The best hopes of society are the progressive improvement of

succeeding generations, and the prospect that each will add something

to the stock of knowledge to that which went before it. But gloomy is

the perspective, if the science of education be rendered stationary or

retrograde by the iron hand of power and bigotry, and if errors by

these means are propagated from age to age with a species of

accelerated force. Yet, what signs of improvement are visible in our

public schools, wherein are educated those youths who are destined to

direct the fortunes of Britain in each succeeding age? Most of these

schools were endowed at the epoch of the revival of learning; yet the

exact course of instruction which was prescribed by the narrow policy

of that comparatively dark age, is slavishly followed even to this

hour! Instead of knowledge, moral and physical, being taught in them,

as the true end of all education,--those dead languages, which in the

15th and 16th centuries were justly considered as the fountains of

wisdom, are still exclusively taught; as though the English language,

now, as then, contained no works of taste and information on a par

with those of the ancients; and as though such writers as Bacon,

Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Locke, Addison, Pope, Johnson,

Blackstone, Hume, Robertson, and Blair, had never lived! Is it not to

mistake the means for the end, to teach any language, except as the

medium of superior philosophy? And is it not a false inference, to

ascribe exclusively to the study of languages, those habits of

industrious application, which would grow with equal certainty out of

the study of the useful sciences, if pursued with the same system, and

for a similar period of time?

Reason demands, however, on this subject, those concessions from the

#PRIDE# of #PEDANTRY# which that pride will never yield. We seem,

therefore, to be destined, by the force of circumstances, to make slow

or inconsiderable advances in civilization; and it remains for other

nations, the bases of whose institutions are less entangled in

prejudices, to raise the condition of man higher in the scale of

improvement than can be expected in Britain. We may, as a result of

geographical position, attain a certain degree of national

distinction; but, if our system of public education cannot be made to

keep pace with knowledge, and is not calculated to generate a

succession of patriots, who are qualified to sustain liberty at home

and justice abroad, we cannot fail to sink in our turn to the level of

modern Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Those hotbeds of human genius were

ultimately degraded by the triumph of prejudices over principles, by

the extinction of public spirit, by the preference of despotism over

liberty, and by the glare of foreign conquests. The countries, the

soil, and even the cities remain; but, as their youth are no longer

trained in the love of truth and liberty, they exist but as beacons to

warn other people of their fall and its causes.

I turned aside to view a manufactory of Delft and Stone ware, for

which, among potters, Mortlake is famous. A silly air of mystery

veiled these work-shops from public view; and, as I professed mine to

be a visit of mere curiosity, the conductor's taciturnity increased

with the variety of my unsatisfied questions. It was in vain I assured

him that I was no potter--that experimental philosophy and chemistry

had stript empiricism of its garb--and that no secret, worth

preserving, could long be kept in a manufactory which employed a dozen

workmen, at 20_s._ a week. The principal articles made here are those

brown stone jugs, of which the song tells us, one was made of the clay

of Toby Filpot; and I could not help remarking, that the groups on

these jugs are precisely those on the common pottery of the Romans. I

learnt, however, that the patterns employed here are not copied from

the antique, but from those used at Delft, of which this manufactory

is a successful imitation in every particular: and perhaps the Delft

manufactory itself is but a continuation of a regular series of stone

or earthenware manufactories, from the age of the Romans. Each may

have continued to imitate the approved ornaments of its predecessors,

till we trace in the productions of this contemporary pottery, the

patterns used by the nations of antiquity when just emerging from

barbarism. Hunting, the most necessary of arts to the vagrant and

carnivorous savage, is the employment celebrated on all these vessels,

A stag, followed by ferocious quadrupeds and hungry bipeds, forms

their general ornament. I have picked up the same groups among Roman

ruins, have often contemplated them in the cabinets of the curious,

and here I was amused at viewing them in creations but a week old.

To take off ornamental impressions on plastic clay, was a contrivance

which would present itself to the first potters--but perhaps it was

the foundation of all our proud arts of sculpture, painting,

hieroglyphic design, writing, seal-engraving, and, finally, of

printing and copper-plate engraving! What an interesting series!--But

I solemnly put the question, Have we arrived at the last of its terms?

Is the series capable of no further application, extension, or

variation? Have we conceived the utmost limits of its abstractions?

Have we examined the powers of all its terms with equal care? In one

sense, we may never get beyond a Phidias or a Canova--in another,

beyond a Woollet or a Bartolozzi--or, in a third, beyond a Corregio or

a David;--but have we sufficiently examined and husbanded the

abstractions of Thoth or Cadmus?--Ought not the signs of ideas, ere

this, to have become abstract representations; as universal in their

signification as ideas themselves?--Ought we to be obliged to study

all languages and many characters, in order to comprehend the ideas

which are common to the whole human race? Are ideas more numerous than

musical sounds, and tones, and tunes? Do not the powers of musical

characters and of the telegraph prove the facility and capacity of

very simple combinations? Does not the Christmas game of _Twenty_

indicate the narrow range of all our ideas? And is not a fact thereby

ascertained, from which we may conceive the practicability of so

combining hieroglyphic with arbitrary characters, as to be able to

read men's ideas without the intervention of a hundred tongues?

On leaving this manufactory, I proceeded about a hundred yards,

through the main street; and, turning a corner on the right, beheld

the ancient gateway, now bricked up, and the ruined walls of an

enclosure, sanctified, during five centuries, as the residence of

thirty-four successors to the see of Canterbury. Learning that the

enclosure was occupied by a market-gardener, I could not avoid

observing, as a proof of the sagacity of gardeners, and of the luxury

which manured these sites, that I have seldom visited decayed religious

houses without finding them in possession of market-gardeners! Ah!

thought I, as I stopped before the gate, how many thousands of rich

donations used to be brought to that portico by superstitious

votaries, who considered it as the emblem of the gate of St. Peter,

and believed that, if welcomed at the one, they should be equally

welcomed at the other! Poor souls--they and their spiritual protectors

have alike passed away--and we can now look with the eye of Philosophy

on the impotent impostures of one party, and on the unsuspecting

credulity of the other!

I was in haste---yet I could not avoid stopping five minutes--yes,

reader, and it is a lesson to human pomp--I could wait but five

minutes to contemplate the gate through which had passed thirty-four

successive Archbishops of Canterbury, from Anselm, in the time of

William the Norman, to Warham and Cranmer, the pliant tools of the

tyrant Tudor. As leaders of the Catholic Church, we may now, in this

Protestant country, speak, without offence, of their errors and vices.

Ambition and the exercise of power were doubtless the ruling passions

of the majority, who have shown themselves little scrupulous as to the

means by which those passions might be gratified;--yet it would be

uncandid not to admit that many men, like the present amiable

Protestant archbishop, have filled this See, whose eminent virtue,

liberality, and piety, were their principal recommendations--and who

doubtless believed all those articles of the Church's faith which they

taught to others. They were, in truth, wheels of a machine which

existed before their time; and they honestly performed the part

assigned them, without disputing its origin or the sources of its

powers; prudently considering that, if they endeavoured to pull it in

pieces, they were likely themselves to become the first victims of

their temerity. Thus doubtless it was with Cicero and the philosophers

of antiquity; they found theological machinery powerful enough to

govern society; and though, on the subject of the Gods, they prudently

conformed, or were silent, yet we are not at this day warranted in

supposing that they obsequiously reverenced the absurd theology of the

romance of Homer. Of the archbishops who have passed this gate, St.

Thomas a Becket was perhaps the greatest bigot; but the exaltation of

the ecclesiastical over the temporal power was the fashion of his day;

and obedience and allegiance could scarcely be expected of a clergy

who, owing all their dignities to the Pope, owned no authority

superior to that of the keeper of Peter's Keys to the Gates of Heaven!

I could not, even in thus transiently glancing at these meagre

remains, avoid the interesting recollection, that this portico once

served as a sanctuary for the contrition of guilt against the

unsparing malignity of law. In those days, when bigotry courted

martyrdom as a passport to eternal glory, and when, in consequence,

the best principle of religion was enabled to triumph over the malice

of weak princes and the tyranny of despots, this gate (said I) served

as one of many avenues to the emblem of that Divinity to whom the

interior was devoted. It justly asserted the authority of the religion

of charity, whose Founder ordered his disciples to pardon offences,

though multiplied seventy times seven times. Yet, alas! in our days,

how much is this divine precept forgotten! Is not the sanguinary power

of law suffered to devour its victims for _first_ relapses from

virtue, as unsparingly as for any number of repetitions? Do not its

sordid agents exult in the youth or inexperience of offenders, and

often receive contrition and confession as aggravating proofs of more

deliberate turpitude? Has not the modern sanctuary of Mercy long been

shut, by forms of state, against the personal supplications of

repentance, and against humble representations of venial errors of

criminal courts? If sinners would approach that gate, are they not

stopped at the very threshold, and obliged to rely on the intercession

of some practised minister, or seek the good offices of illiberal

clerks? Is this Christendom, the volume of whose faith tells its

votaries to knock without fear at the gate of Mercy, and it shall be

opened by an Heavenly Father?--or England, where a solemn law enacts,

that it is the right of the subject to petition the King, and that all

commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal?--or

civilized Europe, where it has so often been asserted that the

receiving of petitions, and granting their prayer, is the most

enviable branch of royal prerogative? Alas! will the golden mean of

reason never govern the practices of men? Must we for ever be the

dupes of superstition, or the slaves of upstart authority? Are we

doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies,

a medium between the bigotry of the #Crozier#, the pride of the

#Sceptre#, and the cruelty of the #Sword#?

Nor ought it to be forgotten, that the benevolence which flowed from

this portico, served as a substitute for the poor's-rates, throughout

the adjoining district. Thus #Food#, as well as #Mercy#, appeared to

flow from Heaven, through the agency of the Romish priesthood! Thus

they softened the effects of the monopolies of wealth, and assuaged

the severities of power! And thus, duration was conferred on a system

which violated common sense in its tenets; but, in its practices,

exhibited every claim on the affections and gratitude of the people!

At this gate, and at a thousand others spread over the land, no poor

man sought to satisfy his hunger in vain. He was not received by any

grim-visaged overseer; not called on for equivocal proofs of legal

claims; not required to sell his liberty in the workhouse as the price

of a single meal; not terrified by the capricious justice of a vulgar

constable; nor in fear of the infernal machine, called a

pass-cart--but it was sufficient that he was an hungered, and they

gave him to eat--or that he was sick, and they gave him medicine! Such

was the system of those times; not more perfect for being ancient, but

worthy of being remembered, because justified by long experience.

Thrice the relative wealth, and as much active benevolence, are at

this day exerted to relieve the still unsatisfied wants of the poor,

simply because our workhouses are not regularly provided with an

hospitable monastic portico, where temporary wants might be supplied

with a wholesome meal, without the formality of regular admission,

without proofs of settlement, without the terrors of the House of

Correction, or the horrors of a _middle-passage_ in the pass-cart! The

tenderest sympathy would then be able to excuse itself from the

obligation of granting eleemosynary aid--the act of begging might be

justly punished as a crime--and crimes themselves could never be

palliated by pleas of urgent want.

This entire site was too much consecrated by historical associations

to be passed without further examination. A slight expression of my

feelings procured every attention from Penley, the gardener, who told

me that his family had occupied it since the revolution, and that he

remembered every part above fifty years. He took me to a summer-house,

on the wall next the water, the ruins of which were of the

architecture of the time of the Plantagenets; and, indeed, the entire

wall, above half a mile in circuit, was of that age. Of the ancient

palace no vestige remained; and he could guess its precise site only

by means of the masses of brickwork which he discovered by digging in

certain parts of the garden.

If I was, however, little gratified by remains of the labours of man,

I was filled with astonishment at certain specimens of vegetation,

unquestionably as ancient as the last Catholic archbishops. Among

these were two enormous walnut-trees, twelve feet round the trunk, the

boughs of which were themselves considerable trees, spreading above

twenty-six yards across. Each tree covered above a rood of ground; and

so massy were the lower branches, that it has been found necessary to

support them with props. Their height is equal to their breadth, or

about seventy feet; and I was surprised to find, that, notwithstanding

their undoubted age, they still bear abundance of fine fruit. Mr.

Penley assured me, that in his time he had seen no variation in them;

they had doubtless attained their full growth in his boyhood, but

since then they had maintained a steady maturity. At present they must

be considered as in a state of slow decay; but I have no doubt that in

the year 1916 they will continue grand and productive trees.

I was equally struck with some box-trees, probably of far greater

antiquity. They were originally planted in a semicircle to serve as an

arbour; but in the progress of centuries they have grown to the

prodigious height of thirty feet, and their trunks are from six to

nine inches in diameter.[7] And what was strikingly curious, in the

area which they enclose is seen the oval table of the arbour,

evidently of the same age. It is of the species of stone called

Plymouth marble,--massy, and so well-wrought as to prove that it was

not placed there at the cost of private revenues. It was interesting,

and even affecting, to behold these signs of comfort and good cheer

still remaining, so many ages after those who enjoyed them have passed

away like exhalations or transient meteors! I would have sat down,

and, with a better conscience than Don Juan, have invoked their ghosts

over a bottle of the honest gardener's currant-wine; but he had filled

up the elliptical area of the trees with a pile of fagots, of which

the old table serves as a dry basement.

[7] The box-wood used in England by the engravers on wood is

often twelve inches in diameter; this, however, is not of

English growth, but comes from Turkey, where it is held in

slight estimation. Of course, when engravings on wood are

larger than twelve inches in diameter, two blocks are joined

together, for it is only the transverse section that can be

wrought for this purpose. The most famous plantations of box

in England are on the White-hill, near Dorking; but the

trees there are mere sticks and shrubs compared with those

at Mortlake; yet many of them are known to be two hundred

years old.

What was less wonderful, though to the full as interesting--was the

circumstance that the gardener has, at different times, in digging up

the roots of his old fruit-trees, found them imbedded in skeletons of

persons who were interred in or near the chapel of the archbishops. He

told me, that a short time before my visit, in removing a pear-tree,

he had taken up three perfect skeletons; and that one of them was

pronounced by a surgeon in the neighbourhood to be the frame-work of a

man full seven feet high. This probably was an accidental

circumstance; for it is not to be supposed that any of the interments

on this spot took place in those rude ages when bulk and stature led

to rank and distinction, and, by consequence, to costly funerals and

encasements of stone, which often surprize us with specimens of an

apparently gigantic race. Doubtless, however, here were interred

hundreds of pious persons, who calculated, in their last moments, on

the protection of this consecrated ground till "the Earth should be

called to give up its Dead;" and now, owing to the unsatisfied passion

which the first "Defender of the Faith" felt for Anna Boleyn, this

consecrated spot, and a thousand similar ones, have been converted

into cabbage-gardens!

Perhaps more than one archbishop, many bishops, and scores of deans,

angelic doctors, and other reverend personages, lie in this now

profaned and dishonoured spot! So great an outrage might, one would

have supposed, have led them, according to ordinary notions, again to

walk the earth, to despoil the garden, and disturb the gardener's

rest! I expressed my fears on this point to the worthy man; but he

assured me, these good gentlefolks lie very quiet; and that, if they

produced any visible effect, it was as manure, in rendering the part

where they lie a little more productive than the other parts. I

shuddered at this lesson of humility--Alas! thought I, is it for such

ends that we pamper ourselves--that some of us boast of being better

than others--that we seek splendid houses and superfine clothing--and

render our little lives wretched by hunting after rank, and titles,

and riches! After all, we receive a sumptuous funeral, and are

affectionately laid in what is called consecrated ground, which some

political revolution, or change of religion, converting into a

market-garden, our bodies then serve but as substitutes for vulgar

manure! If such an end of the illustrious and proud men, whose remains

now fertilize this garden, had been contemplated by them, how truly

would they have become disciples of the humble Jesus--and how

horror-struck would they have been at the fantastic airs which, in

their lives, they were giving themselves!--Yet, is there a reader of

these pages, the end of whose mortal career may not be similar to

theirs?--and ought he not to apply to himself the lesson thus taught

by the known fate of the former inhabitants of the archiepiscopal

palace of Mortlake?

I shook my head at Penley, and told him, that he was a terrible

"leveller," and that, in making manure of archbishops and bishops, he

was one of the most effective moralists I had ever conversed with!

In walking round this garden, every part proved that its soil had been

enriched from all the neighbouring lands. Whether, according to Dr.

#Creighton#, there are classes of organic particles adapted to form

vegetables and animals over and over again; or whether, according to

the modern chemistry, all organized bodies consist of carbonaceous,

metallic, and gaseous substances in varied combinations; it is

certain, that the well-fed priesthood, who formerly dwelt within these

walls, drew together for ages such a supply of the pabulum of

vegetation, as will require ages to exhaust. All the trees of this

garden are of the most luxuriant size: gooseberries and currants in

other gardens grow as shrubs; but here they form trees of four or five

feet in height, and a circumference of five or six yards. In short, a

luxuriance approaching to rankness, and a soil remarkable for its

depth of colour and fatness, characterize every part. The abundant

produce, as is usual through all this neighbourhood, is conveyed to

Covent-Garden market in the night, and there disposed of by salesmen

that attend on behalf of the gardeners.

I took my departure from this inclosure with emotions that can only be

felt. I looked again and again across the space which, during

successive ages, had given birth to so many feelings, and nurtured so

many anxious passions; but which now, for many ages, has, among

bustling generations, lost all claim to sympathy or notice; and

displays, at this day, nothing but the still mechanism of vegetable

life. There might be little in the past to rouse the affections; but,

in the difference of manners, there was much to amuse the imagination.

It had been the focus, if not of real piety, at least of ostensible

religion; and, dead as the spot now appeared, its mouldering walls,

some of those gigantic trees, and, above all, the box-tree arbour,

had, in remote ages, echoed from hour to hour the melodious chaunts

and imposing ceremonials of the Romish Church. Here moral habits

sanctified the routine of life, and conferred happiness as a necessary

result of restraint and decorum--and here Vice never disgraced Reason

by public exhibitions; but, if lurking in any breast, confessed its

own deformity by its disguises and its secresy. In surveying such a

spot, the hand of Time softens down even the asperities of

superstition, and the shade of this gloomy site, contrasted with the

bright days of its prosperity, inclined me to forget the intolerant

policy which was wont to emanate from its spiritual councils. Under

those fruit-trees, I exclaimed, lie all that remains of the follies,

hopes, and superstitions of the former occupants; for, of them, I

cannot remark as of the torpid remains in Mortlake church-yard, that

they live in the present generation.--No! these dupes of clerical

fraud devoted themselves to celibacy as a service to the procreative

#Cause# of #CAUSES#, and became withered limbs of their family trees.

We can, however, now look on their remains, and presume to scan their

errors:--but let us recollect, that, though we are gazers to-day, we

shall be gazed upon to-morrow--and that, though we think ourselves

wise, we are, perhaps, fated to be commiserated in our turn by the age

which follows. Alas! said I, when will the generation arrive that will

not merit as much pity from succeeding generations as those poor

monks? Yet how wise, how infallible, and how intolerant, is every sect

of religion--every school of philosophy--every party of temporary

politicians--and every nation in regard to every other nation! Do not

these objects, and all exertions of reasoning, prove, that the climax

of human wisdom is #HUMILITY#?

Commending the bones of the monks to the respect of the gardener,

whose feelings, to do him justice, were in unison with my own, I

proceeded, by the side of the wall, towards the banks of the Thames.

The relics of exploded priestcraft which I had just contemplated in

the adjoining garden, led me into an amusing train of thought on the

origin and progress of superstition. I felt that the various

mythologies which the world has witnessed, grow out of mistakes in

regard to the phenomena of #SECONDARY CAUSES#; all natural phenomena,

accordingly as they were _fit_ or _unfit_ to the welfare or caprices

of men, being ascribed, by the barbarous tribes who subsequently

became illustrious nations, to the agency of _good_ and _evil_

spirits. However absurd might be the follies of these superstitions,

they became ingrafted on Society, and were implanted in the opening

minds of every successive generation. Of course, the age never arrived

which did not inherit the greater part of the prejudices of the

preceding age. Reason and philosophy might in due time illumine a few

individuals; yet even these, influenced by early prejudices, and a

prudent regard for their fortunes and personal safety, would rather

support, or give a beneficial direction to, mythological

superstitions, than venture to expose and oppose them. Hence it was

that the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, continued _polytheists_ through

the most brilliant epochs of their history; and hence their

philosophers, as #Pythagoras#, #Plato#, and others, gave to the whole

the plausibility of system, by affecting to demonstrate that the

#FIRST CAUSE# necessarily and proximately generates immortal gods!

Hence too it is that philosophers have, in different past ages,

undertaken to demonstrate the verity of all religions, and according

to the religion of the government under which they lived, they have

either supported Polytheism, Theism, Sabinism, Judaism, Popery, or

Mahomedanism. The fate of #Socrates# has never been forgotten by any

philosopher who possessed the chief attribute of wisdom--#PRUDENCE#;

and no benevolent man will ever seek to disturb a public faith which

promotes public virtue, because the memorials of history prove that no

discords have been so bloody as those which have been generated by

attempts to change religious faith. This class of human errors can

indeed be corrected only by establishing in civilized countries

practical and unequivocal systems of toleration; because, in that

case, truth and reason are sure, in due time, to establish themselves,

while falsehood and fraud must sink into merited contempt.

The fleeting, wild, and crude notions of savages, constituted

therefore the _first stage_ in the progress of mythological

superstition. Their invisible agencies would however soon have forms

conferred upon them by weak or fertile imaginations, and be

personified as men or animals, according to the nature of their deeds.

To pray to them for benefits, and to deprecate their wrath, would

constitute the _second stage_. In the mean time, individuals who

might, by chance or design, become connected with some of these

supernatural agencies, would be led, by vivid or gloomy imaginations,

to deceive even themselves by notions of _election_ or _inspiration_;

and, then superadding ceremonials to worship, they would form a select

class, living, without manual labour, on the tributes offered by the

people to satisfy or appease the unseen agencies. This would

constitute a _third stage_. Each priest would then endeavour to extol

the importance of the god, of whom he believed himself to be the

minister; and he would give to his deity a visible form, cause a

temple to be built for him, deliver from it his oracles or prophecies,

and affect to work miracles in his name. This would constitute the

_fourth stage_. The terror of unseen powers would now be found to be a

convenient engine of usurped human authority, and hence an association

would be formed between the temporal and invisible powers, the latter

being exalted by the former in having its temples enlarged and its

priests better provided for. This would constitute the _fifth stage_;

or the consummation of the system as it has been witnessed in India,

Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.--Hence among the #Hindoos#, those

personified agencies have been systematized under the titles of

Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Crishna, &c. Among the #Egyptians#, they were

worshipped in the forms of living animals, and called Osiris, Ammon,

Oris, Typhon, Isis, &c. Among the #Chaldeans#, and, after them, among

the #Jews#, they were classed in principalities, powers, and dominions

of _angels_ and _devils_, under chiefs, who bore the names of Raphael,

Gabriel, Michael, Moloch, Legion, Satan, Beelzebub, &c. Among the

#Greeks#, the accommodating Plato flattered the priests and the

vulgar, by pretending to demonstrate that their personifications were

necessary emanations from #THE ONE#; and he, and others, arranged the

worship of them under the names of Jupiter, Neptune, Minerva, Venus,

Pluto, Mars, &c. Among the #NORTHERN NATIONS#, they assumed the names

of Woden, Sleepner, Hela, Fola, &c. Every town and village had,

moreover, its protecting divinity, or guardian saint, under some

fantastical name, or the name of some fantastical fanatic; and, even

every man, every house, every plant, every brook, every day, and every

hour, according to most of those systems, had their accompanying

genius! In a word, the remains of these superstitions are still so

mixed with our habits and language, that, although we pity the

hundreds of wretched victims of _legal wisdom_, who under Elizabeth

and the Stuarts were burnt to death for witchcraft; and abhor the

ghosts of Shakespeare, his fairies, and his enchantments; yet we still

countenance the system in most of the personifications of language,

and practise it when we speak even of the _spirit_ of Philosophy and

the _genius_ of Truth.

Nor have philosophers themselves, either in their independent systems,

or in the systems of the schools, steered clear of the vulgar errors

of mythologists. They have in every age introduced into nature active

causes without contact, continuity, or proximity; and, even in our

days, continue to extort worship towards the _unseen and occult_

powers of attraction or sympathy, and of repulsion or antipathy! It is

true, they say that such words only express _results_ or _phenomena_,

and others equivocate by saying there is in no case any contact:--but

I reply, that to give names to proximate causes does not correspond

with my notions of the proper business of philosophy; and that, in

thousands of instances, there is sensible contact, and in all nature

some contact of intermediate media, in the affections of which, may be

traced the laws governing the phenomena of distant bodies. At the hour

in which I write, the recognized philosophical divinities are called

#Space#, #Matter#, #Inertia#, #Caloric#, #Expansion#, #Motion#,

#Impulse#, #Clustering Power#, #Elasticity#, #Atomic Forms#, #Atomic

Proportions#, #Oxygen#, #Hydrogen#, #Nitrogen#, #Chlorine#, #Iodine#,

#Electricity#, #Light#, #Excitability#, #Irritability#, &c. All these

have their priests, worshippers, propagandists, and votaries, among

some of whom may be found as intolerant a spirit of bigotry as ever

disgraced any falling church. As governments do not, however, ally

themselves to Philosophy, there is happily no danger that an heretical

or reforming Philosopher will, as such, ever incur the hazard of

martyrdom; and, as reason decides all disputes in the court of

Philosophy, there can be no doubt, but, in this court at least,

#Truth# will finally prevail.

Hail, Genius of Philosophy! Hail, thou poetical personification of

wisdom! Hail, thou logical abstraction of all experimental knowledge!

I hail thee, as thou art represented in the geniuses of Pythagoras,

Thales, Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Columbus, Bacon, Galileo,

Descartes, Newton, Boyle, Euler, Buffon, Franklin, Beccaria,

Priestley, Lavoisier, Cavendish, Condorcet, Laplace, Herschel,

Berzelius, Jenner, Dalton, Cuvier, and Davy; and I hail thee, as thou

excitest the ambition of the solitary student of an obscure village,

to raise himself among those gods of the human race! How many

privations must thy votaries suffer in a sordid world; and how many

human passions must they subdue, before they can penetrate thy mazy

walks, or approach the hidden sanctuaries of thy temple of Truth!

Little thinks the babbling politician, the pedantic linguist, or the

equivocating metaphysician, of the watchful hours which thy

worshippers must pass,--of the never-ending patience which they must

exert,--of the concurring circumstances which must favour their

enthusiasm! Whether we consider the necessary magnitude of the

library, the ascending intricacy of the books, the multitude of the

instruments, or the variety of the experimental apparatus in the use

of which the searchers into thy mysteries must be familiar; we are

compelled to reverence the courage of him who seeks preeminence

through thee, and to yield to those mortals who have attained thy

favours, our wonder, admiration, and gratitude![8]

[8] The system of Physics which I have for many years

inculcated, in the hope of removing from Philosophy the

equivocal word _attraction_, supposes that space is filled

with an elastic medium,--that this medium permeates bodies

in proportion to their quantities of matter,--that

resistance or re-action takes place between the universal

medium of space and the novel arrangements of matter in

bodies,--that this action and re-action diverge in the

medium of space from the surfaces of bodies,--and that, like

all diverging forces, they act inversely as the squares of

the distances. That, if there were but one body in the

universe, it would remain stationary by the uniform action

of the surrounding medium,--that the creation of another

body would produce phenomena between them, owing to each

intercepting the action of the medium of space on the other,

in proportion to the angles mutually presented by their

bulks,--that two such bodies so acted upon by an universal

medium must necessarily fall together, owing to the

difference between the finite pressure on their near sides,

and the infinite pressure on their outsides,--that a stone

falls to the earth, because, with regard to it, the earth

intercepts an angle of 180 deg. of the medium of space on its

near or under side; while, with regard to the earth, the

stone intercepts but a small proportion of a second,--that

these actual centripetal forces are very slight, between

such distant bodies as the planets,--and, that the law of

the forces is necessarily as their bulks directly, and as

the squares of their distances inversely. That the

centrifugal forces result from the same pressure or

impulse,--that the varied densities of the opposite sides of

the masses, as land and water, occasion a uniform external

pressure to produce rotation on an axis,--that the action or

oscillation of the fluid surfaces, a consequence of the

rotation, constantly changes the mechanical centre of the

mass, so as thereby to drive forward the mathematical centre

in an orbit,--and that this is the purpose and effect of the

tides, increased by the action and re-action of the fluid

and solid parts. That centripetal and centrifugal forces so

created, are necessarily varied by the diverse arrangements

of the solid and fluid parts of planetary bodies, as we see

in the northern and southern hemispheres of the earth,--and

that hence arise the varied motions, the elliptical orbits,

and all the peculiar phenomena. Attached as the moderns are

to the terms _attraction_ and _repulsion_, I produce this

theory with due deference to their prejudices; and I venture

to presume, that, on examination, it will be found to be a

fair induction from the phenomena, and also in perfect

accordance with all the laws of motion. It accounts for the

uniform direction and moderate exertion of the centripetal

force towards the largest body of a system; for the mutual

actions of a system of bodies, or of many systems, on each

other; and for the constantly varying direction of the

centrifugal force, by shewing that it is generated within

the mass. The term _repulsion_ is even more disgraceful to

Philosophy than that of _attraction_; all repulsion being in

truth but a relative phenomenon between at least three

bodies; and its most palpable appearance in electricity

being but a stronger mechanical action towards opposite

surfaces. The local impulses of magnets, and of bodies going

into chemical union, are not better explained by Kepler's

gravitating sympathy, than by this doctrine of mechanical

interception; but, I have no doubt that the former of these

will, in due time, be traced to the difference between the

rotary motion of the Equatorial and Polar regions; and the

latter to some laws of the atomic theory, arising out of the

shape and arrangement of the component particles, with

reference to those of surrounding bodies.

Overtaking three or four indigent children, whose darned stockings and

carefully-patched clothes bespoke some strong motive for attention in

their parents, I was induced to ask them some questions. They said

they had been to Mortlake School; and I collected from them, that they

were part of two or three hundred who attend one of Dr. Bell's

schools, which had lately been established for the instruction of poor

children in this vicinity. I found that, until this establishment had

been formed, these children attended no school regularly--and, in

reply to a question, one of them said, "Our father could not afford to

pay Mr. ---- sixpence a week for us, so we could not go at all; but

now we go to this school, and it costs father nothing." This was as it

should be; the social state ought to supply a preparatory education of

its members--or, how can a government expect to find moral agents in

an ignorant population--how can it presume to inflict punishments on

those who have not been enabled to read the laws which they are bound

to respect--and how can the professors of religion consider themselves

as performing their duty, if they have not enabled all children to

peruse the volume of Christian Revelation? We are assured by Mr.

Lancaster, that #George the Third# expressed the benevolent wish that

every one of his subjects should be enabled to read the Bible; and his

successors will, it is to be hoped, not lose sight of so admirable a

principle. But a few ages ago, to be able to read conferred the

privileges of the clerical character, and exempted men from capital

punishments--how improved, therefore, is the present state of society,

and how different may it yet become, as prejudices are dispelled, and

as liberal feelings acquire their just ascendancy among the rulers of

nations! These boys spoke of their school with evident satisfaction;

and one of them, who proved to be a monitor, seemed not a little proud

of the distinction. Whether the system of Mr. Lancaster or of Dr. Bell

enjoy the local ascendancy; or whether these public seminaries be

"schools for all," or schools in which the dogmas of some particular

faith are taught, I am indifferent, provided there are some such

schools, and that all children are enabled to read the Bible, and

"_the Catechism of their Social Rights and Duties_."

Seeing several respectable houses facing the meadow which led to the

Thames, I inquired of a passing female the names of their owners, and

learnt that they were chiefly occupied by widow ladies, to whom she

gave the emphatic title of _Madam_--though she called one of them

_Mistress_. It appeared that those who were denominated _Madams_ were

widows of gentlemen who, in their lives, bore the title of _Esquires_;

but that the _Mistress_ was an old maid, whom her neighbours were

ashamed longer to call by the juvenile appellation of _Miss_. _Madam

----_, whose name I ought not to have forgotten, has devoted a paddock

of four or five acres to the comfortable provision of two

super-annuated coach-horses. One of them, I was assured, was

thirty-five years old, and the other nearly thirty; and their

venerable appearance and pleasant pasture excited a strong interest in

favour of their kind-hearted mistress. Such is the influence of good

example, that I found her paddock was opposite the residence of the

equally amiable #Valentine Morris#, who so liberally provided for all

his live-stock about thirty years ago, and whose oldest horse died

lately, after enjoying his master's legacy above twenty-four years.

I now descended towards a rude space near the Thames, which appeared

to be in the state in which the occasional overflowings and gradual

retrocession of the river had left it. It was one of those wastes

which the lord of the manor had not yet enabled some industrious

cultivator to disguise; and in large tracts of which Great Britain

still exhibits the surface of the earth in the pristine state in which

it was left by the secondary causes that have given it form. The

Thames, doubtless, in a remote age, covered the entire site; but it is

the tendency of rivers to narrow themselves, by promoting prolific

vegetable creations on their consequently increasing and encroaching

banks, though the various degrees of fall produce every variety of

currents, and consequently every variety of banks, in their devious

course. In due time, the course of the river becomes choaked where a

flat succeeds a rapid, and the detained waters then form lakes in the

interior. These lakes likewise generate encroaching banks, which

finally fill up their basins, when new rivers are formed on higher

levels. These, in their turn, become interrupted, and repetitions of

the former circle of causes produce one class of those elevations of

land above the level of the sea, which have so much puzzled

geologists. The only condition which a surface of dry land requires to

increase and raise itself, is the absence of salt water, consequent on

which is an accumulation of vegetable and animal remains. The Thames

has not latterly been allowed to produce its natural effects, because

for two thousand years the banks have been inhabited by man, who,

unable to appreciate the general laws by which the phenomena of the

earth are produced, has sedulously kept open the course of the river,

and prevented the formation of interior lakes. The Caspian Sea, and

all similar inland seas and lakes, were, for the most part, formed

from the choaking up of rivers, which once constituted their outlets.

If the course of nature be not interrupted by the misdirected industry

of man, the gradual desiccation of all such collections of water will,

in due time, produce land of higher levels on their sites. In like

manner, the great lakes of North America, if the St. Lawrence be not

sedulously kept open, will, in the course of ages, be filled up by the

gradual encroachment of their banks, and the raising of their bottoms

with strata of vegetable and animal remains. New rivers would then

flow over these increased elevations, and the ultimate effect would be

to raise that part of the continent of North America several hundred

feet above its present level. Even the very place on which I stand

was, according to #Webster#, once a vast basin, extending from the

Nore to near Reading, but now filled up with vegetable and animal

remains; and the illustrious #Cuvier# has discovered a similar basin

round the site of Paris. These once were Caspians, created by the

choaking and final disappearance of some mighty rivers--they have been

filled up by gradual encroachments, and now the Thames and the Seine

flow over them;--but these, if left to themselves, will, in their

turn, generate new lakes or basins--and the successive recurrence of a

similar series of causes will continue to produce similar effects,

till interrupted by _superior_ causes.

This situation was so sequestered, and therefore so favourable to

contemplation, that I could not avoid indulging myself. What then are

those superior causes, I exclaimed, which will interrupt this series

of natural operations to which man is indebted for the enchanting

visions of hill and dale, and for the elysium of beauty and plenty in

which he finds himself? Alas! facts prove, however, that all things

are transitory, and that change of condition is the constant and

necessary result of that motion which is the chief instrument of

eternal causation, but which, in causing all phenomena, wears out

existing organizations while it is generating new ones. In the motions

of the earth as a planet, doubtless are to be discovered the superior

causes which convert seas into continents, and continents into seas.

These sublime changes are occasioned by the progress of the perihelion

point of the earth's orbit through the ecliptic, which passes from

extreme northern to extreme southern declination, and _vice versa_,

every 10,450 years; and the maxima of the central forces in the

perihelion occasion the waters to accumulate alternatively upon either

hemisphere. During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually

retiring and encroaching in both hemispheres:--hence all the varieties

of marine appearances and accumulations of marine remains in

particular situations; and hence the succession of layers or strata,

one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. It is evident, from

observation of those strata, that the periodical changes have occurred

at least three times; or, in other words, it appears that the site on

which I now stand has been three times covered by the ocean, and three

times has afforded an asylum for vegetables and animals! How

sublime--how interesting--how affecting is such a contemplation! How

transitory, therefore, must be the local arrangements of man, and how

puerile the study of the science miscalled Antiquities! How foolish

the pride which vaunts itself on splendid buildings and costly

mausoleums! How vain the ostentation of large estates, of extensive

boundaries, and of great empires!--All--all--will, in due time, be

swept away and effaced by the unsparing ocean; and, if recorded in the

frail memorials of human science, will be spoken of like the lost

Atalantis, and remembered only as a philosophical dream!

Yet, how different, thought I, is the rich scene of organized

existence within my view, from that which presented itself on this

spot when our planet first took its station in the solar system. The

surface, judging from its present materials, was then probably of the

same inorganic form and structure as the primitive rocks which still

compose the Alps and Andes; or like those indurated coral islands,

which are daily raising their sterile heads above the level of the

great ocean, and teaching by analogy the process of fertilization. At

that period, so remote and so obscure, all must have been silent,

barren, and relatively motionless! But, the atmosphere and the rains

having, by decomposition and solution, pulverized the rocks, and

reduced them into the various earths which now fertilize the surface,

from the inorganic soon sprung the vegetable, and from the vegetable,

in due time, sprung the animal; till the whole was resolved into the

interesting assemblage of organized existences, which now present

themselves to our endless wonder and gratification.

I looked around me on this book of nature, which so eloquently speaks

all languages, and which, for every useful purpose, may be read

without translation or commentary, by the learned and unlearned in

every age and clime. But my imagination was humbled on considering my

relative and limited powers, when I desired to proceed from phenomena

to causes, and to penetrate the secrets of nature below the surfaces

of things. I desire, said I, to know more than my intellectual vision

enables me to see in this volume of unerring truth. I can discover but

the mere surfaces of things by the accidents of light. I can feel but

the same surfaces in the contact of my body, and my conclusions are

governed by their reciprocal relations. In like manner, I can hear,

taste, and smell, only through the accidents of other media, all

distinct from the nature of the substances which produce those

accidents. In truth, I am the mere patient of certain illusions of my

senses, and I can know nothing beyond what I derive from my capacity

of receiving impressions from those illusions! Alas! thought I, I am

sensible how little I know; yet how much is there which I do not, and

can never, know? How much more am I incapable of knowing, with my

limited organs of sense, than I might know if their capacity or their

number were enlarged? How can a being, then, of such limited powers

presume to examine nature beyond the mere surface? How can he measure

unseen powers, of which he has no perception, but in the phenomena

visible to his senses? How can he reason on the causes of effects by

means of implements which reach no deeper than the accidents produced

by the surfaces of things on the media which affect his senses, and

which come not into contact with the powers that produce the

phenomena? Ultimate causation is, therefore, hidden for ever from man;

and his knowledge can reach no deeper or higher than to register

mechanical phenomena, and determine their mutual relations. But there

is yet enough for man to learn, and to gratify the researches of his

curiosity; for, bounded as are his powers, he has always found that

_art is too long and life too short_. He may nevertheless feel that

his mind, in a certain sense, is within a species of intellectual

prison; but, like the terrestrial prison which confines his body to

one planet, no man ever lived long enough to exhaust the variety of

subjects presented to his contemplation and curiosity by the

intellectual and natural world.

We seem, however, said I, to be better qualified to investigate the

external laws which govern #INORGANIC MATTER#, than the subtle and

local powers which govern organized bodies. We appear (so to speak) to

be capable of looking down upon mere matter as matter; but incapable,

like the eye in viewing itself, of retiring to such a focal distance

as to be able accurately to examine ourselves. It is not difficult to

conceive that planetary bodies, and other masses of inorganic matter,

may appear to act on each other by mutually intercepting the pressure

of the elastic medium which fills space; and the pressure intercepted

by each on the inner surface of the other, may, by the un-intercepted

external pressure on each, produce the phenomena of mutual

gravitation: nor is it improbable that the curvilinear and rotatory

motions of such masses may be governed by the arrangement and mutual

action of their fixed and their fluid parts; nor impracticable for the

geometrician, when the phenomena are determined, to measure the

mechanical relations of the powers that produce those phenomena; nor

wonderful that a system of bodies so governed by general laws, should

move and act in a dependent, consequent, and necessary harmony.

Thus far the intellect of an organized being may reason safely on the

mechanical relations of inorganic masses, because an unequal balance

of forces produces their motions, and from combined motions result the

phenomena; but, in the principle of organic life, and in the duration

and final purpose of the powers of vegetables and animals, there are

mysteries which baffle the penetration of limited observation and

reason. I behold #VEGETABLES# with roots fixed in the ground, and

through them raising fluids mechanically; but my understanding is

overpowered with unsatisfied wonder, when I consider the animating

principle of the meanest vegetable, which constitutes a selfish

individuality, and enables it to give new qualities to those fluids by

peculiar secretions, and to appropriate them to its own nourishment

and growth. My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever

I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence;

whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing

agency which originates each successive germ; and the independent, but

coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and,

correcting aberrations, secures the continuity of every species--both

acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the

growth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom! On

these several subjects, my mind renders the profoundest homage to the

#MYSTERIOUS POWER# which created and continues such miracles; and,

being unable to reason upon them from the analogy of other experience,

I am forced to refer such sublime results to agency not mechanical;

or, if in any sense mechanical, so arranged and so moved as to exceed

my means of conception.

Looking once more upon the volume of nature which lay before me, I

behold a superior class of organized beings, each individual of which,

constituting an independent microcosm, is qualified to move from place

to place, by bodily adaptation and nervous sensibility. This kingdom

of #LOCO-MOTIVE BEINGS# ascends, in gradations of power and intellect,

from the hydatid to the sympathetic and benevolent philosopher; and

rises in the scale of being as much above the organization of

vegetables, as vegetables themselves are superior to the inorganic

particles in which they flourish. That they may subsist while they

move, their roots, instead of being fixed in the soil, are turned

within a cavity, or receptacle, called the stomach, into which,

appropriate soil, or aliment, is introduced by the industry of the

creature; and, that their powers of loco-motion may be exerted with

safety and advantage, they are provided with senses for smelling,

tasting, feeling, and seeing their food; and with a power of hearing

dangers which they cannot see. They are, for the same purpose, enabled

to profit by experience in powers of association, of reasoning by

analogy, and of willing according to their judgments; and they are

governed by an habitual desire to associate in species, accompanied by

moral feelings, resulting from obligations of mutual deference and

convenience. Here again, humanly speaking, we have a series of natural

miracles--a permanent connexion between external objects and the

sensations, reasoning, and conduct of the organized being. We trace

the animal frame to two constituent parts--the one mechanical, the

other sensitive; the mechanical consisting of bones, skin, stomach,

blood-vessels, glands, and intestines, provided with muscles and

sinews for voluntary motion; and the sensitive, consisting of nerves

and brain, which direct the motions by the feelings of the organs of

sense--the results of the union constituting creatures whose essence

is perception, springing from a system of brain and nerves, which,

being nourished by the energies of circulating fluids, moved by a

contrivance of muscles, and strengthened by an apparatus of bones,

produce all those varieties of feeling, durable, moving, and powerful

beings, whose functions continue as long as the original expansive

powers balance the unceasing inertia of their materials. But, of that

#SUBTLE PRINCIPLE# which distinguishes _organic life_ from _inert

matter_--of that principle of individuality which generates the

passion of self-love, and leads each individual to preserve and

sustain its own existence--of that principle which gives peculiar

powers of growth, and maturity, to germs of vegetables and

animals--and of that principle which, being stopped, suspended, or

destroyed, in the meanest or greatest of them, produces the awful

difference between the living and the dead--we have no knowledge, and

we seem incapable of acquiring any, by the limited powers of our

senses. Whether this principle of vitality is a principle of its own

kind, imparted from parent plants and animals to their germs; or

whether it is the result of the totality of the being, like the centre

of a sphere,--are questions which must perhaps for ever remain

undetermined by the reasoning powers of man.

The creature of an hour, whose chief care it is to live and indulge

his self-love, who cannot see without light, nor distinctly above a

few inches from the eye, is wholly incompetent to determine those

questions which have so long agitated philosophy; as, Whether the

phenomena of the creation could be made to exist without action and

re-action, and without space?--Whether, consequently, there are

#THREE# Eternals, or #ONE# Eternal?--Whether the #SUPREME

INTELLIGENCE, MATTER# void of form, and #SPACE# containing it, were

all eternal--or whether the supreme intelligence alone was eternal,

and matter and space created?--Whether the supreme intelligence has

only been exerted proximately or remotely on inorganic matter; space

being the necessary medium of creation, and organization being the

result?--Whether the globe of the earth, in form, is eternal, or,

according to Herschel, the effect of "a clustering power" in the

matter of space, beginning and ending, according to the general

analogy of organized beings?--Whether the earth was a comet, the

ellipticality of whose orbit has been reduced; and, if so, what was

the origin of the comet?--How the secondary mountains were

liquefied--whether by fire or by water--and what were the then

relations of the earth to the sun?--How and when that liquefaction

ceased; and how, and when, and in what order of time, the several

organizations arose upon them?--How those organizations, at least

those now existing, received the powers of secondary causes for

continuing their kind?--How every species now lives, and grows, and

maintains an eternal succession of personal identities?--How these

things were before we were, and how they now are on every side of

us--are topics which have made so much learning ridiculous, that, if I

were to discuss them, in the best forms prescribed by the schools, I

might but imitate in folly the crawling myriads, who luxuriate for an

hour on a ripening peach; and who, like ourselves, may be led by their

vanity to discuss questions in regard to the eternity, and other

attributes, of the prodigious globe, which they have inherited from

their remote ancestry, and of which the early history is lost in the

obscure traditions of their countless generations!

Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite

creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in regard to

the world in which we are placed, that all things which #DO EXIST#,

owe their existence to their #COMPATIBILITY# with other existences; to

the necessary #FITNESS# of all existing things; and to the #HARMONY#

which is essential to the existence of any thing in the form and mode

in which it does exist: for, without reciprocal #COMPATIBILITY#,

without individual #FITNESS#, and without universal #HARMONY#, nothing

could #CONTINUE TO EXIST# which #DOES EXIST#; and, therefore, what

does exist, is for the time #NECESSARILY COMPATIBLE# with other

existences, #FIT# or #NOT INCOMPATIBLE#, and in #HARMONY# with the

whole of #CO-EXISTENT BEING#. Every organized #EXISTENCE# affords,

therefore, indubitable evidence of #FINAL CAUSES# or #PURPOSES#,

competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations of #FITNESS#

to other beings; of #COMPATIBILITY# with other existences; and of

#HARMONY# in regard to the whole. And every case of #DESTRUCTION#

affords evidence, that certain #FINAL CAUSES# have become unequal to

their usual office; that the being is #UNFIT# to exist simultaneously

with some other beings; that its existence is #INCOMPATIBLE# with

certain circumstances, or that it is contrary to the general #HARMONY#

of co-existent being. May not the fifty thousand species of beings now

discoverable, be all the species whose existences have continued to be

fit, compatible, and harmonious? May not the known extinction of many

species be received as evidence, therefore, of the gradual decay of

the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not the

extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit,

by diminishing the number of final causes? And, may not the successive

breaking or wearing out of these links of final causes ultimately lead

to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called, #THE

END OF OUR WORLD#?

As I approached a sequestered mansion-house, and some other buildings,

which together bear the name of #Brick-stables#, I crossed a corner of

the meadow towards an angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames,

which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles

an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, and, running

a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced

edge of that physical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid-pendulum

which creates the earth's centrifugal power, varies the centre of its

forces, and holds in equilibrium that delicately adjusted pressure of

the medium of space, which pressure, without such balance, would, by

its _clustering power_, drive together the isolated masses of suns and

planets.--In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a

majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often

succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine origin,

and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error

it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and

which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher,

and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every

series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty

priesthood to consider a beneficent river as a tangible branch of the

Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, are

but a portion of the rains and snows which, having fallen near its

source, are returning to the ocean, there to rise again and re-perform

the same circle of vapours, clouds, rains, and rivers. What a process

of fertilization, and how still more luxuriant would have been this

vicinity, if man had not levelled the trees and carried away the crops

of vegetation! What a place of shelter would thus have been afforded

to tribes of amphibiae, whose accumulated remains often surprise

geologists, though necessarily consequent on the fall of crops of

vegetation on each other, near undisturbed banks of rivers. Happily,

in Britain, our coal-pits, or mineralized forests, have supplied the

place of our living woods; or man, regardless of the fitness of all

the parts to the perfection of every natural result, might here, as in

other long-peopled countries, ignorantly have thwarted the course of

Nature by cutting down the timber, which, acting on the electricity of

the clouds, affects their density, and causes them to fall in

fertilizing showers. Such has been the fate of all the countries

famous in antiquity. Persia, Syria, Arabia, parts of Turkey, and the

Barbary coast, have been rendered arid deserts by this inadvertency.

The clouds from the Western Ocean would long since have passed over

England without disturbance from the conducting powers of leaves of

trees, or blades of grass, if our coal-works had not saved our natural

conductors; while this Thames, the agent of so much abundance and so

much wealth, might, in that case, have become a shallow brook, like

the once equally famed Jordan, Granicus, or Ilyssus.

The dingy atmosphere of London smoke, which I had measured so

accurately on Putney Heath, presented itself again over the woods of

Chiswick Grove, reminding me of the cares of the busy world, and

producing a painful contrast to the tranquillity of nature, to the

silently gliding Thames, and to the unimpassioned simplicity of the

vegetable creation. #Man#, I reflected, brings upon himself a thousand

calamities as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then,

overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what

he calls #EVIL#:--#He# compromises every natural pleasure, to acquire

fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and

eternally in death; and seeks to render his name celebrated among

posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though

posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feeling--#HE#

deprives himself, and all around him, of every passing enjoyment, to

accumulate wealth, that he may purchase other men's labour, in the

vain hope of adding their happiness to his own--#HE# omits to make

effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the

rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming

poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice--#HE# arms

himself with murderous weapons, and on the lightest instigations

practises murder as a science, follows this science as a regular

profession, and honours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers,

in proportion to the quantity of blood they have shed, or the

mischiefs they have perpetrated--#HE# disguises the most worthless of

the people in showy liveries, teaches them the use of destructive

weapons, and then excites them to murder men whom they never saw, by

the fear of being killed if they will not kill, or of being shot for

cowardice--#HE# revels in luxury and gluttony, and then complains of

the diseases which result from repletion--#HE# tries in all things to

counteract, or improve, the provisions of nature, and then afflicts

himself at his disappointments--#HE# multiplies the chances against

his own health and life, by his numerous artifices, and then wonders

at the frequency of their fatal results--#HE# shuts his eyes against

the volume of truth, presented by nature, and, vainly considering that

all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts

in regard to the justice of eternal causation--#HE# interdicts the

enjoyments of all other creatures, and, regarding the world as his

property, in mere wantonness destroys myriads on whom have been

lavished beauties and perfections--#HE# is the selfish and merciless

tyrant of all animated nature, no considerations of pity or sympathy

restraining, or even qualifying, his antipathies, his caprices, or his

gluttonies; while, more unhappy than his victims, he is constantly

arraigning that system in which he is the chief cause of more misery

than all other causes joined together--#HE# forgets, that to live and

let live, is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to all

man's relations with his fellow-men, but to inferior creatures, to

whom his moral obligations are the greater, because their lives and

happiness are often within his power--#HE# is the patient of the

unalterable progress of universal causation, yet makes a difficulty of

submitting to the impartial distribution of the provisions which

sustain all other beings--#HE# afflicts himself that he cannot live

for ever, though he sees all organized being decay around him, and

though his forefathers have successively died to make room for

him--#HE# repines at the thought of losing that life, the use of which

he so often perverts; and, though he began to exist but yesterday,

thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to

enjoy it for ever--#HE# sees no benevolence in the scheme of Nature

which provides eternal youth to partake of the pleasures of existence;

and which, destroying those pleasures by satiety of enjoyment,

produces the blunted feelings of disease and old age--#HE# mars all

his perceptions of well-being by anticipating the cessation of his

vital functions, though, before that event, he necessarily ceases to

be conscious or to suffer--#HE# seeks indulgences unprovided for by

the course of Nature, and then anxiously employs himself in

endeavouring to cheat others of the labour requisite to procure

them--#HE# desires to govern others, but, regardless of their

dependence on his benevolence, is commonly gratified in displaying the

power entrusted to him, by a tyrannical abuse of it--#HE# professes to

love wisdom, yet in all his establishments for promoting it he sets up

false standards of truth; and persecutes, even with religious

intolerance, all attempts to swerve from them--#HE# makes laws, which,

in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty,

but as shields to crafty wealth--#HE# renders justice unattainable by

its costliness; and personal rights uncertain by the intricacy and

fickleness of legal decisions--#HE# possesses means of diffusing

knowledge, in the sublime art of Printing; but, by suffering wealth

and power to corrupt its agents, he has allowed it to become

subservient to the gratification of personal malignity and political

turpitude--#HE# acknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet

teaches them any thing rather than their social duties in the

political state in which they live--#HE# adopts the customs of

barbarous ages as precedents of practice, and founds on them codes for

the government of enlightened nations--in a word, #HE# makes false and

imperfect estimates of his own being, of his duties to his

fellow-beings, and of his relations to all being; and then passes his

days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing Evil to

supernatural causes, and in feverish expectations of results contrary

to the necessary harmony of the world!

I was thus employed in drawing a species of Indictment against the

errors, follies, selfishness, and vices of my fellow-men, while I

passed along a pleasant foot-path, which conducted me from

Brick-stables to the carriage-road from Mortlake to Kew. On arriving

at the stile, I saw a colony of the people called #Gipsies#, and,

gratified at falling in with them, I seated myself upon it, and,

hailing the eldest of the men in terms of civility, he approached me

courteously; and I promised myself, from the interview, a fund of

information relative to the economy of those people.

Policy so singular, manners so different, and passions so varied, have

for so many ages characterized the race of Gipsies, that the incident

of meeting with one of their little camps agreeably roused me from

that reverie on Matter and its modifications, into which I had fallen.

What can be more strongly marked than the gipsy physiognomy? Their

lively jet-black eyes--their small features--their tawny skins--their

small bones--and their shrill voices, bespeak them to be a distinct

tribe of the human race, as different from the English nation as the

Chinese, the North-American Indians, or the woolly-headed Africans.

They seem, in truth, as different in their bodies, and in their

instincts, from the inhabitants of England and other countries in

which they live, as the spaniel from the greyhound, or as the

cart-horse from the Arabian. Our instincts, propensities, or fit and

necessary habits, seem to lead us, like the ant, to lay up stores;

theirs, like the grasshopper, to depend on the daily bounties of

nature;--we, with the habits of the beaver, build fixed habitations;

and they, like the deer, range from pasture to pasture;--we, with an

instinct all our own, cultivate arts; they content themselves with

picking up our superfluities;--we make laws and arrange governments;

they know no laws but those of personal convenience, and no government

beyond that of muscular force growing out of the habits of

seniority;--and we cherish passions of ambition and domination,

consequent on our other arrangements, to which they are utter

strangers. Thus, we indulge our propensities, and they indulge theirs.

Which are the happiest beings, might be made a question--but I am led

to decide in favour of the arts and comforts of civilized life. These

people appear to possess the natural feebleness and delicacy of man,

without the power of shielding themselves from the accidents of

nature. Their darling object appears to be, to enjoy practical

personal liberty. They possess less, and they enjoy fewer, luxuries

than others; but they escape slavery in all the Protean shapes by

which it ensnares the rest of mankind. They do not act as menial

servants, and obey the caprice of a master; nor do they work as

labourers for a tythe of the advantages of their industry. They do

not, as tenants of land, pay half the produce in rentals; nor do they,

as anxious traders, pay half their profits to usurers or capitalists.

They are not liable to the conscriptions of a militia-ballot; nor to

be dragged from their families by the frightful tyranny of the

impress. And, in fine, they are not compelled to contribute a large

portion of their earnings in taxes to support folly or prodigality;

nor are they condemned to pay, through their successive generations,

the interest of money lent for the hire of destroyers of men, who

were, like themselves, guilty only of resolving to be free. Yet, if

they are exempt from the torture of civilized man, of having the

comforts he enjoys torn from him by the sophistry of law, or the

tyranny of governments; they suffer from hour to hour the torments of

want, and the apprehension of not meeting with renewed supplies. If

they are gayer than civilized man, it is because their wants are

fewer, and therefore fewer of them are unsatisfied; and probably the

gaiety which they assume before strangers may result from their

constitution, which, under the same circumstances, may render them

gayer than others, just as a Frenchman is gayer than an Englishman, or

an Englishman than a North-American Indian. In a word, in looking upon

this race, and upon the other recorded varieties of our species, from

the woolly-headed African to the long-haired Asiatic, from the

blue-eyed and white-haired Goth to the black-eyed and black-haired

North American, and from the gigantic Patagonian to the dwarfish

Laplander; we are led to believe, that the human species must

radically have been as various as any other species of animated

beings; and it seems as unphilosophical as impious, to limit the

powers of creation to pairs of one kind, and to ascribe their actual

varieties to the operations of chance.

As I proceeded from the stile towards their tents, the apparent chief

of the gang advanced with a firm step, holding a large knife in one

hand, and some eatables in the other; and he made many flourishes with

his knife, seemingly in the hope of intimidating me, if I proved an

enemy. I civilly begged his pardon for intruding upon their camp, and

assured him that mine was a mere visit of curiosity; that I was not a

justice of the peace, and had no desire to disturb them. He then told

me I was very welcome, and I advanced to their chief tent. "But," said

I to this man, "you have not the gipsy colour and features?" "O, no,"

he replied, "I am no gipsy--the people call us all _gipsies_--but I am

by trade a tinker--I live in ---- Court, Shoreditch, in the winter; and

during the summer I travel the country, and get my livelihood by my

trade." Looking at others of the group, who were sitting at the

entrance of two tents, I traced two sets of features among them, one

plainly English, and the other evidently Gipsy; and, mentioning this

circumstance, he replied, "O yes--though I am not a gipsy, my wife is,

and so is her old mother there--they are true gipsies, every inch of

'em. This man, my wife's brother, is a gipsy--we are useful to one

another in this way of life--and the old woman there is as knowing a

gipsy as any in the country, and can tell your fortune, sir, if you

like to hear it."--His character of the elder gipsy, who resembled

Munden's witch in Macbeth, produced considerable mirth in the whole

party; and the old woman, who was engaged in smoking her pipe, took it

from her mouth, and said: "I ayn't told so many gentlefolks their

fortunes to no purpose, and I'll tell your's, sir, if you'll give me

something to fill my pipe." I smiled, and told her I thanked her; but,

as I was not _in love_, I felt no anxiety to hear my fortune.--"Aye,

sir," said she, "many's the lover I've made happy, and many's the

couple that I've brought together."--Recollecting Farquhar's incident

in the Recruiting Officer, I remarked:--"You tell the ladies what

their lovers hire you to tell them, I suppose--and the gentlemen what

the ladies request you to tell them?"--"Why, yes," said she,

"something like it;" and laughing--"aye, sir, I see you're in the

secret!"--"And then you touch golden fees, I suppose?"--"Yes,"

interrupted the first man, "I've known her get five or six guineas on

a wedding-day, part from the lady, and part from the gentleman; and

she never wants a shilling, and a meal's victuals, when she passes

many houses that I could name."--"True," exclaimed the old beldame,

"that's all true; and I've made many fine folks happy in my time, and

so did my mother before me--she was known far and near!" I had no

occasion to remark on the silly dupes on whom they practised these

impositions, for the whole party expressed their sentiments by bursts

of laughter while the old woman was speaking: but I could not help

exclaiming, that I thought she ought to make the fools pay well who

gave credit to her prophecies.--"Aye," said she, "I see you don't

believe in our art--but we tell all by _the hand_!"--I felt of course

that _the hand_ was as good a key to determine the order of _probable_

events as planets, cards, or tea-sediments; and therefore, concluding

that gipsies, like astrologers and other prophets, are imposed on by

the doctrine of chances, I dropped the conversation; but felt it my

duty to give the old woman a shilling to buy some tobacco for her

pipe.

I now surveyed the entire party, and in three tents found there were

three men, two women, besides the old woman, four girls, and two boys.

One of the tents was placed at a little distance from the others, and

in that resided a young married couple.--"And pray," said I, "where

and how do you marry?"--"Why," said the first man, "we marry like

other folks--they were married at Shoreditch Church--I was married to

my old woman here at Hammersmith Church--and my brother-in-law here

was married at Acton Church."--"Then," said I, "you call yourselves

Christians?"--At this question they all laughed; and the first man

said, that, "If it depends on our going to church, we can't say much

about it; but, as we do nobody any harm, and work for our living, some

in one way, and some in another, we suppose we are as good Christians

as many other folks."

While this conversation passed, I heard them speaking to each other in

a language somewhat resembling Irish, but it had tones more shrill;

and the first man, notwithstanding his English physiognomy, as well as

the others, spoke with a foreign accent, not unlike that of

half-anglicized Hindoos. I mentioned this peculiarity; but he assured

me that neither he nor any of the party had been out of England. I now

inquired about their own language, when one of them said it was

_Maltese_; but the other said it was their _cant_ language. I asked

their names for various objects which I pointed out; but, after half a

dozen words, the first man inquired, if I had "ever heard of one Sir

Joseph Banks--for," said he, "that gentleman once paid me a guinea for

telling him twenty words in our language." Perceiving, therefore, that

he rated this species of information very high, and aware that the

subject has been treated at large by many authors, I forbore to press

him further.

The ground served them for a table, and the grass for a table-cloth.

The mixture of their viands with dirty rags, and other disgusting

objects, proved that they possess no sentiment, in regard to

cleanliness, superior to lower animals. Like philosophical chemists,

they evidently admitted the elementary analogy of what the delicate

sense of society classes under contrasted heads of _dirty_ and

_clean_. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and

they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling

which actuates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of

benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their

furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two

or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a

pole at each end, with a ridge pole, covered with blanketing, which

was stretched obliquely to the ground by wooden pegs. Such rudeness,

and such simplicity, afforded a striking contrast to the gorgeous

array of oriental splendour in the palaces of Royalty; and to the

varied magnificence displayed in those warehouses whence an Oakley, or

a Bullock, supplies the mansions of wealth and grandeur.

Indeed, as I stood conversing with these people, how could I help

marvelling that, in the most polished district of the most civilized

of nations, with the grand pagoda of Kew-Gardens in full view on one

hand, and the towers of the new Bastile Palace in sight on the other,

I should thus have presented under my eyes a family of eleven persons

in no better condition than the Hottentots in their kraals, the

Americans in their wigwams, or the Tartars in their equally rude

tents. I sighed, however, to think that difference of natural

constitution and varied propensities were in England far from being

the only causes of the proximity of squalid misery to ostentatious

pomp. I felt too that the manners of these gipsies were assimilated to

those of the shepherd tribes of the remotest antiquity, and that in

truth I saw before me a family of the pastoral ages, as described in

the Book of Genesis. They wanted their flocks and herds; but the

possession of these neither accorded with their own policy, nor with

that of the country in which they reside. Four dogs attached to their

tents, and two asses grazing at a short distance, completed such a

grouping as a painter would, I have no doubt, have found in the days

of Abraham in every part of Western Asia, and as is now to be found

among the same people, at this day, in every country in Europe. They

exhibit that state of man in which thousands of years might pass away

without record or improvement: and, whether they are Egyptians, Arabs,

Hindoos, Tartars, or a peculiar variety of our species; whether they

exhibit man in the rude state which, according to Lord Montboddo, most

nearly approximates to the ourang-outang of the oriental forests; or

whether they are considered in their separated character--they form an

interesting study for the philosopher, the economist, and the

antiquary.

In a few minutes after I had left the gipsy camp, I was overtaken by a

girl of fifteen, the quickness of whose breathing indicated excessive

alarm. "O, sir," said she, "I'm so glad to come up with you--I'm so

frightened--I've been standing this quarter of an hour on the other

side of the stile, waiting for somebody to come by."--"And what has so

frightened you?" said I.--"O, sir," said the still terrified girl,

looking behind her, and increasing her pace, "those gipsies and

witches--they frighten every body; and I wo'dn't have come this way

for all the world if I'd known they'd been there."--"But," said I,

"what are you frightened at? have you heard that they have done harm

to any one?"--"O dear! yes, sir, I've heard my mother say they

bewitches people; and, one summer, two of them beat my father

dreadfully."--"But what did he do to them?"--"Why, he was a little

tipsy, to be sure; but he says he only called 'em a pack of

fortune-tellers."--"And are all the children in this neighbourhood as

much frightened at them as you?"--"O yes, sir; but some of the boys

throw stones over the hedge at them, but we girls are afraid they'll

bewitch us. Did you see the old hag, sir?" The poor girl asked this

question with such simplicity, and with a faith so confirmed, that I

had reason once more to feel astonishment at the superstition which

infests and disgraces the common people of this generally enlightened

nation! Let me hope that the tutors in the schools of Bell and

Lancaster will consider it as part of their duties, to destroy the

vulgar faith in ghosts, omens, fortune-telling, fatality, and

witchcraft.

On my right, my attention was attracted by the battlements of a new

Gothic building, which I learnt, from the keeper of an adjoining

turnpike, was called #Kew Priory#, and is a summer retreat of a

wealthy Catholic maiden lady, Miss Doughty, of Richmond-Hill; after

whom a street has recently been named in London. Learning that the

lady was not there, I turned aside to take a nearer view; and, ringing

at the gate, in the hope of seeing the interior, a female, who opened

it, told me that it was a rule of the place, that _no man_ could be

admitted besides the Rev. Mr. ----, the Catholic priest. I learnt that

the Priory, a beautiful structure on a lawn, consisted merely of a

chapel, a room for refreshments, and a library; and that the lady used

it for a change of scene in the long afternoons of the summer season.

The enclosed space contained about 24 acres, on the banks of the

Thames, and is subdivided by Pilton's invisible fences. Behind the

priory, there is a house for the bailiff and his wife, a capacious

pheasantry, an aviary, and extensive stables. Nothing can be more

tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is

exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes

cover the entire site to a considerable depth.

Another quarter of a mile, along a dead flat, brought me upon

#Kew-Green#. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens

presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten

stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the

horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured

the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green.

As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my left, the long boundary-wall of

Kew-Gardens; on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk the

effigies of the whole British navy, and over each representation

appears the name of the vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in

this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or six feet long, and

extending, with intervening distances, above a mile and a half. As the

labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary performance; and I

was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency from passing

travellers.

#Kew-Green# is a triangular area of about thirty acres. Nearly in the

centre is the chapel of St. Anne. On the eastern side is a row of

family houses; on the north-western side a better row, the backs of

which look to the Thames; and on the south side stand the

boundary-wall of Kew-Gardens, some buildings for soldiery, and the

plain house of Ernest, duke of Cumberland. Among other persons of note

and interest who reside here, are the two respectable daughters of

Stephen Duck, the poet, who deserve to be mentioned as relics of a

former age. In the western corner stand the buildings called Kew

Palace, in which George III. passed many of the early years of his

reign, and near which he began a new structure a few years before his

confirmed malady--which I call the _Bastile Palace_, from its

resemblance to that building, so obnoxious to freedom and freemen. On

a former occasion, I have viewed its interior, and I am at loss to

conceive the motive for preferring an external form, which rendered it

impracticable to construct within it more than a series of large

closets, boudoirs, and rooms like oratories. The works have, however,

been suspended since the unhappy seclusion of the Royal Architect; and

it is improbable, at least in this generation, that they will be

resumed. The foundation is in a bog close to the Thames, and the

principal object within its view is the dirty town of Brentford, on

the opposite side of the river.

I had intended to prolong my route to the western corner of the Green;

but, in passing St. Anne's Chapel, I found the pew-openers engaged in

wiping the pews and washing the aisles. I knew that that child of

Genius, #Gainsborough#, the painter, lay interred here; and, desirous

of paying my homage to his grave, I inquired for the spot. As is usual

in regard to this class of people, they could give me no information;

yet one of them fancied she had heard such a name before. I was

therefore obliged to wait while the sexton or clerk was fetched, and

in the interim I walked into the chapel. I was, in truth, well re-paid

for the time it cost me; for I never saw any thing prettier, except

Lord Le Despencer's exquisite structure at West Wycombe. As the royal

family usually attend here when they reside at Kew, it is superbly

fitted up, and the architecture is in the best taste. The seats for

the family fill the gallery, and on the ground-floor there are

forty-eight pews of brown oak, adapted for four and six persons each.

Several marble monuments of singular beauty adorn the walls; but the

record of a man of genius absorbed every attraction of ordinary rank

and title. It was a marble slab, to the memory of #Meyer#, the

painter,--with lines by the amiable poet, #Hayley#; and I was led, by

respect for painter and poet, to copy the whole:--

#Jeremiah Meyer#, R.A.

Painter in Miniature and Enamel to

his Majesty Geo. III.

Died January 19, 1789.

Meyer! in thy works, the world will ever see

How great the loss of Art in losing thee;

But Love and Sorrow find the words too weak,

Nature's keen sufferings on thy death to speak;

Through all her duties, what a heart was thine;

In thy cold dust what spirit used to shine!

Fancy, and truth, and gaiety, and zeal,

What most we love in life, and, losing, feel;

Age after age may not one artist yield

Equal to thee, in Painting's ample field;

And ne'er shall sorrowing Earth to Heaven commend

A fonder parent, or a firmer friend.

_William Hayley_, 1789.

From hence I strolled into the vestry, where I found a table of fees,

drawn with a degree of precision which merits imitation. It appears,

that the fees for #MARRIAGES# with a licence are 10_s._ 6_d._, and by

banns 5_s._ That those for #BURIALS#, to the minister, if the prayers

are said in the church, are 5_s._; if only at the grave, 2_s._ 6_d._

The graves are six feet deep; and, in the church, the coffin must be

of lead. The clerk is entitled to _half_, and the sexton to about a

_third_ more. A vault in the church is charged 21_l._, and in the

church-yard 10_l._ 10_s._; with 5_l._ 5_s._ and 2_l._2_s._

respectively for each time of opening. To non-residents they are

double.--I had scarcely finished this extract, when the clerk's or

sexton's assistant made his appearance; and on the south side of the

church-yard he brought me to the tomb of #Gainsborough#.

"Ah! friend," said I, "this is a hallowed spot--here lies one of

Britain's favoured sons, whose genius has assisted in exalting her

among the nations of the earth."--"Perhaps it was so," said the man,

"but we know nothing about the people buried, except to keep up their

monuments, if the family pay; and, perhaps, Sir, you belong to this

family; if so, I'll tell you how much is due."--"Yes, truly, friend,"

said I, "I am one of the great family bound to preserve the monument

of Gainsborough; but, if you take me for one of his relatives, you are

mistaken."--"Perhaps, Sir, you may be of the family, but were not

included in the Will, therefore are not obligated." I could not now

avoid looking with scorn at the fellow; but, as the spot claimed

better feelings, I gave him a trifle for his trouble, and mildly told

him I would not detain him.

The monument being a plain one, and making no palpable appeal to

vulgar admiration, was disregarded by these people; for it is in death

as in life, if you would excite the notice of the multitude, you must

in the grave have a splendid mausoleum, or in walking the streets you

must wear fine clothes. It did not fall in the way of the untaught, on

this otherwise polite spot, to know that they have among them the

remains of #THE FIRST PAINTER OF OUR NATIONAL SCHOOL#, in

fancy-pictures, and one #OF THE FIRST# in the classes of landscape and

portrait;--a man who recommended himself as much by his superiority,

as by his genius; as much by the mode in which his genius was

developed, as by the perfection of his works; and as much by his

amiable private character as by his eminence in the chief of Fancy's

Arts. There is this difference between a poet and a painter--that the

poet only exhibits the types of ideas in words, limited in their sense

by his views, or his powers of expression; but the painter is called

upon to exhibit the ideas themselves in a tangible shape, and made out

in all their parts and most beautiful forms. The poet may write with a

limited knowledge of his subject, and he may produce any partial view

of it which his powers enable him to exhibit in a striking manner; but

the successful painter must do all this, and he must execute with his

hand as well as conceive with his mind. The poet, too, has the

advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself

of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his

entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his

composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the

judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of

admiration among ordinary persons--but far more so a great painter,

who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary

combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man was #Thomas Gainsborough#,

before whose modest tomb I stood! The following are the words engraven

on the stone:--

#Thomas Gainsborough#, esq.

died August 2, 1788.

Also the body of

#Gainsborough Dupont#, esq.

who died Jan. 20, 1797,

aged 42 years.

Also, Mrs. #Margaret Gainsborough#,

wife of the above

Thomas Gainsborough, esq,

who died Dec. 17, 1798,

in the 72d year of her age.

A little to the eastward lie the remains of another illustrious son of

art, the modest #Zoffany#, whose Florence Gallery, Portraits of the

Royal Family, and other pictures, will always raise him among the

highest class of painters. He long resided on this Green, and, like

Michael Angelo, Titian, and our own #West#, produced master-pieces at

four-score. The words on the monument are:

Sacred to the Memory

of #John Zoffany#, R.A.

who died Nov. 11, 1810,

aged 87 years.

It was a remarkable coincidence, that the bones of #Gainsborough# and

#Zoffany# should thus, without premeditation, have been laid side by

side; and that, but a few weeks before I paid my visit to this spot,

delighted crowds had been daily drawn together to view their principal

works, combined with those of #Wilson# and #Hogarth#, in forming an

attractive metropolitan exhibition. On that occasion every Englishman

felt proud of the native genius of our #Gainsborough#. It was ably

opposed in one line by a #Wilson#, and in another by a #Zoffany#; yet

the works of the untutored #Gainsborough# and #Hogarth# served to

prove that every great artist must be born such; and that superiority

in human works is the result of original aptitude, and cannot be

produced by any servile routine of education, however specious,

imposing, sedulous, or costly.

This valley of the Thames is, however, sanctified every-where by

relics which call for equal reverence. But a mile distant on my right,

in Chiswick Church-yard, lie the remains of the painting moralist

#Hogarth#; who invented a universal character, or species of moral

revelation, intelligible to every degree of intellect, in all ages and

countries; who opened a path to the kindred genius of a #Burnett# and

a #Wilkie#; and who conferred a deathless fame on the manners, habits,

and chief characters of his time. And, but a mile on my left, in

Richmond Church, lie the remains of #Thomson#, the poet of nature, of

liberty, and of man--who displayed his powers only for noble purposes;

who scorned, like the vile herd of modern rhymesters, to ascribe

_glory_ to injustice, _heroism_ to the assassins of the champions of

liberty, or _wisdom_ to the mischievous prejudices of weak princes;

and who, by asserting in every line the moral dignity of his art,

became an example of poetical renown, which has been ably followed by

#Glover#, #Akenside#, #Cowper#, #Robinson#, #Burns#, #Barlow#,

#Barbauld#, #Wolcot#, #Moore#, and #Byron#.

The fast-declining Sun, and my wearied limbs here reminded me that I

was the slave of nature, and of nature's laws; and that I had neither

time, nor power, to excurse or go farther. My course, therefore,

necessarily terminated on this spot; and here I must take leave of the

reader, who has been patient, or liberal enough, to accompany me.

For my own part, I had been highly gratified with the great volume, ten

or twelve miles long, by two or three broad, in the study of which I

had employed the lengthened morning; though this volume of my brief

analysis the reader will doubtless find marked by the short-sightedness

and imperfections which attend every attempt of human art to compress

an infinite variety into a finite compass.

In looking back at the incidents of the day, which the language of

custom has, with reference to our repasts, denominated #THE MORNING#,

I could not avoid feeling the strong analogy which exists between such

an excursion as that which I have here described and #THE LIFE of

MAN#. Like that, and all things measured by #TIME# and #SPACE#, it had

had its #BEGINNING#--its eventful #COURSE#--and its #END# determined

by physical causes.

On emerging in the morning, I foresaw as little as the child foresees

his future life, what were to be the incidents of my journey. I

proceeded in each successive hour even as he proceeds in each year. I

jostled no one, and no one disturbed me. My feelings were those of

peace, and I suffered from no hostility. My inclinations were

virtuous, and I have experienced the rewards of virtue. Every step had

therefore been productive of satisfaction, and I had no-where had

cause to look behind me with regret.

In this faithful journal, I have ventured to smile at folly; I have

honestly reprehended bad passions, and I have sincerely sympathized

with their victims. May all my readers be led to smile, reprehend, and

sympathize with me; and I solicit this result--for their sakes--for

the sake of truth--and in the hope that, if our feelings have been

reciprocal, our mutual labours will not have been wasted! At the end

of my short career, I conscientiously looked back on the incidents of

my course with the complacency with which all may look back in old-age

on the incidents of well-spent lives. Let no one sneer at the

comparison, for, when human life has passed away, in what degree are

its multiplied cares and chequered scenes more important than the

simple events which attend a morning's walk? Look on the graves of

that church-yard, and see in #THEM# the representations of hundreds of

anxious lives! Are not those graves, then, said I, the end of

thousands of busy cares and ambitious projects? Was not life the #MERE

DREAM# of their now senseless tenants--like the trackless path of a

bird in the air, or of a fish in the waters? Were they not #the

Phantasmagoria# which, in their day, filled up the shifting scene of

the world,--and are we not, in our several days, similar shadows,

which modify the light for a season, and then disappear to make room

for others like ourselves? May not the events of a morning which

slides away, and leaves no traces behind it, be correctly likened

therefore to the entire course of human life? The one, like the other,

may be well or ill spent--idly dissipated or beneficially

employed;--and the chequered incidents will be found to be similar to

those which mark the periods of the longest life.

In conclusion, I cannot avoid wishing that my example may be followed,

in other situations, by minds variously stored and directed by

different inquiries. Like the day which has just been recorded, the

incidents of every situation, and the thoughts which pass without

intermission through every mind, would, in a similar portion of time,

fill similar volumes, which, as indices of man's intellectual

machinery, might serve the purpose of the dial of a clock, or the

gnomon of a sun-dial, and prove agreeable sources of amusement, as

well as efficacious means of disseminating valuable principles and

useful instruction.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE AUTHOR'S ROUTE.]