you will be in no danger of heresy; and you requested me to send you
full accounts of all that I should see, learn, and think during this
enquiry, as the main confession you should require. The result will
prove that your confidence was not misplaced; that nothing could leach
me so feelingly the blessing of health, as a course of studies in an
infirmary.
Many of the names of this hydra brood need no explanation; the others I
shall explain as I understand them, and those which are left untouched
you may consider as too insignificant in their numbers, or in their
points of difference, to require more than the mere insertion of their
titles in the classification of heresies. The Dunkers and Sandemonians,
the Baxterians and Muggletonians, may be left in obscurity with the
Tascadrogiti and Ascodrogiti, the Perliconasati of old, the
Passalaronciti, and Artotyriti, of whom St Jerome might well say, _Magis
portenta quam nomina_.
Some of these sects differ from the establishment in discipline only,
others both in doctrine and discipline; they are either political, or
fanatical, or both. In all cases it may be remarked, that the dissenting
ministers, as they are called, are more zealous than the regular clergy,
because they either choose their profession for conscience sake, or take
it up as a trade, influenced either by enthusiasm or knavery, which are
so near akin and so much alike, that it is generally difficult, and
sometimes impossible, to distinguish one from the other.
When the schism was fairly established in this island by the accursed
Elizabeth, all sorts of heresies sprung up like weeds in a neglected
field. The new establishment paid its court to the new head of the
church by the most slavish doctrines; the more abject, the more were
they unlike the principles of the Catholic religion, and also to the
political tenets of the Nonconformists. The consequence was, a strict
union between the clergy and the crown; while, on the other hand, all
the fanatics, however at variance in other points, were connected by
their common hatred of this double tyranny. Elizabeth kept them down by
the Inquisition: she martyred the Catholic teachers, and put the
Puritans to a slower death, by throwing them into dungeons, and leaving
them to rot there amid their own excrement. They strengthened during the
reign of her timorous successor, and overthrew the monarchy and
hierarchy together under Charles, the martyr of the English schismatical
church. Then they quarrelled among themselves; and one party,
disappointed of effecting its own establishment, brought back Charles
II., who ruled them with a rod of iron. A little prudence in James would
have restored England to the bosom of the church; but he offended the
clergy by his precipitance, forced them to coalesce with the Dissenters,
and lost his crown. His father’s fate was before his eyes, and he feared
to lose his head also; but had he been bold enough to set it at stake,
and been as willing to be a martyr as he was to be a confessor, a
bloodier civil war might have been excited in England than in Ireland;
England might have been his by conquest as well as by birth, and the
religion of the conqueror imposed upon the people.
This revolution occasioned a new schism. From the time of their first
establishment the clergy had been preaching the doctrines of absolute
power and passive obedience; that kings govern by a right divine, and,
therefore, are not amenable to man for their conduct. These principles
had taken deep root in consequence of the general fear and hatred
against the Calvinists. No inconsiderable portion of the clergy,
therefore, however heartily they dreaded the restoration of what they
called Popery by James, could not in conscience assent to the accession
of William: indeed, the more sincerely they had deprecated the former
danger, the less could they reconcile their really tender consciences to
the Revolution. They therefore resigned, or rather were displaced from,
their sees and benefices, and lingered about half a century as a
distinct sect, under the title of Nonjurors. These men were less
dangerous to the new government than they who, having the same opinions
without the same integrity, took the oaths of allegiance, and washed
them down with secret bumpers to King James. But great part of the
clergy sincerely acquiesced in the Whig principles; and this number was
continually increasing as long as such principles were the fashion of
the court. Of this the government were well aware: they let the
malcontents[20] alone, knowing that where the carcase is there will the
crows be gathered together; and in this case it so happened that the
common frailty and the common sense of mankind coincided.
Footnote 20:
Don Manuel seems not to recollect Dr Sacheverell, or not to have heard
of him.—TR.
I have related in my last how the Dissenters, from the republican
tendency of their principles, became again obnoxious to government
during the present reign; the ascendancy of the old high church and tory
party, and the advantages which have resulted to the true religion.
Their internal state has undergone as great a change. One part of them
has insensibly lapsed into Socinianism, a heresy, till of late years,
almost unknown in England; and into this party all the indifferentists
from other sects, who do not choose, for political motives, to join the
establishment, naturally fall. The establishment itself furnishes a
supply by the falling off of those of its members, who, in the progress
of enquiry, discover that the church of England is neither one thing nor
another; that in matters of religion all must rest upon faith, or upon
reason; and have unhappily preferred the sandy foundation of human wit.
_Crede ut intelligas, noli intelligere ut credas_, is the wise precept
of St Augustine; but these heretics have discarded the fathers as well
as the saints! These become Socinians; and though many of them do not
stop here in the career of unbelief, they still frequent the
meeting-houses, and are numbered among the sect. With these all the
hydra brood of Arianism and Pelagianism, and all the anti-calvinist
Dissenters have united; each preserving its own peculiar tenets, but all
agreeing in their abhorrence of Calvinism, their love of unbounded
freedom of opinion, and in consequence their hostility to any church
establishment. All, however, by this union, and still more by the medley
of doctrines which are preached as the pulpit happens to be filled by a
minister of one persuasion or the other, are insensibly modified and
assimilated to each other; and this assimilation will probably become
complete, as the older members, who were more rigidly trained in the
orthodoxy of heterodoxy, drop off. A body will remain respectable for
riches, numbers, erudition, and talents, but without zeal and without
generosity; and they will fall asunder at no very remote period, because
they do not afford their ministers stipends sufficient for the decencies
of life. The church must be kept together by a golden chain; and this,
which is typically true of the true church, is literally applicable to
every false one. These sectarians call themselves the enlightened part
of the Dissenters; but the children of Mammon are wiser in their
generation than such children of light.
From this party, therefore, the church of England has nothing to fear,
though of late years its hostility has been erringly directed against
them. They are rather its allies than its enemies, an advanced guard who
have pitched their camp upon the very frontiers of infidelity, and exert
themselves in combating the unbelievers on one hand, and the Calvinists
on the other. They have the fate of Servetus for their warning, which
the followers of Calvin justify, and are ready to make their precedent.
Should these sworn foes to the establishment succeed in overthrowing it,
a burnt-offering of anti-trinitarians would be the first illumination
for the victory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER XXX.
_Watering Places.—Taste for the Picturesque.—Encomiendas._
The English migrate as regularly as rooks. Home-sickness is a disease
which has no existence in a certain state of civilization or of luxury,
and instead of it these islanders are subject to periodical fits, of
what I shall beg leave to call _oikophobia_, a disorder with which
physicians are perfectly well acquainted though it may not yet have been
catalogued in the nomenclature of nosology.
In old times, that is to say, two generations ago, mineral springs were
the only places of resort. Now the Nereids have as many votaries as the
Naiads, and the tribes of wealth and fashion swarm down to the sea coast
as punctually as the land crabs in the West Indies march the same way.
These people, who have unquestionably the best houses of any people in
Europe, and more conveniences about them to render home comfortable,
crowd themselves into the narrow apartments and dark streets of a little
country town, just at that time of the year when instinct seems to make
us, like the lark, desirous of as much sky-room as possible. The price
they pay for these lodgings is exorbitant; the more expensive the place,
the more numerous are the visitors; for the pride of wealth is as
ostentatious in this country as ever the pride of birth has been
elsewhere. In their haunts, however, these visitors are capricious; they
frequent a coast some seasons in succession, like herrings, and then
desert it for some other, with as little apparent motive as the fish
have for varying their track. It is fashion which influences them, not
the beauty of the place, not the desirableness of the accommodations,
not the convenience of the shore for their ostensible purpose, bathing.
Wherever one of the queen-bees of fashion alights, a whole swarm follows
her. They go into the country for the sake of seeing company, not for
retirement; and in all this there is more reason than you perhaps have
yet imagined.
The fact is, that in these heretical countries parents have but one way
of disposing of their daughters, and in that way it becomes less and
less easy to dispose of them every year, because the modes of living
become continually more expensive, the number of adventurers in every
profession yearly increases, and of course every adventurer’s chance of
success is proportionately diminished. They who have daughters take them
to these public places to look for husbands; and there is no indelicacy
in this, because others who have no such motive for frequenting them go
likewise, in consequence of the fashion,—or of habits which they have
acquired in their younger days. This is so general, that health has
almost ceased to be the pretext. Physicians, indeed, still send those
who have more complaints than they can cure, or so few that they can
discover none, to some of the fashionable spas, which are supposed to be
medicinal because they are nauseous; they still send the paralytic to
find relief at Bath or to look for it, and the consumptive to die at the
Hot-wells: yet even to these places more persons go in quest of pleasure
than of relief, and the parades and pump-rooms there exhibit something
more like the Dance of Death than has ever perhaps been represented
elsewhere in real life.
There is another way of passing the summer which is equally, if not
more, fashionable. Within the last thirty years a taste for the
picturesque has sprung up,—and a course of summer travelling is now
looked upon to be as essential as ever a course of spring physic was in
old times. While one of the flocks of fashion migrates to the sea-coast,
another flies off to the mountains of Wales, to the lakes in the
northern provinces, or to Scotland; some to mineralogize, some to
botanize, some to take views of the country,—all to study the
picturesque, a new science for which a new language has been formed, and
for which the English have discovered a new sense in themselves, which
assuredly was not possessed by their fathers. This is one of the customs
to which it suits a stranger to conform. My business is to see the
country,—and, to confess the truth, I have myself caught something of
this passion for the picturesque, from conversation, from books, and
still more from the beautiful landscapes in water colours, in which the
English excel all other nations.
To the lakes then I am preparing to set out. D. will be my companion. We
go by way of Oxford, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and return by York and
Cambridge, designing to travel by stage over the less interesting
provinces, and, when we reach the land of lakes, to go on foot, in true
picturesque costume, with a knapsack slung over the shoulder.—I am
smiling at the elevation of yours, and the astonishment in your arched
brows. Even so:—it is the custom in England. Young Englishmen have
discovered that they can walk as well as the well-girt Greeks in the
days of old, and they have taught me the use of my legs.
I have packed up a box of _encomiendas_ to go during my absence by the
Sally, the captain of which has promised to deposit it safely with our
friend Baltazar. One case of razors is for my father; they are of the
very best fabric; my friend Benito has never wielded such instruments
since first he took man by the nose. I have added a case of lancets for
Benito himself at his own request, and in addition the newest instrument
for drawing teeth, remembering the last grinder which he dislocated for
me, and obeying the precept of returning good for evil. The cost stands
over to my own charity score, and I shall account for it with my
confessor. Padre Antonio will admit it as alms, it being manifestly
designed to save my neighbours from the pains of purgatory upon earth.
The lamp is infinitely superior to any thing you have ever seen in our
own country,—but England is the land of ingenuity. I have written such
particular instructions that there can be no difficulty in using it. The
smaller parcel is Dona Isabel’s commission. If she ask how I like the
English ladies, say to her, in the words of the Romance,
Que no quiero amores
En Inglaterra,
Pues otros mejores
Tengo yo en mi tierra.[21]
Footnote 21:
_That I want no loves in England, because I have other better ones in
my own country._—TR.
The case of sweetmeats is Mrs J—’s present to my mother. There is also a
hamper of cheese, the choicest which could be procured. One, with the
other case of razors, you will send to Padre Antonio, and tell him that
in this land of heresy I shall be as mindful of my faith as of my
friends.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER XXXI.
_Journey to Oxford.—Stage-Coach Travelling and Company._
Thursday, July 1.
The stage-coach in which we had taken our places was to start at six. We
met at the inn, and saw our trunks safely stowed in the boot, as they
call a great receptacle for baggage, under the coachman’s feet: this is
a necessary precaution for travellers in a place where rogues of every
description swarm, and in a case where neglect would be as mischievous
as knavery.—There were two other passengers, who, with ourselves, filled
the coach. The one was evidently a member of the university; the other a
fat vulgar woman who had stored herself with cakes, oranges and cordials
for the journey. She had with her a large bundle which she would not
trust in the boot, and which was too big to go in the seat, so she
carried it upon her lap. A man and woman, who had accompanied her to the
inn, stood by the coach till it set off; relations they seemed to be, by
the familiar manner in which they spoke of those to whom she was
returning, sending their love to one, and requesting to hear of another,
and repeating ‘Be sure you let us know you are got safe,’ till the very
last minute. The machine started within a few minutes of the time
appointed; the coachman smacked his whip, as if proud of his dexterity,
and we rattled over the stones with a fearful velocity, for he was
driving four horses. In Piccadilly he stopped at another inn, where all
the western stages call as they enter or go out of town: here we took in
another cargo of parcels, two passengers mounted the roof, and we once
more proceeded.
We left town by the great western road, the same way which I had
entered. It was a great relief when we exchanged the violent jolting
over the stones for steady motion on a gravel road; but the paved ways
were met with again in all the little towns and townlets;[22] and as
these for a considerable distance almost join each other, it was a full
hour before we felt ourselves fairly in the country. Several stages
passed us within a few miles of London, on their way up: they had been
travelling all night; yet such are their regularity and emulation, that
though they had come about thirty leagues, and stopped at different
places, not one was more than ten minutes distance apart from another.
Footnote 22:
_Lugares._ Villages would have been an improper name for such places
as Kensington, &c.
Englishmen are not very social to strangers. Our fellow-traveller
composed himself to sleep in the corner of the coach; but women are more
communicative, and the good lady gave us her whole history before we
arrived at the end of the first stage;—how she had been to see her
sister who lived in the Borough, and was now returning home; that she
had been to both the play-houses; Astley’s Amphitheatre, and the Royal
Circus; had seen the crown and the lions at the Tower, and the elephants
at Exeter ’Change; and that on the night of the illumination she had
been out till half after two o’clock, but never could get within sight
of M. Otto’s house. I found that it raised me considerably in her
estimation when I assured her that I had been more fortunate, and had
actually seen it. She then execrated all who did not like the peace,
told me what the price of bread had been during the war and how it had
fallen, expressed a hope that Hollands and French brandy would fall
also; spoke with complacency of Bonniprat, as she called him, and asked
whether we loved him as well in our country as the people in England
loved King George. On my telling her that I was a Spaniard, not a
Frenchman, she accommodated her conversation accordingly, said it was a
good thing to be at peace with Spain, because Spanish annatto and jar
raisins came from that country, and enquired how Spanish liquorice was
made, and if the people wer’n’t papists and never read in the Bible. You
must not blame me for boasting of a lady’s favours, if I say my answers
were so satisfactory that I was pressed to partake of her cakes and
oranges.
We breakfasted at Slough, the second stage; a little town which seems to
be chiefly supported by its inns. The room into which we were shown was
not so well furnished as those which were reserved for travellers in
chaises; in other respects we were quite as well served, and perhaps
more expeditiously. The breakfast service was on the table and the
kettle boiling. When we paid the reckoning, the woman’s share was
divided among us; it is the custom in stage-coaches, that if there be
but one woman in company the other passengers pay for her at the inns.
We saw Windsor distinctly on the left, standing on a little eminence, a
flag upon the tower indicating that the royal family were there. Almost
under it were the pinnacles of Eton college, where most of the young
nobility are educated immediately under the sovereign’s eye. An inn was
pointed out to me by the road side, where a whole party, many years ago,
were poisoned, by eating food which had been prepared in a copper
vessel. The country is flat, or little diversified with risings,
beautifully verdant, though with far more uncultivated ground than you
would suppose could possibly be permitted so near to such a metropolis.
The frequent towns, the number of houses by the road side, and the
apparent comfort and cleanliness of all, the travellers whom we met, and
the gentlemen’s seats, as they are called, in sight, every one of which
was mentioned in my Book of the Roads, kept my attention perpetually
alive. All the houses are of brick; and I did not see one which appeared
to be above half a century old.
We crossed the Thames over Maidenhead-bridge, so called from the near
town, where a head of one of the eleven thousand virgins was once
venerated. Here the river is rather beautiful than majestic; indeed
nothing larger than barges navigate it above London. The bridge is a
handsome stone pile, and the prospect on either hand delightful; but
chiefly up the river, where many fine seats are situated on the left
bank, amid hanging woods. As the day was very fine, D. proposed that we
should mount the roof; to which I assented, not without some little
secret perturbation; and, to confess the truth, for a few minutes I
repented my temerity. We sate upon the bare roof, immediately in front,
our feet resting upon a narrow shelf which was fastened behind the
coachman’s seat, and being further or closer as the body of the coach
was jolted, sometimes it swung from under us, and at others squeezed the
foot back. There was only a low iron rail on each side to secure us, or
rather to hold by, for otherwise it was no security. At first it was
fearful to look down over the driver upon four horses going with such
rapidity, or upon the rapid motion of the wheels immediately below us:
but I soon lost all sense of danger, or, to speak more truly, found that
no danger existed except in imagination; for if I sate freely, and
feared nothing, there was in reality nothing to fear.
The Oxford road branches off here from the great Western one, in a
northerly direction. A piece of waste which we crossed, called
Maidenhead Thicket, (though now not woodland as the name implies,) was
formerly infamous for robberies: and our coachman observed that it would
recover its old reputation, as soon as the soldiers and sailors were
paid off. I have heard apprehensions of this kind very generally
expressed. The soldiers have little or no money when they are
discharged, and the sailors soon squander what they may have. There will
of course be many who cannot find employment, and some who will not seek
it. Indeed the sailors talk with the greatest composure of
land-privateering, as they call highway robbery: and it must be
confessed, that their habits of privateering by sea are very well
adapted to remove all scruples concerning _meum_ and _tuum_.
At Henley we came in sight of the Thames again,—still the same quiet and
beautiful stream: the view as we descended a long hill was exceedingly
fine: the river was winding below, a fine stone bridge across it, and a
large and handsome town immediately on the other side; a town, indeed,
considerably larger than any which we had passed. These stage-coaches
are admirably managed: relays of horses are ready at every post: as soon
as the coach drives up they are brought out, and we are scarcely
detained ten minutes. The coachman seems to know every body along the
road; he drops a parcel at one door, nods to a woman at another,
delivers a message at a third, and stops at a fourth to receive a glass
of spirits or a cup of ale, which has been filled for him as soon as the
sound of his wheels was beard. In fact, he lives upon the road, and is
at home when upon his coach-box.