THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 CAMELEON SKETCHES.
 
 [T7iis J fork is on sale at 143, Strand ; by Horatio 
 Phillips, 3, Charing Cross ; at Marsh's Subscription 
 Library, 137, Oxford Street ; at the Inn at Boa. hill ; 
 and at the Library at Dorking-.]
 
 Cameleon §>fcetri)e0. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF « A PICTURESQUE 
 PROMENADE ROUND DORKING.'' 
 
 Nil fuit unquam 
 
 Sic irapar sibi. Horat. 
 
 Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen. — Francis, in imit. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1828.
 
 LONDON 7 : 
 
 CKINTTKD BV D. S1DNHV, 
 
 Northumberland-*!.
 
 
 £2- CL- 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 The Author of the following pages 
 is not unknown to the literary pub- 
 lic, by a topographical description 
 of one of the most delightful districts 
 in England, written in his nineteenth 
 and twentieth years, but revised and 
 enlarged in a second edition, pub- 
 lished in 1823. His success on this 
 occasion was more attributable to 
 the picturesque celebrity of his sub- 
 ject, than to any attraction which his 
 
 a 2 

 
 VI TO THE READER. 
 
 slender talents could contribute to its 
 locale. Nevertheless, this favourable 
 reception of his first production in- 
 duced him to announce for publi- 
 cation a volume of " Cameleon 
 Sketches," which has been delayed 
 until the present moment ; and pro- 
 bably, the author's interests and the 
 gratification of the public would have 
 been equally studied, had the " Ca- 
 meleon" been altogether left to a 
 sine die fate. 
 
 A taste for literature, and that, too, 
 in childhood, first led the writer into 
 the trammels of authorship, as a re- 
 lief from his school studies; and before 
 he read the first iEneid of Virgil, he
 
 TO THE READER. Vll 
 
 had published a manuscript school 
 newspaper, somewhat on the plan, 
 though certainly not an imitation of, 
 the Etonian Miscellany. This early 
 thirst for literature next seduced him 
 from other professional pursuits ; and 
 from the publication of his first book, 
 he determined on a literary life. But 
 these memoranda are enlarged into 
 detail, in the progress of the subse- 
 quent pages. 
 
 The above circumstances will, it 
 is hoped, be received as apologetic 
 for the delay of the " Cameleon 
 Sketches ;" especially when it is 
 known that the present volume has 
 been a labour of leisure, or like the
 
 Vlll TO THE READER. 
 
 private studies of a painter, not un- 
 profitable employment for the inter- 
 vals of more active life. To say they 
 were not intended for the public eye, 
 would be prevarication ; and to hope 
 that they may prove as gratifying to 
 the reader as they have been to the 
 writer, would be somewhat too pre- 
 sumptuous. To the latter they have 
 been a sweet solace during many 
 hours of " trial and endurance ;" and, 
 as a proof of their fidelity, (though, 
 in this place, somewhat ungracious 
 and egotistical) the labour of record- 
 ing them has often revived the pangs 
 of gloom and suffering. This is what 
 has been eloquently called the joy of 
 grief; — a pleasure which men of
 
 TO THE READER. IX 
 
 1 
 
 ■ough natures may ridicule, because 
 they are too ignorant of mankind 
 to allow themselves to be suscep- 
 tible of such influence. 
 
 The epithet of " Cameleon" has 
 been chosen for these " Sketches," 
 as the most appropriate to denote 
 the shades and reflections which they 
 contain. Many gems of antiquity 
 would have been easily recognised 
 amidst the crudities of the present 
 author, even had not such been de- 
 noted by acknowledgement. Origi- 
 nal identities are left for the reader 
 to discard or enjoy, as his taste may 
 suggest ; but as no love of fame, 
 interest, or worse motive, has stimu-
 
 X TO THE READER. 
 
 lated the enthusiasm of either of 
 these pages, the writer does not he- 
 sitate to throw himself before the 
 respecters of truth and singleness of 
 heart. Inadvertencies and errors of 
 the head have, doubtless, found their 
 way here ; but for these misgivings, 
 the author hopes to receive the in- 
 dulgence of his readers. 
 
 London, April, 1828.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION - - l 
 
 CHILDHOOD - - n 
 
 B. L.; OR, LONDON AT MIDNIGHT - 31 
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER - - 74 
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR - 109 
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD* - - 131 
 
 PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY - 169 
 
 BRAMBLETYE HOUSE - - 207 
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY - 221 
 
 * At page 134. it should be September 7, and three (in- 
 stead of two) following- Sundays.
 
 Sntrotmcticw- 
 
 " Show the motley-minded gentleman in." — Shakspeare. 
 
 I can trace the love of Solitude among 
 my earliest predilections, and I number its 
 enjoyment with the happiest hours of my 
 little life. This impression, received in my 
 childhood, has been strengthened in youlh, 
 and is now matured in manhood. If society 
 brand me with the name of a Misanthrope, 
 I must bear my lot with patience. I entered 
 the world with better feelings ; but experi- 
 ence has saddened me to the soul, and all 
 the consolation I find — is in myself, so that, 
 with the old philosopher, I may say, " I am 
 never less alone, than when alone." I 
 hope it will not be considered as a recan- 
 tation, or conviction of error, if I substitute 
 
 B
 
 y INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "retirement" for "solitude;" the latter 
 being considered as too ascetic a state for 
 the high-bred readers of the present day. 
 
 It matters not for me here to explain, 
 more in detail, the motives with which I 
 have secluded myseW (I mean mentally) 
 from the herd of mankind. Suffice it now 
 to say, that having lost the fondest endear- 
 ments of life, or those which had the fastest 
 hold on my affections, I consider myself as 
 a detached being, whose converse is with 
 the business, but seldom with the bosoms, of 
 society. These premises must not, however, 
 be mistaken for sorrowings, or repinings at 
 Nature, or her dispensations. Reason and 
 resignation have more to do with my com- 
 position than to allow me to murmur at the 
 precarious tenure of existence, or at the 
 justice of its conditions. We have a balm 
 for all these cares, and no wounds are 
 sooner healed, than those inflicted by death. 
 The mind is soon reconciled to this almost 
 imaginary affliction, or the blank is filled 
 up. It is not so with the other sufferings
 
 INTRODUCTION. 4 
 
 of Sensibility, or those created by the 
 infidelity and ingratitude of man. They 
 too generally accelerate and increase the 
 infirmities of age, and becloud the latter 
 years of life with " friends remembering 
 not," which sorrow ceases but in death. 
 
 All I could wish to be inferred from the 
 above, is somewhat of an explanation for 
 the spirit which characterises the following 
 few pages, lest mankind should receive the 
 author as their common enemy ; whereas, 
 although I do not say, with Jaques: 
 
 Give me leave 
 To speak my mind, and I will through and through 
 Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
 If they will patiently receive my medicine ; — 
 
 I crave their indulgence ; and all the revenge 
 I ask will be gratified, as it must be confessed, 
 but a sorry requital for any injuries. Hun- 
 dreds of philosophers have already outwritten 
 themselves on the subject of Happiness, 
 whose writings have been the only illustra- 
 tions of their views. I trust that I shall not 
 be set down with them, nor do I wish to add 
 a jot to their theories. I have been a more 
 
 b2
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 silent spectator of mankind, and, notwith- 
 standing my conclusions may have little 
 novelty to recommend them, I will be con- 
 fident enough to assert they are hot borrowed 
 from the experience of others. 
 
 I am a devout admirer of Shakspeare ; 
 but of neither of the gems of his genius more 
 than his comedy — As you like It. Indeed, 
 the wit, love, and philosophy of that 
 play are so nicely suited to my frame of 
 mind, that in witnessing its enactment 
 on the stage, I have been carried out of the 
 theatre, even into the woods and groves of 
 Arden : — the very life and soul of dramatic 
 influence. Of the genius of Hamlet I am 
 proud to say I am almost equally as warm 
 an admirer ; and the distinction I would 
 draw is this ; viz. — that the sweetness and 
 simplicity of adversity and forest life, as 
 delineated in the former production, are to 
 me more inviting than the fine-spun melan- 
 choly of Hamlet, chequered as it is by the 
 noblest bursts of reason and passion. I 
 would say with the Duke, in As you like It :
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 Hath not custom made this life more sweet 
 Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court ? 
 
 I shall not waste more words on Shaks- 
 peare, on whom the modesty of Milton led 
 him to offer an encomium with diffidence. 
 In truth, we have stolen so liberally from his 
 writings, that our every-day conversation 
 is a tribute to his merit. 
 
 It may be as well to mention, that the 
 substance of the following chapters is from 
 the world — partly from impressions on the 
 surface of memory — and partly from record- 
 ed facts — in the note-book of an Observer 
 Nature. The characters have ceased to 
 live but in recollection, or still exist, and 
 will, doubtless, be recognised ; as they are 
 drawn from the " loop-holes of retreat," 
 wherein opportunities for observation have 
 been by no means rare. 
 
 It will be seen throughout the subsequent 
 pages whether I am justified in these preli- 
 minaries with my readers. I have little to 
 boast beyond the usual lot of a scion of
 
 G 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 respectable middle life. I herded with no 
 noble stock when at school, nor have I ever 
 ventured on the threshold of the court. I 
 have rather chosen to divert my leisure 
 hours beneath the porticoes of Nature, or 
 in the cottages of humble life. On com- 
 paring the inmates of the latter with the 
 recorded lives of those in palaces, I found 
 neither to be masters of themselves, but in a 
 sort of social slavery — the one striving to 
 live by laborious industry — the other tor- 
 tured to exist in excess, and shut out from 
 the enjoyment of life by an accumulation of 
 luxuries. Thus both were states of negative 
 happiness, and proved to me that happiness, 
 where it can be found, is only in content- 
 ment. "I reasoned thus wiih life :" animal 
 enjoyments are limited, and when they 
 cease distate ensues. Possession increases 
 desire in ourselves, and envy in others : this 
 set me against the silly passion of avarice, 
 and made me scorn the " having and hold- 
 ing," as one of the greatest of human follies. 
 They who ground their enjoyments in pos-
 
 INTRODUCTION. / 
 
 session, will also be disappointed. Change 
 and the love of variety are so strongly 
 marked in our nature, that to be always the 
 same is insipid : disappointment and success 
 serve to mingle with the sweets of life; but 
 a long course of either state levels the 
 spirit in despair, or elevates it into pitiless 
 pride. Of the empire of the mind it is im- 
 possible to speak in definite terms. It is 
 alike the region of pain and happiness ; its 
 sufferings are doubly acute ; but when well 
 regulated, we may take the run of the world 
 in comparative security. All other pretences 
 to enjoyment remind one of " children sing- 
 ing in the dark to drive away fear." 
 
 It may next be asked, why should I 
 obtrude upon the world these broodings of 
 my melancholy, or why should I allow the 
 spring of my life to be poisoned by such 
 misanthropic sentimentalities. To this I 
 answer, that if I have not, like lord Ches- 
 terfield, " run the giddy round," I must 
 plead guilty to an ordinary share of vices 
 and misgivings, in common with my fellow
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 creatures. My conscience is unmolested 
 by reproach, and my health unbroken by 
 excess ; but my heart is like one of those 
 stringed instruments, on which, the bleak 
 wild winds love to wanton, and which 
 vibrate with every discord of the storm : 
 
 infixum stridit sub pectore vulnus. 
 
 To say that I am discontented with the 
 scheme of the world, or that I could add to 
 its real or imaginary miseries, would be 
 equally untrue: I do not repine at its dis- 
 tinctions, because it is allowed that they are 
 scattered abroad with little discrimination; 
 and beyond the usual love of superiority 
 observable in all men, I have scarce a whit 
 of ambition. The task of enquiry is perhaps 
 but ill suited to me, and scholarship, so far 
 from a badge of distinction, is almost a sure 
 sign of poverty and disquietude. Neither 
 the closet nor the cloister have charms to 
 hold me with the controversies of their 
 schools, nor the wisdom overmuch of their 
 sects. I hate the mummery of learning, and>
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 like Montaigne, would use books as sources 
 of pleasure and not of distraction ; and of 
 the two evils, I would rather be lost in the 
 mist of ignorance than in the depth of wis- 
 dom. I disclaim the " whence" and " whi- 
 ther" of the sceptic, and consider the only 
 treasurable earthly knowledge to consist in 
 knowing what I am ; which, amidst all the 
 intricacies of philosophy, is the purest, in 
 like manner as it is the most useful, of hu- 
 man acquirements. 
 
 b3
 
 A child is man in a small letter. * * * Nature and his 
 parents alike dandle him and tice him on with a bait of 
 sugar to a draught of wormwood. — Bishop Earle. 
 
 My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 
 My heart is idly stiir'd ; 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 
 Thus fares it still in our decay ; 
 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what time takes away, 
 Than what he leaves behind. — Wordsworth. 
 
 There are few persons who do not find 
 some amusement in retracing the flowery 
 fields of their childhood. Although the 
 spring-tide of existence, this season has its 
 adversities ; from which the waxen imagi- 
 nations of children often receive impressions 
 which dissolve only with life itself. Me- 
 lancholy and misanthropy often succeed 
 cheerfulness and high-born hope; and when 
 they have once overcast our childhood,
 
 12 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 their influence is almost certain, and the 
 diversions of the world are but of little 
 avail to clear away their gloom. 
 
 The incidents of childhood, however 
 puerile and sportive, give a tone to the 
 habits of after-life ; since here the budding 
 ideas of nature are brought into action, 
 uninfluenced by the designs of men ; and 
 there is a kind of spontaneousness in many 
 actions of children which we in vain expect 
 in riper years. It is, too, the season of inno- 
 cence, and can alone furnish us with a true 
 picture of the primitive simplicity of human 
 nature. None but the wicked will shrink 
 from a recurrence to this era of their lives; 
 and if one of the guilty be but reclaimed by 
 
 the retrospect, a good purpose is effected. 
 
 * ***** * 
 
 When I was about live years old, my 
 youngest brother died. His death was 
 kept secret from me, by the nurse telling 
 me that he had been sent to the house of a 
 relation in the country. I believed the 
 story. On the day of his burial, I was
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 IS 
 
 taken to an old widow-lady and her daugh- 
 ter. In the evening my favourite nurse 
 came for me ; but scarcely was the door 
 opened when I perceived her to be dressed 
 in deep mourning. I questioned her with 
 more than my usual shrewdness, till the 
 good old woman burst into tears, telling 
 me that my dear brother was dead, and 
 had on that day been buried. I now thought 
 my little heart would break. The happi- 
 ness which I had anticipated from the 
 society of a younger brother, not to speak 
 of the superior notions which my seniority 
 had raised — were now cut off. I remem- 
 bered too, that during the day I had heard 
 the tolling bell, but unconscious of its 
 meaning, I continued my gambols — and 
 this, thought I, while a brother's remains were 
 laying in the cold ground. All the efforts 
 of my good nurse to appease me were use- 
 less ; her fondness and coaxing were to sne 
 bitter insult. The concealment of his death, 
 devised for a good purpose, appeared to 
 be a fraud on my feelings, and my grief
 
 14 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 now became two-fold ; my sorrow was 
 increased by knowing that I had been 
 abused — at which my unruly spirit rose and 
 swelled with anger, implacable but unutter- 
 able. 
 
 I have a faint recollection of my general 
 frame of mind during this first shock of 
 death. On my return home, I found it a 
 house of mourning — dismal and half-closed. 
 Perhaps the excited state of my own feelings 
 made me think the occurrence less noticed 
 than it ought to have been : for, if we except 
 the yearning affection of a mother, the emo- 
 tions caused by the death of children are soon 
 hushed by the peaceful reflection, that were 
 we to repine we should but lament their 
 happiness. I was not then allowed to feel 
 thus, and the blank which this event created, 
 was not by me so easily understood. I 
 could not reconcile my active mind with the 
 stifling stillness of the chambers of our 
 house. There was to me a very difference 
 which 1 am now at a loss to describe. 
 What was offered as consolation only made
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 15 
 
 my green wound smart the more, and 
 gave fresh vent to my grief. I sought sleep ; 
 but dreams, unlike the waking rebukes of 
 conscience, disturbed my slumbers. The 
 form of my little brother — his oft-repeated 
 name was in my ears — his laughing blue 
 eyes were before me — I awoke, but heard 
 not his cry — he had fled from my embrace — 
 "they have taken him away," said I, 
 "where have they lain him?" In my 
 prayers I was taught to acknowledge what 
 I thought an affliction to be a mark of Divine 
 favor. I confess that I murmured, and, 
 like Spenser's shepherd, hated 
 
 the darkness and the dreary night, 
 Because they bred sad balefulness in me. 
 
 I felt terrified on hearing the word Death re- 
 peated — cowardice overcame me as though 
 an enemy had been before me, and my inquir- 
 ing spirit did not tend to appease these appre- 
 hensions. I remember hearing our nurse use 
 certain words unlike the language of com- 
 mon conversation, which frequently occurred
 
 16 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 in, as she said, "the Testament." She 
 often kissed me, and strove to comfort me, 
 by telling me that my dear little brother 
 was '*'in heaven." I now began to feel 
 somewhat more composed ; but on coupling 
 the words " death and heaven," I was again 
 perplexed. One was all sadness — the other 
 neither sad nor happy ; but at the latter, I 
 became more serene ; for the word, often 
 repeated, produced in me a train of the 
 most consolatory reflection. Then the 
 word " Death," in a half-whisper, broke 
 upon mine ear, at which I changed color, 
 chilled, and stood amazed. I remember 
 the nurse tried to divert me with other sub- 
 jects. All would not avail. 
 
 I had not then seen a corse ; but, while 
 indulging my taste for toy-pictures, I one 
 day met with a representation of Death, 
 unskilfully engraved on wood. About this 
 time, too, I heard a story of mechanical 
 skeletons in a surgery cupboard, and some 
 equally pernicious narrative of a bone-house. 
 These circumstances added to my terrors,
 
 CHILDHOOD. IT 
 
 and, sleeping or waking, I saw Death in all 
 his vulgar monstrosity. It is much to be 
 regretted that the above and similar hiero- 
 glvphics were ever raked from caverns and 
 cells to terrify and torment men on earth : 
 and that all such symbolical mummery had 
 not been allowed to crumble and decay on 
 the tombs it was first suffered to deface. 
 
 There was still another fosterer of melan- 
 choly in our old nurse, who chronicled as 
 many deaths as she could in a London 
 parish, and witnessed many of its funerals. 
 Had she indulged this taste in the country, 
 I could freely have pardoned her ; but at 
 this moment, nothing is so frigid and me- 
 chanical as a funeral in the metropolis ; so 
 slovenly and unfeelingly conducted, or more 
 repugnant to the sympathies of relatives and 
 friends. The old woman was, as I have 
 said, a correct observer of these matters, 
 and she generally made me a partaking 
 companion of her sorrow. She accordingly 
 had her eye on muffled knockers and closed 
 windows, knew the monotony of each hell,
 
 18 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 and kept up a sort of gossiping acquaintance 
 with the clerk and sexton. I recollect her 
 to have possessed the most acute feelings, 
 which she seldom could repress ; for often 
 have I seen the tear glisten down her fur- 
 rowed cheek, as she witnessed the funeral 
 of a stranger. I would that on all such 
 occasions I had turned away. I was of too 
 tender an age to bear such scenes, but I 
 rather courted than shunned them. 
 
 In her visits to the church-yard, she was 
 not inattentive to the grave of my little 
 brother. It is situate between two dilapi- 
 dated abutments of the church. She disliked 
 the stunted and neglected appearance of the 
 grass and earth around it; and even turfed 
 the grave herself. I remember that for 
 several months after, we never passed the 
 church-yard without stopping to peep through 
 the rails at the head and foot stone : alas, 
 how changed ! a few months since I tried 
 to find this humble memorial, but the spot, 
 in common with the rest of the ground, was 
 an unvarying scene of wreck and desola-
 
 CHILDHOOD. 19 
 
 tion, and the few prouder monuments that 
 time had spared, seemed but reserved to be 
 
 mutilated and defaced by wanton idlers. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Habits of melancholy are often engen- 
 dered in childhood, and are perhaps brought 
 about by such common-place circumstances 
 as I have here mentioned. It is not too 
 much to presume that if their germen be 
 not thus traced^ it is at least in this manner 
 nourished in its growth. 
 
 Youth-melancholy is, therefore, of all 
 passions, the most dangerous ; and the more 
 safely to avoid its poison, children should 
 rather be taught to view mankind in the 
 distance, than allowed to study them in the 
 abstract; the latter being too frightful a 
 picture for their tender minds, and it being 
 a well-known fact, that whatever may be 
 our early opinion of our species, it is seldom 
 known to grow better; on the contrary, 
 much worse. Books are, for the most part, 
 faithless pictures of men : they are more 
 inclined to flatter their prejudices, than to
 
 20 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 correct their vices, and where one book is stu- 
 died for useful profit, hundreds are read for 
 mere idle gratification, and as often to create 
 and quicken ideas of pleasure, and create 
 higher gusto for its short-lived indulgence. 
 For this purpose, the ennobling powers of 
 language are set about, like so many springes, 
 to catch men's minds ; and all her graces 
 are flourished around their brain for the 
 worst purposes — viz. to deceive man in his 
 estimate of himself, and to hide himself from 
 what he is. The chance, is that he will 
 listen to whichever sect or school best flatters 
 his conceit ; and thus, his understanding is 
 put up for sale to the highest bidder. He 
 seldom stops to sift motives ; for were he to 
 do this, he would lose all his life in (he 
 task, without finding two grains of good ; 
 but frequently when he sees evil, beyond 
 suspicion, by a sort of blind fatuity, he 
 will rather sin against his own judgment 
 than practise self-denial. These are truths 
 which men generally acknowledge before 
 they arrive at maturity; but untimely
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 -21 
 
 knowledge of them will man* the only inno- 
 cent season of life, and serve to terrify and 
 distort the brain of spotless youth. 
 
 Certain books are also helps to youth- 
 melancholy, especially where its virus has 
 been previously infused into the mind by 
 domestic affliction, or by overweening sorrow 
 at the infidelity of our own nature. I recol- 
 lect an instance of this species of melancholy 
 on my first sight of that most baneful of all 
 pestilential books, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress, the fanaticism of whose pages has 
 been known to poison scores of children, 
 and has made more enemies than friends to 
 the cause it pretends to espouse. For my 
 own part I can well attest its effect. In 
 the early years of boyhood, I had proceeded 
 in my reading, till Christian arrives at " the 
 hill of difficulty," — when, horror-struck and 
 disgusted, I threw away the volume, and have 
 never since been induced to take it up At 
 the moment, I felt as we should imagine a 
 convicted criminal feels, when surrounded by 
 the terrors of guilt and punishment : had this
 
 22 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 impression been in riper years, some formal- 
 ists might attribute it to the stings of con- 
 science. The book is still read, and within 
 these few months I was much surprised to 
 hear an English countess, when in a book- 
 seller's shop, remark to her companion (in 
 French) that the Pilgrim's Progress was an 
 excellent book for a servants' hall : — per- 
 haps she would have been ashamed of such 
 an opinion expressed in English. 
 
 Another medium for narrowing the ideas 
 of children, is allowing them to linger over 
 Fox's Book of Martyrs. Such scenes of 
 human atrocity as are exhibited in its intole- 
 rant pages and frightful pictures, should only 
 be opened to more comprehensive minds ; 
 since, at every age, it will impress us with 
 horror, and not unfrequently direct our taste 
 in channels for similar developements of 
 human character. Altogether, this book is 
 better fitted for the gravity of the historian 
 than for the buoyancy of youth, and rather 
 than it had ever been placed in the way of
 
 CHILDHOOD. 23 
 
 children, it should have been burnt a century 
 ago by the common hangman. 
 
 To this class of books, in effect at least, 
 belongs Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
 which, in spite of its slips of Latinity, at 
 some day or other has found its way into 
 hundreds of cottages, to the discomfiture of 
 as many families. Johnson says that Sterne 
 borrowed largely from this book, and I am 
 inclined to think Shenstone did the same. 
 I remember reading it in forty sittings, at 
 least ; but I often shuddered and sickened 
 in my progress. 
 
 Perhaps I dwell too fondly on these 
 trifles ; for it has often occurred to me, 
 that in youth, what I would call the solitude 
 of books is of all propensities the most dan- 
 gerous. It is apt to poison the spring of 
 life ; hence all that flows from it is unhealthy 
 and bitter. Bad companions are, at all 
 times, unsafe, and some books resemble 
 them in their influence upon the youthful 
 heart. There is too, in mankind, a certain 
 hankering for the gloomy side of nature,
 
 '21 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 whence the trials and convictions of vice 
 become so much more interesting and attract- 
 ive than the brightest success of virtue. 
 In a novel, or on the stage, they care not 
 to see the hero obtain his object by a mere 
 common-place course of things. There 
 must be the perpetual conflictof bad passions 
 to excite, or all will be vapid and tiresome; 
 and by a species of false morality, they 
 attempt to conceal this taste for scenes 
 of evil, — it being acknowledged that, in 
 such cases, men are oftener prone to imitate 
 than avoid. 
 
 The above may be more characteristic 
 of vulgar than of refined minds, and per- 
 haps this distinction is never more evident 
 than in an English multitude. I have 
 accordingly placed to its account, those 
 otherwise unexplained bursts of popular 
 feeling, which are often to be witnessed in 
 crowds assembled at any public disaster, or 
 outrage on humanity. On these occasions, 
 the less the mischief, the greater the disap- 
 pointment of the mob. This is peculiarly
 
 "\ 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 25 
 
 applicable to Fires, common wrecks, in 
 which all the world seem interested, but few 
 are concerned. Here, the low humours, or, 
 as a punster would say, the lively sympa- 
 thies, of the crowd, often make the scene 
 more like one of public rejoicing than of pri- 
 vate calamity. As the flames subside, the 
 waggery grows flat; but the most extraordi- 
 nary feeling displayed on these occasions, is 
 that kind of savage yell which the mob are 
 accustomed to raise at different stages of 
 the conflagration. 
 
 Misanthropy is a disagreeable spot in a 
 man's character, and if we are to be ruled 
 by the maxims of the world, it will not serve 
 him a whit in his intercourse with mankind. 
 In our times, the monk and the hermit live 
 but in the page of romance ; and the few, 
 who are disgusted with the infidelity of 
 their race, and have the good sense to seclude 
 themselves from further insult, excite as 
 much wonder in the world as would a tribe 
 of wandering fanatics.* The haters of 
 
 It deserves notice, that Nat. Lee, who said so manv iiard 
 
 c
 
 26 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 mankind are usually set down as the largest 
 dealers in the wares of hypocrisy, who cal- 
 culate that the specks on their own character 
 will be lost in the sins of the multitude. This 
 opinion, as often applied, is uncharitable 
 and roguish ; since to plunder a man, and 
 then brand him as a felon, is a law not 
 yet recognised by the worst of banditti : 
 even poor Gil Bias is better treated by 
 his honourable companions of the cave. 
 " Misery makes men acquainted with 
 strange bed-fellows ;" and if men be hypo- 
 crites, in nine out of ten cases, it is rather 
 the effect of company than of design ; and it 
 is not among old rogues that the successful 
 practice of hypocrisy is usually made. This 
 
 tilings of mankind, was set down as mad. His madness was 
 a fortunate circumstance for his fellow men: but the poet 
 who wrote 
 
 Drive me, O drive me from that traitor, man ! 
 * » * # * w 
 
 Can there be found so terrible a ruin 
 
 As man ! false man ! smiling- destructive man ! 
 
 — might well say to the follow who called him a madman, — 
 " 'tis easier to write like a fool than a madman."
 
 CHILDHOOD. 27 
 
 charge of hypocrisy, therefore, arises from 
 the fear of some start of skill over those 
 who advance it, or when recrimination be- 
 comes self-preservance. The victim often 
 loves its seducer, but the seducer seldom 
 his victim ; therefore, the immaculate have 
 little to fear from their contact with misan- 
 thropes : while as overlookers of the squab- 
 bles of rogues, the honest may learn how 
 they have been plundered, without perfecting 
 themselves in the practice. 
 
 He who would study mankind in safety, 
 must not stir from his fireside, but there 
 content himself with their portraits as they 
 are drawn by intriguing historians, and in the 
 fancies of poets, and the common conceits 
 of self-biographers. He will then view the 
 actions of his contemporaries, as it were, 
 through a mist ; the voice of truth being 
 stifled in the clamour of party, and the eye 
 of reason blinded with gold dust. He must 
 consider public men as so many puppets, 
 but he must not meddle with the strings 
 by which the policinelli are worked. If he 
 
 c2
 
 28 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 require illustrations of virtue, he must seek 
 it in the lives of the Fathers : it will not 
 flourish in the present age ; as well might 
 he seek for icebergs in the hot tide of the 
 Ganges. In these outlines he may trace 
 human character, as in a map, whose seas 
 resemble unruffled lakes, and whose deserts 
 compare with fruitful valleys : but let him 
 beware how he trust himself with such a 
 guide. To preserve the dream undisturbed, 
 and the spell unbroken, this student of hu- 
 manity must live in a " loop hole of retreat," 
 in the country. In the solitude of a city, 
 his ears will be annoyed with the countless 
 cries and sounds of toil and luxury, struggling 
 for the uppermost seat. He will hear sla- 
 very at work out of doors, from the bawlings 
 of menial life, to the word of command. 
 This will prove another world to such a 
 novice. 
 
 To keep the charm, he must not stray 
 beyond his own park or garden, unless it be 
 to some neighbouring forest, where he may 
 contemplate nature in her grandest features
 
 CHILDHOOD. 29 
 
 of the sublime and wonderful. He should 
 avoid even a village ; and a town as the 
 traveller would a nest of termites. If he 
 wander, let him take heed at the hum of a 
 city, as he would at the rattle of the serpent, 
 and consider it as the warhoop of destruc- 
 tion. Thus secure from man, he may walk 
 out with nature, and return with his mind 
 delighted and refreshed with her harmonies. 
 His whole life will then be a green and 
 flourishing youth : his dissolution will not 
 be by piecemeal death, but almost imper- 
 ceptible ; and the divine lessons derived 
 from his constant contemplation of nature 
 will teach him to hail this crisis as a con- 
 necting scene of his pilgrimage. Temper- 
 ance will induce cheerfulness and equani- 
 mity — the key-stone of real pleasure. All 
 other attempts at enjoyment are like air- 
 bubbles on the stream, which rise and sink, 
 or glide on, and are lost in the current. 
 Life, from which men so dearly part, is 
 too often meted out by themselves: the 
 rational recreations of nature being insufti-
 
 30 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 cient for them, though considering life too 
 short, they render it still shorter hy their 
 own excesses, till disease overtakes them, 
 and even death often treads on the heels of 
 aspiring youth. This piecemeal death is, in- 
 deed, a sort of suicide; for how often do we 
 see men with imbecile intellect and disabled 
 frames, stalking about the earth like spectres, 
 and this too in the meridian of life ; till at 
 length they become like clay unhallowed, 
 or with their Promethean fire dwindled to 
 its last embers ! 
 
 As we are all/in a greater or less degree, 
 creatures of habit, it necessarily follows that 
 whatever we imbibe in our youth, will, if 
 not checked, " grow with our growth." 
 But discipline will correct the storms of an- 
 ger, and the waywardness of temper ; whilst 
 education will fit the mind for pursuits of 
 graver years. A retrospect of our child- 
 hood, its joys and adversities, will then re- 
 semble an episode in a drama, by reverting 
 to which we may take up many valuable 
 precepts for after life ; and then see what 
 innocence we have outlived.
 
 B. L.; 
 
 * 
 
 OR 
 
 StonttonatiHttwtcjIjt 
 
 "London is nothing to some people ; but to a man whose 
 pleasure is intellectual, London is the place. — You cannot 
 play tricks with your fortune in a small place; you must make 
 an uniform appearance." — Johnson. 
 
 "For this end, that I might entertain myself at home, and 
 together refresh my mind after my studies, and that I might 
 not need the company of young men, in whom I observed 
 in those times much ill example and debauchery." — Life of 
 Ij>rd Herbert of Cherbury. 
 
 * (Baccalarius LondinensisJ—the London bachelor.
 
 " Dividing the day and night in'o twenty-four hours, they 
 appoint six of them for work ; three of which are before din- 
 ner, and three after ; they then sup ; and at eight o'clock, 
 counting from Doon, go to bed, and sleep eight hours — 
 Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia. 
 
 "Though the rabble of mankind look upon these and on 
 innumerable other things of the same nature, as pleasures; 
 the Utopians, on the contrary, obsei ving,that there is nothing 
 in them truly pleasant, conclude that they are not to be 
 reckoned among pleasures : for though these things may 
 create some tickling in the senses (which seems to be a true 
 notion of pleasure) yet they imagine that this does not arise 
 from the nature of the thing itself, but from a depraved 
 custom, which may so vitiate a man's taste, that bitter tilings 
 may pass for sweet ; • • * • * but as a man's 
 sense when corrupted, either by a disease or some ill habit, 
 does not change the nature of other things, so neither can it 
 change the nature of pleasure. — Ibid.
 
 35, &. ; or JUnttrnt at iHflmiflfit 
 
 Of all locomotive beings, a London 
 Bachelor is the most flittering. He is ever 
 at hawk and buzzard with what the world 
 calls society and solitude — either running 
 the giddy round of the Babylonian amuse- 
 ments, or pent up in the sepulchral recesses 
 of his own chambers. He cannot enjoy a 
 friend at home : if abroad, the extent of 
 his favor is perhaps estimated by its cost. 
 He pays visits like tribute-money, but reluc- 
 tantly quits the domestic comforts of a family 
 circle for the solitariness of his own habita- 
 tion. If perchance a Templar, he is not 
 believed to possess the aboriginal celibacy 
 of that order ; but is suspected of hiding his 
 own irregularities with the pretext of seclu- 
 sion and study. It is true, Congreve wrote 
 his comedies while resident in the Temple, 
 
 c3
 
 34* b. l. ; or 
 
 and they exhibit the utmost license of his 
 times. Here he wrote the Old Bachelor, in the 
 languor of convalescence ; but Congreve, 
 though himself an "intellectual gladiator," 
 was, as Voltaire said of him, unseasonably 
 vain, and like his characters, almost artifici- 
 ally gay ; and is no more a fair specimen 
 of Templar life, than Cowper with his sple- 
 netic monodies and musings. The chamber 
 life (not the chambering of St. Paul) is, 
 however, the most congenial to a man of 
 mind. If he be tired with his own fire, or the 
 flame of his own lamp, he has only to think 
 of Dr. Johnson's boast in his chimney-cor- 
 ner, in Bolt-court, and a little exertion will 
 bring him forth into a new world. When 
 at home, his " house is his castle," where, 
 secure as the Chinese with their great wall, 
 he may seclude himself, trusting to his laun- 
 dress for a ministering angel. Here he 
 may shut himself up from the rude inter- 
 ference of vulgar minds, secure from the im- 
 pertinent curiosity of the idle, and the impor- 
 tunities of false friends. Without doors he
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 35 
 
 sees all mankind striving for his gratification, 
 and on the same tenure as all his other mun- 
 dane enjoyments are held (for at best he is 
 but a tenant-at-will), he may enjoy splen- 
 didly illuminated saloons ; at every turn he 
 is surrounded by the substantial luxuries of 
 life ; while his imagination may be feasted 
 with intellectual banquets prepared by the 
 master spirits of the past, as well as of the 
 present ages. All these enjoyments are 
 over and above the social resources of a 
 metropolis, and are within the reach of a 
 mile. A man of reflective temperament 
 conceals more than half his enjoyment : 
 though he be drunken with delight, his 
 intoxication does not resemble that of 
 grosser minds ; neither does he vent his 
 softer sympathies in the roar of the table, 
 or the maudlin sentimentality of its songs. 
 With him nothing is barren; his cup of joy 
 runs over when others imagine it to be ex- 
 hausted, and that too with joy which it 
 never entered into their hearts to conceive. 
 All endeavours to impart these set notions
 
 •36 b. l. ; or 
 
 to others are useless ; for, as sc every man 
 will speak of the fair as his own market has 
 gone in it," there can be no universal scheme 
 of happiness laid down for the present or 
 future generations. Being long since con- 
 vinced of the truth of this maxim, I have 
 learned to disregard the world's sneers 
 about " a lean cheek, a sunken eye, or an 
 untied shoe," and other features of the out- 
 ward man ; since, if you are accounted 
 unhappy, there is less chance of your being 
 envied, than if thought otherwise. The con- 
 tented man holds in the little region of his 
 own heart more happiness than the rule of 
 empires can command; and he who builds all 
 his enjoyments on the friendship of the world, 
 or w T ho is not happy, as the philosophers 
 say, per se, must be the patient of the world, 
 and alike tossed to and fro on its troubled 
 seas. Its pleasures are but as helps to 
 momentary happiness, and, like brandy, 
 assist to chase away ennui; but without a 
 sort of self-pilotage, they will serve as false 
 lights to decoy the unskilled voyager to his 
 destruction. Unless such a heart as the
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 
 
 37 
 
 / 
 
 above finds an echo or response in society, 
 the more secret its fluttering sympathies are 
 kept from the world, the better for its pos- 
 sessor ; it should then be the charnel-house 
 for its own grief, and the hiding-place of its 
 own joy. Neither is such conduct misan- 
 thropy, since a weak, confiding heart often 
 occasions much mischief, by encouraging 
 the disguised enemies of mankind in their 
 evil successes. 
 
 I chance to belong to the above-men- 
 tioned fraternity, and the reader will there- 
 fore conclude me to be the Childe of the 
 subsequent pilgrimage, unholy as some of 
 its windings and turnings may appear. In 
 London the seasons are reversed ; or (to 
 the point) winter is the London harvest 
 for the pleasure hunter and the philosopher. 
 On a cold January night, tired with study- 
 ing mankind in the abstract, and the frigid 
 morality of a fireside, I put out my flaming 
 minister, and soon found myself in that 
 animated Corso of London — the Strand. 
 There is something very impressive, not to say 
 monastic, in an Inn of Court ; for these esta-
 
 38 b.l. ; or 
 
 blishments are as nearly associated with the 
 habits of our ancestors, as their vassals are 
 with our livery servants. The cloisters, courts, 
 and paved passages of such places have a cold 
 stillness, which is so strong a contrast with 
 the full tide of their neighbourhood, that they 
 rather resemble receptacles of suffering, or 
 depositories of the dead, than part and par- 
 cel of a living metropolis. But what is this 
 compared with the pursuits of their inmates, 
 from the tyro who is perplexing himself 
 over a page of Blackstone, to the subtle 
 wight, who is racking and torturing his 
 brain to hoodwink truth, that he may profit 
 by her blindness. This is, however, but a 
 single line in the problem with which inge- 
 nuity is sometimes baffled, and right not 
 unfrequently subverted by the stronger 
 energies of artifice and cunning. 
 
 The streets were now in full blaze of 
 light, and many a face and garment, whose 
 honesty and beauty would have shrunk from 
 the vulgar glare of day, shone resplendent 
 in the moving throng. A strong current 
 seemed to have set in towards the west, and
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 39 
 
 the majority of the crowd were ebbing 
 from the mucky haunts of the city, — some 
 to their residences in the suburbs, and others, 
 still content to remain in town, were about 
 to seek recreation amidst the poisoned 
 atmosphere of crowded theatres, or to be 
 fumigated in coffee-rooms, in whose neigh- 
 bourhoods it was just approaching to high- 
 water mark. Had John Bunyan beheld 
 this scene, he might have said, Satan was 
 setting his springes ; but for my part, I pre- 
 ferred the good-humoured devilry of Faus- 
 tus, and did not feel the influence of such 
 fanatical apprehensions. 
 
 It was Monday, in London the busiest 
 night of the week, probably, in consequence 
 of the pious practice of reading Sunday 
 newspapers, which act as stimulants on the 
 public by furnishing them with the best 
 catalogue of the amusements of the ensuing 
 six days ; the immense increase of these 
 equivocating publications being one of the 
 grand results of educational enlightenment. 
 In their oracles every appetite is studied ; 
 and when we consider the thousands sold
 
 4*0 B. L. : OR 
 
 weekly, we need not be surprised at Mon- 
 day being the gala day, or holiday of the 
 week, — from the proneness of mankind to 
 take pleasure by the forelock. One cannot 
 breakfast without the Examiner, and ano- 
 ther as regularly looks for the niaiseries of 
 the John Bull as he would for the Psalms 
 at church ; a third stays at home all the 
 morning to read and discuss the political 
 acumen of the News ; the first enquiry of 
 the sporting man is for his oracle, with its 
 matches and feats, which he devours with 
 half-opened eyes — such are his orisons ; 
 another cannot rise till he has read the 
 "Dispatch;" then the fond parents linger 
 over the home news of the Observer, to 
 enliven their after-dinner chat, occasionally 
 admonishing their children by paragraphs of 
 fire and water accidents; and if it but contain 
 the "best account" of a murder, or of crimes 
 still more baneful to domestic peace, the 
 chance is that it will be ransacked by every 
 one of the household, and perhaps read aloud 
 to the children : such is the prurient curiosity
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 41 
 
 of the patrons of Sunday newspapers ; and it 
 is a boasted fact that these oracles of the week 
 are circulated thirty miles round London 
 before half the population of the metropolis 
 have risen from their beds. We must, 
 therefore, allow that the partial cessation 
 of bodily toil on a Sunday is more than ex- 
 ceeded by this extra exertion of the mind, 
 or at least of some of its meanest faculties.* 
 The patent theatres were open, and it 
 was tragedy night, and, above all, the 
 chefd'oeuvre of Shakspeare, — Hamlet, was 
 performing at each house ; the rival Danes 
 being Kean and Young. I chose the latter, at 
 Covent-garden theatre, thereby combining 
 the highest excellence of the actor with that 
 of the poet. Indeed, Mr. Young's embodi- 
 ment of Hamlet deserves the highest praise : 
 the illusion is so complete, and the concep- 
 tions of the author and actor are so nicely 
 
 * l hope 1 shall not be mistaken in this digression, or be 
 suspected of a puritanical motive. On the contrary, it is 
 only introduced to account for the importance attached to 
 Monday in the London calendar — perhaps, a vulgar distinc- 
 tion, but still influencing a large majority of the people.
 
 42 b. l. ; or 
 
 poised, that they appear the emanations of 
 the same brain. In the Hamlet of Mr* 
 Kean there are also gleams of excellence; 
 but they appear as the study and effort of 
 the actor, and the charm is consequently 
 lost. Much of the dignified temperament 
 of philosophic melancholy, " native, and to 
 the manner born," is wanting in the latter 
 representative ; and while the one soars to 
 the proudest energies of concealed art, the 
 other ranks as a performance, barely con- 
 ceived, and still more unequally embodied. 
 The former is altogether a near approach 
 to perfection of — acting — for it is still art, 
 notwithstanding the " modesty of nature" 
 is less M overstepped" in this than in any 
 other histrionic triumph our times are likely 
 to afford. 
 
 John Kemble, the " pride of the British 
 stage," was wont to say to his friend, and 
 since biographer, Mr. Boaden, " take up any 
 Shakspeare you will, from the first collection 
 of his works to the last, which has beenread, 
 and look what play bears the most obvious
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 43 
 
 signs of perusal. My life for it, they will 
 be found in the volume which contains the 
 play of Hamlet." The effect is the same 
 in the theatre as in the closet, and so 
 strongly does it enchain the feelings of the 
 audience, that on the present occasion, 
 (entering the theatre during the platform 
 scene, act i.) forcibly re-called to my 
 memory the observation of Hume, that 
 " a man who enters the theatre is immedi- 
 ately struck with the view of so great a 
 multitude, participating of one common 
 amusement; and experiences, from their 
 very aspect, a superior sensibility, or dispo- 
 sition of being affected with every sentiment 
 which he shares with his fellow-creatures." 
 The actor seemed to hold the key, or 
 master spring of the hearts and under- 
 standings of his audience, and no sooner 
 had the electric flash of his excellence shot 
 forth, than it was followed up by the thunder 
 of their admiration — in effect resembling a 
 discharge of artillery. In short, the univer- 
 sal reception of the play of Hamlet is always
 
 44 b. l. ; or 
 
 highly creditable to the English people, and 
 proves, that besides possessing the finest 
 language for dramatic writing, they have 
 the good taste to appreciate its proudest 
 productions. 
 
 This digression on the merits of Hamlet 
 may appear very germane to my story, or, 
 at best, but " madness with method in it." 
 Let moralists say what they will, a theatre 
 is a school of morality, and what is called 
 a " full house" is as much the pride and 
 glory of a Londoner, as a fair, birth-day, 
 or jubilee is of a country squire. It in part 
 realizes the hackneyed motto, 
 
 " Spectator reniunt" Sfc. 
 
 an unlucky quotation for an unlatinized 
 lady, which has betrayed more smatter- 
 ers than the " temjpus fugif' of our sun- 
 dials : but he who studies in this school of 
 reflection will not allow his attention to be 
 entirely absorbed with what is passing on 
 the stage. Besides the mechanical decorum 
 of that department, he will find almost equal 
 claims in the audience ; and if he be a phy-
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 45 
 
 siognomist, the chance is that he will 
 gladly borrow the genius of Hogarth for 
 ten minutes, if only to sketch outlines on 
 his thumb nail. In France, the conduct 
 of the audience is as mechanical as that of 
 the actors ; silence is instantly obtained, 
 and as strictly preserved, and an interrup- 
 tion is almost a cause of alarm. But in an 
 English audience, there is more of the sau- 
 ciness of liberty ; and a freer vent is given 
 to their feelings, though often at the expense 
 of justice and discernment, especially from 
 the critical, though occasionally turbulent, 
 tenants of the galleries, an ascendancy co- 
 eval with the acting of plays, and which 
 Swift has in view when, in his Tale of a 
 Tub he says, "Bombastry and buffooncry,by 
 nature lofty and light, soar highest of all, 
 and would be lost in the roof (of the thea- 
 tre) if the prudent architect had not with 
 more provident foresight contrived for them 
 a fourth place, called the twelvepenny gal- 
 lery, and there planted a suitable colony 
 who greedily intercept them in their pas- 
 sage."
 
 46 b. l. ; or 
 
 The routine of theatre noises, bating its 
 vulgarity, is always amusing, and besides 
 having our hearts gladdened with the sight 
 of hundreds of laughing faces, not a mi- 
 nute need be lost in a crowded theatre ; 
 for in watching the effect of certain scenes, 
 our attention must be fairly divided between 
 the audience, the author, and the actors. 
 Our neighbours may in vain sneer at the cor- 
 rupt taste of an English audience ; but the 
 shade of their Voltaire, or the fiery poet him- 
 self, would not persuade them out of the 
 ghost scenes of Hamlet or Macbeth, the 
 dream of Richard, or the smothering of 
 Desdemona, or cheat them of their effect. 
 What can surpass the thrilling interest of 
 these scenes, or in comedy, the tittering 
 ecstasy of such an one as that of the screen 
 in the School for Scandal. The temper 
 of the audience, too, is visible, first and 
 last, during the evening ; their impatience, 
 curiosity, waywardness, and above all, their 
 quick resentment of suspected imposition 
 or managerial fraud — privileges vested in
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 47 
 
 themselves, and the exercise of which is not 
 even restrained by the presence of Royalty 
 itself. 
 
 At the conclusion of the tragedy I quit- 
 ted the theatre, compared with whose taint- 
 ed atmosphere, even the vegetable odours 
 of Covent-garden were gratefully refresh- 
 ing. My road lay through the piazza, 
 where, thanks to the genius of Inigo Jones, 
 several little masquerade groups were flaunt- 
 ing in every direction, and even children 
 were spreading their toils with the dexte- 
 rity of those " past crying for their cake." 
 The scene seemed to have been stolen from 
 the Beggar's Opera, with its Pollys, Lucys, 
 ^ukeys, and Filches, by dozens, and many a 
 Peachum and Lockit in trustworthy dis- 
 guise : gangs of slip-shod and shoeless strip- 
 lings, were, by turns, hankering about the 
 window of an hotel, and casting many long 
 and lingering looks at the luxuries of the 
 table displayed in the tantalizing style of a 
 French restaurateur ; then watching for a 
 benevolent passenger to levy a contribution
 
 48 
 
 II. l. ; OK 
 
 for a night's lodging ; and in almost at the 
 same minute playing at hide and seek about 
 the pillars of the piazza, and making its 
 vaulted roof resound with their urchin 
 clamours. This scene was continued with 
 little variation along King-street, whilst a 
 courtly silence reigned in Henrietta-street 
 broken by the occasional rattle of a carriage 
 on its road to the theatre. I remembered, 
 too, that its daily traffic little exceeded that 
 of the night, and perhaps no street in 
 London has suffered more from the western 
 emigrations of fashion, than Henrietta- 
 street, it having once been the Bond-street 
 of this quarter ; and generally crowded 
 with carriages at the most fashionable 
 shopping hours: — what a comparatively 
 dejected and deserted appearance does it 
 now present! but can we wonder, when 
 fashion is fast transferrins her favors from 
 Bond-street to the splendid line of Regent- 
 street. Henrietta-street is still known to 
 scores of nocturnal spirits by its kindred 
 attractions of excellent cookery, aided by
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 19 
 
 plenteous outpourings of Burton ale. I 
 crossed out of my road to pay a passing visit 
 to that most eccentric of all resorts (not even 
 the Coal-hole excepted) the Cyder Cellar, 
 at whose fount Porson was wont to quaff, 
 and doubtless with its regalings, replenish 
 his stores of wit and humour. Facilis 
 descensus Averni, says the poet, and so is 
 that of the Cellar. Over the mantel-piece 
 is a good portrait of the patron Professor, 
 and perhaps his semblance may sometimes 
 inspire a few of its admirers with fond re- 
 collections of the illustrious original, whilst 
 thousands drink the Professor's potations 
 with less classical inspiration, but with 
 equally stirring effect. 
 
 To avoid the murky but grandiloquent 
 Chandos-street, often quoted as a hey to 
 stories of royal and noble waggeries, I re- 
 turned by Bedford-street to King-street, 
 and viewed from hence the rapid current 
 of passengers from the west to the vicinity 
 of the theatres, in the full tide of Picca- 
 dilly and Coventry-street, through the 
 
 D
 
 50 b. l. ; or 
 
 strait-like passage of Sidney 's-alley, the 
 pave and shoals of Leicester-square, again 
 narrowing into the flirtations of Cranbourn- 
 street — the jostle and bustle of St. Martin's- 
 court — the thickset line of New- street 
 thence — which I likened to a conjoint retort 
 and receiver. The analysis of their con- 
 tents would, however, have been a task of 
 more difficulty. Hence innumerable courts 
 and alleys branch off, in their ramifications 
 vying with the hundred arms of Briareus 
 of old; but in their destinations proving 
 that the broad path of destruction does not 
 admit of universal application. Again, these 
 arms resembled the tentacula of a star fish, 
 which, in the words of the naturalist, the 
 animal, in swimming, spreads like a net, 
 and when he perceives any thing within 
 them, draws them in again, thus catching 
 it with all the dexterity of a fisherman. I 
 hurried through these clutches of vice and 
 guilt by a circuitous route, to the compara- 
 tively tranquil street of Pall Mall. Here, 
 a' sort of courtly silence reigned, from
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 51 
 
 the gloomy front of Carlton House to the 
 monastic pile of St. James's, now and then 
 broken by the solitary whirl of a carriage ; 
 and by the clear chime of the palace clock. 
 This was continued up St. James's-street, 
 where the gloom was occasionally relieved 
 by illuminated club-houses, but with equal 
 quiet ; for the devil does not always deal 
 in noise : on the contrary, his incarnations 
 work oftener in silence and darkness : and 
 however busy vice, with all her golden ma- 
 chinery and nets of gossamer, might be 
 within doors, all was tranquil without. So 
 long as her workings are confined to splen- 
 did saloons, the evil is, as it were, concen- 
 trated ; but the misery produced by their 
 extension would be more disgusting and 
 equally fatal. It is not a wholesome prin- 
 ciple to qualify the vices of wealth, neither 
 should it be ; but while gaming is confined 
 to the upper circles, the evil will be less 
 ostensible, and more likely to work its own 
 cure. Fortune may repair the ravages of 
 chance, or the steep fall of a few from 
 
 n 2
 
 52 B. L. ; OR 
 
 luxury to poverty, may scare many from 
 the same precipice, whilst the transit being 
 shorter, serves to flatter the victim with 
 hopes of easily regaining his stand, or, in 
 event of a strong reverse, to render him at 
 once reckless of all that may follow: but 
 all forget that the rein once let fall, and 
 not re-taken up, makes the steed restless, 
 unmanageable, and headlong, in its courses. 
 There must be, too, a taste for play, as 
 well as a passion for gain, to produce these 
 lamentable effects, which points distinguish 
 the calculating gamester from the avaricious 
 risker ; the one worships chance, or the 
 spirit of the game, the other, lucre, or the 
 vilest art of money-getting ; the former 
 almost deserves to be called an error of the 
 head, while the latter is the base offspring 
 of the heart ; but so long as sterling indus- 
 try scorns both of them, our national cha- 
 racter will be preserved.* 
 
 * Extravagance can hardly be called a vice ; for, as 
 Franklin thinks, many a shilling that is let fall by a fool, is 
 picked up by a wiser man. This good effect is often coun- 
 teracted when money keeps floating among gamesters. But 
 when the run is against the avaricious player, the chance
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 58 
 
 Such was my philosophy in St. James's 
 Street ; and though somewhat at variance 
 with the sweeping censures of a great por- 
 tion of the press, and of defunct moralists, 
 I hope its doctrines will be properly re- 
 ceived by those who think for themselves. 
 Popular fallacies are hard to stem ; for the 
 multitude, who are easily misled, are as 
 difficult to convince. It has long been the 
 fashion to decry French habits, and to sad- 
 dle that much-abused people with half our 
 sins ; and among these charges is the sin of 
 gaming, which is thought to have been 
 wafted by some pestilential breeze from the 
 salons of the Palais Royal, to the hells of 
 St. James's — and from Frascati's to Crock- 
 ford's ; the accusers forgetting that what 
 one country licenses by law, the other pro- 
 secutes as a crime, and that however thick 
 the saloons may be in London, the stews are 
 left to Paris. As a make-weight in the moral 
 scale, our lotteries are abolished, fairs are 
 suppressed, and the relics of vulgar gaming 
 
 will be that his money may become scattered. It is little 
 better than a windfall, and is generally received accordingly.
 
 54 B. L. 
 
 OR 
 
 are at Newmarket, Doncaster, Epsom, &c. 
 whilst French lotteries are drawn three times 
 monthly, and the low scheme allows the 
 canaille to risk their mites ; urchins play 
 for sous in the cellars of the Palais Royal, 
 and every fete has its raffle, as often the 
 pam loos at our Brighton libraries. Nei- 
 ther do the English gamesters drown them- 
 selves in the park basin, or in Rosamond's 
 pond, as the French do in their Seine ; but 
 this predilection is to be traced in other 
 features of national character. 
 
 Had I been disposed to dabble in the 
 ivealth of nations, or the cold calculations 
 of political economy, the corner of St. 
 James's-street would have been a good 
 point, the whole street a studio, and the 
 splendid hotel pile, with Mr. Hoby's book of 
 debts, would have proved important items. 
 With less trouble and more precision than 
 the site of Carthage was determined, I 
 drew, in my mind's eye, a quadrangle of 
 fashion, within whose sides the greatest of 
 her sons might live and die, or build a wall, 
 a la Chinois, to exclude the vulgar herd of
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 55 
 
 mankind. To him who is not familiar with 
 the topography of fashion, this plan may 
 not be unacceptable. Taking it for granted 
 that he has studied under William of Wyk- 
 ham, the manners that maketh the man, his 
 exterior equipments may, at call, be assem- 
 bled from St. James's-street; his experience 
 bought in its dicing-houses and hotels ; and 
 his foreign travels picked up in its libraries, 
 from travellers who never moved from their 
 native city. In Pall Mall he may receive 
 the courtly polish of a royal bend, and, in 
 happy ignorance, listen to the exotic witchery 
 of the opera; marshal his limbs in Waterloo- 
 place ; and supply the grosser wants of 
 sense from the store-houses of Piccadilly : 
 while the noble and hallowed ground of St. 
 James's-square remains for the nucleus, or 
 centre. In this delightful region of imprison- 
 ment, he would not feel the silver fetters 
 nor the silken slavery of fashion. His 
 sensibilities would not be shocked with the 
 vulgar exhibitions of labour, the groanings 
 of toil, or the abortive affectation of mean 
 birth. Here he might worship his golden
 
 56 b. l. ; or 
 
 idol, and, cameleon-like, feed upon the 
 voluptuous meltings of smiles, and sighs, 
 and tears. 
 
 I continued prowling westward, where 
 the same aristocratic gloom rendered the 
 whole region a desert, barren of out door 
 incident or interest. Nothing was to be 
 heard but the occasional rattle of a carriage, 
 the clatter of its horses, and the brutum 
 fulmen of an officious footman, w T ith the 
 iron lungs of a street-door knocker, with 
 whose monotony I did not feel much gra- 
 tified. Berkeley and Grosvenor-squares 
 appeared to shrink from the vulgar blaze 
 of gas, and the scene altogether was grow- 
 ing too sombre for one whose spirits began 
 to flow in a fiercer vein. I accordingly 
 returned by way of Piccadilly , where industry 
 seemed extinct, but many busy heads were 
 doubtless still racking on sleepless pillows, 
 with all the fear and disquietude of money- 
 getting, and whose ledgers and diaries were 
 the only accounts rendered of their past 
 day. But the semblance was that of quiet.
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 57 
 
 The passengers were " few and far be- 
 tween," and had the eye been spared the 
 disgusting display of their weakness, per- 
 haps the imagination would have suffered 
 less. Still, the philosopher who would 
 study mankind in the street, must not shrink 
 from such scenes, however hideous their 
 outlines and colours may be. They are 
 part and parcel of human nature ; and 
 though their exhibition may excite pain, 
 they are fraught with healthy food for a 
 reflective mind : but the sickening student 
 of humanity stands little chance of becoming 
 master of his subject. 
 
 As I drew near to the termination of 
 Piccadilly,, by Coventry-street, I began to 
 prepare myself for an entire change of 
 scene. It appeared like returning from a 
 desert to a thickly-peopled country, or 
 rather from slumbering industry to the busy 
 haunts of wantoning and wasting life. 
 Regent-street and the Quadrant, the fa- 
 vourite evening promenade of foreigners, 
 (who alone seem to appreciate their archi- 
 
 i)3
 
 58 r. i-.; or 
 
 tcctural splendour) were fast merging into 
 quiet, in part from the early habits of their 
 frequenters ; but as I proceeded from 
 thence, the freshness of evening still shone 
 forth at every turn, and scores of passengers 
 seemed to have just burst from their dark 
 chrysalis-state, and, like the gayest moth of 
 nature, to have just flown on mealy wings to 
 this garden of sweets. In truth, no part of 
 London is more degenerate than Leicester- 
 square and Soho, when we consider that 
 the former was once the residence of some 
 of the proudest sons of art, and even of 
 royalty ; and the fact of its being a com- 
 paratively new neighbourhood does not 
 argue for the morality of the times. But ge- 
 nius and talent, or the fondest reminiscences 
 of their greatness, cannot rule fashion, how- 
 ever they may attract her, elssthe celebrity 
 of this quarter would have been more last- 
 ing. Other causes probably contributed 
 to its first desertion, and so short was the 
 interval of its degradation, that we need no 
 longer wonder at the waste of antiquity,
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIOHT. 59 
 
 when similar change is perceptibly going 
 on before us. Cities neither rise nor fall 
 " in a day ; " but instances of such rapid 
 decay as the foregoing, show us by com- 
 parison, how this earth of ours is frittered 
 away by piecemeal, and how the whim of 
 fashion effects part of the wreck and disso- 
 lution of the material world. 
 
 The critical conversation of the opposite 
 passengers soon reminded me that the thea- 
 tres had, in the common phrase, " broken 
 up,"* and that it was high carnival time in 
 their neighbourhood. It was a sorry scene. 
 All the noise and bustle of petty slavery 
 were at work ; from the footmen of rank to 
 the yellings and bawlings of helpers, who 
 officiously anticipated the wants of such as 
 were unattended. Nothing could exceed 
 the din and clamour of the scene : scores of 
 
 * What a convenient term is this " break up : " all must 
 remember it, every day, from their infancy. It is applied 
 to good and evil news; we " break up " first at school, and 
 last in old age ; and these dates, with the intervening " break- 
 ing down," seem to comprehend the whole catalogue of 
 human pleasure and pain.
 
 60 b. l.; or 
 
 elegantly-dressed females were hurrying 
 like Cinderella after the ball, or as from a 
 pest-house, and picking their road to coaches ; 
 then came the link-bearer for his fee, with 
 anxious features gleaming through the copper 
 flame of his torch. In the halls of the theatres 
 was the usual description of waiting groupes 
 and avenues, while at the doors crowds were 
 looking out for partners in sin, and others 
 were enviously gazing on the luxurious cloth- 
 ing of the carriage company. The pit poured 
 forth its well-dressed crowd, and whilst 
 some were securing themselves from the 
 chilling damp of the night air, others were 
 planning the future movements of the even- 
 ing. The galleries, too, ejected their 
 visitors, sinking in appearance as they rose 
 in station — from second-rate respectability 
 to the spume and spawn of profligacy: here 
 was the best study ; some faces were still 
 lit up with the remains of the farce-laugh, 
 others bore the symptoms of recklessness 
 and disappointment, and on a greater por- 
 tion delight was still shining through ex-
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 6i 
 
 haustion with heat and struggle. And how 
 dearly might this little luxury have been 
 purchased : some were almost shoeless and 
 in rags, others were neglected and dirty ; 
 and probably, the majority would, for this 
 night's diversion, forego a meal or two, or, 
 still worse, persuade themselves into ha- 
 bitual vice, at the charge of conscience, and 
 the cost of crime. But such inconsistencies, 
 on a larger scale, are hourly practised by 
 all ranks, and fits of pleasure resemble those 
 of anger — whose only preventitive is pre- 
 meditation. Were men to adopt this resolve, 
 appetite would fly off, or feast upon air, 
 and passion exhaust itself to inanity.* 
 
 *The excesses to which the English people extend their 
 recreations, (if they may be so called without a perversion 
 of the term) formerly almost amounted to a national reproach; 
 but they are gradually disappearing. Under this head are 
 included the affectation of the great, in appearing at half a 
 dozen routs in one night; and in middle life, the sin of gor- 
 mandizing and drunkenness, vices which are becoming 
 ungenteel, and descending to the canaille. But there is a 
 species of intoxication nearly as much indulged as ever — 
 that of dancing all night, to suffer from exhaustion and rheu- 
 matism on the following day— an evil easy of remedy, by such 
 amusement being more frequent and less protracted. The
 
 62 b. l. ; or 
 
 But the last to depart — whose lingerings 
 resembled those of birds of prey beside 
 a spoil, bespoke pity not unmixed with 
 shame. They were the dregs, the gall, and 
 the wormwood, of the mixture, and at which 
 every thing but the flame of rank passion 
 would recoil. In these cases, where the 
 consciences of men resemble mirrors, how 
 painfully strong must be the reflection of 
 precipitate error. Passion is the consuming 
 fire of the soul ; untameable in its excesses, 
 and unquenchable in its fury, it tortures its 
 victims, till it leaves them, like burnt-out 
 volcanoes, melancholy memorials of the 
 last shock of nature ! 
 
 Such were my meditations as I paced the 
 almost deserted piazza of Covent-garden. 
 The genius loci appeared to feed and foster 
 my melancholy musings ; and in the absence 
 of better studies, the name and premises 
 
 influence on the character would probably be thai of ren- 
 dering it more even, in the admixture of business and pleasure 
 being more proportional. As it is, nearly all the excellencies 
 of the English lie in questionable extremes.
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 03 
 
 of Robins, the celebrated auctioneer, would 
 have called up many recollections of the 
 instability of wealth, and the unenviable 
 incertitude of possession, if it be not pushing 
 the vraisemblance too far. But these were 
 not moments for mere comparisons, when 
 so many realites were at hand. 
 
 As the night advanced, the strollers 
 appeared more degraded and reckless in 
 appearance and conduct. The scene be- 
 came like the parting shadows of a mas- 
 querade, and its revel shouts resembled those 
 of victory and death, in more senses than 
 one — for, as reason yielded, passion tri- 
 umphed. Occasionally there passed a few 
 well-dressed young men, whose boisterous 
 mirth vented itself in stray snatches of glees 
 and airs, like the yea,st of fermenting liquors, 
 working to the top ; then the good-natured 
 dispute ; and the disguised heart, with its 
 outpourings of generosity before justice — 
 the jolly laugh — the indiscriminate welcome 
 which would have the whole world for one 
 table — the eyes flashing in their sockets
 
 64? B. l.; or 
 
 between reason and incontinence — the self- 
 confident walk, that would have the whole 
 street for a path — and, lastly, the uncon- 
 strained glory of free-will, the only return 
 for all this proffered liberality. About 
 these sons of pleasure, there flitted and 
 danced a few of the shadows of frailer na- 
 ture, with 
 
 Calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire, 
 And aery tongues that syllable men's name9. 
 
 As I wandered about the theatres, 
 
 Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth 
 Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear, 
 
 I found, that however thin the passengers 
 became abroad, the strong light that would 
 feign show itself through blinds and chinks 
 of insecure shutters, denoted that the scene 
 was only shifted ; and doors unwilling to be 
 closed, or stealthily opened, and as secretly 
 shut, satisfied me that admittance, if a spe- 
 cial favour, could be procured, if not " on de- 
 mand — at sight." My protracted stroll, and 
 its consequent fatigue, soon convinced me
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 05 
 
 that, like the forms I had been contem- 
 plating, I, too, was mortal, and that senti- 
 ment was not the staple of life ; again I 
 thought of 
 
 Seraque revertens 
 Nocte doinum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis. 
 
 But the vain-glory of a sated appetite ill 
 accorded with my narrow-souled street phi- 
 losophy, which now began to relax, and to 
 exemplify Johnson's maxim, that there are 
 few people who do not practise what they 
 cease to censure. Festive luxury, just at its 
 best pitch, and the chance-meeting of a fel- 
 low wanderer, who, like myself, could " suck 
 melancholy from a song" — could not be 
 resisted, notwithstanding many involuntary 
 glances towards the clock, which now be- 
 came an odious spot on this scene of sun- 
 shine. There was a decent display of dress 
 and gallantry, and of good manners, but 
 the seasoning of wit was wanting : and for 
 all this show of pleasure, few would suffer 
 besides those present, so long as anxious 
 parents and unfortunate tailors, could be
 
 C6 b. l. ; or 
 
 kept in happy ignorance, or, like Dermody's 
 clothier, be satisfied with an expostulation 
 — but not in verse. So long as they ran 
 their whirl, and feasted their vanity at 
 their own expense, the evil might, perhaps, 
 work its cure, till exhausted nature cut short 
 the little thread of their folly. After a cer- 
 tain season of life, even the variety of such 
 scenes is unchanging ; but when the thirst 
 of appetite is slaked, and the charm is over, 
 we arrive at the golden gain of experience 
 and reflexion, and we then learn to regard 
 others in similar positions, with the same in- 
 difference that men behold insects dancing 
 in the sun-beam. On these matters some 
 affect a puritanical delicacy, while others 
 enlarge on them at the expense of truth : it 
 should, however, be remembered, that none 
 but fools will show their own vanity ; notwith- 
 standing many seeming wise, by flattering 
 the world, contrive to come in for a share 
 of their own praise. 
 
 However prurient might be the scene 
 around us, and however deeply men might
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 67 
 
 be staking at the game of life — the passion 
 for money-getting play was stifled; but, 
 alas ! the links in the fetters of vice are so 
 finely wrought, that the present might be 
 but a connecting link with the cares of 
 chance, and the mere fragment of a scheme 
 
 of vice. 
 
 ******* 
 
 A rumbling stir abroad soon reminded us 
 that the day of labour was commencing, 
 and that Nature scorned disobedient man 
 in his night of pleasure. Tired with the 
 heat and glare of gas and lamps, and of the 
 mimicry of life, I again returned to the 
 street. But here, how changed the scene. 
 The frosty air of morning began to nip my 
 bones, in spite of all my provision, and day 
 was just gleaming through scattered clouds, 
 as if to show the blank faces of revellers — 
 pale with disgust. How I envied those 
 who, just bursting into industry, were happy 
 indeed, when compared with the feverish 
 patient of luxury, just at his last ebb of 
 enjoyment. But, probably, they in turn
 
 08 B. L. 
 
 OR 
 
 envied my pleasure, so fondly do men cling 
 to the fallacies of life. 
 
 It would be tedious, not to say repulsive, 
 to fill up the outline of the midnight orgies, 
 which I have here attempted to sketch ; and 
 though the preceding pages be but snatches 
 from scenes worthy of the Hogarth of our 
 own times, it seldom happens that they are 
 drawn, to use a term of art, with good ef- 
 fect. On the contrary, men are either 
 terrified with their darkness, or dazzled with 
 their light, and they thus lose much of the 
 interesting amusement of contemplating 
 motley life. In my progress, I sjaw the 
 offscourings of vice at a distance, but 
 avoided them unharmed ; and saving the 
 exhaustion of the night, I suffered but little 
 inconvenience. Mine may be an odd 
 taste, but were all mankind unlike me, their 
 misgivings would serve as mere sport for 
 each other. Such as do not treasure up first 
 impressions, but suffer them to glide off 
 unheeded, will ruin themselves in witnessing
 
 LONDON AT MIDNIGHT. 69 
 
 the folly of others ; but they who retain 
 such impressions, may enjoy 
 
 Mens sana, in corpore sano ; 
 
 if they have but the good fortune to possess 
 a common share of fortitude. Sensibility 
 will sicken, and be frozen or scorched amidst 
 such scenes: indeed, she resembles an exotic, 
 which it were best to shelter from frost and 
 sunshine, and lock up at nightfall, since her 
 delicate form cannot withstand the incle- 
 mency of the — world or weather : she can 
 only vegetate in sickly pride within doors.
 
 ( 71 ) 
 
 Milage Cfiatarttr. 
 
 God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. — Slerne. 
 
 Emma — was born about the year 
 1778, in the humble village of Merstone, 
 situate in one of the most picturesque dis- 
 tricts of the south of England. As the 
 rural life of that period is now only to be 
 found in neglected books, or traced on the 
 canvas of contemporary artists, memory 
 can alone supply the deficiency. As a road- 
 side village, Merstone is, however, still 
 unusually interesting. The street lies in a 
 gentle valley, terminated at one end by an 
 iron gate, opening into the pleasure grounds 
 of a modern mansion-house, erected by the
 
 72 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 descendants of one of the most opulent 
 families in the county ; hut the old cottage- 
 residence still remains, and in its snugness 
 and rural comfort presents a striking contrast 
 with the upstart splendour of its more 
 favoured rival. The present proprietor, 
 or " squire," (for, in spite of all innovation, 
 he retains this primitive title) is the repre- 
 sentative of an ancient northern family. 
 In early life he signalized himself in the 
 British expedition to Egypt: he is now 
 a parliament man, or one of those plain 
 country gentlemen, whose tutelar eloquence 
 seldom travels out of the county which they 
 represent. The success which attended his 
 foreign enterprize, seems to have stimu- 
 lated him with similar thirst for civil con- 
 quest. At Merstone, during his boyhood, 
 in the beautiful allegory of Scripture, " every 
 man sat under his own fig-tree ; " and the 
 neighbourhood consisted of those dear in- 
 heritances of independence, small farms, 
 which were chiefly cultivated and occupied 
 by their owners. War, the common foe of
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 73 
 
 mankind, broke up this tranquil scene : in 
 its host of evils came the monopolization of 
 landed property, mortgage brought up the 
 rear of misery, and hence, in various parts 
 of England, parishes became consolidated 
 into so many estates. To this ruinous sys- 
 tem, the village of Merstone, with few- 
 exceptions, was sacrificed ; and a conse- 
 quent revolution has followed. The ma- 
 jority of that useful class of men, termed 
 " small farmers," to use the cant language 
 of the day, have been " sold off," and their 
 property " thrown together,'* and confided 
 to a steward. Again, the villagers have 
 been coaxed into compliance with every 
 fastidious request of their squire : public 
 roads have been stopped up, or turned, and 
 even their street has been crossed and 
 bounded with a gate, to suit his convenience. 
 In the meantime, the same spirit of mono- 
 poly has shown itself in a thousand other 
 forms. The squire has turned speculator 
 in railroads,* canals, and bridges ; whilst 
 
 * It is almost impossible for the lover of the country to 
 
 E
 
 74 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 his tenantry are impoverished, and the 
 peace of rural life is neglected for lucrative 
 distinction in national improvement. He, 
 however, maintains a large establishment, 
 though not upon the hospitable scale of his 
 ancestors ; and he still indulges a proverbial 
 fondness for the chase, which, being hale 
 and hearty, he may long continue, should 
 he not become too closely beset with the 
 trammels and anxieties of his commercial 
 speculations. 
 
 A short distance from this lordly domain, 
 
 conceive a more unsightly picture, than is caused by hu- 
 man contrivance straining to omnipotence, and disfiguring 
 the beautiful face of Nature, with what may be termed the 
 mutilations of Art. The invention of man is indeed insa- 
 tiate, and its stages of perfection raise his life into so many 
 little triumphs, secure but for a moment, and then to be 
 broken up by the perfection of others — the embryo of a 
 minute, or, at best, the creature of an hour, with a glory as 
 tender as the brain that gave it birth, and an existence as 
 insecure as that of its originator. To cut up picturesque 
 countries with inventions, supersedable within the nest hour, 
 almost amounts to wantonness, especially as man cannot at 
 pleasure replace the harmony which he thus disturbs. When 
 the squire has become tired of luxuriant vales, and ploughs 
 tliem up with iron rail-roads, within view of his own window, 
 the chance is that better feelings are in like manner narrowed, 
 and passions more dangerous than vanity indulged, in this 
 perversion of taste.
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 75 
 
 a broad gravelled walk across a beautiful 
 paddock, passes the parsonage-house and 
 its apple-orchard of productive celebrity, 
 and leads to the church. These are almost 
 the only wrecks, that time has spared, of 
 the once happy village of Merstone ; for 
 the reproductiveness of the orchard, and 
 the outline of the church, are fresh in the 
 memory of the oldest villager. The par- 
 sonage is withal a comfortable building, in 
 its improvements and additions, exhibiting 
 the studied convenience of many occupants. 
 The lawn, shrubbery, and flower-garden, 
 which front the house, are in trim taste, 
 the whole has an appearance of rural neat- 
 ness, well adapted for a life of calm con- 
 templation. The rector is upwards of three- 
 score, and his silver locks and faltering 
 voice denote the length of his services ; 
 whilst a volume of sermons, published a 
 few years since, has obtained for him a 
 literary distinction among the clergy of the 
 county. 
 
 The church and church-yard are pecu- 
 e2
 
 76 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 liarly interesting, from their structure and 
 situation ; but I reserve their description 
 for the present. They nearly adjoin the 
 high-road, which has been formed within 
 these twenty years, and crosses the street 
 of the village. Here resides a stone-mason, 
 whose employment has kept pace with the 
 mortality of his fellow-villagers, but whose 
 Phidian fame has never travelled beyond 
 the confines of a country church-yard ; a 
 blacksmith, whose hammer has lingered on 
 the same anvil during the last forty years ; 
 a public-house, or second-rate inn, whose 
 sign was, perhaps, chosen as a compliment 
 to passing royalty ; a wheel-wright's shed 
 and yard, with half-finished wheels and un- 
 repaired waggons ; a shop, whose stores 
 once supplied nearly all the wants of the 
 village ; and an errand-cart resting on its 
 shafts, which weekly traffieks to and from 
 London, and formerly conveyed one of the 
 town evils, in the tempting lottery scheme, 
 displayed on the tilt. There is, too, a farm- 
 house, of the better description, still saved
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. t I 
 
 from the agricultural wreck to which I have 
 already alluded, — with its adjoining yard, 
 barns, and ricks ; and a little pond darkened 
 by an aged beech-tree, and unenclosed 
 from the road. Within my recollection, 
 the farm-house was the abode of hospita- 
 lity ; I mean of that good cheer which once 
 glowed around the hearts of English far- 
 mers, and entitled them to the honourable 
 distinction of yeomen. But such charms 
 have long been eclipsed by the ignes fatui, 
 the false lights, of innovation and refinement ; 
 whilst this perversion of liberality to con- 
 ceited extravagance has been erroneously 
 attributed to bad times. I remember one 
 family as the finest and most numerous in 
 Merstone : the girls were beauties, in the 
 purest sense of the term — such as we are 
 wont to see, in paintings and prints, crowned 
 with milk-pails, at morn and eve, with 
 ruddy cheeks and flowing hair, and eyes 
 laughing with maiden simplicity : 
 
 As lamps burn silent, with unconscious light, 
 So modest ease in beauty shines more bright :
 
 78 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 Unaiming charms with edge resistless fall, 
 
 And she who means no mischief does it all— A. Hill. 
 
 — lovely as a novelist would have his heroine 
 — all perfection, and in one year winning 
 more love by their unpretending singleness 
 of heart, than the vain beauty of fashion is 
 able to extort from crowds of idolizing fol- 
 lowers, during her whole life. Well do I 
 remember the time when one of this 
 groupe played with my long golden hair, and 
 fondly petted me by the hour ; now hiding 
 and seeking with me in the green alleys 
 and nooks of the shrubbery, next rolling me 
 on the lawn, or helping me to clamber a 
 spreading apple-tree, in the orchard. Then, 
 too, would I disturb her newly-arranged 
 hair or dress, till, tired with my urchin 
 waggery, her fine dark eyes tried to frown 
 me into shame. Then the little periodical 
 treats on birth-days, &c. with the garlanded 
 bowls of syllabub and creamed fruits. Alas ! 
 this is but one of the many retrospective 
 dreams of childhood, which memory now 
 calls up to cheat sorrow of a smile ! The
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 79 
 
 boys of the family were likewise well-look- 
 ing, and with their sisters, drew around them 
 scores of admirers. But the stronger sex 
 proved the weakest in error. Two of the 
 boys rode high-bred horses, flourished at the 
 fairs and markets of the neighbouring towns, 
 and, by frequent visits to London, learned 
 to swagger and drink wine in the market- 
 room, and astonish the simple villagers at 
 home with the airs of fine gentlemen ; and 
 by way of finish, one became a bit of a 
 soldier. At harvest-homes and christenings, 
 too, they surprised rather than amused the 
 company, whose harmony thus became en- 
 dangered. Marriage and death, the dis- 
 joiner of the best families and friends, at 
 length separated this numerous groupe to 
 their several fates and fortunes in life ; but 
 to pursue them further is not my present 
 purpose. 
 
 On the opposite side of the street are seve- 
 ral cottage-like dwellings, with broad-eaved 
 tiled roofs, and casements with their panes 
 blinded with the leaves of old vines ; the en-
 
 80 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 trances being down a step. In one of these 
 ill-contrived abodes, lives the parish-clerk, 
 who to his professional calling, adds that of 
 a carpenter, and thus between the spiritual 
 and temporal wants of the villagers, has 
 dwelt here upwards of forty years. One 
 of his neighbours is a retailer of tarts and 
 toys, as w r ell known to the children of the 
 place, as Barbara Allen once was at Ox- 
 ford, or Gunter is to the Londoners or 
 " children of a larger growth." Another 
 neighbour is an old dealer in, and rearer of, 
 singing-birds, with a confused idea of herbs 
 and simples ; she is indeed a most important 
 personage, among bird-fanciers and the 
 sick portion of the village. Now w r e reach 
 the squire's formidable gate, and the street 
 ends, if we except the foundation walls of 
 some houses which have been pulled down 
 to gratify the great man's caprice, and 
 which remind the neighbours that he has 
 " bid money" for their dwellings, for simi- 
 lar work of destruction. 
 
 Towards the eastern extremity of the
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 81 
 
 village, there are also some genteel resi- 
 dences, and some old specimens of cottage 
 rusticity, the latter with mouldering thatched 
 roofs and diminutive casements, fronted by 
 well-stocked strips of garden, and partially 
 hidden by aged trees, stretching their moss- 
 crusted limbs in every direction. They 
 are, for the most part, approached by rude 
 time-worn steps, up a lofty bank, — past 
 which the road winds by a steeply-descend- 
 ing lane, overhung with dense trees, nar- 
 rowing into almost impervious gloom, and 
 at length spreading forth across a small 
 green or common, till it again narrows 
 through a rich succession of grass lands, 
 and stretches away past a handsome court 
 or manor-house, and a battlemented church 
 tower, rising from a group of massy trees ; 
 a mile from whence is the next village. 
 Altogether, this is one of the most delightful 
 bye-roads with which I am acquainted, 
 although it is better calculated for the 
 equestrian than for the carriage tourist ; it 
 
 being in many places steep, and not en- 
 
 e3
 
 82 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 tirely free from sand-springs. In the neigh- 
 bourhood are some pits of fuller's earth, 
 (silver mines to their owners) and, in some 
 parts of the road, the steep banks present 
 many interesting varieties of sandstone, 
 stained with oxidized iron veins, crowned 
 with a light superstratum or soil, with tufted 
 grass, and the wild clothing of luxuriant 
 nature. 
 
 At one of the angles of the road, I re- 
 collect, a few years since, stood the mere 
 shell of a brick mansion, tenanted only by 
 the fowls of the air, with its window-frames 
 falling out by piecemeal. It had, however, 
 been a seat of some importance, as was 
 denoted by its fish-ponds and ivied foun- 
 tains ; but at that time it presented a sad 
 wreck of neglect and decay. Another 
 dwelling, though apparently of the same 
 age and description, has shared a better 
 fate, still retaining much of that substantial 
 comfort which we usually infer from a 
 heavy red-brick exterior of the time of Wil- 
 liam III. — with its walnut-trees and walled 
 court-yards.
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 83 
 
 Among the most cheerful and genteel 
 of the cottage dwellings at Merstone, may 
 be mentioned the glazier's, with its newly- 
 painted paling, protecting a thick hedge of 
 sweet-briar, and enclosing a profusion of 
 holly-hocks and rose-trees, which rise from 
 box-edged beds and borders of flowers. 
 The " boarding-school for young ladies" is 
 a modern appendage which has sprung up 
 with the refinement of the times ; its exte- 
 rior is, indeed, as trim and neat as its in- 
 mates. The street of the village is, however, 
 broken by an unsightly toll-house and gate, 
 an interruption to which most travellers, 
 whether horse or foot, must object. 
 
 Within the parish are some valuable 
 quarries of stone, (whence the name of the 
 village) which were once in possession of 
 the crown ; and according to antiquarian 
 authority, a patent of Edward III. is still 
 preserved, empowering certain persons to 
 dig stone here for the use of Windsor Castle, 
 and ordering the sheriff to assist and appre- 
 hend such men as should refuse to work,
 
 84 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 and send them prisoners to Windsor — a 
 tolerable specimen of feudal aristocracy. 
 From its resistance to fire it is called 
 firestone ; it is soft when brought from the 
 quarry, but hardens in the air. With the 
 abundance and celebrity* of this material, 
 it might be expected that it would form the 
 principal building material at Merstone, 
 which might thus, in neatness, rival some of 
 the beautiful villages of Essex : such, how- 
 ever, is not the case, many of the houses 
 being of red brick ; but this variety adds to 
 the pleasing character of the village street. 
 The whole spot is sheltered by a portion of 
 the bold range of chalk hills which stretches 
 across the county of Surrey ; in this di- 
 rection is a lane consecrated by the (eet 
 of numerous pilgrims, in their progress from 
 the west, to visit the shrine of Becket, at 
 
 * Tlie magnificent chapel of Henry VII., at Westminster, 
 is built of this stone ; in repairing and renovating the exte- 
 rior of which so much time is occupied, that before the 
 whole is finished, the portion first commenced will have 
 resumed much of the indistinctness of antiquity — so satirical 
 is time in mocking the boasted perfection of human art !
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 85 
 
 Canterbury ; and tradition has assigned to 
 this hallowed spot the name of Pilgrim's 
 Lane. 
 
 But were I to proceed in enumerating 
 the many delightful scenes of rural repose 
 with which this neighbourhood abounds, 
 my readers might forget the village charac- 
 ter which I have already attempted to 
 sketch. I must, however, mention a decay- 
 ed borough, said to have been once an im- 
 portant town, with privileges which have 
 preserved its name in election eloquence, 
 and have even rendered it a bye-word and 
 laughing-stock for corruption and disgrace. 
 Its patron resides in a showy mansion, on 
 the verge of a variegated park, and he 
 seems to share the unpopularity which is 
 attached to the borough. Nevertheless, the 
 park is of extraordinary beauty, and from 
 one of its gates the prospect extends over 
 the cultivated districts and the wilds of Sur- 
 rey and Sussex, to the blue horizon of the 
 South Downs. 
 
 When Emma was a little girl, the ladies
 
 86 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 of the village usually passed their mornings 
 in visiting the cottages of the sick ; and 
 almost every poor family had its patroness. 
 Nearly a mile from Merstone, a narrow lane 
 branches off the high road to the sequestered 
 hamlet of Chepstone, about half a mile 
 distant. Here are a small green, a few 
 cottages, and a farm-house, with a church 
 almost overgrown with affectionate ivy, em- 
 bosomed in the dense foliage of trees ; in a 
 substantial brick mansion adjoining which, 
 resided an old gentleman, who having 
 amassed a princely fortune in India, was, 
 in the harmless satire of the day, termed a 
 nabob. He had three maiden daughters, 
 and in this comfortable retreat they passed 
 the greatest part of the year ; for rural life 
 was not then as it is now among the wealthy, 
 
 Whose lives are others, not their own ; 
 
 neither were they chained by fashion to 
 pass the spring and summer in London. The 
 family lived in good style ; but the respect 
 in which they were held by the villagers 
 did not border on that cold and servile con-
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 87 
 
 duct which the opulence of the great and 
 the sordid interests of the little, sometimes 
 dictate in such neighbourhoods. It was ra- 
 ther the warm effect of gratitude, and that 
 high esteem which should always recipro- 
 cate with true benevolence, and in part 
 reconcile the distant relationship of wealth 
 and humble virtue. 
 
 The retiring modesty and unassuming 
 simplicity of Emma's demeanour, soon at- 
 tracted the notice of these benefactresses, 
 and through their bounty she received the 
 rudiments of her education, a mark of fa- 
 vor to which more consequence was at- 
 tached in those days, inasmuch as the 
 expense was greater, and the opportunities 
 were less frequent, than at present ; for there 
 were no Sunday schools, and reading and 
 writing were then enviable accomplishments 
 among adults. Emma was accordingly 
 received into the ' c great house" at Chep- 
 stone, as a kind of pet companion for the 
 ladies, a distinction to which the children of 
 lowly parents even now are notunfrequently
 
 88 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 recommended by correct conduct and per- 
 sonal appearance, — qualifications which 
 caused Emma to be selected from the vil- 
 lagers of Merstone. At length, the old 
 gentleman died, the estate was let or sold, 
 and the three daughters left Chepstone ; 
 two went abroad, and the third on a per- 
 manent visit to a relation ; or, to be brief, 
 they, what is termed, gave up housekeeping. 
 I have already alluded to the personal 
 attractions of Emma: in figure she was 
 rather petite, but of regularly-proportioned 
 form ; her features might be called pretty, 
 and they were lit up by cheerfulness ; and, 
 in the language of the poet, she was " indus- 
 trious, modest, quiet, neat.'' She was now 
 confided by her mother to the care of an aunt 
 in London, where she soon engaged the 
 attention of the other sex, and before she 
 had reached the age of twenty, she at- 
 tracted the affections of William . 
 
 He is described to me, by those who well 
 recollect him, as tall and well made, with a 
 fine open countenance, and dark luxuriant
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 89 
 
 hair. But his eyes were not the index of his 
 heart: for a time they bespoke ardent 
 attachment to their favored object, but they 
 lacked sincerity, that jewel which is set in 
 the eyes and hearts of true lovers. His con- 
 stancy in love did not equal his warmth in 
 the service to which he belonged ; and, un- 
 like the loves which are so artlessly told in 
 the ballads and ditties of sea-life, he inhe- 
 rited their misgivings without their fidelity ; 
 but faster than his heart 
 
 Did make offence, his eye did heal it up. 
 
 Emma loved him ;* but like a froward 
 child, his affections strayed, and his wan- 
 derings often flushed her maiden cheek, and 
 steeped her eyes in the tears of grief. He 
 took his long and last farewell, — when, a 
 few months after he had sailed, Emma re- 
 ceived the intelligence of his wreck ; 
 
 So sad, so tender, and so true. 
 
 * Certain impressions received in these moments, are 
 never effaced. The few hours that William passed in 
 Emma's company, he sometimes cheered by singing the
 
 90 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe the days and 
 nights of concealed anguish that followed ; 
 for this has baffled the plaintiveness of 
 poetry. Love is, indeed, " all trial, all ob- 
 servance ; " but where the affection of 
 woman seeks to reclaim the nobler sex 
 from error, its anxieties are doubled : when 
 that object is accomplished, the joy is un- 
 speakable, but when hope and life are cut 
 off at one blow, the sickenings of anxiety 
 
 are but as past dreams of bliss. 
 
 * * * # * * 
 
 Emma lived in what is sometimes distin- 
 guished as southern London, then the prin- 
 cipal entrance of that quarter to the metro- 
 polis, but now considered as one of its main 
 streets. A church, which at that time stood 
 isolated, is now surrounded with knots of 
 murky streets, lanes, and alleys, or dwellings 
 
 most popular sea-ballads of that time. Such were Gay's 
 inimitable '' Black-eyed Susan," Dibdin's " Plough-boy," 
 and a few others of the same cast. He had a musical voice ; 
 that of Emma, too, was flexible and sweet; and I have often 
 heard her repeat the chorus lines of these songs, but seldom 
 have I heard her hum the air of any other.
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 91 
 
 blackened with the atmosphere, so as to 
 resemble the abodes of many previous ge- 
 nerations. In those days, too, the south 
 bank of the Thames supplied its adjacent 
 counties with merchandize; and a journey 
 (for such it might be called) to Tyburn, 
 then resembled the passage from Dover to 
 Calais, or a steam voyage across the Atlan- 
 tic, in our age ; so rapid, but imperceptible, 
 are the strides and changes which art and 
 time effect in the intellectual habits of a 
 great portion of mankind. At the period 
 to which I have alluded, the above district 
 was more like a large market or county 
 town, than a part of the metropolis ; and 
 thousands were born, and died there, with- 
 out ever migrating three miles north, east, 
 or west, which, on the other hand, charac- 
 terises the minds of a different class of 
 thinkers. Waggons were the ordinary con- 
 veyances, — and coaches, which were then 
 considered as triumphs of locomotive skill, 
 both in construction and pace, would cut but 
 a sorry figure with a modern Brighton outfit,
 
 92 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 or with many subordinate vehicles which ebb 
 and flow through this line of streets, with 
 every whirl round the dial of St. Paul's. 
 Now I fear that I have travelled out of my 
 record. 
 
 But the gloom of the first untoward 
 event of Emma's life at length cleared off 
 before the vivacity of youth and artless 
 beauty. 
 
 From the faint outline of Emma's first 
 love, it will be readily expected that her 
 good qualities did not fail to awaken 
 a kindred sympathy, perhaps somewhat 
 quickened by that interesting charm which 
 unrequited confidence not unfrequently 
 lends to personal attractions. Happily, in 
 this case, the frown of melancholy fled be- 
 fore the brighter beams of untutored affec- 
 tion ; and in noticing the circumstance of 
 Emma becoming the object of three rivals, 
 simultaneously, it is gratifying to add, that 
 so far as their integrity has been proved by 
 their subsequent success in life — on which- 
 ever suitor Emma's choice might have
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 93 
 
 fallen, each would have been found equal in 
 his commendatory claims to her hand. It is 
 too often only the theory of love to sink the 
 advantages of birth and fortune, and forget 
 them in reciprocal affection ; and this sys- 
 tem of happiness has long since been proved 
 to be equally fallacious with every other 
 scheme of human certainty. Such expec- 
 tations, if not chivalric, do not belong to 
 this age of calculation ; they have long 
 been laid asleep, and the doctrine of self- 
 love works too powerfully in men's minds 
 to admit a chance of their frequent resus- 
 citation. How refinement has brought 
 about this modern reform in the course of 
 human sympathies, must be left to the de- 
 cision of the metaphysical enquirer ; but 
 certes, it extends throughout the chain of 
 civilization — from the earliest germ of com- 
 mon friendship to the finest web of inter- 
 woven affections. If the comparison be 
 not too ludicrous, the relation of such ap- 
 peals to the heart often resembles the faulty 
 construction of some obsolete machine and
 
 94 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 its appendages, in the communication of 
 which there are too many cranks, points, or 
 stages, to admit of calculating the effect or 
 result. 
 
 Harding, the choice of Emma's second 
 love, was in age and station her equal. He 
 was a native of Northampton, and, like 
 many of his brethren still further north, he 
 came to better his fortune among the south- 
 erns of London. In person he was well 
 formed ; in address frank and manly ; with 
 an open and expressive set of features, which 
 well bespoke the generosity of his heart. 
 These are, perhaps, the most fortunate of 
 Nature's bounties for an introduction to mid- 
 dle life ; and, if physiognomists be right, they 
 are best entitled to our confidence. Industry 
 and success are probably as often found 
 under other characteristics, but such good 
 fortune is then less easily attained ; it is 
 often but up-hill work, whilst companion- 
 able qualities, or an agreeable exterior, not 
 unfrequently prepossess, and thus lighten 
 labour, and smooth difficulty into a pleasant
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 95 
 
 exercise of genius. It is a principle of 
 early nature to allow fondling, coaxing, 
 and persuasion, to accomplish many pur- 
 poses which more apparent influence will 
 defeat ; and in almost every hour of our 
 lives we illustrate the universal application of 
 this maxim. By this reason, men of tyran- 
 nical dispositions usually defeat themselves, 
 and become self-tormentors ; though per- 
 chance they have ignorance and pride to bol- 
 ster up their weakness, and persuade them- 
 selves into rash experiments on mankind, 
 which at length end in their ruin. But sim- 
 plicity, or singleness of heart and purpose, 
 will, in nineteen out of twenty cases, effect 
 more than cunning, with all her cameleon 
 cheateriesandtrapwork machinery. Beauty, 
 it is acknowledged, is oftener a lure to 
 misfortune than a handmaid to welfare ; 
 but all her charms fade, wither, and die, 
 or, at best, are but as false gilding of art 
 and study, without beauty or purity of 
 heart. Were this principle better recog- 
 nized, vice would be left to her own
 
 96 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 deformity, and the beautiful become syno- 
 nymous with clear perfection. 
 
 A short courtship brought about a happy 
 union. With a family came an increase 
 of fortune. Emma still retained the same 
 humility that adorned her childhood ; com- 
 fort succeeded the early practice of self- 
 denial, and the prosperity of this amiable 
 pair just appeared complete, when disease 
 broke in upon their halcyon days, and began 
 to overcloud their future prospects. Harding 
 fell a victim to acute bodily suffering, which 
 usually confined him to his chamber up- 
 wards of one-third of each subsequent year. 
 In these hours of racking anguish, Emma 
 mingled her sweet consolation, and in 
 these scenes of conjugal tenderness, how 
 finely were their affections blended : his 
 care was her care — her joy was his joy ; 
 how affecting are such touches of 
 
 Sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek. 
 
 These afflicting visitations continued up- 
 wards of twenty years, when nature, worn
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 97 
 
 out with pain and suffering, sunk beneath 
 the burthen — and Harding was no more ! 
 
 I had been for some time absent from 
 town, and did not see Harding eight months 
 previous to his death. His last attack con- 
 fined him to his bed-room six weeks, when 
 being somewhat recovered, he w r as, a few 
 days previous to his decease, removed into 
 his dining-room. Here he was seen by a 
 friend whom I deputed to call on him, and who 
 described him, personally, as the " ruin of 
 a fine man." He appeared to be much 
 concerned for his wife and family, whilst he 
 hastily summed up the principal incidents of 
 the latter years of his life ; but he neither 
 exhibited symptoms, nor expressed any fear, 
 of approaching dissolution. On the follow- 
 ing morning, however, during one of those 
 precious intervals in winch death so often 
 surprises his victims, slight fits of apoplexy 
 nipped the fine thread, already spun out 
 with the subtlety of human contrivance, 80 
 as to have flattered with hope of recovery. 
 
 F
 
 98 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 Emma and her little circle, five in num- 
 ber, were now plunged into the deepest 
 sorrow : for a time her affliction bordered 
 on distraction, and " she refused to be com- 
 forted ;" but the consolation of her friends, 
 and the affectionate caresses of her children, 
 aided by the balm of pious resignation, were 
 apparently efficacious. At the desire of Em- 
 ma, Harding was buried in the church-yard 
 of her native village, Merstone ; for the rites 
 and associations of a London funeral did 
 not harmonize with the simplicity of her 
 feelings. How fondly did she cling to every 
 reminiscence of Harding, that could endear 
 him to her memory ! thus, the idea of con- 
 veying his cold remains from the distraction 
 of a city to the peaceful shade of a village 
 church-yard, momentarily relieved the poig- 
 nancy of her sufferings ; for in the over- 
 flow of her affection she attached an impor- 
 tance to the place of interment, which 
 enjoined tranquillity, and rest from the 
 busy strife of the world. We can trace this
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 99 
 
 concern for the dead among the lives of our 
 earliest ancestors ; not to speak of the in- 
 teresting honors which the fathers of the 
 Christian church were wont to pay the 
 grave-stones of the dead; in which pleasing 
 ceremony they placed baskets of lilies, vio- 
 lets, and roses, on the graves of husbands 
 and wives. And in our times such customs 
 are not entirely forgotten, except in crowded 
 and ungenial cities. I well remember the day 
 of Harding's burial. It was a pensive morn- 
 ing in October, a period when nature begins 
 to sadden, and to remind us of the approach 
 of winter. The sky was one sheet of melan- 
 choly overcast. The trees and hedges had 
 just begun to shed their leaves, which being 
 whirled about by occasional gusts of wind, 
 proved their strict analogy to the fleeting 
 course of man : and this too, on the high 
 road to a luxurious watering-place, along 
 which, at intervals, carriages passed in all 
 the ostentatious bustle and splendour of toil 
 and fashion. I saw the funeral approach. 
 The little bell sent forth its deepest knell, 
 
 f2
 
 100 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 (with the wind) audible at a mile from the 
 church ; and as the gloomy train wound 
 round the hill, the windows of the few 
 straggling cottages on the road side were 
 crowded with the heads of young and old, 
 with all that inconsistent curiosity which 
 leads men to regard such scenes like pass- 
 ing shadows, for which they feel but mo- 
 mentary concern. 
 
 A church may be called the gem of vil- 
 lage scenery ; and such is the humble church 
 of Merstone. It stands on a gentle knoll, 
 and its shingled spire is discernible for se- 
 veral miles round. It abounds with vari- 
 ous orders of architecture, among which 
 the rude Saxon arch, and the tracery of 
 pointed windows predominate. The interior 
 is spacious, but if we except the pews of the 
 squire's and a few other families, it is far 
 from commodious. There is a large gal- 
 lery, in which the unmusical psalmody of 
 our forefathers is set and sung. A few 
 verses from the Old and New Testament, 
 (as helps to the duties of social life,) are
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 101 
 
 written on the walls, which in the angles, 
 and near the windows, are discoloured with 
 the dank of the ivy and evergreens clinging 
 to their exterior. Some rude oaken rails 
 enclose a small area at the top of the mid- 
 dle aisle, and beneath a window, whose light 
 is dimmed with ivy, is placed by way of 
 altar-piece, a well-executed French engrav- 
 ing, on nine sheets, about six feet high and 
 five wide, beside which are the ten com- 
 mandments, &c. with the communion table 
 underneath. This is indeed a hallowed spot, 
 for here many a beating heart has been set 
 at rest. The reading-desk and pulpit are 
 of rudely carved oak, with an old date 
 nearly effaced; and over the pulpit is a repre- 
 sentation of the king's arms in fresco. There 
 is too, near the principal door, a font of 
 a square block of highly-polished Sussex- 
 marble, lined with lead, and elevated on a 
 pillar of the same material. From its capa- 
 ciousness it rather resembles a small bath, 
 being sufficiently excavated to dip an infant. 
 There is no further attempt at internal de-
 
 102 
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 coration ; and notwithstanding some folks 
 call it " a barn of a place," it is far more 
 devotional than any of the churches built in 
 the present day. 
 
 The exterior is notuninteresting. Church- 
 wardens' alterations, as stopping up and 
 opening doors and windows, are pretty nu- 
 merous, and to judge by these specimens, 
 every score of years has its school of archi- 
 tecture. The whole pile is in a dilapidated 
 condition : the stones of the tower are dis- 
 jointed, and according to tradition, they 
 shake when the peal of four bells is rung ; 
 and there are a few slabs on the battle- 
 mented coping which have threatened to 
 fall during the last seven years: the several 
 abutments are in the same ruinous state, and 
 are falling by piecemeal ; and to judge from 
 recent vestry squabbles about rates and bell 
 repairs, little can be expected towards the 
 renovation of this venerable pile. The 
 valley forms the church-yard, bounded on 
 one side by a rookery, and on the other by 
 elms, intermixed with sombre yews and
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 10-3 
 
 firs. It is altogether pensively picturesque ; 
 and there have I, in the innocent hours of 
 boyhood, loved to 
 
 Pluck the frail flowers that gaily bloom 
 
 And cast them, as they fade away 
 In garlands on my tomb : 
 
 Here too could I now trace the generations 
 of Emma's family, surrounded with the sar- 
 cophagus of rank, the gilt-lettered marble 
 slab, the railed vault, and the time-worn 
 wooden rail — all spotted with moss, or dis- 
 coloured with the green mark of antiquity. 
 And this crowd of mementos of human 
 frailty — this scene of mortal repose — lay 
 close to the full tide of a fashionable haunt. 
 The road to the church-yard winds round 
 the hill or shelving bank, almost overgrown 
 with weeds and high grass, and the entrance 
 to the church-yard is by a flight of stone steps 
 leading to a hatch-gate. Here the proces- 
 sion was met by several of Emma's relatives. 
 At respectful distances stood little groupes 
 of women and children silently, observing 
 the ceremony — from tottering age to hushed
 
 104 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 childhood — so forcibly do the emblems of 
 death strike into the heart, inasmuch as 
 every one, at some period of his existence, 
 acknowledges their effect. 
 
 I shall mention only one incident of the 
 funeral, and that because, if ever the influ- 
 ence of superstition be sweet to the soul, it 
 is in moments like the present. Birds are 
 amusing creatures, and their economy is an 
 epitome of mankind ; but the robin is one of 
 the most favoured of birds ; and its habits 
 are recorded in some of the sweetest stanzas 
 of poesy.* The service in the church had 
 scarcely commenced, when a robin flew in 
 at the door, and perching itself in the niche 
 of a window, began to warble its woodland 
 notes, and was immediately joined by ano- 
 ther robin without the same window. These 
 
 * I could easily adduce many hundred examples ; but the 
 beautiful one of Collins, in the dirge, sung over the grave of 
 Kidele, (in Cymbeline) will suffice : 
 
 The redbreast oft, at evening hour, 
 
 Shall kindly lend his little aid, 
 With hoary moss, and gather'd flowers, 
 
 To deck the ground, where thou art laid.
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 105 
 
 plaintive choristers continued to make the 
 church re-echo with their shrill strains 
 throughout the ceremony. The robin had 
 been Harding's favourite bird, and the as- 
 sociation of this circumstance, with the 
 above slender incident, if weakness, was 
 pardonable in such a moment. 
 
 In this hour of trial, Emma appeared to 
 bear her loss with fortitude ; but it left a 
 corroding care within her breast, which 
 embittered the remainder of her life. Her 
 fine feelings were doubly quickened ; her 
 heart sorrowed within itself ; and her peace 
 of mind appeared to have fled for ever : 
 
 In every shadow, every blast, 
 
 The spirits of enjoyment pass'd 
 
 She sees, she hears; ah ! — then her eyes o'erflow, 
 
 Not with a mother's love, but with a widow's woe. 
 
 * ***** * 
 
 About five years after the death of Hard- 
 ing, Emma died also. The little ills that 
 chequer life had so worked upon her acute 
 feelings, that her's was indeed a widowhood 
 in woe. A fit of paralysis seized her whilst 
 in the bosom of her familv : she lingered for 
 
 f3"
 
 106 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 a few days, and on the nineteenth of her 
 suffering, died at the vigorous age of 45. 
 There was the same little tragic ceremony at 
 Merstone, as at the burial of Harding, for 
 they sleep in the same grave, and a single 
 stone bears their names and ages, leaving 
 their merits to the world, and as a more 
 valuable legacy than fortune could have 
 enabled them to bequeath to their children. 
 Many of the village throng at Emma's fu- 
 neral remembered he in the hey-day of her 
 youth ; some were perhaps her playmates ; 
 and they too recollected her departure from 
 Merstone. In the interval she became a 
 fond wife, a mother of unbounded affection; 
 but alas ! an inconsolable widow ! How 
 deeply is the picture shadowed with grief; 
 but let us recollect the sublime sentiment of 
 Sterne, that 
 
 God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb; 
 
 and then we shall cease to repine. 
 
 Towards evening I drew near to the
 
 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 107 
 
 newly-turned grave of Harding and Emma. 
 It was in April, and the chilling wind began 
 to threaten the few tender leaflets with 
 which spring had already bedecked the 
 trees. Here, said I, lie an honest pair. I 
 may say, a few years since they started in 
 life ; and during that period they have been 
 blessed with children, five of whom survive 
 them. By industry and integrity they have 
 educated and fitted them as ornaments of 
 society ; and thus, have they not fulfilled 
 their part ? Though not conspicuous in life ; 
 they are still to be numbered among the 
 " honour ables of the land.''' By common 
 sense and a right application of what abi- 
 lities they possessed, they were enabled to 
 ward off difficulties ; and rather than waste 
 life in repining at its cares, they overcame 
 them by their own perseverance. 
 
 In England we know how to appreciate 
 the sterling worth of middle life, inasmuch 
 as its members are among the best germs of 
 her prosperity ; and however well the histo- 
 rian and biographer may conceive them-
 
 108 VILLAGE CHARACTER. 
 
 selves to be employed in perpetuating the 
 successes of empires, the conquests of ambi- 
 tion, the foundation of illustrious houses, or 
 the virtues of public lives — it must be ac- 
 knowledged that all human excellence may 
 be traced to the influence of such principles 
 as those which governed Harding and Emma 
 throughout their short career.
 
 Bebtor anU (EretJftor* 
 
 " The time is out of joint." — Hamlet. 
 
 " A man of my profession never counterfeits, till be lays 
 hold upon a debtor, and says he rests him ; for then he brings 
 him to all manner of unrest."— The Bailiff, in "Every Mart 
 in his Humour." 
 
 " Run not into debt, either for wares sold, or money bor- 
 rowed ; be content to want things that are not of absolute 
 necessity, rather than to run up the score ; such a man pays 
 at the latter a third part more than the principal comes to, 
 and is in perpetual servitude to his creditors ; lives uncom- 
 fortably ; is necessitated to increase his debts to stop his 
 creditors' mouths ; and many times falls into desperate 
 courses."— Sir M. Hale. 
 
 " The greatest of all distinctions in civil 
 life." says Steele, " is that of Debtor and 
 Creditor ;" although no kind of slavery is so 
 easily endured, as that of being in debt. 
 Luxury and expensive habits, which are 
 commonly thought to enlarge our liberty,
 
 110 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 by increasing our enjoyments, are thus the 
 means of its infringement ; whilst, in nine 
 out of ten cases, the lessons taught by this 
 rigid experience lead to the bending and 
 breaking of our spirits, and the unfitting of 
 us for the rational pleasnres of life. All 
 ranks of mankind seem to fall into this fatal 
 error, from the voluptuous Cleopatra to the 
 needy philosopher, who doles out a meal's- 
 worth of morality for his fellow creatures, 
 and who would feign live according to his 
 own precepts, had he not exhausted his 
 pocket in the acquisition of his experience. 
 I blush to confess that I have often 
 thought the habit of debt to be our national 
 inheritance, from that bug-bear of out-of- 
 place men, the Sinking Fund, to the parish 
 clerk who mortgages his fees at the chand- 
 ler's ; and that my countrymen seem to 
 have resolved to increase their own enjoy- 
 ments at the expense of posterity, with 
 whose provision, even Swift thinks we have 
 no concern. Again, I have thought that 
 we are apt to overrate our national ad-
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. Ill 
 
 vancement, by supposing the present race 
 to be wiser than the previous one, without 
 once looking into our individual contribu- 
 tions to this state of enlightenment. Proud 
 as we are of this distinction in the social 
 scale, we can record but few instances of con- 
 temporary genius ; and we are bound to con- 
 fess that men are not a whit the better in 
 the present than in the previous generation. 
 Thus we hoodwink each other, till social 
 outrages become every-day occurrences, 
 and every thing but sheer violence is pro- 
 tected by its frequency; and in this manner, 
 we consent to compromise our happiness, 
 and then affect to be astonished at its rarity. 
 In the later ages of the world, men have 
 learned to temporise with principle, and 
 to sacrifice at the shrine of passing inter- 
 est, as much real virtue as would bear 
 them harmless throughout life. Hence, of 
 what more avail are the virtues of the Roman 
 fathers, or the amiable friendship of Scipio 
 and Lelius, than as so many amusing fictions 
 to exercise the imaginations of schoolmen
 
 112 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 in drawing outlines of character, which ex- 
 perience does not finish. Friends, like 
 certain flowers, bloom around us in the 
 sunshine of success; but at nightfall, or at 
 the approach of storms, they shut up their 
 hearts ; and thus, poor victims being rifled 
 of their mind's content, with their little 
 string of enjoyments broken up for ever, 
 are abandoned to the pity or scorn of bye- 
 standers. It is impossible to reflect for a 
 moment on such a crisis, without dropping 
 a tear for the self-created infirmities of man : 
 but these are considerations at which he 
 shudders, and which he would rather var- 
 nish over with the sophistry of his refinement, 
 and self-conceit. 
 
 I fear that I am breaking my rule by not 
 confining myself to a few shades of debt 
 and conscience, with a view of determining 
 how far they are usually reconciled among 
 us. The task may not prove altogether 
 fruitless; notwithstanding, to find honest men 
 would require the lantern of Diogenes, and 
 the search, perhaps, turn out in the propor- 
 tion of Gratiano's eloquence.
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 113 
 
 In our youthful days, we all remember 
 to have read a pithy string of maxims, by 
 Dr. Franklin; and we are accustomed to 
 admire the pertinence of their wit — but here 
 their influence too often terminates. Since 
 Franklin's time, the practice of getting into 
 debt has become more and more easy, not- 
 withstanding men have become more wary. 
 Goldsmith, too, gives us a true picture of 
 this practice, in his scene with Mr. Padusoy, 
 the mercer, a mode which has been found 
 to succeed so well since his time, that, with 
 the exception of a few short-cuts by sharpers 
 and other proscribed gentry, little amend- 
 ment has been made. Profuseness on the 
 part of the debtor will generally be found 
 to beget confidence on that of the creditor ; 
 and, in like manner, diffidence will create 
 mistrust, and mistrust an entire overthrow 
 of the scheme. An unblushing front, and 
 the gift of nonchalance, are, therefore, the 
 best qualifications for a debtor to obtain 
 credit, whilst poor modesty will be starved 
 in her own littleness. In vain has Juvenal
 
 114 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 protested, " Front i nulla Jides ;" and have 
 the world been amused with anecdotes of 
 paupers dying with money sewed up in their 
 clothes : appearance and assumed habits 
 are still the handmaids to confidence ; and 
 so long as this system exists, the warfare of 
 Debtor and Creditor will be continued. 
 Procrastination will be found to be another 
 furtherance of the system, inasmuch as it is 
 too evident throughout life, that men are 
 more apt to take pleasure " by the fore- 
 lock," than to calculate its consequence. 
 In this manner, men of irregular habits 
 anticipate and forestal every hour of their 
 lives, and pleasure and pain continue to 
 alternate, till pain, like debt, accumulates, 
 and sinks its patient below the level of the 
 world. Economy and forecast do not enter 
 into the composition of such men, nor are 
 such lessons often felt or acknowledged, 
 till custom has rendered the heart unfit for 
 the reception of their counsels. It is too 
 frequently that the neglect of these prin- 
 ciples strikes at the root of social happiness,
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 115 
 
 and produces those lamentable wrecks of 
 men — those shadows of sovereignty — which 
 people our prisons, poor-houses, and asy- 
 lums. Genius, with all her book-knowledge, 
 is not exempt from this failing ; but, on the 
 contrary, a sort of fatality seems to attend 
 her sons and daughters, which tarnishes 
 their fame, and often exposes them to the 
 brutish attacks of the ignorant and vulgar. 
 Wits, and even philosophers, are among this 
 number ; and we are bound to acknowledge 
 that, beyond the raciness of their writings, 
 there is but little to admire in the lives of 
 such men as Steele, Foote, or Sheridan. 
 It is, however, fit that principle should be 
 thus recognised and upheld, and that any 
 dereliction from its rules should be placed 
 against the account of such as enjoy other 
 degrees of superiority, and allowed to form 
 an item in the scale of their merits. 
 
 Debt is obligation, and " obligation, " 
 says Hobbes, " is thraldom." This will be 
 evident if we once consider to what a va- 
 riety of mean shifts the state of being in
 
 116 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 debt exposes us. It sits like fetters of iron 
 on conscience, but as old offenders often 
 whistle to the clanking of their chains, so 
 rogues lighten their hearts by increasing 
 their debts. It destroys freedom, inasmuch 
 as a debtor is his creditor's slave ; and, under 
 certain circumstances, his range may be 
 reduced to a few square feet, and his view 
 prescribed by a few cubits of brick walls ; 
 and, humiliating as this may appear, it sits 
 lightly on the majority, since even the brawl- 
 ers for liberty, forgetting " the air they 
 breathe," are often to be found within their 
 pale ; but in this case, they forget, that 
 being in legal debt is less venial than many 
 other sins, since debt cannot be cleared by 
 any appeals to argument, or settled by 
 shades of opinion. Subterfuge, lying, and 
 loss of liberty, are not all the miseries of a 
 conscious debtor : in the world he resembles 
 a prisoner at large ; he walks many cir- 
 cuitous miles to avoid being dunned, and 
 would sooner meet a mad dog than an angry 
 creditor. He lives in a sort of abeyance,
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 117 
 
 and sinks under shame when caught enjoy- 
 ing an undue luxury. In short, he is 
 cramped in all his enjoyments, and considers 
 his fellow, out of debt, as great as the Em- 
 peror of the Celestial Empire, after whose 
 repast other kings may dine. Hence ensue 
 repining and envy: he fancies himself 
 slighted by the world, and in return, he 
 cares not for the opinion of the world ; his 
 energies waste, and he falls ! 
 
 These sufferings, however, appertain but 
 to one class of debtors. There are others 
 who scorn such compunctious visitations, 
 and set the qualms of conscience at defiance. 
 They press into their service all the aids of 
 cunning, and travel on the bye-roads of the 
 world till they are bronzed enough for its 
 highway. Their memories are like mirrors, 
 and their debts like breathings on them, 
 which vanish in the same moment they are 
 produced. They look on mankind as a 
 large family, and the world as a large store- 
 house, or open house, where they have a 
 claim proportioned to their wants. They
 
 118 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 clear their consciences by maintaining, that 
 what is parted with is not lost, and foster 
 their hopes with the idea of its reversion. 
 They think those who can ride ought not to 
 walk, and, therefore, that all men have the 
 option of such chances of good fortune. 
 With this laxity of principle, they quarter 
 themselves on the credulity of extortionate 
 tradesmen, and the good-natured simplicity 
 of friends or associates. If, perchance, 
 they possess any excellence above their 
 society, they consider it as a redeeming 
 grace for their importunities, and calculating 
 on the vulgarism, ad captandum, and that 
 what is dearest bought is most prized, they 
 make their friends pay freely for their ad- 
 miration. Nor are such admirers willing 
 to break the spell by which they are bound ; 
 since, by their unqualified approval, they 
 sanction, and even flatter the man of their 
 party to their mutual ruin ; for, as Sei- 
 dell observes, " he who will keep a monkey, 
 should surely pay for the glasses he breaks." 
 Prone as men are to the crooked path,
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 119 
 
 and still more apt as the weak and ignorant 
 are to indulge them in such a course, per- 
 haps, the love of principle is as strong in 
 men's hearts as ever it will be. Of times 
 gone by, we must not here speak, because 
 the amor patriae has long since shifted to 
 amor nummi, and naked honesty has learned 
 the decency of dress. There have been 
 profligates in all ages ; but the world, though 
 sometimes a severe master, ruins as many 
 by its deceitful indulgence, as by its ill-timed 
 severity. Good fellows are usually the 
 worst treated by the world allowing them 
 to go beyond their tether, and then cutting 
 them off out of harm's way. Nothing but an 
 earlier discipline can preserve them ; for so 
 habitual is debt, that the boy w T ho forestals 
 his pocket money, uses it as a step-ladder 
 to the mortgage of his estate. The sufferers 
 in such cases are generally shut up in pri- 
 sons or poor-houses, to afflict or console 
 each other, as their sensibilities may direct ; 
 and thus the salutary lessons which their 
 condition might afford, is lost to the world.
 
 120 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 Neither are such scenes of real misery 
 courted by mankind, the nearest semblances 
 which they can bear, being in the senti- 
 mentalities of the stage, encumbered as they 
 often are by overstrained fiction and cari- 
 cature. On the contrary, a walk through 
 these receptacles of human woe, and the 
 little histories of their inmates, will often 
 furnish as many lessons of morality and 
 world-knowledge as will suffice us for life. 
 How often may we see the rapacious cre- 
 ditor at the same goal with the pennyless 
 debtor, whom he has hunted through life ; 
 supplicating mercy which he never exer- 
 cised, and vainly attempting to recant a 
 course of cruelty and persecution, by mixing 
 up his merited sufferings with the distresses 
 of his abused companion. ' 
 
 Goldsmith has said, that " every man is 
 the architect of his own fortune ;" and per- 
 haps there are few men who, in the moments 
 of their deepest suffering, have not felt the 
 application of this maxim. In high life, em- 
 barrassments are generally attributable to the
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 121 
 
 to the love of gambling, prodigality or some 
 such sweeping vice, which no station can 
 controul. Bankruptcies, or failures in trade, 
 being common occurrences, are seldom 
 traced to their origin, which would be often 
 found in expensive habits, and overreaching 
 or misguided speculations, and sometimes in 
 the treachery and villainy of partners ; and 
 amidst this bad system, so nicely is credit 
 balanced, that a run of ill-luck, or a mere 
 idle whisper, has been known to destroy 
 commercial character of a century's growth. 
 But in these cases it should be recollected 
 that the reputation of the parties has pro- 
 bably been endangered by some great stretch 
 of enterprize, calculated to excite envy or 
 suspicion. 
 
 Debts of fashion, or those contracted in 
 high life, are usually the most unjust, pro- 
 bably the result of honesty being more a 
 virtue of necessity than of choice, or of the 
 disgraceful practice of imposing on the ex- 
 travagant and wealthy. Experience, it is 
 granted, is a treasure which fools must pur. 
 
 G
 
 122 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 chase at a high price ; but however largely 
 we may hold possession of the commodity, 
 it will not excuse that scheme of bare- weight 
 honesty which some are apt to make the 
 standard of their dealings with the rich. 
 A man of family, by indiscretion, becomes 
 embarrassed : the clamours of his creditors 
 soon magnify his luxuries, but not a word 
 is said about their innumerable extortions, 
 in the shape of commissions, per-centages, 
 and other licensed modifications of cheatery ; 
 nor are they reckoned to the advantage of 
 the debtor. These may be practices of 
 world-wisdom and money-getting, but they 
 are not rules of conscience. In truth, 
 there is not a more painful scene than the 
 ruin of a young man of family. There is 
 so much vice and unprincipled waste op- 
 posed to indignant and rapacious clamour, 
 often accompanied with idle jests. Here 
 again is food for the vitiated appetites of 
 scandalmongers, and that miserable but 
 numerous portion of mankind who rejoice 
 at the fall of a superior. The name of
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 123 
 
 debtor is an odium which a proud spirit can 
 but ill support : cunning and avarice come 
 in a thousand shapes, not to retrieve lost 
 credit, but to swell the list of embarrass- 
 ment — friends have fled at the approach 
 of the crisis, and associates appear but to 
 pluck the poor victim of the wrecks of for- 
 tune ! * * * * 
 
 " Friends found in sunshine, to be lost in storm." 
 
 Absenteeism, the curse of England, is 
 the only alternative of wretched and hu- 
 miliating imprisonment. An entire change 
 of habits ensues : ease and elegance of 
 manners dwindle into coldness and neglect; 
 liberality to meanness ; and good-natured 
 simplicity to chicanery and cunning : in 
 society, too, how changed ; once, the gay 
 table-companion, full of gallantry and wit 
 — now solitary and dejected, with the weeds 
 of discomfort and despair rankling around 
 his heart. If fortune ever enable him to 
 regenerate from such obscurity, perhaps 
 custom may have habituated him to priva- 
 tion, till the return of comfort serves little 
 
 g2
 
 124 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 more than to awaken recollections of past 
 error or obligation, and to embitter future 
 enjoyment. Such a change may, however, 
 empower him to adjust his conscience with 
 men, of all satisfaction the most valuable, 
 notwithstanding that the world are readier 
 to exaggerate misgivings than to recognize 
 sterling principle. It is alike obvious, that 
 men who are under the stigma of debt, do 
 not enjoy that ease which they are com- 
 monly thought to possess. The horrors of 
 dependence, in all its afflicting shapes, are 
 known to visit them hourly, although, in 
 some instances, buoyancy of spirits and af- 
 fected gaiety may enable them to appear 
 happy ; and oftimes would they be awaken- 
 ed to a sense of these fallacies, and thus 
 become reformed, were it not for the rigour 
 of persecution, which renders them reck- 
 less of all that may ensue, and callous to 
 the honourable distinctions of man. This, 
 of a truth, is tampering with human weak- 
 ness, and is too often known to prove the 
 upshot of industry, by sacrificing principle 
 to vindictive passion.
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 125 
 
 That a system of Debt is identified with 
 the existence and framework of all com- 
 mercial republics is well known ; else ge- 
 nius would cease to be fostered, enterprize 
 would be cramped, and industry wither on 
 her own soil. Nevertheless, this scheme 
 may be so extended, as to beget indiffer- 
 ence for the future, and neglect of pre- 
 sent concerns, which leads to gradual ruin. 
 Time travels at divers paces, but with none 
 more quickly than the unprepared debtor ; 
 and he who allows his debts to get the start 
 of his fortune, lives upon other men's estate, 
 and must accordingly become the slave of 
 their passions and prejudices : in truth, he 
 may be thus said to be parting with his inde- 
 pendence by piecemeal. Hence, he becomes 
 a kind of convict in society, his debts re- 
 sembling a log of wood chained to his body, 
 and a brand-mark on his conscience. Thus, 
 pent up with fear and disquietude; his im- 
 prisonment is two-fold, and being an enemy 
 to his own peace, he is apt to imagine all 
 men to be leagued against him. If his debts
 
 126 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 are those of youth, his old age will probably 
 resemble the sequel to revelry, when appe- 
 tite has fled to make way for disgust and 
 spleen ; and he dies — in debt. Mark the 
 lamentable scenes that follow : — when the 
 pride of inheritance sinks before the un- 
 sparing hand of the usurer or exorbitant 
 mortgagee. 
 
 In the preceding epigraphs, somewhat 
 hastily strung together, no attempt has been 
 made to remedy the evil system of Debtor 
 and Creditor: it must, indeed, work its 
 own cure. Human life is but one continued 
 scene of anticipation, from the beginning to 
 the end ; and anticipation is but another 
 term for Debt. Money* is only an artificial 
 standard in society ; and so numerous are 
 the inconsistencies of mankind, that were 
 there no money, there would be similar 
 evils of Debt. A loan is still the same, 
 
 • Sir Thomas More, in his delightful "Utopia," says, 
 •• Men's fears, solicitudes, cares, labours, and patchings, 
 would all perish in the same moment, with the value of 
 money : even poverty itself, for the relief of which money 
 seems most necessary, would fall."
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 127 
 
 whether it be a guinea or a loaf; and 
 whatever may be the character of the cre- 
 ditor. The exclusive application of Debtor 
 and Creditor, to what is termed commerce, 
 is altogether a vulgar error. It has other 
 relations in society, which may be less sub- 
 stantial, but are in effect more important. 
 No man is so poor as to be utterly destitute, 
 and have " nothing to give," even if he be 
 without coin in his pocket. An obligation 
 in any shape, unless repaid, makes the re- 
 ceiver a debtor. Time is money ; and to 
 receive an office of friendship, without the 
 intention of repaying it, is, morally, as 
 culpable as to borrow a shilling with a de- 
 termination of keeping it. A girl has a 
 fortune of five thousand pounds and is be- 
 loved by a young fellow without a hundred : 
 both are equally attached, and were it not 
 for the fortune, they might be married. 
 Sometimes money is thrown in as a sort of 
 make-weight, and the bargain is struck ; 
 but it often happens that the fortune being 
 the only tangible substance, is suffered to
 
 128 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 outweigh every other claim, which is con- 
 sidered merely of nominal value. 
 
 There is no secret in getting money ; as 
 well might we believe in alchemy : neither 
 is there any science in being agreeable : 
 what has pleased will please again, and 
 (with modifications of time and circum- 
 stance) what has turned out profitable will 
 yield a similar result. The grand art is to 
 use money, or, as in the game of life, " to 
 play for much and stake little." But we 
 usually do the reverse : thus, a man gives 
 ^50,000 for an estate, without ever con- 
 sidering what capabilities he possesses for 
 enjoying his wealth ; for, as lord Bacon 
 says, " there be that can pack the cards and 
 cannot play well." An abused fortune is 
 a disgrace to its possessor ; else what 
 makes wealthy vice so low in public estima- 
 tion : for bad as the world may be, they 
 have the justice to make this distinction ; 
 although misanthropes will tell you, it is 
 rather from envy of their wealth than a 
 proper perception of their merits.
 
 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 129 
 
 It would be almost supererogatory to say- 
 any thing about the cubits which money 
 adds to a man's stature ; for until a set of 
 philanthropists can contrive to shame the 
 purse-proud out of their vanity, by treating 
 them according to their virtues, and not 
 according to their fortune, — the petty ty- 
 ranny of wealth will endure. The only 
 method of curing the Dagonites, or wor- 
 shippers of gold, is to leave them to their 
 own folly, till they become choked with its 
 excess. The lives of rich and poor are of 
 the same term, and their chances of happi- 
 ness better proportioned than we imagine 
 them to be. This made the poet happier 
 over his Splendid Shilling than the nabob 
 with his millions ; it is a sort of store, per se, 
 which cannot be described, but by too fre- 
 quent drafts can easily be exhausted. If, 
 as Swift says, the great secret of life be 
 hoaxing, or as a more reckless spirit thinks 
 — intoxication — then a truce to lip-wisdom. 
 
 Charles Dibdin, one of the finest lyrical 
 poets of our age, supplies me with an ap- 
 
 o3
 
 130 DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 propriate quip for the conclusion of these 
 saws of world-knowledge. It is from a bal- 
 lad entitled " Life's Weather-gage," stated 
 to be the last written by that celebrated 
 master-spirit of British song : 
 
 But take the good and evil cheerly 
 And sum up creditor and debtor; 
 
 If in this world they use you queerly, % 
 
 Be honest, and vou'll find a better.
 
 a Bag at M. CImitr, 
 
 I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, 
 and looking through the glass, saw all the world in yellow, 
 blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure.— Sterne. 
 
 St. Cloud is the Richmond of France ; 
 or rather, it is to Paris what Richmond, 
 in the days of its regal splendour, was to Lon- 
 don — the summer palace of the court. In 
 this comparison, allowance must be made 
 for the opposite building taste of each na- 
 tion ; especially as Richmond has an ap- 
 pearance of substantial comfort in its 
 massive brick mansions and rusticated cot- 
 tage groupes. The French Sheen is, on 
 the contrary, gayer ; the exterior of the
 
 132 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 residences being whitened, or, what is still 
 more artificial, coloured and decorated in 
 tawdry French. Such, at least, is the 
 character of the auberges, or inns, and res- 
 taurateurs, with which St. Cloud is even 
 better supplied than our Richmond. In 
 situation, however, they stongly assimilate ; 
 the former being placed on an acclivity 
 overlooking the Seine, as the latter is on 
 the banks of the Thames. 
 
 In Paris, a man may indeed" play tricks 
 with his fortune," even to a greater extent 
 than he can in the English capital : par 
 example, in the French metropolis, his 
 standing in society is not measured by the 
 height of his residence. There is accord- 
 ingly less restraint in the public amusements ; 
 for, as Sterne says, " this is a nicety which 
 makes not the heart sore at Paris." But 
 le Dimanche is the gala-day of certain 
 orders of Parisian society. It is set apart 
 for fetes and fairs, balls and fresco enter- 
 tainments ; and the nobility and gentry 
 absent themselves from the theatres on that
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 133 
 
 evening, though with a more liberal motive 
 than that which induced the opera sub- 
 scribers in England to give up their the- 
 atre for one night during the season. Do- 
 mestic enjoyment seems to be a secondary 
 feature in the French character ; which has 
 induced some conceited tourists to imagine 
 comfort indigenous with England. The 
 English are like certain animals which sleep 
 half the year, and their amusements are, 
 therefore, overloaded with dulness, so as 
 frequently to partake of the gravity and 
 reserve of study — or at best, like the game 
 of chess ; whereas, the Parisian is happiest 
 when he is out of doors : he rises early, 
 breakfasts and reads the newspapers with 
 his windows open, or beneath the viranda 
 of a cafe, and this, too, from April to Oc- 
 tober ; he dines nearly after the same 
 fashion, and usually retires early. He is 
 any thing rather than a stay-at-home ; but 
 he doubtless has his social enjoyments as 
 well as the Englishman; for, in what country 
 of the globe are women better treated than
 
 134 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 in France — la belle France ; a distinction 
 which I have seen humourously illustrated 
 in a print of two labourers parting at the 
 corner of a street, with the words, •' Mes 
 respects a Madame." 
 
 St. Cloud, as I have already said, is the 
 usual summer residence of the French 
 court ; and with a royal liberality which 
 might be less politic elsewhere, the park is 
 granted for three fairs — September 7 and 
 the two following Sundays, on the last of 
 which I resolved to visit the fete of St. 
 Cloud. It was a glowing September day. 
 The sun shone with more than mellow 
 warmth through the groves of the Tuil- 
 leries, and on the little southern terrace, was 
 unusually crowded with groupes of rosy 
 children, with here and there a valetudina- 
 rian, who seemed to have emerged from 
 his chamber, to enjoy the parting glories of 
 the season. Crowds of elegantly-dressed 
 company were promenading the mall, or 
 principal walk, and some few were not incuri- 
 ously lingering about the enclosed parterres
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 135 
 
 of the garden, whose beauties would soon 
 be transported to a milder atmosphere. 
 There was a general stir in the neighbour- 
 ing streets ; it did not resemble the bustle 
 of business, but had more of the gaiety of a 
 holiday scene. The Pont Royal was 
 thronged with passengers, and just beneath 
 it, were several hundreds, many of whom 
 were embarking in the steam-boat for St. 
 Cloud. But the Seine is at all times less 
 inviting for such an excursion than our 
 Thames ; and in the summer months many 
 insulated spots may be seen in the centre 
 of the latter river. At the next bridge (Louis 
 xvi.) there was a general muster of car- 
 riages, each adapted for six or eight passen- 
 gers, and drawn by one or two horses. Here 
 was aloud clamour of" St. Cloud" and " Ver- 
 sailles" among the drivers, some of whom 
 were even more officious than the Jehus of 
 Greenwich, or the wights of Charing Cross 
 or Piccadilly. I resisted all their importu- 
 nities, and passed on through the Champs 
 Elystes, or a dusty road through a grove,
 
 136 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 intersected with ill-formed paths, with a few 
 gaudy cafes bearing pompous inscriptions — 
 for Voltaire has made the French too fond 
 of nomenclature, to say with our Shaks- 
 peare, " what's in a name !" The road 
 presented a strange specimen of the in- 
 subordination of French driving, notwith- 
 standing police superintendants affected 
 much concern in the matter. Diligences, 
 fiacres, and carriages resembling large co- 
 vered cabriolets, might be seen loaded with 
 gaily-dressed women and children, with a 
 due proportion of young Parisians, all jus l 
 in the hey-day of mirth, drawn by dust- 
 provoking Flanders horses, their drivers 
 slashing almost indiscriminately, and, with 
 their clamour and confusion, far exceeding 
 the Epsom road on a race-day. 
 
 At length, escaping from the dust and 
 din of the French elysium, I halted to enjoy 
 the distant view of the city of Paris, from 
 the gate of the barrier. It was indeed an 
 interesting scene. Through the avenue, 
 whose area presented a living stream of traf-
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 137 
 
 fie, might be seen the terraces and groves 
 of the Tuilleries, and the spacious and irre- 
 gular palace, with its cupola tops; the 
 tarnished dome of the Invalides ; the cupola 
 of St. Genevieve ; the grey towers of Notre 
 Dame ; then the winding Seine, with its 
 bridges, quays, and terraces, flanked with 
 the long line of the Tuilleries, and the Lux- 
 embourg, and Louvre galleries, on the one 
 side ; and on the other by the noble facade of 
 the Chamber of Deputies ; the courtly man- 
 sions of St. Germain ; and the blackened 
 front and dome of the Institute. What a 
 multitude of associations flitted across the 
 memory, by a single glance at — Paris — 
 the capital of that gay, light-hearted, and 
 Mercurial people, — the French nation — 
 the focus of European luxury, and the grand 
 political arena of modern history, the very 
 calendar of whose events, within the last 
 half century, will form one of the most in- 
 teresting episodes that ever glowed among 
 the records of human character. In the 
 chain might be traced the vain-glory of
 
 138 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 conquest linked with defeated ambition, and 
 the sullied splendour of royalty just breaking 
 through the clouds of discontent, and slowly 
 dispelling the mists of disaffection and po- 
 litical prejudice. What an unenviable con- 
 trast to the man who has " no enemy but 
 wind and rough weather." The same objects 
 that prompted these discordant reflexions 
 gave rise to others of the most opposite 
 character ; and w T ithin the walls, where 
 treaties, abdications, and warrants, by turns 
 settled and resettled, exiled and condemned 
 — were the store-houses of art, with all her 
 proud and peaceful labours of sculpture, 
 painting, and architecture, through galleries 
 and saloons, on whose contents the chisel 
 and the pencil had lingered many a life, 
 and reduced the compass of its fond designs 
 to the cubits of a statue, the fame of a pic- 
 ture, or the glory of a pillar or ceiling — 
 such are the frail elements of human art. 
 Then, the very road along which these 
 holiday crowds were journeying ; how dif- 
 ferent must have been its aspect a few years
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 139 
 
 since ; what scenes of breathless haste, 
 retreat, horror, and dismay, when the dar- 
 ling fabric of popularity began to totter 
 beneath its insecurity, and fate urged on 
 thousands in the ruin which their own im- 
 petuosity had begun. But the contrast 
 became too painful to pursue, and I left the 
 subject for the historians, resolving not to 
 be as Dryden thinks they are, lighted up 
 like tapers, to waste themselves for the 
 benefit of others. 
 
 Perhaps my reader may imagine that I 
 have passed through the Elysian fields at 
 rather too rapid a pace ; but, in France, 
 names should be even more cautiously 
 trusted than in England ; for here is nothing 
 like the locos hetos, or the sedes beatas of 
 Virgil's paradise, if we except a few 
 painted cafes and villas, which some En- 
 glishmen would liken to card-houses, or the 
 mimic dwellings to be traced on their imita- 
 tive china. But Virgil drew his picture 
 amidst the finest charms of Italian scenery,
 
 140 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 where nature had supplied what the inven- 
 tion of man will never enable him to imitate. 
 Almost every thing about Paris is cold and 
 artificially gay: it is true, the avenue 
 through which I had just passed, was no- 
 ble and not destitute of the high over- 
 arching beauty of Milton's mosaic groves ; 
 but, in French scenery, (and in no part more 
 than in the vicinity of Paris) this avenue 
 taste is too prevalent. In short, all the 
 trees seem to have been planted in rank 
 and file, and most of the gardens laid out 
 in circle and segment order. Poplars perk 
 their heads in rows at every mile, and you 
 see but few old forest timber trees, with 
 mossy trunks and mighty arms. Next, the 
 soil is only interesting to geologists, for the 
 millions of marine and fresh-water shells 
 and animal remains which it contains, espe- 
 cially in the plaster quarries, from which Cu- 
 vier and his associates infer, that it has 
 been alternately covered with salt and 
 fresh water, and is connected with " the last
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 141 
 
 revolutions which formed the present con- 
 tinents."* The Bois de Bologne is yet in 
 its infancy, being a knot of rides through 
 mere twigs ; their arrangement is very ju- 
 dicious, but in general effect, our Regent's 
 Park is superior. 
 
 The road now began to exhibit the usual 
 appearance of an approach to a country 
 fete or fair. Scores of pedestrians, over- 
 come with the heat and dust of the day, 
 might be seen at the little boxes or shops of 
 the traiteurs, or cooks, and at the houses 
 of the marchands de vin et de la biere ; 
 these by their anticipated anxiety caused 
 the line from Paris to St. Cloud to resem- 
 ble a road-side fair. Cheerfulness and vi- 
 vacity were uppermost in the passengers ; 
 and the elastic pace of dozens of gaily- 
 dressed souhrettes not a little enhanced the 
 interest of the scene. Neither were these 
 charms impaired by that species of vulgarity 
 which not unfrequently characterizes the 
 
 * See Cartel's Theory of the Earth, &c.
 
 142 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 road to suburban fairs ; and, what is still 
 more creditable to humanity, there was no 
 brutality towards jaded horses or hacks 
 sinking beneath their loads. 
 
 Historians attach some antiquarian im- 
 portance to the village of St. Cloud, it 
 being historically confounded with the 
 earliest times of the French monarchy ; for, 
 from the beginning of the first race, the 
 kings of France had a country-seat here. 
 This spot was originally called Novigen- 
 tium ; — Clodoalde, or Cloud, the youngest 
 of the three sons of Clodomir, having es- 
 caped from the savage fury of his unnatural 
 uncle, Clotaire, and thus avoided sharing 
 the tragical fate of his two brothers, con- 
 cealed himself in a wood near this spot, and 
 there led the life of a hermit ; at his decease, 
 bequeathing his hermitage, and a church 
 besides, built near it, to the chapter of the 
 church of Paris. After his death (as a re- 
 turn for his liberality) he was canonized, 
 and the village from him took the name of 
 Sanctus Clodoaldus, or St. Cloud. It was
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 143 
 
 at this palace that Henry III. was assas- 
 sinated by Jaques Clement, in 1589; here 
 likewise took place the revolution of Nov. 
 10, 1799, which placed Buonaparte at the 
 head of the government* 
 
 * The period here alluded to is, perhaps, one of the most 
 important epochs of the French revolution. Napoleon's splen- 
 did success at Aboukir enabled him to dazzle and mislead 
 the French people ; and so intoxicated were they with the glit- 
 ter of this victory, that, in their enthusiasm, neither party 
 ventured to question his purpose, or the authority by which 
 he had left his army in Egypt. He however contrived to 
 appear indifferent to popular honours — secluded himself in 
 study, and was more frequently to be found in the chambers 
 of the Institute, than in the haunts of political life. " In 
 all this," says his biographer, " there was deep policy. No 
 one knew better how much popular applause depends on the 
 gloss of novelty, and how great is the difference in public 
 estimation, betwixt him who appears to hunt and court ac- 
 clamations, and the wiser and more disguised favourite of 
 the multitude, whose popularity follows after him, and 
 seeks him out, instead of being the object of his pursuit and 
 ambition." Such as are familiar with the biographical de- 
 tails of Napoleon, will not fail to remember St Cloud, as 
 the place of meeting of the two councils — the Five Hundred, 
 and the Ancients, or Moderes. The Orangerie was assigned 
 to the Council of Five Hundred, and the Gallery of Mars to 
 that of the Ancients. Who can forget Napoleon's subtle 
 harangue on the termination of the sharp debate, challenging 
 the legality of the transference of the Legislative bodies 
 from Paris to St. Cloud ? " Citizens," said he, " you are 
 placed upon a volcano. Let me tell you the truth with the
 
 144 
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 I now reached the bridge of St. Cloud, 
 an elegant modern structure which crosses 
 
 frankness of a soldier. Citizens, — I was remaining tranquil 
 with my family., when the commands of the Council of An- 
 cients called me to arms. I collected my brave military 
 companions, and brought forward the arm of the country in 
 obedience to you who are the head. We are rewarded with 
 calumny — they compare me to Cromwell — to Cassar. Had 
 I desired to usurp the supreme authority, I have had oppor- 
 tunities to do so before now. But I swear to you, the 
 country has not a more disinterested patriot. We are sur- 
 rounded by danger and by civil war. Let us not hazard the 
 loss of those advantages for which we have made such 
 sacrifices — Liberty and equality." He then went on to de- 
 nounce the Council of Five Hundred, as containing men 
 who desired to bring back the Convention, with its revolu- 
 tionary committees, its scaffolds, its popular insurrections. 
 '• But 1," said he, " will save you from such horrors — I and 
 my brave comrades at arms, whose swords and caps I see at 
 the door of the hall." This appeal, powerful as it was, was 
 answered by cries of " the Constitution," &c. — the voice of 
 the Moderates was overwhelmed by clamour — and never had 
 the party of democracy shown itself fiercer, or more tenacious, 
 than when about to receive the death-blow. Napoleon's 
 next expedient was to enter the Orangerie, attended by four 
 grenadiers. He was received with murmurs; all the de- 
 puties arose, some rushed on Buonaparte, and seized him by 
 the collar; others called out— " Outlawry — outlawry — let 
 him be proclaimed a traitor." At this crisis of the fracas, a 
 party of grenadiers rushed into the hall with drawn swords, 
 and extricating Napoleon from the deputies, bore him off in 
 t heir arms, breathless with the scuffle. At length, Murat, 
 deputed by Buonaparte to execute the command* of his 
 brother Lucien, entered the Orangerie with drums beating,
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 145 
 
 the Seine, near the entrance to the village.* 
 Here the river loses much of its importance ; 
 and in summer, the steam-boats are not 
 unfrequently delayed in their voyage (if it 
 may be so designated) for lack of water. 
 The prospect of the chateau, or palace, 
 embosomed in trees, and the park va- 
 riegated with natural and artificial beauties, 
 with the adjoining village on 2 steep shelv- 
 ing hill — is unusually picturesque. On 
 
 at the head of a detachment with fixed bayonets. He sum- 
 moned the deputies to disperse on their peril ; some of 
 whom and the spectators began to leave the hall ; but the 
 greater part continued firm. " Forward, grenadiers," said 
 the officer who commanded the party :. they levelled their 
 muskets, and advanced as if to the charge. The deputies 
 now fled on all sides, most of them jumping from the win- 
 dows of the Orangerie, and leaving behind them their official 
 caps, scarfs, and gowns. In a very few minutes, the apart- 
 ments were entirely clear ; and, " thus,'' says the biographer 
 already quoted, " furnishing, at its conclusion, a striking 
 parallel to the scene which ended the long parliament of 
 Charles the First's time, terminated the last democratical 
 assembly of France. 
 
 * On July 1, 1815, a sharp encounter took place on this 
 bridge, between the English and Prussians (who had made 
 themselves mastersof the village), and the French troops, who 
 had retired from thence to that of Boulogne, having pre- 
 viously broken the central arch, to prevent the passage of 
 the allies. 
 
 H
 
 146 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 the present occasion, however, the principal 
 attraction was the fete, which reminded me 
 more forcibly of John Bunyan's Vanity 
 Fair, than any other exhibition I had ever 
 witnessed. The entrance to this motley 
 scene was by the principal gate, where the 
 carriages set down their company, and at 
 a short distance along the bank of the river, 
 the steam-boat in like manner contributed its 
 visitors. On entering the park, I was first 
 struck with a long row of boxes, (somewhat 
 in the style of those at Vauxhall) but 
 on a raised bank, and attached to a res- 
 taurateur. Here were tables for dinner, 
 and as many others were laid in the open 
 air — with the usual carte of 2 or 300 ar- 
 ticles, and the economical elegancies of 
 silver, napkins, and china, and this, too, in 
 style little inferior to Vercy's in the Pa- 
 lais Royal. Promenaders of the better 
 description appeared in the mall, or prin- 
 cipal walk, and it being the last fete of the 
 season, their attendance was very numerous. 
 The stalls and exhibitions were chiefly on
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 147 
 
 the left side of this walk ; at the former was 
 displayed an almost indescribable variety 
 of wares, which were the adjudged prizes 
 in a lottery ; but, from the decisions which 
 I witnessed, they resembled the stationary 
 capitals in an English scheme — the nominal 
 stock in trade of the office-keepers. Many 
 of these little gambling shops were super- 
 intended by women, who proved them- 
 selves far from deficient in loquacious 
 inducements for adventurers ; and by their 
 dexterous settlement of the chances, left 
 little time for losers to reflect on their folly. 
 Provisions of various descriptions were to 
 be purchased at every turn, and among their 
 marchands, it was not incurious to see 
 some humble professors of gastronomy over 
 smoking viands, fritters, and goffers or 
 indented wafers baked on cast-iron stoves 
 a la minute — it must be owned unsea- 
 sonable luxuries for a September day. The 
 spectacles, or shows, in noise and absurdity, 
 exceeded the English trumpery of that or- 
 der ; and to judge from the gaping crowds 
 
 ii 2
 
 148 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 which they attracted, we are not the only 
 credulous nation in the world. Among the 
 games was a machine resembling an En- 
 glish round-a-bout, with wooden horses for 
 the players, each of whom was furnished 
 with a foil, with which he strove to seize 
 the greatest number of rings from the cen- 
 tre: this was, indeed, a chivalrous exhibition. 
 Stilt-walkers, mountebank families, and 
 jugglers, " chequered in bulk and brains," 
 lent their aid to amuse the crowd ; and, 
 occasionally, two or three fellows contrived 
 to enact scenes from plays, and with their 
 vulgar wit to merit the applause of their 
 audience. Portable clock-work exhibitions 
 swarmed, and mummeries or mysteries re- 
 presenting the Life and Death of our Sa- 
 viour, and the blessed Virgin, appeared 
 to be ritual accompaniments of the day, 
 and represented each stage of the holy 
 lives. The bearers of the latter machinery 
 enlivened their exhibitions with a grind- 
 ing organ, which they accompanied with 
 appropriate ditties or carols. Crosses and
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 149 
 
 other emblems of Catholicism were hung 
 about the theatrical boxes or shows, which, 
 with their representations, could only be 
 compared with the nursery toys of Noah's 
 ark, with which most of us have been 
 amused.* Accordingly, here were models 
 of Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Mount Cal- 
 vary, in the characteristic accuracy of 
 biblical topography, and from the zeal of 
 the spectators, the ingenuity of the inventors 
 was unsparingly rewarded. 
 
 Toleration, liberal as it might have been, 
 did not prevent my sickening at such sights, 
 and I turned from them to the natural beau- 
 ties of the park, which, aided by the happy 
 inequalities of the ground, (which French 
 artists imagined would be such an obstacle 
 to its perfection) possesses far more variety 
 than is usually found in the pleasure grounds 
 of France. The original plantation of the 
 
 * If the supposition be not too puerile and nugatory for the 
 antiquarian, — is it not probable that these toys of Noah's 
 ark are the relics of exhibitions similar to the above, in 
 England : they are certainly the oldest of our nursery toys.
 
 150 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 park was the work of La Notre, who, it 
 will be recollected, planned the garden of 
 Versailles ; but St. Cloud is considered his 
 chef-d'oeuvre, and proves, that with the few 
 natural advantages which it afforded him, 
 he was enabled to effect more here than 
 millions have accomplished at Versailles — 
 where art is fairly overmatched with her 
 own wasteful and ridiculous excess. This 
 alone ought to make the French blush for 
 that monument of royal folly. 
 
 The present palace of St. Cloud was 
 built in 1572, by an individual called Je- 
 rome de Gondy ; it was afterwards pur- 
 chased in succession by four bishops of Paris. 
 Louis XIV. purchased it in 1658, and 
 presented it to his brother, the duke of 
 Orleans, by whom it was considerably al- 
 tered and embellished. It remained in the 
 Orleans family till 1782, when it became 
 the property of Maria Antoinette, who be- 
 came much attached to the spot, and likewise 
 made considerable improvements there. 
 Under the imperial government of Napo-
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 151 
 
 Jeon, large sums were also expended on St. 
 Cloud, destined to become the scene of 
 some of the stirring events of his career. 
 
 The architects of these several periods 
 succeeded in forming the parts which they 
 found constructed, into a whole sufficiently 
 harmonious and symmetrical. The exterior 
 facade forms three sides of a large square, 
 and though not perfectly regular, is agree- 
 able. The entrance is by a vestibule,, 
 within which I saw guards on duty — an 
 unsightly contrast with the cottage style 
 of some part of the palace. The staircase 
 and hall are, however, suited to the magni- 
 ficence of a royal residence. The private 
 apartments are said to be furnished in a 
 style of chaste and elegant simplicity, with 
 hangings of rich Lyons silks ; but the state 
 rooms are more sumptuous in their decora- 
 tions. The saloons and galleries have 
 ceilings painted in fresco, by the celebrated 
 Mignard. Vases of porcelain, from Sevres 
 in the neighbourhood, Florentine tables,
 
 152 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 and the usual assortment of palace finery, 
 complete the decorations of the rooms. 
 
 The situation of the chateau is, however, 
 its greatest attraction. It possesses a fine 
 view of Paris, which is indeed a splendid 
 item in the prospect of the princely occu- 
 pants ; and the sight of the capital may, 
 perhaps, be a pleasant relief to the natural 
 seclusion of the palace. But royalty is too 
 much hemmed in with satellites and slaves 
 to allow the silent reveries and rebukes of 
 solitude to interfere ; and the " men in great 
 place'' — the "thrice servants," — are too well 
 versed in court policy to trust a crowned head 
 entirely to think for itself. Modern times 
 have, nevertheless, furnished one brilliant 
 exception to this slavish rule ; but the result 
 has proved, that a single mind in a state, 
 like a single plank at sea, will not always 
 secure the adventurer from ruin or wreck. 
 Napoleon passed much of what the world 
 thought his " leisure " at St. Cloud : it was 
 to him a favourite scene of repose, when
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 153 
 
 compared with the noisy site of the Tuil- 
 leries ; and Versailles was too wantonly 
 splendid for a republican abode, notwith- 
 standing the emperor took some pains in 
 re-gilding a few of the rooms. It had been, 
 too, the scene of outrage and massacre, and 
 perchance the unwelcome whispers of con- 
 science might occasionally have stolen 
 through its gilded saloons and galleries to 
 disconcert the embryo schemes of further 
 enterprise. Again, St. Cloud was one of the 
 pinnacles of Napoleons sudden glory, in 
 1799 ; it was associated with success ; 
 and as 
 
 Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns, 
 
 so ambitious men avoid the scenes of their 
 defeat, though they at last fall with diz- 
 ziness from their elevated stations. Napo- 
 leon, when at St Cloud, is said to have been 
 jealous of intruders into his park, and ap- 
 proach to the palace was interrupted, — so 
 ominous were his ideas of his own safety. 
 One of the most remarkable objects in 
 
 the park is a kind of square tower, sur- 
 
 h3
 
 154 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 mounted with an exact copy, in terra cotta, 
 of the lantern of Diogenes at Athens, or- 
 namented with six Corinthian columns. It 
 is used as an observatory, and, like its ori- 
 ginal, is associated with the name of the 
 illustrious Grecian — it being also called the 
 lantern of Diogenes. Its view of the sub- 
 jacent plain overlooks the city of Paris by 
 a distance of twenty miles. 
 
 The fountains and jets d'eau are entitled 
 to special notice, although in extent and 
 variety they are far exceeded by those of 
 Versailles. The arrangement of the prin- 
 cipal cascade is well contrived, and I had 
 the good fortune to be present at the moment 
 the water commenced flowing, which con- 
 tinued but a short time : this struck me as a 
 singular piece of mimicry, and compared 
 with those truly-sublime spectacles — the 
 cascades of Nature, — the boasted works of 
 St. Cloud seemed mere playthings, like the 
 little falls which children contrive in run- 
 ning brooks ; or at best resembling hy- 
 draulic exhibitions on an extensive scale.
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 155 
 
 The playing commenced by a jet bursting 
 from a point almost secluded by trees, 
 which appeared on a level with the first 
 story of the palace ; the stream then fell 
 into stone basins, and by turns threw itself 
 aloft, or gushed from the mouths of num- 
 berless marine animals, and descended by 
 glassy falls into a basin, whence it found its 
 way into several vase-shaped forms, and 
 again descended by magnificent cascades, 
 discharging themselves into a large circular 
 tank or basin, with two strong jets throwing 
 their limpid streams many feet high. In the 
 sculptured forms there is some display of 
 classic design ; and the effect of many 
 mouths and forms gushing forth almost in- 
 stantaneously was altogether that of magic 
 art, not unaided by the lines of trees on two 
 sides being clipped or cut into semi-arched 
 forms. The most powerful of the fountains 
 is, however, a grand jet, characteristically 
 named the Giant, or giant, for the incre- 
 dible force with which it springs from its 
 basin, and rises 125 feet high, being more
 
 156 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 than the elevation of Napoleon's triumphal 
 column, in the Place Vendome, at Paris. 
 An uninterrupted view of these exhibitions 
 may be enjoyed from the river, which runs 
 parallel with the road adjoining the park. 
 Crouds flocked from all directions to wit- 
 ness the first gush of the fountains ; but their 
 attention soon became directed to a royal 
 party attended by footmen, from the pa- 
 lace, who came to witness the sights of the 
 fair, and appeared especially amused with 
 a family of vaulters and stilt-walkers. They 
 were received with a slight buz of curiosity, 
 but without that enthusiasm with which the 
 English are accustomed to recognize, and, 
 not unfrequently, to annoy royalty ; for 
 
 No man cried, God save them, 
 
 1 now began to make a more minute survey 
 of the preparations for amusement, for the 
 fete was not yet in its equinoctial splen- 
 dour. The most prominent of these were 
 plots of the raised bank on one side, and at 
 the termination of the principal walk, which
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 157 
 
 were enclosed with hurdles or frames, a 
 platform being elevated and decorated with 
 festooned curtains, &c. for an orchestra, 
 and the whole hung round with illumination 
 lamps. Towards evening, but long before 
 dark, these enclosures were blazing with va- 
 riegated splendour ; the bands commenced 
 playing several lively French airs, and the 
 area was occupied with groupes of waltzing 
 and quadrilling votaries. As the evening 
 darkened, lamps began to glisten in every di- 
 rection, and the well-lighted cafes resembled 
 so many Chinese lanterns ; and these, aided 
 by the discordant sounds of scores of instru- 
 ments, gave the whole scene an air of 
 enchantment, or rather a slight resemblance 
 to one of its exorcisms. The effect was, 
 however, improved by distance. Accord- 
 ingly, I stole through a solitary shrubbery 
 walk, which wound round the hill, and at 
 length led me to a forest- like spot, or strag- 
 gling wood, which flanked the whole of the 
 carnival. Viewed from hence, it was, in- 
 deed, a fantastical illustration of French
 
 158 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 gaiety, and it momentarily reminded me of 
 some of Shakspeare's scenes of sylvan ro- 
 mance, with all their fays and fairy popu- 
 lation. 
 
 The English reader who has not wit- 
 nessed one of the fetes of St. Cloud, may pro- 
 bably associate them with his own Vauxhall ; 
 but the resemblance is very slight. At one 
 of these entertainments in France, there is 
 much less attempted, but considerably more 
 effected, than in England ; and all this is 
 accomplished by that happy knack which 
 the French possess of making much of a 
 little. Of what did this fete consist — a few 
 hundred lamps — a few score of fiddlers, and 
 about as much decoration as an English 
 showman would waste on the exterior of his 
 exhibition, or assemble within a few square 
 yards. There were no long illuminated 
 vistas, or temples and saloons red hot with 
 oil and gas — but a few slender materials, 
 so scattered and intermixed with the natural 
 beauties of the park, as to fascinate, and 
 not fatigue the eye and ear. In the mo-
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 159 
 
 dern reform of our Vauxhall, only one relic 
 is spared to illustrate French taste in 
 the decoration of their fresco entertain- 
 ments. This is the long-remembered scenic 
 groupe of the hermit in the dark walk, 
 which is so placed among the trees and 
 shrubs as to deceive scores of young folks 
 with an idea of reality ; and the interest, 
 not to say fondness, with which this contri- 
 vance is sought, and still admired, before 
 the gaudier trappings of other parts of the 
 gardens, brings me to a further illustration of 
 the superior effect of intermingling art with 
 nature. Even the pell-mell frolics of St. 
 Cloud were better idealities of enjoyment, 
 than the splendid promenade of Vauxhall, 
 in the days of its olden celebrity ; for dia- 
 monds and feathers are often mere mas- 
 querade finery in such scenes — so distant 
 are the heads and hearts of their wearers. 
 
 Night, with her poetic glooms, only 
 served to heighten the lustre of the fairy fete ; 
 and as I receded through the wood, the little 
 shoal of light gleamed and twinkled through
 
 160 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 " branches overgrown," and the distant 
 sounds began to fall into solitary silence, — 
 even saddening to meditation— so fast do 
 the dying glories of festive mirth sink into 
 melancholy — till at once, with the last gleam 
 and echo, I found myself in a pleasant 
 little glade on the brow of the hill. The 
 day had been unusually hot — all was 
 hushed stillness. But the darkening clouds 
 were fast gathering into black masses : 
 
 The rapid lightning flames along the sky. 
 What terrible event does this portend ? 
 
 The stifling heat of the atmosphere was, 
 however, soon changed by slight gusts of 
 wind ; the leaves trembled ; and a lew 
 heavy drops of rain fell as harbingers of 
 the coming storm : the pattering ceased ; 
 an impressive pause succeeded — broken by 
 the deepening roar of thunder. But the 
 glorious aspect of the skies at this moment 
 is indescribable in poetry — much less in 
 the narrow confines of prose. They now 
 appeared assembled in one dense panoply,
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 161 
 
 except when they became burnished by the 
 gorgeous lightning — instantly followed up 
 by deafening thunder — " associating its 
 horrors with the anger of heaven." How 
 awfully sublime is that picture of offended 
 majesty — a storm ! what a lesson of infi- 
 nite wisdom to the proud emmet of the 
 creation — man ! But the world of imagi- 
 nation is exhausted on this subject ; and the 
 bolder flights of philosophy can alone aid us 
 in our approach to the knowledge of divine 
 perfection. Every age and country has 
 been impressed with its awe — on the na- 
 ked savage, who flies from his desert shores 
 for protection — and the royal sufferer of So- 
 phocles : 
 
 He stood, and o'er his face his hands he spread 
 Shading his eyes; as if with terror struck, 
 At something horrible to human sight. 
 
 In short, from the cottager who " woos ter- 
 ror to delight him," to the silken baron of 
 civilization, or the philosopher pent up in 
 his own ignorance and varnished unbelief. 
 The threatening storm hastened my re-
 
 162 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 turn to the focus of the carnival. The 
 partial sprinkling had already caused many 
 of the dancers to withdraw to the cafes, 
 and to the most sheltered parts of the park. 
 The lightning became more and more vivid, 
 and, at length, the thousands who had lin- 
 gered in these groupes of gaiety, were 
 fairly routed by pelting rain ; and the park, 
 with a few lamps flickering out, and de- 
 corative finery drenched with rain, presented 
 a miserable contrast with the festivities of 
 the previous hour. The crowd streamed 
 through the park-gate into the village, 
 where hundreds of competitors shouted 
 " Paris, Paris ; " and their swarms of dili- 
 gences, cabriolets, and curtained carts, 
 were soon freighted. One of these cha- 
 rioteers engaged to convey me to Paris for 
 half a franc, in a large covered cart, with 
 oil-skin curtains to protect the passengers in 
 front. To my surprise I found the vehicle 
 pre-occupied by twelve or fourteen well- 
 dressed persons — male and female, who 
 appeared to forget their inconvenient situa-
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 163 
 
 tion in sallies of laughter, which sometimes 
 bordered on boisterous mirth. The storm 
 increased ; lamps gleamed and flitted across 
 the road ; and many of the horses plunged 
 with their heavy loads, and swept along the 
 line in resistless confusion ; for nothing can 
 be less characteristic of timidity than French 
 driving. 
 
 On reaching Paris, the streets resembled 
 so many torrents, and in most places were 
 not fordable, notwithstanding scores of per- 
 sons, with the alacrity of mushrooms after 
 rain, had placed themselves at the narrowest 
 parts of the streams, with raised planks, 
 or temporary bridges for crossing. Our 
 load was landed under the arcade of the 
 Hotel de Ville ; but the driver, in the ge- 
 nuine spirit of a London hackney-coachman, 
 did not forget to turn the ' c ill wind " to his 
 own account, by importuning me for a dou- 
 ble fare. 
 
 I learned that the storm had been less 
 tremendous in its consequences at St. Cloud 
 and Paris than at Versailles, the lightning
 
 164* A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 having consumed a farm-house and barns 
 near that town. It is an event worthy of 
 notice, from its being part of the pheno- 
 menon of what is termed a returning stroke 
 of lightning,* the circumstances of which 
 are thus recorded in a popular philosophical 
 journal. 
 
 " On the 24th of September, 1826, at the moment 
 when the lightning struck the ground, at the farm of 
 Gali, near Versailles, M. B was violently af- 
 fected by a returning stroke, at the distance of half a 
 league from the place. The following are the cir- 
 cumstances of the case : — A violent storm occurred 
 
 * The returning stroke of lightning is well known to be 
 due to the restoration of the natural electric stale, after it 
 has been disturbed by induction. Thus, if a person be 
 brought in'.o a highly-electric and negative state by induc- 
 tion, from the approximation of a body highly charged 
 positively, and then the latter be discharged by means having 
 no connexion with the negatively electrified person, the 
 negative state of the latter will be immediately destroyed, 
 and an effect, in part analogous to that of a positive dis- 
 charge of electricity, will be produced. Some of the most 
 serious accidents which occur from lightning are supposed 
 to be produced in this way, not by the mere disturbance of 
 electricity in a person only, but of the electricity of those 
 bodies with which the person may be in contact; and to 
 which he accidentally serves as a conductor. — Annate^ !< 
 ( 'hhnie.
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 165 
 
 at Versailles and the neighbouring parts, at half-past 
 nine o'clock. M. B., aged 72 years, was passing the 
 Rue Dauphine, at a little distance from the Church 
 of Notre Dame, when one of those whirlwinds so 
 so common in the neighbourhood of large buildings, 
 obliged him to turn round. He was then close to the 
 party- wall of the houses 13 and 14, his right side 
 being at a small distance from it. A metal-pipe 
 was fixed up the front of the house in this place, 
 bringing the rain from the roof to the level of the 
 pavement. In this position M. B. felt a commotion, 
 which he describes as if the right side of his body was 
 roughly thrown towards the left, feeling, at the same 
 time, much oppression, and vertigo, resembling that 
 of drunkenness. The immediate effects were diffi- 
 culty of motion on the left side, and a disturbed res- 
 piration 3 and it was with much difficulty, and only 
 by resting frequently, that M. B. could reach the 
 house of a neighbouring friend. It was there ob- 
 served, that the tongue was embarrassed in its motions 
 as well as the left side, but by the aid of attention, 
 the agitation of the mind was calmed ; the night 
 passed moderately, and the next morning all was 
 nearly in its ordinary state. In the evening, how- 
 ever, at the hour when the circumstance occurred, 
 all the symptoms returned, and the same results 
 occurred daily until the end of the week, when a 
 physician was consulted. He immediately recog- 
 nised the symptoms of compression on the brain and 
 spinal-marrow, from which had resulted an incom- 
 plete paralysis of the tongue and the left arm and
 
 166 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 
 
 leg. This speedily gave way under the hands of the 
 physician, but the periodical returns occurred until 
 the cure was completed." 
 
 " It would be difficult to prove the identity of the 
 electric discharge which fired the farm of Gali, and 
 struck M. B. 5 but the latter cannot be attributed to 
 a direct stroke ; for, at the moment when it hap- 
 pened, the intervals between the lightning and the 
 thunder were such as to shew that the storm was not 
 over Versailles. By a coincidence of circumstances, 
 M. Demonferrand, who describes the case, was in the 
 house No. 15, the whole of the evening, in an apart- 
 ment contiguous to the metal-pipe, which appears to 
 have served as a conductor for the electricity, but 
 neither he nor any other person in the house felt the 
 slightest disturbance. In the opposite house was a 
 person in a bad state of health, and, therefore, per- 
 haps, more sensible to electric changes, but neither 
 did he experience any change in his feelings at the 
 moment." 
 
 We are not permitted to allude to the 
 Fete of St. Cloud as a scene of pastoral 
 amusement, or of the primitive simplicity 
 which is associated with that epithet. The 
 French arc not a pastoral people, although 
 they are not less so than the English ; nei- 
 ther are the suburbs of a metropolis rural 
 life. They are too near the pride of human
 
 A DAY AT ST. CLOUD. 167 
 
 art for pastoral pleasures, and no aristocracy 
 is more infested with little tyrants than the 
 neighbourhood of great cities, the oppressors 
 being too timid to trust themselves far out 
 of the verge of public haunts, in the midst 
 of which they would be equally suspicious. 
 Amusements are at all times among the 
 best indications of national character ; a 
 truth which the ancients seem to have exag- 
 gerated into their maxim in vino Veritas. 
 Here the national comparison is not 
 " odious.'' Three Sunday fairs are held 
 within six miles of Paris, in a park, as was 
 once the custom at Greenwich: the latter, 
 though a royal park, does not boast of the 
 residence of Royalty, as does St. Cloud. 
 The objection to the day of the French 
 fetes is cleared by another argument. But 
 what would be the character of a week- 
 day fair or fete in Kensington Gardens ? 
 The intuitive answer will make the moral 
 observer regret that man should so often 
 place the interdict on his own happiness, and 
 then peevishly repine at his uncheery lot.
 
 THE 
 
 pleasures of JBrtattd&oig, 
 
 Sun of the sleepless ! melancholy star ! 
 
 Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far, 
 
 Thou show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel, 
 
 How like art thou to joy remember'd well ! 
 
 So gleams the past, the light of other days, 
 
 Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays ; 
 
 Or night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold, 
 
 Distinct, but distant ; clear, but, oh, how cold ! 
 
 Lcrd Byron— Hebrew Melodies. 
 
 There is melody in the storm, and music 
 in the wind ! 
 
 In the early pages of this volume, I have 
 attempted to trace the workings of me- 
 lancholy through infancy and childhood ; 
 and to show that wherever implanted, it 
 usually takes root, and luxuriates. It is often 
 known to damp the ardour of youth ; chill 
 
 I
 
 170 PLEASURES OF 
 
 the enthusiasm of genius; sometimes to 
 throw a gloom over the closing years of a 
 well-spent life ; and in its common accep- 
 tation among us, it is thought to preclude 
 enjoyment, and to ensepulchre man within 
 himself. The overweening fondness of 
 weak philanthropists disclaims this passion 
 as the poison of life, and the spleen of men's 
 souls. This is, indeed, a kind, but fruitless, 
 attempt to reclaim a vagrant world, and to 
 coax its inmates. But the muse of Melan- 
 choly has thousands of followers, and those 
 not such as woo, and coquet with her, for an 
 idle hour; neither are they all voluntary 
 victims to her rule, the majority of them 
 being driven to seek comfort in each other's 
 woes, and to mingle their grief in her com- 
 mon sorrow, when the world has already 
 denied them its forced sympathies. To 
 her the children of sensibility flock in 
 crowds ; but they approach her oracle by 
 various paths — solitary and sad — in their 
 progress alike shunning the haunts of man, 
 and sequestering their souls from converse
 
 MELANCHOLY. 171 
 
 with his vanities. There is enough in Nature 
 to replenish their minds, and lead them, 
 step by step, to her store-houses of wisdom 
 — not such as is usually sought in the sub- 
 tlety of science, or the labyrinths of art ; 
 but that which enables them to find 
 
 Tongues in trees, books in running streams, 
 Sermons in stones, 
 
 and to " translate the subbornness of fortune 
 into so happy a state." 
 
 All have their moments of melancholy — 
 from those occasioned by the unwelcome 
 rebukes of conscience, to the sighs and 
 sympathies of the parting hour. But how 
 speedily are such impressions chased away 
 by the uproar of mirth, or in the transitory 
 joys of sense. Such men do not enter into 
 the pleasures of melancholy, but rather 
 avoid them as a contagion, which would 
 break up their mimic circle of happiness, 
 and strip life of its dearest magic. 
 
 Akin to the melancholy of childhood and 
 youth (already quoted) is that of sickness 
 and disease, the most dangerous, inasmuch 
 
 i 2
 
 172 PLEASURES OF 
 
 as it dries up the springs of recovery. This 
 is a state in which well-regulated minds 
 suffer least ; for it is only when the poig- 
 nancy of afflicted nature is attended with the 
 rackings of evil, that its effects are to be 
 feared. In such scenes, cheerfulness and 
 resignation are the consequences of a vir- 
 tuous life ; but melancholy and despair are 
 severe reproaches of human weakness, if 
 not of shame and guilt. Here, her influ- 
 ence resembles the sorrowings after life's 
 sweets, not such as lead to lasting enjoy- 
 ments, but those which hasten corruption 
 and decay. 
 
 To the children of frailty, with an epitome 
 of their existence constantly before them, in 
 the several stages of creation and dissolu- 
 tion, melancholy is sometimes the forerunner 
 and follower of death. This is a proof of 
 shortsightedness, or of unwillingness to ap- 
 preciate the wise end of their being. Ne- 
 vertheless, the links and bearings of families 
 and friends are so closely wrought, that the 
 first impression of death is melancholy —
 
 MELANCHOLY. 173 
 
 from the blank which it occasions, or the 
 close analogy it bears to the anticipated 
 fate of the survivor.* This, however, is but 
 cold philosophy against the fondness with 
 which men cling to their darling world. 
 It is too true that they trifle away their 
 most precious hours, and pleased with what 
 is called the poetry of life, they drive away 
 contemplation, from time to time, till the 
 only approach they make to so devout an 
 exercise of the heart, is in the vapourings 
 of disappointment, or the sickening of animal 
 
 « Let us hear what a popular contemporary author says on 
 this point : 
 
 " There are those to whom a sense of religion has come 
 in storm and tempest ; and there are those whom it has 
 summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity ; there are 
 those who have heard its ' still small voice' amid rural lei- 
 sure and placid contentment. But, perhaps, the knowledge 
 which cometh not to err, is most frequently impressed upon 
 the mind during seasons of affliction ; and tears are the sof- 
 tening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring and 
 take root in the human heart." — Sir Waller Scolt. 
 
 When we consider that the writer of this sublime snatch 
 of sentiment has furnished us with many accurate analyses 
 of human nature, and that the above extract is from the last- 
 finished of his productions, it must carry his sincerity home 
 to the most superficial and sceptical of his readers.
 
 174 PLEASURES OP 
 
 spirits — whence their melancholy. But it is 
 only when the mind is, as it were, worn out 
 and exhausted, and the imaginative appetite 
 of intellect is " corrupt to the core," that 
 man pines under the melancholy of death. 
 He then associates with a world of beings 
 that exist but in the heated brain, and 
 vanish at the first approach of reason. He 
 persecutes himself with horrors of his own 
 invention, till his ingratitude blackens into 
 impiety. He is the constant slave of fear, 
 though the stubbornness of his pride will not 
 allow him to confess the dread of vengeance. 
 Or, if these be not the workings of death- 
 melancholy, the soul is hidden in the dark- 
 ness of despair, and the day-spring of hope 
 is banished never to re-dawn. But there 
 have been instances of reclamation even 
 from such extremities of error, in the last 
 hours of fallen men ; and if the sensitive 
 mind can enter into the ecstasies of such 
 moments, how pure must be the equanimity 
 of days and nights thus passed ; though 
 each of our lives be but as a speck in eter-
 
 MELANCHOLY. 175 
 
 nity, or as an air-bubble upon infinite space. 
 We should not, however, trust ourselves to 
 the perils of these hours ; neither is their 
 ordeal an absolute condition of our happi- 
 ness, it being a boon of mercy. By such 
 reflections as these, we are reminded that 
 death, if an enemy, is our last ; and if this 
 belief were allowed to regulate life, the re- 
 sult would be very different from that of 
 melancholy. The lives and writings of 
 such men as have approached nearest per- 
 fection, will convince us that happiness is 
 not unattainable, while a death-bed repent- 
 ance but too closely resembles the former 
 lives of those who cling to it as a last hope 
 — as a plank on which they may walk from 
 earth to heaven : yet men endure years of 
 sacrifice and sorrow upon so slender a 
 prospect. We are accustomed to lament 
 the breaking-up of families, and the loss of 
 friends in imcheery impressions ; but there 
 should be enough consolation amidst such 
 sorrows to strengthen us against the ap- 
 proach of our own fate ; and then the
 
 176 PLEASURES OF 
 
 fleeting melancholy that death creates, will 
 clear off, and leave our hopes still brighter 
 than it found them. 
 
 Among the most captivating charms of 
 philosophic melancholy, are those to be 
 found in the love of Nature; and such 
 minds as enter into her joys, are, perhaps, 
 best fitted for the pleasures of melancholy. 
 In what may be termed the melancholy of 
 art, all is profitless to the soul ; but the me- 
 lancholy of nature is so enlivened by change, 
 that the most insensible of men find amuse- 
 ment in some of its reflections : for exam- 
 ple, who is indifferent to the approach or 
 progress of a summer storm ! 
 
 In the musings of my early days, how 
 often, and how fondly, have I lingered in 
 the melancholy of nature ; with what rap- 
 ture have I listened to the music of her 
 sounds — from the infant notes of spring to 
 the forlorn melody of winter. Can the 
 invention of man devise such harmony as 
 the symphonies of rural sounds to be en- 
 joyed in the country ? How often have I
 
 MELANCHOLY. 177 
 
 betaken myself to those leafy orchestras of 
 song — the wood, the glade, and grove; and 
 there have I revelled in the plaintiveness 
 and pensiveness of forlorn love : 
 
 There I can sit alone, unseen of any, 
 
 And to the nightingale's complaining notes 
 
 Time my distresses, and record my woes. 
 
 In my garden, too, I have watched the 
 fading of its frailest flowers : I have seen 
 the lily droop its tender head, and shut up 
 its chastity in the leafy shroud — the spread 
 rose dishevelled in the wind — and the sickly 
 exotic drooping at nightfall. Then, too, the 
 busy rustle of wind through the shrubbery- 
 walk, or among the golden pride of an au- 
 tumnal landscape — the little whirl of that 
 sublime and simple lesson, the sear and 
 falling leaf: its progress from and to earth 
 — its changes, flutterings, and decay, are 
 not lost to the contemplatist. 
 
 Who can harmonize such fascination as 
 the whistle of winds and the music of 
 storms ! With what anxiety and interest 
 do we listen to the gathering of a tempest 
 
 i3
 
 178 PLEASURES OF 
 
 and all its discords ; and then trace its ra- 
 vages through tender nature. In the gran- 
 deur and simplicity of sublimer scenes our 
 delight will be proportionally enhanced ; 
 in the majesty of mountains ; the density of 
 aged forests ; the roar of water ; or the 
 stillness of desert life. Amidst these stu- 
 pendous beauties, man dwindles to the 
 emmet, and the proudest of human triumphs 
 resemble its minute labours. 
 
 The melancholy of night, from its con- 
 stant recurrence, is, perhaps, less regarded 
 than it merits. It is full of theme for re- 
 flection ; witness the inspired breathings of 
 Milton, responded in the soul-stirring strains 
 of Handel and Haydn. But when we turn 
 to earth at such a season, we there find the 
 poison of melancholy, in the thousand asso- 
 ciations of evil with night — whence " deeds 
 of darkness." We may there see vice, fled 
 from the glorious light of day, as unsuited 
 for her workings, lest reason should prompt 
 detection, and discover her snares. All the 
 lures of passion and the wiles of deceit are
 
 MELANCHOLY. 179 
 
 then spread abroad to seduce the few fol- 
 lowers of virtue, or the uncorrupt flower of 
 youth, into the stinging wantonness of sen- 
 suality, and the wildness of her despair. 
 How different is the night of Nature from 
 that of man, and the repose of her scenes 
 from the misrule of his sensual haunts ; 
 what a contrast between the refreshing re- 
 turn of her morning, and the feverish 
 agonies of his day-dreams. 
 
 The melancholy of mirth is also among 
 my fondnesses, to enjoy which how often 
 have I listened to her raptures, and mixed 
 in her gayest fascinatians. In her halls, 
 too, have I watched the blandishments of 
 beauty ; and leaped with ecstasy in the kin- 
 dred spirit of her dance. But in a few short 
 hours, the string of music and the sweet 
 soul of song have died in silence; the 
 lively feet have fled ; and the roses of plea- 
 sure have ceased to bloom. At the table, 
 where wit flashes but in the still shorter 
 interval of sense and sorrow, leaving nought 
 but empty roars, and man's finest aftec-
 
 180 PLEASURES OF 
 
 tions to the maudlin song,— excess over- 
 topples its victims, one by one, and black 
 melancholy, in turn, takes the vacant seat, 
 till she has scared the last. Among the 
 children of chance, who, in reality, treat 
 the whole world as a ball, melancholy takes 
 the uppermost seat — in the blank stare and 
 stifled sigh, till she, tc with a little pin, bores 
 through his castle wall, and — farewell !" In 
 an unpeopled theatre, and on the vacant 
 stage, whence precept, without puritanism, 
 steals into the hearts of men, I have lingered 
 and wantoned in the woes of melancholy, 
 while watching the nicety with which I have 
 seen the finery of its walls covered up from 
 vulgar light. 
 
 Next, the melancholy of art, in the decay 
 of her triumphs, and the mouldering of her 
 mightiest monuments. How often have I 
 gazed on these, till the pride of their 
 founders has even filled me with compassion 
 for their fall. Then, indeed, have I sor- 
 rowed for their greatness, and wept aloud 
 for the little span of their vanity. In a
 
 MELANCHOLY. 181 
 
 deserted palace, and amidst the splendour 
 of its solitary halls, I have traced the me- 
 lancholy of envy and ambition, whilst re- 
 flecting on the dear purchase of their proud- 
 est victories. In the consecrated shrines 
 of art I have seen the overweening devotions 
 to honour, wealth, fame, and titled pride, 
 crumble and fall into dust, and strew the 
 floors with their piecemeal decay. Here have 
 I seen tablets and trophies obscured with dank, 
 and leaves, till the shield of rank has been 
 mocked and blotted out with the weeds of 
 Nature. There, too, have I seen grass 
 shoot up and luxuriate between the inter- 
 stices of tombs, and fatten on the frail re- 
 mains of princes, patriots, and philosophers. 
 In short, I have strayed amidst such scenes 
 of affecting reproof, till shame has banished 
 me from their sepulchral gloom. 
 
 Of the common melancholy of bells and 
 the superstitious associations to which they 
 give rise in vulgar minds, I would speak 
 with forbearance, whether as the harbingers 
 of halcyon days, in the doleful knell, or in
 
 182 PLEASURES OF 
 
 the hallowed and hallowing rites of burial. 
 Such influence is coeval with their inven- 
 tion. They commemorate our little joys, 
 mingle with our deepest lament, and are the 
 faithful monitors of our frail existence. 
 
 Bells, says Coleridge, are " the poor 
 man's only music ; * '' and in the ages of 
 merry England, the festivals of her calen- 
 dar were welcomed with joyous peals in 
 every village. On the birth of the squire's 
 heir, at his christening, his manhood, and 
 marriage, bells were rung with " the loud 
 festivity of mirth." But these customs are 
 discontinued ; and the celebration of such 
 happy events has given way to tidings of vic- 
 tory or partial defeat, through a long series 
 of desolation, and dearly-bought triumph. 
 How painful is this contrast, between peace- 
 
 * There are but few of us who care to recollect our antes- 
 tors as bell-hangers: but sir Symonds d'Ewes, who was Lord 
 of the Manor of Lavenham, in Suffolk, and one of the most 
 learned antiquaries of his time, was a bell-ringer ; as was sir 
 Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. 
 William Cecil, High Treasurer of England, was also a bell-
 
 MELANCHOLY. 183 
 
 ful simplicity and semblance of joy. How 
 many scenes of melancholy are called up 
 by one of these ill-timed accompaniments 
 of the orgies of war. They resemble 
 the music of a sacrifice, contrived to drown 
 the cries of its victims, and to make the 
 multitude forget the widowhood and orphan 
 woe which overshadow this false picture 
 of glory, and dim the lustre of its boasted 
 success. Neither is the gay peal of the 
 bridal morning to be forgotten. It seems 
 as a ratification of the altar oath to cherish 
 the partner of our weal and woe — the con- 
 summation of earthly enjoyment ; and the 
 very sounds act as gladdening wine to the 
 heart, by harmonizing with its ecstasies. 
 Flowers were once strewn on such occasions, 
 to propitiate the lives of the parties, in assimi- 
 lating them with the gay face of Nature ; 
 but this rite has been progressively abolished, 
 except in a few favoured districts, where 
 the simplicity of rural life remains un- 
 broken. Solemnity or impressive effect 
 is likewise one of the charms of bells. In
 
 184* PLEASURES OF 
 
 the country it strikes on the ear undisturbed, 
 and associates with the plaintive minstrelsy 
 of birds, a day of overcast, or the dying 
 splendour of sunset ; in the still-life of vil- 
 lages and small towns, it is not unheard, 
 and as a memento of death it is not always 
 unheeded. To the contemplatist, in his 
 noon-tide and evening walk, it is not unwel- 
 come ; and if, perchance, he may have be- 
 come giddy with looking on " the wheels of 
 vicissitude," it will guide him back to the 
 spring of his reflections. The same sounds that 
 welcome us into life, and celebrate our joys, 
 may thus probably knell out at our depar- 
 ture : this is but a fragment of coincidence ; 
 for the element that gave us birth is con- 
 stantly yawning for our return. Whilst in- 
 dulging such reflections, how have I 
 luxuriated in the mournful melody of bells, 
 and the deepening melancholy of their 
 sounds. 
 
 In cities, bells may be said to lose their 
 effect ; for art is too clamourous to allow 
 their interference. Nevertheless, almost
 
 MELANCHOLY. 185 
 
 every city of Europe has its great bell. 
 The occasion on which that of St. PauPs 
 Cathedral is tolled, is of more than 
 ordinary import ; for it announces the 
 death of royalty, an event that seldom 
 fails to reach the most indifferent heart, 
 since it has a douhle claim on its sensibi- 
 lities. In some London parishes, there is 
 a practice of tolling bells at fixed hours, the 
 observance of which has been secured by 
 legacies of persons, who, doubtless, intend- 
 ed the custom as an aid to daily devotion. 
 Nothing can be more dismal than the mono- 
 tony of the rolling toll of Notre Dame, at 
 Paris; but it well accords with the ve- 
 nerable exterior of the cathedral. In the 
 Kremlin, at Moscow, is a bell weighing 
 443,772 lbs. English, and valued at nearly 
 £70,000, which, on festivals, the peasants 
 visit as they would resort to a sanctuary, 
 crossing themselves as they descend and 
 ^ascend the steps of the belfry. The tolling 
 or ringing of " great bells " on special oc- 
 casions, is still observed ; and it is a grate-
 
 186 PLEASURES OP 
 
 ful relic of the importance which was once 
 attached to the influence of bells. This 
 frequently occurs in the imagery of pensive 
 poetry. Spenser has many illustrations ; 
 Shakspeare, in his " iron tongue of mid- 
 night ;" and Gray, in his elegiac allusions, 
 are well known. Marvell calls music, " the 
 mosaic of the air/' a term peculiarly appli- 
 cable to bells ; and to them we may ascribe 
 nearly all the effects attributed by sir Wil- 
 liam Temple to the power of music — " to 
 raise joy and grief; to give pleasure and 
 pain ; to give motions to the feet as well as 
 to the heart ; to compose disturbed thoughts ; 
 to assist and heighten devotion itself." 
 
 Akin to bells may be mentioned the me- 
 lancholy interest of sun-dials, those silent 
 monitors of heaven, which are still re- 
 tained on the walls or lawns of mansion- 
 houses, sculptured with quaint mottoes and 
 hieroglyphics, or occupying the surface of a 
 solitary pedestal : on the gable-ends, or on 
 the towers of old churches, they are not 
 uncommon ; but they are seldom cherished
 
 MELANCHOLY. 187 
 
 with repairs.* These humble mementos of 
 " time and tide," seldom fail to excite the 
 curiosity of children, and with not less ac- 
 
 * In some of the London Inns of Court, whose mo- 
 nastic character has already been mentioned, a few 
 of these indicators remain. Thus, in one of the courts 
 of the Temple, there is a sun-dial which has been 
 repaired so recently as 1812. In New Inn there is 
 one with the motto, " Time and tide tarry for 
 no man j" and in Clement's Inn, is one supported 
 by a cast of a kneeling negro ; to this groupe some 
 lines were addressed a few years since. In Lyon's 
 Inn there is an old sun-dial in a ruinous state, having 
 lost its gnomon, and the figures being effaced : It 
 bears the letters g. t ' c In the garden of Gray's Inn, 
 opposite Verulam Buildings, venerated as the resi- 
 dence of the great lord Bacon, is a sun-dial which 
 was once the monitor of that illustrious philosopher ; 
 and, probably, from its contemplation he drew some 
 of his invaluable treasures on " time." 
 
 [" Horas non numero nisi serenas" — is the motto of 
 a sun-dial near Venice. Bloomfield calls the sun- 
 dial a companion of the lonely hour : 
 
 ' Once more, companion of the lonely hour, 
 I'll turn thee up again.' 
 
 The widow to her Hour-glass. 
 
 'Hie effect of Chimes is thus alluded to by Words- 
 worth :
 
 188 PLEASURES OF 
 
 curacy than Archimedes in his diagrams 
 on the sand, have I seen boys write a dial 
 
 ' Sing those witty rhymes 
 
 About the crazy old church-clock 
 
 And the bewildered chimes.' 
 
 " If I were a moralist, 1 might disapprove the ringing 
 in the new, and ringing out the old year. 
 
 ' Why dance ye, mortals, o'er the grave of Time ?' 
 Rousseau has admirably described the effect of bells 
 on the imagination, in a passage in the Confessions, 
 beginning ' Le son des cloches ma toujour* singulicri- 
 ment affecte? fyc.~] 
 
 For these last illustrations I am indebted to 
 a paper in a recent magazine, entitled, " On a 
 Sun-dial," and written by Mr. Hazlitt. It is, per- 
 haps, one of the most graceful and elegant of his 
 late compositions. My reader should see it, lest he 
 suspect me of borrowing more than I have acknow- 
 ledged, although I shall suffer severely by the com- 
 parison. I must, however, vindicate myself in one 
 coincidence— the allusion to bells in Catholic coun- 
 tries. My note was made in France, in 1826 ; and 
 Mr. Hazlitt's was published towards the close of 
 1827. This brings me to the chimes at Calais, whose 
 long-lingering music every traveller must recollect. 
 I suspect they resemble the chimes in Holland, which 
 Mr. Hazlitt describes. I well remember their mo- 
 notony as I sauntered about the grand place or 
 square of Calais. My stay there was one of protracted 
 suspense, what Swift calls " the life of a spider'' —
 
 MELANCHOLY. 189 
 
 in dust, and stake their wooden pen for 
 its gnomon. Could the urchin philosophers 
 
 waiting for a friend from England, to accompany me 
 in my first visit to Paris. How many hours I whiled 
 away on the wooden pier, between a book and watch- 
 ing the first smoke of the bateau de vapeur. Every 
 night, too, I crossed the place to my hotel. For- 
 tunately it was in summer, and I often halted to 
 hear the chimes " out." There were, too, the 
 revolving lights gleaming on the whitened tower 
 of the Court-house. I passed most of my indoor 
 time at a large rambling house, near the Royal Hotel. 
 We landed at midnight, and the silence of the town 
 beneath a cloudless moon-lit sky, was delightfully 
 placid. The entrance to our domicile was through 
 a door cut in a large wooden gate, with a long bell- 
 handle dangling at its lintern. Our apartment was 
 a spacious dining-room, fronting the street, with two 
 windows, and a window at the back nearly blinded 
 by a grape-vine. The furniture was old and ricketty, 
 consisting of a few common chairs, and a sofa stuffed in 
 yellow silk ; the last was the only luxury of the room. 
 The kitchen was inhospitable, dark, and dreary ; 
 but it was summer-time : the servant's name was 
 Therese : the proprietor was an academician, as I 
 afterwards learned by a brass plate on his door. He 
 had three or four pupils, and had become naturalized 
 since the peace of 1814. His room was a kind of 
 studio — half French and half English — with a guitar, 
 an old piano-forte, and a spinning-wheel, a favourite
 
 190 PLEA9URES OF 
 
 select a more appropriate method and ma- 
 terial to work out their little problems of 
 futurity? Shadows in the sun-beam are 
 also among the earliest appeals to the per- 
 ceptions of children ; they pause with 
 wonder on this phenomenon ; and in after- 
 life they are reminded by the poet, that we 
 
 Come like shadows, so depart. 
 
 Sun-dials and hour-glasses have, however, 
 long given place to prouder inventions: 
 and the latter have almost become mytho- 
 logical emblems of time, or, at best, com- 
 
 parrot, and a raven. He had written an antiquarian 
 history of Calais, which he was about to print, and 
 had just commenced oil-painting on panel, though 
 without any knowledge of the rules of art. I long to 
 know how he succeeded, for I have seldom seen a 
 more indefatigable genius. In the town he was much 
 respected as a mediator between the French and 
 English in their tattling disputes. There was much 
 of the good Samaritan about him, and like other good 
 men, he sometimes indulged his benevolence to- 
 wards his countrymen at his own cost. Altogether, 
 his petite sentimental servant, (her name, as Leigh 
 Hunt would say, a piece of romance), his wife a bus 
 bleu, and his own studious ;md secluded habits, 
 seemed to accord with the conventual character of 
 the house.
 
 MELANCHOLY. 191 
 
 panions of the moody muse. Perhaps they 
 measure the sand of life with melancholy 
 truth ; and the periodical turnings of the 
 hour-glass come too fast upon the refined 
 student of humanity. The vulgar almost re- 
 gard them with superstitious dread, and the 
 killers of time consider them as useless 
 mummery, fit only for religious cells and 
 caverns. With them, their simplicity be- 
 comes too plain to be pleasing. 
 
 Clocks are, also, aids to melancholy ; for 
 their solemn truth breaks through the trace- 
 work and finery of art. House-clocks, 
 though they be cased up with japan and 
 gilt-work, are often unwelcome intruders to 
 such as are " late to take rest." Sitting up 
 with a favourite author, as Montaigne, 
 Burton, or Sterne, writing an overdue let- 
 ter to a ckere amie, or indulging a long 
 fit of dreamy reverie, (and this, when 
 all the household are in bed,) you seem to 
 have the world to yourself, and the hours 
 glide on with thought, so quickly, but de- 
 lightfully, that you would feign stay time.
 
 192 PLEASURES OF 
 
 You hear the heavy sluggish bell of the 
 hall rumble out one — two — three ; and al- 
 most simultaneously the tinkle of an oracle 
 perked on an antique bracket on the land- 
 ing ; and the crystal sound on your own 
 chimney-piece vibrating through glass, ala- 
 baster, marble, and or-moulu. Then the 
 heavy toll of the church-clock, and the bawl- 
 ing echo of the watchman without doors — 
 and all relapses into silence. You fancy 
 you hear a noise in the passage — you open 
 the door — and in comes a puff of nipping 
 frosty air. You re-seat yourself — but the 
 charm is broken. Your lamp begins to 
 grow dim ; you hear the oil gurgle like the 
 last breath of life ; you turn towards the fire- 
 place with the poker crosswise, as you 
 placed it three hours since — all is extinct. 
 The room is as yet warm, and you resolve 
 to sit a little longer. Then come a few 
 melancholy dreams of youth : you remem- 
 ber how you were frightened when at 
 school, from all the stories of giants, ogres, 
 and fairies, to old Aubrey, Ferriar, Dr.
 
 MELANCHOLY. 
 
 193 
 
 Hibbert, and sir Walter Scott. This brings 
 you to the superstitions of master-minds — 
 from Saul to lord Byron. Then you stray 
 into the mazes of presentiments of death, 
 and perchance there is a couch or chair in 
 the room, on which your dear mother sank 
 on the fitful attack of her last illness. You 
 retrace the events of that fatal night ; you 
 remember its dread alarm — and the mo- 
 ment when the icy hand of death marked 
 her for its own. Alas! how drear and 
 rayless is that retrospect ; and long,— 
 long, — long, — will it be ere its recollection 
 shall fade away ! Had the grief been iso- 
 lated on the brain, it might have disappeared 
 in the sun-light of youth and hope ; but 
 
 When sorrows come, they come not single spies, 
 But in battalions! 
 
 In these moments, you cling to consolation 
 like the dying mariner to the fragment of a 
 wreck. The solemn tick of your watch, with 
 its dial peeping from a fancy case, reminds 
 you of the time when you could not sleep 
 with a watch in your room, from its super- 
 
 K
 
 194 PLEASURES OF 
 
 stitious association with the beatings of a 
 harmless insect, vulgarly termed the death- 
 watch : perchance you recollect some beau- 
 tiful lines, as those addressed by lord Her- 
 bert, of Cherbury, to his watch : 
 
 Incessant minutes, whilst you move you tell 
 
 The time that tells our life, which though it run 
 Never so fast or far, your new begun 
 
 Short steps shall overtake ; for though life well 
 
 May 'scape his own account, it shall not yours. 
 You are death's auditors, that both decide 
 
 And scan whate'er that life inspir'd endures, 
 Past a beginning; and through you we bide 
 
 The doom of fate, whose unrecall'd decree, 
 You date, bring, execute ; making what's new, 
 111 ; and good, old ; for as we die in you 
 
 You die in time, time in eternity : — 
 
 this is, indeed, a happy haven for the me- 
 choly mind. 
 
 Churches and Church-yards, with their 
 hallowed silence, are sites of melancholy. 
 Beneath your feet men lie sleeping in their 
 graves ; and as you raise your eyes from 
 their memorials, either the clear bell, or 
 the tarnished and time-worn face of the dial 
 on the tower, denotes to you the universal 
 standard by which their lives were mea-
 
 MELANCHOLY. 195 
 
 sured. There you may calculate that 
 700,000 whirls of its minute-hand, will 
 afford you the longest of their lives ; and 
 upwards of 168 of these whirls are effected 
 within a week : 
 
 Thereby to see the minutes how they run. 
 How many make the hour full complete, 
 How many hours bring about the day. 
 How many days will finish up the year. 
 How many years a mortal man may live. 
 
 The week-day visit to the interior of a 
 church, is forcibly interesting. The opening 
 of the ponderous door, the footsteps, and 
 your very voice are re-echoed. As you walk 
 up the nave, you think of Milton's 
 
 Studious cloysters pale, 
 The high embowed roof. 
 With antique pillars massy proof. 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim religious light. 
 
 You ascend into the tower, and there in- 
 spect the huge machinery of the parish 
 clock ; and from thence to the bell-loft, 
 where a single stroke would vibrate 
 throughout your frame. At length, by a 
 
 k2
 
 196 
 
 PLEASURES OF 
 
 cautious ascent through the dust of ages, 
 you reach the platform of the tower, and 
 your toil is repaid with such a view as Hol- 
 lar drew from the tower of St. Mary 
 Overie, in Southwark. When I last vi- 
 sited that venerable pile, I thought I saw 
 the dust of its monkish founders quietly 
 reposing in the vast lofts of the tower. At 
 St. Alban's I clambered through buttresses 
 lit by loop-holes ; but I was more than 
 recompensed by the picturesque view from 
 its summit. 
 
 In Catholic countries, the churches are 
 almost always open ; but nothing can be 
 more dismal than the monotony of the Bell, 
 from the tinkling of the village, to the deep 
 and heavy sound of the cathedral toll. 
 This melancholy is not a little increased by 
 the gloomy architecture of the smaller 
 churches, the damp and cavernous dullness 
 which strikes you on entering them, and 
 the disgusting objects which desecrate their 
 precincts ; and their exterior and interior 
 present affecting pictures of devotcdness
 
 MELANCHOLY. 197 
 
 and pollution, not unfrequently mixed with 
 the ludicrous. At St. Denis, I remember 
 seeing soldiers, with the full band playing 
 at their head, march into the cathedral, 
 making the sacred edifice ring with military 
 music. Every one has heard of the cathe- 
 dral of Abbeville, one of the most magni- 
 ficent in France. It is, indeed, a monument 
 of gothic beauty ; and the interior has all 
 the freshness of recent finish. My visit was 
 in the falling glooms of evening, just at the 
 termination of vespers. Its altars, relics, 
 and paintings, are celebrated all over the 
 world. There were not more than six or 
 seven persons at prayers : one of whom was 
 a boy, about eleven or twelve years old, 
 kneeling in a chair, with his eyes and hands 
 raised to heaven, in ail the fervour and sim- 
 plicity of devotion. He would have been 
 a good study for a painter. The cathedral 
 and church of Beauvais are likewise noble 
 structures. In the latter is a stupendous 
 organ, whose thunder a young priest was 
 pealing through the majestic aisles and
 
 198 
 
 PLEASURES OF 
 
 avenues. Nothing can be more inspiring 
 than the music of Catholic festivals. I 
 was present at one at Notre Dame, when 
 the archbishop of Paris officiated. The 
 deep bass of the serpent was full of melan- 
 choly, even when mingled with the lively 
 strains of the orchestral accompaniments. 
 
 One of the most beautiful pictures of 
 royal melancholy, is that of the sufferings 
 of King Richard n. as drawn by Shaks- 
 peare. Who does not remember the scene 
 with Aumerle and others, in Act in. ; the 
 King's querulous answer, " of graves and 
 worms, and epitaphs ;" the crown scene 
 with Bolingbroke ; and Richard's soliloquy 
 in the dungeon of Pomfret castle : 
 
 For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock : 
 My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar 
 Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch 
 Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, 
 Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. 
 Now, sir, the sound, that tells what hour it is, 
 Are clamourous groans, that strike upon my heart, 
 Which is the bell : So sighs, and tears, and groans, 
 Show minutes, times, and hours. 
 
 Hamlet and Jaqucs teem with philosophic
 
 MELANCHOLY. 199 
 
 melancholy ; but the satire of the " noble 
 Timon," will sear and cauterize ungrate- 
 ful man. The pictures of Care, Debate, &c. 
 and the beautiful Daphnaida of Spenser, 
 are well known ; Milton's II Penseroso I 
 have already quoted, as well as the quaint 
 old Burton. How many beautiful effusions 
 have been written after reading the Book of 
 Job. Such narratives as the prison scene 
 of lady Jane Grey and sir Walter Raleigh, 
 on the night before their execution, are well 
 suited for meditative melancholy. 
 
 Among the literature of our times, no 
 passages are more powerfully impressed on 
 the minds of readers, or more universally 
 admired, than such as delineate the plain- 
 tive and pensive woes of deep and settled 
 melancholy. In the earlier writings of 
 lord Byron these may be met with ; and 
 in this vein, Moore is peculiarly successful : 
 
 As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow, 
 While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below ; 
 So the cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile. 
 Tho' the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while. 
 
 In the poems of Campbell, Rogers, and
 
 200 PLEASURES OF 
 
 Montgomery, are many elegant and pow- 
 erful examples of this passion : the stanzas 
 of Watts, Hemans, and Landon, are full of 
 pathos ; and those of Neele become still 
 more attractive, by the afflicting circum- 
 stance of his recent death, attributed to a fit 
 of lurid melancholy. 
 
 In particularizing even a few of the most 
 familiar sites consecrated to melancholy, can 
 we forget two in Warwickshire — Gaveston's 
 and Kenilworth ; Cumnor in Oxfordshire, 
 and Woodstock in Berkshire.* In olden 
 time, it was the taste of fashion to dedicate 
 groves, boscages, and alcoves, to melan- 
 choly, silence, and other imaginary spirits. 
 One of these may not be unacceptable : 
 
 MELAXCHOLIE. 
 
 Inscribed in Old English characters on a root-seat, at 
 Nursery Westfeltox. 
 
 O come not to these peacefulle bowres 
 Chagrin'd at humane follie : 
 
 * Gaveston's, or Blacklow Hill, the place where the ill- 
 starred favourite of Edward 11., Piers Gaveston, was mur-
 
 MELANCHOLY. 201 
 
 Nor censure here my harmlesse houres 
 Of blisefulle melancholie. 
 
 For if ye spurne the ioyes serene 
 
 From solitude accruing, 
 Mixe with the busie world againe, 
 
 Or wealthe or fame pursuinge. 
 
 But quarrelle not with humane-kinde, 
 
 For little faultes offendinge ; 
 Better to beare with what ye finde, 
 
 Than marre it in the mendinge. 
 
 6 X 
 
 Soe shall ye walke eche crowded courte 
 
 And smile at humane follie ; 
 Or pleas'd, like mee to boures resorte, 
 
 And feaste on melancholie. 
 
 Shenstone, the " wailing poet of Leasowes," 
 must not be forgotten ; although the arti- 
 ficial paradise which he formed, lives but 
 in his plaintive verse. 
 
 Some of my readers may remember the 
 little terrestrial paradise at the foot of Box- 
 hill ; Mr. Tyers's anti-Vauxhall, with its 
 concealed clock, and II Penseroso wood, 
 
 tiered. For an illustration of Cumnor, see Mickle's Ballad — 
 and for Woodstock, Stanzas written with charcoal on a 
 shutter by Elizabeth, while prisoner at Woodstock : the 
 two last in Percv's Relics. 
 
 k3
 
 202 PLEASURES OF 
 
 at Denbies, near Dorking ; the rustic tem- 
 ples at the Rookery and Wotton Place ; 
 the hermitages and mossy cells of the Deep- 
 dene, with Mr. Howard's oratory and la- 
 boratory ; and this fairy-land, as it is now 
 disposed by the classic taste of the author 
 of " Anastasius." * 
 
 Retrospection, or the charm of looking 
 back to our first years, belongs to the in- 
 spirations of melancholy ; and the periodical 
 recurrence of certain seasons is amongst 
 the strongest incentives to this passion. 
 Then come the golden dreams of childhood 
 and youth that have slid by unnoticed, as if 
 reserved for the reflection of graver years. 
 All its events pass before us like the scenes 
 of a phantasmagoria, till we say with the 
 learned Arab, i( I went to the place of my 
 birth, and I said — the friends of my child- 
 hood where are they ? and an echo answer- 
 
 * See the Promenade round Dorking, Second edition. — 
 The solitary beauty of the vales of this district is scarcely 
 exceeded by the picturesque splendour of the prospect from 
 its hills.
 
 MELANCHOLY. 203 
 
 ed, where are they ?" I remember, when a 
 boy, walking to see the house in which I 
 was born — a few days before it was pulled 
 down : it was to me an event not easily to 
 be forgotten ; and there are few persons 
 who do not treasure up similar affection for 
 the place of their birth. 
 
 Visiting the last homes of genius is, 
 perhaps, one of the most impressive pur- 
 suits of retrospection. How many sites are 
 there in England thus consecrated by great 
 names. At St. Alban's they show you the 
 bones of the good duke Humphrey. Wash- 
 ington Irving tells us that he saw the dust 
 of Shakspeare, in the vault of the church at 
 Stratford-on-Avon ; and the enthusiasm 
 with which he visited this shrine was not 
 exceeded by the discovery of Cheops' dust 
 in the pyramid, or the royal pilgrimage to 
 Becket's tomb; Wolsey's bones were found 
 about thirty years since, at Leicester, in a 
 stone coffin, subsequently used as a horse- 
 trough, at a neighbouring inn — what an 
 antidote to the witchery of pride and power.
 
 204" PLEASURES OF 
 
 In Hamlet, " that piece," says Shaftesbury, 
 " which appears to have most affected En- 
 glish hearts," how sublime is the church- 
 yard reflection on the skull of Yorick, 
 which grosser spirits have imitated in their 
 bacchanal moments. 
 
 To stand on the shore of the sea, and 
 watch its ebb and flow, is one of the most 
 enchanting amusements of solitude. The 
 very sight of the ocean, but more especially 
 the first sight, is calculated to impress the 
 mind with awe. How much is conveyed 
 in the single reflection, that each of our 
 lives may be compared with eternity as a 
 drop of water to the illimitable expanse 
 of the sea. The most delightful marine 
 scenery in England is that of the Under- 
 cliff, in the Isle of Wight ; and one of the 
 happiest recollections of my life is my first 
 morning walk along that shore. It is an 
 enchanting picture of forlorn and desert, 
 nature, frowning with melancholy and 
 sullen grandeur. Shakspeare says
 
 MELANCHOLY. 205 
 
 Like as the waves make towards the pebble shore 
 
 So do our minutes hasten to their end ; 
 Each changing place with that which goes before, 
 
 In sequent toil all forwards do contend. 
 
 Ossian sung his carmen triumphale, and 
 loved to invoke the spirit of the storm, on 
 the sea shore; and lord Byron says, 
 
 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
 There is society where none intrudes, 
 By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 
 
 Indeed, he is the Vernet of poetry ; and his 
 love of the sea rendered his life almost am- 
 phibious. The sea, the shore, its pebbles, and 
 sands, are emblems of infinity ; and in those 
 districts, where the encroachments of the 
 ocean are gradually destroying islands and 
 continents, and carrying them to other 
 spheres, the lesson soars above the pride of 
 science ; and thus man, " with God himself 
 holds converse." 
 
 In the retrospective dreams of youth, 
 how fondly do we remember when the lost 
 toy was to us as the merchant's wrecked 
 vessel ; our attachment to those, from whom
 
 206 PLEASURES OP 
 
 we then thought none but death would sever 
 us ; the little holiday galas, and periodical 
 visits to the play, and the tender parting at 
 the close of the festive season-^the iron that 
 entered into one's soul. Then the school 
 friendships, brittle as life itself; for drop- 
 ping which there seems to be a maxim, as 
 for acquaintance made at a public resort. 
 This is the how d'ye do of life ; but how 
 few meet at its close to say the good bye. 
 More heads have been made to dance by 
 Alexander's Feast, than by the virtuous 
 lives of Socrates or Cato ; but the high 
 spirits of youth generally fall in after-life, 
 when they seem to have poured out all 
 their flow of soul, which floated them for a 
 time, but quickly evaporated, and left qua- 
 lities less welcome to the world. Then 
 we date our reminiscences of Philo, who 
 used to scribble newspapers for his school- 
 fellows for a few pence, and was a retailer 
 of prosody and arithmetic ; but is now wri- 
 ting for his subsistence, and is, by turns, 
 historian and anecdotist, essayist, song-
 
 MELANCHOLY. 207 
 
 writer, and necrologist ; and a topographer 
 of books, hills, libraries, and green fields. 
 Then we call up some grand school event, 
 as a game of chess that, in duration, did 
 not quite equal those of the Chess Clubs. 
 Franklin compares the world to a game of 
 chess, and, perhaps, the same number excel 
 in each ; still it would be better for men if 
 the game of life impressed them with the 
 difficulties of chess. Hope is the Queen — 
 but 
 
 Lose not the Queen, for ten to one, 
 If she be lost, the game is gone. 
 
 There is an episode in these reminiscences, 
 which I hope the reader will pardon me for 
 introducing, especially as it respects a spot 
 which has recently obtained some lettered 
 fame ; and as the circumstances of the late 
 re-visit to this land of my youth are not 
 altogether irrelevant to the title prefixed to 
 these pages. 
 
 BRAMBLETYE HOUSE. 
 
 On the borders of Ashdown Forest, in the county 
 of Sussex, stands the picturesque ruin of Brambletye
 
 208 PLEASURES OF 
 
 House, a place of some notoriety in the time of the 
 Protector, but not of sufficient importance to obtain 
 mention in history. A novelist of the present day 
 has, however, rescued Brambletye from its ,f unlet- 
 tered fame," by interweaving a few slender scenes 
 of the lives of its possessors, with a due preponder- 
 ance of fiction, and thus diverting some portion of 
 public attention to the opening scenes of his narra- 
 tive. From him we learn, that Brambletye, or, as it 
 is termed in Doomsday Book, Brambertie House, 
 after the conquest, became the property of the earl of 
 Mortain and Cornwall ; and that, towards the close 
 of the seventeenth century, it came into the occupa- 
 tion of the Comptons — the heroes of his novel ; and 
 from the arms of that family impaling those of Spen- 
 cer, still remaining over the principal entrance, with 
 the date, 1631, in a lozenge, it is conjectured that an 
 old moated house, which had hitherto been the resi- 
 dence of the proprietors, was abandoned in the reign 
 of James i. by sir Henry Compton, who built the 
 extensive and solid baronial mansion, commonly 
 known by the name of Brambletye House. The 
 Comptons, it appears, from their courage and 
 loyalty to the Stuarts, had been heavy sufferers, 
 both in purse and person, during the civil wars. One 
 of them was put to death at the battle of Hopton 
 Heath, and two others accompanied Charles in his 
 exile. Sir John Compton, a branch of this family, 
 having preserved much of his property from the com- 
 mittee of sequestration, displayed rather more splen- 
 dour than fell to the lot of most of the cavaliers who
 
 MELANCHOLY. 209 
 
 took an equally conspicuous part against the parlia- 
 ment armies. Although never capable of any regular 
 defence, yet Brambletye being hastily fortified, 
 refused the summons of the parliamentary colonel, 
 Okey, by whom it was invested, and speedily taken. 
 By some subsequent freak of fortune, the mansion 
 became deserted, and it now presents an interesting, 
 though not time-worn, ruin. 
 
 But my recollection of Brambletye is blended with 
 associations of a more pacific character. On the same 
 estate, though, doubtless, of more recent date than 
 the mansion, stands a faint house, and to this 
 property are attached two mills. Thither, when about 
 seven years old, and like another puny plant, I was 
 removed from a London atmosphere. My journey to 
 East Grinstead, the nearest town, in a long-bodied 
 coach j my quarantine in the market-room, while I 
 was handed round to the farmers by my uncle, as 
 " his nephew ; " my jolting ride to Brambletye ; the 
 smothering caresses of my four maiden cousins j and 
 my astonishment at the bright dogs, blazing logs, and 
 chimney machinery ; are matters of trivial interest to 
 the general reader. At that time, count Romford 
 and his stoves were not so well known in the wilds 
 of Sussex, as they now are in the back settlements 
 of North America, and it was some time before I be- 
 came reconciled to the comforts of chimney corners 
 for the luxury of polished grates ; but this reconci- 
 liation was mainly brought about by the cracking 
 fagot, which, with its brilliant flame, lit up every
 
 210 PLEASURES OF 
 
 corner of the room, and gleamed along its polished 
 tables and benches. 
 
 The family at Brambletye, consisted of my uncle, 
 a good specimen of the sturdy yeoman ; his wife, a 
 portly dame, on the shady side of fifty-eight ; three 
 daughters 5 and a son, then a half grown youth. Ano- 
 ther inmate was a land-surveyor, who was considered 
 as one of the family ; and had he only repaid them 
 with his company, they would have been gainers, for 
 he was the life and soul of all our little festivals. 
 To please my vanity, he drew a plan of an estate, to 
 which he attached my name and title, but whether 
 the property was like the Atlantis of the ancients, or 
 whether I forfeited my claim by losing the rent-roll, 
 I am unable to determine ; but I know that I never 
 gained possession. He also made a Hogarthian 
 sketch of " ringing pigs," in which he introduced my 
 urchin face just peeping above the paling ; but he 
 incurred the sore displeasure of the servant girl, by 
 representing her astride one portion of the pig-stye. 
 
 Hours and hours have I passed in clambering the 
 tottering staircases of the old mansion. The peo- 
 ple in that part, called it Old Place, and it then 
 contained perfect rooms ; whilst the vaults afforded 
 excellent cellarage for home-made wine, potatoes, 
 &c. It originally possessed three towers, with cupola 
 tops, and large copper vanes, two of which (from a 
 drawing in my possession) were entire in 1780. 
 The principal entrance was by an arched gate, with 
 immense posterns surmounted with similar cupolas,
 
 MELANCHOLY. 211 
 
 but the connecting wall between that and the se- 
 condary gate was then in ruins. It is, altogether, a 
 rural retreat, being almost embosomed in forest 
 scenery, and from the lowness of its site, scarcely 
 discernible at a mile distant 5 but well calculated 
 for the abode of a jocund cavalier — an odd admixture 
 of fox-hunting and politics — just such as the novelist 
 has made him stand out on his page, as the painters of 
 that time have done on their canvass. The old 
 tc moated " house to which he has alluded, stood still 
 deeper in the forest vale. It was furnished with a 
 ponderous drawbridge, and other fortifying resources. 
 I remember we put into its hall one day during a 
 heavy fall of snow, during a surveying excursion, 
 when my curiosity was soon satisfied on being told 
 it was haunted, — an idea somewhat fostered by the 
 licentious character of its former occupants. 
 
 As I became familiarized with the country, the 
 attraction of Old Place rather increased than wore 
 off. I delighted to range about its walls, with as 
 much triumph as Okey or Lilburne did in the days of 
 its better fortune. I had already learned to venerate 
 the ruin as a wreck of antiquity, and to speculate on 
 its fall with as much interest as antiquarians have the 
 removal of Stonehenge. It still appeared to me a 
 stupendous building 3 and had the rank of its occupant 
 been left to my decision, it certainly could not have 
 been lower than an earl ; but not a king ; for no- 
 thing is so vague as the ideas which children have of 
 palaces, since they collect them from the nursery 
 literature of fairy tales. I was still at a loss for the
 
 212 PLEASURES OF 
 
 history of Old Place: the parson came from East 
 Grinstead to fish in the mill-stream, and he set me to 
 dig worms for his line ; but in return gave me no 
 information. The outline of the building long re- 
 mained in my mind's-eye ; and the winds whistling 
 through its shattered tower, and the paneless case- 
 ment, were in my ears ; but the earliest striking resem- 
 blance which occurred to me was in my first reading 
 the unpretending stanzas—" Mary the Maid of 
 the Inn." I thought of the ivy clinging to its tower 
 — the fatal branch— and my early associations of 
 horror, which the above stanzas were not calculated to 
 allay. 
 * ***** * 
 
 In the autumn of 1S27, about a score of years from 
 the preceding date, I was induced to re-visit Bram- 
 bletye ; and had I, as the vulgar say, been dropped 
 from the clouds, the town of East Grinstead could 
 not have appeared more strange. If the reader 
 recollects, its situation is one of almost unparalleled 
 beauty, being on the brow of a commanding hill, and 
 belted with some of the finest forest scenery in En- 
 gland. The church is Gothic, built about 25 years, 
 at an immense expense, for which fact the parish 
 will vouch. But they have the boast of possessing 
 one of the most beautiful of modern-built churches. 
 All I can say of the town is, that it is dull and un- 
 interesting; notwithstanding I was once accustomed 
 to think it a London in miniature. 
 
 During the interval of my visits, the main road, 
 from which a lane branches off to Brambletye, was
 
 MELANCHOLY. 213 
 
 entirely re-cut through an immense chalk hill, so 
 as to save a mile in the distance ; an improve- 
 ment of which the present occupants have reason to 
 be proud. As I drew near the lane, about half a 
 mile from the town, a few faint shadowy traces 
 began to gleam across my recollection ; I fancied I 
 knew the forms of a few small cottages on the crest 
 of the hill ; but the first glimpse of a windmill, the 
 shafts of which once struck terror into me,— first 
 satisfied me of the identity of the neighbourhood ; 
 and looking down from the very summit of the hill, I 
 saw the grey cupola of Brambletye in the solitary 
 stillness of desolation and decay. I hurried on with 
 all that blissful ecstasy which a traveller feels on re- 
 turning to his long-lost home. My eye lingered till, 
 by the descent of the hill, the tower disappeared in 
 the wood. At length I reached the lane. I clam- 
 bered over the gate, (unluckily fastened) and did not 
 halt till I regained a view of the tower. My approach 
 was, indeed, a little struggle of human suffering. It 
 seemed to me an optical illusion, (as I am aware, a 
 common effect, though not always noticed.) It was a 
 camera, and not a scene of real life. The towers 
 which I once viewed as stupendous, were mere but- 
 tresses, the windows and doors tiny, and, altogether, 
 a piece of mimic grandeur. In like manner, the farm- 
 house appeared a small cottage, the barns huts, and 
 the mill-stream a trickling ditch ; and the lime-trees 
 in front of the house, which I had considered as forest- 
 like shelter, now appeared stunted in their growth. 
 I made my way to the interior, where the effect was
 
 214* PLEASURES OF 
 
 continued : the paved kitchen, the trim parlour, the 
 pantry, — all receded ; even Gulliver at Lilliput could 
 not have felt more surprise, although he has the aid 
 of wit and philosophy in its delineation. 
 
 Having obtained the key of the only entire room, I 
 hastened across the adjoining field, and in a few mo- 
 ments I stood within the principal porch of Bram- 
 bletye House. Here, such was the summary of my 
 feelings. Within two hundred vears the mansion has 
 been erected ; by turns the seat of baronial hospita- 
 lity and civil feud — the best and basest feelings of 
 mankind ; — the loyalty of cavaliers ; the fanatic out- 
 rage of Roundheads ; and, ultimately, of wanton de- 
 struction. This was evident from the mutilated state 
 of some parts which probably bore armorial or other 
 symbols of rank and gentility— so scrupulous are 
 levellers in displaying their hatred of legitimacy. The 
 gate through which col. Lilburne and his men entered, 
 was blocked up with a hurdle ; and the court-yard 
 in which he marshalled his forces, covered with 
 high flourishing grass ; the towers have become mere 
 shells ; but the vaults, once stowed with luxuries 
 and weapons, still retained much of their original 
 freshness. What a contrast between these few wrecks 
 of turbulent times and the peaceful scene by which 
 they are now surrounded — a farm and two water-mills 
 — on one side displaying the stormy conflict of pas- 
 sion and petty desolation — and, on the other, the 
 smiling attributes of humble industrv. Alas ! on a 
 farewell glance, I learned by visitors' names penciled
 
 MELANCHOLY. 215 
 
 on the wall, (and not unknown to me) that I was not 
 the first to, sympathize with the fate of Brambletye.* 
 Within these few years, through an almost unpar- 
 donable disregard for their associations, the lodge, 
 and some part of the mansion, have been pulled down ; 
 the moated house has shared the same fate — for the 
 sake of materials — an expectation in which I rejoice 
 to hear the destroyers have been disappointed — their 
 intrinsic worth not being equal to the labour of re- 
 moving them. The work of destruction would, 
 however, have extended to the whole of the ruin, had 
 not some guardian hand interfered for its preservation. 
 
 The melancholy of certain animals should 
 not, however, be passed over unnoticed. 
 Shakspeare, in Henry iv. has the following 
 " quips and quiddities." 
 
 FaLstaff. 'Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat, or a 
 lugged bear. 
 
 * Here I learned that Brambletye had been visited by 
 hundreds of tourists during the two preceding summers. The 
 good housewife told me they borrowed her chairs, and other 
 accommodations for their gipsey fetes; some of them had 
 not the courtesy to leave the seats in the adjoining field. I 
 was, however, once guilty of a worse offence- When I visited 
 Wotton, for the Promenade round Dorking, I was without a 
 shilling in my pocket, and could not reward my conductress. 
 The reader may recollect I have introduced the girl's answer 
 to one of my questions. Lady Morgan may well say of tourists, 
 — the only return these fellows make is to put you in their book.
 
 216 PLEASURES OF 
 
 P. Henry. Or an old lion, or a lover's lute 
 Falsiaff Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnsliire bagpipe. 
 P. Henry. What say'st thou to a hare, or the melancholy 
 of Moreditch. 
 
 The " lordly lion," as he is called by 
 Young, often denotes this passion in his 
 confinement. The story of the lion at 
 Versailles, a few years since, who, on the 
 death of his favourite clog, became discon- 
 solate and miserable, is well known to the 
 readers of natural history. Bears are, per- 
 haps, the most solitary of all quadrupeds ; 
 the brown species frequently choosing for 
 its abode the hollow of a tree, in which it 
 lives during the winter without provisions ; 
 or in caves, on beds of grass, leaves, and 
 moss. The attachment of bears to their 
 young is proverbial, although they are un- 
 sparingly sacrificed to the avarice and 
 amusement of unfeeling bipeds. Stories of 
 bears in the polar regions, seldom fail to 
 excite momentary sympathy in their readers ; 
 indeed, they exhibit traits of affection which 
 are not always to be found in nobler animals. 
 Cats are likewise subject to the influence of
 
 MELANCHOLY. 
 
 217 
 
 melancholy ; and this fact is attested by a 
 writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, who 
 saw a cat attempt suicide, by repeatedly 
 throwing itself head foremost from a high 
 shelf on a stone floor ; and though it did 
 not accomplish its purpose, yet it was so 
 bruised, as to render its destruction hu- 
 mane.* Sonnini relates an anecdote of the 
 Angora cat, a native of Egypt, which kept 
 by his side in his solitary moments, and 
 often interrupted him in his meditations by 
 affectionate caresses ; and, in his absence, 
 sought and called for him with great in- 
 
 * The above circumstance will hardly obtain belief, ex- 
 cept among persons conversant with the phenomena of natu- 
 ral historv. Lord Kaimes relates this anecdote : — A brood 
 of stone-chatters, taken from the nest, were inclosed in a 
 cage ; the door was left open to admit the mother, and was 
 then shut upon her. After many attempts, finding it impos- 
 sible to get free, she first put her young to death, and then 
 dashed out her own brains on the side of the cage. Similar 
 stories of parrots and domesticated birds are very frequent. I 
 recollect an instance of a parrot exhibiting tokens of joy for 
 upwards of an hour, on the return of its mistress, after an ab- 
 sence of some months : the lady was absent on the following 
 day for three or four hours, during which time the poor bird 
 died of what may be termed excessive grief. 
 
 L
 
 218 PLEASURES OF 
 
 quietude. Hares are, however, the most 
 interesting in their melancholy characteris- 
 tics. They are so timid as to be fascinated 
 by fear ; even a falling leaf disturbs them. 
 They live in solitude and silence, except 
 occasionally assembling by moonlight, to 
 sport together, when their savage enemies 
 are asleep. Their cries, when taken, 
 resemble those of an infant; but this ap- 
 peal to man, though in the semblance of 
 his own nature, is ineffectual. Cowper 
 domesticated three hares, and his account 
 of them is full of pathos and fine feeling : 
 what congenial companions must they have 
 been in his melancholy musings ! Thomson 
 says, 
 
 Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare ; 
 
 — though not a sentiment of his epicurism. 
 The analogous sensibilities of the hare may 
 be carried still further: timid men in the 
 world, resemble hares in the chase : a more 
 classical comparison will, however, be in 
 that of a sensitive heart to the heel of 
 Achilles, in the siege of Troy ; it is the
 
 MELANCHOLY. 219 
 
 most assailable part, at which scores of 
 little Hectors may let fly their shafts. 
 
 Of the varieties of melancholy to which 
 the human mind is incident, it would be 
 tedious, in this place, to give a mere outline : 
 neither would they illustrate my subject — 
 " a melancholy of mine own, compounded 
 from many simples, extracted from many 
 objects ; and, indeed, the sundry contem- 
 plations of my travels, in which my rumina- 
 tion often wraps me, in a most humorous 
 sadness.'' 
 
 Whilst reflecting on the fate of the plea- 
 sure-hunter, in the houses of his pride, I 
 have learned that the louder the mirth, the 
 more quickly it subsides into melancholy. 
 But we need not be defiled in our current 
 through these muddy passages, unless their 
 film hangs about the furrows of a deeply- 
 worn heart, or excited conscience. 
 
 The melancholy of little minds is envy ; a 
 
 passion not excitable by either of the above 
 
 scenes. Adversity and melancholy have 
 
 alike their sweet uses ; although, both of 
 
 l2
 
 220 PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY. 
 
 them people the barren brain with horror. 
 Happiness consists not in having or holding, 
 else the rich would insure it with their lives, 
 and secure immortality by purchase : though 
 '* to have seen much and to have nothing, 
 is to have rich eyes and poor hands." They 
 who husband the wealth of melancholy, 
 and have minds to enjoy her treasures, need 
 not fear the approach of poverty — a state 
 only known to such as have been taught to 
 mistake the fading pleasures of sense for 
 happiness, and their intermission for the 
 last ebb of human suffering.
 
 Hobe ot tfie Countrg, 
 
 A RHAPSODY. 
 
 God made the country, and man the town. — Cowper. 
 
 If one must have a villa in summer to dwell, 
 
 O give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall. — Song. 
 
 These epigraphs exhibit great contra- 
 riety of taste ; and, probably, both are 
 equally sincere. The sentiment of Cowper 
 is terse and epigrammatic, and will find an 
 echo in every lover of rural life. The bal- 
 lad whence the last quoted lines are taken, 
 is the offspring of the convivial muse, when 
 the soul was in its full flow, and reason, 
 though a light rider, still retained her seat. 
 They, however, induce a comparison be- 
 tween the influence of Nature and Art, in
 
 222 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 the pursuits of mankind ; and hence they 
 become a valuable morality. 
 
 The influence of Art is strongly evident 
 in self-love. It fosters pride in every shape. 
 Amidst its glories men forget their origin, 
 and cease to remember the puny brain of 
 which they are the produce. Their per- 
 ceptions thus become blunted : invention is 
 racked to find new appetite ; and, by over- 
 strained refinement, they may be said to 
 slide into retrogression. To cheer and 
 embellish life, and not to interdict its dearest 
 enjoyments, should be the aim of art. Her 
 " gross handyworks ? ' may delight the eye, 
 charm the ear, and fascinate the under- 
 standing, but they do not often reach the 
 heart ; or, when they do, their influence is 
 transient and useless. But it is for such 
 delusions that men herd in cities, there to 
 squander fortunes in the mimicry of Art, 
 and waste whole lives in the study of its 
 treasures. For these they neglect the real 
 philosophy of Nature, and the " good in 
 every thing" which is scattered throughout
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 223 
 
 her kingdoms. Thus, they exchange the 
 towering sublimity of mountains for the frail 
 splendour of palaces ; the variegated hues 
 of groves for the sickly glare of painted 
 walls ; the peaceful seclusion of valleys for 
 the noisy brawlings of courts ; the cheer- 
 fulness of contentment for the pinings of 
 fruitless ambition : — in short, the simplicity 
 of Nature for the depravity of Art ! How 
 deplorable is this fatuity, by which men 
 are led to compromise their own happi- 
 ness. Whilst thus busied in the labours 
 of idleness, man repines at the fleetingness 
 of life. But mark — these pursuits, which 
 are impiously designated as the glories and 
 triumphs of man, serve to minister to his 
 vanity and self-love, till, his efforts being 
 flattered into perfection, he usurps a sort of 
 mortal omnipotence. Such are the busy 
 dreams of Art, from which the study of 
 Nature can alone divert or reclaim mankind. 
 Perhaps I dwell too vehemently on these 
 inconsistencies ; but such were my senti- 
 ments on a recent visit to the palace of
 
 224 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Versailles. Tired with the gewgaws of 
 Paris, I one day strayed to Versailles, to 
 view that paragon of modern art — its 
 palace. With the minute topography 
 of the gardens of the Tuilleries and the 
 Luxembourg still in my mind's eye, I was 
 delighted with those of Versailles, notwith- 
 standing their incongruous admixture of 
 nature and art — such as marble temples 
 dedicated to courtezans, with stately groves 
 and picturesque rides and walks, lawns, 
 glades, &c. magnificent pieces of water, 
 besides pools, basins, &c. with superb foun- 
 tains, and the unnumbered and finely-exe- 
 cuted statues that adorn them. To say the 
 truth, I was, however, disappointed ; but 
 not to have admired them would have been 
 " bad taste, '' besides damping the commu- 
 nicative zeal of my guide ; so that with the 
 frequent aid of " magnjfique ! superb /*' I 
 contrived to suppress my real sentiments. 
 The splendid terrace, as an artificial con- 
 trivance, is, perhaps, unrivalled. 
 
 This vast palace contains 6400 rooms,
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 225 
 
 reckoning large and small ; which, destitute 
 as they are of furniture, still impress the 
 spectator with wonder and admiration. 
 The Grand Gallery surpasses all the rest 
 in magnificence : it is thirty-seven fathoms 
 in length, lighted by seventeen large win- 
 dows, opposite which are arcades, occupied 
 by mirrors, which reflect the gardens and 
 fountains. As I paced this splendid vista, 
 with one of the royal footmen, who was 
 very loud and incessant with " Louis Qua- 
 torze /" the broad beams of the sun fell on 
 the rich gilding of the walls and ceilings, 
 and just served to light up their trophied 
 scenes from the life of the renowned and 
 extravagant monarch. Not a vestige of 
 furniture remains ; but as if to keep up the 
 folly of the splendid ruin, I found a gilder 
 employed in renovating one of the rooms, 
 viz. — the chamber of Marie Antoinette, in 
 which the revolutionary ruffians stabbed 
 through the covering of the bed, the queen 
 having previously escaped from this room to 
 
 the king's chamber. The chapel, with its 
 
 l 3
 
 226 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 costly Italian marble columns and pave- 
 ment, remains a perfect gem ; but the thea- 
 tre is hastening to decay. Here the light is 
 almost excluded, the gilt-work fronts of the 
 boxes are deeply tarnished, mouldings are 
 flying off, and, altogether, there is a dusty 
 and death-like stillness about the place ; 
 which, contrasted with the usual associa- 
 tions of a theatre, produced on me an im- 
 pression of painful melancholy. 
 
 The usual sentiment of visitors to the 
 palace, is that of mixed gratification ; but 
 I would sooner have written lord Bacon's 
 Essays, than have the glory of being its 
 founder. The site is indescribably beau- 
 tiful, though not from its commanding in its 
 prospect five other palaces. I was, how- 
 ever, most gratified with a walk through 
 the orangery of trees two and three hun- 
 dred years old, which will, probably, be 
 flourishing when the decorative glare of the 
 palace shall be obscured, and even its 
 walls be fast crumbling to dust. It is, alto- 
 gether, a perfect specimen of princely pro-
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 227 
 
 fusion ; and whether as a work of art, or in 
 connexion with the events of history, you are 
 glad to quit the spot. The town of Ver- 
 sailles, too, is deserted and gloomy. Its 
 magnificence was like a work of enchant- 
 ment : its streets are formed like so many 
 grand avenues, leading to, and terminating 
 in, the royal palace, which is, indeed, a 
 
 symbol of its lamentable fate. 
 
 * . * * * * * * 
 
 The country is my soul's rest. Its tran- 
 quillity, broken only by the sweet and simple 
 music of birds, is almost unearthly. Some 
 painters have represented paradise as a pile 
 of mansions ; but were it not for the literal 
 transcript of a certain passage in the New 
 Testament, I would associate elysium with 
 rural life, and rid the allegory of all aid or 
 association of art. 
 
 I have a perfect remembrance of my ear- 
 liest predilection for rural life. It began 
 with gardening ; and when a child, I recol- 
 lect to have enjoyed my garden, now almost 
 in the heart of southern London, and to
 
 228 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 have studied Abercrombie's Pocket Gar- 
 dener with as much avidity as I read Ro- 
 binson Crusoe. At Brambletye, too, I had 
 my slip of ground. Planting and trans- 
 planting were my delight ; and here I drew 
 my first lesson of the principle of existence 
 from the germinating of an upturned bean ; 
 and how pure has been my delight to iden- 
 tify this lesson among the philosophical truths 
 of maturer studies. The seed which my tiny 
 hands let fall into the bosom of the earth, 
 I saw peeping through little clods, after 
 the kind and quickening showers of spring. 
 The plant which my impatience led me to 
 steal from its native rooting place, drooped 
 in its new soil, but revived after the genial 
 damps of night. How analogous is this frailty 
 of vegetable life with the fates and fortunes of 
 nature's noblest sons, whose course is but a 
 link in the grand chain of being — thus 
 making man resemble a plant on the earth, 
 over which he rules, and reducing the gra- 
 dations of animal and vegetable existence to 
 an imperceptible transition. Flowers, those
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 229 
 
 transient emblems of our versatile lives, 
 were also admitted, from the modest violet 
 to the curious passiflora, and the gaudy 
 array of the tulip. All were numbered in 
 my little family, and with more than pater- 
 nal care, I watched their growth, while my 
 garden was to me an Eden of bliss. 
 
 Such were the rural amusements of my 
 boyhood ; and in all the little sojourns of 
 those days, among uncles, aunts, and cou- 
 sins, my first object was to secure " a gar- 
 den." At some schools, too, the privilege 
 of gardens is allowed, but ours was too 
 numerous for that indulgence ; and I did 
 not regret this, for in so large an assembly, 
 the petty burnings and jealousies of hu- 
 manity might have burst forth, and thus have 
 spoiled that simplicity of manners which gar- 
 dening is calculated to encourage. As 
 if to compensate for these privations at 
 school, I was indulgently noticed by the 
 relatives of the master, (who were farmers) 
 and with his children I usually paid them a 
 few periodical visits, among which was
 
 230 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 one afternoon set aside for gathering daffo- 
 dils, in a meadow four miles distant, where 
 they grew in early profusion. This was 
 called Daffying, and was the first rustic 
 treat of the year. We gathered the flowers 
 into clusters on sticks, and thus carried them 
 home in triumph, often singing on the road, 
 
 Daffydown dilly is coming to town, 
 
 With her yellow petticoat and her green gown ; 
 
 from the old Norfolk song. This was in a 
 picturesque district of Hertfordshire. In 
 Sussex the plant is called Lent Lily, from 
 the period of its coming into flower. Her- 
 rick's well-known ode, beginning 
 
 Fair daffodils, we weep to see 
 You haste away so soon, &c. 
 
 is addressed to this flower : its elegant pale 
 yellow cups arc the pride of April, and, like 
 its sunshine, their tender nature droops 
 amidst the early storms of spring. 
 
 Is there on earth a purer delight than 
 that of Gardening, or a more refreshing 
 scene than a garden ? It is, indeed, holy 
 ground, whence the sacred historian has
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 231 
 
 dated our first nature, and whose simplicity 
 the poet has embellished with the sublimest 
 flights of song. But when evil was first 
 sown in the heart of man, how appropriate 
 was his expulsion from such a scene of har- 
 mony and love, when he was declared un- 
 fit for its heavenly region, and quickly 
 driven from the state he was intended to 
 adorn. Hence began his debasement : the 
 nobility of nature fell, and nought was left 
 but the clay and gross material of form, to 
 become regenerate in blissful immortality. 
 Some of the principal incidents of this 
 blessed mission were in gardens — witness 
 the re-appearance of Christ after his resur- 
 rection. Thus, a garden has been the scene 
 of man's birth — his fall — and proffered re- 
 demption. Is not such a spot, then, well 
 fitted for the incense of adoration and divine 
 love, the only accepted tribute of man to 
 his Author : is it not calculated to purify 
 his heart from unholy desires, to quell the 
 storms of passion, and render him tranquil 
 and happy. Its associations will lead him
 
 232 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 to meditate and contemplate — not in the 
 gloom of despair — but in the cheerfulness 
 of hope, which will shine like a radius of 
 glory around his heart. In the tenderness 
 of spring, or the infancy of Nature ; the 
 buoyant hope of summer, her pride ; the 
 mellowed richness of autumn, her perfec- 
 tion and decay ; or the scowl of winter, 
 and the last exit of icy age — he may reflect 
 till 
 
 One unbounded spring encircle all. 
 
 Phenomena of heat and cold closely re- 
 semble the cares and crosses of his umbra- 
 tile and transitory life ; and the grain, the 
 blade, and the ear, are as so many stages 
 of his being. With Nature's broad volume 
 before him, how can he wander from such 
 divine truths — how can he stray from her re- 
 freshing scenes to the despicable haunts of 
 folly and guilt, in which he is prone to 
 forget that bounteous hand which constantly 
 nourishes and sustains him. 
 
 Opposed to the blessed study of looking 
 " through Nature up to Nature's God," are
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 233 
 
 the seductions of art in crowded cities. 
 Infants are universally pleased with the sim- 
 plicity of the country, and the unnumbered 
 variety of its leaves, fruit, and flowers. 
 Here they can, in fields and lawns, and 
 from the warblings of birds, learn to lisp the 
 praises of the first Being ; and amidst this 
 picture of peace and love, rebuking con- 
 science will sow the first seed of moral truth. 
 But, how often does it happen, that chil- 
 dren, thus brought into life, are hurried from 
 these simple scenes to the rigid discipline of 
 art ; hence to the gay theatre of the world, 
 ere reason has taken root in their minds, 
 and cunning rendered them safe from the 
 lures of pleasure. At first, they are terrified 
 with the glitter of art ; till change of atmos- 
 phere vitiates the appetite, and what was 
 at first sight repulsive, by frequency be- 
 comes inviting. The toys and baubles of 
 the nursery are the first objects to excite 
 the sparks of self-love ; and the same effect 
 is visible through life, from the rattle of in- 
 fancy to the sceptre of riper years. The
 
 234 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 fro ward child, the obstinate youth, and the 
 unsparing oppressor, act but one part in the 
 philosophy of life, though its business be 
 extended to many scenes and stages . 
 
 The Town is the work of man, and Art 
 is the scope of his invention ; but Nature is 
 plundered for all his triumphs. He hews 
 down forests, and quickly covers seas with 
 ships, capable of transporting him to the 
 varieties of soil and climate, and of supply- 
 ing all the cravings of his luxury. By the 
 same means he ransacks the earth for ma- 
 terial to build palaces and cities, whose 
 finery leads him to forget that he is of mat- 
 ter still more destructible. Here begins his 
 idolatry of Art; but to escape the chastise- 
 ment of the consciousness of evil, he tortures 
 his brain with the subtleties of erring reason, 
 miscalled philosophy. At length, like the 
 besotted historian, he designates all men 
 who are unlike him, barbarians, and teaches 
 others to look upon his ancestors as be- 
 longing to savage tribes. Disdaining phy- 
 sical force, in proportion as the virility and
 
 LOVE OP THE COUNTRY. 235 
 
 real dignity of Nature have been impaired 
 by vice, he has thrown aside the sinew and 
 skin, and has adopted a set of subtler wea- 
 pons — such as will enable the weak and 
 wicked to fight in ambush against the vir- 
 tuous. Hence, his dominion is extended 
 by the magic of Art, and his fancy fondled 
 in her dreams, till life becomes a mere 
 scene of gay illusion. But how dark and 
 dreary are its endings : the vessel perishes 
 with its luxuries in a troubled sea ; the 
 palace moulders into ruins, or falls a prey 
 to more summary calamity, its nice deco- 
 rations fade and rot in a few generations, 
 and its history is lost in legendary lore. In 
 the meantime, the constant reproductiveness 
 of Nature supplies all the ravages of Art, — 
 and decay is followed up by new successions 
 of beauty. But it may be asked, a few cen- 
 turies hence where will be the proud piles of 
 the Alhamra, the Escurial, or Versailles ?* 
 
 * Until very lately it was a common opinion that Louis 
 xiv. burnt all the bills relative to the building of the palace 
 of Versailles— like a citizen after an expensive excursion.
 
 236 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Apart from other enjoyments, the plea- 
 sures of " the country life " induce health, 
 vigour, and strength. They exclude fe- 
 verish luxury, and allow us to return to 
 their indulgence with additional zest ; hence 
 the comparative misery of what the world 
 calls a man of pleasure. Many minds are 
 ill framed for retirement, and still fewer for 
 solitude ; but all are naturally fitted for the 
 enjoyment of the country. Rapine and 
 fraud first drove mankind to associate in 
 communities for mutual protection, not for 
 mutual corruption and ruin. Here, the 
 bland sympathies of kindred souls were first 
 attuned, to cheer us through life, and not to 
 estrange us from the unsophisticated enjoy- 
 ments of Nature. Still, how few are de- 
 voutly attached to rural pleasures, and how 
 many are contented with the most super- 
 it has, however, been recently ascertained that the money 
 expended on Versailles, from 1664 to 1690, was 81,151,414 
 francs, or about 6,300,0001. at the present day. Amongst 
 items, we find that the machine of Marly cost, without the 
 pipes or aqueducts, nearly 280,0001. For plate, pictures, 
 medals, &c. not comprised in the above, upwards of 500,0001.
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 237 
 
 ficial knowledge of the inherent beauty of 
 her kingdoms ;* how many who decide on 
 the merits of a mimic artist are ignorant of 
 the glorious master pieces of the Original. 
 The pleasure and advantages of a reflective 
 mind, in appreciating the harmonies of this 
 lower world, are, however, two-fold, since 
 they lead to the contemplation and enjoy- 
 
 • Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne is one of 
 the most delightful household books in our language. Paro- 
 chial and Natural Histories also belong to the most interest- 
 ing literature of all times. They have not the common 
 fault of history, to make you think that the only great men 
 in the world are princes, heroes, and statesmen ; but they 
 concern men's homes and firesides, and represent every vil- 
 lage as a microcosm. This is the only method of attaining a 
 true knowledge of nature ; for nations, cities, and villages, 
 are but so many concentric circles of the whole system. 
 There is a district, the Natural History of which I hope one 
 day to complete, so as to perfect a little labour which I have 
 already, in part, sent to the world. If God should spare me 
 from the storms of life, and I should ever reach the haven of 
 undisturbed old age, this should be the first labour of my 
 retirement. As it is, I am but a humble insect in the sun- 
 beam of fate and fortune ; but as the great man of antiquity 
 desired that he might die with the setting sun before him, so 
 I desire that my little sun may set in the peaceful vales of 
 the land of my youth — to propitiate, in my last moments, 
 an unmerited, though not unhoped for, succession of never- 
 ending peace.
 
 238 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 ment of another, still more sublime and 
 beautiful. 
 
 In the preceding pages I have dwelt on 
 Gardening, from a persuasion of its being 
 the purest and most refreshing exercise 
 and study for youth and age, and as most 
 conducive to a taste for the delightful re- 
 creations of natural philosophy. Wisdom is 
 alone beneficial to man, inasmuch as it leads 
 to his content ; every other study is vexati- 
 ous and wearisome, and only calculated to 
 excite envy and disquietude. We have on 
 record innumerable instances of the attach- 
 ment of great and wise men, to the pur- 
 suits of rural life, all of whom have indulged 
 their taste for Gardening. Of the originators 
 of palaces and their gardens, I do not 
 generally speak, because there is too much 
 form in their disposal, and they are, for the 
 most part, too near the monuments of art. 
 The humility of nature will not allow their 
 immediate association ; they must be at a 
 distance, or the deception is destroyed. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a subject
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 239 
 
 which has been more fervently treated by 
 poets and philosophers, than the love of 
 gardens. In old Rome, poets sung of their 
 gardens. Ovid is so fond of flowers, that in 
 the account of the Rape of Proserpine, in 
 his Fasti he devotes several lines to the 
 enumeration of flowers gathered by her 
 attendants. But the passion for garden- 
 ing, which evidently came from the east, 
 never prevailed much in Europe, till the 
 times of the religious orders, who greatly 
 improved it. 
 
 In the whole compass of English litera- 
 ture, perhaps no pursuit is more beautifully 
 illustrated than Love of the Country. Its 
 peaceful amusements were even blended 
 with chivalric life. " Hunting and falcon- 
 ry," says Mr. Mills, " the amusements of the 
 cavalier were images of war, and he threw 
 over them a grace beyond the power of mere 
 baronial rank." Herrick has commemorated 
 all its festivities with his usual quaintness. 
 Milton wrote many hours in his garden at 
 Chalfont; and Cowley poured forth the
 
 240 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 greatness of his soul among the boscages of 
 his rural retreat at Chertsey. Lord Bacon is 
 proverbial for his love of gardens ; sir Wil- 
 liam Temple discourses eloquently on the 
 same ;* the illustrious Shaftesbury wrote his 
 Characteristics in a delightful spot in Surrey ; 
 Evelyn first cultivated the garden taste in 
 England ; and sir Philip Sidney's beautiful 
 Arcadia must not be overlooked. Pope's 
 love of gardens is, perhaps, less to be ad- 
 mired; his grotto had too great semblance 
 of art : but within the same neighbourhood, 
 Thomson 
 
 Sung the Seasons and their change 
 
 in a rustic summer house. Innumerable 
 also are the devotional passages on this 
 subject, in the self-written biographies of 
 Christian and rural philosophers, besides 
 
 * Indeed, a passage in his writings runs thus : — " As r/ar- 
 diming has been the inclination of kings and the choice of 
 philosophers, so it lias been the common favourite of public 
 and private men ; a pleasure of the greatest, and the care of 
 the meanest ; and, indeed, an employment and a possession, 
 for which no man is too high nor loo low."
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 241 
 
 those already mentioned. In our drama, 
 too, are many happy allusions ; as the Duke, 
 in As You Like It, and some scenes in 
 Cymbeline, which are full of the touching 
 simplicity of country life. Neither should 
 it be forgotten that the earliest British dra- 
 mas were pastorals, or tales of shepherds' 
 loves. In our time, these scenes are ge- 
 nerally less successful in representation 
 than in reading, partly from want of true 
 conception of character, and partly from 
 the minds of the audience requiring stronger 
 stimulants than they contain. 
 
 The ideas of rural enjoyment have, how- 
 ever, assumed another cast : they have be- 
 come less philosophic, and are, for the most 
 part, regulated by the caprices of wealth 
 and high fashion ; and the majority of the 
 people being drawn together in large knots, 
 by the arts of life, or worse motives, are 
 accustomed to short periodical visits to the 
 country. Hence, their pleasures become 
 so costly, as to assimilate to extravagant 
 luxury ; and such precious intervals of toil are 
 
 M
 
 242 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 eagerly seized by the ostentatious and purse- 
 proud, as scope for their little aristocracies. 
 Among these follies, the preference given 
 to watering places is not to be overlooked ; 
 and it is some proof of the degenerate taste of 
 our neighbours, the French, to find that this 
 absurd custom is every year becoming more 
 and more fashionable among them. To 
 say that such excursions present any of the 
 recreations of rural life, would denote gross 
 ignorance and perverted taste ; since, ac- 
 cording to the chronicles and calendars of 
 fashion, their groupes indulge nearly every 
 bad passion which a crammed metropolis is 
 capable of spawning forth over the country ; 
 and the ruling passion of the English for 
 playing the magnifico, abroad and at home, 
 does not modify the evil. 
 
 A handful of expensive young men and 
 their flirting companions, a score of ladies 
 of a certain age, and the same number of 
 stupid bachelors and lean and slippered in- 
 valids, with a few rosy-gilled fathers and 
 their " better halves," are the usual society
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 2tS 
 
 of watering-places ; whilst their amuse- 
 ments consist of taking coffee and rolls at 
 mid-day in the public sunshine, idling, co- 
 quetting, and gaming at libraries and as- 
 semblies ; simpering over newspapers and 
 scandal-novels, and learning to kill charac- 
 ter and run down reputation, from morning 
 till midnight. 
 
 But there is another and abetter class of 
 mankind, whose neglect of the country is 
 still more culpable, not to say criminal, 
 than the above ; inasmuch as they have the 
 advantages of education, taste, and fortune, 
 on their side. Such are all those who herd 
 together in the court of fashion, from April 
 to August in each year ; thus terminating 
 the spring-tide of fashion with the summer 
 of Nature. Their love of the country is 
 confined to the forced luxuries of kitchen 
 gardens, conveyed to them in wicker bas- 
 kets ; and a few hundred exotics hired from 
 a florist to furnish a mimic conservatory, 
 for an evening rout. Here they remain, 
 content to breathe through the lungs of the
 
 244 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 parks, till their trees and the town grow 
 " thin ; " Ude, Jarrin, and Gunter, at last 
 fail to produce a gusto, and their votaries 
 are fairly worn out and blind with the gas, 
 heat, and dust of the opera, and even the 
 feet and foot-lights lose their charms. Now, 
 when early leaves begin to fall, and remind 
 old and young of their wrinkles, the parlia- 
 ment man sets off to recruit his eloquence 
 in the chase ; the coquette to repair those few 
 wrecks of beauty which the season has spared 
 her ; and the young man of fashion to recruit 
 his recreant limbs and shattered frame in the 
 country. Then follow loud complaints of 
 dulness and ennui, and scores of visiting 
 friends go the round, from September to 
 January, when they return to their " base 
 purposes " in town. 
 
 All this proceeds from an overstrained 
 refinement of life, or the interdict of Art! 
 Neither of these parties know how to ap- 
 preciate the pleasures of the country. The 
 latter carry with them too much of the 
 style of their town establishments, in scr-
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 24-5 
 
 vants,* equipage, &c. ; and they would fain 
 infect their halls with the gas and glitter 
 of London routs. Hence the rich vein of 
 hospitality and humour which once flowed 
 among them, is narrowed and almost dried 
 up, and with it much of the simplicity of 
 men's lives, motives, and actions. 
 
 Contrast but for a moment this blaze of 
 artificial excitement, and its saturnalia of 
 fashion, with the unstudied and poetic ease 
 of a rural retreat. Here, rest succeeds en- 
 joyment, free from the pain of luxury and 
 the returning pang of excess. Nature is 
 our physician and our guide ; and health 
 the handmaid to real happiness. But the 
 wealthy linger in the halls of pleasure till the 
 
 * Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, thus alludes to the vas- 
 salage of wealth : " There is a great Dumber of noblemen 
 among' you that carry about with them a great numher of 
 idle fellows, who never learned any art by which they may 
 gain their living; and these, as soon as either their lord dies, 
 or they themselves fall sick, are turned out of doors ; fur 
 your lords are readier to feed idle people, than to take cart 
 of the sick ; and often the heir is not able to keep together 
 so great a family as his predecessor did.'' The laller part of 
 this paragraph will apply to another age besides that in w hich 
 the writer lived. 
 
 M 2
 
 24G LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 lamp of life is nearly extinct, when they flee 
 from her " nodes cenceque^ and with de- 
 bauched appetites and minds, and bodies 
 equally unfit for pure enjoyment, they be- 
 take themselves, as a last resource, to re- 
 tirement in the country. Thus, men trifle 
 with their existence, till Nature, tired and 
 disgusted with their impiety, and refusing to 
 be longer replenished by human skill, shuts 
 to the scene, and " life's poor play is o'er." 
 In occasional retirement, how innumera- 
 ble are the amusements, even for those who 
 spurn the ascetic state of solitude, despite 
 the poetic enthusiasm of the amiable sir 
 Philip Sidney : 
 
 O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness ! 
 O how much do I like your solitariness ! 
 
 In a cottage may be assembled all the com- 
 forts, and even many of the luxuries, of life ; 
 whilst the solitaire may be left to his fruits 
 and crystal well. The morning walk will 
 produce an orison of praise, as an appropriate 
 commencement of the duties of the day ;
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 247 
 
 the society of a retired few, or of those ne- 
 ver-failing friends, well-chosen books; our 
 flower-garden at morn and eve, our little 
 studies and recreations in natural philo- 
 sophy ; our daily visit to some sequestered 
 spot, the summit of a hill, an oft-remem- 
 bered tree, or a grotto or ruin in some dark 
 grove or shrubbery, or 
 
 Pacing thro' the forest 
 Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy- 
 may be numbered in the amusements of 
 retirement. Rustic sounds are music sweet 
 to the soul : the echo of lanes and dells ; 
 the roar of a distant mill, or the busy gush 
 of its wandering stream ; and the thousands 
 of feathered choristers that tenant every 
 tree, and make every thicket resound with 
 their little peals of praise ; the radiant 
 smile of showers, the gathering scowl of 
 storms, and the whistle of winds ; the " joy- 
 ful king of day," the moon, and the starry 
 splendour, or the silent shades, of night — 
 are alike themes for the rural philosopher.
 
 248 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 In these pursuits, how fascinating is the con- 
 verse of elegant woman ! how perfect is 
 the happy, happy, harmony of such society ! 
 In astronomy, botany, geology, and elegant 
 literature, how are all her graces reflected ! 
 But how far removed is such amiability 
 and benignity of mind from the repulsive 
 hauteur of a female slave of fashion, with 
 all that decorative trickery and tinsel of art 
 which is the indolence and ennui of weak 
 minds : in the transition she almost becomes 
 unsexed. 
 
 All that can enliven mankind, or lead 
 them to the spring of bliss, is to be found in 
 the country : it is the Castalium of earth ; 
 and to a fervent lover of Nature, Art may 
 in vain throw open her store-houses, for her 
 master-pieces are nothing worth when con- 
 trasted with the sweets of rural enjoyment. 
 Simplicity is man's happiest state, but every 
 attempt to seduce him from her paths is 
 to be reprehended. The false gilding of 
 pleasure will but lead him to the bark of folly, 
 which is rapidly sailing down the stream of
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 249 
 
 time ; but it should be recollected that her 
 course is beset with sands and shoals, and 
 that in case of wreck, it is one of the 
 maxims of the world to leave the victims to 
 perish on the strand. 
 
 In examining the virtuous and happy 
 lives of men, we find that great portions of 
 their time were passed in rural retirement. 
 Kings, when past the meridian of life, be- 
 come sensible of this fact, and leaving the 
 painted pomp of cities, hold their courts 
 amidst woods and groves — so pleasantly do 
 the charms of the country alternate with the 
 cumbrous cares of state. The soliloquy in 
 Shakspeare's Henry iv. 
 
 Methinks it were a happy life, &c. 
 
 is, doubtless, line by line s atrueportraitureof 
 the discontent of many wearers of diadems. 
 In truth, the brightest examples of such a pre- 
 ference may be selected from the greatest 
 and wisest of men, of all times and countries. 
 Amidst the imagery of these associations, 
 princes may learn humility, and ambition, 
 contentment :
 
 250 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 
 His few books, or his beads, or simple diet, 
 Or do his gray hairs any violence ? 
 
 In the patriarchal ages of the world, we are 
 presented with many interesting episodes 
 which are characteristic of the happiness of 
 such a state, among dwellers in tents, 
 " hewers of wood, and drawers of water," 
 with flocks and herds, and other primitive 
 possessions. 
 
 Youth is the season for the full enjoyment 
 of the country. The great master of Na- 
 ture drew his pictures of pastoral happiness 
 from the scenes of his boyhood — perhaps 
 from the vales of Stratford, or the woods 
 and glades of Charlecot. The romances of 
 Spenser, and the brilliant flights of Par- 
 nell's muse sparkle with youthful vigour 
 and beauty. It is in this season, also, that 
 the man of sensibility, who can " hang a 
 thought on every thorn," finds the sweetest 
 repose in the solitudes of Nature. In her 
 gay scenes he may forget past suffering 
 amidst sweets that never cloy ; and, in
 
 LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 251 
 
 her hours of gloom, he may find consolation 
 among storms, which, unlike those of the 
 world, are succeeded by clays — unclouded 
 and serene. If, perchance, the trials of 
 youth are unmixed with self-reproach, there 
 will be reason to hope, that the clouds which 
 lower about the morning of life will gra- 
 dually disperse before the sunshine of its 
 mid-day, and lead on to a cheerful evening 
 of rest unto the soul. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Errata — Page 20, line 12, dele comma. 
 
 In note, page 182, for •' bell-hangers," read " bell-wringers."
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
 
 1 
 
 Price 8s. 6d. in green cloth with a View of Box-hill, and 
 
 Twelve I ignettes, 
 
 A PICTURESQUE 
 
 PROMENADE ROUND DORKING 
 
 IN SURREY; 
 
 SECOND EDITION, WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS. 
 
 Locus l;ptos, et amcena vireta 
 
 Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas. — Virgil. 
 
 " This neat little work displays much industry and research. It is 
 written with ease, and abounds with reflections arising upon a view of 
 the beauties of nature, here so liberally bestowed." — Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, June 1824. 
 
 " This is an entertaining and correct guide round a spot, the vi 
 of which probably affords a greater variety of gratification to the lovers 
 of natural beauty, than can be found in any other space of equal extent 
 within the same distance from the metropolis.." — Veto Monthly Magazine. 
 
 We have no room to follow the Author in his agreeable Promenade, 
 nor could any extract give a sufficient idea of the minute information 
 and mass of anecdote which his book contains. We understand that he 
 is a young man, but he has been a most laborious gleaner; and has had 
 the further advantage of describing scenes with which he was' long fami- 
 liar. We have given a favourable specimen of his style of writing, as 
 encouraging a presumption that he may one day produce a work more 
 calculated for general perusal. We are happy so see that the volume 
 before us is a Second Edition; but it may be considered, in a great de- 
 gree, as a new work. , Literary Register, 
 
 " Such of our readers as have in contemplation an excursion of plea- 
 sure in the approaching season, cannot do better than refer to 'A Pictur- 
 esque Promenade round Dorking !■■ Stirrer/,' which represents the attrac- 
 tions of that beautiful portion of Hie country, in very alluring, and, we 
 believe, in very genuine colours. Whoever may be tempted to make a 
 personal survey of it, will find a very intelligent and pleasing guide in 
 this pleasing little volnme, which displays much industry and research, 
 and is written in a style far superior to that of most works of this de- 
 scription." Monthly Mtiurjtn: 
 
 A Series of Picturesque Vignettes, and the Fron- 
 tispiece View of PjO.\-IIill, to illustrate the First Edition, 
 may be had separately, price Is. 6d. 
 
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