Yet, unsociable as is Wandsworth, it is in that respect like all the

villages round London. Gay and splendid as they appear to the summer

visitor, nothing can be more dull and monotonous than the lives of

their constant residents. Made up of the mushroom aristocracy of

trade, whose rank, in its first generation, affords no palpable ground

of introduction--of pride, whose importance, founded on the chances of

yesterday, is fed on its self-sufficiency--of individuals whose

consequence grows neither out of manners, intellectual endowments,

superior taste, nor polished connections--and of inhabitants of a

metropolis, among whom shyness of intercourse is necessary as a

security against imposture--it is not to be wondered that most of the

showy mansions in these villages are points of repulsion rather than

of attraction. It must, however, be conceded, that many of these

families are hospitable, charitable, sociable, and anxious to be

agreeable--qualities which would serve as the basis of systems of more

liberal intercourse, if properly directed, and if cherished in such

establishments as book-clubs, periodical assemblies, and evening

promenades. Nor should it be forgotten that many of the proprietors of

these mansions consider them as mere retreats from the craft and

selfish jargon of the world, in which, to enjoy the contrast afforded

by the simplicity of nature, they court Solitude, for its own sake,

during their temporary residence from evening till morning, and from

Saturday till Monday.

In a Village once famous for its manufactories, which, as the effect

of the wicked Policy that involved the country in twenty years'

warfare, have lost their powers of giving employment to the population

whom they had drawn together, I was naturally led to inquire the

condition of these helpless victims of deluded and deluding statesmen.

What an affecting topic for the contemplation of Sensibility! How

painful the condition of Poverty, contrasted with that of Wealth; yet

how closely are they allied, and how adventitiously separated! The

Rich solace themselves in a fancied exemption from the miseries and

ignominy which attach to the Poor, though their daily experience of

the caprice of fortune ought to teach them, that, while they have the

power, it would be wiser to diminish the contrast by ameliorating the

condition of Poverty! How glorious is the spectacle afforded by the

contrast of civilized society, with the wretched condition of savages,

though that justly admired civilization is often but a result of

artifices that create the distinctions of rich and poor! What a gulph

between the ancient Britons in the social equality of their woods and

caverns, and the favoured English in their luxurious cities and

magnificent palaces! Yet, alas! wealth and splendour and greatness are

such only by contrast!--Wherever there are rich there must be

poor--wherever there is splendour there must be misery--and wherever

there are masters there must be servants. These conditions of men in

society are like the electrical power in nature, which never indicates

its positive qualities without creating corresponding negations; and

which, when equally diffused, exhibits no phenomena. If then men are

rich merely because they have abstracted or absorbed the wealth of

others, their obligations, as moral and sympathetic creatures towards

those by whose abasement they are exalted, can require no formal

proof. The laws may allow, and the arrangements of society may

require, as a condition of civilization, that the rich should enjoy

their ascendency; but it is neither just, nor wise, nor decent, nor

humane, nor necessary, that the poor should be deprived of benefits

which ought to result to the whole family of man, from the triumphs of

Art over Nature. All are bound cheerfully to concede to superiority in

virtue and intellect, those advantages which are the result of

virtuous and intellectual exertions; but, as common descendants of the

once-equal Britons, the lowest are warranted in claiming, as matter of

right, to be as well fed and as comfortably provided for, on

performing, or on evincing a willingness to perform, the duties of

their stations, as their equal ancestors among the Britons, or society

at large cannot be said to have profitted by our boasted civilization.

To adjust these intricate relations, so that all virtue may partake in

its sphere of the gifts of nature, augmented by the ingenuity of man,

is the arduous, but interesting, task of wise legislation. It would

not be reasonable to expect, that every case should be met, and every

exigency anticipated, by adequate arrangements; but it is the duty of

power, in whomsoever it is placed, to exert itself with unremitting

anxiety, so as in the arrangements of man to approximate to the

dispositions of nature, which are always marked by inexhaustible

abundance, by appropriate benevolence, and by means commensurate to

suitable and desirable ends.

Under the influence of such reasoning, I made a variety of enquiries

between Battersea and Wandsworth, relative to the condition of the

poor. I learnt with grief that the payment of day-labourers varies

from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ per day, or on an average is not more

than 12_s._ per week; of women from 1_s._ 3_d._ to 1_s._ or about

6_s._ per week; and of children from 9_d._ to 6_d._ or 4_s._ per week;

though, for the two last classes there is sufficient employment for

only half the year. A poor man, who had a wife and three children to

maintain on 14_s._ per week, told me, that for many months he and his

family had been strangers to meat, cheese, butter, or beer--that

bread, potatoes, nettles, turnips, carrots, and onions, with a little

salt, constituted the whole of their food--that during the winter

months he was obliged to rely on the parish--that in case of sickness

he and his children had no resource besides the workhouse--and that,

though it had pleased God to take two of his children, it was better

they should go to heaven than continue in this wicked and troublesome

world. "But I don't think," said he, "the gentlefolk saves much by

running down we poor so nation hard, for we are obligated to get it on

the parish, which they pay; so it's all one; though it grieves a poor

man, as one may say, to apply to them overseers, and to have no hope

but the workhouse at last."

I agree with this humble Economist that it seems to be as ungenerous

as impolitic to throw on the poor's rates a burthen which ought to be

borne by those who profit from the labour thus inadequately

remunerated. It could not, and ought not, to be difficult to fix a

minimum (not a maximum) on twelve hours' labour per day, such as

should be sufficient to support an average-sized family. Suppose for

bread and flour 6_s._ were allowed; for meat, cheese, butter, milk,

and beer, 4_s._; for potatoes, &c. 2_s._ candles, soap, and coals,

2_s._ cloathing 3_s._ 6_d._ house-rent 2_s._ 6_d._ sundries

1_s._--total 21_s._ Here is nothing superfluous, nothing but what

appertains to the earliest stages of civilization, and what every

well-arranged society ought to be able to give in return for manual

labour of the lowest kind. With inferior means the labourer must

suffer the obloquy of being remunerated from the parish rates, to

which all are forced to contribute as fully as though the employer

paid the fair value of the labour in the first instance, and the

amount were assessed on the price of his commodity, instead of being

assessed in the form of poor's rates.

It being, however, the _favourite_ system to pay the difference

between what the labourer receives, and what he ought to receive,

through the medium of the workhouse or parish officers, I anxiously

directed my way to #Wandsworth Workhouse#, to examine whether it was

an asylum of comfort or a place of punishment? On my entrance I found

the hall filled with a crowd of poor persons, then applying to receive

a weekly stipend from the overseers, who, with other parish-officers,

were assembled in an adjoining apartment. Many women with infants at

their breasts, and other children clinging round their knees,

presented interesting subjects for poets and painters. Every feeling

of the human heart, though in the garb of rags, and bearing the aspect

of misery, evidently filled the various individuals composing this

groupe. I pressed forward to the room, where I found the overseers

were sitting at a table, covered with bank-tokens and other silver for

distribution. They received me politely, and, on learning my wish to

view the interior, directed the matron to accompany me. The manners

and countenances of these overseers flatly contradicted the prejudices

which are usually entertained against persons filling the office; and

it gratified me to hear several of the poor, whose characteristic is

said to be discontent, exclaim, "God bless 'em, they're noble

gentlemen."

The matron conducted me into a spacious yard, round which are suites

of rooms, built in the manner of alms-houses, a plan which cannot be

too much commended, because it sufficiently detaches the tenants of

each, secures to every set their peculiar comforts, and may be

rendered the means of separating virtue from vice. In the middle of

the area stand the offices and kitchen, dividing it into two yards,

one for the men, and the other for the women. The whole had been

recently white-washed, and, but for the name of work-house, and

certain restraints on their habits and liberty, it seemed calculated

to secure the comfort of its inmates.

The matron took me into several of the men's rooms, and here I found

tottering grey hairs, crippled youth, inveterately diseased of all

ages, and artizans destitute of employment. Six or eight were in a

room, though I was informed they slept for the most part but one in a

bed. A fine young girl about twelve years old, who had slipped out of

the women's yard, was seated by the side of her father, an interesting

looking artizan, whose trade had ceased to afford him employment.

This, I found, was contrary to the discipline of the house, and the

matron chid the girl for coming there; "however," said she to me in an

under-tone, with great good nature--"one can't blame a child for

getting to her father, nor the father for encouraging his child to

come over to him."--"No, madam," said I, "and no one can blame you for

granting such an indulgence, while all must admire the goodness of

heart which dictates that sentiment." Would to God, thought I, that

all workhouses were governed by matrons as capable of sympathizing

with the feelings of the unfortunate inmates; and that all those who

embitter poverty by directing the separation of parents from their

children, and husbands from their wives, may themselves become the

object of their own law!

My guide now led me to a room where lived a man, his wife, and

children, a sawyer out of work, whose eyes were so affected by the

dust that falls into the pit, as to render him incapable of following

his employment. His pride, as well as that of his wife, seemed to be

piqued at being exhibited to view in the workhouse, and they took much

pains to convince me that it was their misfortune, not their fault or

their wish. Two fine children, one of them a chubby happy creature,

playing on the floor, added to the groupe an interest that was deeply

affecting. Doubtless, thought I, these simple people once entertained

many projects of humble ambition, which, if explained, might draw a

smile from the great--but here, alas! they seem to be entombed for

ever!

I now took a cursory view of the women's yard, in which I found the

same appearances of cleanliness and comfort as on the men's side. But

the most interesting scene was the nursery, where sixteen little

cherubs, the oldest about five years, were engaged in their innocent

diversions, regardless whether they were in a workhouse or a palace,

and unsuspicious of the ills that await them in a world governed by

selfishness, where the greatest of all crimes, and the forerunner of

all calamities, is poverty! I was pleased to find that the mother of

three of them was allowed to fill the office of nurse, and the tears

trickled down the poor woman's face, as I particularly admired one

fine boy, who, it happened, was her child. "Ah! Sir, (said she,) he's

so like his poor father!--my poor husband little thought, when he

died, that his dear children would so soon be in a workhouse"--here

her tears and loud sobs stopt her utterance; but, recovering

herself--"if I can't maintain 'em with the labour of my hands, (said

she,) I will do what I can for 'em here; there is no other happiness

for me in this world, and I will continue to do for them till God

shall please to take me also." A woman's and mother's tears are so

contagious, and the scene before me formed so deep a drama of real

life, that I hurried from the room!

The good matron now showed her cleanly kitchen, her well-arranged

laundry, pantry, bakehouse, &c. &c., with which my feelings were not

at that moment in unison; I saw, however, much to admire and nothing

to condemn. On inquiry, I found that these excellent regulations were

the effect of a late revolution in the establishment. Till a very

recent period, it had been the criminal practice of the overseers, and

the negligent sufferance of the parish, to #FARM# or #LET OUT# the

poor to some grim tyrant or task-master, at the average rate of 5_s._

6_d._ per head! This man was to provide for these wretched victims of

the public neglect, and of his miscalculation, out of 5_s._ 6_d._ per

week, rent exclusive; and his remuneration consisted in the difference

between their cost and that pitiful allowance. The cries of the poor

at length forced their way to the ears of the opulent, the contractor

was turned out, and it was then humanely determined that the

overseers, aided by a master and matron, should in future superintend

the workhouse as trustees for the parish.

I understood that they had hitherto performed this duty with great

attention and humanity, giving meat-dinners four days in the week, and

soup-dinners on the other days, the cost proving about 6_s._ 9_d._ per

head, on the one hundred poor in the house, of whom forty were

children. In the petty labours with which the aged, crippled, and

infant poor are too often harassed in these receptacles, they had, as

yet, made no essays. The stipends out of the house amounted, I

learned, to nearly as much as the cost within, or to about 30_l._ per

week, which, at 2_s._ 6_d._ per head, assists two hundred and forty

objects, making a total charge on the parish of from 3 to 4000_l._ per

annum.

How many parishes in the metropolis still, however, persist in the

negligent practice of farming their wretched poor at only 4_s._ or

even 3_s._ 6_d._ per week! And how few of the opulent, idle, and

well-intentioned of the parishioners, concern themselves about their

condition or sufferings! When the overseer calls for the rates, they

perhaps complain so heavily of the amount, that he fears to increase

the allowance, however sensible he may be of its necessity; or,

perhaps, when accosted by a beggar in the street, they excuse

themselves by quoting their large contributions to the rates, and

refer the despairing wretch to the workhouse! How incumbent then to

see what that workhouse is!--Whether its arrangements are not more

fitted for dogs or pigs, than for rational and heart-broken

fellow-creatures, however unequal in fortune, or however differing

even in virtue! Let us then neither wonder nor complain, that our

streets or highways are filled with objects of misery, preferring the

cold ground, the unsparing storm, and the inclemency of seasons, to

the provisions legally provided for them; if we have not had the

industry to ascertain, the courage to reform, and the benevolence to

improve, the condition of their parochial asylums!

The reader of sensibility will not, I trust, complain of the length of

details on an object which interests every son and daughter of

Britain. The other demands on my time allowed me to spend but twenty

minutes in this receptacle of the helpless and unfortunate; yet what a

volume of feelings and reflections were excited in that short period!

We have had a #Howard#, I exclaimed, who visited our gaols and

alleviated the condition of those who are forced to drink the dregs of

the cup of misery, from the iron-hearted and unsparing hands of

lawyers, whose practices are sometimes countenanced by the

incorrigible character of criminals! We have a #Webb#, who vainly

assaults the giant Penury on the King's highway, but whose frightful

strides outstrip his generous speed!--We want then some #ANGEL#, in

the form of man, who, uniting the courage and perseverance of a

#Howard# with the liberality of a #Webb#, will visit and report on the

condition of our Workhouses. But, if, as every parish contains its

workhouse, and every county but one gaol, the task in consequence is

too great for one life, though actuated by the godlike zeal of a

#Wesley#; then it is a task worthy of parish committees, composed of

groupes of Angels, in the form of benignant Women, who will find, that

the best-spent and the happiest morning of every month would be passed

in a visit to the workhouse; where, with slender alms, kind advice,

and fostering care, they would be able to soothe the sorrows of the

aged widow,--to comfort the sick and helpless,--to pour balm into the

mental wounds of those who are reduced from affluence by

misfortune,--to raise from hopeless indigence modest merit, which

never found a friend,--and to protect orphan children, who need advice

and pilotage in their outset in life. No pampered minion of fortune

need complain of _ennui_, or be anxious for new amusements, in whose

parish there exists a workhouse. It is a Stage on which Dramas,

serious or tragical, are every day performed; the interest of which is

created by no tricks of the author or machinist, but in which the

performers play their parts according to nature, always touching the

most sensitive chords of the heart. No spectator ever came away from

one of these houses without having his feelings wrought up by actors

of all ages, who far outstrip our Siddonses, Kembles, Bettys, Youngs,

or Keans, and whose petit dramas excel those of Shakespeare, Rowe, or

Otway, in the degree in which suffering and unsophisticated Nature is

superior to the trappings and blandishments of Art.

Wandsworth having engaged me above an hour, I endeavoured to recover

my loitering, by a rapid pace towards #Putney Heath#, where a crowd of

objects presented themselves for description and observation.

The road from #Wandsworth# to #Putney Heath# ascends with a gentle

slope, which is inclined about six degrees from the horizontal plane.

Wandsworth itself lies little above the level of the Thames at high

water; and, as this road ascends nearly a mile, with an angle which

averages six degrees, the height of Putney and the adjoining Wimbledon

Common may be taken at about the tenth of a mile, 180 yards, or 540

feet. The ascent of one yard in ten gives that gentle fall to the

road, which, in a smaller degree, ought to be conferred artificially

on all roads, in order that they might drain lengthways, and that the

argillaceous earth might be carried off in solution, and only the hard

bed of silex remain behind. This beautiful piece of road is a fine

exemplification of that principle; but an elevation of two degrees, or

nearly one yard in thirty, would be sufficient for the purpose; and,

if the rise and fall in flat roads were made to take place at every

quarter of a mile, the difference between the bottoms and tops would

be about fifteen yards. In general, the natural inequalities of the

country would assist such a system of philosophical road-making; but,

notwithstanding the first labour, it merits no less respect in all

dead levels, as the only means of carrying off their standing water

and clay, and of establishing a hard bottom, which, when once formed,

would last for many years. Any person who has not duly regarded this

principle, will be struck with its justness, by taking notice, during

a journey, of any piece of road from which the road-makers have been

unable to turn a stream of running water; and he will find, that it

possesses a hard smooth bottom, and stands less in need of repair than

any road in the same vicinity. Let us then take a lesson from nature

on this subject, as we do on all others when we evince our modesty and

wisdom.

The objection to this form of roads, founded on the increase of

draught required in ascending one side of the inclined plane, has no

validity. An inclination of two degrees rises one yard in thirty;

consequently, such a power as would draw thirty tons on level ground,

must, other circumstances alike, be equal to thirty-_one_ tons on a

road so inclined. The resistance of friction in roads which permit the

wheels to sink into them, rises, however in a much higher proportion.

It may be assumed, that wheels which sink but half an inch, would

require an increased draught of an eighth, or, in the above instance,

of 2-1/2 tons; if an inch, they would require a fourth more, or 7-1/2

tons; if two inches, a half increase, or fifteen tons; and at three

inches, the power would be required to be double. Different soils, and

different wheels, would indicate different proportions, but the above

may be taken as averages; and, when contrasted with the small increase

of power, rendered necessary by the ascent of an inclined plane, the

latter, on the ascending half of any road, will appear to be

unimportant.

The Emperor Napoleon, who endeavoured to apply philosophy to all the

arts of life, decreed, that no public road in France should exceed an

inclination of 4 deg. 46', or rise more than one metre in twelve. This

proportion, it was estimated, would combine the maxima and minima of

the powers; and, in spite of those malignant confederacies which he

was so often called upon to overthrow, the labour of reducing many

steep roads of France to this practicable inclination was

accomplished, and hence the praises of the roads of that country which

we read in the narratives of our tourists. England, which set the

first example to Europe, in this branch of economy, ought not to allow

itself to be outdone by the measures of a reign which it asserted was

incompatible with regal dignity; but, proceeding on correct

principles, it ought in this case to imitate even a _bad_ example, and

to correct its system of patching up its roads under the direction of

surveyors, ignorant of general principles, and at the expence of local

commissioners, who are interested in making their improvements on the

narrowest scale. The rapid advancement of Great Britain in social

comforts, within the last sixty years, may be ascribed to the turnpike

system, which took the jurisdiction of the public roads out of the

hands of parish-officers, and transferred it to commissioners of more

extensive districts. A still further improvement is now called for by

superadding the controul of a #NATIONAL ROAD POLICE#, which should

equalize the tolls, or apply the whole to the unequal wants of various

districts; so that roads of nearly equal goodness might characterize

all parts of an empire which ought to be rendered one great

metropolis, and to be united in means and fraternity by all the

facilities of human art.

A stage-coach toiling against this road of six degrees inclination,

and a flour-waggon traversing from side to side to lengthen the

hypotheneuse, yet stopping at every hundred yards to enable the horses

to recover their ordinary tone of breathing, proved the good policy of

that law in France, which would have lowered this road at the top full

thirty yards, and have extended the hypotheneuse three hundred and

sixty yards under the level road at the summit. If the barbarity of

the practice of tight-reining the heads of wretched horses needed any

exaggeration, its superlative absurdity was evidenced in the horses

which I saw labouring up this hill. Nature, which does nothing in

vain, had a final purpose in giving motion to the vertebrae that join

the head of an animal to the trunk. The moving head is, in truth, one

of the extremities of that compound animal lever, whose fulcrum is the

centre of gravity. The latter point is disturbed in its inertia, and

acquires progressive motion by the action of the extremities of the

lever, which are themselves moved by volition, whose seat is in the

cranium; and the head, in consequence, is in all instances the first

mover. The propulsion or vibration of the head puts the entire

muscular system in motion, disturbs the balance on the centre of

gravity, and so effects the sublime purposes of loco-motion in all

animals. Yet it is this prime mover which the greater brutes, who

profess themselves _knowing_ in the economy of horses, so tie up that

it can in no way exert itself; and then they whip and spur the animal

to force it to make new and unnatural exertions! Let any man, himself

an erect animal, the powers of whose _primum mobile_ are divided

between his head and his hands, cause his head to be so tied back and

fastened behind as to force out his chest. In that position let him

try his comparative powers in walking or running with speed and

safety, or in carrying or drawing a load, and he will soon be

convinced of the cruelty of the practice of tying up the head of a

horse for no other purpose than that he may _look_ bold and noble!

#Wesley# and #Bakewell#, who rode more than any men of their time,

told me that they had suffered from frequent falls, till, by attending

to the evident designs of nature, they suffered the bridle of their

horses to festoon in a semicircle; and since then, in riding thousands

of miles, they had never endured even the anxiety of a stumble.

A pedestrian like the writer could not avoid feeling grateful to the

constructor of this piece of road, for its beautiful and spacious

causeway, which extends from the village of Wandsworth to Putney

Heath. It is in most parts seven feet wide, and it doubtless owes much

of its hardness, smoothness, and dryness, to its declining position,

which causes the water to run off, carrying with it in solution the

argillaceous earth, and leaving a basis of pure but well pulverized

silex. All who reside in the country, ladies particularly, know how to

estimate the worth of a broad, smooth, and dry walk, by the miseries

so generally suffered from those of a contrary description. For the

sake, therefore, of the example and the precept, they will candidly

excuse the eulogy extorted from a wandering pedestrian on meeting with

so agreeable an accommodation in a district, which, in many respects,

seems appropriated to the caprice of wealth. To supply the deficiency

of our Road Bills, one sweeping law ought to enact that all turnpike

roads should be provided with a raised causeway for foot passengers,

at least five feet wide, with cross posts at every furlong to prevent

equestrians from abusing it, and with convenient seats at the end of

every mile. It is too much to expect in these times to see realized

the writer's favourite plan of #MILE-STONE# and #MARINE COTTAGES#,

among a people who have passionately mortgaged all their estates, and

blindly encumbered all their industry, in paying the interest of money

raised to carry on wars made for the purpose of regulating the

independant governments of other countries!

The sides of this road and the openings of the distant landscape,

excite the admiration of the eye of taste by the architectural and

horticultural beauties of mansions which have sprung out of the

profits or artifices of trade. The multiplication of these dormitories

of avarice is considered by too many as the sign of public prosperity.

Fallacious, delusive, and mischievous notion! Was the world made for

the many, or the few? Can any one become rich from domestic trade

without making others poor; or can another bring wealth from foreign

countries except by adding to the circulating medium, and thereby

diminishing the value of money? In either case, what is the benefit to

the public or the community? Yet a benefit is rendered visible--a fine

house has arisen where there stood before but a wretched hovel--and a

paradise has been created out of a sheep pasture!--The benefit,

however, is merely to the individual! His pride and taste have been

gratified, and this gratification is called a benefit--yet with him

the benefit, if to him it really be so, begins and ends. But he

employs the neighbourhood, patronizes the arts, and encourages trade?

Granted,--but whence come his means? His wealth is not miraculous. It

has no exclusive or original properties. If he spend it at Putney, he

must draw it from other places, either from rents of land or houses,

or from interest of money, both the fruit of other's industry, and the

sign of corresponding privations in those who pay them!

For the sake of the elegant arts, which derive their encouragement

from the superfluities of the few, I am no enemy to any moderate

inequalities of means which enable men to become examples of the good

effects of industry; I merely object to the vulgar inference that

splendid mansions serve as signs of the increasing wealth of a

country. Better criterions would be the diffusion of plenty and

comfort--abundance of smoking farm-houses and well-stored

barns--#CHEAP PROVISIONS# and #DEAR LABOUR#--enough with moderate

exertions for home consumption, and something to exchange for the

luxuries of different climates. But it is no index of national

prosperity that elegant villas rise like sun-flowers, as gaudy as

unprofitable, while gaols are crammed with insolvents or needy

culprits, and poor-houses are filled with wretchedness! Poland

astonishes travellers by the splendour of its palaces; while in the

same prospect they are shocked at the huts of the people, exhibiting

the characteristics of English hog-sties! Let the increase of

splendour, therefore, be considered rather as a proof of the

derangement of social order, than as any sign of its triumph; and let

us not forget that, however much fine houses may benefit and gratify

the blameless and often meritorious occupants, they do not, as such,

serve as any signs of increased opulence in the community at large.

On arriving near the top of this road, I obtained a distinct view of a

phenomenon, which can be seen no where in the world but at this

distance from London. The Smoke of nearly a million of coal fires,

issuing from the two hundred thousand houses which compose London and

its vicinity, had been carried in a compact mass in the direction

which lay in a right angle from my station. Half a million of

chimneys, each vomiting a bushel of smoke per second, had been

disgorging themselves for at least six hours of the passing day, and

they now produced a sombre tinge, which filled an angle of the horizon

equal to 70 deg., or in bulk twenty-five miles long, by two miles high. As

this cloud goes forward it diverges like a fan, becoming constantly

rarer; hence it is seldom perceived at its extremity, though it has

been distinguished near Windsor. As the wind changes, it fills by

turns the whole country within twenty or thirty miles of London; and

over this area it deposits the volatilized products of three thousand

chaldrons, or nine millions of pounds of coals per day, producing

peculiar effects on the country. In London this smoke is found to

blight or destroy all vegetation; but, as the vicinity is highly

prolific, a smaller quantity of the same residua may be salutary, or

the effect may be counteracted by the extra supplies of manure which

are afforded by the metropolis. Other phenomena are produced by its

union with fogs, rendering them nearly opaque, and shutting out the

light of the sun; it blackens the mud of the streets by its deposit of

tar, while the unctuous mixture renders the foot-pavement slippery;

and it produces a solemn gloom whenever a sudden change of wind

returns over the town the volume that was previously on its passage

into the country. One of the improvements of this age, by which the

next is likely to benefit, has been its contrivances for more perfect

combustion; and for the condensation and sublimation of smoke. The

general adoption of a system of consuming the smoke would render the

London air as pure as that of the country, and diminish many of the

nuisances and inconveniences of a town residence. It must in a future

age be as difficult to believe that the Londoners could have resided

in the dense atmosphere of coal-smoke above described, as it is now

hard to conceive that our ancestors endured houses without the

contrivance of chimneys, from which consequently the smoke of fires

had no means of escape but by the open doors and windows, or through a

hole in the roof!

On the left I passed the entrance into the tastefully planned, but

very useless, park of the justly esteemed #Earl Spencer#. It contains

about seven hundred acres, disposed so as to please the eye of a

stranger, but which, like all _home-spots_, soon lose, from their

familiarity, the power of delighting a constant occupant. Why then

appropriate so fine a piece of ground to so barren a purpose? Does the

gratification of strangers, and the first week's pleasure to the

owner, counterpoise the consideration that the same spot would afford

the substantial ornament of ten farms, or subsistence to three hundred

and forty cottages, with two acres of garden and pasture? The superb

mansion of Lord Spencer, with all necessary garden-ground and

pasturage, would not less ornament the landscape, nor be less

ornamented by such an assemblage of humbler happiness. Though a

#Repton# might exhaust his magic art in arranging the still beauties

of a park, yet how certainly would they pall on the eye after the

daily survey of a month! Why then sacrifice to the pride of custom

that which in other dispositions might add so much to the sum of

happiness? Let the means of promoting the felicity of others

constitute part of our own; and, with the aid of the ornamental

gardener, both objects might be combined. He would so dispose of his

white-washed cottages, so groupe his farm-yards, and so cluster his

trees, that from every window of the feudal mansion the hitherto

solitary occupant might behold incessant variety, accompanied by the

pleasing associations growing out of prosperous industry and smiling

plenty. Does Claude ever revel in solitudes? Does Poussin fascinate in

exhibitions of mechanical nature? And when does Woollet enchant us but

in those rich landscapes in which the woods are filled with peeping

habitations, and scope given for the imagination by the curling smoke

of others rising behind the trees?

On entering Putney Heath, my attention was drawn towards an obelisk

which stands by the road-side, recording a wonder of the last age; and

the liberal attention of the public authorities to a discovery which

promised ulterior advantages to the community. Several recent Fires

had led ingenious men to consider of the means of preventing similar

catastrophes. One person improved water-engines, another suggested

floors of stucco, and others contrived means of escape; but David

Hartley, esq. a son of the illustrious writer who traced to their

sources the associations of Ideas, and then a member of parliament,

contrived to build a house which no ordinary application of ignited

combustibles could be made to consume.

This house, still standing at the distance of a hundred yards from the

obelisk, serves as a monument of the inventor's plans; but, like every

thing besides, it recently excited the avarice of speculation, and,

when I saw it, was filled with workmen, who where converting it into a

tasteful mansion, adding wings to it, throwing out verandas, and

destroying every vestige of its original purpose. One of the workmen

shewed me the chamber in which, in 1774, the King and Queen took their

breakfast; while, in the room beneath, fires were lighted on the

floor, and various inflammable materials were ignited, to prove that

the rooms above were fire-proof. Marks of these experiments were still

visible on the charred boards. In like manner there still remained

charred surfaces on the landings of the staircase, whereon fires had

been ineffectually lighted for the purpose of consuming them, though

the stairs and all the floorings were of ordinary deal! The fires in

the rooms had been so strong that parts of the joists in the floor

above were charred, though the boards which lay upon them were in no

degree affected.

The alterations making at the moment enabled me to comprehend the

whole of Mr. Hartley's system. Parts of the floors having been taken

up, it appeared that they were double, and that his contrivance

consisted in interposing between the two boards, sheets of laminated

iron or copper. This metallic lining served to render the floor

air-tight, and thereby to intercept the ascent of the heated air; so

that, although the inferior boards were actually charred, the less

inflammable material of metal prevented the process of combustion from

taking place in the superior boards. These sheets of iron or copper,

for I found both metals in different places, were not thicker than

tinfoil or stout paper; yet, when interposed between the double set of

boards, and, deprived of air, they effectually stopt the progress of

the fire.

The House of Commons voted 2500_l._ to Mr. Hartley to defray the

expences of this building; the sovereign considered it a popular act

to give him countenance; and a patriotic lord-mayor and the

corporation of London, to impress the public with deeper convictions

of its importance, witnessed the indestructible property of the

structure on the 110th anniversary of the commencement of the great

fire of London. Yet the invention sunk into obscurity, and few records

remain of it except the pompous obelisk and the wreck of this house.

It merits observation, that in modern-built Houses taste or accident

has effected sufficient security against fires without any special

preventives. Flame is only ungovernable when in its ascent it meets

with combustible materials. Heat, as the principle of expansion,

rarefies and volatilizes all bodies; and then, as the heavier give

place to the lighter, so bodies subject to its action ascend, and

carry up with them the principle, matter, or action of heat. A chief

object therefore of man's policy in economizing fire, in subduing it

to his use, and in governing its decomposing and destructive powers,

should be to prevent its finding fuel in the ascent. No connected

timbers ought therefore to join an inferior floor with a superior, so

that, if one floor were on fire, its feeble lateral combustion might

easily be extinguished with a mop and a pail of water, provided no

train of combustibles were extended to the floor above. Such is the

language of philosophy, and such the slight process of reason, by

attending to which the habitations of men may at all times be secured

against the calamity of fire. How absurd however was the construction

of our houses till within the last twenty or thirty years! Wooden

staircases, exposed wooden balusters, and wainscotted walls, coated

with paints composed of oil and turpentine, and put together more like

a train of combustibles, than the habitations of beings calling

themselves rational! The taste of modern architecture has, however,

corrected the evil; and stone staircases, iron balusters, plastered

walls, and lofty rooms, contribute to cut off the communication,

though a fire may have seized on a flooring, or on any articles of

furniture. This security might however be further increased by more

strictly regarding the principle; by cutting off all contact between

floor and floor, made by wooden pilasters, window-shutters, &c.; by

the more liberal introduction of iron; and by the occasional use of

Hartley's iron or copper sheets.

By analogous reasoning it is suggested to us, that, if those females

whose clothes have taken fire, and whose head, throat, breasts, and

arm-pits, are consequently exposed to the increasing intensity of an

ascending flame, were instantly to throw themselves into an horizontal

position, their vital parts would not only not be affected, but the

lateral flame would be so trifling as to be easily and safely

extinguished. What in human life can exceed in horror, the

circumstance of a woman in full health, often in the middle of her

friends and family, being roasted alive by combustibles fastened to

her person, from which it is impossible to escape till her most

sensitive parts have been reduced to a cinder! What crime ever

perpetrated by human turpitude could have warranted a more dreadful

fate! What demons, contriving mischief and torments, could have

invented a combination of miseries so terrible and heart-rending? The

decorations of beauty--the gratification of pride--even the humble

means of health and comfort, are thus rendered the unmerciful

instruments of the keenest sufferings, the most frightful sudden

deaths, and the most dismal domestic tragedies! Yet the entire evil

arises from the principle of the ascent of all heat; from the flame

meeting in that ascent with fresh fuel to feed on, by which its

intensity is progressively augmented; and then acting at its summit on

the head, throat, and sensitive vital parts of the agonized victim.

The remedy therefore is simply to lie down, when the roaring flame of

several feet high will be so reduced that it may be put out with the

hands, with the other parts of the garments, or by any extraneous

covering.

About a hundred yards from this fire-proof house, stands the Telegraph

which communicates with Chelsea, and forms part of the chain from the

Admiralty to Portsmouth and Plymouth. I learnt that there are twelve

stations between London and Portsmouth, and thirty-one between London

and Plymouth, of which eight are part of the Portsmouth line till they

separate in the New Forest. Another chain, extending from London to

Yarmouth, contains nineteen stations; and another from London to Deal

contains ten stations; making in the whole system sixty-four

telegraphs. The distances average about eight miles, yet some of them

are twelve or fourteen miles; and the lines are often increased by

circuits, for want of commanding heights. In the Yarmouth line

particularly, the chain makes a considerable detour to the northward.

After about twenty years' experience, they calculate on about two

hundred days on which signals can be transmitted throughout the day;

about sixty others on which they can pass only part of the day, or at

particular stations; and about one hundred days in which few of the

stations can see the others. The powers of the stations in this

respect are exceedingly various. The station in question is generally

rendered useless during easterly winds by the smoke of London, which

fills the valley of the Thames between this spot and Chelsea hospital;

or more commonly between the shorter distance of the Admiralty and

Chelsea. Dead flats are found to be universally unfavourable; and

generally stations are useless nearly in the proportion of the miles

of dead flat looked over. On the contrary, stations between hill and

hill, looking across a valley, or series of valleys, are mostly clear;

and water surfaces are found to produce fewer obscure days than land

in any situation. The period least favourable of the same day is an

hour or two before and after the sun's passage of the meridian,

particularly on dead levels, where the play of the sun's rays on the

rising exhalations renders distant vision exceedingly obscure. The

tranquillity of the morning and evening are ascertained to be the most

favourable hours for observation.

A message from London to Portsmouth is usually transmitted in about

fifteen minutes; but, by an experiment tried for the purpose, a single

signal has been transmitted to Plymouth and back again in three

minutes, which by the Telegraph route is at at least five hundred

miles. In this instance, however, notice had been given to make ready,

and every captain was at his post to receive and return the signals.

The progress was at the rate of one hundred and seventy miles in a

minute, or three miles per second, or three seconds at each station; a

rapidity truly wonderful! The number of signals produced by the

English telegraph is sixty-three--by which they represent the ten

digits, the letters of the alphabet, many generic words, and all the

numbers which can be expressed by sixty-three variations of the

digits. The signals are sufficiently various to express any three or

four words in twice as many changes of the shutters.

The observers at these telegraphs are not expected to keep their eye

constantly at the glass, but look only every five minutes for the

signal to make ready. The telescopes are Dolland's Achromatics, at

which one would wonder, if every thing done for governments were not

converted into a job. The intention should have been to enable the

observer to see the greatest number of hours; consequently the light

should be intercepted by the smallest quantity of glass. Dollond's

achromatics contain, however, six lenses, and possess no

recommendation but their enlarged field, and their freedom from

prismatic colours in that field; points of no consequence in looking

through a fixed glass at a fixed and circumscribed object. The field

of the Galilean telescope is quite large enough, and, having but two

lenses, one of which is a thin concave, it exhibits the object with

greater brightness, and therefore ought to have been preferred for

this purpose. It seems strange also, that, to ease the operator, it

has never been contrived to exhibit the fixed spectrum on the

principle of a portable camera, so that, without wearying the eye, the

changes of the distant telegraph might have been exhibited on a plain

surface, and seen with both eyes like the leaf of a book. The

application of optical instruments, between a fixed station and fixed

object, ought to have been made in an appropriate manner, and not

influenced by the practices which prevail in regard to moveable

telescopes for various objects.

I have long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes

would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country.

Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require

that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping

concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all

the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd's coffee-house; and commerce would

be essentially served, if, during 'Change-hours at London, Bristol,

Liverpool, Hull, and Glasgow, communications could be interchanged

relative to the state of markets, purchases, sales, and other

transactions of business. How convenient too would be such a rapid

intercourse between London and country bankers, in regard to balances,

advances, and money transactions; how desirable in law business

between London and country practitioners; and how important in cases

of bankruptcy or insolvency! In family concerns, notices of deaths,

births, accidents, progressive sickness, &c. it would often be deeply

interesting. The state of elections, the issues of lawsuits,

determinations of the legislature, questions for answers, and

numberless events of more or less importance, would occur sufficient

to keep telegraphs in constant requisition, and abundantly repay the

cost of maintaining them. A guinea might be paid per hundred miles,

for every five or six words, which, in matters of private concern,

might, by pre-concert, be transmitted in cypher. Instead of sixty-four

telegraphs, we might then require five hundred, and an establishment

costing 100,000_l._ per annum; yet five hundred messages and replies

per day, between different parts of the kingdom, taken at 2_l._ each,

would in two hundred and fifty days produce 250,000_l._ or a net

revenue of 150,000_l._ But to achieve so vast a purpose, and to confer

on men a species of ubiquity, even if 50,000_l._ per annum were lost

to the government, would it not be worth the sacrifice, thus to give

to the people of England an advantage not possessed, and never likely

to be possessed, by any other people on earth? What a triumph of

civilization would be afforded by such an extension of the telegraphic

system! The combinations of the #TELESCOPE# began what those of the

#TELEGRAPH# would complete. United, they would produce a kind of

_finite ubiquity_, rendering the intercourse of an industrious

community independent of time and distance, and binding the whole in

ties of self-interest, by means which could be achieved only in a high

state of civilization through fortunate combinations of human art.

As I looked around me from this eminence, a multitude of ideas,

sympathies, and affections, vibrated within me, which it would be

impossible or tedious to analyse. The organ of the Eye was here played

upon like that of the Ear in a musical concert. Nor was it the sense

alone which was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and

tone found a separate concord or discord, in innumerable associations

and reminiscences. It was, in truth, a chorus to the eye, unattended

by the noise and distraction produced by the laboured compositions of

#Handel#; while it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an

effect like one of the tender symphonies of #Haydn#. It was a

Panorama, better adapted, however, to a poet than a painter; for it

had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any

eminences which raise the landscape above an angle of six or eight

degrees; yet, to a poet, how rich it was in associations--how endless

in pictures for the imagination!

The north and north-east were still obscured by the dingy, irregular,

and dense Smoke issuing from the volcano of the Metropolis; and, in

looking upon it, how difficult it was to avoid tracing the now mingled

masses back to their several sources, considering the happiness or

misery which they reflected from their respective fire-sides, and

gaging the aspirations of hope, or the sighs of wretchedness, which a

fertile imagination might conceive to be combined with this social

atmosphere! Convenient alike to every condition of humanity, it might

be considered as flowing at once from the dungeons of despairing

convicts, the cellars and garrets of squalid poverty, the busy haunts

of avarice, the waste of luxury, and the wantonness of wealth.

Straight before me, the metropolis, like a devouring monster,

exhibited its equivocal and meretricious beauties, its extensive

manufactories, its a_spir_ing churches and towers, and other

innumerable edifices. #Westminster Abbey# stood prominent, at once

reviving the recollection of its superstitious origin, and exciting

deep veneration as the depository of the relics of so much renown.

What topics for commentary, if they had not been recently exhausted in

the classical stanzas of a #Maurice#! St. #Paul's#, the monument of

Wren, was but just visible through the haze, though the man at the

Telegraph asserted, that he could sometimes tell the hour by its dial

without the aid of a telescope! How characteristic is this structure

become of the British metropolis, and how flat the mass of common

spires and smoky chimneys would now seem without it! The Monument,

recording the delusions of faction, and the Tower, with all its gloomy

associations, were visible in the reach of the river. Of Churches

there appeared a monotonous groupe; while the houses presented a dingy

and misshapen mass, as uninteresting at the distance of seven miles as

an ant-hill at the distance of seven feet. Indeed, any wretch capable

of setting his foot upon an ant-hill, and of destroying it, because it

made no palpable appeals to his sympathy, might at this distance, by

parity of feeling, let fall a mill-stone on this great city, and

extinguish in an instant the hopes and cares of its inhabitants. On

this spot then I behold an assemblage of the greatest wonders of man's

creation, at a focal distance, which reduces them to the measure of an

#ANT-HILL#; and still further off they would be diminished even to a

#POINT#! Such is the estimate of the eye, nor is it heightened by that

of the ear; for I was assured that during tranquil nights,

particularly by listening near the ground, the confused hum of the

vast British metropolis could here be compared only to the buz of a

#BEE-HIVE#, or the sound of a #CONCH#! What a lesson do these

considerations afford to the pride of man, whose egotism represents

him to himself as the most important object of the infinite creation;

for whose use, he asserts, all things were made, and to whom all

things are subservient! It is, however, natural that the nearest

object should fill the largest angle, whether viewed by the mind or

the eye; though it is the business of wisdom and philosophy to correct

such illusions of our intellectual or sensitive powers.

Of the moral condition, and feelings, concentrated within a spot thus

embraced by a glance of the eye, how impossible to form an estimate!

Supposing 900,000 human beings are thus huddled together, in 150,000

houses, we may conclude, that 100,000 will always be lying on the bed

of sickness, and that 30,000 are constantly afflicted by mortal

diseases, eighty of whom expire every day, or three in every hour! Of

the 150,000 house-keepers, above 50,000 are racked by poverty, or by

the dread of its approach; other 50,000 maintain a precarious

independence; while the remaining 50,000 enjoy comfort and happiness,

chequered, however, by care and the conflict of human passions. The

greater part of the first class are either already plunged, or

predisposed to plunge, into vices and crimes unknown except in such a

city; those of the second class maintain a virtuous struggle, but more

frequently sink into the lower, than rise into the higher class;

while, among the third class, there are found all degrees of virtue

and worth, although mixed with an envious spirit of rivalry, and an

indulgence in expense and luxury that greatly reduce the number of

truly happy families.

On the north, north-west, and east, I still beheld the signs of this

overgrown metropolis in villages, which branch, like luxuriant shoots,

on every side. And it was only on the south and south-west, in the

swelling downs and in the charms of Box-hill, Leith-hill, and Dorking,

that I could discover the unsophisticated beauties of nature, which

seemed to mock the toils of man, in the contrast they afforded to the

scene in the opposite direction. Yet men, who never receive

instruction except through their own experience, flock in tens of

thousands to share in the lottery presented to their ambition in great

cities, where thousands perish while in pursuit of the prize, where

other thousands obtain nothing but blanks and disappointments, and

whence the tens who achieve their object, gladly escape to enjoy their

wealth, free from the disturbance of city passions, amid the placid

and unchangeable beauties of nature.

In looking around me from the windows of Hartley's Fire-house, it was

impossible to avoid reflecting on the wretchedness of Want existing in

the sooty metropolis, and the waste of Means in the uncultivated

country immediately around me. I had just been sympathizing with the

forlorn inhabitants of the workhouse at Wandsworth, at the distance of

only a mile; and half a dozen other such receptacles of misery invited

commiseration within equal distances, in other directions; yet a

radius of a few hundred yards round this spot would have included as

much unappropriated and useless land as might have sufficed to confer

independence and plenty on their hopeless inmates! In the

north-eastern direction, within a distance of ten miles, at least

twenty thousand families might be discovered pining in squalid misery;

though here I found myself in an unpeopled and uncultivated tract,

nearly four miles square, and containing above fifteen thousand acres

of good soil, capable of affording independent subsistence to half as

many families!

I could not help exclaiming against the perversity of reason--the

indifference of power--the complication of folly--and the ascendancy

of turpitude, which, separately or conjointly, continue to produce

circumstances so cruel and preposterous! Let it be recorded, said I,

to the eternal disgrace of all modern statesmen, of many hundreds of

ambitious legislators, and of our scientific economists, that in this

luxuriant county of Surrey, there still exist, without productive

cultivation, no less than 25,000 acres of open commons; 30,000 acres

of useless parks, 48,000 acres of heaths, and 30,000 acres of chalk

hills, serving but to subsist a few herds of deer and cattle, and to

grow some unproductive trees, though at the very instant 10,000

families in the same county are dependent on the bounty of their

respective parishes! Is this, said I, the vaunted age of reason? Are

these the genuine fruits of civilization? Do such circumstances

indicate the ascendency of benevolence? Do they not rather demonstrate

that the principle of doing to others as we would be done unto, has

little influence on the practices of our Statesmen and Legislators?

I may be told, that the principle of enclosing waste lands has long

been recognised in the prevailing system of economy, and that the

Legislature is incessantly active in passing Bills for new enclosures.

But, I ask, for whom, and for whose benefit, are these bills passed?

Do they provide for the poor? Do they help those who require help? Do

they, by augmenting the supply, make provisions cheaper? Do they

increase the number of independent fire-sides?--Rather, do they not

wantonly add to the means of monopolists? Do they not give where

nothing is wanted, however much may be coveted? Do they not add to the

number of vassals, and diminish the number of freemen? Do they not

abridge the scanty means of the poor in the free use of their

bare-cropt commons? And do they not transfer those means to others who

do not want them, and who, without the aid of new laws could never

have enjoyed them?

Yet does reason afford no alternative? Is benevolence forced to prefer

barren heaths from which cottagers may derive scanty meals, merely

because those who have the power fail to reconcile the rights (C)f

others who want, with the benefit of the whole community? Is our

wisdom confined in so narrow a circle? Has nature provided abundance,

and do we create insuperable bars to its enjoyment? Is such the line

of demarcation between the selfish ordinances of man, and the wise

dispensations of Providence?

Let me recommend our legislators for once to put their greedy,

covetous, and inordinate Selves out of consideration. The poor may not

be qualified to plead their rights, except by acts of rioting; but let

them find clamorous advocates in the consciences of some of their

law-makers. In spite, then, of the fees of parliament, I exhort the

Legislature to pass a #GENERAL ENCLOSURE BILL#, not such a one,

however, as would be recommended by the illustrious Board of

Agriculture, but founded on such principles as might appropriately

confer on it the title of #A BILL FOR THE EXTINCTION OF WANT#!

In discussing and enacting its provisions, let it be borne in mind,

that the surface of the earth, like the atmosphere in which we

breathe, and the light in which we see, is the natural and common

patrimony of man. Let it be considered, that by nature we are tillers

of the soil, and that all the artifices of society, and the

employments of towns, are good and desirable in the degree only in

which they promote the comforts of the country. Let it be felt, that

the 10,000 destitute families in this county of Surrey, and the half

million in England and Wales, are so, merely because servitude or

manufactures have failed to sustain them; and that they require, in

consequence, the free use of the means presented by nature for their

subsistence. In fine, let it be considered, that the unappropriated

wastes are a national stock, fortunately in reserve as a provision for

the increasing numbers of destitute; and that no more is required of

the law than to arrange and economize the distribution, consistently

with the wants of some, and the rights of all.

I indulged myself in a pleasing reverie on this subject, while I

rambled from the spot where it originated towards an adjacent house,

in which died the late Mr. #Pitt#, a man who had the opportunity of

executing that which I have the power only to speculate upon, and who,

though resident in this tract, was blind to its capabilities. Ah!

thought I, perhaps in a less selfish age, this very heath, and all the

adjoining heaths, waste tracts, and commons, from Bushy to Wimbledon,

and from Barnes to Kingston, may be covered with cottages, each

surrounded by its two or three acres of productive garden, orchard,

and paddock! The healthful and happy inhabitants, emerged from the

workhouses, the gaols, the cellars, the stews, the St. Giles's, the

loathsome courts, alleys, and lanes of the metropolis, would have

reason to return thanksgivings to the wise Legislature, who had thus

restored them to the condition of men, and enabled them to exhibit the

moral effects of the change. Such, in the opinion of the writer, would

be a radical cure for several of the complicated and deep-rooted

diseases which now afflict British society; at least, it is a remedy

without cost or sacrifice; and, as such, an homage due from affluence

and power to indigence and misfortune. Such a plan would draw from the

over-peopled towns, that destitute portion of the population, whose

means of living have been reduced or superseded by shoals of

adventurers from the country. It would render workhouses useless,

except for the vicious or incorrigibly idle; would diminish the

poor-rates, and deprive the inmates of gaols of the powerful excuse

afforded to crime by the hopeless and galling condition of poverty.

The house in which that darling of Fame, the late Mr. #Pitt#, lived a

few years, and terminated his career, is a modest and irregularly-built

mansion, surrounded by a few acres of pleasure-ground, and situated

about a quarter of a mile from the paling of Richmond Park. My

curiosity led me to visit the chamber in which this minister died, to

indulge in the vivid associations produced by the contemplation of

remarkable localities. I seated myself in a chair near the spot where

stood the couch on which he took his eternal slumber. I fancied, at

the instant, that I still saw the severe visage and gaunt figure of

the minister standing between the Treasury-bench and the table of the

House of Commons, turning around to his admiring partisans, and

filling the ear of his auditory with the deep full tones of a voice

that bespoke a colossal stature. Certain phrases which he used to

parrot still vibrated on my brain: "Bonaparte, the child and champion

of Jacobinism,"--"the preservation of social order in Europe,"--"the

destruction of whatever is dear to our feelings as Englishmen,"--"the

security of our religion, liberties, and property,"--"indemnity for

the past and security for the future," with which he used to bewilder

or terrify the plain country gentlemen, or the youths from Eton,

Oxford, or Cambridge, who constitute a majority of that House. His

success in exciting the passions of such senators in favour of discord

and war, his lavish expenditure of the public money in corrupting

others, and his insincerity in whatever he professed for the public

benefit, rendered him through life the subject of my aversion: but, in

this chamber, reduced to the level of ordinary men, and sinking under

the common infirmities of humanity, his person, character, and

premature decease became objects of interesting sympathy. Perhaps he

did what he thought best; or, rather, committed the least possible

evil amidst the contrariety of interests and passions in which he and

all public men are placed. This, however, is but a poor apology for

one who lent his powerful talents to wage wars that involved the

happiness of millions, who became a willing firebrand among nations,

and who, as a tool or a principal, was foremost in every work of

contemporary mischief. The love of office, and a passion for public

speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To

gratify the former, he became the instrument of others, and thence the

sophistry of his eloquence and the insincerity of his character;

while, in the proud display of his acknowledged powers as an orator,

he was stimulated not less by vanity, than by the virtuous rivalry of

Fox. As a financier, he played the part of a nobleman who, having

estates, worth 20,000_l._ per annum, mortgages them to enable him to

spend 100,000_l._ and then plumes himself on his power, with the same

freeholds, to make a greater figure than his predecessors. But, except

for the lesson which he afforded to nations never to trust their

fortunes in the hands of inexperienced statesmen, why do I gravely

discuss the measures and errors of one who did not live long enough to

prove his genuine character? No precocity of talents, no mechanical

splendour of eloquence, can stand in the place of judgment founded on

Experience. At forty-six, Pitt would have begun, like all other men of

the same age, to correct the errors of his past life; but, being then

cut off--#HIS STORY IS INCOMPLETE#! He had within him the elements of

a great man, yet they were called into action before their powers were

adjusted and matured; and the world suffered by experiments made in

teaching himself, instead of profiting by the union of his experience

with his intellectual energies. He was an actor on the stage, while he

ought to have been in the closet studying his part; his errors,

therefore, merit pity, and those alone are to be blamed for them who

made a dishonest use of his precocious powers.

I learnt in the immediate vicinity, that he was much respected, and

was a kind master to his domestics. A person, who a little before his

death was in this room, told that it was heated to a very high and

oppressive temperature; and that the deep voice of the dying minister,

as he asked his valet a question, startled this visitor, who had been

unused to it. He died calmly, and apparently under none of those

political perturbations which, at the period, were mistakenly ascribed

to his last moments. The Bishop of Lincoln, who acted the part of his

friend and confessor, published an interesting account of his decease,

the accuracy of which has never been questioned.

It being my intention, on leaving this spot, to descend the hill to

Barnes-Elms, and to proceed by that once classical resort through

Barnes and Mortlake to Kew, I left Mr. Pitt's house on the right, and

crossed the common to the retired village of Roehampton.

Opposite to me were the boundaries of Richmond Park; and, little more

than half a mile from the house of Pitt, in one of the most

picturesque situations of that beautiful demesne, stands the elegant

mansion which was presented, it is said, to the then favourite

minister, Mr. #Addington#. Thus it appears, that two succeeding

ministers of England, in an age reputed enlightened, lived in a

district possessing the described capabilities for removing the

canker-worm of poverty, yet neither of them displayed sufficient

energy or wisdom to apply the remedy to the disease. I am not,

however, arrogant enough to adduce my plans as tests of the patriotism

of statesmen; but I venture to appeal from the judgment of this age to

that of the next, whether any minister could deserve the reputation of

sagacity, who, in an over-peopled country, in which large portions of

the inhabitants of the towns were destitute of subsistence, lived

themselves in the midst of waste tracts capable of feeding the whole,

and yet took no measures nor made a single effort to apply the waste

to their wants. If the same facts were related of a ruler in any

foreign country, or in any remote age, what would be the inference of

a modern English reader in regard to his genuine benevolence, wisdom,

or patriotism?

I am desirous of advancing no opinions which can be questioned, yet I

cannot refrain from mentioning, in connexion with this wooded horizon,

my surprise that peculiar species of trees have not yet formed a line

of distinction between inhabited and civilized, and uninhabited and

barbarous countries. Does not the principle which converts a heath

into pasturage and corn-fields, or a collection of furze-bushes or

brambles into a fruit-garden, demand that all unproductive trees

should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other

trees which afford food to the inhabitants? Are there not desolate

countries enough in which to grow trees for the mere purposes of

timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none

but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees

as useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which now encumber

our soil? It is true, that, when wood constituted the fuel of the

country, the growth of lumber-tree was essential to the comforts of

the inhabitants; but that is no longer our condition. I conceive,

therefore, that a wise and provident government, which, above all

other considerations, should endeavour to feed the people at the least

cost and labour, ought to allow no lumber-trees to encumber the soil

until fruit-trees were planted sufficient to supply the inhabitants

with as much fruit as their wants or luxuries might require. The

primary object of all public economy should be to saturate, a

civilized country with food. Why should not pear and walnut-trees

supply the place of oaks, elms, and ash; the apple, plum, cherry,

damson, and mulberry, that of the birch, yew, and all pollards? It

would be difficult, I conceive, to adduce a reason to the contrary;

and none which could weigh against the incalculable advantages of an

abundant supply of wholesome provisions in this cheap form. Nor does

my plan terminate with the ornaments of forests, parks, and

hedge-rows; but I ask, why many hedges themselves might not, in like

manner, consist of gooseberry and currant trees in their most

luxuriant varieties, intermingled with raspberries, nuts, filberts,

bullaces, &c.? Not to give this useful and productive face to a

country, appears to me to be shutting our eyes to the light; to prefer

the useless to the useful; to be so inconsistent as to expect plenty

where we take no means to create it; or, in other words; to sow tares

and desire to gather wheat, or expect grapes where we have planted

only thorns. Let us, even in this point, condescend to borrow a lesson

from an illustrious, though oft despised, neighbour, who, it appears

by the evidence of all travellers, has taken care that the roads and

hedges of France should be covered with productive fruit trees. If

such also were the condition of Britain, how insignificant would

become the anxious questions about a Corn Bill, or the price of any

single article of food. We should then partake of the ample stores

provided, and perhaps contemplated, by our forefathers, when they

rendered indigenous the fruit-trees of warmer climates; and, feeling

less solicitude in regard to the gross wants of animal subsistence, we

should be enabled to employ our faculties more generally in improving

our moral and social condition. We should thus extend the principle,

and reduce the general purpose of all productive cultivation to an

analogous economy, enjoying the fullest triumph which our climate

would admit, of the fortunate combinations of human art over the

inaptitude and primitive barbarity of nature.

The sequestered village of Roehampton consists of about thirty or

forty small houses, in contact; and of a dozen monastic mansions,

inhabited by noblemen and well-accredited traders. Each of the latter

being surrounded by twenty or thirty acres of garden and

pleasure-grounds, and bounded by high brick walls, which in every

direction line the roads, Roehampton presents to a stranger a most

cheerless aspect. As the plantations are old, the full-grown oaks,

elms, and chesnuts, within the walls, add to the gloom, and call to

mind those ages of mental paralysis when Druids and Monks gave effect

to their impostures by similar arrangements.

They serve to prove how slavishly men are the creatures of imitation;

how seldom, in how few things, and by what small gradations genius

gives a novel direction to their practices! When this island was

overrun with beasts of prey, in the shape of quadrupeds, and lawless

bipeds, the baron and the man of wealth found it necessary to shut

themselves within castellated mansions and circumvallated domains; and

hence the vulgar association between such establishments and a

presumed high rank in their occupiers. The state of the country and of

modern society renders them no longer essential to security; yet they

are maintained as the effect of a false association; and half the

stimulus of avarice would be lost without the anticipated grandeur of

a monastic establishment, buried in the centre of a wood, and cut off

from the cheerful world, and the healthful circulation of the

atmosphere, by damp and mouldering walls! It does not signify how

apparently dull, how unappropriate to fixed habits, how unvarying the

inanimate scene, how much the inmates may be visited by low fevers,

agues, rheumatisms, and pulmonary affections; the manor-house, or the

ancient monastery, which has for ages been the residence of nobility,

becomes, in consequence, the meed of wealth, and the goal of vulgar

hope, to be patiently endured, however little it may be enjoyed! Pride

will feed upon the possession; and, if that master-passion be

gratified, minor inconveniences will have little weight in making the

election.

I confess it--and I make the declaration in the humble form of a

confession, in the hope that those who think I have sinned, will be

led to forgive my error--that I could not help thinking that the

inhabitants of the humble cottages by the way-side, whose doors stood

wide open, whose children were intermingling and playing before them,

whose society is restricted by no formal reserve, whose means depend

on their industry, #WHO HAVE NOT LEISURE TO BE UNHAPPY#, who cannot

afford to stimulate their appetites so as to enfeeble themselves by

the languor of repletion, or disease themselves by the corruptions of

plethora, and who would have no wants if the bounties of nature were

not cruelly intercepted--I could not help feeling, that such

unsophisticated beings experience less care, less self-oppression,

less disease, more gaiety of heart, more grateful sympathy, and more

even of the sense of well-being, than the artificial and constrained

personages who, however amiable, and however free from the common

vices of rank and wealth, inhabit the adjacent mansions, with all

their decorations of art, and all their luxuries of hot-houses,

graperies, pineries, ice-houses, temples, grottoes, hermitages, and

other fancies, with which power hopes to cheat itself into enjoyment,

as an apology for its insatiable monopolies.

The inefficacy of wealth to raise man above his cares and mortal

feelings has, however, of late years been so honestly conceded, that

the rich have begun, at least in external appearance, to assume the

condition of the poor. Hence, few of those mansions are built, or even

restored, on whose gloomy character I have been remarking; and our

proudest nobility now condescend to inhabit the cheerful, though

humble, Cottage. They find, or by their practices they seem to prove

they have found, that the nearest approach to happiness, is the

nearest approach to the humility of poverty! The thatched roof--the

tiny flower-garden--the modest wicket--the honey-suckle bower--the

cleanly dairy--the poultry yard--the dove-cote--the piggery--and the

rabbit-pen,--comprehended under the names of the _Ferme Ornee_, or

_Cottage Ornee_, now constitute the favourite establishments of those

who found so few comforts in marble porticoes, in walls hung with the

works of the Gobelins or the Italian school, in retinues of servants,

and extensive parks. What a concession of pride--what a homage

rendered to nature--what a consolation to discontented poverty--what a

warning to inconsiderate ambition!

Yet our taste ought to be governed by our reason and our wants. Large

families require large houses; it is therefore the business of good

taste to combine capacity with cheerfulness. Nothing, at the same

time, within the sphere of human enjoyment, equals the delight

afforded by well-planned garden-grounds; and it is consequently the

duty of the artist to unite these with the cheerful family mansion.

Here, then, begin the obtrusion, and the alledged necessity of those

boundary walls, against which I have been protesting. No such

thing--such walls, thanks to the genius and good taste of a #Pilton#,

are become unnecessary. We may now, without walls, have secure

boundaries--we may keep out trespassers without excluding the fresh

air--and we may circumscribe our limits without diminishing our

external prospects. In that case, how different in appearance would be

this village of Roehampton--how much more tolerable to its

residents--how far more healthy--and how enchanting to strangers,--if,

instead of monotonous brick-walls, the boundaries were formed by the

magical fences of #Pilton#, allowing the free passage of the solar

rays and the vital air, reciprocating delightful prospects from

plantation to plantation, and adding the essential charms of variety

to the pleasures of possession.

The first house in the lane is the classical seat of the Earl of

Besborough, enriched with specimens of ancient statuary from Italy and

Greece, and with exquisite pictures of the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch

schools. Adjoining, is the highly finished residence of the

Marchioness of Downshire; and farther on, are the superb mansions of

Mr. Gosling, a banker; and of Mr. Dyer. In the lane leading to

Richmond Park, across which there is a delightful drive to the

Star-and-Garter, is the charming residence of Mr. Temple; and, farther

north, is the splendid mansion of the late Mr. Benjamin Goldsmid,

since become the property of Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough.

Various associations in regard to its first and its present

proprietor, drew my attention to the site last mentioned. I had not

leisure to examine its interior, but the exterior is in the best style

of such edifices. The house looks to the north-west, and, being the

last in the descent of the hill, commands an uninterrupted prospect

over the country towards Harrow and Elstree. The front consists of a

superb portico of white marble columns, in the Corinthian order; but

in other respects the house is not very striking, and its dimensions

are inconsiderable. The lawn falls pleasingly towards a piece of

water, and on its eastern side is a fascinating drive of half-a-mile,

terminated by a pair of cast-iron gates of singular beauty. But the

object which more particularly called to mind the unbounded wealth of

its former proprietor, is a subterraneous way to the kitchen-garden

and lawns on the opposite side the road. It is finished with gates

resembling those of a fortified castle, with recesses and various

ornaments, all of Portland-stone; and on the near side is a spacious

hermitage.

In this house the late Mr. B. Goldsmid resided, while he balanced the

finances of the British empire, and raised for the Pitt Administration

those vast sums which enabled it to retard the progress of liberal

opinions during the quarter of a century! After the instance of a

Goldsmid, the reputed wealth of a Croesus sinks into insignificance.

The Jew broker, year after year, raised for the British government

sums of twenty and thirty millions, while the Lydian monarch, with all

his boasted treasures, would have been unable to make good even the

first instalment! Such, however, is the talisman of credit in a

commercial and banking country! In addition to their own funds, and to

the funds permanently confided to their prudence from foreign

correspondents, amounting to three or four millions, the brothers,

Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid, commanded for many years, from day to

day, the floating balances of the principal London bankers; and they

were among bankers, what bankers are among private traders. It was

their daily practice to visit most of the bankers' counting-houses,

and address them briefly--"Will you borrow or lend fifty thousand

to-day?"--According to the answer, the sum required was deposited on

the spot, or carried away--no memorandum passed, and a simple entry in

their respective books served merely to record the hour when the sum

was to be repaid, with its interest. With such credit, and such ready

means, it is not to be wondered that the Goldsmids commanded the

wealth of the world; nor that their services were courted by an

administration which never suffered its projects to languish while

these brokers could raise money on exchequer-bills! A paper

circulation is, however, a vortex, out of which neither individuals

nor governments ever escaped without calamity, and from whose fatal

effects the prudence and integrity of these worthy men served as no

adequate protection. A whisper that they had omitted to repay a

banker's loan at the very hour agreed, first shook their credit; while

some changes in the financial arrangements of government, and the

malignity of some envious persons, (for rivals they could have none,)

led to a fatal catastrophe in regard to one brother in this house;

afterwards to a similar tragedy in regard to the other, at Merton; and

finally to the breaking-up of their vast establishment. Whether their

exertions were beneficial to the country may be doubted; this,

however, is certain, that the Goldsmids were men of a princely spirit,

who possessed a command of wealth, during the twelve or fifteen years

of their career, beyond any example in the domestic history of

nations. In this house Benjamin repeatedly gave banquets, worthy of

his means, to the chief branches of the royal family, and most of the

nobility and gentry of the realm: and it deserves to be mentioned, to

his honour, that he was the constant patron of literature and of

distressed men of letters. Abraham, in like manner, gave royal

entertainments, and was the unshaken friend of Lord Nelson, and of the

interesting widow of Sir William Hamilton, whose premature death in a

state of poverty, was a consequence of the misfortunes of her generous

protector.

Adjoining the splendid iron gates which lead into these grounds,

stands a house memorable for the violent effects of a thunder storm.

The records of the year 1780 probably describe the details of these

phenomena; but, happening to meet, on the premises, with a man who had

witnessed the whole, I collected from him the following

particulars:--He related, that, after a pleasant day in September, a

sudden storm of thunder and lightning, accompanied by rain and wind,

took place, which lasted not more than ten or fifteen minutes. That,

believing "the world at an end, his master and family went to

prayers;" but, on the noise abating, they found that their extensive

barn, with various out-buildings, had been entirely carried away.

Parts of them were found, on the following morning, on Barnes Common,

at the distance of a mile, while other parts were scattered around the

fields. He related also, that two horses which were feeding in a shed,

were driven, with their manger, into the ditch on the opposite side of

the lane; and that a loaded cart was torn from the shafts and wheels,

and wafted into an adjoining field. A crop of turnips were mowed down

as with a scythe, and a double row of twenty or thirty full-grown

elms, which stood on the sides of the lane, were torn up by the roots.

One man was killed in the barn, and six others were wounded, or so

severely shocked as to require relief in an hospital.

Having never before met with a case of such total destruction from the

action of electricity, I considered these facts as too interesting to

be lost. It may be worth while to add, in elucidation, that the

mischief was doubtless occasioned by an ascending ball; or rather, as

the action extended over a surface of three or four acres, by a

succession of ascending balls.[3] The conducting substances were dry

or imperfect, and thence the violence of the explosions. This is

neither the time nor place to speak of the erroneous views still

entertained of a power which is only known to us by experiments made

within a non-conducting atmosphere, whose antagonist properties, or

peculiar relations to it, afford results which are mistakenly ascribed

to the power itself, as properties _per se_. Are we warranted in

calling in an independent agent to account for phenomena which are

governed in their appearances by every different _surface_ in

connexion with which they are exhibited, and which can be produced

only in certain classes of _surfaces_ in fixed relations to other

_surfaces_? Can the cause of phenomena, of which we have no knowledge

but in the antagonist relations of _surfaces_ called conducting and

non-conducting, be philosophically considered but as _the mere effect_

of those nicely-adjusted relations? Can that power be said to be

distinct from the inherent properties of various matter, which can

never be exhibited except in contrast, as _plus_ on one surface, and

_minus_ in another, or, if positive on A. necessarily and

simultaneously negative on B.? Are the phenomena called #LIGHT#,

#HEAT#, #GRAVITATION#, #COHESION#, #ELECTRICITY#, #GALVANISM#, and

#MAGNETISM#, produced by different powers of nature, or by the action

of one power on different bodies, or by the action of different bodies

on one active power? Do not the phenomena appear constantly to

accompany the same bodies, and are they not therefore occasioned by

the qualities of the bodies? May not the different qualities of bodies

be sufficient to explain the phenomena on the hypothesis of one active

power? Is it necessary that the phenomena should be confined to

particular bodies, if there are as many active fluids as phenomena? Is

not the exact limitation of each set of phenomena to particular bodies

conclusive evidence that the phenomena grow out of some antagonist

qualities of those bodies? In fine, do not the varying powers

calculated to produce the phenomena, consist of the varying qualities

of bodies, and the varying circumstances in which they are placed in

regard to each other; and may not the active power be fixed and always

the same? Does not this conclusion best accord with the simplicity of

nature? Is it probable that two active powers could be co-existent?

May not the elasticity of a universal medium account for most of the

intricate phenomena of bodies? May not motion grow out of the vacuum

between the atoms of that universal medium? May there not be set

within set, each necessary to the motion of the other, till we

approximate a plenum? May not certain varieties of these involved

series of atoms constitute the several media which produce the several

phenomena of matter?

[3] I use the word _ball_, because I consider the power

called electric, which shews itself between four containing

and contained surfaces, as a physical point bearing

geometrical relations to those surfaces; which point, by the

rapidity of its motion to restore some disturbed

equilibrium, generates a continuous fire, and deceives the

eye by the semblance of a stream.

Prudence forbids me to extend these queries on subjects which will

ever interest the speculative part of mankind, but on which it will be

difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at certain and indubitable

conclusions: as, however, I have been led into this digression by

existing errors relative to Electricity, I may remark, in conclusion,

that the phenomena produced by this power arise from the action of

opposing surfaces through intervening media; that the excitement

impels the surfaces towards each other; and that all the phenomena

grow out of the motive quality of intervening bodies, whose surfaces

are alternately attracted by the comprehending excited surfaces, or

out of the want of perfect smoothness in the opposing or excited

surfaces. Electricity is in fact the phenomena of surfaces, growing

out of the sole property of their mutual mechanical attractions, which

attractions are governed by some necessary relations of the surfaces

of the intervening media to the surfaces of the opposing conductors.

At any rate, it is irrational to suppose that the #CAUSE# of #CAUSES#

operates in the production of natural phenomena by the aid of such

complicated machinery, and such involved powers, as men have forced

into nature, for the purpose of accounting for affections on their

senses, or effects of matter on matter; in the measure of which they

have no standard but their sensitive powers and the undiscovered

relations of the agent and patient. Would it not, on the contrary, be

more consistent with the proper views of philosophy to dismiss all

occult powers, which are so many signs of our ignorance or

superstition, and to search for the #SECONDARY CAUSES# of all

phenomena, as well between the smallest as the largest masses, in the

undeviating laws of #ARITHMETIC#, #GEOMETRY#, and #MECHANICS#; whose

simplicity, sublimity, perfection, and immutability, accord with our

deductions in regard to the attributes of an #OMNISCIENT ARCHITECT#

and #OMNIPOTENT DIRECTOR# of the universe?

This, however, is certain, that such catastrophes as those described

could never occur, if the imperfect conductors of which our buildings

are generally composed, were encompassed by more perfect conductors.

The ridge of the roof of every house should be of metal; and, if that

metallic ridge were connected with the leaden water-pipes, and by them

continued into the ground, all buildings would be protected. A

descending or an ascending ball would then find a conduit, by which to

pass, or freely propagate its powers, without the violent effects that

accompany its transition through air and other non-conductors. The

rods of Franklin are toys, which were ingeniously contrived in the

infancy of this branch of science, but they ought now to be forgotten.

Before I dismiss this interesting topic, I would ask whether the

transmission of the power called _electric_, to a particular spot,

does not always afford evidence, that at that spot there exists,

beneath the surface of the earth, either a vein of metallic ore, a

spring, or some other competent conductor, which the power called

_electric_ is seeking to reach, when the antagonist non-conductors

exhibit their destructive phenomena? Does not the power or vacuum

created by the change of volume in the aqueous vapour of the cloud,

regard only the perfect conductors prepared to receive it, however

deeply they may be concealed beneath the surface of the non-conducting

or imperfectly-conducting soil and vegetable surface? If it were not

so, would not the stroke always affect the higher objects, or prefer

palpable conductors in moderately elevated sites? In this instance 200

degrees of the horizon were more elevated than the place attacked,

while the destruction proves that the superficies invited no

accumulation here. Must not then the predisposing and operative cause

have existed beneath the surface; and, hence, may not the selection of

lightning, in most cases where it prefers lower sites, afford evidence

of the existence of metallic strata, of springs, or other conducting

surfaces, the discovery of which, by such natural test, may sometimes

be important to the owner of the soil?

The bottom of Roehampton-lane joins the road which leads from Putney

and Wandsworth to Richmond. Here I came again upon the same alluvial

Flat which I left when I ascended from Wandsworth to Putney-heath,

having since passed a corner of the undulating high land on which

stand Wimbledon, its common, Roehampton, Richmond-park, and its lovely

hill. A more interesting site of the same extent, is not perhaps to be

found in the world. Its picturesque beauty, and its general advantages

as a place of residence, are attested by the preference given to it by

ministers and public men, who select it as a retreat from the cares of

ambition. On this ridge Pitt, Tooke, Addington, Burdett, Goldsmid, and

Dundas, were recent contemporary residents. Here, amid the orgies of

the latter, were probably concerted many of those political projects

which have unfortunately desolated the finest portions of Europe, for

the wicked, yet vain, purpose of destroying Truth by the sword! In an

adjoining domain, Tooke beguiled, in philological pastime, the evening

of a life whose meridian had been employed in disputing, inch by inch,

the overwhelming march of corrupt influence; while, as though it were

for effect of light and shade, the spacious plain of Wimbledon served

to display the ostentatious manoeuvres of those servile agents of

equivocal justice, whose permanent organization by an anti-human

policy has been engrafted on modern society, but whose aid would

seldom or never be necessary, if the purposes of their employers

accorded with the omnipotent influence of truth, reason, and justice.

I was now on the border of Barnes Common, consisting of 500 acres of

waste; and at a few paces eastward stands #Barnes poor-house#!

Yes!--in this enlightened country--in the vicinage of the residence of

many boasted statesmen--stands a #PARISH POOR-HOUSE ON A WASTE#! The

unappropriated means of plenty and independence surrounding a mansion

of hopeless poverty, maintained by collections of nearly 4000_l._ per

annum from the industrious parishioners! Lest readers in future ages

should doubt the fact, the antiquary of the year 2500 is hereby

assured,--that it stood at the angle of the Wandsworth and Fulham

roads, at the perpendicular distance of a mile from the Thames, and by

the side of the fashionable ride from London to Richmond!--Did so

monstrous an incongruity never penetrate the heads or hearts of any of

the high personages who daily pass it? Did it never occur to any of

them that it would be more rational to convert the materials of this

building into cottages, surrounded by two or three acres of the waste,

by which the happiness of the poor and the interests of the public

would be blended? Can any antiquated feudal right to this useless

tract properly supersede the paramount claims of the poor and the

public?--From respect to any such right, ought so great a libel on our

political economy to be suffered to exist, as a receptacle for the

poor in the middle of an uncultivated and unappropriated waste? To

dwell further on so mortifying a proof of the fallibility of human

wisdom may, however, pique the pride of those who enjoy the power to

organize a better system:--I therefore forbear!

These and other considerations prompted me to visit the interior. I

found it clean and airy, but the best rooms were not appropriated to

the poor. The master and matron were plain honest people, who, I have

no doubt, do all the justice that is possible with a wretched pittance

of 5_s._ 6_d._ per head per week. Should 4_s._ 6_d._ remain to provide

each with twenty-one meals, this is but two-pence half-penny per meal!

Think of this, ye pampered minions of wealth, who gorge turtle at a

guinea a pound, who _beastialize_ yourselves with wine at a shilling a

glass, and who wantonly devour a guinea's worth of fruit after

finishing a sumptuous dinner!--The guardians have judiciously annexed

to the house an acre or two of ground for a garden, which is

cultivated by the paupers, and supplies them with sufficient

vegetables. This, though a faint approach to my plan, is yet

sufficient to prove what the whole common would effect, if properly

applied to the wants and natural claims of the poor. It is too often

pretended that these wastes are incapable of cultivation--but the

fertile appearance of enclosed patches constantly falsifies such

selfish and malignant assertions.

I visited the community of these paupers, consisting in this small

parish of only thirty men, women, and children, in one large room.

Among them were some disgusting-looking idiots, a class of objects who

seem to be the constant nuisance of every poor-house.[4] How painful

it must be to honest poverty to be brought into contact with such

wretched creatures, who are often vicious, and, in their tricks and

habits, always offensive and dirty. Surely, for the sake of these

degraded specimens of our kind, as well as out of respect to the

parish-poor, who have no choice but to live with them, every county

ought to be provided with a special Asylum for idiots; whose purpose

should be to smoothen their passage through life, and to render it as

little noisome to others, and to one another, as possible.

[4] Since these observations were first published, a new law

has provided for the separate maintenance of these wretched

objects, nearly on the plan suggested.

On leaving this poor-house, I crossed Barnes Common in a north-eastern

direction, with a view to visit at Barnes-Elms the former residence of

Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, and once the place of meeting of the

famous Kit-Cat Club.

On this Common, nature still appeared to be in a primeval and

unfinished state. The entire Flat from the high ground to the Thames,

is evidently a mere freshwater formation, of comparatively modern

date, created out of the rocky ruins which the rains, in a series of

ages, have washed from the high grounds, and further augmented by the

decay of local vegetation. The adjacent high lands, being elevated

above the action of the fresh water, were no doubt marine formations,

created by the flowing of the sea during the four thousand years when

the earth was last in its perihelion during our summer months; which

was between twelve and seven thousand years since. The Flat or

fresh-water formation, on which I was walking, still only approaches

its completion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defined the

boundaries of the river. At spring-tides, particularly when the line

of the moon's apsides coincides with the syzygies, or when the

ascending node is in the vernal equinox, or after heavy rains, the

river still overflows its banks, and indicates its originally extended

scite under ordinary circumstances.

The state of transition also appears in marshes, bogs, and ponds,

which, but for the interference of man, would many ages ago have been

filled up with decayed forests and the remains of undisturbed

vegetation. Rivers thus become agents of the #NEVER-CEASING CREATION#,

and a means of giving greater equality to the face of the land. The

sea, as it retired, either abruptly from some situations, or gradually

from others, left dry land, consisting of downs and swelling hills,

disposed in all the variety which would be consequential on a

succession of floods and ebbs during several thousand years. These

downs, acted upon by rain, were mechanically, or in solution, carried

off by the water to the lowest levels, the elevations being thereby

depressed, and the valleys proportionally raised. The low lands became

of course the channels through which the rains returned to the sea,

and the successive deposits on their sides, hardened by the wind and

sun, have in five or six thousand years created such tracts of

alluvial soil, as those which now present themselves in contiguity

with most rivers. The soil, thus assembled and compounded, is similar

in its nature to the rocks and hills whence it was washed; but, having

been so pulverized and so divided by solution, it forms the finest

medium for the secretion of all vegetable principles, and hence the

banks of rivers are the favourite residences of man. Should the

channel constantly narrow itself more and more, till it becomes

choaked in its course, or at its outlet, then, for a time, lakes would

be formed, which in like manner would narrow themselves and disappear.

New channels would then be formed, or the rain would so diffuse itself

over the surface, that the fall and the evaporation would balance each

other.