woolly-headed Africans. They seem, in truth, as different in their bodies, and in their instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propensities, or fit and necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores; theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of nature;—we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habitations; and they, like the deer, range from pasture to pasture;—we, with an instinct all our own, cultivate arts; they content themselves with picking up our superfluities;—we make laws and arrange governments; they know no laws but those of personal convenience, and no government beyond that of muscular force growing out of the habits of seniority;—and we cherish passions of ambition and domination, consequent on our other arrangements, to which they are utter strangers. Thus, we indulge our propensities, and they indulge theirs. Which are the happiest beings, might be made a question—but I am led to decide in favour of the arts and comforts of civilized life. These people appear to possess the natural feebleness and delicacy of man, without the power of shielding themselves from the accidents of nature. Their darling object appears to be, to enjoy practical personal liberty. They possess less, and they enjoy fewer, luxuries than others; but they escape slavery in all the Protean shapes by which it ensnares the rest of mankind. They do not act as menial servants, and obey the caprice of a master; nor do they work as labourers for a tythe of the advantages of their industry. They do not, as tenants of land, pay half the produce in rentals; nor do they, as anxious traders, pay half their profits to usurers or capitalists. They are not liable to the conscriptions of a militia-ballot; nor to be dragged from their families by the frightful tyranny of the impress. And, in fine, they are not compelled to contribute a large portion of their earnings in taxes to support folly or prodigality; nor are they condemned to pay, through their successive generations, the interest of money lent for the hire of destroyers of men, who were, like themselves, guilty only of resolving to be free. Yet, if they are exempt from the torture of civilized man, of having the comforts he enjoys torn from him by the sophistry of law, or the tyranny of governments; they suffer from hour to hour the torments of want, and the apprehension of not meeting with renewed supplies. If they are gayer than civilized man, it is because their wants are fewer, and therefore fewer of them are unsatisfied; and probably the gaiety which they assume before strangers may result from their constitution, which, under the same circumstances, may render them gayer than others, just as a Frenchman is gayer than an Englishman, or an Englishman than a North-American Indian. In a word, in looking upon this race, and upon the other recorded varieties of our species, from the woolly-headed African to the long-haired Asiatic, from the blue-eyed and white-haired Goth to the black-eyed and black-haired North American, and from the gigantic Patagonian to the dwarfish Laplander; we are led to believe, that the human species must radically have been as various as any other species of animated beings; and it seems as unphilosophical as impious, to limit the powers of creation to pairs of one kind, and to ascribe their actual varieties to the operations of chance.

As I proceeded from the stile towards their tents, the apparent chief of the gang advanced with a firm step, holding a large knife in one hand, and some eatables in the other; and he made many flourishes with his knife, seemingly in the hope of intimidating me, if I proved an enemy. I civilly begged his pardon for intruding upon their camp, and assured him that mine was a mere visit of curiosity; that I was not a justice of the peace, and had no desire to disturb them. He then told me I was very welcome, and I advanced to their chief tent. “But,” said I to this man, “you have not the gipsy colour and features?” “O, no,” he replied, “I am no gipsy—the people call us all gipsies—but I am by trade a tinker—I live in —— Court, Shoreditch, in the winter; and during the summer I travel the country, and get my livelihood by my trade.” Looking at others of the group, who were sitting at the entrance of two tents, I traced two sets of features among them, one plainly English, and the other evidently Gipsy; and, mentioning this circumstance, he replied, “O yes—though I am not a gipsy, my wife is, and so is her old mother there—they are true gipsies, every inch of ’em. This man, my wife’s brother, is a gipsy—we are useful to one another in this way of life—and the old woman there is as knowing a gipsy as any in the country, and can tell your fortune, sir, if you like to hear it.”—His character of the elder gipsy, who resembled Munden’s witch in Macbeth, produced considerable mirth in the whole party; and the old woman, who was engaged in smoking her pipe, took it from her mouth, and said: “I ayn’t told so many gentlefolks their fortunes to no purpose, and I’ll tell your’s, sir, if you’ll give me something to fill my pipe.” I smiled, and told her I thanked her; but, as I was not in love, I felt no anxiety to hear my fortune.—“Aye, sir,” said she, “many’s the lover I’ve made happy, and many’s the couple that I’ve brought together.”—Recollecting Farquhar’s incident in the Recruiting Officer, I remarked:—“You tell the ladies what their lovers hire you to tell them, I suppose—and the gentlemen what the ladies request you to tell them?”—“Why, yes,” said she, “something like it;” and laughing—“aye, sir, I see you’re in the secret!”—“And then you touch golden fees, I suppose?”—“Yes,” interrupted the first man, “I’ve known her get five or six guineas on a wedding-day, part from the lady, and part from the gentleman; and she never wants a shilling, and a meal’s victuals, when she passes many houses that I could name.”—“True,” exclaimed the old beldame, “that’s all true; and I’ve made many fine folks happy in my time, and so did my mother before me—she was known far and near!” I had no occasion to remark on the silly dupes on whom they practised these impositions, for the whole party expressed their sentiments by bursts of laughter while the old woman was speaking: but I could not help exclaiming, that I thought she ought to make the fools pay well who gave credit to her prophecies.—“Aye,” said she, “I see you don’t believe in our art—but we tell all by the hand!”—I felt of course that the hand was as good a key to determine the order of probable events as planets, cards, or tea-sediments; and therefore, concluding that gipsies, like astrologers and other prophets, are imposed on by the doctrine of chances, I dropped the conversation; but felt it my duty to give the old woman a shilling to buy some tobacco for her pipe.

I now surveyed the entire party, and in three tents found there were three men, two women, besides the old woman, four girls, and two boys. One of the tents was placed at a little distance from the others, and in that resided a young married couple.—“And pray,” said I, “where and how do you marry?”—“Why,” said the first man, “we marry like other folks—they were married at Shoreditch Church—I was married to my old woman here at Hammersmith Church—and my brother-in-law here was married at Acton Church.”—“Then,” said I, “you call yourselves Christians?”—At this question they all laughed; and the first man said, that, “If it depends on our going to church, we can’t say much about it; but, as we do nobody any harm, and work for our living, some in one way, and some in another, we suppose we are as good Christians as many other folks.”

While this conversation passed, I heard them speaking to each other in a language somewhat resembling Irish, but it had tones more shrill; and the first man, notwithstanding his English physiognomy, as well as the others, spoke with a foreign accent, not unlike that of half-anglicized Hindoos. I mentioned this peculiarity; but he assured me that neither he nor any of the party had been out of England. I now inquired about their own language, when one of them said it was Maltese; but the other said it was their cant language. I asked their names for various objects which I pointed out; but, after half a dozen words, the first man inquired, if I had “ever heard of one Sir Joseph Banks—for,” said he, “that gentleman once paid me a guinea for telling him twenty words in our language.” Perceiving, therefore, that he rated this species of information very high, and aware that the subject has been treated at large by many authors, I forbore to press him further.

The ground served them for a table, and the grass for a table-cloth. The mixture of their viands with dirty rags, and other disgusting objects, proved that they possess no sentiment, in regard to cleanliness, superior to lower animals. Like philosophical chemists, they evidently admitted the elementary analogy of what the delicate sense of society classes under contrasted heads of dirty and clean. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling which actuates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a pole at each end, with a ridge pole, covered with blanketing, which was stretched obliquely to the ground by wooden pegs. Such rudeness, and such simplicity, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous array of oriental splendour in the palaces of Royalty; and to the varied magnificence displayed in those warehouses whence an Oakley, or a Bullock, supplies the mansions of wealth and grandeur.

Indeed, as I stood conversing with these people, how could I help marvelling that, in the most polished district of the most civilized of nations, with the grand pagoda of Kew-Gardens in full view on one hand, and the towers of the new Bastile Palace in sight on the other, I should thus have presented under my eyes a family of eleven persons in no better condition than the Hottentots in their kraals, the Americans in their wigwams, or the Tartars in their equally rude tents. I sighed, however, to think that difference of natural constitution and varied propensities were in England far from being the only causes of the proximity of squalid misery to ostentatious pomp. I felt too that the manners of these gipsies were assimilated to those of the shepherd tribes of the remotest antiquity, and that in truth I saw before me a family of the pastoral ages, as described in the Book of Genesis. They wanted their flocks and herds; but the possession of these neither accorded with their own policy, nor with that of the country in which they reside. Four dogs attached to their tents, and two asses grazing at a short distance, completed such a grouping as a painter would, I have no doubt, have found in the days of Abraham in every part of Western Asia, and as is now to be found among the same people, at this day, in every country in Europe. They exhibit that state of man in which thousands of years might pass away without record or improvement: and, whether they are Egyptians, Arabs, Hindoos, Tartars, or a peculiar variety of our species; whether they exhibit man in the rude state which, according to Lord Montboddo, most nearly approximates to the ourang-outang of the oriental forests; or whether they are considered in their separated character—they form an interesting study for the philosopher, the economist, and the antiquary.

In a few minutes after I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive alarm. “O, sir,” said she, “I’m so glad to come up with you—I’m so frightened—I’ve been standing this quarter of an hour on the other side of the stile, waiting for somebody to come by.”—“And what has so frightened you?” said I.—“O, sir,” said the still terrified girl, looking behind her, and increasing her pace, “those gipsies and witches—they frighten every body; and I wo’dn’t have come this way for all the world if I’d known they’d been there.”—“But,” said I, “what are you frightened at? have you heard that they have done harm to any one?”—“O dear! yes, sir, I’ve heard my mother say they bewitches people; and, one summer, two of them beat my father dreadfully.”—“But what did he do to them?”—“Why, he was a little tipsy, to be sure; but he says he only called ’em a pack of fortune-tellers.”—“And are all the children in this neighbourhood as much frightened at them as you?”—“O yes, sir; but some of the boys throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they’ll bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?” The poor girl asked this question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened nation! Let me hope that the tutors in the schools of Bell and Lancaster will consider it as part of their duties, to destroy the vulgar faith in ghosts, omens, fortune-telling, fatality, and witchcraft.

On my right, my attention was attracted by the battlements of a new Gothic building, which I learnt, from the keeper of an adjoining turnpike, was called Kew Priory, and is a summer retreat of a wealthy Catholic maiden lady, Miss Doughty, of Richmond-Hill; after whom a street has recently been named in London. Learning that the lady was not there, I turned aside to take a nearer view; and, ringing at the gate, in the hope of seeing the interior, a female, who opened it, told me that it was a rule of the place, that no man could be admitted besides the Rev. Mr. ——, the Catholic priest. I learnt that the Priory, a beautiful structure on a lawn, consisted merely of a chapel, a room for refreshments, and a library; and that the lady used it for a change of scene in the long afternoons of the summer season. The enclosed space contained about 24 acres, on the banks of the Thames, and is subdivided by Pilton’s invisible fences. Behind the priory, there is a house for the bailiff and his wife, a capacious pheasantry, an aviary, and extensive stables. Nothing can be more tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a considerable depth.

Another quarter of a mile, along a dead flat, brought me upon Kew-Green. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green.

As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my left, the long boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens; on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk the effigies of the whole British navy, and over each representation appears the name of the vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or six feet long, and extending, with intervening distances, above a mile and a half. As the labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary performance; and I was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency from passing travellers.

Kew-Green is a triangular area of about thirty acres. Nearly in the centre is the chapel of St. Anne. On the eastern side is a row of family houses; on the north-western side a better row, the backs of which look to the Thames; and on the south side stand the boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens, some buildings for soldiery, and the plain house of Ernest, duke of Cumberland. Among other persons of note and interest who reside here, are the two respectable daughters of Stephen Duck, the poet, who deserve to be mentioned as relics of a former age. In the western corner stand the buildings called Kew Palace, in which George III. passed many of the early years of his reign, and near which he began a new structure a few years before his confirmed malady—which I call the Bastile Palace, from its resemblance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen. On a former occasion, I have viewed its interior, and I am at loss to conceive the motive for preferring an external form, which rendered it impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large closets, boudoirs, and rooms like oratories. The works have, however, been suspended since the unhappy seclusion of the Royal Architect; and it is improbable, at least in this generation, that they will be resumed. The foundation is in a bog close to the Thames, and the principal object within its view is the dirty town of Brentford, on the opposite side of the river.

I had intended to prolong my route to the western corner of the Green; but, in passing St. Anne’s Chapel, I found the pew-openers engaged in wiping the pews and washing the aisles. I knew that that child of Genius, Gainsborough, the painter, lay interred here; and, desirous of paying my homage to his grave, I inquired for the spot. As is usual in regard to this class of people, they could give me no information; yet one of them fancied she had heard such a name before. I was therefore obliged to wait while the sexton or clerk was fetched, and in the interim I walked into the chapel. I was, in truth, well re-paid for the time it cost me; for I never saw any thing prettier, except Lord Le Despencer’s exquisite structure at West Wycombe. As the royal family usually attend here when they reside at Kew, it is superbly fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. The seats for the family fill the gallery, and on the ground-floor there are forty-eight pews of brown oak, adapted for four and six persons each. Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls; but the record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank and title. It was a marble slab, to the memory of Meyer, the painter,—with lines by the amiable poet, Hayley; and I was led, by respect for painter and poet, to copy the whole:—

Jeremiah Meyer, R.A. Painter in Miniature and Enamel to his Majesty Geo. III. Died January 19, 1789.

William Hayley, 1789.

From hence I strolled into the vestry, where I found a table of fees, drawn with a degree of precision which merits imitation. It appears, that the fees for MARRIAGES with a licence are 10s. 6d., and by banns 5s. That those for BURIALS, to the minister, if the prayers are said in the church, are 5s.; if only at the grave, 2s. 6d. The graves are six feet deep; and, in the church, the coffin must be of lead. The clerk is entitled to half, and the sexton to about a third more. A vault in the church is charged 21l., and in the church-yard 10l. 10s.; with 5l. 5s. and 2l.2s. respectively for each time of opening. To non-residents they are double.—I had scarcely finished this extract, when the clerk’s or sexton’s assistant made his appearance; and on the south side of the church-yard he brought me to the tomb of Gainsborough.

“Ah! friend,” said I, “this is a hallowed spot—here lies one of Britain’s favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her among the nations of the earth.”—“Perhaps it was so,” said the man, “but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their monuments, if the family pay; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this family; if so, I’ll tell you how much is due.”—“Yes, truly, friend,” said I, “I am one of the great family bound to preserve the monument of Gainsborough; but, if you take me for one of his relatives, you are mistaken.”—“Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not included in the Will, therefore are not obligated.” I could not now avoid looking with scorn at the fellow; but, as the spot claimed better feelings, I gave him a trifle for his trouble, and mildly told him I would not detain him.

The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death as in life, if you would excite the notice of the multitude, you must in the grave have a splendid mausoleum, or in walking the streets you must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the remains of THE FIRST PAINTER OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL, in fancy-pictures, and one OF THE FIRST in the classes of landscape and portrait;—a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority, as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was developed, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his amiable private character as by his eminence in the chief of Fancy’s Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter—that the poet only exhibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is called upon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but the successful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his hand as well as conceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons—but far more so a great painter, who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man was Thomas Gainsborough, before whose modest tomb I stood! The following are the words engraven on the stone:—

Thomas Gainsborough, esq. died August 2, 1788. Also the body of Gainsborough Dupont, esq. who died Jan. 20, 1797, aged 42 years. Also, Mrs. Margaret Gainsborough, wife of the above Thomas Gainsborough, esq, who died Dec. 17, 1798, in the 72d year of her age.