September 7, 1784.
Of all pleasure, I see much may be destroyed by eagerness of
anticipation: I had told my female companion, to whom travelling was
new, how she would be surprized and astonished, at the difference found
in crossing the narrow sea from England to France, and now she is not
astonished at all; why should she? We have lingered and loitered six and
twenty hours from port to port, while sickness and fatigue made her feel
as if much more time still had elapsed since she quitted the opposite
shore. The truth is, we wanted wind exceedingly; and the flights of
shaggs, and shoals of maycril, both beautiful enough, and both uncommon
too at this season, made us very little amends for the tediousness of a
night passed on ship-board.
Seeing the sun rise and set, however, upon an unobstructed horizon, was
a new idea gained to me, who never till now had the opportunity. It
confirmed the truth of that maxim which tells us, that the human mind
must have something left to supply for itself on the sight of all
sublunary objects. When my eyes have watched the rising or setting sun
through a thick crowd of intervening trees, or seen it sink gradually
behind a hill which obstructed my closer observation, fancy has always
painted the full view finer than at last I found it; and if the sun
itself cannot satisfy the cravings of a thirsty imagination, let it at
least convince us that nothing on this side Heaven can satisfy them, and
_set our affections_ accordingly.
Pious reflections remind one of monks and nuns; I enquired of the
Franciscan friar who attended us at the inn, what was become of Father
Felix, who did the duties of the quête; as it is called, about a dozen
years ago, when I recollect minding that his manners and story struck
Dr. Johnson exceedingly, who said that so complete a character could
scarcely be found in romance. He had been a soldier, it seems, and was
no incompetent or mean scholar: the books we found open in his cell,
shewed he had not neglected modern or colloquial knowledge; there was a
translation of Addison's Spectators, and Rapin's Dissertation on the
contending Parties of England called Whig and Tory. He had likewise a
violin, and some printed music, for his entertainment. I was glad to
hear he was well, and travelling to Barcelona on foot by orders of the
superior.
After dinner we set out to see Miss Grey, at her convent of Dominican
Nuns; who, I hoped, would have remembered me, as many of the ladies
there had seized much of my attention when last abroad; they had however
all forgotten me, nor could call to mind how much they had once admired
the beauty of my eldest daughter, then a child, which I thought
impossible to forget: one is always more important in one's own eyes
than in those of others; but no one is of importance to a Nun, who is
and ought to be employed in other speculations.
When the Great Mogul showed his splendour to a travelling dervise, who
expressed his little admiration of it--"Shall you not often be thinking
of me in future?" said the monarch. "Perhaps I might," replied the
religieux, "if I were not always thinking upon God."
The women spinning at their doors here, or making lace, or employing
themselves in some manner, is particularly consolatory to a British eye;
yet I do not recollect it struck me last time I was over: industry
without bustle, and some appearance of gain without fraud, comfort one's
heart; while all the profits of commerce scarcely can be said to make
immediate compensation to a delicate mind, for the noise and brutality
observed in an English port. I looked again for the chapel, where the
model of a ship, elegantly constructed, hung from the top, and found it
in good preservation: some scrupulous man had made the ship, it seems,
and thought, perhaps justly too, that he had spent a greater portion of
time and care on the workmanship than he ought to have done; so
resolving no longer to indulge his vanity or fondness, fairly hung it up
in the convent chapel, and made a solemn vow to look on it no more. I
remember a much stronger instance of self-denial practised by a pretty
young lady of Paris once, who was enjoined by her confessor to wring off
the neck of her favourite bullfinch, as a penance for having passed too
much time in teaching him to pipe tunes, peck from her hand, &c.--She
obeyed; but never could be prevailed on to see the priest again.
We are going now to leave Calais, where the women in long white camblet
clokes, soldiers with whiskers, girls in neat slippers, and short
petticoats contrived to show them, who wait upon you at the
inn;--postillions with greasy night-caps, and vast jack-boots, driving
your carriage harnessed with ropes, and adorned with sheep-skins, can
never fail to strike an Englishman at his first going abroad:--But what
is our difference of manners, compared to that prodigious effect
produced by the much shorter passage from Spain to Africa; where an
hour's time, and sixteen miles space only, carries you from Europe, from
civilization, from Christianity. A gentleman's description of his
feelings on that occasion rushes now on my mind, and makes me half
ashamed to sit here, in Dessein's parlour, writing remarks, in good
time!--upon places as well known as Westminster-bridge to almost all
those who cross it at this moment; while the custom-house officers
intrusion puts me the less out of humour, from the consciousness that,
if I am disturbed, I am disturbed from doing _nothing_.