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 ^ir Cljomas itlotri^ 
 
 ' I • t 
 
 OR, 
 
 COLLOQUIES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS 
 
 OF 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., LL.D. 
 
 POET LAUREATE, 
 
 HONORARr KrEMBBR OP THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY, OF THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADESIY OP HISTORY. 
 OP THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF THE NETHERLANDS, OP THE CYMMRODORION, OP THE MASSA- 
 CHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY, 
 OP THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY, OP THE BRISTOL PHILOSOPHICAL 
 AND LITERARY SOCIETY, OP THE METROPOLITAN 
 INSTITUTION, OP THE PHILOMATHIC 
 INSTITUTION, &C. 
 
 RESPICE, ASPICE, PKOSPICE. St. Behnabd. 
 
 WITH PLATES. 
 
 THE SECOND EDITION, IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL 11. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXI, 
 
 e-; 'i 1 3 2 

 
 t.lC« Cc4«« 
 
 ■ • 
 
 • • ' 
 
 Ht,Yiru dvQpai-ffots copiaasiv. — GALATIANS, T. 10. 
 *fi(TT£ sx^ios VIJ.WV yiyovx dXriQevcov viuy. — GALATIANS IV. lO. 
 
 4 Jfr- O iJ 
 
 London:— Printed by W. Clowes, Stamford-slreet.
 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 
 
 COLLOQUY XL 
 Infidelity. — Church Establishment .... 1 
 
 COLLOQUY XIL 
 Blencathra. — Threlkeld Tarn. — The Cliffords . . 59 
 
 PART 11. 
 Privileged Orders. — The American Governments . 83 
 
 COLLOQUY Xin. 
 The River Greta. — Trade. — Population.— Colonies . 150 
 
 COLLOQUY XIV. 
 The Library s ... 243 
 
 COLLOQUY XV. 
 The Conclusion 314 
 
 APPENDIX . 335 
 
 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 357
 
 DIRECTIONS FOR PLACING THE PLATES. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Crosth%vaite Church and Skiddaw Frontispiece. 
 
 Thralkeld Tarn to face page &b 
 
 Greta Hall, Derwentwater, and Newlands 150
 
 ON THE 
 
 PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS 
 
 OP 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 COLLOQUY XL 
 
 INFIDELITY.— CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Your last words, Sir Thomas, have left a weight 
 upon my mind. Nothing but religion, you 
 said, can preserve our social system from pu- 
 trescence and dissolution. This I entirely be- 
 lieve; and therefore a melancholy and fearful 
 apprehension comes over me when I contem- 
 plate the present state of the Christian world. 
 Throughout Papal Christendom there has been 
 substituted for Christianity a mass of corrup- 
 tions which nauseates the understanding, and 
 at which the reasonable heart revolts. And 
 in reformed countries I see the Church abroad, 
 for the most part, starved by the government, 
 and betrayed by the clergy; and, at home, 
 
 VOL. II. B
 
 ^ INFIDELITY. 
 
 assailed by greater danger than lias at any time 
 threatened it since the accession of Elizabeth, 
 when this nation was delivered from bondage. 
 In comparing the age of Luther with the pre- 
 sent times, this great difference is to be ob- 
 served, that Infidelity, which was rife enough 
 during the former period, kept safely then 
 under the wing of the Romish Church, and ex- 
 erted itself to uphold the system of imposture 
 with which it had coalesced, and by which it 
 flourished. It is strong enough now to claim 
 supremacy, and to struggle for it. At that 
 time it consisted simply in the disbelief of re- 
 ligion ; it now implies the hatred of it ; and, 
 while it is vehemently engaged against Popery 
 on the continent, acts in alliance with Popery, 
 with equal vehemence, against the ecclesiastical 
 Establishment here. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The difference is worthy of consideration, and 
 its causes are easily to be traced. All men 
 of learning in those days were, with very few 
 exceptions, either monks or clergy ; and they 
 were not so many but that the Church and the 
 Monasteries could provide for all. You have a 
 numerous and rapidly increasing class of literary 
 men, and a still more numerous one of persons 
 who take their opinions from them with as im-
 
 INFIDELITY. 3 
 
 plicit a faith, and as mucli prostration of intel- 
 lect, as the simplest peasant exhibits to the 
 wiliest priest. That a little learning is dan- 
 gerous, is true enough to have passed into a pro- 
 verb ; it is not less true that a very little suffices 
 for the stock in trade upon which the scribes 
 and scriveners of literature, who take upon them- 
 selves to direct the public, set up. Better edu- 
 cation, humbler minds, sounder intellects, hap- 
 pier dispositions, nay, even a more fortunate 
 position in society, might have enabled them to 
 perceive the truth of religion, and to understand 
 its paramount importance to the human race, 
 to the community of which they form a part, 
 and to their own happiness, temporal as well as 
 eternal. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Of too many of them, indeed, may it be said, 
 that 116* dubitare quidem sckint, qidbiis omnia con- 
 temner e ac nescire satis est. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Ignorance upon that subject is not to be ad- 
 mitted as an excuse f, or palliation, for those 
 
 * D. Heinsius, in the letter in which he gives an account 
 of Scaliger's death. 
 
 t ' As far as ignorance itself is excusable,' says Dean Sher- 
 lock, ' so far ignorance will excuse. But commonly igno- 
 ' ranee itself is a great crime; and, when it is so, if men shall 
 
 B 2
 
 4 INFIDELITY. 
 
 who have had the means and the opportunity of 
 knowledge. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 Lawyers have laid down that maxim without 
 any qualification. But the ways of God are 
 more merciful than those of man. He who falls 
 into the water has the natural means for saving 
 his life ; but, if he has never been taught to 
 exercise his limbs in swimmino- he sinks and 
 perishes. Surely this is his misfortune, not his 
 crime ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 In what manner is this illustration intended 
 to serve? 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 I would apply it to show, that there are cir- 
 cumstances which may be admitted in palliation 
 or excuse for neglecting the means and oppor- 
 tunities of knowledge. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 We are speaking of that knowledge whereby 
 men are rendered wise unto salvation. Let not 
 the evil heart of unbelief tempt you to presume 
 that the means of this kno\vled<2,'e can be neo-- 
 
 ' not be judged for llie sins wliicli they ignorantly commit, 
 ' yet they sliall be judged and condemned lor their ignorance, 
 ' as well as for their sins against knowledge.' — On Judgement^ 
 p. 307.
 
 INFIDELITY. O 
 
 lected -with impunity ! The condition of men 
 in this world, however wisely and virtuously 
 they may act, must depend, in no slight degree, 
 upon the conduct of others, upon circumstances, 
 and the chances of society. But their condi- 
 tion in a future state, their everlasting welfare, 
 depends wholly on themselves ; no chances, no 
 circumstances, no misconduct on the part of 
 others can deprive them of eternal happiness, 
 if they are true to themselves, and reject not 
 the proffered means of salvation. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Alas, that it should be so difficult for them to 
 believe* and love ! I know not which should be 
 regarded as the worst enemies of their fellow- 
 creatures, they who mislead and abuse our faith, 
 or they who labour with pestilent activity to 
 destroy it. Yet, perhaps, more evil is brought 
 about by indirect causes than by immediate ones; 
 and the ways of the world have greater influence 
 than the efforts of fanaticism and false philo- 
 sophy, in producing superstition and misbelief 
 
 * ' Let tliis meditation,' says Jackson, ' never slip out of 
 ' thy memory ; that seeing the last and principal end of all 
 ' graces bestowed upon us in this life, is rightly to believe in 
 ' Christ, this cannot be, as the drowsy worldling dreams, the 
 ' easiest, but rather the most difficult point of Christianity.' — 
 Vol. i. p. 780.
 
 6 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 on one hand, and unbelief on the other. The 
 religious culture of the mind is neglected in 
 youth, when its intellectual advancement in other 
 respects receives most attention ; and no sooner 
 have we attained to manhood, than we are de- 
 voted to some branch or other of ' that cold 
 business,' in which, as Ben Jonson says, ' a man 
 misspends the better part of life.' Care then 
 cankers the heart, or prosperity corrupts it ; the 
 fever of ambition seizes us, or we fall into the 
 morbus fatims of the worldly wise ; and practical 
 irreligion is thus produced even in those who 
 escape the malaria of infidelity. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Religious education, you say, is neglected. 
 Where does that sin of omission rest,, .with the 
 people, or with the clergy ? Is it a defect in the 
 institutions, or a fault in the customs of the 
 country ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 All have their share in it, ill customs, defec- 
 tive institutions, . .the clergy, who neglect their 
 duty in this particular, . . and the parents, who 
 leave undone what it is in their power to do. 
 To them, however, the least part of the omission 
 is imputable ; few mothers failing to instruct 
 their children as far as their own capabilities of 
 instructing extend. But it is one of the evils of
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 7 
 
 our schools, public and private, that the habits 
 of devotion which a boy learns at his mother's ' 
 knees are broken there, and the seeds of early- 
 piety destroyed. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 It has come to pass, then, in the changes of 
 society, that the very institutions which in their 
 origin were purely religious seminaries, are now 
 the places where religion may, in a certain sense, 
 be said to be unlearnt ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 To keep up so much of the practice of piety, as 
 is essential for the life and reality of religion, there 
 must be social worship and solitary prayer. For 
 the latter there is no opportunity at school, how- 
 ever much the boy himself may desire to observe 
 a custom, the importance of which he has duly 
 been taught to apprehend. But it is impossible 
 for him to do this in a common dormitory, or 
 even when other boys are lodged in the same 
 chamber. Few parents seem to be sensible of 
 this evil, though it may prove more deeply in- 
 jurious in its consequences than any other mis- 
 chief which may be deemed incidental to public 
 education. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The use of dormitories was continued from 
 the old establishments ; but the perpetual super-
 
 8 
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 intendence, which made a part of the conventual 
 system, was withdrawn. The evil is to be re- 
 medied by allotting to each his separate chamber, 
 and introducing just so much superintendence as 
 may secure its privacy. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 There may be too much superintendence, as 
 well as too little ; but this remedy would go far 
 towards putting an end to the tyranny exercised 
 by the senior boys, which is the worst evil that 
 the want of superintendence has produced. There 
 would be more difficulty in making social wor- 
 ship retain, or rather resume, its proper character 
 and uses ; the effect at present, both at schools 
 and universities, being to deaden the instinct of 
 piety, instead of cherishing and maturing it. 
 Here we have a difficulty which had no existence 
 in days when monasteries were the only semi- 
 naries of learning. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The pupils in such establishments saw that 
 the practice, or at least the profession, of reli- 
 gion, was the main business of life for those 
 under whose tuition they were placed, or by 
 whom they were surrounded. Moreover, it was 
 the service in which they had enlisted, and to 
 the higher grades of which they were looking 
 on ; by it they were to be elevated in society,
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 9 
 
 and it was the only means of elevation for those 
 who were not of noble birth ; by it they were 
 to obtain, at all events, security in an insecure 
 age, subsistence, respectability, ease and com- 
 fort : wealth and luxury were accessible to their 
 desires ; if ambition inclined that way, the 
 highest earthly dignities entered into their pro- 
 spect ; if it took a loftier direction, the higher 
 honours of altars and images might be reserved 
 for them at last. Here, then, everything tended 
 to make them feel the temporal and spiritual 
 importance of religion. If their minds were 
 not impressed by the ceremonials of a splendid 
 ritual, they were at least engaged in it; there 
 was something to occupy them, . . something 
 for the eye and the imagination. Should the 
 heart remain unaffected, it was, nevertheless, 
 entertained in a state which made it apt to re- 
 ceive devout impressions, and open to their in- 
 fluences. You threw away your crutches too 
 soon, mistaking the excitement of that fervour, 
 which the religious revolution called forth, for 
 confirmed and healthy strength. Now, when 
 the excitement has worn itself out, a stage of 
 languor has succeeded, which has a dangerous 
 tendency to terminate in torpor and indifference. 
 But this is an unnatural state of mind, for man 
 is a religious creature, and it is among those
 
 10 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 who seek to escape from it, that superstition 
 finds an eager demand for its opiates, or enthu- 
 siasm for its cordial elixirs. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I have smiled at seeing- little angels on horse- 
 back parading- in honour of some Nossa Senhora 
 of the thousand appellations. But these puppet- 
 shows of Popery have their use. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And the puppets also ; or that part of Pa- 
 ganism would never have been taken into the 
 ceremonials of a Priesthood which has possessed, 
 in full perfection, the wisdom* of this world ! 
 It is for a better wisdom to separate the help- 
 ful from the hurtful ; to reject whatever is incon- 
 sistent with pure and undefiled religion, and to 
 retain all that may assist in winning the heart 
 to its service. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 What the Romanists succeed in doing by the 
 worship of Saints and Angels, and by their 
 Marian religion, is effected by purer means in 
 those parts of Europe where the Reformed 
 
 * A modern historian talks of ' that ignora7ice of mankind 
 ' which Priests usually display !' As if any other class of men 
 ever had, or could have, from the nature of their functions, 
 half so much knowledge of human nature !
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. H 
 
 Church still lays ' the strong hand of her purity*' 
 upon her children. It is thus in Scotland, 
 wherever manufactures and infidelity are not 
 co-operating to corrupt the people. It is so in 
 the better parts of Switzerland, where the clergy 
 have not betrayed their trust. The youth of 
 both sexes there, when they have arrived at 
 years of discretion, receive a regular and care- 
 ful course of religious education, for which the 
 state provides : early tuition has prepared them 
 for this, . . and the effects of this intellectual con- 
 firmation are seen in their conduct through life. 
 They are made to understand the grounds and 
 foundation of their belief. They are trained up " 
 in the way that they should go, and their feet 
 depart not from it. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Wherefore is it not so with you ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 That it is not may be explained, but not ex- 
 cused, by observing, that crowded societies are ^ 
 less favourable to morals, and to piety, upon 
 which morals must be established, than simpler 
 and smaller communities ; but they afford full 
 opportunities for irreligion on one hand, and for 
 the contagious influences of enthusiasm and 
 
 * Wordsworth.
 
 12 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 
 
 bigotry on the other. There is the reason, 
 also, that the State has made no provision for 
 it ; an express provision, such as at this time 
 exists in Switzerland, was not needed formerly ; 
 and the instruction which Sunday-schools can 
 afford is discontinued at an earlier age than 
 that at which the Swiss course of confirmation 
 (as it may be called) begins. But even primary 
 instruction is insufficiently supplied. The in- 
 crease of population, while the Church Esta- 
 blishment has remained as the Reformation left 
 it, renders it impossible for the clergymen to 
 perform the business of a catechist, except in 
 small parishes ; and the course of domestic in- 
 struction is broken by the custom, long since 
 general in the middle and higher classes, of 
 sending boys to school. But nowhere is a boy 
 in so ill a disposition to receive religious lessons 
 as at school, and perhaps nowhere are lessons 
 so ill taught. My old master. Dr. Vincent, 
 endeavoured to repel this charge, as it affects 
 public schools, when it was brought against 
 them some five-and-twenty years ago by Dr. 
 Renncll. He took up the argument with natural 
 feeling, and becoming warmth, in defence of 
 an establishment with which he had been so 
 long and so honourably connected, and he wrote, 
 as he always did, vigorously and well. But the
 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 18 
 
 case failed him ; lie could only show tliat books 
 of cateclietical instruction were used in the 
 school, that Scriptural exercises made a part of 
 the course, and that theological lectures were 
 read to the King's scholars. So far is well ; 
 there is no fault of omission here, and what is 
 done is performed as well as it there can be. It 
 is true, also, that the school is always opened 
 and prorogued with a short prayer, and that in 
 the boarding houses prayers are read every night 
 by the head boy of the house ; . . but performed 
 as this is, and necessarily must be, it were better 
 left undone. And Vincent did not reflect on 
 the effect of compulsory attendance at divine 
 service, at times when the service is merely per- 
 functory, and under circumstances which render 
 attention to the duties of the place, at all times, 
 impossible. Public worship is never presented 
 in so unattractive, . . almost, I might say, in so 
 irreligious a form^ . . as it is to schoolboys. 
 Now, though we are, as you have justly said, 
 religious creatures, (and it is the noblest dis- 
 tinction of human nature that we are so,) youth 
 is not the season of life in which the develop- 
 ment of our religious instinct naturally takes 
 place ; in boyhood it must be awakened, and 
 requires to be kept up by continual culture. 
 Habitual irreverence soon deadens, even if it
 
 14 INFIDELITY. 
 
 does not destroy it; but habitual irreverence 
 is what is learnt at school, and certainly not un- 
 learnt at college. A distaste is thus acquired 
 for public worship, . . not to say a dislike for it ; 
 and young men, when they become their own 
 masters, cease to frequent church, because they 
 have been so long compelled to attend its ser- 
 vice in an unfit state of mind. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Such absentees are, probably, more easily 
 made Dissenters, than they can be brought 
 back to the fold which they have once forsaken. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Men who have received this higher education, 
 seldom enter into the ranks of dissent; their 
 connexions in life are rarely such as would lead 
 them towards the meeting-house. A few be- 
 come Socinians ; and perhaps there are more 
 who pass from cold indifference to a feverish 
 state of what may better be called religiosity 
 than religion, for little charity can be perceived 
 in it, and less humility. Professional engage- 
 ments bring back a greater number into the 
 right way, and keep them there. Others are 
 restored by the gentle and natural effects of 
 time, or the sharper discipline of affliction, which 
 teaches them where to find the only source of 
 comfort, the only balm for a wounded heart,
 
 INFIDELITY. 15 
 
 the only rest for an immortal spirit. But too 
 many fall into habits of practical irreligion, and, 
 according as there may be more or less of vanity 
 and presumptuousness in their disposition, be- 
 come the proselytes or the propagandists of 
 speculative impiety. Even while the Jews were 
 living under a visible dispensation, and before 
 the Glory had departed from the Temple, fools 
 were to be found among them, who said in their 
 heart, there is no God. Much more may this 
 worst and deadliest infatuation be expected to 
 show itself in these latter times, when so great 
 a part of mankind live as if there were none, 
 and when the ways of the world, its pursuits and 
 its* pleasures, its follies, and, .. Heaven help 
 
 * I would not, however, be understood as if assenting to 
 Paley's assertion, tliat ' the world, even in its innocent pur- 
 ' suits and pleasures, has a tendency unfavourable to the 
 ' religious sentiment.' (Sermon I.) Surely this is not the 
 case with its innocent pleasures, some of which directly induce 
 devotional feelings ! St. Pierre has a pretty story which is 
 applicable here. 
 
 ' Un jour, jni de me.s amis fid voir un Chartreux ; cetoit 
 ' ail mois de Mai. Le jardin du solitaire etoit convert de 
 '' Jiexirs dans les plates-bandes ei sitr les espaliers. Pour lui, 
 ' il s etoit renfe.rme dans sa chambre, ou Von ne voyoit goutte. 
 ' Pourquoi, lui dit mon ami, avez-vous ferme vos volets ? 
 
 * C'est, lui repondit le Chartreux, ajin de mediter sans dis- 
 
 • traction sur les attributs de Dieu. Eh ! pensez-vous, reprit 
 ' mon ami, en trouver de plus grands dans voire tele, que ne
 
 16 INFIDELITY. 
 
 US ! . . its philosophies, have interposed an at- 
 mosphere of darkness palpable between us and 
 the light of His presence, though in that light 
 only is there life ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Is the proportion of those who are thus dwel- 
 ling in darkness and in the shadow of death, as 
 great among you, as it is in the countries where 
 the Romish Church has maintained its do- 
 minion ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The classes among whom infidelity prevails, 
 are different. In the most unbelieving of Romish 
 countries the lower orders believe whatever the 
 priest tells them : . . utterly as they may disregard 
 his moral precepts, and habitually as they may 
 break every injunction in the decalogue, they 
 never doubt the efficacy of his absolution, nor the 
 saving mercy of the Magna Mater. Population 
 has not increased there as it has with us ; it has 
 not outgrown the means of religious instruction, 
 such as that instruction is. But we have a nu- 
 merous class of people, which is scarcely known 
 in any other part of Europe, bred in the filth and 
 
 * vovs en monlre. la nature an mois de mai? Croyez-inoi, 
 ' ouvrez vos volets, el fcrmez voire imagination.' — Harmonies 
 de la Nature, t. i. p. 332.
 
 INFIDELITY. 1 7 
 
 corruption of large towns and manufacturing dis- 
 tricts, and allowed to grow up in that corruption 
 as much neglected, and consequently becoming 
 as depraved, as the vagrants of former times, 
 against whom so many, and such severe laws, 
 were enacted. These people are unbelievers, 
 just as savages are, . . (shame to us that they 
 should be so !) because, as far as regards all 
 moral culture, all needful instruction, all human- 
 izing and redeeming influences, they are left like 
 savages, in the very midst of cultivated society. 
 Bad as the consequences of this most culpable 
 omission on the part of Government have been, 
 and continue to be, they must have been far 
 more hideous and appalling if Methodism had 
 not intervened, and carried with it humanity and 
 civilization, as far as it has spread, among these 
 poor perishing creatures. Here, then, the differ- 
 ence between England and other countries is to 
 our disadvantage and disgrace. If w^e look to 
 the classes next above these, we shall find that 
 speculative infidelity has descended lower among 
 us than it has done where the arrangements of 
 society are less complicated and artificial. There 
 is no other country, France alone excepted, in 
 which the poison is openly prepared for the 
 people. There, indeed, the writings of Voltaire 
 are circulated with as much zeal by one party, 
 
 VOL. II. c
 
 IB INFIDELITY. 
 
 as the lying and blasphemous legends of a frau- 
 dulent superstition are by another ; but if the 
 former party are more successful in the metro- 
 polis and in large towns, the propogandists of 
 the Monkish and Marian* religion have greater 
 facilities for distributing their wares throughout 
 the provinces ; and none of that mischief is even 
 attempted there which is carried on throughout 
 these kingdoms by periodical publications, daily, 
 weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and by some or 
 other of these introduced into the remotest parts 
 of the country. There are few towns, however 
 small, in which a knot of scoffers and infidels 
 may not be found in the lower walks of life, 
 disciples usually of. some sharp-witted, ready- 
 tongued, and coarse-minded unbeliever, who 
 has cast off the restraints of duty, and is too 
 ignorant even to suspect himself of any deficiency 
 in knowledge. There is scarcely a village into 
 which opinions hostile to the Church Establish- 
 ment, and to Christianity itself, are not carried, 
 in the former case insolently, in the latter with 
 
 4 
 
 more or less disguise, to the alehouse fireside, 
 
 * I thank the Jesuits ' for teacliiiig me tliat word.' (Ma- 
 cedo. Divi Tutelarcs, p. 75.) Fr. Wichmans (a Norbortine, or 
 Premontren, Canon of Tongcrloo) addresses liis Brabantia 
 Mariana, Lectori Mariano, ..a. most useful distinction tliis 
 between the Christian and the Marian faitli !
 
 INFIDELITY. 19 
 
 by some provincial journal, professedly enlisted 
 in the service of a political faction, but aiming 
 directly at this end. Moreover, there are London 
 booksellers w^ho carry on a trade in blasphemy, 
 and their productions, which are as ignorant 
 as they are impious, are dispersed gratuitously. 
 I have heard of instances in which country 
 tradesmen have received them with their goods ; 
 should they be addressed to a person of good 
 principles, who resents such an importation, 
 the plea is, that they had been made use of as 
 waste paper, without any knowledge of their 
 contents ; but the desired object is gained if, as 
 is more likely, they fall into the hands of shop- 
 men, or shopboys, who are in a state to receive 
 the infection. Whence the funds are derived 
 for this distribution, and for supporting the fre- 
 quent prosecutions which have been brought 
 against the publishers and venders of such poi- 
 sons, has not come to light : but there are 
 amateurs of infidelity in high life ; this is one of 
 the ways in which superfluous wealth has been 
 misemployed, and in no way can its misapplica- 
 tion have produced more misery and evil. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Misery and evil, indeed, for those who are 
 taken in the snare, . . and for those who spread it ; 
 for woe to them by whom the offence cometh ! 
 
 c 2
 
 20 INFIDELITY, 
 
 But it is not thus that a nation can be made 
 irrelio-ious. Relig-ion is too natural a feelins:, 
 too essential to the being-, too necessary for the 
 heart of man, for its general influence to be sus- 
 pended, or even endangered by such means, so 
 lono- as it shall be seen and known to exist in 
 any part of the community as a living and actu- 
 ating principle. And this it "vvill ever be in 
 countries where it has once been firmly esta- 
 blished, in however corrupt a form. Opinions 
 may be changed, belief may be shaken, institu- 
 tions modified or subverted, a false system may 
 even prevail over the true ; but while men are 
 subject to disease, infirmity, and affliction, and 
 death, the good never will exist Avithout the 
 hopes of religion, the wicked never without its 
 fears. The vulgar retailers of infidelity can 
 never shake this foundation. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 Alas ! for human nature, when those hopes 
 and fears are no long-er under the reo'ulation of 
 a reasonable faith ! When ho})e and fear break 
 loose from that restraint, men become priest- 
 ridden or devil-ridden, and yield themselves up 
 to the horrors of tlie bloodiest Heathenism, or to 
 the loathsome and pitiable extravagancies of tlie 
 basest Monkery, as frightened horses plunge from
 
 INFIDELITY. 21 
 
 a precipice, or dash themselves headlong against 
 whatever opposes their way. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You, however, are in a state of society wherein 
 the one of these extremes is impossible, the other 
 not to be apprehended. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 Great and irreparable injury may, neverthe- 
 less, be done. Even such miserable labourers 
 loosen the cement of society, while the more 
 skilful engineers of evil are sapping and mining, 
 and preparing the train for an explosion. As 
 yet, however, the mischief has not spread widely 
 in this lower grade ; and it is precisely in that 
 grade, also, that the counteracting spirit of fa- 
 naticism operates with most effect : and although 
 men pass, as may be expected, from one extreme 
 to the other, it is generally, by God's mercy, to- 
 ward the better that they gravitate at last. But, 
 in the educated classes, the balance of religious 
 feeling is as much in favour of England, when 
 compared with Roman-Catholic countries, as it 
 may seem to be against it in the inferior ones. 
 True it is that young men, who have just entered 
 upon manhood, if they have an ambitious pro- 
 pensity for intellectual exercitation, and if the 
 foundation has either been neglected or unwisely 
 laid, pass commonly through a stage of scepti-
 
 22 
 
 INFIDELITY. 
 
 cism, or unbelief; presumptuous youth is as 
 liable to it as childhood to the small-pox and 
 measles ; the disease, too, is as rife and con- 
 tagious as either, and sometimes draws after it 
 injurious consequences, which long continue to 
 be felt, sometimes lays fatal hold. True it is 
 that there are circles where dogmatical Atheism 
 struts and crows upon its dunghill ;. . that it has 
 laid its eggs in seminaries founded for far other 
 purposes, where its cockatrices are hatched and 
 fostered, and from whence they come into the 
 walks of life, hissing, wriggling, and venomous. 
 True it is that there is an active and inHuential 
 party in literature and in the state with whom 
 blank unbelief is the esoteric doctrine, and who 
 seek on all occasions industriously to wound and 
 weaken what public opinion, and a regard to 
 their own interest, withholds them from attack- 
 ing openly. But the great and quiet body of 
 the English gentry walk in the ways of their 
 fathers, and hold fast to that Church for which 
 Laud and his King suft'ered on the scaffold, and 
 the noble army of our earlier martyrs at the 
 stake. They hold to it with a sober and sedate, 
 but sincere and strono- attachment. Even the 
 Dissenters, who rise into this rank, seldom con- 
 tinue in their nonconformity : their views are 
 altered with their station ; they see and under-
 
 INFIDELITY. 23 
 
 stand what they had before precluded them- 
 selves -from seeino- and understanding: : and if 
 they do not become conformists themselves, suffer 
 their children to become so. The same here- 
 ditary and rooted feeling prevails among- the 
 yeomanry of the land. Here, then, we have a 
 strong' ground of hope and confidence on which 
 to rest. But our strongest is in the Church 
 itself, and in the character of its ministers. In 
 Roman-Catholic states, and more especially in 
 those which are most Catholic, and most Papal, 
 infidelity is as common among the higher and 
 better educated clergy, as the grossest super- 
 stition is among those who are taken, with little 
 education, from the lower order of the people. 
 Among the clergy of the Church of England, 
 there may be some who believe and tremble ; 
 and a few, (they are but few,) who are false to 
 the Establishment in which they are beneficed, 
 and would let the wolf into the fold ; but, if 
 there be an Infidel among them, it is known only 
 to that Almighty and Most Merciful Father to 
 whom all hearts are open, and from whom no 
 secrets are hid. Such a man may live self- 
 reproached, but his want of belief will never 
 infect others, . . it will be a hidden wound,. . quod 
 proxima nesciat uxor.
 
 24 INFIDELITY, 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The heart of England then, in this respect, 
 is sound ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 An unbelieving clergyman would be regarded 
 as a monster. And, as this is one of the heal- 
 thiest symptoms of public feeling, so is it one of 
 the most remarkable points of difference between 
 the state of the English and of the Romish 
 Church. For in Roman-Catholic countries, even 
 where the Inquisition is established, the Infidel 
 Priest may always have a circle as well among 
 his own brethren, as the laity, wherein he would 
 think it a reproach were he supposed to believe 
 in the religion which he professes. In that circle 
 his understanding would be impeached by such 
 a supposition : but it is no impeachment of his 
 integrity that he continues publicly to profess 
 what the laws will not permit him to abjure. He 
 must go on with his part in the drama of delu- 
 sion ; or he must cast himself upon the world a 
 voluntary exile, exposed to all the privations and 
 miseries of that condition ; or he must remain, and 
 suffer martyrdom : and how should he be expected 
 to bear this testimony against falsehood, who is 
 ready with Pilate to ask, ' What is truth?' 
 being, like Pilate, in that pitiable state of mind 
 which conceives that no answer can be given
 
 ROMISH INFIDELITY, 25 
 
 to tlie question ! One fatal error, which is most 
 carefully inculcated, keeps its hold upon him, 
 when he has shaken off the authority of his 
 Church in other respects ; he still supposes 
 Christianity to be such as that Church in its 
 dogmas and rituals represents it ; in no other 
 form has it ever been presented to his consider- 
 ation, and he never thinks of turning from the 
 mythology of the Breviary to the religion of the 
 Gospel. Meantime, the exercise of his office 
 tends to confirm him in his unbelief. He is 
 engaged in functions which, when performed by 
 one who does not implicity believe himself to be 
 invested with the portentous attributes which 
 he assumes, must sear the conscience, and far- 
 ther indurate the already hardened heart. He 
 performs the daily routine of a service, in which, 
 indeed, there is much that in itself is good, but 
 in which it is not less certainly true, that folly 
 and imposture stare him in the face ; he sees 
 the weakness of human nature, and too much 
 of its wickedness, also, is laid open to him ; till, 
 learning at last to congratulate himself that his 
 lot in life has been assigned among knaves in- 
 stead of dupes, (for into these classes it is that 
 he divides mankind,) he says complacently, 
 ' popidus milt decipi et dcciinetiir,' . . as so many 
 of his fraternity have said before him, and so
 
 26 ROMISH INFIDELITY. 
 
 many say with him at this day. Let it not be 
 supposed that men cannot attain to this fearful 
 state without a strong- predominance of evil in 
 their nature ! Such persons may have, and are 
 likely to have better dispositions, as well .as 
 better understandings, than those who, being 
 found unfit for any other branch of ecclesiastical 
 service, are, for that reason, destined* to preside 
 over matters of faith as members of the Holy 
 Office ! The more selfish sensualists, the tho- 
 roughly profligate, the sollicitantes, are as likely 
 to be found among those Priests who trust in 
 the validity of absolution, and expect to buy 
 themselves ofl' from Purgatory, or at the worst to 
 be prayed out of it in some reasonable time, as 
 among those who doubt of every thing beyond 
 the grave, and standing in no awe of judgement 
 to come, trouble themselves with no devices 
 
 * Tliat this was the case in the Spanish Universities we 
 learn from Dr. Villanucva. ' Era voz comun e/itotices (he is 
 ' speaking of the reign of Charles III.) que para los mas 
 ' hahiles de aqnellos colegios (que cierlamente los hubo) eran, 
 ' por lo general las 7nUras, y las dignidades y canongias, 
 ' especialmciite las de q/icio: y en el orden civil las logas de 
 ' las audiencias, chancillerias y consejos supremos ; y para 
 ' los incplos las plazas de Inquisicion ; d cuyo propSsilo se 
 ' decia con escandalo, y lo oi yo muchas veces, proestet fides 
 ' supplementum.' — Vida Liieraria de D. Joaquin Lorenzo 
 Villanueva, t. i. p. 11.
 
 ROMISH INFIDELITY. 27 
 
 for eludino- it. Ministers of the Romish Church, 
 though they be persons of natural piety, good 
 feelings, and virtuous aspirations, may fall into 
 the state of infidelity which I have described ; 
 and such in melancholy truth were they who are 
 present to my thoughts while I speak, . . for 
 the picture has been taken from reality : . . men 
 far above the standard of their countrymen ; 
 richly gifted with moral not less than intellec- 
 tual endowments ; just, generous, high-minded, 
 and gentle-hearted ; respected and admired and 
 loved by all around them, but most so by those 
 who knew them best ; men who, in more favour- 
 able circumstances, might have been the pride 
 of their country, and the benefactors of their 
 kind, as they were the ornament, and the de- 
 light of the circle in which they moved ; but 
 who have perished miserably, and guiltily, in 
 revolutionary movements, . . because the root of 
 religion was wanting in them, and they ventured 
 to do evil in the hope that good might follow. 
 God be merciful to them, for His dear Son's 
 sake ! I will not think that the sin of rejecting 
 Him can be laid to their charge, for in truth 
 they knew Him not I They ' did it ignorantly, in 
 unbelief* !' 
 
 * 1 Tim. i. 13.
 
 28 ENGLISH CLERGY. 
 
 But these painful recollections have drawn me 
 from the point. . . Let us contrast without re- 
 ference to any such catastrophe, the situation 
 of a Romish Priest thus gifted, and thus dis- 
 posed, with that of a young man who has entered 
 into holy orders in the English Church, not 
 so much from any predilection of his own, 
 as in conformity to the destination which has 
 been chosen for him, and because preferment 
 is within his reach, or his prospect ; . . let us 
 suppose him to be one who has not paid more 
 attention to the evidences and doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, than was required for passing an easy 
 examination ; and who, from vanity, half-know- 
 ledge, presumptuousness, and love of display, 
 might very probably, if he had followed any 
 other profession, have run, with all sails set, upon 
 the shallows of infidelity. Have I taken a fair 
 case ? 
 
 SIR THOMAS MOllE. 
 
 Certainly not too favourable a one on your 
 own side. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Such a man, however unspiritual, however 
 unworthy the motives which have influenced his 
 choice, places himself, nevertheless, in a situa- 
 tion favourable to liis mental and spiritual im- 
 provement. His profession imposes upon him
 
 ENGLISH CLERGY. 29 
 
 just SO much restraint as is salutary for his moral 
 and intellectual nature, nothing- more ; nothing- 
 against which the heart rises, or the understand- 
 ing- revolts. The discharge of his functions 
 tends to strengthen, to stablish, and to quicken 
 his belief, not to shake, or torpify it. The 
 service which he is called upon to perform deals 
 not in legends which, beyond all possibility of 
 dissembling to himself the conviction, he feels 
 and knows to be absurd and false. Instead of 
 these, he delivers in our fine liturgy the doc- 
 trines of Christianity pui-e and undefiled ; its 
 proofs are before him in the Bible, opening 
 more and more upon the willing mind, the more 
 it is perused ; it is a regular part of his office to 
 enforce its precepts, and in so doing he cannot 
 but become sensible of their unspeakable im- 
 portance. He is not requested to act in any 
 thing which he suspects or knows to be a juggle, 
 such as the exhibition of relics, the worship of 
 wonder-working images, and the performance 
 of miracles. He is not exposed to the pollutions 
 of the Confessional. His professional library 
 is neither filled with extravagant and impious 
 fictions, which he is required to believe, and in 
 the service of the Church must deliver to the 
 people for imdoubted and sacred truths ; nor 
 of books of casuistry, which sophisticate the
 
 30 ENGLISH CLERGY. 
 
 understanding and defile the heart ; nor of rhap- 
 sodies of idolatrous and carnal devotion : instead 
 of these he has the works of our English divines, 
 who, with erudition and philosophy, and elo- 
 quence, which have not been, and cannot be, 
 surpassed, vindicate the authority of Scripture, 
 expound its truths, and apply its all-important 
 doctrines. All circumstances thus contribute 
 to render him a sincere and faithful minister, 
 even though his first profession should have 
 been merely formal. Once embarked, he is 
 borne along upon the main stream of belief; 
 there are neither rocks, shoals, nor rapids in his 
 course, no side eddies which may hurry him 
 back, no whirlpools wherein he may be absorbed 
 and lost. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You have taken for your comparison on the 
 one side men of superior and ambitious talents, 
 and on the other, persons who, possessing fair 
 abilities and easy tempers, may with little diffi- 
 culty be inclined to good or evil, but escape evil 
 because they are not led into temptation. And 
 you argue that the latter, if they were Roman 
 Catholic Priests, would not fall into the same 
 happy and facile belief; and that the former 
 would not be exposed to the same danger of in- 
 fidelity in the Anglican as in the Papal Church.
 
 ENGLISH CLERGY. 31 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I argue thus upon assumptions wliicli, were 
 it required, I am prepared by fair reasoning 
 to prove, that the circumstances of the English 
 Church are likely to confirm and invigorate the 
 belief of its ministers ; but that in the Romish, 
 the heart instinctively revolts against the unna- 
 tural privations which are imposed upon it, and 
 the understanding against the gross and tan- 
 gible falsehoods with which the doctrine and 
 practice of that Church are so intermingled and 
 overlaid, that religion is represented in the garb 
 of mythology, and truth itself wears the sem- 
 blance of imposture. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 I am not disposed to call in question either 
 of these assumptions. But you present your 
 Anglican Clergyman as a contrast to the Infidel 
 Romanist, not as a representative likeness of his 
 brethren. Is he above or below the general 
 standard ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I know not in what manner the mean stan- 
 dard could be computed : the character which 
 I have imagined is a common one. Undoubt- 
 edly there are many, very many, far above it in 
 intellectual, moral, and spiritual qualifications ;
 
 32 ENGLISH CLERGY. 
 
 but too surely those who fall below it are likely 
 to be more numerous. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Too surely they must be so. For it is not 
 possible that men, properly qualified by educa- 
 tion and manners, should be found for starved 
 benefices ; nor likely that the proper qualifica- 
 tions of heart and understandino- should o-ene- 
 rally be possessed by persons who are destined 
 for the priesthood, merely because in that pro- 
 fession they may with most facility be advan- 
 tageously settled in life. In the former class, 
 coarse, and sometimes scandalous, livers will, 
 of necessity, be found : among- the latter there 
 must be not a few, who, though they may avoid 
 open scandal, are more likely to find the Esta- 
 blishment serviceable to them, than to render 
 service to the Establishment. The latter in- 
 convenience belongs to the system of patronage, 
 and may be remedied so far as Government 
 may be convinced that it is its policy, and in- 
 dividuals that it is their duty, to dispose of it 
 witli a righteous regard to character. There is 
 an awful responsibility upon both ! This is less 
 likely to be felt by Government, because, thougli 
 bodies of men have a general sense of honour, 
 they have no general sense of conscience. They 
 may, however, be made to understand their in-
 
 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 33 
 
 terest ; blind indeed must they be, if in this 
 matter they do not distinctly see it ! But where 
 will you find a remedy for the inconvenience 
 which the impoverishment of the Church pro- 
 duces? ' Ad tenuitatem Beneficiorum necessarid 
 ' sequitiir ignorantia Sacerdotum.'' And long be- 
 fore he who is called the Panormitan wrote thus, 
 it was remarked by a Roman Satirist, that po- 
 verty brings with it nothing harder for men to 
 endure than the contempt to which it rendei's 
 them subject. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 Undoubtedly this was the principal cause of 
 that contempt into which the Clergy had fallen 
 in the days of Eachard and Stackhouse ; and it 
 is at this day one great and never-failing cause 
 of the increase of Methodism, and of the various 
 Dissenting sects. Wherever there is a worldling, 
 who takes no other care of his flock than to look 
 after the wool at shearing time, . . wherever the 
 shepherd neglects his charge, or is incompetent 
 to it, . . wherever the charge is greater than even 
 the best will, and the utmost exertions can per- 
 form, there the Dissenter, or the Methodist, steps 
 in. A wide field of opportunity is thus opened 
 to them in those parishes, scattered throuohout 
 the land, which are in the hands of unworthy, or 
 inefticient incumbents, . .and in all those exten- 
 
 » VOL. 11. D
 
 34 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 sive districts, where mines or riianufactures have 
 brought together a swarming population. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Mark here how curiously opposite causes are 
 operating alike to the detriment and danger of 
 your Church Establishment ! Both its wealth 
 and its poverty bring into it persons who want 
 either the natural fitness, or the acquirements 
 necessary for the proper discharge of their duty. 
 Its wealth exposes it to envy and rapaciousness ; 
 its poverty to contempt. Against envy and ra- 
 paciousness it were unreasonable to expect that 
 any reasoning should avail. They who hate the 
 Church will seek to destroy it ; and erring con- 
 science makes this the duty of all those who 
 conscientiously dissent from it : and should your 
 Government in a season of financial difficulty be 
 under the direction of illprincipled politicians, or 
 unprincipled ones, a compromise with its ene- 
 mies might be apprehended. But this evil (in 
 its certain consequences the worst that could 
 befall the nation, for it woidd bring down, as 
 with an earthquake, the whole fabric of your 
 prosperity). . .this evil never can be brought to 
 pass, even with all the eiforts which are con- 
 tinually making for that wicked end, and all 
 the causes whicli unhappily facilitate and assist 
 them, . .if the people are made sensible that there
 
 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 35 
 
 is no property so beneficially distributed for the 
 general good as that which, by the wisdom not 
 less than the piety of their forefathers, was set 
 apart to be a provision for the ministers of the 
 altar. The English are a sober people. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Charles I. bore testimony to that part of their 
 character, at a time when they were most infa- 
 tuated. But error has ever an easier access to 
 the mind than truth, when it addresses itself to 
 the weak and selfish and corrupt part of human 
 nature. Let any person in the middle ranks of 
 life, who knows anything of his ancestry for two 
 or three generations, ask himself what benefit 
 they have derived, and he himself in conse- 
 quence, from so much of the church property as 
 may have fallen to their portion in its service ; 
 and then let him calculate whether he and they 
 would have been gainers, even in this low, 
 pounds-shillings-and-pence point of view, if there 
 had been no such charge upon the land as that 
 of tithes ! Let any parent, who has a diligent and 
 hopeful son at school or at college, ask himself 
 whether the youth's chance in life would be as 
 good as it is, if the Church lands were secular- 
 ized, if tithes were abolished and the clergy left, 
 like the Dissenting ministers, to depend upon 
 their congregations ?.. And if we had Dukes of 
 
 D 2
 
 36 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 Durliam and Winchester, instead of Bishops, 
 would the lands attached to the title be more 
 productive, or the tenants sit at easier rents ? 
 Should it not, on the other hand, seem as evi- 
 dent as it is certain, that every one is interested 
 in upholding an establishment by means of which 
 some of the public wealth is set apart to be dis- 
 posed of, not by the accident of birth, but among 
 those who may deserve it by their learning, their 
 abilities, and their character ; and that, too, under 
 the notorious condition, that without character 
 neither learning nor abilities, however eminent, 
 will be reofarded as a claim ? . . a distribution 
 whereby no man has been, is, or can be injured, 
 while some scores of individuals in every gene- 
 ration are raised by it to stations of dignity, and 
 some hundreds of families placed in respectabi- 
 lity and comfort ? And yet the wealth of the 
 Church, which, when thus regarded, might be 
 thought necessarily to secure it, by connecting 
 its preservation with tlie plain, tangible interest 
 of every household, from the highest to the 
 lowest, is, on the contrary, a cause of danger at 
 this time, because men will not thus reasonably 
 regard it. Already voices are heard in Parlia- 
 ment recommending a second spoliation ! A ge- 
 neration ago, if any man had ventured to utter 
 in cither House the unprotestant, unchristian, un-
 
 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 37 
 
 English wisli, the g-eneral feeling would have put 
 him down, and that with a force from which he 
 would not easily have risen again : now, he is 
 heard with applause by one party, and too often 
 without rebuke from those who ought to know 
 that such opinions should never be allowed to 
 pass unrebuked, because, if they are unanswered, 
 they are represented to be unanswerable. Com- 
 binations are formed for ridding the land of what 
 Political Economists call the burden of the tithes. 
 Mr. Pitt, among his other errors, gave ear to 
 this, and at one time entertained an intention of 
 selling them. Men with worse intentions, and 
 no better judgement, will gladly avail themselves 
 of his authority for promoting so injurious a 
 measure. It may be looked to as one conse- 
 quence which would follow upon the admission 
 of the Roman-Catholics into Parliament. For 
 in that case the Test Act must, of course, be 
 abolished ; of course, I say, because the well- 
 meaning but short-sighted men, by whose con- 
 sent the fence had been broken to let the foxes 
 in, would find it impossible afterwards to keep 
 the wolves out. The Dissenters, who would 
 then in a far greater proportion find their way 
 into the House, would league there with the 
 Unbelievers; and some of the Squirarchy, wlio 
 are not lay-impropriators, might be duped into 
 
 6 4 '^ 2 2
 
 38 
 
 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 tlie alliance. The Romanists would faithfully 
 follow the Vatican's old policy of promoting any- 
 thing which should injure the Anglican Church. 
 And by such a combination tlie tithes would be 
 offered as a resource to some distressed admini- 
 stration in difficult times, . .even if the Govern- 
 ment should not have been previously delivered 
 into the hands of what Johnson called our bot- 
 tomless Whigs, . . Avhich it must be before a 
 measure so full of mortal danger, so directly in 
 opposition to the principles upon which the Pro- 
 testant Succession was established, as that of 
 admitting the Roman-Catholics into Parliament, 
 and thereby investing men with power in the 
 State, whose bounden religious duty it is to use 
 every endeavour for re-establishing the Roman- 
 Catholic Church in this kingdom, can possibly 
 be effected. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Take into the account of this danger that 
 which in such a case would arise from the ex- 
 istence of an increasing sect like the Methodists, 
 with an embodied and efficient hierarchy, pro- 
 fessing to hold the doctrines of the Establish- 
 ment, and assenting to its ritual, and its whole 
 discipline, saving only such parts as it suits their 
 present convenience to dispense with. A minister 
 of Thomas Cromwell's stamp, or one who, like
 
 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 39 
 
 Jane Seymour's brother, thinks such edifices as 
 Glastonbury Abbey might beneficially be con- 
 verted into manufactories, might make his bar- 
 gain with a popular sect for undertaking the 
 business of public religion at a reduced rate ; 
 and he would take credit to himself when he 
 laid the arrangement before Parliament, in his 
 Budo-et, for a measure of economical reform. 
 The desire of fame which is felt by such men ex- 
 tends not beyond a nine days' popularity, . . and 
 their foresight of consequences hardly reaches 
 so far ! 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 Something of this kind took place in the great 
 triumph of hypocrisy and fanaticism (always the 
 most loving of allies) under the second and 
 greater Cromwell ; or rather before he had taken 
 into his hands the power, which, htid it lawfully 
 been placed there, he, of all living men, was 
 most worthy to have wielded. The treacherous 
 Presbyterians, by whom the Church Establish- 
 ment was betrayed, and who helped themselves 
 liberally out of its spoils, made such an arrange- 
 ment, set up the discipline and the Directory, 
 and slew an Archbishop, as an acceptable sacri- 
 fice to the Lord, upon their installation. The 
 danger of which we speak seemed probable to 
 me when I first began to look into the system of
 
 40 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 tlie Methodists ; but, upon further knowledge 
 and reflection, methinks it is hardly to be con- 
 sidered as among the contingencies of evil that 
 await us. They appear to have attained the 
 point beyond which they are not likely, in this 
 country, to make any considerable advance, be- 
 cause their sects and sub-sects intercept the 
 recruits who would otherwise be added to the 
 old body ; these will in like manner be again 
 divided, carrying the principle of schism in their 
 constitution, as grafts take with them the dis- 
 eases of the parent stock : and any coalition 
 among them is less likely, than the return of a 
 respectable portion to the Establishment from 
 which they have been led astray. The danger, 
 if there be any of this kind, would rather be from 
 the Calvinistic Methodists, and the Calvinizing 
 Clergy, who spread themselves among more in- 
 fluential classes, and who have already a party 
 in the Church. But I do not regard this with 
 any serious apprehension. For although many 
 sects and parties would combine, and indeed 
 have already combined, for the work of demo- 
 lition, yet, when the plans for rebuilding came 
 under consideration, the old disagreements be- 
 tween them would break out more virulently 
 than ever, and the confusion at Babel woidd be 
 represented to the life. This is well understood
 
 CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 41 
 
 by their allies, the Infidels and the Romanists, 
 each of -which hope to have the field at last to 
 themselves. But neither will the one succeed 
 in their desire of destroying Christianity, nor 
 the other in re-establishing the religion of St. 
 Dominic and St. Dunstan. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Whereon is this confidence founded which 
 you so decidedly express ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 On the promises and the providence of God. 
 
 ' There are many devices in a man's heart ; 
 
 ' nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that 
 ' shall stand*.' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But Providence works always by human 
 means, giving or withholding its blessings ac- 
 cording as the ways of men are good or evil. 
 The best institutions will not support them- 
 selves if they be vigorously attacked, and feebly 
 defended : and with you, zeal and activity are 
 on the erring side. Is it that they have not the 
 same opportunities of entering the church, . . 
 or not the same encouragement if they are found 
 there ? 
 
 * Proverbs xix. 21.
 
 42 POOR SCHOLARS. 
 
 MOXTESIKOS. 
 
 The latter part of the question may be 
 answered as I could wish. There is at this 
 time greater encouraQ;ement than has been 
 known since the accession of the House of 
 Hanover, from which time, for full half a cen- 
 tury, the interests of religion were scandalously 
 disregarded. Now, though men are sometimes 
 promoted undeservedly, desert, where it is found, 
 is rarely left unrewarded. But, constituted 
 as society at present is, there certainly is not 
 the same access for zeal into the Establishment, 
 which is offered in the ranks of its enemies. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 There is not, then, that encouragement for 
 poor scholars which existed in former times ? 
 not the same means of advancement which 
 were open to the Wolseys and Cromwells and 
 Latimers ? 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 For the Wolseys and Cromwells there are 
 other, and more ways of advancement. But 
 cheap learning is no longer to be obtained, edu- 
 cation being, of all things, that which has ad- 
 vanced most enormously in its cost. This has 
 been caused by the great increase of the middle 
 ranks, by the higher degree of civilization which
 
 POOR SCHOLARS. 43 
 
 exists in those ranks, and by the general im- 
 provement in the condition of the clergy. The 
 endowments in our schools and colleges, which 
 were formerly the portion of poor scholars, have 
 become objects of competition for the sons of 
 the wealthy ; they were never too many, and 
 the additions which have been made to them 
 are so trifling that they can hardly be taken 
 into calculation, while the number of competi- 
 tors has increased tenfold, and is increasing 
 every generation. The poor scholar is not ab- 
 solutely excluded by this, but his chances are 
 diminished ; and what is perhaps even more dis- 
 couraging, the disadvantages of his situation 
 are so greatly augmented, that nothing short 
 of the most extraordinary abilities, and the most 
 painful industry, can enable him to surmount 
 them. These, indeed, make their way ; and 
 as they are sure of meeting in the University 
 the most liberal assistance, it is perhaps on the 
 whole best that, in the present state of society, 
 there should be no bounty for bringing forward 
 aspirants of inferior capacity. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 So it may seem. But some evil there mani- 
 festly is in a change which renders it more 
 difficult for those who are humbly born, and 
 placed in unfavourable circumstances, to follow
 
 44 POOR SCHOLARS. 
 
 those studies whereto good parts, virtuous in- 
 clinations, and laudable ambition, might impel 
 them. It is no matter for regret that such 
 persons should labour under the inevitable disad- 
 vantage of receiving, at the best, only an ordinary- 
 school education, •while the sons of the opulent 
 are brought forward by the most skilful and 
 diligent tuition. Wealth ensures this for its 
 children : and it is well, on all accounts, that 
 some part of the expenditure of the wealthy, 
 should take this direction ; and, after all, native 
 vigour of mind will prevail against such odds. 
 Forced culture is not needful for our elms and 
 oaks; they require only room for their growth. 
 And as natural precocity is always to be re- 
 garded with fear, so the precociousness which 
 art produces cannot be without its dangers : 
 the first frequently terminates in early death ; 
 the latter dwarfs, or lastingly debilitates the 
 faculties which have been called into exertion 
 too soon, and heive been overtasked. But are 
 there no other disadvantages of a more serious 
 nature? Is the poor scholar upon the same foot- 
 ing in your colleges that he was one or two 
 hundred years ago ? Have not officers become 
 servile, both in reality and in appearance, Avliich 
 carried witli them no sucli character in old 
 times, when they were performed in great houses
 
 POOR SCHOLARS. 45 
 
 by youths of higli birth, in the course of a 
 generous education, suited to their birth and ex- 
 pectancies ? Is not inferiority of condition in your 
 Universities made more humiliatino- than it was 
 in times when the distinction of ranks was more 
 broadly marked ; . . and is not that humiliation 
 of a kind which is likely to produce anything 
 rather than humility? As those distinctions have 
 been more shaded into each other, has there 
 not been less bountiful patronage on the one 
 side, and less of the kindly and grateful feeling 
 of dependence on the other ? ... for a kindly 
 and a grateful feeling it is ; and they who think 
 that it is well exchanged for the pride of in- 
 dependence, are in danger of losing the bles- 
 sing which has been promised to the poor in 
 spirit, and to the meek. One consequence of 
 all this is, that the Dissenting ministry is filled 
 with men, the greater part of whom would 
 have become clero-y of the Establishment, if 
 there had been the same facilities for enter- 
 ing it. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 Certainly it is not the desire of independence* 
 
 * I happened once to ask a Dissenting minister to what de- 
 nomination he belonged ; he replied, tliat lie was an Inde- 
 pendent ; . . ' so called,' he added, ' tliough we are the most 
 ' dependent j^oor creatures on the face of the earth,'.. The
 
 46 
 
 POOR SCHOLARS. 
 
 that leads them into that service. Their minis- 
 try, however, has its temptations ; for although 
 the Dissenters can rid themselves easily of a 
 scandalous preacher, and therefore are obnoxious 
 to none of that reproach which such men bring 
 upon the Church, on the other hand, Tartuffe 
 is a much more frequent character among them 
 than in the Establishment. In Romish countries, 
 as in your days, such persons would have be- 
 come Monks or Friars, both the devout and the 
 worldlings. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The circumstances, which exclude the better 
 part of them from your Establishment, have 
 produced a great and growing evil, and too 
 probably it may be found a growing danger 
 also. They have likewise led to a change in 
 the Universities which is far from beneficial, 
 and which has, in no slight degree, contributed 
 
 confession accords with the following Advertisement, which 
 has been circulated with a recent number of the Evangelical 
 Magazine. ' Wanted, two Persons, respectably connected, 
 ' of j^leasing manners and genteel address, to beg for a Cliapel, 
 ' the Minister of which is indisposed. One must be resident 
 ' in London; and the other, if single, and a Minister, would be 
 ' j)referred. Of course none will apply who cannot bring the 
 ' highest testimonials for religious character, &c., and give 
 * security, if required.'
 
 UNIVERSITIES. 47 
 
 to the decay of that sound learning* by which 
 your Church was raised and defended, and with- 
 out which it cannot be supported. Your Col- 
 leges are no longer seats of learning in the old 
 and veritable sense; no longer the abode of 
 men whose lives are devoted to the c|uiet pur- 
 suit of knowledge, and who find in that pursuit 
 its own reward. They have become mere semi- 
 naries, . . and for raising dwarf trees. Habits 
 of life, more accordant to the age than to the 
 place, have been introduced, habits which are 
 injurious anywhere, and especially reprehen- 
 sible there. Hence that increased expenditure, 
 which in so great a degree excludes the poor 
 scholar from his chance of those endowments 
 which were intended for men of his class. Hence 
 the greater evil, that no sooner has a young man 
 completed his own scholastic education, and ob- 
 tained a fellowship at its close, than his whole 
 time is immediately appropriated to the education 
 of others. At an age when his faculties, with the 
 strength of manhood, have, or ought to have, 
 the unabated ardour of youth, a stop is put to 
 his advancement. The spirit of the world has 
 intruded, and taken possession of the place ; 
 in obedience to that spirit, he makes lucre, in- 
 stead of learning, his object, his business, his 
 desire ; giving himself up to the drudgery of tui-
 
 48 LEARNING. 
 
 tion for the sake of gain, when he ought to be 
 engaged m the pursuit of knowledge, and in 
 that self-improvement whicli might qualify him 
 for his proper vocation in this world, and arm 
 him at all points for the arduous service upon 
 which he has entered. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 It is a humiliating confession, but I fear that 
 in no other country is learning so little loved 
 and followed for its own sake as in England ; 
 a national reproach, which, nevertheless, arises 
 not so much from the low-mindedness of indi- 
 viduals, as from the circumstances wherein they 
 are placed. The number of persons who, if favour- 
 able opportunity were afforded them, might be 
 willino- to make learnino- the business and the 
 delight of their lives, with the ardour and ability 
 requisite for pursuing it to good effect, must in 
 an}' generation necessarily be very small. How 
 little, then, is the chance of their being born to 
 the possession of such wealth as might enable 
 them to indulge their genius ! and if sucli men 
 are born in such a station, they must be endowed 
 with a strength of moral character, which is far 
 more rare than the gifts either of intellect or 
 fortune, or they will not be able to overcome 
 the debilitating effects of early prosperity. Such 
 men, therefore, are the rarest of God's creatures
 
 LEARNING. 49 
 
 But for those who, with the same natural endow- 
 ments, are born to the wooden spoon, and have 
 to make their way in the world, they soon are 
 made to feel that the care of providing for 
 immediate wants leaves them little leisure, and 
 less heart for those worthier labours, by which 
 they might once have dreamt of making them- 
 selves 'for ever known.' The booksellers and the 
 public must be their patrons ; the former, of 
 course, can only act as caterers for the latter ; 
 and the many-headed beast is a foul feeder. 
 To literature, therefore, as a means of subsis- 
 tence, none but the rash and ill-advised, the un- 
 fortunates and castaways of society, will betake 
 themselves. But what are called the learned 
 professions, allow no leisure for any pursuit that 
 looks beyond the present. The lawyer has no 
 sooner obtained a professional reputation, than 
 he becomes the very slave of his practice, . . and 
 well is it if his own soul is not entanoled in the 
 snares which he is perpetually engaged in spin- 
 ning for others. The physician has indeed the 
 advantage that his path is in the way of intel- 
 lectual and moral improvement ; but his, also, 
 is an occupation which engrosses him, and which 
 rarely can leave tlie mind at leisure, or at ease, 
 for excursive and voluntary labours. From the 
 clergy more might be expected, and more is 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 50 LEARNING. 
 
 found : but liow few among tliem are blest with 
 the disposal of their own time, and the oppor- 
 tunity of improving it! In retired situations 
 libraries and encouragement are wanting ; in 
 populous parishes, the cares and duties of his 
 cure require the whole attention of a faithful 
 pastor. Secular business, which, unconnected 
 as it is with their sacred calling, and in some 
 respects ill according with it, it is nevertheless 
 in many situations necessary that they should 
 undertake, makes large demands upon them. 
 And they who are promoted to the dignities of 
 the Church, find that when they were advanced 
 from a private station they left behind them the 
 leisure and the opportunities, as well as the 
 freedom and the tranquillity and the comfort of 
 private life. It is therefore from the minor dig- 
 nitaries, the few of the clergy who possess bene- 
 fices where the duty is little and the income 
 sufficient, and the still fewer who, careless of 
 cost or consequence in their ardour, overlook, 
 and sometimes overcome, all obstacles, that lite- 
 rary service can be looked for. The disposition 
 and the ability God alone can give : the allot- 
 ment which might place these in full action is at 
 man's disposal : but when it is considered that 
 what arc called family livings will be disposed 
 of according to family claims, the best that can
 
 UNIVERSITIES. 51 
 
 be hoped is, that they may for the most part be 
 respectably filled ; and the same* must be said 
 of that portion of the crown patronage, which is 
 bestowed among political claimants, though pub- 
 lic opinion interposes there a stronger check. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The more, therefore, is it to be desired that 
 your Universities should again become seats of 
 learning, as they were originally intended to be, 
 and not mere places of education. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I know not how this is to be brought about, 
 seeing that the changes of society have made 
 them what they are ; and that, as places of edu- 
 cation, they are essential parts of our system. 
 Even for this object they are straitened, so 
 greatly has the population of this country in- 
 creased, while the increase of those persons, for 
 
 * ' How does it happen,' says a friend, whose letter has 
 just reached me, ' that the opponents of the Church of Eng- 
 ' land always miss the vulnerable points ? They attack our 
 ' faith, and we have no difficulty in proving that we are ortho- 
 ' dox. They attack the property of the Church, and we easily 
 ' make out a legal title. Now, if they were to call upon us to 
 ' prove that right faith has led to right practice, and that 
 ' Church property is employed for Church purposes, we should 
 ' have but little to say for ourselves.' . . More, I believe, in 
 this generation than in the last, (more, indeed, it had need 
 be !) and more I trust in the next than in this, 
 
 E 3
 
 52 UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 whom such education is thought necessary, has 
 been in far greater proportion. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Another University, then, is wanted ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Undoubtedly it is. For, aUhough the en- 
 largements which are now in progress at Cam- 
 bridge are more extensive than all which were 
 made during the last century, the new buildings 
 will not do more than accommodate the students 
 who have hitherto necessarily been lodged in 
 the town, a practice in many respects incon- 
 venient and injurious. So it will be at Oxford, 
 if Oxford should follow the example. But both 
 Universities are already sufficiently numerous ; 
 and it is far more desirable that a third should 
 be established, than that any further increase 
 should take place in them. There are diffi- 
 culties in the way ; and, if these were overcome, 
 the Religio Loci would long continue to attract 
 those, who could choose, to the elder institutions. 
 On the other hand, much might be expected 
 from that laudable desire which would be felt, 
 of raising the new University in other respects 
 to an equal estimation with those which have 
 so long been the glory of the land. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 An advantage might be given it, if its fellow-
 
 UNIVERSITIES. 53 
 
 ships were not to be voidable by marriage ; the 
 restriction is not necessary where residence with- 
 in the walls is not required, and, not being- 
 necessary, it is injurious, because it renders men, 
 whose dearest hopes are indefinitely delayed, 
 discontented with their lot. The usages of your 
 society tend but too strongly to defer marriage 
 in the middle ranks of life beyond the time 
 which nature indicates, and which wise foresight 
 would approve. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 This may be one cause why so few of those, 
 who remain in Colleo-e till middle or declinino- 
 age, apply themselves there to those disinte- 
 rested, and self-rewarding studies, for which 
 the Universities afford facilities hardly to be 
 found elsewhere. The fellowship was not more 
 the object of their desire when they were labour- 
 ing to obtain it in youth, than the succession is 
 which may enable them to vacate it, and enter 
 upon that course of domestic life to which every 
 man looks forward with an instinctive longing, 
 unless he has rendered himself unworthy of the 
 happiness which in that course of life, and in 
 that only, is to be found. Expectation, how- 
 ever remote, of the chance that may remove 
 him, keeps him always in a certain degree un- 
 settled, and discontented patience produces in-
 
 54 UNIVERSITIES.' 
 
 sensibly a distaste for the place, and indisposes 
 him for making the right use of its advantages. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 If you wovild make men good subjects, good 
 servants of the public, good stewards of that 
 which is committed to their charge, you must 
 place them in circumstances favourable to their 
 own happiness. No plants will thrive in a cold 
 and meagre soil, ungenial to their nature ; nor, 
 even if the soil be generous, will they put forth 
 flowers, and yield fruit in due season after their 
 kind, unless they have the enjoyment and the 
 benefit of air and sunshine. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The experiment might well be tried in a new 
 institution. The first, and indeed the only diffi- 
 culty, that of raising funds, might be overcome, 
 if the intention were earnestly entertained, and any 
 proper inclination shown on the part of govern- 
 ment to promote it. Some of those reservoirs of 
 private wealth, which are filled in every genera- 
 tion by men whose souls can hardly be con- 
 ceived of as anything else than glands for secret- 
 ing lucre, might be expected to be opened in 
 this direction by posthumous liberality. Some- 
 thing might be expected for that better wisdom 
 which discovers in time that riches must prove 
 the reverse of a blessing to those unto whom
 
 UNIVERSITIES. 55 
 
 they are entrusted, unless they are well em- 
 ployed. And that national and characteristic 
 generosity, which in this country has never failed 
 to answer every just call that has been made 
 upon it, would not be found wanting- here. You 
 said to me, that the spirit which built and 
 endowed monasteries has passed away. Me- 
 thinks it is not dead, but sleepeth ! It waits only 
 for opportunity to awaken it, and encouragement 
 to call it forth, and it would then be manifested 
 in a manner suited to the state of knowledge, 
 and the real interests of the nation. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Where would you fix your University ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 York has been named wnen such a design has 
 been proposed : but a situation farther north 
 would be preferable : because it should be chosen 
 with a view to Scotland, for the Episcopalians 
 of that country, and not for them alone, but for 
 all who wish to preserve their sons from the 
 Pestilence which, in certain Scotch Universities, 
 walketh at noon day. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Wherever there is a Cathedral, there would 
 be a Religio Loci, into which the University 
 would enter.
 
 56 
 
 DURHAM. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There are many places in the North where 
 such a feeling might be revived, though that one 
 to which your thoughts and mine would instantly 
 recur, . . tliat which was the earliest seat of 
 learning in this kingdom, is desecrated beyond 
 all possibility of purification. It has become a 
 place of colliers and keelmen ; and if in national 
 gratitude a monument were to be erected, as it 
 ought to be, in honour of the Venerable Bede, a 
 spot whereon it might decently be set up could 
 not now be found at Jarrow, where his happy 
 and holy life was past. 
 
 SIR TIIO:\rAS MORE. 
 
 Durham, where his dust is deposited, would 
 be in all respects an appropriate place, and not 
 the M'orsc for having been the see of Cuthbert 
 Tonstal. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There are o-rcat and o-ood names connected 
 with Durham, both of earlier and later date. 
 The suitableness of that city for the seat of a 
 third University is so apparent, that Oliver 
 Cromwell, at the petition of certain northern 
 gentry, took measures for establishing one there. 
 But tlie part of the spoils of the bishopric, 
 little as it was, which he appropriated to that 
 purpose, was thought too much by those who
 
 HEXHAM. 5.7 
 
 were for sharing the whole plunder among them- 
 selves : opposition was made by Oxford and 
 Cambridge, both being at that time in hands 
 from which nothing generous could be expected, 
 and thus the scheme failed even before the Re- 
 storation, which would probably have subverted 
 it. Durham would be the fittest place in the 
 north of England, unless Hexham may be deemed 
 preferable. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 On the score of antiquity Hexham has greater 
 claims, and as an ancient seat of learning. And 
 as it is one of those places which were grievously 
 injured by the dissolution of the Monasteries, 
 the reparation, that might thus be made, is a 
 consideration which ouoht not altoo-ether to be 
 overlooked. You look, methinks, as though this 
 were a consideration which, if mentioned, would 
 only be despised. If such be your meaning, it 
 is an ill symptom of the state of public feeling 
 in these days. Whatever tends to withdraw men 
 from the always too powerful influence of the 
 present, and to connect them with other times, 
 past or to come, . .whatever may lead them to 
 extend their views out of their own generation, 
 forward or in retrospect, . .whatever gives them 
 a more diffused benevolence, a more extended 
 range for their gratitude or their desires, indivi-
 
 58 ANCESTRY. 
 
 duals, if they are sensible of their own highest 
 interest, would cherish in their own hearts, and 
 Governments would do every thing to encourage 
 in the people. They who care nothing for their 
 ancestors, will care little for their posterity, . . 
 indeed, little for anything except themselves.
 
 19 
 
 COLLOQUY XIL 
 
 BLENCATHRA.— THRELKELD TARN.— THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 Of the very many Tourists who are annually 
 brought to this Land of Lakes by what have 
 now become the migratory habits of the opulent 
 classes, there is a great proportion of persons 
 who are desirous of making the shortest possible 
 tarriance in any place ; whose object is to get 
 through their undertaking with as little trouble 
 as they can, and whose inquiries are mainly 
 directed to find out what it is not necessary for 
 them to see; happy when they are comforted 
 with the assurance, that it is by no means re- 
 quired of them to deviate from the regular track, 
 and that that which cannot be seen easily, need 
 not be seen at all. In this way our o'l 7ro\7\.o) 
 take their degree as Lakers. 
 
 Nevertheless, the number of those who truly 
 enjoy the opportunities which are thus afforded 
 them, and have a genuine generous delight in 
 beholding the grandeur and the lovelier scenes of 
 a mountainons region, is sufficient to render this 
 a good and wholesome fashion. The pleasure
 
 60 MOUNTAIN SCENERY 
 
 which they partake conduces as much to moral 
 and intellectual improvement, as to health, and 
 present hilarity. It produces no distaste for 
 other scenes, no satiety, nor other exhaustion 
 than what brings with it its own remedy in 
 sound sleep. Instead of these, increase of ap- 
 petite grows here by what it feeds on, and they 
 learn to seek and find pleasure of the same kind 
 in tamer landscapes. They who have acquired 
 in these countries a love of natural scenery, carry 
 with them in that love a perpetual source of en- 
 joyment ; resembling in this respect the artist, 
 who, in whatever scenes he may be placed, is 
 never at a loss for something from which his 
 pencil may draw forth a beauty, which unculti- 
 vated eyes would fail to discover in the object 
 itself. In every country, however poor, ..there 
 is something of ' free Nature's grace ;' . . where- 
 ever there is wood and water, wherever there are 
 green fields,, .wherever there is an open sky, the 
 feeling which has been called forth, or fostered 
 among the mountains, may be sustained. It is 
 one of our most abiding as well as of our purest 
 enjoyments, .. a sentiment which seems at once 
 to humble and exalt us, which from natural emo- 
 tion leads us to devotional tliouglits and religious 
 aspirations, grows therefore with o\u' growth, and 
 strengthens when our strength is failing us.
 
 MOUNTAIN SCENERY. Gl 
 
 I wonder not at tliose heathens who wor- 
 shipped in high places. There is an elasticicity 
 in the mountain air, which causes an excitement 
 of spirits, in its immediate effect like that of wine 
 when, taken in due measure, it gladdens the 
 heart of man. The heio-ht and the extent of the 
 surrounding objects, seem to produce a corre- 
 spondent expansion and elevation* of mind ; 
 and the silence and solitude contributes to this 
 emotion. You feel as if in another region, al- 
 most in another world. If a tourist in this 
 country inquires which of our mountains it may 
 be worth his while to ascend, he may be told 
 any, or all. Helvellyn and Skiddaw and Blen- 
 cathra, Scawfell and Great Gable, Hindsgarth 
 
 * This feeling has never been more feelingly expressed 
 than by Burnet in his fine chapter, de Montibus. ' Preeter 
 ' Ccelornm facie7n, et immensa spacia cetherea, stellarumque 
 ' graiissimum aspectimi, ocidos meos atque animum nihil 
 ' magis deledare solet, quam Oceanum intueri^ et magiios 
 ' monies terrce. Nescio quid grande hahent ct augiistum 
 ' uterqite liorum, quo mens excitatur ad ingentes affectus et 
 ' cogitationes ; sunimum rerum Authorem ct Opijicem inde 
 ^facile contuenuir et admirainiu^ mentemque nostrum, qua; 
 ' cumvoluptate res magnas contemplatiir, non esse rem parvam 
 ' cnm gaudio recognoscimus. Et queecunque mnhram injiniti 
 ' hahent, ut hahent omnia quce von facile comprchendimus, 
 ' 06 magnitudinem rei, et sensus 7iostri plenitudinem, gratum 
 * quendam stupor em animo affandunt.' — Telluris Thcoria 
 Sacra, 1. i. c. 9.
 
 6^ 
 
 CUMBRIAN HISTORY. 
 
 and Causey Pike, each is -unlike all the others 
 in the prospect that it presents, each has features 
 of its own, and all may well repay the labour of 
 ascendino' them. 
 
 There is little or nothing of historical or ro- 
 mantic interest belonarino- to this re"ion. In this 
 respect it is very unlike the Scotch Border, where 
 Sir Walter can entertain his guests during a 
 morning ride with tales of murders, executions, 
 house-besieging and house-burning, as parts of 
 family history belonging to every homestead of 
 which he comes in sight. The Border history is 
 of no better character on the English side ; but 
 this part of the country was protected by the 
 Solway, and by its natural strength, nor does it 
 appear, at any time after it became English, to 
 have been troubled with feuds. The English 
 Barons, indeed, were by no means so often en- 
 gaged in private wars as their Scotish neighbours, 
 or the nobles on the continent; their contests 
 were with the Crown, seldom with each other, 
 and never with their vassals. Those contests 
 were carried on at a distance from our Lake-land, 
 where the inhabitants, being left in peace, seem 
 to have enjoyed it, and never to have forfeited 
 its blessings by engaging in the ways, and con- 
 tracting the disposition of marauders. They 
 had, therefore, neither ballad heroes, nor ballad
 
 DUNMAILRAISE. 63 
 
 poets, liappy in having afforded no field for tlie 
 one, and no materials of this kind for the other. 
 
 A heap of stones is the doubtful* monument 
 of a battle which, in the middle of the tenth 
 century, put an end to the kingdom of the Cum- 
 brian Britons ; after a war in which the victori- 
 ous allies must have been actuated by any motive 
 rather than policy; the King of South Wales 
 having united with Edmund the Elder against 
 a people of his own race, and Edmund giving 
 the little kingdom, when they had conquered it, 
 to the King of Scotland. That heap at Dun- 
 mailraise is our only historical monument, if such 
 it may be called. There is something more for 
 the imagination in knowing that three centuries 
 earlier, the old bard, Llywarc Hen, was a prince 
 of Cumbria, or of a partf thereof. He is said to 
 have attained the extraordinary age of an hun- 
 dred and fifty ; and, having been driven from his 
 own country, to have died near Bala, at a place 
 which is still called after him, the Cot'l of 
 
 * Doubtful, because it is at the division of the two counties, 
 upon the liigh road, and on the only pass, and may very pro- 
 bably have been intended to mark the division. 
 
 t Argoed, which, according to Mr. Owen, was part of the 
 present Cumberland : it lay west of the Forest of Celyddon, and 
 was bordered by that wood to the east, as the name implies. 
 
 t Pabell Llywarc Hen, in the parish of Llanvor, in which 
 church, according to tradition, he was buried.
 
 64 
 
 LLYWARC HEN. 
 
 Llyvvarc the Aged. From his own lamentations 
 we know that he had four-and-twenty sons, 
 ' wearing the goklen chain, leaders of battles, 
 ' men that were valiant opposers of the foe,' and 
 that he lived to see them all slain ! St. Herbert, 
 our only Saint, is less remarkable among saints 
 than Llywarc among poets ; the single circum- 
 stance of his life that has been remembered, or 
 invented of him, is that of his dying at the same 
 hour with his absent friend St. Cuthbert, accord- 
 ing to their mutual wish and prayer. From 
 St. Herbert down to the tragedy of Lord Der- 
 wentwater, (who was connected with this country 
 only by his possessions and his title,) our local 
 history has nothing that leads a traveller to con- 
 nect the scenes through which he is passing with 
 past events, . . one of the great pleasures of tra- 
 velling, and not the least of its utilities. The 
 story of the Shepherd Lord Clifford aftbrds a 
 single exception ; that story, which was known 
 only to a few antiquaries, till it was told so 
 beautifully in verse by Wordsworth, gives a 
 romantic interest to Blencathra. 
 
 They who would ascend this mountain, should 
 go from Keswick about six miles along the Pen- 
 rith road, then take the road which branches 
 from it on the left, (proceeding along tlie moun- 
 tain side toward Heskctt Newmarket,) and begin
 
 TlIRELKELD TARN. Go 
 
 to ascend a little way farther on by a green 
 shepherd's path, distinctly marked, on the left 
 side of a gill. That path may be followed on 
 the mountain toward a little stream which issues 
 from Threlkeld Tarn*; you leave it, keeping the 
 stream on the right, and mount a short and 
 rugged ascent, up which a horse may be led 
 without difficulty ; and thus, with little fatigue, 
 the Tarn is reached. A wild spot it is as ever 
 was chosen by a cheerful party where to rest, 
 and take their merry repast upon a summer's 
 day. The green mountain, the dark pool, the 
 crag under which it lies, and the little stream 
 which steals from it, are the only objects ; the 
 gentle voice of that stream the only sound, un- 
 less a kite be wheeling above, or a sheep bleats 
 on the fell side. A silent, solitary place; and 
 such solitude heightens social enjoyment, as 
 much as it conduces to lonely meditation. 
 
 Ascending from hence toward the broAv of the 
 mountain, you look back through the opening, 
 where the stream finds its way, to a distant view 
 
 * Absurd accounts have been published both of the place 
 itself, and tlie difficulty of reaching it. The Tarn has been 
 said to be so deep that the reflection of the stars may be seen 
 in it at noon day, . . and that the sun never shines on it. One of 
 these assertions is as fabulous as the other, ..and the Tarn, 
 like all other Tarns, is shallow. 
 
 VOL. IT. F
 
 6G THRELKELD TARN. 
 
 of the open country about Penrith, with the long 
 line of Crossfell bounding it. When the brow is 
 reached, you are on the edge of that bold and 
 rugged front which Blencathra presents when 
 seen from the road to Matterdale, or from the 
 Vale of St. John's. A portion of the hill, (Hall- 
 fell it is called,) somewhat pyramidical in shape, 
 stands out here like an enormous buttress, sepa- 
 rated from the body of the mountain on all sides 
 by deep ravines. These have apparently been 
 formed by some water-spout, bursting upon what 
 was once the green breast of the mountain, and 
 thus opening water-courses, which the rain and 
 storms have continually been deepening. In 
 looking down these ravines from the brow you 
 have a sense of perfect security ; there is not 
 even an appearance of danger ; and yet, if the 
 whole depth below were one precipice, the effect 
 could not be grander. At the foot is the culti- 
 vated valley, where the Glenderamaken, collect- 
 ing the waters of Blencathra from the north and 
 east, winds along to join St. John's Beck, and 
 form with it the Greta. In front are the Ulls- 
 water mountains. The Vale of St. John's and 
 Nathdale open into the subjacent valley; you 
 look over Nathdale fell, which divides them, and 
 beyond it Lcatheswater is seen, in its length, 
 extending between Helvcllyn and its own fells.
 
 BLENCATHRA. 67 
 
 Derwentwater is to the right of this, under the 
 western side of those fells^ and the semicircle is 
 every where closed by mountains, range behind 
 range. My friend, William Westall, who has 
 seen the grandest and the loveliest features of 
 nature in the East Indies and in the West, with 
 the eye of a painter, and the feeling of a poet, 
 burst into an exclamation of delioht and won- 
 der when I led him to this spot. 
 
 From Linthwaite Pike, which is the hiahest 
 point of Blencathra, keeping along the brow, 
 you pass in succession the points called Lilefell, 
 Priestman and Knott Crag. They who perform 
 the whole excursion on foot, may descend from 
 hence, in a south-westerly direction, to the Glen- 
 deraterra, cross that rivulet by a wooden bridge, 
 and return to Keswick through Brundholm wood, 
 by a very beautiful road, commanding views of 
 the Greta in its manifold windings below, and, 
 farther on, of the town, the lake, and the whole 
 line of mountains from the Borrodale fells to 
 Withop. But for women, and those from Avhom 
 time has taken the superfluous strength of youth, 
 it is better to be provided with carriages to the 
 point where the ascent is commenced, and to 
 rejoin them at the village of Threlkeld, descend- 
 ing, after they have passed Knott Crag, upon 
 that village by a green shepherds' path. The 
 
 r 2
 
 68 
 
 THRELKELD. 
 
 path is not immediately perceptible from tlie 
 heights, but, by making toward the village, you 
 come upon it, and on so steep a declivity it is a 
 great relief. Threlkeld, when it is approached by 
 the high road on either side, or from the Vale of 
 St. John's, appears one of the least agreeable of 
 our villages ; it presents no character of amenity 
 or beauty, and seems rather to be threatened* by 
 the mountain, than sheltered by it. Very dif- 
 ferent is its appearance when you descend upon 
 it from Highrow-fcU by this green and pleasant 
 path. Then, indeed, the village is beautiful ; 
 
 * Blcncathra is indeed at all times an ill neighbour to this poor 
 village. Waterspouts are either more frequent there, or from 
 their effects have been more frequently observed, than on any 
 other of our mountains, except it be Helvellyn, on the side of 
 the Vale of St. John's. AVlicn they break, the houses are 
 deluged, the fields covered with stones and gravel, the bridges 
 sometimes blown up, and the road rendered im})assable. Some 
 years ago I went to tlie village on the day after one of these 
 Bursts, as they are significantly called. The jjcople were 
 clearing their liouses of the wreck which had been deposited 
 there by the water in its jiassago, and all the furniture from 
 tlie lower rooms was set out in the street, as if there liad been 
 a general distress. Three parallel channels liad been formed 
 on tlie slope of the great buttress (II all-fell) where the cloud 
 discharged its whole weight of waters ; and these were from 
 five to six feet deep, and eighteen wide. Wc knew at Kes- 
 wick that a waterspout had fallen in this direction, because the 
 Greta hud risen suddenly, and was unusually discoloured.
 
 THRKLKELD, 6D 
 
 not merely as a habitable human spot, the first 
 which we reach upon issuing from some wild 
 and uncultivated solitude, but in itself, and its 
 position. The mountain, as thus seen, appears 
 to protect and embosom it ; in front there is the 
 cheerfulness and the fertility of the open valley ; 
 old sycamores extend their deep shade over some 
 of the long low-roofed outhouses; there is the 
 little chapel to complete the picture, and sanctify, 
 as it were, the scene ; and there is the musick of 
 the mountain stream, accompanying the latter 
 part of the descent, in unison with all the ob- 
 jects, and with the turn of mind which those 
 objects induce. 
 
 Here was the family seat of that good Sir 
 Lancelot Threlkeld, who, after John Lord Clif- 
 ford (the Clifford of Shakespere's dramas) was 
 slain at Ferrybridge, and his lands seized, and 
 his posterity attainted by the triumphant House 
 of York, married his widow, Margaret Bromflett, 
 Baroness Vesey, and was, as the records of the 
 family say, ' a very kind and loving husband to 
 her,' helping to conceal her two sons. The 
 youngest was sent beyond sea, and died, while 
 yet a child, in the Low Countries. Henry, the 
 elder, who was about six or seven years old when 
 his father was killed, ' she committed to the care
 
 70 THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 ' of certain shepherds whose wives* had served 
 ' her, which shepherds and their wives kept him 
 * concealed sometimes at Lonsborrow in York- 
 ' shire, (which was part of her inheritance,) and 
 ' sometimes in Cumberland, (here among these 
 ' mountains,) and elsewhere, for the space of 
 ' almost four-and-twenty years.' There he was 
 bred up as a shepherd's boy, ' in a very mean 
 ' condition,' and thus ' miraculously preserved,' 
 for, ' had he been known to be his father's son 
 ' and heir, he would either have been put in 
 ' prison, or put to death, so odious was the 
 
 * memory of his father for killing the young 
 
 * Earl of Rutland, and for being such a des- 
 ' perate commander in battle against the House 
 ' of York.' 
 
 The Shepherd Lord was the happiest of his 
 race ; and, falling upon peaceful times after his 
 restoration, was enabled to indulge the peaceful 
 and thoughtful disposition which his early for- 
 tunes had produced. 
 
 * ' Which sheplierds' wives had formerly been servants in 
 ' that family, attending the nurse that gave him suck, whicli 
 ' made him, being a child, more willing to submit to tliat mean 
 ' condition ; where they infused into him the belief that he 
 ' must either be content to live in that manner, or l)e utterly 
 *. undone.'
 
 THE CLIFFORDS. 71 
 
 Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 
 
 In him the savage virtue of the race, 
 Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead ; 
 Nor did he change ; but kept in lofty place 
 The wisdom which adversity had bred. 
 
 Glad were the vales and every cottage hearth ; 
 Tlie Shepherd Lord was honoured more and more : 
 And ages after he was laid in earth, 
 * The Good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 His history is not more remarkable in itself, 
 than in the contrast which it affords to that of 
 his ancestors, so many of whom had rendered 
 themselves eminent by their activity and their 
 ability in turbulent times. The property which 
 they possessed in this part of England was origi- 
 nally granted by William the Conqueror to 
 one of the Norman Chiefs, Ranulph de Me- 
 schiens, who married William's niece, the sister 
 of Hugh Lupus. From his sister it descended 
 to Hugh de Morville, one of the murderers of 
 Thomas-a-Becket, and having been forfeited in 
 consequence of that crime, was granted by King- 
 John to Robert de Veteripont, who was the son 
 of Morville's sister : ' the favour of that king,
 
 .72 THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 ' and tlie marriage of Idonea* his wife, (who was 
 ' a great heiress,) and his own industry, (for he 
 * was of an active knowing spirit,) were the three 
 ' steps which raised his fortunes to the height 
 ' they attained.' He was, indeed, one of the 
 most distinguished men of his ao-e, and to him 
 Appleby and Brovigh, with all the appendages, 
 and the Sheriffwick of Westmoreland, were 
 granted in perpetuity. He died in peace, at a 
 good old age, a rare fortune for men of his sta- 
 tion in those days ; his son also came to a natural 
 death, dying young ; the grandson fell in battle 
 on the side of Simon de Montfort, either at 
 Lewes or at Evesham, and thus the estates 
 escheated a second time to the Crown. They 
 were restored to his two daughters, one of whom 
 dying without issue, they past in marriage 
 with the other to the Cliffords, who in conse- 
 quence removed from the Wye to the Edenf. 
 The Cliffords took their English appellation 
 from their castle upon the Wye ; they were de- 
 
 * It is upon a later personage of the same family tliat Fuller 
 in his quaint way remarks, ' the first and last I meet with of 
 ' that Christian name, though proper enough for women, who 
 ' arc to be " meet he/pn" to their husbands.' 
 
 t * Some back friends to this country,' says Fuller, ' will 
 
 * say that, though Westmoreland hath niurli of Eden, (running 
 
 * clear through it,) yet iiath it little of delight therein.'
 
 THE CLIFFORDS. 73 
 
 scended from the dukes of Normandy, and al- 
 ready the story of Rosamond had given a roman- 
 tic celebrity to the name. The first of the 
 family, who settled in Westmoreland, built the 
 greater part of Brougham Castle ; he was sur- 
 prized in Hawarden Castle by the Welsh Prince 
 David, and taken prisoner, being mortally 
 wounded. His son and successor fell at Ban- 
 nockburn. 
 
 Roger Lord Clifford, who came next in suc- 
 cession, had the worse fortune, according to the 
 Chroniclers, of being drawn and hanged at 
 York, but in good company, and in no discredit- 
 able cause, the other persons who suffered at 
 that time being John Lord Mowbray, and Sir 
 Gosein d'Eeuill. There are few old family 
 trees, especially of the coronet-bearing kind, 
 which have not a pendant from some of their 
 branches : but thouoh this Roo-er had done as 
 much to deserve the honours of political mar- 
 tyrdom as any other bold baron of that rebellious 
 age, the Chroniclers are certainly mistaken in 
 saying that he attained a consummation so de- 
 voutly to be deprecated. A feeling of humanity 
 such as is seldom read of in civil wars, and 
 especially in those times, saved him from exe- 
 cution, when he was taken prisoner with Lan- 
 caster and the rest of his confederates at Borough-
 
 74 THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 bridge. He liad received so many wounds in 
 the battle, that he coukl not be brought before 
 the judge for the summary trial, which would 
 have sent him to the hurdle and the gallows. 
 Being looked upon, therefore, as a dying man, 
 he was respited from the course of law; time 
 enough elapsed, while he continued in this state, 
 for the heat of resentment to abate, and Edward 
 of Caernarvon, who, though a weak and most 
 misguided prince, was not a cruel one, spared 
 his life ; . . an act of mercy which was the more 
 graceful, because Clifford had insulted the royal 
 authority in a manner less likely to be forgiven 
 than his braving it in arms. A pursuivant had 
 served a writ upon him in the Baron's Chamber, 
 and he made the man eat the wax wherewith the 
 writ was signed, ' in contempt, as it Avere, of the 
 said king.' 
 
 He was the first Lord Clifford that was at- 
 tainted of treason. His lands and honours were 
 restored in the first year of Edward HI., but he 
 survived the restoration only a few weeks, dying 
 in the flower of his youth, unmarried ; but 
 leaving * some base children behind him, whom 
 ' he had by a mean woman who was called Julian 
 ' of the Bower, for whom he built a little house 
 ' hard by Whinfell, and called it Julian's Bower, 
 * the lower foundation of which standcth, and is
 
 THE CLIFFORDS. 75 
 
 ' 3^et to be seen,' said tlie compiler of tlie family- 
 records, an hundred and fifty years ago, ' though 
 ' all the walls be down long since. And it is 
 ' thought that the love which this Roger bore to 
 * this Julian kept him from marrying any other 
 ' woman.' Poets, this story is for you; the 
 marriao-e of the brother who succeeded to his 
 titles and estates contains something for the 
 antiquaries. His wife, Isabella de Berkeley, was 
 sister to Thomas Lord Berkeley, of Berkeley 
 Castle, in which castle, two years after it had 
 rung with ' shrieks of death,' when the tragedy 
 of Edward II. was brought to its dreadful catas- 
 trophe there, the marriage was performed. She 
 had for her portion a thousand pounds and fifty 
 marks, to be paid by three equal instalments in 
 three years, and secured to her by recognizance, 
 ' toward the raising of which portion her brother 
 ' levied aid of his freeholders.' Her wedding 
 apparel was ' a gown of cloth of bruny Scarlett, 
 ' or brown scarlett, with a cape furred with the 
 
 * best miniver. Lord Berkeley and his lady being, 
 ' for the honour of the said bride, apparelled in 
 
 * the like habit. And the bride's saddle, which 
 
 * she had then for her horse, cost five pounds in 
 ' London.' 
 
 This Robert lived a country life, and ' nothing 
 ' is mentioned of him in the wars,' except that
 
 76 THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 he once accompanied an army into Scotland. It 
 is however rekited of him, that when Edward 
 Balliol was driven from Scotland, the exiled 
 kino' was ' right honourably received by him in 
 ' Westmoreland, and entertained in his Castles 
 ' of Brougham, Appleby, and Pendragon ;' in 
 acknowledgment for which hospitality Balliol, 
 if he might at any time recover the kingdom of 
 Scotland out of his adversaries' hands, made 
 him a grant of Douglas Dale, which had been 
 granted to his grandfather who fell in Wales. 
 The Hart's-horn tree in Whinfell park, well 
 known in tradition, and in hunters' tales, owes 
 its celebrity to this visit, though the tale* which 
 
 * That ' they ran the stag by a single grcyliound out of 
 ' AVhinfel Park to Red Kirk in Scotland, and back again to 
 ' this place, when, being botli spent, the stag leaped over the 
 ' pales, but died on the other side. . . and the greyhound, at- 
 ' tempting to leap, fell, and died on the contrary side.' In 
 memory of this fact the stag's horns were nailed upon a tree 
 just by, and, the dog being named Hercules, this rhyme was 
 niade upon them : 
 
 Hercules killed Hart a-greese. 
 And Hart a-greese killed Hercules. 
 
 Nicolsonn and Burn remark, wlien they tell the story, that 
 a course to Nine Kirks, instead of into Scotland, might be ftir 
 enough, from some parts of the park, for a greyhound to run. 
 But the tale is of later invention than the Countess's time ; she 
 simply says, that the King hunted the stag to death, . . and 
 certainly he would not have liunted him into Scotland,
 
 THE CLIFFORDS. 7"/ 
 
 belongs to it is, beyond all doubt, apocryphal. 
 The horns were nailed up in the tree in honour 
 of the royal guest who had seen the animal 
 killed there ; and there they remained more than 
 three centuries, ' growing, as it were, naturally 
 ' in the tree,' till, in the year 1G48, one of the 
 branches was broken off by some of the army, 
 and, ten years afterwards, the remainder was 
 taken down by some mischievous people secretly 
 in the night; ' so now,' says the Countess of 
 Pembroke, noticing this act of mischief in her 
 Diary, ' there is no part thereof remaining, the 
 * tree itself being so decayed, and the bark of 
 ' it so peeled off, that it cannot last long ; where- 
 ' by we may see Time brings to forgetfulness 
 ' many memorable things in this world, be they 
 ' ever so carefully preserved, for this tree with 
 ' the Hart's horn in it was a thing of much note 
 ' in these parts.' And then, according to her 
 custom of applying scripture on all occasions 
 that any way touched her, she refers to the third 
 chapter of Ecclesiastes. 
 
 Roger had remained unmarried, because his 
 illicit connexion with a woman of low birth had 
 produced a true and faithful love. Robert lived 
 seventeen years with the wife, whose bridal 
 magnificence was thought worthy of being de-
 
 78 THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 scribed in the records* of the Berkeley family; 
 and his high-born widow married again so soon 
 after his decease, that the second husband, Sir 
 Thomas de Musgrave, paid into the Exchequer 
 a fine of £200, for the trespass which he had 
 committed in marrying her ; it being forbidden 
 by the canon law, then much in use in England, 
 to remarry intra annum hidus, without a special 
 dispensation from the Sovereign. His eldest 
 son, at the age of sixteen, fought with the 
 Black Prince when he won his spurs at Cressy; 
 he died, as is supposed, in France, without 
 issue, leaving a brother to succeed him. This 
 brother, Roger Lord Clifford, ' was accounted 
 ' one of the wisest and gallantest men of all the 
 ' Cliffords of his race, by the consent of those 
 
 * antiquaries that knew most of the story of 
 ' England, and have seen most of the records 
 ' and leger books thereof.' He was often in the 
 wars, both in France and in Scotland ; he re- 
 paired the ancient castles which had been the 
 seats of his forefathers ; he left a greater estate 
 in lands than most of them ; and he was the 
 longest possessor of those lands of any before 
 
 * ' All wliith particulars are cited by Mr. Smith's 
 
 * book of tlic records of the Lord Berkeley, in written hand, 
 ' which he faithfully collected out of the records of that Castle, 
 
 * and out of the Tower of London.'
 
 THE CLIFFORDS. 79 
 
 him, or after him, till the Shepherd Lord. It 
 was his fortune, also, to be the first Lord Clif- 
 ford of Westmoreland and Skipton, that ever 
 lived to be a grandfather. He obtained from 
 Edward IIL two weekly markets and two fairs 
 in the year for the town of Kirkby Stephen. His 
 wisdom was shown in keeping himself free from 
 troubles during those troublesome times at the 
 latter end of King Edward IH.'s reign, and in 
 the beginning of King Richard IL's. 
 
 His eldest son, Thomas, was less prudent; 
 he was one of Richard H.'s loose favourites, and 
 in consequence fell into such displeasure with 
 the Parliament, that he was in the number of 
 those persons who were banished from the 
 Court, and proscribed from the King's service ; . . 
 a great grief to his father, who died presently 
 after this disQ-race. The son survived him little 
 more than two years ; impatient of inaction, 
 and probably with the hope, also, of redeeming 
 his character in a holy war, he went to fight 
 against the Pagans in what was then called 
 Spruce, and was there slain*, leaving an infant 
 son. That son deserved and enjoyed the good 
 opinion of Henry V., and held the office of 
 
 * His father-in-law, Lord Ross, crusading in a different 
 direction, died the same year, on his return from the Holy 
 Land, ' in the city of Paphos, in the isle of Cyprus.'
 
 80 l-HE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 Butler at the coronation of liis Queen. He was 
 bound by articles to cany over to the French 
 wars two hundred men-at-arms, consisting of 
 three knights, forty-seven esquires, and an hun- 
 dred-and-fifty archers ; one-third of them on 
 foot, the rest horsemen ; the knights were to be 
 allowed two shillings a-day, the esquires one, 
 the archers sixpence, Clifford himself four shil- 
 lings. In the flower of his age he w^as slain 
 there at the siege of Meaux, by a quarrel from 
 a crossbow. Then ensued the civil wars, in 
 which the old Lord Clifford, so called* when 
 
 * To the mistake, into wliicli tliis has misled Shakspeare, 
 we are indebted for a beautiful passage : 
 
 ' Wast thou ordain'd, dear father, 
 ' To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve 
 ' The silver livery of advised age ; 
 ' And in thy reverence, and thy chair-days, thus 
 ' To die in ruffian battle V 
 
 The old play, which Shakspeare follows, calls him 
 
 ' Aged pillar of all Cumberland's true house,* 
 but has not the farther inaccuracy of representing him as 
 having grown old in peace. This Lord Clifford was for fi-om 
 liaving past a peaceful youth. He had done ' brave service 
 ' in the wars in France, at the assault and taking of the strong 
 ' town of Ponthoise, when and where he and his men were all 
 ' clothed in white by reason of the snow, and in that manner 
 ' surprised the town. He also valiantly defended the same 
 ' town against the assaults then and there given by the French 
 ' King Charles VII.'
 
 THE CLIFFORDS. 81 
 
 only forty years of age, because he had a sou 
 who was iu the field, fell at St. Albaus ; and 
 that son, to whom Shakspeare has given a worse 
 renown than he* deserves, at Ferrybridge. 
 
 How often must that sweet strain of melan- 
 choly reflection, which Shakspeare has so beau- 
 tifully expressed for Henry VI., have past 
 through the mind of the Shepherd Lord, in his 
 humble state, when thinking of his ancestors, 
 and comparing his own consciousness of per- 
 petual danger f with the security of his lowborn 
 associates ! 
 
 * Rutland was in his eighteentli year, and barbarous as it 
 was to refuse him quarter, there is a wide difference between 
 killing a youth of that age in the field, and butchering a boy 
 of twelve years old. Hall has misled Shakspeare and the 
 author of the old play here. 
 
 t Cromwell had this feeling. ' I can say in tlie presence of 
 ' God,' said he in one of his speeches, ' in comparison of 
 ' whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I 
 ' would have been glad to have lived under my wood side, to 
 ' have kept a flock of sheep, rather than have undertook sucli 
 ' a government as this is !' Mr. Towell Rutt (to whom English 
 liistory is indebted for the publication of Burton's Journal) 
 calls this ' one of the Protector's favourite common-places. 
 I do not doubt that Oliver Cromwell often felt as he then 
 expressed himself, and that the tears, which accompanied the 
 expression, came from a deeper source than hypocrisy can 
 reach. 
 
 VOL. II. G
 
 82 THE CLIFFORDS. 
 
 ' O God ! methinks it were a happy life 
 To be no better than a homely swain ; 
 To sit upon a hill, as I do now, 
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
 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. 
 When tliis is known, then to divide the times ; 
 So many hours must I tend my flock ; 
 So many hours must I take my rest ; 
 So many hours must I contemplate ; 
 So many days my ewes have been with young ; 
 So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean ; 
 So many months ere I shall shear the fleece ; 
 So minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months and years, 
 Pass'd over to the end they were created, 
 Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.'
 
 83 
 
 PART II. 
 
 PRIVILEGED ORDERS.— THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 I HAD passed upon Blencathra one of those days 
 which provide a pleasure for remembrance, till 
 time and mortality, in their sure course, sadden 
 our blithest recollections. Our talk had been of 
 the Shepherd Lord and of his house ; and I was 
 still ruminating upon the history of that family, 
 and the days in which a noble birth so frequently 
 led to a violent death, when Sir Thomas entered 
 the room, and put an end to my musings. The 
 change of times, said I, has been favourable in 
 all respects to one class of men, at least : our 
 nobles enjoy all the advantages of their rank in 
 this age, without any of the dangers which for- 
 merly environed it. Their rivalry with each 
 other expends itself at elections, where they bleed 
 in purse instead of person ; engage in political 
 parties or factions as passionately as they will, 
 their stake extends not now beyond an official 
 appointment, or a feather in the cap ; and none 
 among them for the last three generations can 
 
 G 2
 
 84 REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES. 
 
 even have dreamt of leaving his head upon 
 Temple Bar to be looked at for a halfpenny 
 through a spy-glass* ; . . or of being buried with 
 it under his arm. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And yet in these your days, noble and royal 
 heads, which were as little troubled on their pil- 
 lows with such anticipations before the danger 
 surrounded them, have been laid under the en- 
 gine ! Pestilences of every kind, Montesinos, 
 even when they move slowly, travel far; and 
 their morbific principle, though it may long lie 
 dormant, quickens into sudden and fatal activity 
 at last. This plague began near at hand . . close 
 upon your shores. Ucalegon's house has been 
 burnt, . . it is smoking still, and the sparks have 
 been carried among your combustibles and dry 
 timber ! ' Having eyes, see ye not ? and having 
 'ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?' 
 States have their seasons of tranquillity, and that 
 with which this kingdom has been blest, has 
 been of unusual duration ; but no state will ever 
 be secure from political tragedies till that king- 
 dom come, for the coming of which children are 
 
 * ' I have been this morning,' says Horace Walpole, ' to tlie 
 ' Tower, and past under tlie new heads at Tenij)le liar, wlicre 
 ' j)coj)le make a trade of letting spying-glasses at a Iialf-pcnny 
 ' a look.' — Leltas, vol. i. p. 151.
 
 REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES. 85 
 
 taught to offer up their daily prayers, but for 
 which the institutions of society seem little calcu- 
 lated to prepare the way. Half a century ago, 
 the British constitution was an object of admira- 
 tion, or of envy, to other nations, wherever its 
 true character was understood, or its effects per- 
 ceived. Then also it was the pride, the boast, 
 the peculiar and proper glory of the British 
 people, that they lived under such a constitution, 
 . . that they were blessed, above all nations, with 
 a form of government in which political freedom 
 and legitimate authority were united, . . that they 
 were born to an inheritance of civil and religious 
 liberty. Is it at this time held in such estima- 
 tion, either by foreigners, or among yourselves ? 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 With the wise and the thoughtful it is not less 
 valued, either abroad or at home, than it has been 
 at any time since, under the especial blessing of 
 Providence, it settled, after so many struggles, 
 and such imminent danger, into its existing 
 state. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The wise and the thoughtful ! . . what propor- 
 tion, think you, do these bear to the multitude? 
 Or in what age or country is it that they have ever 
 acted upon their own generation, otherwise than
 
 86 REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES. 
 
 to appeal to posterity against it? In what esti- 
 mation is this mixed government held by the 
 stirring spirits of the world ? by your talking and 
 your writing population, . . your sophists and 
 sciolists, . . the blind who lead the blind, . . and 
 those whom the Prince of this World (their Ju- 
 piter) dementates ? Are these people, . . and their 
 name is Legion, . . English at heart ? Or is it 
 not true of the many, or the most, that they are 
 eager to begin the work of demolition, . . a craft 
 in which any one may commence master, without 
 having served an apprenticeship,* though not 
 without danger of bringing down an old house 
 upon his head ? . . for, in offences of this nature, 
 retribution follows righteously, close upon the 
 crime ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 A new government has been constituted in a 
 new country, under new circumstances, and con- 
 sequently upon a different platform; and to this 
 they look, like the Puritans of old to Geneva, as 
 to their pattern in the Mount. They take its 
 permanence for granted, and reason upon its 
 
 * Al dcscomponcr cada uno cs maestro. Columbus says 
 this in tlie account of liis last voyage. (Navarrete. Coleccion 
 de los Viages, &c. vol. i., p. 310.) Perliajjs it is a proverb which 
 he uses.
 
 AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS, 87 
 
 assumption as a matter which admits of no dis- 
 pute"^', though its duration is yet some twenty 
 years short of the natural age of man ! Such 
 governments, however, which now spring up like 
 mushrooms in the new world, possess one obvious 
 advantage over our more complicated forms ; 
 they build up little, and therefore have little that 
 can be overthrown, through whatever revolutions 
 they may pass. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The supposed advantage, methinks, is such as 
 they who dwell in tents may be said to enjoy in 
 comparison with those who inhabit cities. An 
 earthquake finds nothing to destroy among them ; 
 and if a storm loosen their poles, tear the tent-cords 
 
 * ' Intelligent foreigners,' says Dr. Dwight, ' who have 
 ' made such inquiries as were in their power, and gained some 
 ' knowledge of our system of government ; who see it in theory 
 ' more liable to fluctuation than any other, and yet are obliged 
 ' by facts to acknowledge, that it is one of the most stable and 
 ' unchanging in the world ; are astonished and perplexed at. 
 ' this strange contradiction.' (Travels in New England and 
 New York, vol. i. p, 288.) This very intelligent, and, for the 
 most part, judicious writer, has forgotten that he himself was 
 some twenty years older than the government of whose stability 
 and immutability he boasts I 
 
 The Life of General Hoche, by Alexandre Rousselin, is de- 
 dicated A La Republique Eternelle, . . the republic being at that 
 time in the sixth year of its age !
 
 88 AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 out of the sand, and blow down the whole dou- 
 ?(Y//', they have only to crawl out from under the 
 curtains, and pitch it again as soon as the wind 
 has ceased. The Scenitse have certainly had this 
 advantage over the ancient Egyptians, and the 
 Greeks and Romans of antiquity ; . . a worshipful 
 pre-eminence it is ! But such as it is, it is to be 
 enjoyed only by those who dwell in don-wars or 
 JiTcials. Civilization, polity, urbanity, are terms 
 which denote their relation to a more advanced 
 state of society, and this may be brought down 
 by revolutions to as low a state as that of the 
 Barbary Moors, or the Abyssinian Christians. 
 Lay your foundations in the rock and let your 
 edifice be compact and well-proportioned ; then, 
 though the rain descend, and the floods come, 
 and the winds blow and beat, and the stream 
 bear upon it, it will not fall : nothing but an 
 earthquake can overthrow it ;.. and if, by some 
 such convulsion in the order of nature, as by 
 Providence appointed, it be overthrown at last, it 
 is something at least to leave ruins for posterity ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 In a certain sense men may be said to lose 
 that, which, having within their power, they fail 
 to gain. Much the new Governments, or rather 
 the fabrics of society, must undoubtedly lose in 
 not possessing some of those institutions which
 
 AMERICA. 89 
 
 they seem agreed to reject. But they have 
 hardly had a choice. Old forms of government 
 are not transplantable into new countries. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 If the Greeks and Romans had been of that 
 opinion, Europe would at this day have been 
 more barbarous than it is. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 But the Greeks and Romans never established 
 themselves in new countries. They planted 
 armed colonies; they went as conquerors, not as 
 occupants. To their colonists, therefore, mili- 
 tary discipline was necessary for self-preserva- 
 tion ; and civil order took its place under that 
 protection. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The whole of America was, in one sense of the 
 term, a new country, when it was discovered, 
 and taken possession of with a strong hand by 
 the discoverers, upon an imaginary right which 
 they devised for themselves. But in the sense 
 wherein you use it, the term applies only to 
 those parts which were inhabited by scattered 
 tribes, . . savages, whom it was hardly possible 
 to conquer or to tame. War with them resembled 
 a contest* with wild beasts for possession of the 
 
 * This was well represented by the Marquis de Denonville 
 in a despatch from Canada to the French Government, written
 
 90 COLONIES. 
 
 forest; and by any ordinary means or agencies 
 of civilization they were not to be reclaimed. In 
 such countries where the forest is to be cleared, 
 and the savag-es who roam over it are to be 
 hunted beyond the pale, the colonists have to 
 carry with them not only the rudiments, but also 
 the materials of society, and those materials are 
 necessarily scanty, and, for the most part, bad 
 of their kind. Natural wants leave them no 
 leisure for the refinements of life, and the mere 
 animal importance of individual man is such, 
 that artificial distinctions are not maintainable 
 among them. When such colonists occupy a 
 sea-port, they are kept by means of commercial 
 intercourse up to a certain degree of civilization, 
 but it is the lowest degree. If there be a well- 
 rooted principle of religion among them, it acts 
 as a strong corrective, so long as they remain 
 together ; but among those who branch oif and 
 
 in 1688. ' En parlant de la guerre des Sauvages, il dit, qu'on 
 ' 726 pent en donner line plus juxtc idee, que de representer 
 ' ces Barharea comme des Betes farovches, qui sont repandues 
 ' dans une vasie Foret, d'ou ils ravagent tons les Pays circum- 
 ' voisins. O as' assemble pour leur donner la chasse, ons'informe 
 ' oil est leur retraite, et elle est par tout ; ilfaut les attendre a 
 ' Vaffut, et on les attend lontems. On neles pent aller chercher 
 ' qu'avec des chiens de chasse, et les Sauvages sont les seuls 
 ' Levriers dont on j^uisse se servir pour cela.' — Cliarlevoix, 
 Hist, dc la Nouvellc France, t. ii. \i. 379.
 
 COLONIES. 91 
 
 disperse into the interior, where the rituals of 
 social religion can no longer be observed, that 
 only preservative fails ; and they fall into a 
 state, which, if it be in some respects better than 
 that of the wild-men whom they displace, is in 
 other respects as certainly worse. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 Such has been the history of the Dutch in 
 South Africa, of the Spaniards in the Llanos, in 
 the interior of La Plata, and in Paraguay, 
 wherever, indeed, in their wide American pos- 
 sessions, they found none but savages to contend 
 with ; and such, also, is the state of the Brazilians 
 in their grazing provinces. Among a people in 
 this condition, the propensity is towards a popu- 
 lar government, weak in its seat and centre, and 
 altogether inefficient at a distance. Whatever 
 may be the nominal government under which 
 they live, the state in which such people exist 
 differs little from mere anarchy. Some admitted 
 rules are followed among them in the devolution 
 and distribution of property ; in other respects 
 laws are regarded no farther than as the ob- 
 servance may coincide Avith their inclination or 
 convenience. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But there were parts of the New World where 
 the Spaniards found regular governments, com-
 
 92 SPANISH AMERICA. 
 
 plicated systems of society, and established habits 
 of principled subordination, which had been 
 artfully inculcated, and were well rooted in the 
 feelings of the people. In those countries they 
 found no tendency toward democratical institu- 
 tions, and certainly they carried none with them 
 when they settled there. Yet such institutions 
 are adopted in Bogota, Peru, and Mexico, as 
 well as at Buenos Ayres and Caraccas, as if, 
 wherever society were fused by the revolutionary 
 fire, it took this form ; whether it be that into 
 which it will finally settle after cooling, time will 
 show. In those countries a monarchial govern- 
 ment might seem more congenial to old customs, 
 old opinions, and the condition of the people at 
 the time when the flames reached them. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Had the Spaniards efi'ccted their American 
 conquests in independent armies, like the nor- 
 thern nations, who established themselves by 
 arms throughout the Western Empire, monarchies 
 would have taken root in parts of the New 
 World as naturally as they had done in the Old. 
 The victorious leader would have taken the place 
 of the Potentate whom he had thrust from the 
 throne ; and Cortes, Pizarro, Qucsada and Fe- 
 derman, might have been the Hengist and Cerdic, 
 the Alaric and Clovis, of so many dynasties.
 
 SPANISH AMERICA. 93 
 
 But the Spaniards carried with them a strono-er 
 principle of loyalty to their sovereign, and at- 
 tachment to their country, than might have been 
 expected from such adventurers; and when the 
 attempt to establish an independent state was 
 made in Peru, under the most favourable cir- 
 cumstances, the King's name was found to be a 
 tower of strength by those who adhered to it. 
 Perhaps this has not been fortunate either for the 
 conquered kingdoms, or for the mother country. 
 Perhaps it might have been better for Mexico, 
 if Cortes had seated himself in the place of Mon- 
 tezuma, and for Peru if the younger Almagro, 
 or Giron, had made Cuzco the metropolis of a 
 revived kingdom. In that case the two nations 
 would long ere this time have been united, and 
 that fatal enmity of castes and colours would have 
 been prevented, which has produced so great 
 injustice, and so much misery at all times, and 
 has cost so much blood in the present generation. 
 But no local and present monarchy having grown 
 up in the transition of power from one race to 
 another, all things have since tended to alienate 
 the minds of the American Spaniards from such 
 a government. To them it has been for the pur- 
 poses of oppression, a terrible reality; for the 
 purposes of protection and beneficence, a phan- 
 tom. Thus when the hour of revolution came
 
 94 
 
 SPANISH AMERICA. 
 
 they were found in a condition utterly indisposed 
 for monarchy, and as utterly unfit for any other 
 form of government, having neither materials 
 from which an aristocracy might be built up, 
 nor a democracy composed with any reasonable 
 prospect of stability for the state, or of repose for 
 the miserable people. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Grievous, indeed, must have been the misgo- 
 vernment of the Mother Country, which has ren- 
 dered its colonies thus at the same time impatient 
 of foreign dominion, and incompetent to the task 
 of governing themselves ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Our colonists were not found in that state 
 when the plague, which is now devastating 
 Spanish America and threatening Brazil, broke 
 out among them. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 A plague you justly call it, ..of all plagues 
 the most formidable that has ever yet been 
 poured out from the vials of wrath ! Yet how 
 easily might all this evil have been averted by 
 moderation and patience, both from the British 
 and the Spanish-American colonies ! There is 
 a natural unfitness in distant dominion, when it 
 ceases to be necessary for the support and pro- 
 tection of a growing state. This is so evident
 
 COLONIES. 95 
 
 a truth, that no government, which is not in a 
 state of barbarous ignorance, can fail to perceive 
 it, however reluctant it may be to allow that 
 the natural term of pupilage has expired. But 
 no reluctance can long delay the recognition ; 
 for it becomes necessary, as soon as it manifestly 
 appears to be just. In a due course of policy 
 the Mother Country would withdraw its super- 
 intendence from an adult colony, just as a nation 
 recalls its cautionary troops from fortresses which 
 they have occupied in a friendly territory, when 
 the cause for that provisional occupation is at an 
 end. The state of tutelage and dependence thus 
 terminating would be succeeded by an alliance, 
 nearer in its kind, and more durable, than any 
 which is grounded upon treaties, with whatever 
 adjurations ratified, and by whatever motives of 
 mutual interest cemented. The connection of 
 Great Britain with what are now the United 
 States of America would, ere this time, have thus 
 matured, had not a convulsion, which ended in 
 a violent disruption, been brought on by the old 
 leaven of puritanism in the colonies, and by the 
 heat and profligacy of faction at home, at least 
 as much as by the erroneous measures of the 
 government. Well had it been if the mischief 
 had terminated with the struggle ! The Ameri- 
 cans, like the English, are a sober people, and
 
 90 
 
 COLONIES. 
 
 the mispolicy on either side, which should pre- 
 vent the close relationship between the two 
 nations, from yet producing its proper and be- 
 neficent effect upon both, would deserve rather 
 to be called wicked than weak. But an evil 
 principle has triumphed. The doctrine of obe- 
 dience for conscience sake has been renounced 
 in the one country, and seems too surely as if it 
 were practically abandoned in the other, though 
 it is the Christian doctrine, and that upon which 
 alone the peace and happiness of society can 
 rest. The example which was thus set them, 
 has been followed by the Spanish-Americans 
 with fatal fidelity. They, indeed, had real 
 grievances to render them discontented under a 
 dependence, which was made galling by every 
 kind of vexatious and contumelious injustice. 
 But when the course of events would surely and 
 speedily have brought about, without a struggle, 
 their virtual independence and actual emancipa- 
 tion, . . when those injurious restrictions must of 
 necessity have ceased, which, having once ceased, 
 it would not have been possible for the Mother 
 Country ever to re-impose, . .just at that time 
 the revolutionary spirit broke loose. All the 
 crimes which have been committed among them,* 
 all the calamities which they have endured, tlie 
 blood which has been shed like water, the dcso-
 
 Spanish America. 97 
 
 lation of families, the miseries in which a whole 
 generation has been involved, . . might have been 
 spared, and they would at this hour have pos- 
 sessed, in peace and prosperity, every privilege 
 which they ought to have desired, or whicli 
 they were capable of enjoying, if they could 
 have been contented * to ' tarry the Lord's 
 leisure.' 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 So it is that men in their impatience convert 
 
 to their bane that which, if seasonably received, 
 
 would be their blessing. Like children who 
 
 gather green fruit, they do not feel, and will not 
 
 be persuaded to perceive that 
 
 . . . Time is Nature's faithful messenger, 
 And brings up all we wish, as well as all we fear.f 
 
 Dearly are the Spanish colonists at this day 
 abiding the consequences of this error, and dearly 
 will they long abide it ! The consumption of 
 
 * Patience, however, is not recommended by the directors 
 of public opinion in Great Britain. One of tliem says : — 
 ' Patience never did any good in this world, and never will. 
 ' We must fight for all that is valuable ; and as it is a condi- 
 ' tion of our existence that rest can only be enjoyed after 
 ' labour, so in like manner we can have no good without a 
 ' struggle. . . John Bull must be constantly poked in the ribs.' 
 This is the advice given, in wliat may be called Captain Rock's 
 Journal, to the Irish Papists! 
 
 t Defoe. 
 VOL. II. H
 
 98 SPANISH AMERICA. 
 
 lives has been more than tenfold the sum of that 
 in the American war; and now, when Spain is 
 no longer able to support the distant contest, 
 they are left with all the principles of discord 
 among themselves in full activity. The best 
 men, as in such times they always are, have been 
 the earliest victims. Are legislators and rulers 
 likely to be found among those who, by means 
 of a craftier course of conduct, or the exertion 
 of more daring qualities, have survived the 
 struggle, . . men whose hearts have been seared 
 by their own sufferings, or hardened, if not by 
 the crimes which they have actually committed, 
 by those which they have witnessed, and in 
 which they have been inevitably, perhaps unwil- 
 lingly, engaged, . . which they have been com- 
 pelled to sanction, . . and by which they have 
 profited ? 
 
 'Tis not in battles tliat from youth we train 
 The Governor, who must be wise and good, 
 And temper willi llie sternness of the brain 
 Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanliood. 
 Wisdom doth live with cliildren round her knees, 
 Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk 
 Man liolds with week-day man in the hourly walk 
 Of the mind's business ; these are the degrees 
 By which true sway doth mount ; this is the stalk 
 True power doth grow on.* 
 
 * Wordswortli.
 
 SPANISH AMERICA. 99 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE, 
 
 The reason is sufficiently manifest wherefore 
 a preference for republican institutions should 
 hitherto have been shown throughout the whole 
 of these new states. There was neither family 
 nor person in any of them to whose claims the 
 general opinion would have deferred ; and there 
 was the example of their northern neighbours, 
 whose prosperity they would consider to be the 
 consequence of their popular government, not 
 knowing for how much the Americans are in- 
 debted to the habits and principles in which they 
 had been educated, and which they derived from 
 their Original stock, Dutch, or Swedish, as well 
 as British. But this preference among the 
 Spanish-Americans has not even the prejudice 
 of a classical education to support it. After an 
 age of anarchy, men gladly submit to any govern- 
 ment that offers them a prospect of tranquillity ; 
 and a successful commander may, for that reason, 
 find that the public inclination coincides with 
 his own ambition, if he wishes to make his 
 authority permanent, and take to himself the 
 title of King. The station may be, though pe- 
 rilous, the safest in which he can place himself; 
 and monarchies may thus begin in the New 
 World as they did in the Old. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 SPANISH AMERICA. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The general disposition there, at present, seems 
 decidedly against that form of government. — > 
 Even in Canada there exists a strong feeling in 
 favour of republican equality. For though by 
 the constitution of that province, as determined 
 in the Quebec Bill, the King may confer here- 
 ditary titles of honour, with the right annexed 
 of a seat in the Legislative Council, no title with 
 such a right has yet been conferred, during the 
 course of half a century. Now surely it must 
 have been the intention of the British Govern- 
 ment, when that Constitution was framed, to 
 strengthen itself thus cheaply and naturallv, by 
 creating a colonial nobility ; and the reason why 
 this has not been done, can only be that some 
 strong objection was apprehended from the state 
 of popular opinion. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Perhaps persons have not been found there 
 solicitous for such honours. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Titles will always be objects of ambition when 
 they are regarded as honours, even tlio\igh mere 
 honours, and of the lowest kind ; surely still 
 more in a case like tliis, wliere they would have 
 carried with them hereditary iullucnce, whicli is 
 power.
 
 DISCONTENT. lOl 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The reason, then, peradventure, may be, that 
 fit subjects have not been found. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 That reason might be admitted if any intel- 
 ligible principle of selection could be discovered 
 in the promotion of aspirants to the peerage at 
 home. 
 
 SIR THOMAS .^IOR£. 
 
 The English, Montesinos, have not as yet been 
 remarkable either for the efficiency, or the wis- 
 dom of their colonial system. They send out 
 adventurers of British mould and spirit, . . good 
 clay, well-tempered, . . and by such men rapid 
 advances are made toward a certain kind of pros- 
 perity, under British protection, and with the aid 
 of British capital. But how the foundations of 
 a state should be laid, and what superstructure 
 should be erected, seem to be questions upon 
 which your colonial architects have bestowed 
 little thought, and in which they have hitherto 
 manifested but poor proficiency. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 I should rather expect, if things hold on in 
 their apparent course for another centurv, or for 
 half the time, that monarchies would be demo- 
 lished in the Old World, than that they would be 
 established in the New,
 
 102 DISCONTENT. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Allow sometliing, my friend, for the contra- 
 dictious principle in human nature ; and you may 
 then see cause for supposing that the same tem- 
 per of mind which makes men discontented under 
 one form of government, is likely to produce the 
 same effect under another. There are certain 
 dispositions which arrange themselves, as if in- 
 stinctively, on the querulous or railing side : like 
 the beautiful birds of the Spice Islands, they 
 must fly against the wind, from whatever quarter 
 it may blow. Such men will be royalists in Ame- 
 rica, for the same reasons which make them 
 republicans in England, France, and Germany. 
 A lawyer will argue with the whole force of his 
 intellect and his lungs upon a much feebler case 
 than may be made out in favour of either form ; 
 they may therefore easily persuade themselves 
 that their opinions are built upon conviction, 
 when in reality the root of the matter is to be 
 found in a contentious humour, in the love of 
 display, in the pleasure of opposition, and in that 
 spirit of self-complacency, wherewith men^ espe- 
 cially young men, are liable to be possessed, 
 when they think themselves advanced in know- 
 ledge, and in liberality, beyond the institutions of 
 their country. There are weeds which never 
 show themselves in the wilderness, where the
 
 DISCONTENT. 103 
 
 forest overshadows, or the brake chokes them 
 with its stronger growth ; but they spring up in 
 the garden and the cultivated field, and become 
 rank and noxious, in consequence of the very 
 labour which man hath bestowed in preparino- 
 and manuring the ground. So it is with subjects 
 such as these : they are most numerous, where 
 there is most freedom ; . . of such discontent, 
 therefore, there will be as much in the United 
 States as in England. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 But it has not the means of acting there with 
 equal force. There is no metropolis* in the 
 United States, no London, or Paris, no heart of 
 the political body; nor can there be one while 
 the federal system continues. That system re- 
 sembles the banyan tree ; its branches as they 
 extend send down shoots, and form for themselves 
 new trunks. An American poet might thus 
 
 * ' There can hardly,' says Hobbes, (Behemoth, Mor. and 
 Pol. Works, p. 549, ed. 1750,) ' arise a long and dangerous 
 ' rebellion, that has not some such overgrown city (as London), 
 ' with an army or two in its belly, to foment it.' On the other 
 hand the historian Niebuhr remarks, that unity is what ' the 
 ' nations of antiquity never attained, except by means of a 
 ' predominant capital.' (Hare and Tljirhvall's Trans, vol. i. 
 p. 87.) There is no probability that any such capital will be 
 formed in the United States: . . by it their constitution would be 
 endangered, . . but can their union be maintained without one ?
 
 104 UNITED STATES. 
 
 typify it ; and if he looked to the emblem only, 
 he might say that, in proportion to its extension 
 its strength must be increased, and its continu- 
 ance secured ; for the storm cannot uproot it, and 
 there is no single life which the woodman can 
 destroy. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 . Follow the emblem, and you will find that the 
 banyan has no privilege of indestructibility. It 
 may be consumed by fire ; and though it cannot 
 be thrown down by a tempest, it may be shattered 
 by it, and its polyped unity destroyed. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Perhaps the truth may be, that republics, 
 when once established, although more turbulent 
 than monarchical states, are more stable ; and 
 one cause for this may be, tliat where any end is 
 in view which concerns their advantage, or their 
 security, they are less scrupulous concerning the 
 means. The more you divide responsibility, tlic 
 less of it, morally as well as legally, will each of 
 the persons among whom it is divided take unto 
 himself. There is an esprit dc corps, by whicli 
 the point of honour is maintained at a high 
 standard ; but there is no corporate conscience. 
 And men who act in bodies, it matters not whe- 
 ther large or small, . . mobs, senates, or cabinets^ 
 , . will, without hesitation, take their share in
 
 UNITED STATES. 105 
 
 measures, which^ if proposed to any one of them 
 as an individual, would make him reply with the 
 Syrian, ' Am I a dog, that I should do this 
 thing ? ' 
 
 If governments are to be appreciated by their 
 stability, the Venetian should seem to have been 
 the best that has ever been known in Europe. 
 So it was esteemed by our republicans of the 
 seventeenth century : yet if there be one govern- 
 ment that has been systematically conducted 
 upon more abominable principles than all others, 
 it is that of the Republic of Venice. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And, therefore, Montesinos, it has fallen ! Had 
 Venice possessed the moral strength of Switzer- 
 land, it would not indeed have been more secure 
 than the Swiss Cantons were found to be ao-ainst 
 such a military force as that of the French Re- 
 public; but the general feeling of Europe would 
 have called for its restoration, and the shameless 
 iniquity of its transfer, from the robber to the 
 receiver, could not have been sanctioned in oppo- 
 sition to that feelingf. 
 
 All things are always in change : and the 
 example of Venice may show that, in a state 
 where external mutation is least apparent, the 
 process of internal decay may be going on the 
 more surely and irremediably.
 
 106 UNITED STATES. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 But in the United States of America, however 
 the affectation of opposition, and the love of dis- 
 play, may make a certain number of persons 
 disparage the government which it is their duty 
 to obey and to uphold, it is not the interest of 
 any party or sect to attempt its overthrow. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 He who maintains that men are best directed 
 by a sense of their own interest, should be pre- 
 pared to show that they always know what their 
 own interests really are. The sense of duty is 
 more influential in good men ; envy, hatred, and 
 malice, in wicked ones ; prejudice in many, su- 
 perstition in more, passion* in most men. 
 
 If governments understood their interest, would 
 there be wars in the world ? if individuals under- 
 stood f it, would there be wickedness? 
 
 It is true that there is nothing to pull down 
 in America ; no temple for Erostratus to destroy. 
 
 * ' Interest,' said Glover the Poet, ' is not the predominant 
 ' ruler of mankind. The few, indeed, are under that frigid 
 ' influence ; but the many are governed by passion.' — Parlia- 
 mentary Historij, vol. xviii. p. 477. 
 
 t That good man, Louis Buonaparte, says, ' il est bein con,' 
 * sola/it de songer que Vinteret real des individus et des gouvenie- 
 ^ metis s' accorde parfaitejne?it avec la morale; que le droit 
 ' chcmin est non seulemeni les plus court, mais encore le meil- 
 ^ leur ; qu'enfiti la prosperity et le 2}erfcctio?incjnent de la
 
 UNITED STATES. 107 
 
 But the very levelness of the political platform 
 may excite in some Pharaoh the ambition of 
 constructing a pyramid upon it. Ambition, even 
 if it be not the besetting sin of republics more 
 than of monarchies, acts in them, when once they 
 are possessed by it, with greater force, and has 
 fewer obstacles in its course. But so surely as 
 ambition shall introduce a military spirit, the 
 cradle will be made ready for an Imperator. 
 Anarchy has a natural tendency to the same 
 crisis ; and in the new states what is to preserve 
 the people from it? No provision is made for 
 their religious instruction ; they are left to take 
 up at their choice with fanaticism, or unbelief; . . 
 both existing there in such hideous forms, that it 
 may almost be doubted which is most destructive 
 to human happiness. In those states little more 
 respect is paid to law than to gospel : as among 
 the Jews when there was no king in Israel, every 
 man does that which is right in his own eyes. 
 A weak government cannot enforce obedience at 
 a distance : a strong one cannot exist without 
 establishments which the American people will 
 not willingly support. Even in the best esta- 
 
 * soci'ete sont inseparables.' — Documens Historiques sur la 
 HoUande, t. ii. p. 64. 
 
 But it is Christianity alone that can bring about tliis un- 
 provement.
 
 108 
 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 blislied states, there is nothing- which supplies, 
 or can supply, the place of loyalty*; and through- 
 out the wliole union, the principle of religious 
 obedience, which is the cement of political society. 
 
 18 wanting-. 
 
 * ' Affection,' says Dr. Dwiglit, ' has for its proper object 
 ' intelligent beings. The fewer tliese are, and the longer they 
 ' are regarded with affection, tlie more intense and rivetted the 
 ' affection becomes. The great officers of this state (Connec- 
 * ticut) are few, and their continuance in office is usually long. 
 ' Hence they are customarily regarded by their fellow-citizens 
 ' with no small degree of respect and personal attachment. 
 ' Government in tlieir hands is felt to be the government of 
 'friends; and the attachment to the men is naturally asso- 
 ' ciated with their measures. 
 
 ' The whole force of this affection does not, I confess, exist 
 ' even here. For its entire efficacy we must look to a mo- 
 ' narchy, army, or navy. The ruler here being a single object, 
 ' concentres the whole regard of the mind ; and if an amiable 
 ' and worthy man, faithfully and wisely discharging the duties 
 ' of his oflice, may exert an influence over those whom lie 
 ' governs next to magical. Of the benefits to which this 
 ' powerful principle gives birth, free governments ought, in 
 ' every safe way, to avail themselves. A doctrine, a consti- 
 ' tution, or even an abstract term, may serve as a watcliword 
 ' of party, a torch of enthusiasm, or an idol of occasional ar- 
 ' dour. But there is no permanent earthly object of affection, 
 ' exce})t man ; and, witliout such affection, there is reason to 
 ' fear that no free government can long exist in safety and 
 ' peace.' — Travels in New England and New York, vol, i. 
 p. 262, (American edition.)
 
 UNITED STATES. lOD 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 They will tell you that none is needed for the 
 Cyclopean walls of a republican edifice. And, 
 alas ! it may be feared that there is as little of 
 that cement here. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Your fathers were not sparing- of it when they 
 laid the foundation, and raised the superstruc- 
 ture : . . if their sons have suffered it to be picked 
 out, let them beware of wind and weather ! 
 Governments are held together either by force, 
 or by the attachment of the people to their in- 
 stitutions. Despotism begins generally in the 
 choice, or willing acquiescence of the people, 
 when they are weary of anarchy, and ask only 
 for protection and repose. It is thus welcomed 
 as the remedy for present evils; and when its 
 own evil consequences begin to act, it is then 
 upheld by force, and by the habit of obedience 
 which force produces, a habit which frequently 
 survives the power that generated it. But the 
 willing obedience of a free people rests either 
 on a principle of duty, as by religion enjoined, 
 or upon general prosperity ; that is to say, a con- 
 dition of society in which the great body of the 
 population shall be contented with their lot, and 
 no such grievances, or discrepancies of opinion, 
 shall exist, as to excite in any considerable part
 
 110 UNITED STATES. 
 
 of tliem a desire for clianofe. We will hereafter 
 inquire how far these kingdoms may be deemed 
 secure upon either of these grounds. In America 
 the principle of religious obedience is not acknow- 
 ledged ; obedience, therefore, will be paid there 
 no longer than it may be thought convenient to 
 pay it. And if a province remote from the seat 
 of the central, or rather of the general govern- 
 ment, should choose to separate itself from the 
 confederacy, the elder states, in which the 
 strength * and intelligence and virtue of the 
 union are chiefly to be found, would find them- 
 selves, should they attempt to maintain the con- 
 nection by force, much in the same kind of 
 situation with respect to the new Independents, 
 that the Mother Country was placed in towards 
 them, as to the difficulties of the contest. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The maxim of the first French Revolutionists 
 might again have its season of triumph : for in 
 
 * In 1810 ' two-fiftlis of tlie white population of the Ameri- 
 ' can Republic, its only real strength, were included in the 
 ' northern states (New York and New England). Of these 
 ' two-fifths, 2,350,000 occupy in a solid column a territory of 
 ' less than 100,000 square miles; while the remaining three- 
 ' fifths are spread over a surface of more than a million.' — 
 Dwight's Travels in New England and New York, vol. i. 
 J). 20. (American Edition.)
 
 UNITED STATES. Ill 
 
 sucli a case it would be found practically true 
 tliat, for a state to be independent, it is sufficient 
 that it wills it. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But no sucli change could be brought about 
 without bringing some popular leader conspi- 
 cuously forward ; and were he to obtain military 
 reputation, monarchy might naturally arise, as it 
 has in so many former instances arisen. It is 
 not to be supposed that the same country should 
 produce a second Washington. In any war, 
 foreign or domestic, a successful Commander 
 would be more dangerous in America, than he 
 was ever deemed to be in the most jealous ages 
 of the Roman republic, or of the Athenian 
 democracy. The Americans are an ambitious 
 people, more ambitious than any other existing 
 nation, . . the French, possibly, excepted. A 
 General who should conquer Quebec for them, 
 or take possession of Mexico, might pass from 
 the Presidency to the Throne with as little oppo- 
 sition as Buonaparte, when he exchanged the 
 title of Consul for that of Emperor, found from 
 legislators who had sworn eternal hatred to mo- 
 narchy. The change is easier from republicanism 
 to monarchy in America, than from monarchy to 
 republicanism in any of the European kingdoms, 
 even those wherein there has been the most ila-
 
 112 UNITED STATES. 
 
 grant and pernicious misgovernment. A revolu- 
 tionary party would have less danger to incur, 
 less resistance to encounter, and greater objects 
 of ambition to incite it. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 But there is no appearance of any disposition 
 to such a change. The foundations of govern- 
 ment in that country have not been undermined. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 There are none to undermine. 
 
 MONTESINOS, 
 
 All changes in society, even when indisputably 
 for the better, (and this were far from being so,) 
 are calamitous to the Q-eneration which is fated to 
 pass through them : such only are to be desired 
 as may be effected by the course of progressive 
 improvement, gradually felt rather in the results 
 than in the operation. I know not that such a 
 revolution in America would eventually be for 
 the welfare of the American people ; immediately 
 it would, beyond all doubt, be for their misfor- 
 tune, elevating the turbulent and the daring, and 
 sacrificing to their ambition the peace and hap- 
 piness of the community. Too much of this has 
 already been seen in this my generation ! They 
 who lived (if any were then living) when the 
 great convulsions of this planet, Neptunian or 
 Vulcanian, were going on, arc less to be pitied
 
 PROGRESS OF GOVERNMENT. 113 
 
 than those who are involved in the cataclasms of 
 the moral and social w^orld, inasmuch as it is 
 more tolerable to suffer under the dispensations 
 of nature, than the infliction of man. They were 
 spared also from the foresight of evil, and from 
 participating in the errors, the ill passions, and 
 the crimes, which, in the revolutions of society, 
 bring indiscriminating destruction upon the inno- 
 cent and the guilty. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 All governments, ancient and modern, have 
 undergone such convulsions before the different 
 orders of which they were composed settled each 
 in its proper place. In modern history you have 
 the strus'O'le between the Civil and Ecclesiastical 
 powers, and that between the Crown and the 
 Nobles, the Papacy trimming between them, and 
 siding with one or the other, as might best seem 
 to promote its own haughty pretensions. These 
 continvied for some ages. Then came the contest 
 between the Crown and the third estate, or the 
 people properly so called. Take heed lest there 
 be another, and a more tremendous one, at hand, 
 between the Government and the Populace, . . 
 more doubtful in its issue, and whatever that 
 may be, more dreadful in its course, more fatal 
 in its consequences ! 
 
 VOL. II. I
 
 114 PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Omnino res in ancipiti est, et bene quod nondiim 
 in prfecipiti ! * First the Sword governs ; then 
 the Laws ; next in succession is the Government 
 of Public Opinion. To this we are coming. 
 Ah-eady its claims are openly and boldly ad- 
 vanced, . . timidly, and therefore feebly, resisted ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Say, rather, that its reign has begun. And 
 to hope for tranquillity under it, is like putting to 
 sea with a persuasion that, let the winds rage as 
 they may, and blow from whatever quarter, they 
 will have no action upon the waves ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The more loudlyf and confidently Public Opi- 
 nion is expressed, with the more reason ought 
 it always to be distrusted! The more powerful 
 it becomes, the more easily is it misled, and the 
 more are its predominance and its tyranny to be 
 dreaded. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The more resolutely, therefore, ought its usur- 
 pation to be resisted. 
 
 * Scaliger. 
 
 t ' The best and surest way,' said Sir Benjamin Riulyard, 
 ' to dispel darkness and tlie deeds tliercof, is to let in light. 
 ' We say that day breaks, but no man ever heard the voice of 
 ' it. God comes in the slill voice.' — Rushvvorth.
 
 REVOLUTIONISTS. 115 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 But for tliis, earnestness and energy are want- 
 ing. Public life seems now to be 
 
 the stage 
 Where Hope and Youth shall ruin Fear and Age !* 
 
 It was Cassandra's miserable curse to pro- 
 phecy truly, but always to unheeding, unbeliev- 
 ing ears. There are those among us who have 
 in like manner a strono- and distinct foresig-ht 
 of the evils which are impending, but who await 
 the course of events in silence and resignation, 
 and spare themselves the pain of what they deem 
 (sinfully as respects themselves, if not erringly 
 as regards others) a useless exertion. On the 
 other hand, they who mislead, and they who are 
 misled, have confidence and intrepidity on their 
 side. It is a true saying of Bishop Taylor's, and 
 not less applicable to political than to religious 
 opinions, that ' men are most confident of those 
 ' articles which they can so little prove, that 
 ' they never made questions of them.' Their 
 zeal is in proportion to their confidence. Danton, 
 one of the boldest and bloodiest demaooo-ues that 
 ever excited a deluded populace to acts of atro- 
 city and madness, declared, in the successful part 
 of his career, that the principle of revolutionary 
 
 * Lord Brooke. 
 
 I 2
 
 116 THE PRESS. 
 
 action was audacity in tins, audacity in tliat, 
 audacity in everything. 
 
 Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold I* 
 
 Most faithfully is that maxim followed, by all 
 the members of the Unholy Alliance, from the 
 haughtiest of those whom Johnson called ' our 
 bottomless Whigs,' to the lowest son of profli- 
 gacy and misfortune, who in default of other 
 occupation as Roger North says, ' takes unto the 
 * treason trade.' ' To everything there is a sea- 
 ' son,' saith the Preacher ; and these men imagine 
 that their season is come : that this is the time 
 for them * to rend and to break down, and to 
 ' pluck up that which is planted ; and to get and 
 ' to keep.' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 There was an age during which the Pulpit 
 supplied, and in no inadequate degree, the place 
 of the press, in expressing public opinion, and 
 in exciting and directing it. The Press at this 
 day, though its efforts throughout Christendom 
 were directed to one object, could not produce 
 so powerful, and simultaneous a commotion, as 
 was raised by the Preachers of the first Crusade. 
 That movement coincided with the wishes of the 
 rulers and the temper of the people. But France, 
 
 * Faery Queen.
 
 THE PRESS. 117 
 
 Scotland, and England, have experienced what 
 the tyranny of the Pulpit is, the former during 
 the League, the two latter during the Covenant, 
 and the one being as much the reproach of Pro- 
 testantism as the other is of the Romish Church. 
 Widely as the professions of faith differed, the 
 principle in both confederacies was the same, 
 and it was the same spirit that influenced them. 
 The Press is more difhcultly to be restrained ; it 
 acts more continuously as well as more widely ; 
 beware how you come under its tyranny ! — 
 Nothing but good resulted to these kingdoms 
 when that of the Pulpit was overthrown : but 
 this can neither so effectually, nor so safely be 
 put down. Of the many evils to which its abo- 
 minable abuse must in sure consequence lead, 
 if it be not firmly restrained in time, the ultimxate 
 loss of its just and salutary freedom is one of the 
 worst, and likely to be the most enduring. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Even in its beginning it was found impossible 
 to restrain it, though the severest means were 
 tried. 
 
 SIR THOMAS ]MORE. 
 
 Trust me, Montesinos, when I tell you, that 
 had its abuses proceeded from no other motives 
 than sheer profligacy and the desire of gain, 
 the Tudors would have curbed it to their heart's
 
 118 
 
 THE PRESS. 
 
 content, and with the cordial acquiescence of 
 the nation. It was put in action against tlie 
 greatest of that line by enthusiasm, and religious 
 faction. The men, therefore, whom it was ne- 
 cessary to restrain or to punish, were persons 
 who under a fatal but invincible mispersuasion, 
 deemed it their duty to defy the laws, eluding 
 them by every imaginable* artifice of conceal- 
 ment so long as they could, and, when this was 
 no longer possible, exulting over them, and going 
 to execution, I will not say with the spirit of 
 martyrs, for the meekness and the charity were 
 wanting, but with the resolution of soldiers who 
 advanced to meet death in the breach. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The punishment in their case was proportioned 
 to the apprehended and intended consequences 
 of the offence, not to the pravity of the offender. 
 Human laws, though necessarily imperfect, are 
 
 * Ben Jonson describes, in his lively manner, the ojierations 
 of a libellous press in liis days. 
 
 One in his printer in disguise, and kecj)3 
 
 His press in a hollow tree, where to conceal him 
 
 He works by glow-worm light ; tlie moon's too open. 
 
 The other zealous rag is the compositor, 
 
 Who, in an angle where the ants inhabit, 
 
 (The emblems of his labours) will sit curl'd 
 
 Whole days and nights, and work his eyes out for him. 
 
 Vol. viii. p. 10.
 
 LAWS. 1 1 9 
 
 more imperfect than of necessity they must be ; 
 but whenever they err, or are commonly thouo-ht 
 to err, on the side of severity, they occasion a 
 re-action against themselves. The criminal who 
 suffers under a sentence heavier than his crime, 
 is thereby made an object of compassion ; and 
 forthwith his actual criminality is forgiven, or 
 overlooked. This is not because the eye* of pity 
 sees things through a delusive medium, but 
 because there is in us an instinctive principle 
 which rises against injustice ; and laws not only 
 fail in efficacy, but are always in some degree 
 injurious, if they are not in accord with the sense 
 of right and wrong, . . if they have not the sanc- 
 U'On of natural justice, . . if they do not rest upon 
 that primal and paramount law which God has 
 implanted in the heart of man. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Lawcraft, if not a twin-fiend with Priestcraft, 
 is an imp of the same stock, and perhaps the 
 worser devil of the two. There may be other 
 professions which harden the heart as much, but 
 
 * The afflicted ne'er want praises. Oh how false 
 Doth the eye of Pity see ! The only way 
 To make the foul seem gracious, is to be 
 Within the ken of death. He that erewhile 
 Would have been thought a monster, being now 
 Condemned to die, is thought a hero. 
 
 Cartwright. The Royal Slave.
 
 120 
 
 PARLIAMENT. 
 
 none which tend so greatly to corrupt the sin- 
 cerity, to vitiate the moral sense, and to sophis- 
 ticate the understanding. But this is wandering 
 from the path. To return^ therefore, to the stile 
 where we came over ; . . Public opinion has in 
 this country arrogated and obtained a greater 
 degree of authority than is consistent with the 
 public weal. It is deferred to and followed by 
 those wdiose duty it is to control it within just 
 bounds, to see that it is duly instructed, and to 
 guide it. This usurpation has been favoured by 
 the chano;es which have been made in the fabric 
 of your government, . . changes by which both 
 Houses of Parliament have been altered in their 
 constitution, and both essentially for the worse. 
 Some injury was done by the Unions with Scot- 
 land and with Ireland. Both were expedient and 
 necessary measures ; but they introduced into 
 your legislature too large an admixture of persons 
 who had not been trained up in English habits 
 and feelings. This, you will reply, is an inci- 
 dental evil, inseparable from a great good ; but 
 the increase of numbers is an uncompensated 
 evil, making the lower House of Parliament 
 resemble a popular assembly*, rather than a 
 legislative body. 
 
 * ' For my part,* said Governor Jolinstono, spcakiiiL,-- in 
 Parliament upon the disturbances in North America, ' 1 think
 
 PARLIAMENT. 121 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The members are not too many for the actual 
 business of the House. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But they are far too many for its peculiar and 
 proper business; much of the rest might as well, 
 or better, be performed by a different machinery. 
 If the House of Commons consisted at this time 
 of half, or one-third of its present complement, 
 every influential member would still be there : 
 all who, by character, ability, station, and stake 
 in the country, are entitled to a place. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 This I believe. Cataline and Clodius would 
 still have the same access ; but the entrance 
 would not be so easy for Thersites and Scapin. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The great additions which have been made to 
 the peerage during the last half century have 
 rendered this evil, great as in itself it is, much 
 
 ' with Cardinal de Retz, that any number above one hundred is 
 ' at best but a mere mob.' (Here the House felt the expres- 
 sion as too strong.) ' It never could be my intention,' he 
 proceeded, ' to apply the rule to tliis House, long trained in 
 ' form and discipUne ; though sometimes there are doctrines 
 ' and proceedings even here, that would surprize a stran"-cr 
 ' into this belief.' — Pari. History, vol. xviii. p. 258.
 
 122 PEERAGE. 
 
 greater than it would otherwise have been. In- 
 deed this modern practice, in whatever light it 
 be considered, must be deemed impolitic. If it 
 have not lessened the authority of the House 
 of Peers, it has diminished the dignity of the 
 peerage ; and in proportion as it has removed 
 into that House from the Commons men of large 
 property and corresponding influence, it has made 
 room for persons to whom a voice in the mo- 
 mentous concerns of legislation cannot so safely 
 be entrusted. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 This has been one of the great errors of lat- 
 ter times. Mr. Pitt* committed it to a great 
 extent, and his successors have followed the ill 
 example. 
 
 * Sheridan, in the year 1797, toucliingin oneof his speeclies 
 upon ' the lavish distribution of the peerage, asserted that no 
 ' fewer than an hundred and sixty peers had been created since 
 ' the commencement of the then existing administration.' He 
 added, ' I once heard a member of this House say, that some 
 ' persons were made peers wlio were not fitter for tluit honour 
 ' than his groom ; but unfortunately for me, I cannot call 
 ' upon that gentleman to verify that fact here, for — he is now 
 ' made a peer himself.' — Parliamentary History, vol. xxxiii., 
 p. 90. 
 
 The Chinese have a law whereby ' oflicers of government 
 ' arc not allowed to solicit hereditary honours.' It is a severe
 
 PEERAGE. 123 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Cheap honours and cheap bread make other 
 things cheap which cannot be held too dear. 
 Continue to increase the peerage as you have 
 increased it during the reign of George III., and 
 the appellation of ' my Lord ' will not be worth 
 much more to an Englishman's ear in his own 
 country, than it is in France. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The peers under George I. endeavoured to 
 prevent this evil, in consequence of the notorious 
 creation made in the preceding reign. They 
 proposed, that instead of the sixteen elective 
 peers for Scotland, twenty-five, with hereditary 
 seats, should be named for that kingdom ; that 
 not more than six should be added to the then 
 existing* number of English peers, without pre- 
 cedent right ; and that in those cases the peerage 
 should be limited to the heirs-male, in the direct 
 line. But the number was to be kept full as 
 vacancies occurred. The Bill was rejected in 
 
 one. ' When any officers of the civil department of govern- 
 ' ment, who have not distinguished themselves by extraordinary 
 ' and great services to the state, are recommended to the con- 
 ' sideration of the emperor, as deserving of the highest here- 
 ' ditary honours ; such officers, and those who recommend 
 ' them, shall suffer death, by being beheaded, after remaining 
 ' the usual period in prison.' — Penal Laws of China, p. 52. 
 * It was at that time (1719) 178.
 
 124 PEERAGE. 
 
 the lower House. It was unpopular, . . some 
 pains having been taken to render it so. Steele 
 wrote and spoke against it with effect ; and Wal- 
 pole opposed it upon the grounds that it dimi- 
 nished the king's prerogative, gave to the aristo- 
 cracy a preponderating power in the state, and 
 took away from the people one of the most power- 
 ful incentives to public virtue. That objection 
 might easily have been removed by making an 
 exception for great public services ; it was, how- 
 ever, more specious than solid, for the course of 
 nature occasions more vacancies than could be 
 filled up in ordinary, or even in extraordinary 
 times, by claimants upon that score. But the 
 Bill, as it was brought forward, had an invidious 
 appearance, and was therefore obnoxious to po- 
 pular objections of that kind which can with most 
 difficulty be overcome, because they appeal to 
 prejudice and passion. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The evil which it was intended thus to obviate, - 
 is one which may better be guarded against by 
 usage resulting from clear views of policy, than 
 by a positive statute. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Usage unfortunately sanctions the abuse, so- 
 vereigns having injudiciously manifested their 
 favour in this way, and ministers having been
 
 PEERAGE. 125 
 
 accustomed to gratify their private friends, and 
 strengthen themselves by promotions otherwise 
 as inexplicable as uncalled for. True it is that 
 the error was committed by princes more glaringly 
 in earlier times, and in weak reigns. It was the 
 special weakness of James I., who is otherwise 
 generally entitled to the praise of sagacity, and 
 always of good intentions. The ministerial abuse 
 is of later growth. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 There is a manifest unfitness in ennobling 
 men who have no other pretensions than what 
 they derive from their wealth ; and there is an 
 equal unfitness, and eventually a greater mis- 
 chief, in conferring the peerage, when it is 
 necessary to annex a pension for supporting it ; 
 for permanent property, adequate to his rank, 
 ought to be the indispensable qualification for 
 an hereditary legislator. But there are cases 
 against which the door never should be closed ; 
 and whenever they occur, a sum equivalent to 
 the value of the pension should be granted, and 
 vested in an entailed estate. New nobility has 
 in such cases a noble origin, far worthier indeed 
 than that in which the oldest can have originated. 
 And although great names may descend to un- 
 worthy representatives, the name which thus 
 becomes a reproach to the bearer serves not the
 
 126 PEERAGE. 
 
 less for a national example, and a memorial of 
 national gratitude. Regarding- them as a body, 
 your nobles are far from a degenerate race ; that 
 they should not be so, is some proof of the 
 healthiness of your institutions, and of the 
 strength, also, of the British character, consider- 
 ing how dangerous a great inheritance is to man's 
 moral nature under any circumstances. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 They have long been more fortunately circum- 
 stanced than the nobility of other countries ; 
 having in the settlement of our political elements 
 taken just that position which was safest for 
 themselves, and most conducive to the preserva- 
 tion and stability of the general order, 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 One considerable advantage they possessed in 
 early times. For after the Normans and Saxons 
 were formed into one nation, a kindlier feeling- 
 prevailed between the nobles and the people 
 in this kingdom, than in France, or the Low 
 Countries, or Germany. When the strength of 
 the English armies lay in their archers, the 
 French, well as they knew, and severely as they 
 had been made to feel this, were nevertheless 
 afraid to let the same class of men be trained to 
 the use ol the same weapons.
 
 PEERAGE. 127 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Our peers are fortunate in liaving retained 
 none of tliose invidious and odious privileges 
 which, wherever they are retained, must en- 
 danger the existence of the privileged order. 
 The Court of Honour was too irrational, as well 
 as too vexatious and obnoxious, to be re-esta- 
 blished at the Restoration; and scandalum mao-- 
 nation has become as obsolete an offence as the 
 sin of witchcraft. That unchristian pride of 
 caste, which is still found in some parts of the 
 continent, is. Heaven be praised ! as little to be 
 discovered here, as the physical degeneracy which 
 in other parts, where it is aided by dispensa- 
 tions for unnatural marriages, it has visibly pro- 
 duced. We pass for a proud nation among our 
 neighbours, because they understand our man- 
 ners as little' as we accommodate ourselves to 
 theirs : but pride is not one of our national vices. 
 Our field of society is in a state of cultivation 
 which will not allow that weed to grow. The 
 growth of commercial wealth, the increase of our 
 naval and military establishments, and the pro- 
 gress of education among the middle orders, 
 have shaded the gradations of rank so imper- 
 ceptibly into each other, that in this respect 
 the social order has never been more happily 
 constituted anywhere than it is here at this 
 time.
 
 128 PEERAGE. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Yet, Montesinos, there may be danger, lest 
 by the frequency of undeserved promotions to 
 the peerage, the order itself should not merely 
 lose something in public opinion, but some- 
 thino- also of what ous-ht to be its distinctive 
 character, and by which alone its hold on public 
 opinion can be maintained. There is a feeling 
 of nobility which becomes a virtuous principle 
 of action, and justifies the name of noble. That 
 feeling, when it is fostered by national manners, 
 survives under circumstances of political and 
 intellectual degradation, and even of physical 
 degeneracy, the standard of honour being kept 
 to its mark, when other things have sunk. The 
 faster you create peers, (always excepting those 
 cases in which the coronet has been won, . . for 
 then the root is planted,) the less will there be 
 of this, and the greater likelihood that mere 
 haughtiness may grow up in its place. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There are ways of forcing new wine, (as well 
 as of encrusting new bottles,) by which it may 
 acquire something like the ripeness, and obtain 
 the full market price, of old. The heralds, if 
 they cannot find a coat for Wealth, can furnish 
 one, and produce a genealogy as long and as
 
 PEERAGE. 129 
 
 imposing as if it were authentic. But the feel- 
 ing of nobility can neither be created, nor pur- 
 chased. There is indeed a nobility of Nature's 
 own making, which may sometimes be seen in 
 the lowest walks of life, just as that which is 
 conventional may be found cased in a coarse 
 clay, fit only for vessels of dishonour. Upon 
 such a native temperament of mind and body 
 this feeling grows best, as fruits acquire their 
 finest quality when grafted upon a wild stock of 
 tlieir own kind. But, without this advantage, 
 it is producible by culture : and in one who, be- 
 ing capable of understanding it, has been made 
 to understand how large a debt he owes to his 
 ancestors, and how deeply in consequence he 
 stands bound to his posterity and his country, 
 that knowledge, which may ennoble his youth 
 and dignify his manhood, brings forth in de- 
 clining life a melancholy sentiment, a sad wis- 
 dom, remote from pride, and indeed partaking 
 of humility. Pride is a weed which grows more 
 rankly on the dunghill of riches, than in the 
 hot-bed of rank. But it is not the weed of a 
 British soil. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Look to your words, my mortal friend ! Is 
 it your formed opinion that the sin of pride is 
 less prevalent in England than in other countries? 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 PRIDE OF RANK. 
 
 or was the assertion one of those which, when 
 they have been made hastily, ought sometimes 
 to be questioned at leisure ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 We have an author indeed who says that 
 
 — ' Pride and Strife are natives of our soil, 
 ' Freeholders here.' 
 
 I would call him a poet if he had often expressed 
 himself in verse so well. But Defoe had a per- 
 verse pleasure in disparaging his countrymen. 
 One part of the reproach, which he thus brings 
 against them, is certainly ill-founded ; for though 
 the English are unhappily a divided nation, and 
 at all times more or less disturbed by factions, 
 they are not a quarrelsome people. A¥hether 
 the other charge can or cannot be better sup- 
 ported, I may at least affirm, that the most of- 
 fensive manifestations of pride have never been 
 known among us. Neither our laws, customs, 
 nor religion, recognize left-handed marriages : . . 
 here if cloth of gold be matched with cloth of 
 frieze, all inequality is done away by the mar- 
 riage bond, and husband and wife are one in the 
 eyes of man, as they are in the sight of Heaven. 
 Neither are we chargeable with the guilt of con- 
 verting religion into an instrument of oppression, 
 and devoting girls from their childhood to impri- 
 sonment for life in a nunnery, that the wealth of
 
 PRIDE OF RANK. 131 
 
 the family may not be impaired by portioning- 
 them suitably in marriage, nor the family pride 
 wounded by seeing them marry beneath their 
 birth. For this indeed we are beholden to the 
 Reformation, without which there mio-ht have 
 been as many hard hearts found here as among- 
 our neighbours. But even the formalities of 
 pride are not encouraged by our manners, . . not 
 even tolerated by them. During no age of our 
 history could the common form of greeting among" 
 the members of what is called a good family, 
 have been as it was in a part of the North, 
 ' Welcome, proud Cousins * ! ' Nor have our 
 ' venerable ancient song-enditers ' ever, like the 
 old Danish poets, applied that epithet to a dam- 
 sel otherwise than as conveying a reproach. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Beware how you allow words to pass with 
 you for more than they are worth, and bear in 
 mind what alteration is sometimes produced in 
 their current value by the course of time. Re- 
 member also, that in countries, where the dis- 
 tinctions of ranks are jealously observed and 
 tenaciously maintained, there prevails, neverthe- 
 less, between master and servant an affability on 
 the one side, and an attachment on the other, . , 
 
 * Niebuhr's History of Eomc, N. 732. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 FAMILY FEELING. 
 
 a freedom and a familiarity wliich bring tliem 
 into kindlier sympathies than commonly exist 
 between persons who stand in that relation to 
 each other in Eno-land or in America. Ancient 
 and acknowledged privileges have had in Euro- 
 pean society the effect of disarming pride, . . and 
 in many instances of modifying it or transmuting 
 it into a virtue. The representative of an old 
 family, who resides on the lands of his ancestors, 
 and sees around him their portraits in his man- 
 sion, and their tombs in his parish church, is 
 surrounded by hereditary attachments ; he suc- 
 ceeds to their principles, and feelings, and 
 duties, as part of his inheritance, not less than 
 to their honours and their wealth ; as the Spa- 
 niards say bcbio obligaciones hidcdgas en la sangre, 
 y la leche; the old tenants are as precious to him 
 as the old trees on his estate, and the domestics 
 have, as the name ought to imply, their home and 
 resting-place in his service. There is little of 
 this remainino- in Eno-land, and all thinsfs are 
 tending to wear out the little which is left. Less 
 patronage is shown, because less may be wanted, 
 or desired, or perhaps deserved ; and yet the 
 intellectual humility that courted patronage, and 
 even abased itself sometimes in courting it, was 
 better than that sort of independence which de- 
 spises and defies it. You have in England i\
 
 PRIDE OF INDEPENDENCE. 133 
 
 great deal of what may more truly be called the 
 pride than the spirit of independence : and this 
 pride, and the pride of wealth, and the pride of 
 rank, act upon and provoke each other. There 
 is less of the latter than of the others, . . much 
 less ; and of the three kindred yet hostile vices, 
 it is the least offensive ; the pride of indepen- 
 dence is the most so, because it is suspicious, 
 irritable, and ready to act aggressively upon the 
 slightest pretext, or imaginary provocation. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 There is more of this in America than in Eng- 
 land. It is a surly, ill-conditioned spirit, partak- 
 ing less of pride than of envy, which is perhaps 
 the commonest of all sins. Woe to the country 
 wherein, during any suspension of the laws, or 
 subversion of order, such a spirit of independence 
 should attain the ascendency ! It would speedily 
 show itself to be as intolerant of the real and 
 tangible privileges of wealth as of nobility ; nor 
 of these alone ; natural advantages, all such as 
 are not merely animal, become in such times as 
 odious as artificial ones, and the levelling prin- 
 ciple having once acquired ascendency, renews 
 the 
 
 work of Saturn, wlio with narrow spite 
 
 Mowed clown tlie fat, and let the lean ears spring. 
 
 Lord Brooke.
 
 134 PRIDE OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 When the poor clerk of Chatham thanked God 
 for having been so well brought up that he could 
 write his name, Jack Cade's mob condemned 
 him by acclamation to be hanged with his pen 
 and iukliorn about his neck, as one who had 
 confessed himself a villain and a traitor. Jack 
 Cade's declaration was. 
 
 We will not leave one lord, one gentleman ; 
 Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon ! 
 
 and this principle was so far carried into effect 
 during the paroxysms of revolutionary madness 
 in France, that personal cleanliness was consi- 
 dered a mark of incivism, and clean linen became 
 a crime. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You are speaking of insane times : for like as 
 governments have their seasons of decrepitude 
 and dotage, so may it appear that nations have 
 their accesses of insanity and raging madness. 
 With you such fits have, since the Restoration, 
 served rather to disgrace the nation hitherto, 
 than seriously to disturb its peace, or endanger 
 its safety. But the slow and silent changes of 
 society, those which work unperceived till they 
 are felt in their effects, have, wliile they facili- 
 tated the acquisition of rank and its attendant 
 privileges, rendered its influence less beneficial. 
 It is an incidental evil arising from your laws of
 
 * FORSAKEN MANSIONS. 135 
 
 inheritance . . light when compared with the evils 
 which result from the opposite system of gavel- 
 kind, yet in itself not inconsiderable. But when 
 by marriage, or descent, distant estates are brought 
 into the possession of one lord, old mansions fall 
 to decay, old hearths grow cold, and hereditary 
 attachments wither ; the beneficent presence 
 which should invigorate them being withdrawn 
 The proprietor may, perhaps, occasionally visi 
 the seat of his ancestors ; the bells then ring for 
 his arrival, and there is a short season of revelr 
 and joy : but the joy of former times was differen 
 in character and kind ; the wholesome zest, the 
 raciness, the vivifying spirit, have departed. 
 Such visits are few, and with long intervals be- 
 tween. The relation between land-owner and 
 land-occupier has undergone an unkindly altera- 
 tion : the bond of attachment is broken; there is 
 no longer on one part the generous bounty which, 
 like mercy, is ' twice blest,' and which calls forth 
 on the other a grateful, and honest, and confiding 
 dependence . . a natural and a healthy state for 
 the heart of man, however it may be regarded in 
 your philosophy ! And when fine properties are 
 dissipated by vice or folly, and estates pass in 
 consequence, by purchase, from one owner to 
 another, the tenant has little to regret in the 
 transfer, and less to apprehend from it, his rent
 
 136 FORSAKEN MANSIONS. 
 
 having already been screwed to tlie sticking- 
 place. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There is something less melancholy in a ruined 
 mansion, than in one which, being deserted as a 
 residence, and not condemned to dilapidation, is 
 just preserved from decay ; . . where the house- 
 keeper has to see that light and air may enter 
 the forsaken apartments, and to keep them in 
 such a state, swept and garnished, as might in- 
 vite thither the ghosts of their old possessors, . . 
 if ghosts were as unhappy as Homer represents 
 them, or if they were doomed to do penance in what 
 had been the scenes of their prosperity and pride. 
 If the last of the Cliffords in these northern parts 
 had abused her gifts of fortune, one might fancy 
 that her troubled spirit would haunt the mournful 
 chambers of Appleby and Skipton on spectral 
 days of humiliation ; and turn from these for 
 relief to other castles which she used to gladden 
 with her presence, but amid whose ruins now 
 
 Tlie gadding bramble liangs lier purple fruit. 
 And the green lizard and the gilded newt 
 Lead unmolested lives, and die of age. 
 
 TForcUu'orlh. 
 
 The noble-minded lady set over the gates oi 
 those castles which she restored, this text*; 
 
 ' Isaiah Iviii. 12.
 
 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. IST* 
 
 They that shall be of thee shall build the old 
 ' waste places ; thou sh alt raise up the founda- 
 
 * tions of many generations ; and thou shalt be 
 
 * called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of 
 ' paths to dwell in.' Yet her own grandson de- 
 molished three of the castles which she, with a 
 religious as well as an ancestral feeling, had re- 
 paired ! and in each of which, during her resi- 
 dence, ' every Monday morning, she caused ten 
 ' shillings to be distributed among twenty poor 
 ' householders of that place, besides the daily 
 ' alms which she gave at her gates to all that 
 ' came.' The Duchess of Marlborough (Sarah, 
 who, with all her faults, will ever be as emphati- 
 cally the Duchess of that name, as her glorious 
 husband will be the Duke) said in her old age, 
 ' there would be this great happiness in death, 
 ' that one shall never hear any more of anything 
 ' they do in this world.' It might have troubled 
 the Countess of Pembroke in heaven, if she could 
 have heard that the works upon which she prided 
 herself with so just and noble a feeling, had been 
 demolished, . . and by whom. If amid the ruins 
 of Brougham Castle I were to meet one of those 
 spectres 
 
 Whose walking fear to otliers is, 
 And to tliemselves a woe. 
 
 I should at once apprehend whose spirit it must
 
 138 COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. 
 
 be, and tliat she was come tliitlier to regard 
 mournfully and indignantly tlie site of that cham- 
 ber in which her noble father* was born, and her 
 blessed mother died. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Upon the supposition that we walk for pe- 
 
 * Words wliich the Countess never failed to repeat in her 
 Journal, when she speaks of coming to take up her residence 
 in that apartment. 
 
 ' And in this settled abode of mine,' says the Countess 
 (writing A.D. 1651), ' in these three ancient houses of my 
 ' inheritance, Appleby Castle and Brougham Castle in West- 
 ' moreland, and Skipton Castle or House in Craven, I do more 
 ' and more fall in love with the contentment and innocent plea- 
 ' sures of a country life ; which humour of mine I do W'ish with 
 ' all my heart (if it be the will of Almighty God) may be con- 
 ' ferred on my posterity that are to succeed me in these places ; 
 ' for a wise body ought to make their own homes the place of 
 ' self- fruition, and the comfortablest part of tlieir life. But tliis 
 ' must be left to a succeeding Providence, for none can tell 
 ' what shall come after them ; but to invite them to it, that say- 
 ' ing in the 16tli of Proverbs, verses 5, 6, 7 and 8, may be fitly 
 ' ap])licd : " The lot is fallen to me in a pleasant place : I have 
 ' a fair heritage." And I may truly say that verse, 
 
 * From many noble progenitors I hold 
 
 ' Transmitted lands, castles and honours which they swayed of old.' 
 
 Whether these verses are her own composition, or whether 
 she only remembered, and elongated, and niis-metcred thorn, 
 they show that the sweet poet who was lier tutor had not 
 tliought it necessary to' give her any lessons in the art of 
 poetry.
 
 PEERAGE. 139 
 
 nance, you miglit, perhaps, conclude that it is 
 part of my punishment to converse with you. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 I might well have supposed so. Sir Thomas, 
 had you not at the commencement of these visits 
 assigned a motive for them more flattering to 
 myself. Were you sent upon earth to do penance, 
 methinks, of all your earthly haunts, the Court 
 of Chancery* would be the fittest place. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But there I should be better off than the 
 suitors, for it would be only purgatory to me ; 
 whereas they have cause enough to look upon it 
 as a place from whence nulla est redemptio for 
 them. 
 
 MONTESIlSrOS. 
 
 Dodd, the Roman Catholic historian, (if to 
 have written what he denominates a history may 
 entitle a man to that designation,) says that a 
 
 * Sir Ttiomas More, when he was Chancellor, ' dispatched 
 ' more causes in shorter space than were wont to be in many 
 ' years before or since. For once he sate when there was no 
 ' man or matter to be heard ; this he caused to be enrolled in 
 ' public acts of that Court. It is strange to those that know 
 ' there have been causes there depending some dozen years. 
 ' And there be so many things there heard, that it will be a rare 
 • tiling to hear the like again.' 
 
 Dr. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastic Biography, \o]. ii. p. 96
 
 140 
 
 PEERAGR. 
 
 descendent of yours, in Hertfordshire, had pre- 
 served what he is pleased to call one of your 
 chops, till the year 1G42. Even the Court of 
 Chancery, methinks, might have more attractions 
 for you than the oratory wherein this relic may 
 be still preserved. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Truly my very ghost would be chap-fallen at 
 beholding an instance of so sad and so debasing 
 a superstition. 
 
 But to return once more to the stile where we 
 came over : I was observing that your nobles 
 are not a degenerate race ; exceptions there are 
 and must be, seeing that omne genus hominum 
 habet sinim vulgifs ; but the high-mindedness 
 which ought to characterise the order, is still 
 found in it. And although, upon certain sub- 
 jects, there must of necessity be more minute 
 and practical knowledge in a popular assembly, 
 where men of commercial habits are intermixed, 
 yet upon graver matters, in which the great and 
 permanent interests of the nation are concerned, 
 as much information and as much ability are dis- 
 played in the Upper as in the Lower House ; and 
 a feeling of those interests which is more likely 
 to retain its steadiness and strength, because it 
 is not so liable to veer with the wind of popular 
 opinion. But frec|uent promotions to the peerage
 
 PEERAGE. 1 4 1 
 
 must, in tlieir consequences, alter tlie character 
 of both Houses, to the deterioration of both. 
 Obviously they must lower the standard of the 
 peerage. It was said of old, that gentility is 
 nothing more than ancient riches : this cannot 
 always be said of gentility in these days, nor 
 indeed is it, when it really exists, anything the 
 worse for its recent origin. But wealth ripens 
 into generosity less easily than it rots* into 
 wantonness and dissipation : and to promote men 
 for mere favour or for paltry present interest, 
 who have no other pretension than what wealth 
 may be supposed to offer, what is this but to 
 put honour at a price, and thereby to contami- 
 nate it ? 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 More direct injury has been done to the 
 House of Commons. When Mr. Pitt removed 
 from thence so many of the great land-holders 
 into the House of Lords, their place in the 
 Commons was to be supplied, at best, with 
 
 * The expression is from Sir George Mackenzie's Essay, 
 (p. 337.) ' accumulated wealth rots into luxury.' The same 
 truth is differently illustrated by a Spanish writer. 'Y de la 
 tnanera que el agua estancia y rabahada, cria sapos y saban- 
 dijaa, las riqvezas siiperjluas malas obras y inalos jje.nsa- 
 mientos.' — Juan Ripol. Dialogo de Consiielo por le Expulsion 
 de los Moriscos. Vamplona. 1614.
 
 142 
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 men who had less of that influence which pro- 
 perly belongs to property in a commonwealth 
 constituted as is ours ; and room was made for 
 men of a lower class and of a dang-erous de- 
 scription, who, before the structure of Parlia- 
 ment was thus . . . almost it may be said . . . re- 
 volutionized, would never in the march of their 
 ambition have approached its doors. Now al- 
 though the House of Peers can derive no credit 
 from Lord Cucumber, whose nobility has been 
 raised in the hot-bed of wealth, nor from Earl 
 Mushroom, Marquis Toadstool, and the rest of 
 the fungus order, no such direct evil and ob- 
 vious danQ;er arises from the unmerited eleva- 
 tion of such persons, as from the admission into 
 the Commons of men whose prototypes arc to 
 be found in Cleon, and Cethegus, and Thersites 
 and even Scapin. A notion, I know, prevails 
 very generally among the members of that as- 
 sembly, that there is no other place in which 
 factious questions can be entertained with so 
 little inconvenience from the discussion, nor 
 where a demao;o2:ue can do so little harm : he 
 would speedily find his level there, they say, 
 and be put down by the good sense of the 
 House. They rely upon its good sense, its 
 dignity and its tone. But when I call to mind 
 the derogation which that dignity so frequently
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 143 
 
 endures in the conduct of its present members ; . . 
 when I observe what passes for wit in that 
 assembly, and what for wisdom ; . . what falla- 
 cies pass undetected there, what absurdities are 
 advanced and listened to, and applauded ; . . 
 what confident mis-statements are hazarded in 
 the fearlessness of ignorance and dupery ; . . 
 what falsehoods are asserted in the hardihood 
 of design, . . I cannot partake of this reliance. I 
 cannot but think that there is no place in which 
 a demagogue, well armed with impudence, would 
 feel more conscious of the strength which au- 
 dacity supplies ; nor where he could be so m.is- 
 chievous and so dangerous. If the House failed 
 to impose upon such a man by its tone, (and 
 fail it would, if his own tone* were resolute,) 
 I know not how it could curb a tonoue, that 
 should enounce without disguise the most revo- 
 lutionary intentions, and propose the most revo- 
 lutionary measures for bringing them about, after 
 the insults to authority, the scoffs at religion, 
 and the incitements to rebellion, which have 
 
 * ' Impudence in democratical assemblies does almost all 
 ' that's done : 'tis tlie goddess of rhetoric and carries proof 
 ' with it. For wliat ordinary man will not, from so great 
 ' boldness of aflirmation, conclude there is gi'eat probability in 
 ' the thing affirmed V — Hobbcs's Behemoth.
 
 144 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 at various times been uttered tliere with impu- 
 nity, and sometimes without rebuke. 
 
 They are mistaken who suppose, that want 
 of condition in life, or even want of character in 
 these days, woukl keep a man down in that 
 House, if he had ability and courage. Courage 
 he might dispense with, because where there is 
 no personal danger, there is a brazen quality 
 that may very well supply its place ; and in that 
 quality such men are never deficient. And for 
 ability, ' Do you think,' said Philip Skelton, 
 ' the Devil ever sent a fool of his errand ?' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 A great deal of his work is done by fools, but 
 it is when knaves direct or drive them. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The miserable thing is when upright inten- 
 tions are thus misguided ; when we see men 
 with the worthiest feelings, and the most honour- 
 able views, led astray by specious sophistry, 
 because they have not been well grounded in 
 the principles wherein they were brought up ; 
 and because streno;th of mind is wanting- in 
 them to perceive clearly what is right, or strength 
 of character to act upon that perception steadily. 
 And when weak men are once beguiled into 
 a wrong course, the difficulty of reclaiming
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 145 
 
 them is in proportion to tlieir weakness; for 
 as our incomparable Soutli* says, ' he that re- 
 ' covers a fool, must first unbefool him to that 
 ' degree as to persuade him of his folly.' Alas, 
 in any popular assembly it must needs be that 
 the wise will not be ' so many as to make a 
 fewf,' and in all such assemblies, instead of 
 reasons being weighed, (for where should the 
 balance be found, and who should hold it?) 
 voices must be counted ; . . there is no better 
 method, and yet in that, ' nihil '^ e.^ tarn imequale 
 ' quam cequcditas ipsa ; nam cum sit impar pru- 
 ' chntia, par omnium jus est.' It may have been 
 otherwise in the days of Solomon, when the 
 structure of society was simpler, human inte- 
 rests were less tortuous and involved, and men 
 lived under a Providence which manifested it- 
 self to their grosser senses : but in these times 
 there is more likely to be confusion than safety 
 in a multitude of counsellors. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Pursue that train of thought, and you will 
 perceive that as the numbers in both Houses of 
 Pai'liament have been increased, the constitu- 
 tion of both has been proportionately impaired. 
 Other of your institutions ought long since to 
 
 * Vol. v., p. 157. t Jackson. + Pliny. 
 VOL. II. L
 
 146 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 liave been enlarged,; that tliey might keep pace 
 with the growing wants and claims of a growing 
 population. But if the numbers in a delibera- 
 tive assembly are increased beyond the con- 
 venient sum, its proceedings retain less of the 
 character of deliberation, and the assembly itself 
 partakes of the heat and temper of a popular 
 meetino'. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 In the Commons especially the alloy of num- 
 bers has debased the old standard. The more 
 numerous such an assembly is, the greater must 
 be the proportion of men who have less preten- 
 sions, whether natural or adventitious, to be 
 entrusted with so momentous a charge as that of 
 the national interests. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This is a consideration which should be borne 
 in mind, wherever old governments are to be 
 improved, or colonies founded. But there is 
 another evil which every increase of the peerage 
 in its consequences increases. The younger 
 sons of noble houses were formerly disposed of 
 in comfortable abbeys, if they did not take the 
 course of rapine in the bloodier ages of Europe, 
 or of maritime adventure when the age of dis- 
 covery arrived. They now form a class of men 
 whose claims cannot be overlooked by a govern-
 
 NOBILITY. 147 
 
 ment which is carried on wholly by influence, 
 and has no other means of maintaining itself. 
 They are not indeed in this country, cither 
 physically or intellectually, a degenerate class, 
 (there are parts of Europe in which the two- 
 fold degradation is apparent.) Luxury has not 
 effeminated them, nor is it considered a point 
 of honour for men of quality to hold learning in 
 contempt, as it was in my days, among some of 
 the Italians. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I have heard however of a knight of Malta, 
 (remembered at Lisbon in my youth) who used 
 to say in his English, ' I tank my God dat I 
 ' never in all my life read a book dat was ticJcer 
 ' dan my turn.' Our young jidalgos resemble 
 this Cavalleiro as little as they do the Circassian 
 gentry, whose habit of life it was, according to 
 Tavernier, to sit still, say little, and do nothing*. 
 The wind of fashion and the tide of society have 
 set in, both in a contrary direction ; and literary 
 accomplishments are now considered as hardly 
 less essential for persons of a certain rank in 
 life, than it was for them formerly to be skilled 
 in arms. They show themselves therefore, ge- 
 
 * Ceux qui tiennent ]mrmi eux le rang de gentils-hommes, 
 sont tout le jo%ir sans rien faire, demeurent assis, et parlent 
 fort peu. — lib. iii. c. 12. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 NOBILITY. 
 
 nerally speaking, as diligent and as ambitious in 
 their youthful studies, as those of their compe- 
 titors who have nothing but their attainments 
 and themselves to trust to for their success in 
 the world. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This I was about to say when you interrupted 
 me with your knight of Malta ; and to have re- 
 marked in sequence, that notwithstanding this, 
 there is a great inconvenience in multiplying a 
 class of men, who, independently of personal 
 qualifications or merits, have on the score of 
 their influential connections pretensions for cm- 
 ploy and promotion in the public service, which 
 being, as they are, valid to a certain extent, are 
 not easily withstood when pushed beyond that 
 extent, as they so frequently must be. The 
 injurious effect of this has been felt abroad and 
 at home, in your army and navy, in your colonies, 
 your diplomacy, and, . . worse than any where 
 else, because the miserable consequences of an 
 unfit appointment are there, though less imme- 
 diately, more permanently felt, . . in your church 
 establishment. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 This inconvenience is surely part of the price 
 which must be paid for the blessing of a govern- 
 ment so balanced and so guarded, that we can
 
 NOBILITY. 149 
 
 neither, on the one hand, be oppressed by tlie 
 reckless obstinacy of an arbitrary will ; nor on 
 the other, hurried into disgraceful and iniquitous 
 courses by the violence of popular counsels. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 It is so ; but it is also the reason why the 
 French government has always been served by 
 abler agents than yours. And though a price 
 must necessarily be paid for what you rightly 
 deem a blessing, there is no necessity that the 
 price should be so large. A minister, before he 
 swells the peerage for any other cause than that 
 of great and manifest desert, should bear in mind 
 that by so doing he weakens the government in 
 the worst way, and is adding to a burden which 
 clogs it more than the national debt.
 
 150 
 
 COLLOQUY XIIL 
 
 THE RIVER GRETA.— TRADE.— POPULATION.— COLONIES. 
 
 Our Cumberland river Greta lias a shorter 
 course than even its Yorkshire namesake. St. 
 John's beck and the Glenderamaken take this 
 name at their confluence, close by the bridge, 
 three miles east of Keswick, on the Penrith road. 
 The former issues from Leatheswater, in a beau- 
 tiful sylvan spot, and proceeds by a not less 
 beautiful course for some five miles through the 
 vale from which it is called to the place of junc- 
 tion. The latter, receiving the streams from 
 Bowscale and Threlkeld tarns, brings with it the 
 waters from the southern side of Blencathra. 
 The Greta then flows toward Keswick ; receives 
 on its way the Glcndcraterra first, . . which brings 
 down tlic western waters of Blencathra, and 
 those from Skiddaw forest, . . then the smaller 
 stream from Nathdale ; makes a wide sweep 
 behind the town, and joins the Dcrwent, under 
 Derwent Hill, about a quarter of a mile from, the 
 town, and perhaps half that distance from the 
 place where that river flows out of the lake; but
 
 THE RIVER GRETA. 151 
 
 when swollen above its banks, it takes a shorter 
 line, and enters Derwentwater. 
 
 The Yorkshire stream was a favourite resort of 
 Mason's, and has been celebrated by Sir Walter 
 Scott. Nothing can be more picturesque, no- 
 thing more beautiful, than its course through the 
 grounds at Rokeby, and its junction there with 
 the Tees ; . . and there is a satisfaction in knowing 
 that the possessor of that beautiful place fully 
 appreciates and feels its beauties, and is worthy 
 to possess it. Our Greta is of a different cha- 
 racter, and less known; no poet has brought it 
 into notice, and the greater number of tourists 
 seldom allow themselves time for seeing any 
 thing out of the beaten track. Yet the scenery 
 upon this river, where it passes under the woody 
 side of Latrig, is of the finest and most remem- 
 berable kind : 
 
 ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluilque. 
 
 Occurrensque sibi venturas aspicit undas. 
 There is no English stream to which this truly 
 Ovidian description can more accurately be ap- 
 plied. From a jutting isthmus, round which the 
 tortuous river twists, you look over its manifold 
 windings, up the water, to Blencathra ; down 
 it, over a high and wooded middle-ground to the 
 distant mountains of Newlands, Cawsey Pike, 
 and Grizedal.
 
 152 THE RIVER GRETA. 
 
 About a mile below that isthmus, and in a part 
 of the bottom hardly less beautiful, is a large 
 cotton-mill, with the dwelling-houses and other 
 building's appertaining to such an establishment. 
 I was looking down upon them from the opposite 
 hill-side, where my spiritual companion had 
 joined me in one of my walks. We want an 
 appellation, said I, for an assemblage of habita- 
 tions like that below, which may as little be 
 called grange or hamlet, as it may be village or 
 town. My friend, Henry Koster, . . who, greatly 
 my junior as he was, is gone before me to his 
 rest, and of whom many places, many things, and 
 many thoughts mournfully remind me, . . used to 
 call it the Engenho, borrowing a word from his 
 Brazilian vocabulary. Destitute of beauty as the 
 larger edifice necessarily is, there is nevertheless 
 something in its height and magnitude, and in 
 the number of its windows, which reminds one 
 of a convent. The situation contributes to the 
 likeness ; for the spot is one which the founder 
 of a monastery might well have chosen for its 
 seclusion and beauty, and its advantages of wood 
 and water. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And which, Montesinos, would, in your eyes, 
 be the more melancholy object of contemplation, 
 , .the manufactory, or the convent?
 
 MANUFACTURES. 153 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There are times and places in which each may 
 be regarded with complacency, as contributing to 
 the progress of the community, and to the wel- 
 fare of the human race. There are times and 
 places also in which they may each tend to 
 retard that progress, and counteract that welfare. 
 The spirit of trade has raised this nation to its 
 present point of power, and made it what it is, 
 the riches which have thus been created being as 
 it were the dung and dross with which the garden 
 of civilization is manured, and without which the 
 finest flowers and fruits of cultivated society 
 could not be produced. Had it not been for the 
 spirit of trade, and the impulse which the steam- 
 engine had just then given to the manufacturing 
 system, Great Britain could neither have found 
 means nor men for the recent war, in which not 
 only her vital interests, but those of the whole of 
 Europe, were at stake. This good is paramount 
 to all other considerations. Men act as they 
 deem best for their own interest, with more or 
 less selfishness, but always, upon the great scale, 
 having that object in view ; and national wealth 
 is produced by the enterprize and cupidity of 
 individuals. Governments also pursue their own 
 systems, more cr less erroneously, (not without
 
 154 MANUFACTURES. 
 
 grievous errors, Heaven knows, even in those 
 which act and which mean the best !) and the 
 Providence which is over all, directs all to its 
 own beneficent purposes. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You have remarked that wars may probably be 
 rendered less frequent by the increased means 
 of destruction with which modern science is 
 arming the destroyer man. May not the manu- 
 facturing system be, in like manner, tending to 
 work out, b}^ means of the very excess to which 
 it is carried, a remedy for the evils which it has 
 brought with it ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The steam-engine alone, without war, and 
 without that increased taxation which war has 
 rendered necessary, woidd have produced all the 
 distress which our manufacturing population has 
 experienced, and is likely again and again to 
 experience. Johnson once said he wondered how 
 a man should see far to the right who saw but a 
 little way to the left ; . . reverse the terms, and 
 there will then appear no cause for wonder. Men 
 see far to the left, and to the left only, when they 
 have been trained to look only in that direction, 
 . . never to the right, and never straight forward. 
 This moral and intellectual obliquity of vision is
 
 MANUFACTURES. 155 
 
 but too easily produced. But in more direct 
 reply to your question, . . that remedial process 
 may be, and I would fain hope is, going on, 
 
 Whereby disease grows cure unto diseases . . . 
 A wisdom proper to humanity. — Lord Brooke. 
 
 There are two ways in which it may work. 
 Other nations may compete with us, and our 
 foreign trade in consequence may gradually de- 
 cline. Something of this is already perceptible. 
 The French are said to manufacture* about as 
 much cotton now as was manufactui-ed in this 
 country fourteen years ago. We now send abroad 
 the thread, where we used at that time to export 
 the manufactured article. The Americans also 
 are endeavouring to supply their own consump- 
 tion : they have this at heart, and there are no 
 people who pursue what they think their advan- 
 tage with more sagacity, nor with more deter- 
 mined eagerness and perseverance. An American, 
 when he speaks colloquially of power, means 
 nothing but a steam-engine. We can neither 
 keep our machinery nor our workmen to our- 
 selves : to attempt it is, indeed, in the one case, 
 impolitic ; in the other, oppressive ; in both, 
 unavailing. And wherever they go, and oppor- 
 tunity invites, enough of British capital to set 
 
 * So it was stated in a newspaper of 1827.
 
 156 MANUFACTURES. 
 
 tliem ill activity will follow. No sense of pa- 
 triotism will clieck this ; no laws can prevent it; 
 the facility of transferring capital being- such, 
 that Mammon in these days, like the Cupid of 
 the poem, 
 
 Spreads his liglit wings, and in a moment flies. 
 
 This would be the cuthanasy of the system, a 
 gradual and easy decay without a shock ; and, 
 perhaps, . . were time allowed, . . we might then 
 hope for a palingenesia, a restoration of national 
 sanity and strength, a second birth : . . perhaps, I 
 say, . . and were time allowed, . . for I say this 
 doubtfully, and that ghostly shake of the head 
 with which it is received does not lessen the 
 melancholy distrust wherewith it is expressed. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 O Montesinos ! the Mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness hath made ' the heart of this people fat, 
 
 * and hath made their ears heavy, and hath shut 
 
 * their eyes * ! ' Pray you to the All-Merciful that 
 this spirit continue not to possess the nation, 
 until ' the cities be wasted without inhabitant, 
 ' and the houses without man, and the land be 
 ' utterly desolate:', .or worse than desolate ! That 
 part of the Prophet's commination is come to pass 
 among you which denounces that ' the child shall 
 
 * Isaiah vi, 10, 11.
 
 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 157 
 
 * beliave himself proudly against the ancient, and 
 ' the base against the honourable* ;' and that also 
 which saith that ' the people shall be oppressed,' 
 . . not by their rulers, . . but ' every one by another, 
 ' and every one by his neighbour.' Was there 
 ever a people among wdiom age was treated with 
 so little reverence, . . by whom honour was so 
 little rendered where honour is due, . . and among 
 whom (which is more immediately to our present 
 topic) the desire of gain had so eaten into the 
 core of the nation ? Too truly must it be said 
 that every man oppresses his neighbour, or is 
 struggling to oppress him. The landlord racks 
 his tenant ; the farmer grinds the labourer. 
 Throughout the trading part of the community, 
 every one endeavours to purchase at the lowest 
 price, and sell at the highest, regardless of equity 
 in either case. Bad as the feudal times were, 
 they were less injurious than these commercial 
 ones to the kindly and generous feelings of human 
 nature, and far, far more favourable to the prin- 
 ciples of honour and integrity. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There, Sir Thomas, you touch upon the second 
 cause which is likely, in a less degree perhaps, 
 but in a worse manner, to affect the commercial 
 
 * Isaiah iv. 10.
 
 158 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 
 
 prosperity of Great Britain. In tlie competition 
 of trade one ill principle sometimes counteracts 
 another, and yet both being- ill, work for ill, 
 though an incidental good may be occasioned. 
 The tradesman is not more desirous to obtain a 
 high price from what in your days were called 
 his chapmen, than he is to undersell his fellow 
 dealers. The point of emulation between rival 
 manufacturers, is not so much who shall send 
 forth the best goods, but who the cheapest ; 
 flimsy articles are thus manufactured for rapid 
 sale, and for the foreign market. Formerly their 
 aim was to produce substantial goods, which 
 should wear well, and with which the purchaser 
 should have reason to be satisfied ; now it is how 
 to make the largest quantity with the smallest 
 expenditure of materials. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But this is no new thing under the sun. 
 Honesty, ' the health of the soul*,' was in just 
 as sickly a state among the same class of men in 
 my days, when clothmakers became poticaries, 
 and thickened with flock-powder the web which 
 they had stretched till its sinews cracked. This 
 was done by the professors of godliness ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Dum vivo, l/uivo, was the motto for Ignora- 
 
 * Cliarroii.
 
 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 159 
 
 mus's arms, when Ignoramus was caricatured as 
 a commonwealtli's-man and a puritan. In those 
 ages, no doubt, as in this, such professors might 
 read that covetousness is the root of all evil, and 
 assent to what they read, knowing at the same 
 time that it was the root also of their estate*, and 
 acting upon that knowledge. The sin as it re- 
 lated to the offending individuals was the same 
 then as now, and falls under the same denun- 
 ciation . . . ' Woe unto him that buildeth his 
 house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by 
 wrong f!' but it was at that time confined to a 
 narrow scale and within a narrow sphere, and 
 neither affected the national interests, nor the 
 national character, as both are in danger of 
 being affected now. The goods of other, . . alas ! 
 that I must add honester, . . countries are obtain- 
 ing a preference in foreign markets, because 
 they can be trusted : it is no longer a sufficient 
 warranty for ours to say that they are English. 
 Ought I to repeat what has publicly been stated, 
 . . or should I seek rather in shame to conceal the 
 shameful fact, that the class of men who have 
 thus injured the credit and disparaged the name 
 of their country, have committed the further 
 villainy of setting upon their goods a forged 
 foreign mark, and procuring, under this false 
 
 * Hobbes, Behemoth. t Jeremiah xxiii. 13.
 
 IGO 
 
 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 
 
 pretence, a sale for tliem in markets where they 
 would otherwise have been unsaleable, because 
 of their known inferiority ! It is not very long- 
 since one of the petty African kings said, he 
 would send his son to England, that he might 
 learn ' to read book and be ro2:ue.' This neo-ro 
 had formed no incorrect opinion of the civilization 
 which he had seen, and of the education which 
 is e-iven in the school of trade. 
 
 Johnson has remarked, that he had found men 
 worse in commercial dealings, . . more disposed 
 to take a dishonourable and dishonest advantag^e 
 of each other, than he had any notion of, before 
 he learnt from observation the melancholy fact; 
 but he adds, that he had also found them more 
 disposed to do one another good than he had 
 expected. And this, I believe, is true ; men are 
 benevolent when they are not selfish : but while 
 gain is the great object of pursuit, selfishness 
 must ever be the uppermost feeling. I cannot 
 dissemble from myself that it is the principle of 
 our social system, and that it is awfully opposed 
 to the spirit of Christianity. 
 
 sill THOMAS aiORE. 
 
 Have you never been led to apprehend that 
 freedom of trade, like freedom of the press, may 
 require restrictions; and thut the evils occa- 
 sioned by its abuse, may sooner or later render
 
 SPIRIT OF TRADE. IGl 
 
 necessary a degree of wholesome restraint, wliicli 
 may well exist without vexatious interference ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The evil of vexatious interference is so great, 
 that I have been afraid to pursue that thought 
 when it has risen in my mind. Certainly, I 
 have suspected, that in this as in some other 
 things of equal, or indeed greater importance, 
 our ancestors were wiser in their generation 
 than the men of these days; and that when 
 trade is conducted by corporate bodies, the 
 check upon fraud may more than compensate 
 for any inconveniences arising from want of 
 competition. There is too much competition in 
 this country. Cheap shops ruin the fair trader. 
 Goods are bought at the sale of a bankrupt's 
 stock, the bankruptcy having, perhaps, been 
 fraudulent, or at least occasioned by an impro- 
 vidence differing from dishonesty, rather in name 
 than in nature. These goods for which the 
 manufacturer receives a few shillings, or more 
 probably a few pence, in the pound from the 
 bankrupt's estate, are purchased at so low a rate 
 that they can be retailed far below the cost price, 
 and yet leave a large profit to the speculator ; 
 and at that low rate he sells them, in order to 
 tempt customers, and undersell the upright 
 dealer, who has paid the just price for his wares. 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 1G2 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 
 
 The saving which is thus aftorded to the con- 
 sumer, is but a paltry advantage compared to 
 the injury with which what was formerly the 
 settled system of fair trade is hereby affected. 
 In this process, which is continually going on, 
 the manufacturers are, in the first instance, the 
 injured party. But they also are chargeable 
 with having interloped to the detriment of the 
 shopkeeper. Lest their mills should stand still, 
 and partly, it may be believed, from an unwil- 
 lingness to turn out of employ hands which can 
 find no other employment (for this redeeming 
 motive acts to a considerable extent) they manu- 
 facture more than there is any demand for, or 
 than can find vent through the usual channels : 
 these surplus goods, for the sake of ready money, 
 are hawked*' about the country by their agents, 
 at low prices ; the low price which is all that 
 can be looked for from persons who buy, not be- 
 
 * A certain John Eglcton, in a letter to an M.P. written in 
 1702, advises that ' liawkcrs, pedlars, and petty chapmen,' 
 should he prohibited ' from travelling and trading up and 
 'down the nation; because they impoverished most of the 
 ' corporations and market towns in England by depriving them 
 ' of their trade ; they encouraged the debasing of our manu- 
 ' factures by readily buying all sorts of ware, defective in 
 ' length, breadth, and goodness; and they were the great 
 
 • vendors of smuggled goods : and they neither pay taxes, 
 
 • scot or lot, in any settled place.' — ScoU's So?ner's Tracts, 
 xi. 617.
 
 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 1G3 
 
 cause they want the article, but because they are 
 tempted by the undervalue at which it is offered, 
 leads in its consequence to a deterioration of the 
 goods : they have been sold below their proper 
 price, because too much had been manufactured, 
 and then they must be deteriorated in quality, 
 because they are to be sold cheap ; and the con- 
 sumer finds at last that he has purchased dearly. 
 There is evil in every step of this transaction, 
 and the worst is the great injury which is done 
 to the frugal fair-dealing shopkeeper. And now, 
 too, tradesmen who carry on business in large 
 towns upon a great scale, follow the example of 
 the manufacturers, and employ travellers in like 
 manner to solicit orders from private families. 
 ' Live and let live,' is no longer the maxim in 
 this greedy nation. Under this system the little 
 shopkeepers are disappearing, as the small far- 
 mers disappeared when the devouring principle 
 of trade was applied to agriculture upon the 
 great scale ; . . and yet what class of persons can 
 so ill be spared as that wherein the habit of well 
 regulated and hopeful frugality is most surely to 
 be found ; . . that where there is comfort and 
 contentment enough to render persons happy in 
 their station, and yet a prospect withal of im- 
 proving it for their own old age, and for their 
 children after them ? 
 
 M 2
 
 1G4 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 If, in the progress of your cultivation, these 
 feeders are cut off, be sure the stream of national 
 prosperity will fail ! There are evil states of 
 society in which the very nature of the evil is to 
 prolong, or, as you would say, to perpetuate it- 
 self, . . and under this curse, the awful but the 
 righteous and predicted punishment of their sins, 
 whole nations are existino- at this hour. But that 
 cannot be a durable state of things in which the 
 increase of riches in a few occasions an increase 
 of poverty in the many. National wealth is 
 wholesome only when it is equitably diffused. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 The more the Tliildren of Mammon possess, 
 the more they are desirous of possessing, 
 
 Leur convoilise magnifique 
 Jamais ne se 2)eut assouvir. 
 
 Jan Antoine de Baif. 
 
 Nor is the epithet which the old poet applies to 
 such coveteousness too dignified, for the passion 
 seems in these days to have borrowed something 
 of the grandeur of ambition. And yet John Bun- 
 yan, whom, mcthinks, with a truer aptitude of 
 discrepant terms, I may call the noble tinker, 
 suggests a better illustration ; the larger the heap 
 whicli his poor muckworm has scraped together, 
 the more eagerly he continues to rake.
 
 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 165 
 
 Wealth is the Conjurer's devil, 
 Whom wlicn he thinks he hath, the Devil hath him. 
 
 Herbert. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 It is not to the mere spirit of trade that this 
 must be imputed. When my munificent okl 
 friend John Colet endowed his school at St. 
 Paul's, he left it in perpetual trust not to the 
 bishops, nor the chapter, nor the great men of 
 the state, but to married citizens of the Mer- 
 cers' Company ; . . to married men, because they, 
 he thought, as fathers of families, would feel 
 a proper interest in what was designed for the 
 benefit of children ; and to tradesmen, because, 
 he said*, he had found less corruption among 
 men of that station than in any other class. 
 Do not, then, look upon this evil as arising 
 from the very nature of commerce, for there 
 is no profession v/liich more truly may deserve 
 to be called liberal, when carried on by a just 
 and honourable man. If it be now character- 
 ized by more of speculation and less of probity 
 
 * Reditibus totique ncgotio j)r(efecit non sacerdotes, non 
 episcopmn aut capilulum ut vacant, non magnates, sed cives 
 aliquot conjifgatos, prohatce fames. Roganti causam ait, 
 nihil quidem esse ccrti in rebus hrmianis, sed tamcn in his se 
 minimum invenire corruptelce. — Erasm. Ep. L. 15, Ep. 14. 
 Jod. Jonte.
 
 166 SPIRIT OF TRADE. 
 
 than in former times, it is because it is affected 
 by what is now an epidemic malady in this 
 land. There is at this time a diseased activity 
 in the middle and higher classes ; a feverish 
 excitement, increased by the pressure of taxation, 
 but far more by the prevailing fashion of an 
 ostentatious and emulous expenditure, . . a symp- 
 tom which hath ever preceded the decay of 
 states. As the greedy spirit of trade has de- 
 stroyed the small farmers, and is in like manner 
 destroying the small tradesmen, so has the class 
 of inferior gentry almost disappeared under the 
 operation of the distempered activity generated 
 and fomented by these causes. I remember 
 some homely lines in the Shepherd's Kalendar 
 of my days, . . 
 
 And in especial, God to jilease, 
 
 Desire thou never none other man's tiling ; 
 
 Remember that many fingers are well at ease 
 That never wear no gold ring. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 So I once told a lady whose white hand would 
 have been more pleasing in my eyes without 
 such trinketry, when her fingers, being swoln 
 with cold on a sharp winter's day, tightened 
 round the rings with which they were studded, 
 and made her understand feelingly the sort of 
 pain produced by a thumb-screw.
 
 DESIRE OF GAIN. 167 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The rude verses of that old moralizer are 
 hardly more obsolete than the morality which 
 they inculcate. Few, indeed, of those who 
 possess the means of happiness, know how to 
 use the means with which they are entrusted, 
 because they know not in what the true happi- 
 ness of an intellectual and immortal creature, 
 made in the image of his Creator, consists. 
 They involve themselves in the pursuits of the 
 world, which are its serious follies, when they 
 have outgrown its lighter and more venial ones ; 
 and, ceasing to be the slaves of frivolity, they 
 become the slaves of business, instead of living 
 to themselves, and their families, and their 
 neighbours, and their God. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 But they call this living to their country; 
 and think that in so doing they make no little 
 sacrifice to their duty, and to the service of the 
 state. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 I am not speaking of what is called political 
 life, though the remark bears upon it more 
 forcibly than upon any other calling, because 
 all who enter upon that course must be sup- 
 posed to be influenced by choice, not by neces- 
 sity, . . being possessed of wealth, either here-
 
 1G8 COMPETENCE. 
 
 ditary or acquired, in ample sufficiency for the 
 comforts and refinement of the society wherein 
 they are phiced. My words had a wider mean- 
 ing-. How few among you are those wlio know 
 how to use or to appreciate the blessings of com- 
 petence and leisure ! 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 Leisure, indeed, there are not many who 
 
 know how to enjoy ; time seems hardly to pass 
 
 at a wearier pace with the miserable, than with 
 
 the listless and the idle ; and with regard to 
 
 competence, . . Fortiina imdth nimium dat, satis 
 
 nidli : . . competence has been well defined as 
 
 meaning, in every one's acceptation, a little more 
 
 tlian he himself happens to possess. 
 
 N%il nest content cle sa fortune, 
 Ni inecontcnt dc son esjjrit. 
 
 M" Dcs Iloulieres. 
 
 But political events have, even within reach of 
 my remembrance, made so great a change in 
 the circumstances and constitution of our little 
 world, that what in this respect was prudence 
 and true wisdom half a century ago, might now 
 justly be condemned as improvidence. More 
 cases tlian one have occurred, within my own 
 knowledge, of persons who wound up their 
 comiiicicial concerns, and retired from business 
 witli what appeared to their modest views a
 
 ADVENTURERS. 160 
 
 fortune equal to their wishes, and far above 
 their wants : it was so at the time ; but in the 
 course of twenty years the value of money was 
 so greatly diminished, and the whole expendi- 
 ture of every household unavoidably and pro- 
 portionately so increased, that they found them- 
 selves straitened in their old age, and had the 
 grief of knowing that the children, for whom 
 they thought a fair competence had been pro- 
 vided, must be left with a poor viaticum for the 
 remainder of their melancholy pilgrimage. There 
 is no floating at ease upon the agitated waters of 
 our society ; they who cannot struggle and swim, 
 and buffet the waves that bufl'et them, must sink. 
 Never was there so stirring an age as the pre- 
 sent ! From yonder little town, which with its 
 dependant hamlets contains not more than four 
 thousand inhabitants, adventurers go not only to 
 the all-devouring metropolis, and to the great 
 commercial and manufacturing towns of Lan- 
 cashire and Yorkshire, but to Canada and the 
 United States, to the East and West Indies, to 
 South America, and to Australia. I could name 
 to you one of its natives who is settled at Mos- 
 cow, and another whose home is among the 
 mountains of Caucasus. In these days there is 
 not perhaps one man in a thousand (except 
 among the higher families) who, if he lives to 
 manhood, is buried with his fathers.
 
 170 POPULATION. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This is no happy stage of society, . . no whole- 
 some state of things for the human heart. There 
 is evil, great evil, in this disruption of natural 
 ties, . . this weakening of the domestic affections, . . 
 this premature dissolution of them. Those cir- 
 cumstances are as little favourable to happiness 
 as they are conformable in their consequences 
 to the order of nature, which compel or tempt 
 rational and reflective beings to dispose of their 
 children, as animals who are regulated in their 
 affections by mere instinct act toward their off- 
 spring when the course of instinct is fulfilled. 
 
 MOXTESINOjS. 
 
 But it is an evil of necessity in our system. 
 Even with all these outlets, every walk of life 
 is crowded in this country. There are more 
 labourers than can find employ, more artificers 
 in every craft than can earn a livelihood. Where 
 there is business enough for one tradesman, three 
 or four compete for it. No common interest will 
 suffice at this time for getting a boy placed as 
 midshipman in the navy, or obtaining him a 
 commission when that severe apprenticeship has 
 been served. And if the price of commissions 
 in ihc army were to be doubled, even then mere 
 money would not avail to purchase them, so 
 numerous would be the applicants. The courts 
 of law arc attended by swarms of briefless bar-
 
 POPULATION. 171 
 
 risters upon every circuit ; and were the plague 
 to visit us for our offences, it would hardly afford 
 employment for the young men who are trained, 
 and training to the medical profession. The 
 church alone is not greatly over-supplied with 
 members, because the numbers who may be or- 
 dained are under some limitation. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You spoke of the Plague ; and according to 
 the picture you have drawn, there must be some 
 among you ready, like the Mahommedans, to look 
 upon the Plague itself as a blessing, sent by the 
 Almighty to clear off a superfluous population. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 We have indeed metapoliticians, whose the- 
 ories upon this subject tend quite as much to 
 derogate from the goodness of God, and in a 
 greater degree to harden the heart of man. 
 Their attention has been directed to the increase 
 of the poorer orders. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 A fearful threat, indeed, was denounced 
 through the Prophet against a land where the 
 commandments of the Lord were despised *, . . 
 ' I will fill thee with men as with caterpillars, 
 ' and they shall lift up a shout against thee !' 
 
 * Jeremiah, li. 14.
 
 172 POPULATION. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 You must not suppose that our political eco- 
 nomists seek in the Bible for instruction ! Moral 
 considerations are allowed no place in their phi- 
 losophy, . . how much less then should religion 
 be found there ! Everything is gross and mate- 
 rial in that philosophy ; . . it is of the earth, 
 earthy ; and not of earth, as it came from the 
 hands of that beneficent and all-wise Creator, 
 who saw that it was good, but as it has been 
 rendered by man, where the filth and refuse of a 
 crowded and ill-ordered society have accumu- 
 lated, and the waters of its broken conduits, and 
 the contents of its sewers have met and stag- 
 nated, and all together has become rank, noxious, 
 putrescent, and pestilential. Their philosophy is 
 the growth of such a compost ! They discover the 
 cause of all our difficulties and evils, not in the 
 constitution of society, but of human nature ; and 
 there, also, they look for it, not where it is to be 
 found, iu its sinfidness and fallen state, but in 
 its essence, and the primal law which was its 
 primal benediction ! Take the brains of the whole 
 school, and distil them in vacuo, (which is the 
 nearest approximation to the natural process in 
 this case,) and 3'on could not extract so much 
 essential thought as may be found in any one 
 page of our old divines. . .Although of England
 
 POPULATION. 173 
 
 itself, which is so much the most improved of 
 the united kingdoms, more than a sixth part is 
 at this time uncultivated, and a far larger pro- 
 portion of Wales and Scotland and the sister 
 island ;.. though we have in our colonies tracts of 
 habitable land equal in extent to the whole sur- 
 face of habitable Europe, . . they will not per- 
 ceive that there is room either at home or abroad, 
 for what they call our surplus population ; and 
 instead of enlarging the hive, or sending out 
 swarms, as nature indicates, and the plainest 
 policy enjoins, they advise us to starve the 
 bees, that so they may be prevented from breed- 
 ing ! They have made themselves so incapable 
 of seeing the immediate and ready remedy 
 which earth and ocean offer us, that this is 
 the alternative they choose, . . this the remedy 
 they prescribe ! ' Eyes have they, and yet see 
 not.' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 •■ This blindness is not of tlie eyes alone, 
 
 But of the mind, a dimness and a mist.* 
 
 MOXTE SINGS. 
 
 The difficulty, when we seriously contemplate 
 the subject, is not in disposing of that part of 
 the population who come upon tlie poor rates 
 for assistance or support ; tlie great majority of 
 
 * Higgins. Mirror of Magistrates, vol. i. p. 308.
 
 1 74 POPULATION. 
 
 these poor people being willing' to emigrate, 
 willing to work, to go anywhere where they may 
 be able to provide for themselves, to do any- 
 thing whereby they may earn their bread. What- 
 ever means may be devised for their benefit, 
 they are ready to co-operate and perform their 
 part. They can dig, . . and though hard neces- 
 sity and hardening example have made too many 
 of them not ashamed to beg, they would rather 
 live by labour than by mendicity. But how they 
 should be set to work, . . how the beginning should 
 be made, . . is what we must not expect to learn 
 from any professor of political economy ; . . as 
 Lord Cottington said of old, ' it is not under 
 his cap.' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The wisdom of the heart is wanting there. 
 Statesmen seem hitherto as little to have dreamt 
 of the good which it is in their power to effect, as 
 sailors of the American and Australian regions 
 before the age of maritime discovery. They 
 have not yet had faith enough in goodness to 
 believe in the moral miracles which benevolence 
 and zeal are able to perform ! If at any time 
 they have entertained a serious wish for bettering 
 the condition of their fellow-creatures, the difh- 
 culties which they see before them have appeared 
 like mountains in the way ; and yet had they
 
 POPULATION. 1 75 
 
 faith but as a grain of mustard seed, those moun- 
 tains might be removed. There is abundant 
 room in this country, and its colonies, for any 
 possible increase of population, incolumi Jove, 
 till the end of time ! Only let the poor and in- 
 digent be placed where they may ' labour for 
 ' that which satisfieth,' and ' the earth will give 
 ' seed to the sower and bread to the eater :' 
 ' they shall build houses and inhabit them ; and 
 * the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert 
 ' shall rejoice.' 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The lower classes may be more easily dis- 
 posed of^ and are both more willing and more 
 able to aid in disposing of themselves, than the 
 overflow of educated persons. No small part 
 of the danger, with which our institutions are 
 threatened, arises from the number of adven- 
 turers in the middle rank of life, who, being 
 unsuccessful, are therefore discontented. These 
 become more numerous in every generation. 
 ' The world is not their friend, nor the world's 
 law :' and in disturbed times they must always 
 be dangerous subjects, to whom all change 
 might seem to offer hope, and who have nothing 
 to risk but lives of which they are weary. Loyal 
 obedience, wherein the safety of a state consists, 
 can only rest either in the principle of duty, or
 
 17G HALF-PAY OFFICERS. 
 
 the contented sense of well-being : the first can 
 scarcely be said to exist in this corrupted nation ; 
 the second is not to be found among the labour- 
 ing poor, nor in the great body of disappointed 
 adventurers. 
 
 sill THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And for this you have no remedies, no palli- 
 atives even, except such as chance may present ! 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 A safety valve was opened for us, by what, 
 humanly speaking, may be called chance, at the 
 end of the war. A great number of those brave 
 and unfortunate officers in the army and navy, 
 and more unfortunate midshipmen, who were 
 disbanded upon the conclusion of the peace, 
 hopeless of promotion in their own profession, 
 and unfitted for any other, found their way to 
 South America, and engaged in the service of 
 the revolutionary states, by sea or by land ; some 
 in the persuasion that they were aiding a gene- 
 rous and a noble cause ; but the greater number 
 in a spirit of desperate adventurousness, having 
 no hope elsewhere. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Why was no outlet opened for such persons, 
 to whom the nation had contracted a moral 
 obligation ? They had entered its fleets and 
 armies when their services were wanted, and had
 
 HALF-PAY OFFICERS. 177 
 
 exposed their lives freely and gallantly when 
 lives were in demand. When they had brought 
 the war to its desired termination, (a termina- 
 tion, oh, how far exceeding' in honour that of 
 any former war in which England had been 
 engaged !) was it fitting that this should be their 
 reward ? Was it fittino; that Eno-lish blood should 
 be made as cheap throughout the revolutionary 
 states of South America as the Eno-lish 2:oods 
 with which their markets were glutted by your 
 greedy speculators ? Was it fitting that they who 
 had brought the ship of the state safely and tri- 
 umphantly into port, should then be turned adrift 
 themselves? that having fought their country's 
 battles victoriously, and exalted their country's 
 name, they should be left to engage in contests, 
 in which none of the honourable courtesies of 
 war are observed, none of its redeeming humani- 
 ties are to be found ; but where, with a strong and 
 exasperated feeling of right, on either side, the 
 most nefarious acts of brutal injustice and atro- 
 cious barbarity were perpetrated on both ? Was 
 it fitting that these things should be ? Was it 
 just? Was it honourable to the English name ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 In this, however, there has been hardship, 
 without injustice, inflicted or complained of. It 
 was the condition upon which these adventurers 
 
 VOL. II. N
 
 178 HALF-PAY OFFICER^ 
 
 entered the service. Every one knew that the 
 army must be reduced in time of peace. No 
 sooner had peace been obtained, than there was 
 an immediate cry for a reduction of expenses, 
 and a necessity for it ; and the first obvious re- 
 duction, in deference to that cry, was of the 
 military and naval establishments. The half- 
 pay of a subaltern is indeed barely sufficient for 
 his single subsistence ; but a burthened nation 
 cannot afford more. In these things individual 
 cases must be overlooked : they can no more be 
 regarded in the general measures of government, 
 than in the operations of nature. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Are they then unregarded in the operations of 
 nature ? Those operations are imder the guid- 
 ance of that Providence which feedeth the fowls 
 of the air, and without which not a sparrow falls 
 to the ground. Look to your heart, Montesinos, 
 if the words were spoken advisedly ; look to your 
 heart, and if at any moment the cloud and the 
 darkness come over you, pray for light and for 
 forgiveness from that God in whom you live, and 
 move, and have your being! The earthquake 
 may crush, and the flood overwhelm, and the 
 pestilence sweep away the children of men ; but 
 are you to be told that let death, which must 
 come, come when it may, it comes, and can only
 
 HALF-PAY OFFICERS. 179 
 
 come, in the order of Providence? How in- 
 finitely little then imports it whether it comes 
 soon or late, life being but ' a place which 
 ' God hath given us in time, for the desiring of 
 * eternity ! ' * 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 O monitor and friend, the words deserve re- 
 proof, but not the intention ! I spoke them not 
 in blindness or obduracy, but expressed in com- 
 mon language an illustration drawn from the 
 surface of things. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But it behoves you to look always into the 
 life of things, and especially to guard against 
 language which could not have become common, 
 unless men, having eyes and seeing not, had 
 ceased to regard that which is the life of life. . . 
 Nor is this all that deserves reprehension in your 
 speech : you looked at the political qiiestion as 
 merely political, and spake as if you regarded it 
 in the hard-hearted way in which these things 
 are officially considered. If it were your own 
 way of thinking, . . if the spring from whence 
 such a reply proceeded lay lower than the lips 
 and larynx, I should have had too little sympathy 
 with one so minded, . . too little hope of any good 
 
 * Jeremy Taylor, vol. iii. p. 447. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 MILITARY COLONIZATION. 
 
 that miglit be done to liim, and through him to 
 others, to have put on visibility, and introduced 
 myself to him in this world. Methinks it should 
 require but little reflection, and no extraordinary 
 portion of good-will towards others, to perceive 
 that individual interests may in very many cases 
 be consulted with advantage to the general good, 
 certainly without detriment to it, and that they 
 ought always to be so consulted when they can. 
 Without inquiring here in what manner this 
 might be done both in the army and navy at all 
 times, let me ask whether, at the conclusion of 
 a war, a system of military colonization might 
 not be adopted, like that of the Romans, modified 
 according to change of times and difterence of 
 circumstances ? 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 Such an experiment in home-colonization was 
 tried after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, when 
 soldiers and sailors were settled on some of the 
 forfeited estates in Scotland : decent houses were 
 built for them, and a portion of land allotted to 
 each ; three pounds in money given to every 
 settler, and nine more lent him to begin the new 
 world with, on which he was about to enter. 
 Pennant calls it an Utopian scheme, which was 
 frustrated by the loose and incorrigible habits of 
 the men : they soon spent their money, and then
 
 MILITARY COLONIZATION. 181 
 
 left their tenements to be occupied by the next 
 comer. Yet, he observes, that Utopian as the 
 project was, and notwithstanding the total failure 
 of the primary object, some advantages ensued : 
 a good deal of ground was inclosed, several plan- 
 tations were formed in a wild country, a better 
 manner of building cottages was introduced, and 
 the comfortable dwellings which the first idle in- 
 mates deserted, were left for a more industrious 
 people. Unsuccessful as the experiment proved, 
 the principle was right ; it was a straight-for- 
 ward step in policy, which there may be some 
 advantage in referring to at present, when, crab- 
 like, so many of our movements are oblique, and 
 so many, like those of the lobster, are, as Sir Boyle 
 Roche would have said, in retrograde progres- 
 sion. The error seems to have been in disband- 
 ing the men instead of settling them in companies, 
 with their proper officers, still under command : 
 the same habit of obedience which made them 
 work upon the military roads, would then have 
 kept them to their duty, till, by military discipline, 
 thus directed to moral ends, a second nature had 
 been induced. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Right, Montesinos, . . with the aid of the Bible 
 and of chaplains, who being thus converted into 
 parish priests, should have discharged their duty
 
 182 COLONIZATION. 1 
 
 with fidelity. For in colonizing, upon however 
 small a scale, the vow should be remembered 
 which David vowed unto the Almighty God of 
 Jacob : ' I will not suffer mine eyes to sleep, nor 
 ' mine eyelids to slumber, neither the temples of 
 ' my head to take any rest, until I have found 
 ' out a place for the temple of the Lord,' The 
 chief reason why men in later times have been 
 worsened by colonization (as they very generally 
 liave been, from whatever nation they have been 
 sent forth) is, that they have not borne this in 
 mind. In this respect the Jews have been wiser 
 (in theory at least, for they have had no oppor- 
 tunity of practice) than any Christian people 
 have yet shown themselves : it was a tradition 
 among them, that wherever ten men of Israel 
 were settled together, a synagogue ought to be 
 built there. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 This is indeed the chief reason why the state 
 of morals is generally so much worse in colo- 
 nies than in the parent state. But there are 
 other causes. Slavery, wherever it exists, is a 
 sure cause of corruption, and of the worst kind. 
 Nor is it any blessing for man in his fallen 
 state, when tluit part of the primeval punishment 
 which cursed the ground for his sake, and ap- 
 pointed him to eat bread in the sweat of his
 
 COLONIES. 183 
 
 brow, is with regard to him suspended. Colo- 
 nists are worsened wherever the means of sub- 
 sistence are abundantly produced with little or 
 no labour on their part. Thus the multiplication 
 of cattle has brutalized the boors of South Africa, 
 the peons of La Plata, and the Brazilians of Rio 
 Grande, Piauhy, and the other grazing countries 
 of Brazil. When cattle are raised merely for 
 slaughter, when they are not employed in agri- 
 culture, and nothing is looked for from them but 
 their hides and their flesh, or perhaps the hides 
 alone, the people become worse than barbarians : 
 their physical condition is better than that of a 
 huntino' tribe, but their moral state is far more 
 loathsome : but when milk becomes a part of 
 their food, a difl'erent feeling is introduced, and a 
 better stage of society begins. The horse is 
 nowhere so well treated as where mare's milk is 
 in use. A greater moral contrast can hardly be 
 supposed between two nations whose physical 
 circumstances are, in many respects, very much 
 alike, than exists between the Esquimaux and 
 the Laplanders, and the cause appears to be 
 that the latter have been humanized by the rein- 
 deer. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Let other circumstances be what they may, it 
 is the nature of man to worsen if he be left to
 
 184 COLONIES. 
 
 himself: liis body is not more seriously injured 
 by unnatural restraint, than his better part is if 
 it be under no control of wholesome discipline. 
 In home colonies . . (and it will not always be the 
 reproach of this kingdom that large tracks of 
 land are lying waste while thousands are want- 
 ing employment, and tens of thousands derive 
 their chief means of support from the poor-rates,) 
 in home colonies, I say, if there be any wisdom 
 manifested in forming them, the established order 
 of the general community will be, as of course, 
 observed, and oj^portunity is offered for supply- 
 ing the defects of that order. In these, therefore, 
 the poor and destitute may wisely be employed ; 
 for even if the admixture of persons in a more 
 improved, or more fortunate condition, were left 
 wholly to the natural course of things, they 
 cannot sink below the standard of surrounding 
 civilization. But when foreign colonies are to 
 be founded or enlarged, it must be as ill a policy 
 to stock them with the outcasts and refuse of 
 society, its criminals and its paupers, the most 
 guilty or the most wretched, the ignorant and 
 the worthless of the mother country, as it would 
 be to propagate grafts from a diseased tree, or of 
 a fruit bad in its kind. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There is the same difficulty at this day which
 
 COLONIES. ] 85 
 
 Bacon remarked when treating of the planta- 
 tions in Ireland ; ' those men will be least fit * 
 ' which are like to be most in appetite of them- 
 ' selves ; and those most fit which are like least 
 ' to desire it.' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The colonists of my age sought first for plun- 
 der, secondly for mines ... a pursuit in which 
 they sometimes endured almost as much suffering 
 as they inflicted, and yet less than they deserved. 
 In these days, men go to the colonies for the 
 purpose of accumulating fortunes by trade, or by 
 agricultural speculations carried on in the spirit 
 of trade ; seeking the same end, though by better 
 means. Few are they who, in removing from a 
 crowded society, where, if there be any hope in 
 
 * Captain Beaver, in his most interesting account of the 
 attempt to establish a British settlement on the island of 
 Bulama, says of the adventurers, ' when the terms of subscrip- 
 ' tion v^^ere so very moderate, it is not to be wondered at that 
 ' in such a great city as London some profligate and worthless 
 ' characters were to be found among the subscribers ; but I 
 ' think we had more than one would have expected.' One 
 among them ' had been guilty of wilfully setting fire to a house, 
 * of robbery, of murder, of forgery, and of incest, . . of all which 
 ' (says Captain Beaver) I had full proofs after his death.' It 
 is no pleasant reflection that a miscreant in the land we live 
 in should have committed these crimes, and escaped punish- 
 ment, and even detection, for all of them.
 
 186 
 
 MILITARY COLONIES. 
 
 their prospect, it is a hope indefinitely deferred, 
 look to the moral advantages which a new coun- 
 try possesses, and which are of such moment that 
 in many instances they may well be deemed to 
 overweigli the social and intellectual enjoyments 
 of their native land. The desire of wealth is the 
 one impelling motive. Yet there must be many 
 who might be induced to transplant themselves 
 by worthier considerations, if opportunity were 
 afforded them of providing a sure subsistence, in 
 all comfort and independence, for themselves and 
 their posterity, to the third and fourth generation. 
 There must be many who are capable of under- 
 standing and feeling that a patriarchal state is 
 better and happier than a commercial one, . . 
 happier if temporal enjoyment were the only 
 object of desire, and immeasurably better for 
 them as intellectual and immortal beings. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Military settlements, for which alone the ffx- 
 cilities which you appear to tisk from a govern- 
 ment could readily be supplied^ were attempted 
 at the close of the late war ; and this I ought 
 to have remembered when you arraigned the 
 state for a want of due feeling towards the dis- 
 banded soldiers. Establishments for them in 
 Upper Canada were projected, and the men 
 who were wiUino; to become colonists were
 
 MILITARY COLONIES, 187 
 
 provided with a passage thither for themselves 
 and families ; land in proportion to their respec- 
 tive ranks was allotted ; the largest allotment 
 being twelve hundred acres for a field-officer, 
 the smallest, one hundred, for a private. Im- 
 plements of husbandry were given them, and 
 materials also to assist in building their habi- 
 tations ; and they were allowed rations of pro- 
 visions for one year, the estimated cost of which 
 was twenty pounds for each individual : but 
 this was insufficient, and its continuance should 
 have been fixed for six months lono-er, seeino' 
 that no preparations whatever had been made 
 for receiving the people upon the ground in- 
 tended for them. Their lots had been pre- 
 viously surveyed, but upon reaching them, they 
 found themselves in the wilderness ; no founda- 
 tions had been laid, no clearance begun, and 
 the men themselves were far from being fitted 
 for the work which they were required to per- 
 form. When the former experiment was made 
 in Scotland, the men had previously been broken 
 in to labour, and drilled, as it were, in the use 
 of the spade and the mattock, upon the roads ; 
 and yet this training failed (except in few in- 
 stances) to produce either the disposition or 
 the habits which would have qualified them for 
 a life of regular industry. But in Canada there
 
 188 MILITARY COLONIES. 
 
 had been no sucli training, and the settlers 
 had to contend not only with the difficulties 
 of their situation, but with the worse habit of 
 idleness which they had contracted as soldiers. 
 So it is not strange that an experiment, the plan 
 whereof was so much better in its design than 
 in its details, should have failed as to its pri- 
 mary purpose. Indeed, though the settlements 
 were called military, they were not, properly 
 speaking, military colonies : the men were under 
 certain regulations, to which they were required 
 to conform ; but having been disbanded before 
 they were placed there, the principle of military 
 obedience was withdrawn : they were thus left 
 to act each upon his own views of self-interest, 
 instead of under the sense of obligation and 
 duty ; and a great many of them forsook their 
 allotments, and went to seek their fortune in the 
 United States. The settlements still exist,' for 
 casual settlers were admitted and encouraged ; 
 and other soldiers also received locations there, 
 who beinof in Canada wlicn the term of their 
 limited service expired, chose to accept of such 
 a resting-place, instead of a passage to England. 
 Nor has the experiment been quite useless as to 
 its first intent : experience has been gained by 
 it 1o be acted upon hereafter; the men who re- 
 mained upon their lots are now reaping the fruit
 
 EMIGRANTS. 189 
 
 of their industry and patience, and tlieir chil- 
 dren's children will have cause to bless the bene- 
 ficent Government which placed them there. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 By what inducements should these settlers l)e 
 drawn into the United States ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 By a persuasion that the means of subsistence 
 are more surely and easily to be obtained there ; 
 and this persuasion operates extensively. The 
 casual emigrants who find their way every year 
 from these islands to Canada are estimated at 
 about ten thousand, and of these it has been 
 said that four-fifths'* pass into the American 
 provinces. A great proportion of these are 
 Irish, who, of all emigrants, (though tliey work 
 as willingly as the best,) are the least thrifty, 
 and the least disposed to live quietly and in 
 obedience to the laws ; insomuch that in Ame- 
 rica they are the most wretched part of the 
 whole population 'I, except the free blacks in 
 New York. About a fourth of the English 
 emigrants are supposed to find their way back 
 to England '^ ; but they who have been bred to 
 any handicraft trade remain, wages being high, 
 and employment certain. When Americans be- 
 
 * First Report on Emigration, p. 48. 
 t Second Report on Emigration, p. 37. 
 X First Report, p. 115.
 
 190 EMIGRANTS. 
 
 come restless, tlieir bent is toward tlie wilder- 
 ness : tliev move into the back settlements, and 
 there become the pioneers of civilization. Bri- 
 tish and Irish adventurers, on the contrary, 
 when removed to an uncultivated land, appear 
 to pine after the haunts of men, and make when 
 they can toward the centre of society instead of 
 remaining beyond its frontiers. What to the 
 American back-settler seems the perfection of 
 wild independence, they regard with dislike ; 
 perhaps, because they have been accustomed to 
 consider such relegation to the wilderness as a 
 punishment appropriated for criminals. There 
 is yet another cause. Geneva was not more 
 devoutly looked to as the pattern in the mount 
 by our Puritans, in the days of Calvin and Beza, 
 than the United States are now, as a sort of 
 political Holy-land, by persons who are ill 
 affected * either to the civil or ecclesiastical regi- 
 
 * Mr. Gamble says of the Presbyterians who emigrate from 
 the North of Ireland to America, that he lias ' seen many 
 ' hundreds of their letters to their friends and relations ; and 
 ' scarcely with an exception, the comfort most insisted on, the 
 ' comfort of comforts was, that they could there speak to man 
 ' as man, and that they were not obliged to uncover the head, 
 ' or to bend the knee to any stern lord, arrogant squire, proud 
 
 * vicar, or, above all, upstart agent!' And these he calls ' a 
 
 * valuable description of people, whose loss is a subject of re- 
 
 * grot in all wlio take an interest in the welfare of these king- 
 ' donis!' — Fiews of Society in the North of Ireland, p. 307.
 
 EMIGRANTS. 1 9 1 
 
 men at home. Such persons assent to all the 
 representations which the Americans delight in 
 making- of their improved polity and enlightened 
 freedom, and this opinion has spread among the 
 lower orders : so that when assistance for re- 
 moving to Canada has been afforded to poor 
 families, either by their parishes or by the state, 
 a great many have availed themselves of it only 
 for the sake of a passage, at the public expense, 
 to this promised land. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And thus you send out, at the public charge, 
 able hands to increase the rapidly increasing 
 population of a country wherein a hostile spirit 
 is cherished against you, and against which you 
 may be again engaged in war, no one can foresee 
 how soon ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I do not see how any such consideration should 
 affect the policy of this government with regard 
 to what is deemed its surplus population, unless it 
 were by directing its emigrants rather to South 
 Africa and Australia, than to its North American 
 possessions. It is incontestable that the removal 
 of so many hands for which employment cannot 
 be found at home, is in our present circumstances 
 an immediate good : but it may be doubted 
 whether any eventual evil is to be apprehended
 
 192 COLONIES. 
 
 from thus accelerating the growth of the United 
 States. The faster they grow the sooner they 
 will separate. And though we have been un- 
 natural enemies, the time, I trust, is approaching 
 when both nations will perceive and acknowledge 
 that they ought to be natural friends. The Ame- 
 ricans, I believe, are not desirous of such an in- 
 crease as we send them : they have poor enough 
 of their own, and can derive little benefit from 
 an influx of persons who are not likely to raise 
 the standard either of manners or of principle 
 anion o- them. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Upon this evil it is, Montesinos, that I would 
 fix your attention. There is not a sufiicient ad- 
 mixture of good materials in the foundation of 
 your colonies. The old saying, 
 
 Caelum iron animum mutant qui trans mare ciirrunt, 
 
 is true only for a time, and for no long time. 
 Colonists cliange their country as well as their 
 climate ; and they acquire even in the first gene- 
 ration a new pliysical character, and a new moral 
 one perhaps still sooner ; but the tendency is to- 
 wards a lower standard of general manners tlian 
 prevails in the society which tlicy have left. This 
 it must be, from inevitable circumstances, at first, 
 even when the platform of the new settlement is
 
 COLONIES. 193 
 
 laid after the model of the old, and the grada- 
 tions of the community, as far as possible, care- 
 fully preserved ; but the debasement is likely to 
 be permanent, if no such care be taken. In 
 laying the foundation of their colonies, the Spa- 
 niards of all modern nations have shown the most 
 forethought, the English least. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 But what has been the result? the Spanish 
 colonies are separated from the mother country, 
 and nothing remains of them to Spain except the 
 perpetual reproach which must endure as long 
 as any record of their history, from their first 
 establishment to their final loss, shall be pre- 
 served. 
 
 sill THOMAS MORE. 
 
 That reproach applies not to the policy with 
 which the foundations of those colonies were 
 laid : they would have been well laid had they 
 not been laid in blood. And when vou refer to 
 the separation as proof of mispolicy on the part 
 of the mother country, you should remember 
 that the establishment of the Spanish colonies 
 was anterior by more than an hundred years to 
 that of the Anglo-American, and that they w^ere 
 retained half a century longer. Wherever the 
 Spaniards settled, their first business was to 
 plant their own institutions : their polity was in 
 
 VOL. II. o
 
 194 SPANISH COLONIES. 
 
 that age at its best, their religion at its worst; 
 the former when thus transplanted lost much 
 of its good, the latter more of its evil. The 
 cities which they founded were in the course of 
 half a century little inferior to those of the 
 mother-land in any thing, except those awful 
 works of ecclesiastical architecture, which in 
 that age the European nations, one and all, 
 were so little capable of equaling, that they 
 had ceased to appreciate and even to admire 
 them. In these cities all the gradations of 
 Spanish society were found, except that the 
 Court was wanting; and the Court was repre- 
 sented wherever there was a vice-regal esta- 
 blishment. Bad subjects it was impossible that 
 the Government could keep out, especially when 
 so much bloody and wicked work was to be 
 done ; but every precaution which could be de- 
 vised was taken to prevent persons of bad cha- 
 racter from ^mbarking for the Indies. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The Portuguese, on the contrary, in the same 
 age, sent out criminals to Brazil ; but they did 
 this more from necessity than from choice. Their 
 population was insufficient for the schemes of 
 extensive, and, . . it may fairly be added, . . ge- 
 nerous ambition in which they were engaged ; 
 and therefore they had recourse to a measure,
 
 COLONISTS. 195 
 
 the ill consequences of which were lamented by- 
 all their own writers who have touched upon the 
 subject, 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Has it been wisely done in your Government 
 to follow, upon deliberate choice, an example 
 which the Portuguese only from necessity had 
 set, and which in their case had answered so ill ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Looking' at what time and chance have brought 
 about, I know not whether we may say that it 
 has answered ill. For by the descendants of 
 these men, and of others who were their fit com- 
 panions, (a mixed breed, which could hardly 
 have been raised under any better system of 
 colonization,) the interior of that great country 
 was explored, from the plains of Piratininga to 
 the Parana and the sources of the Paraguay, and 
 from Matto Grosso to the Orellana, and to the 
 frontiers of Quito and Popayan ; and their pos- 
 terity are at this day in a better state, and (if 
 they escape the curse of revolution) a more 
 hopeful one, than those Mexicans and Peruvians 
 and Columbians, who can trace their descent 
 from the proudest names in Castilian history. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But here, Montesinos, the past must be taken 
 into your estimate There were two centuries 
 
 o 2
 
 19G 
 
 AUSTRALIA. 
 
 during- wliicli the standard of civilization at 
 Mexico and Lima was not below that of Madrid : 
 you will not compare Bahia and Pernanibuco, 
 to say nothing of S. Paulo and Para, with Lisbon 
 during the same portion of time. Methinks you 
 would not desire to have a race of Paulistas or 
 Para-men grow up beyond the Blue Mountains 
 of Australia. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The land, if gold mines were discovered there, 
 happily would not supply slaves for working 
 them. That colony originated in a scheme ill 
 digested, and in itself objectionable on weighty 
 grounds ; but this direct good has been effected 
 by it, that the English language has been planted 
 in Australia, and has taken root there, . . 
 
 ' A goodly tree, whose leaf 
 ' No winter e'er shall nip!' 
 
 And the collateral good is yet greater ; for had 
 no such settlement been previously formed, that 
 mission would not have been undertaken, which 
 in so many of the South-sea islands has put an 
 end to a bloody and flagitious system of hea- 
 thenism, and which will spread the comforts of 
 civili/.ution and the blessings of Christianity 
 throughout ;ill Polynesia. Am I wrong in think- 
 ing that tlie disposal of Providence becomes 
 more- niauilcst here when we reflect upon the
 
 AUSTRALIA. ' 197 
 
 errors of the original plan and the worse errors 
 which were committed by those who managed 
 the affairs of the colony at home ? I pass over 
 the extravagance of transporting convicts to the 
 farthest * part of the globe, because, without 
 some such ostensible motive, no scheme of colo- 
 nization would have been attempted; and because 
 one of the most diihcult problems in polity is, 
 how to dispose of such persons in an age when 
 the depravity of the people, and the humanity 
 of the public and of the Government keep pace 
 with each other. I pass over the imprudence 
 of colonizing with criminals, instead of employ- 
 ing them as the bondsmen of better colonists : 
 this error was in the original scheme. But the 
 whole colony was more than once in danger of 
 perishing with hunger, because supplies were 
 not dispatched thither in time. And what should 
 be said of the management which, sending out 
 five thousand convicts in the course of the first 
 twelve years to colonize a new country, made 
 its arrangements with so little forethought, that 
 only a fifth part of that number were women, 
 and of those women many were actually infirm 
 by reason of old age ! I know not whether any 
 
 * A situation for such a colony had been sought in vain 
 upon the coast of Africa.
 
 198 AUSTRALIA. 
 
 measures have even yet been * taken for remedy- 
 ing an error which would be ludicrous for its ex- 
 treme absurdity, if it were not monstrous in its 
 consequences. The deficiency might surely have 
 been supplied by giving a passage, from time 
 to time, to as many of those unhappy women 
 who infest the streets of London, as would 
 thankfully have accepted such an offer of deli- 
 verance. 
 
 * The disproportion among the convicts has doubled since 
 that time I Mr. Eager, in his Evidence before the Emigration 
 Committee, (1st Report, p. 101,) says, that among those 
 people he supposes ' there are not three women to twenty men ; 
 ' perliaps not one to ten.' The general muster for the year 
 1821 shows not one to twelve ! — men, 12,608 ; women, 1,206. 
 (Wentworth's Australasia, i. 481.) Among the free people 
 the women were in the proportion of little more than three to 
 five. The disproportion will be remedied when death has swept 
 away the existing generation, and the population will be cut 
 down accordingly ; but the dissolute manners which have been 
 occasioned by this cause, in a far greater degree than by the 
 original depravity of the stock, will, it may be feared, not be 
 remedied so soon or so surely. Mr. Wentworth (vol. i. 365) 
 gives a frightful })icture of the ' native-born females,' justly 
 observing, that their dc])ravity is occasioned by the ' vast and 
 ' alarming disproportion which exists between the sexes ;' but 
 when, in the same page, he described the young men as ' al- 
 * most invariably temperate, chaste, frugal, and laborious,' he 
 had forgotten that where the women of a connnunity are dis- 
 solute the men cannot be otherwise.
 
 AUSTRALIA. 199 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The regulated polyandrianism which Caesar 
 found established in the south of Britain, could 
 not have been so pernicious in its consequences, 
 as the dissoluteness which this incredible mis- 
 management must produce in a new colony. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The polyandrian system, I think, must have 
 originated when some great body of invaders, 
 who brought no women with them, settled them- 
 selves by conquest in a country where little re- 
 sistance was made. Beginning thus, custom 
 might perpetuate it, aided in some places by 
 pride * of caste, in others t by policy, where the 
 wicked principle prevailed, that it was better to 
 prevent the increase of population than to pro- 
 vide an outlet for it. The moral effects of such 
 a system cannot by possibility be worse than 
 what polygamy produces : the political conse- 
 quences certainly not so bad. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You do not mean to vindicate the system ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Nor you to suspect me of so abominable an 
 intention ! I only compare one evil with ano- 
 ther, when endeavouring to explain in what 
 
 * In INIalabar. t In Tibet.
 
 200 POLYANDRIANISM. 
 
 manner that of which the orig'in is least obvious 
 can have arisen. If I am not mistaken, it vi^as 
 continued among a remnant of the British, or 
 rather Keltic people, much later * than any other 
 observance of Druidical times : and a practice 
 virtually, or rather viciously, the same has been 
 imputed to the Venetian aristocracy, as the cus- 
 tomary, though cryptic means, whereby the ca- 
 dets of noble families were prevented from 
 leaving a posterity who should sink beneath the 
 rank of their race. Into such evils are men 
 betrayed . . . into such abominations are they gra- 
 dually drawn . . . when, instead of conforming 
 their institutions and customs to the order of 
 nature, and the revealed laws of God, they dis- 
 regard those laws, and contravene that order. 
 Hence the continuance of monasteries after their 
 utility had ceased, and the zeal in which they 
 had originated was worn out. When those insti- 
 tutions were abolished in this country, there re- 
 mained only the course of mercantile or military 
 
 * As late as the 12th century it existed in Galloway, ac- 
 cording to Capgravc, in his life of Aelred, Abbot of Rivaux ; 
 ' Est c?iim terra ilia fera, silvcstris, et harbara ; bestiales 
 ' homincx, et harharum omne. (jnod gignit. Castitas ioties 
 ' ])aliiur nanfragium, quotics libido volueril, nee est inter 
 ' rastam rt scortum xilla distanlia : nuiUeres jicr menses viros 
 ' alternant: — Acta SS. Jan. t. i. 750.
 
 ADVENTURERS. 201 
 
 adventure (except such provision as the learned 
 professions might afford) for the younger sons of 
 good families; and the greater number became, 
 during peace, idle, and listless, and hopeless, 
 dependents upon the * elder brother. This was 
 an inconvenience which coukl not long continue 
 in a nation at that time too far advanced in a 
 system of clanship to grow up in it. Accord- 
 ingly, in the first generation after the great 
 religious revolution, schemes of conquest from 
 the Spaniards were attempted, which always de- 
 generated into marauding expeditions ; and in 
 the second, projects of colonization were con- 
 ceived in a better spirit, by minds 'f of a higher 
 order. Lord Sterline, the poet, took possession 
 of and gave name to Nova Scotia : an intended 
 settlement in the island of Mauritius was only 
 prevented by the better speed of the Dutch ; and 
 the troubles in England frustrated the scheme of 
 an expedition for colonizing in Madagascar, which 
 Prince Rupert was to have conducted, and after- 
 wards the Earl of Arundel, and in which some of 
 the choicest spirits of Charles's court would have 
 
 * The best account wliicli I have ever seen of this stage of 
 society, is in Mr. Surtees's History of Durham. Vol. i. 87. 
 
 t I sliould have made an exception for Ralegh, (the great- 
 est man engaged in any of these speculations,) if he had not 
 been engaged in l)oth.
 
 202 ADVENTURERS. 
 
 embarked. This, had it been undertaken, must 
 have proved a disastrous adventure, Madagascar 
 being one of those places where the climate 
 presents an insuperable obstacle to European 
 colonization. An end was put to all such 
 schemes by the civil wars, and with the Resto- 
 ration a new order of things began. Commerce 
 and trade, in many of its branches, had then 
 become lucrative enough to be deemed honour- 
 able, and not being overdone by competition, 
 afforded room for disposing of younger sons ad- 
 vantageously. The gradual increase of trade, 
 and of our civil and military establishments, 
 kept pace for more than an hundred years with 
 the growth of population. It has ceased to do 
 so since the ratio of mortality has diminished, . . 
 which it has done greatly within the last half 
 century, owing, perhaps, as much to the more 
 temperate habits of the middle and higher classes, 
 as to the better mode of treatment in most diseases 
 which improved science has introduced. But 
 the increase of wealth, real or fictitious, (that 
 which is fictitious producing in this case the same 
 efiect as that which is real,) has increased the 
 number of educated persons in a very great de- 
 gree beyond what was their proportion in any 
 former age ; and the multitude of persons so 
 educated, who can find no room in their own
 
 ADVENTURERS. 203 
 
 crowded walks of life, is great and growing 
 enough to require the anxious attention of our 
 statesmen, if the pressing anxieties of the present 
 time left them ever at leisure to devise measures 
 of prospective policy. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You have spoken of polyandrianism and of 
 convents. In what manner is your society af- 
 fected (for affected it must be) by that evil for 
 which these evils have been resorted to elsewhere 
 as remedial or palliative ? Are morals better or 
 worse among you than they were when manners 
 were more gross? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The latter question I must answer doubtfully. 
 So far as morals depend upon natural disposition 
 (upon which they must always, and almost wholly, 
 depend where there is not a vital principle of 
 religion) so far the morality of every age must 
 be pretty much at the same average. Andrew 
 Marvell says, 
 
 ' Tlie world in all doth but two Nations bear, 
 
 ' The Good and Bad; . . and these mixt everywhere :' 
 
 it is thus with every generation also ; and the 
 difference in this point will be found, I fear, to 
 consist less in the proportion of wickedness, than 
 in the shape which it may assume. Not to speak
 
 204 MANNERS. 
 
 of those offences which the law reaches, (though 
 to these likewise the remark would apply,) vices 
 as well as follies have their season, and come 
 into fashion or go out, according to the humour 
 of the times. There Avere undoubtedly, in the 
 middle ages, more and greater crimes committed 
 by the higher classes than by the lower, because 
 the lower were kept in fear, and in order, and 
 in place, whereas the others were powerful 
 enough to defy the laws. Time has reversed this, 
 placing the rich in circumstances more favourable 
 to their moral nature, and in this respect worsen- 
 ing, in an equal degree, the situation of the poor. 
 But it is neither the rich nor poor who are 
 affected by the cause concerning which you bid 
 me inquire ; it is the intermediate class. The 
 poor, perhaps, are not sufhciently mindful of the 
 proverb, which says, that they who marry in 
 haste repent at leisure ; the intermediate class, 
 and especially such of that class as. are most 
 desirous of what is called prospering in the 
 world, are influenced by it too much. Late mar- 
 riages, therefore, have become as much in the 
 order of British society, as they are out of the 
 order of nature ; they are rendered late not more 
 often by reasonable and virtuous prudence, than 
 by manners, which look rather to display than to 
 comfort, and in which an expenditure that con-
 
 LATE MARRIAGES. 205 
 
 duces neither to happiness nor true respectability, 
 is regarded as necessary in a certain rank of life. 
 The eflect of this in the extensive and influential 
 circle wherein it operates, cannot be otherwise 
 than injurious. A great proportion of the women 
 who are born within that circle, wither on the 
 thorn ; it is a mournful thing to consider how 
 many, in every generation, whom their Maker 
 had endowed with every requisite for domestic 
 happiness, pass through the world thus, unbless- 
 ing and unblest : though among such women 
 some of the best specimens of human nature are 
 to be found, . . in saying which I speak not from 
 theory, but from knowledge. Upon the other sex 
 the effect very generally is, and must be, evil. 
 Many become vicious who otherwise would not 
 have been so ; and there arises this farther mis- 
 chief, that, when they marry, undue motives 
 have more than what would otherwise be their 
 share in the engagement, on one side, or on the 
 other : on the man's, when marrying early in life 
 he makes money the object of his choice ; on the 
 w^oman's, when (more pardonably) for the sake 
 of obtaining a settlement in life, she overlooks a 
 disproportionate difference of years, and submits 
 therefore to a union in which, on her part, the 
 place of affection is to be supplied by duty ... if 
 it can.
 
 206 LATE MARRIAGES. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 England then has ceased to be the Paradise of 
 women ! 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 "Was it ever so. Sir Thomas? Has this world 
 ever been other than a place of trial, even for the 
 best and happiest, since Paradise was lost ? But 
 if you ask me what are the worst evils in the 
 commonwealth, I answer, first, the state of that 
 verv numerous class who are left without instruc- 
 tion in their childhood, without restraint in their 
 youth ; and, were it not for the poor laws, I 
 should have to add, without charity in their 
 misery and old age ; secondly, the condition of 
 women, respectably born, carefully educated, and 
 left ill provided for, or unprovided. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The reprobates of society, (and what a re- 
 proach upon society it is, that there should be 
 in it a class which may properly be so denomi- 
 nated!) if greatly more in number than they 
 were in former times, are probably not more in 
 proportion; but they are congregated more. In- 
 stead of being dispersed over the country, as 
 iu my days, they are collected into large towns 
 and populous districts, as into the sinks and 
 sewers of depravity.
 
 CRIMINALS, 207 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Sinks and sewers you may well call them, 
 and yet the country is not drained by such re- 
 ceptacles:., would that it were! For though 
 knights are not more needed now to protect the 
 husbandmen against wastours and wicked men*, 
 than mighty hunters and hawkers are for rid- 
 ding them of wild fowl who used to destroy the 
 corn, and of wild boars and stags who used to 
 break down the fences, we are far from being 
 sufficiently protected either in town or country. 
 There are few places without some inhabitants 
 who live notoriously by unlawful means and 
 yet elude the laws, though affecting no more 
 concealment in their practices than is just suf- 
 ficient for that purpose. Sturdy vagabonds 
 are to be found everywhere ; and tramping beg- 
 gars are continually carrying with them, from 
 place to place, measles, small-pox and hooping- 
 
 * Sykerliclie, s\Te knyght, saide Peers thenne, 
 
 Ich shal swynke and swete and sowe for hus bothe, 
 And laboure for the while thou levest, al thy lyf tyme, 
 In covenaunt that thou kepe holy churche and me selve 
 For wastours and wyckede men that thus worlde struen ; 
 And go honte hardiliche to hares and to foxes, 
 To bores and to bockes that breketh a doune menne hegges ; 
 And fatte thy faucones to cull wylde foules, 
 For thei conien to my croft my corn to defoule. 
 Peirs Plouhman. Passus, 9. p. 129. Whiltaker's Edition,
 
 208 CRIMINALS. 
 
 coiig-li. Our ancestors were better protected 
 when the leper was not allowed to go abroad 
 without his clapper or his bell. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 It has not been for lack of laws that this evil 
 continues, but of vigilance in those who ought to 
 execute them, and for want of that polity, that 
 discipline, that order, the rudiments of which 
 were distinctly marked in your constitution, 
 but from which, it may be seen, that during 
 many generations you have been departing 
 more and more. This, although now an old 
 and inveterate evil, might be eradicated by vigo- 
 rous treatment ; and will be so whenever some 
 long interval of peace brings it to an intolerable 
 degree, and a cessation of faction allows your 
 Government leisure for making the immediate 
 good of the people its chief object. The pro- 
 verb says, that when things are at the worst, 
 they mend ; this is one of those which, when 
 at the worst, must be mended. It is also wholly 
 "within the reach of remedial laws, without re- 
 quiring any previous improvement in public feel- 
 ing, or change in manners, tlic remedy itself 
 tending to produce both. But such an improve- 
 ment and such a change must, it is to be feared, 
 prcced(; any sensible amendment in the con- 
 dition of women so circumstanced as you have
 
 WOMEN. 209 
 
 described ; . . to be feared, I say, because devoutly 
 as such an amendment must be wished, it is 
 mournful to consider how many causes are co- 
 operating- for the continuance and increase of 
 the evil, and how little likelihood there appears 
 of attracting the public attention to anything- 
 that might be proposed for alleviating it. Your 
 manners present one obstacle : on the continent 
 women take a much greater share in business 
 than is usual in this country, and this without 
 being in any degree unfitted thereby for their 
 domestic duties, but on the contrary becoming- 
 more truly their husband's helpmates; with you 
 men have intruded into many of those branches 
 of trade which might as well, and far more be- 
 comingly, be carried on by the other sex. You 
 endeavoured to vindicate your countrymen from 
 the imputation of pride ; look at the charge in 
 connection with this subject, and ask yourself, 
 after such re-consideration, whether it may not 
 be alleged against them with severe but perfect 
 truth. Men are not disqualified oy their en- 
 gagements in trade from being received in high 
 society ; but from the moment that a well-born 
 or well-educated woman emplovs her acquire- 
 ments in obtaining for herself the means of sub- 
 sistence, she loses her caste. The word is odi- 
 ous, and so is the state of things which it im- 
 
 VOL. II. p
 
 210 WOMEN. 
 
 plies ; but it is more odious where it exists 
 as here, in exception to the general course of 
 feeling, than where it is the established order, 
 under which individuals are born, and to which 
 therefore their habits and expectations are ac- 
 commodated. How large is the number of 
 those persons among you, who by birth, con- 
 nections, profession or occupation, hold a re- 
 spectable station in society, deriving their means 
 meantime mainly, if not entirely, from a life- 
 income, or depending for support upon the yet 
 more precarious tenure of their own exertions. 
 The customs of the world in most cases, . . the 
 absolute necessity in many, . . of making an ap- 
 pearance correspondent to their station, compels 
 them to live to the extent of their resources ; 
 and thus upon the death of the father of a family, 
 or the more pitiable case of his hopeless disable- 
 ment, those whom he may leave, and who were 
 dependent upon him, are at once reduced to dis- 
 tress and degradation. How large a proportion 
 of the men in every profession are in this fearful 
 predicament ! Add to this, that commerce in 
 most of its branches has been converted by the 
 greedy spirit of the age, from a regular busi- 
 ness of patient industry into a game of hazard ; 
 insomuch that the safety of even the most honour- 
 able, upright and careful merchant is no longer
 
 WOMEN. 211 
 
 in liis own keeping, but depends, in a most 
 perilous degree, upon the conduct of others, 
 against whose want of prudence or of principle 
 he cannot insure, as he can against the danger of 
 the seas ! Methinks it should make a living heart 
 ache, to think whenever this land of credit is 
 shaken by a commercial earthquake, how many 
 a goodly fabric of happiness is laid in ruins ; 
 and to know how many women, who have been 
 bred up among all the refinements of affluence, 
 and with the expectation that their fortune was 
 in no danger of any such reverse, are reduced to 
 seek for themselves a scanty and precarious sup- 
 port, by the exercise of those talents which had 
 been cultivated for recreation or for display ; and 
 who, while they thus earn the bread of bitter- 
 ness, have but too much cause for saying with 
 the son of Sirach, * O Death, acceptable is thy 
 sentence unto the needy !' In your hard-hearted 
 society misfortune is not considered as affording 
 any claim to respect, . . scarcely to compassion. 
 You have no convents, no religious communities 
 in which such persons may be received and 
 sheltered. Earth has no other asylum for them 
 than its own cold bosom. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 And yet these are not the griefs under which 
 the spirit gives way and the heart breaks. In 
 
 p 2
 
 212 WOMEN. 
 
 such cases such virtuous exertions are made, so 
 much equanimity is manifested, so much good- 
 ness is seen, as to make it apparent that He 
 
 ' "Who gives the burthen gives tlie strengtli to bear.' 
 
 Lord Sterline. 
 
 Happy were it for us ail if we bore prosperity as 
 well and wisely as we endure an adverse fortune. 
 The reason wherefore it is not so, I suppose to 
 be, that the same disposition which in the one 
 state ferments into pride, in the other is refined 
 into fortitude ; and that cares, which eat the 
 heart, are less injurious to our spiritual nature 
 than vanities that inflate it and corrupt it. ' To 
 ' miss the good which may be got by suffering 
 ' evil,' says one* of our old divines, ' is the worst 
 ' of evils ; to lose that gain which should be 
 
 * gotten by losses, is of losses the greatest ; but 
 ' to grow worse with suffering evil, is perdition 
 ' itself.' Men are often found under this con- 
 demnation ; women, I think, but seldom. The 
 sons of perdition are more numerous tlian the 
 daughters. If women are not made of finer clay, 
 there has been more of the dew of heaven to 
 temper it. Or is it that ' though f the dews of 
 
 * Divine Grace fall everywhere, yet they lie 
 
 * Uarnabas Olcy. Note to Jackson's Works, vol. iii. ]>. 072. 
 t I'atrick's Pilgrim.
 
 WOMEN. 213 
 
 ' longest in the shade ;' and women, in the usual 
 course of life, keep in the shade, while men 
 brave the wind, seek the sunshine, and are ex- 
 posed to all weathers ? 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Society, though in some respects it bears hard 
 upon women, is favourable to them in this, that 
 their path of duty is strictly defined by its laws, 
 and that even such of its habits as are least in 
 accord with a religious life, intrench not upon 
 the precincts of their religious belief. The 
 maxim that if honour were lost among the rest 
 of mankind, it ought still to be found in the 
 breast of kings, was a brave one, and worthy to 
 have proceeded from a better man than the one 
 who uttered it. More true is it that if relio-ion 
 were everywhere exploded, it would retain its 
 place in the heart of woman. Wherefore is it 
 then that this principle, of all principles the 
 most powerful, has never been brought into ac- 
 tion for the relief of women under such circum- 
 stances of adverse fortune as those to which, in 
 the changes and chances of your unstable so- 
 ciety, they are always liable? A mad woman 
 can raise a sect among you ; a profligate and 
 revengeful one can endanger the state. How is 
 it, and in a nation too which is so easily moved, 
 that among all the forms which enthusiasm is con-
 
 214 WOMEN. 
 
 tinnally taking,. . among all the channels into 
 which public charity is directed by individual 
 exertions, . . an end so worthy, . .an object so be- 
 neficial, so needful, so pious, as that of providing 
 a ready and honourable retreat for such persons, 
 should have been overlooked ? Zeal abounds 
 among you : enthusiasm, ... I use the word in its 
 virtuous sense, ...is ready to answer any call that 
 may be made upon it ; and the kind of bounty 
 which is required, overflows at this time and runs 
 to waste. But where is the woman who shall be 
 the Clara or the Teresa of Protestant England, 
 labourinof for the certain benefit of her sex with 
 their ardour, but without their delusion and fatal 
 superstition, which have entailed such misery 
 upon thousands ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 An experiment of this kind has been under- 
 taken : it remains to be seen whether this gene- 
 ration will have the honour of supporting it, or 
 the disgrace of suffering it to fail. That which 
 is most essential, and which might have seemed 
 most diflicult to find, was found : an institutress 
 who devotes her fortunes, her influence, and her 
 life, to this generous purpose ; and who, to every 
 other advantage, adds that of rank. Her insti- 
 tution has not the sanction only, but the cordial 
 approljation of persons in the highest rank ; but
 
 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 215 
 
 efficient patronage is still wanting ; nor is it 
 likely to obtain that general attention and con- 
 sequent support which its general utility deserves. 
 The likeliest chance for its being rendered per- 
 manent seems to be from posthumous bounty, 
 if some of those persons (and such there are in 
 every generation) who bequeath large sums for 
 pious purposes, should perceive that no purpose 
 can be more pious than this. 
 
 SIR THOMAS 3I0RE. 
 
 Has it failed to obtain the attention which it 
 deserves because it is too reasonable, or owing to 
 any defect inherent in the scheme itself? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I can discern in the scheme no other defect 
 than the inevitable one that its appeal for sup- 
 port is made to the higher orders, and that large 
 sums may be raised with more facility and more 
 certainty by small contributions, among an ex- 
 tensive public, than by the most liberal donations 
 that can be looked for in a limited circle. Pos- 
 sibly, too, the causes which you suspect may 
 operate against it. There is no appeal to en- 
 thusiasm, none to the imagination ; no sacrifices 
 are to be made, no difficulties to be encountered, 
 no wonders to be achieved ; and, . . which is yet 
 more unfavourable, . . no public meetings for pro- 
 moting it are held : no speeches in favour of it
 
 216 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 
 
 are delivered upon platforms, and reported in 
 newspapers ; no Ladies" Committees are formed 
 to collect contributions ; and no Vanity Fair 
 opened in aid of the funds, under the title of a 
 Ladies' Bazaar.* 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 There is no endowment then for this Insti- 
 tution ? 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 None. It was hoped that from ten to fifteen 
 thousand pounds might have been raised, which 
 
 * ' I wisli,' says a correspondent, ' you would bestow some 
 ' remarks upon tlie Ladies' Bazaars, Repositories, Fairs, &c. . . 
 ' for (to say notliing of tlieir detestable exlubitory character) 
 ' you cannot think the mischief they are doing to little toy- 
 ' shop-keei)ers, and ])oor women who got their bread by those 
 ' knicknacks, the sale of which is now monopolized by the 
 ' ladies. A friend of mine went into a shop in Burlington 
 ' Arcade lately, to purchase some trifle, and on her remarking 
 ' how little choice there was, the shojjkceper said, that all in 
 ' her way of business were half ruined by " the charitable la- 
 ' dies," who came and bought the first of any pretty new-in- 
 ' vented toy, set to work themselves, and so spoilt the trades- 
 ' man's market. 
 
 ' " There 1 " said a young lady of rank to one of lier ac- 
 ' quaintance, pointing to a young mustachioed lancer, who 
 ' had just turned from the booth where she was selling her 
 ' wares ; . . " there, . . I have just made him pay me fifteen sliil- 
 ' lings for a pair of garters ! " How should you like to sec a 
 ' daughter of yours acting charity in that style? '
 
 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 217 
 
 would have sufficed for putting it upon a per- 
 manent establishment; but though the Queen, 
 and the late Princess Charlotte, and the other 
 Princesses, contributed to the subscription, not 
 five thousand were collected ; and the experiment 
 could not have been made, had it not been for 
 the support afforded it by the Institutress, Lady 
 Isabella King, and by those members who were 
 able to pay a high rent for their apartments, . . . 
 the scheme being devised for three classes, dif- 
 fering in point of fortune, but upon an equal 
 footing in education, principles, and manners. 
 The wealthier members contribute, by their 
 larger payments, to the support of the establish- 
 ment : the second class pay fifty pounds each, 
 per year, for their apartments and board ; and 
 there is a third class who, having no means of 
 their own, though in other respects peculiarly 
 fitted for such an institution, as well as peculiarly 
 in need of such an asylum, are appointed to offi- 
 cial situations, with salaries annexed. A school 
 for female orphans, belonging to the same rank 
 of life, is to be engrafted on the scheme, whenever 
 funds shall be obtained for it. No habit is worn: 
 the institution has necessarily its regulations, to 
 which all the members are expected to conform, 
 but there is nothing approaching to what, in 
 your days, would have been called a rule. It
 
 218 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 
 
 must be needless to say that no vows are re- 
 quired, nor even an engagement for any term of 
 years. The scheme has succeeded upon trial, 
 insomuch that the Queen, when she visited it, 
 said it was a blessed asylum ; and it would be as 
 beneficial as it is practicable, if funds for ex- 
 tending and rendering it permanent were forth- 
 coming. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Perhaps the scheme has not enough that is 
 apparent. Esse qiiam videri is a wise motto for 
 one who is worthy to wear it ; but not to be 
 sculptured over the portals of an edifice which, 
 while intended for a pious purpose, should at 
 the same time be a monument of high civilization. 
 Perhaps in this plan too little is asked from those 
 who are disposed to be its benefactors, and too 
 little oflTered them in return. Let us inquire 
 what is desirable, and what mav be deemed at- 
 tainable, in a country such as Great Britain is at 
 this time. How have those eleemosynary esta- 
 blishments been found to answer, which have 
 been endowed since the suppression of the mo- 
 nasteries ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The good they do is by no means commen- 
 surate with the expenditure by which it is ob- 
 tained. Owing in part, no doubt, to the total
 
 ALMS HOUSES. 
 
 219 
 
 want of a religious character, they have never 
 become respectable in public opinion. Less cost 
 than that at which the inmates in such commu- 
 nities are supported, might enable them to live 
 in a manner more conformable to their inclina- 
 tions, if bestowed upon them in the way of 
 pension, as in the case of the out-pensioners of 
 Chelsea and Greenwich. The moral effect, also, 
 would be better; for notwithstanding the old 
 old song, which tells us that 
 
 ' Crabbed age and youtli 
 
 ' Cannot dwell together,' 
 
 gradations of rank are not more beneficial in a 
 commonwealth, than gradations of age are to the 
 heart of man in his domestic circle. There are 
 few people so entirely without connections, that 
 if they derived from some eleemosynary fund a 
 pension sufficient for their decent maintenance, 
 they could not find some family into which, for 
 relationship, or good Avill and mutual convenience, 
 they might be admitted as inmates, and where 
 thev miofht live in an interchanoe of eood offices, 
 which it is as salutary to render as to receive. 
 Such pensions, conferring independence, how- 
 ever humble, would confer a certain degree of 
 respectability, the more surely because good 
 character would be deemed as necessary a quali- 
 fication for the candidate as indigence : the best
 
 220 ALMS HOUSES. 
 
 consequence, however, would be, that the pen- 
 sioner would not be taken out of the sphere of 
 human charities. For, in alms-houses, a number 
 of unhappy persons, unconnected with each 
 other, are brought together, all of whom have 
 been saddened, and the greater part too probably- 
 soured, as well by age, infirmities, and the very 
 course of misfortunes which has brought them to 
 such an asylum ; and there, having no other 
 employment, their uncomfortable feelings take 
 the form of ill-will to one another, and of queru- 
 lous discontent with a situation in which they 
 feel the sense of degradation and the uneasiness 
 of restraint. Such establishments, however, are 
 in no respect analogous to that of which we are 
 speaking; nor, indeed, could anything be more 
 injurious to the success of the experiment, than 
 to have it supposed that it partook, in any de- 
 gree, of the same character. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Right ; but useful inference is to be drawn 
 from them ; for they show that human beings 
 cannot live happily in constrained community of 
 ha])its, without the aid of religious feeling, and 
 without implicit obedience to a superior ; and 
 these are things, which if they were desirable 
 (and this may Ijc doubted), are not to be expected 
 iu tiiese times. There must be a classifica-
 
 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 221 
 
 tion of relief ; and in devising it for the higher 
 classes, you may learn from these inferior esta- 
 blishments the propriety of requiring that the 
 inmates of a Protestant Convent should possess 
 each an income of her own (whether from a 
 salary, or from other sources), otherwise the 
 respectability of the institution could not be 
 maintained. For poverty brings with it worse con- 
 sequences than that which Juvenal pronounced 
 to be its worst : it is not necessarily connected 
 with meanness and sordid habits, but it leads to 
 them so naturally, that you cannot hope to keep 
 them apart. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Alas for humanity, whose frail virtues are 
 parched when exposed to the sun ; or, if de- 
 prived of sunshine, are nipt, and wither in the 
 shade ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Say rather, alas for human institutions ! when, 
 instead of aiming at the improvement of man's 
 moral nature, they are at variance with it, and, 
 favouring all its evil propensities, pamper one 
 class of vices, and exasperate another ! 
 
 In such establishments as are desired, and 
 must, because of the necessity for tliem, be in- 
 stituted ere long (whatever be the issue of the 
 present experiment), unless you become retro- 
 grade in civilization, it will not be difficult to
 
 222 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 
 
 hold a safe and even course between the too 
 little and the too much. They will partake 
 rather of the character of colleges than of con- 
 vents. The fewer regulations the better ; none 
 beyond what are indispensable for the well being 
 of the community : even a common table is not 
 to be recommended : the members may better 
 be left to choose their own society, and to make 
 all minor arrangements among themselves. But 
 uniformity of dress would be proper, for pre- 
 venting expense and vanity, and. for a visible 
 sign, which might attract notice, and if the 
 habit were at once grave, convenient and grace- 
 ful, would ensure respect. In like manner, for 
 the sake of effect, the domicile ought to have 
 an appearance in character with its purpose. 
 Your mortmain laws were necessary when they 
 were enacted : is there any reason why they 
 should not be repealed now that the necessity 
 for them has ceased to exist? 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 None, . . if the laws against Monks, Friars, 
 .Jesuits, and Regulars of every description, were 
 enforced as they ought to be. They have, in 
 some cases, frustrated good and generous in- 
 tentions, and, in others, have diverted into the 
 hands of the lawyers no small portion of pro- 
 perty be(|ueuthed to better uses. Under the 
 Land Tax Redemption Act something more than
 
 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 223 
 
 £100,000 per annum of Churcli Lands were 
 sold, whereby thrice as much land as that rental 
 would represent was freed from mortmain. It 
 must be evident, therefore, that no inconvenience 
 could arise (proper precautions being taken 
 against that pestilent superstition which is 
 spreading amongst us !) ... from replacing in 
 this kind of tenure as much land as could be 
 required for any beneficial purposes. Not that 
 land is to be deemed so advisable for any 
 permanent revenue in such cases as the public 
 funds. Experience has but too well proved 
 that stewards are not always faithful in the 
 care of charitable donations ; and it has proved 
 also that land so appropriated is far from being- 
 secure durino- the desolatino- course of revolu- 
 tion. Indeed, funded property is more likely 
 to be recovered, by inscription in some Great 
 Book (as in France), when the storm is past. 
 A local habitation, therefore, is all that should 
 be desired when a secular nunnery, or rather a 
 college for women, is to be established ; with 
 just ground enough for use, for recreation, and 
 for becoming ornament, . . enough to preserve 
 the respectability of its appearance and to pre- 
 vent intrusion. The spirit which built cathe- 
 drals and founded convents is not extinguished, 
 and never will be extinct, while man retains 
 in him a spark of the divine nature. Nor can I
 
 224 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 
 
 be persuaded, that the religion is wanting by 
 which miracles are wrought, and mountains may 
 be removed, when I know what has been eifected 
 in this generation by Protestant missionaries, 
 and with what true faith and well-directed zeal 
 they are labouring at this time. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The difficulties here to be removed are but 
 as molehills. Money alone is wanted, . . money 
 from the noble and the wealthy, so to be applied 
 as would increase' their means of beneficence. 
 Were the edifice ready it might be expected that 
 as such persons in former times founded clian- 
 tries for the sake of relieving the souls of their 
 ancestors, they would now, in prospective kind- 
 ness to those of their own blood, found bursaries 
 for such a college, reserving to themselves and 
 their heirs the right of presentation. The build- 
 ing itself might be facilitated by a condition, 
 that every benefactor who erected a set of cham- 
 bers, should thereby acquire a right (alienable 
 by will, gift, or sale, like any other property) 
 of nominating an inmate. Considering how 
 greatly patronage is, and ever must be, desired 
 in a state of society like yours, it may reasonably 
 be supposed, that there would be no opulent or 
 noble family, whicli would not, for its own repu- 
 tation, and remote interest, as well as for the 
 satisfaction of securing to itself the sure means
 
 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 225 
 
 of doing good, while it conferred a favour, in- 
 vest some of its money thus. One institution of 
 this kind having been established, the example 
 would be followed, and there would soon be no 
 large town in this wealthy island, without such 
 a Gyneeceum in its vicinity, and no woman of 
 rank and fortune but would have a bursary in 
 her gift. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The business of female education would na- 
 turally be transferred to these institutions gra- 
 dually, and to the evident advantage of all parties : 
 the parents would here be secured against the 
 danger of trusting their daughters to the care 
 of careless or unworthy persons ; girls would 
 have the advantage of elder society ; and the 
 class of women who are now employed in tuition, 
 would find there the asylum which they need, 
 the respectability of station which they deserve, 
 and as much, or as little, as they might choose 
 to undertake of the employment for which their 
 talents and acquirements qualify them. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Thus then you would have all the good which 
 nunneries pretend to offer, and which under 
 some circumstances they have afforded. The 
 enthusiasm which is restless in inaction would 
 not be satisfied there : but for such enthusiasm 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 226 LADIES' ASSOCIATION. 
 
 the scheme is not intended ; it is for sober piety, 
 for the meek, the retiring, and the gentle, whom 
 nature has enabled rather to suffer than to act, 
 and who would thus be saved from suffering, not 
 indeed the numerous evils which tiesh is heir to, 
 but all those (and they are hardly less numerous) 
 which reverses of fortune bring with them. Yet, 
 Montesinos, you must not suppose that I dis- 
 parage enthusiasm, which, if allied to madness, 
 is akin to it only in the same degree that genius 
 is ; and without which nothing that is magnani- 
 mous will be contemplated, . . . nothing that is 
 above the level of every-day life, or out of its 
 course, will be attempted, . . nothing that is great 
 will be accomplished. The material difficulties 
 which must be overcome before a first Gynaeceum 
 can be established, are, as I called them, mole- 
 hills ; there are moral ones in the way which will 
 appear like mountains to the children of this 
 world, but these an enthusiast may remove by 
 faith, and the works of faith, ... by hope, and cha- 
 rity, and exertion, by ardour and by perseverance; 
 without these, righteous enthusiasm is not to be 
 found, and with them it creates the means where- 
 by its ends are to be effected. There is work 
 enough for it abroad and at home ; work enough 
 for all (it is of women that I am now speaking) 
 who feci in themselves the strength of heroic
 
 BEGUINES. 227 
 
 virtue, and aspire to its rewards, and shrink not 
 from the scenes into which, in its exercise, it 
 would carry them. Such women you have among 
 you ; there are such, and there ever will be such, 
 in every generation. Why then have you no Be- 
 guines, no Sisters of Charity ? why, in the most 
 needful, the most merciful form that charity can 
 take, have you not yet followed the example of 
 the French and the Netherlanders ? No Vincent 
 de Paul has been heard in your pulpits : no 
 Louise le Gras has appeared among the daughters 
 of Great Britain ! Piety has found its way into 
 your prisons ; your hospitals are imploring it in 
 vain ; nothing is wanting in them but religious 
 charity ; and oh what a want is that ! and how 
 different would be the moral effect which these 
 medical schools produce upon the pupils edu- 
 cated there, if this lamentable deficiency were 
 supplied ! I know not whether they or the pa- 
 tients suffer most from its absence. Many are the 
 lives which might be saved by it ; many are the 
 deathbeds to which it would administer a conso- 
 lation that is now too often wanted ! and many 
 are the young hearts which would be preserved, 
 by its purifying and ennobling presence, from an 
 infection worse than any evil influence which 
 affects the life alone. A school of medicine 
 ought also to be a school of Christian humanity ; 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 BEGUINES. 
 
 when it is not so, tlie profession wliicli of all 
 others ought most to soften the heart, tends sure- 
 liest to corrupt and harden it. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 It is not to the hospitals alone that this blessed 
 spirit of charity might be directed ; while it 
 reformed those establishments by its presence, it 
 would lessen the pressure upon them by seeking- 
 out the sick; and attending- them in their own 
 habitations. These measures have been ably 
 and eloquently recommended *, and though no 
 visible effect has yet been produced by the appeal, 
 the seed which has been cast upon the waters 
 will be found after many days. 
 
 sill THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Thy pulse, Montesinos, plays not as it was 
 wont to do in youth ! otlierwise there would not 
 have been that expression of cold contented pa- 
 tience, in a case where there arc no diHiculties 
 
 * In a panii)lilct ontitlcd ' Protestant Sisters of Charity : ' 
 a Letter addressed to tlie Lord Bisliop of London, developing 
 a plan for improvinpf the arrangements at present existing for 
 administering medical advice, and visiting the sick poor, Lon- 
 don, 1826. In Blackwood's Magazine for December, 1825 ; 
 and ill two Letters in tlie London Medical Gazette. The 
 pani])hlet I earnestly recommend to my readers' notice ; tlie 
 two Letters and an extract fruiu the Jlagazine will be found 
 appended to the volume.
 
 BEGUINES. 229 
 
 but what earnest ardour may overcome. Disease 
 and wretchedness are as constant in their course 
 as time ; the compassion, the tenderness, . . . 
 whereby, in a far greater degree than by any 
 human skill when these are wanting, they are to 
 be alleviated and lessened, exist among you, but 
 they are latent, and require to be called forth 
 and put in action. And until this be done, it is 
 the duty of those to whom the pulpit or the 
 press is open, if they feel as they ought to do 
 for their suffering fellow-creatures, to awaken 
 these virtues, and direct into useful channels the 
 enthusiasm which too often runs wild, and goes 
 to waste. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 A call of this kind must not be looked for from 
 the pulpit, at least not from the Church pulpits. 
 To make it there would require a spirit of en- 
 thusiasm, which they whose duty it is to keep 
 things in order, and within their appointed bounds, 
 seek always to repress. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Say rather to regulate than to repress, . . . for 
 woe to the Church in which that spirit should 
 be quenched ! It is in the nature of things that 
 the still waters of an establishment should have 
 a tendency to stagnate : they would cease to 
 be living waters, if they were not sometimes,
 
 230 BEGUINES. 
 
 like the Pool of Bethesda, troubled by an 
 Ano-el ! 
 
 o 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The Church pulpits would not be silent when 
 an appeal was to be made, in support of such a 
 scheme, to that charity which consists in alms- 
 giving. They would make the appeal powerfully, 
 and it would be cheerfully answered. But the 
 impulse must first be given by some moving 
 mind, . . by some one ' blessed above women,' 
 who has set her heart on heaven, yet feels that 
 the praise of men may sometimes be necessary 
 for effecting a great work of goodness ; and that 
 it may be part of her duty to leave behind her, 
 in this world, a stirring and illustrious example, . . 
 that which has been called the last infirmity of 
 noble minds, becoming here the righteous am- 
 bition and wise desire of a sanctified one. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Know you such a woman ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 One such is known at this time in our prisons : 
 had her zeal taken this direction, all that we are 
 now desiderating would have been done. I have 
 another in my mind's eye ; . . one who has been 
 the liveliest of the Hvel}^, the gayest of the gay; 
 admired for licr talents by those who knew lier 
 only in her writings, and esteemed for her worth
 
 BEGUINES. 
 
 231 
 
 by those who were acquainted with her in the 
 relations of private life ; one who, having grown 
 up in the laxest sect of semi-Christians, felt the 
 necessity of vital religion, while attending upon 
 her father with dutiful affection, during the long 
 and painful infirmities of his old age ; and who 
 has now joined a sect distinguished from all 
 others by its formalities and enthusiasm, because 
 it was amono- its members that she first found the 
 lively faith for which her soul thirsted. She 
 has assumed the garb, and even the shibboleth 
 of the sect, not losing in the change her warmth 
 of heart and cheerfulness of spirit, nor gaining by 
 it any increase of sincerity and frankness, . . for 
 with these nature had endued her, and society, 
 even that of the great, had not corrupted them. 
 The resolution, the activity, the genius, the be 
 nevolence, which are required for such a work, 
 are to be found in her : and were she present in 
 person as she is in imagination, I would say to 
 her . . . Thou art the woman ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You look to sectarians for the service which 
 is thus to be rendered to humanity. Is this a 
 virtual confession, that it would be vain to hope 
 for such a manifestation of benevolence among 
 the members of the national Church ?
 
 232 BEGUINES. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Supposing the religious feeling in the indi- 
 vidual to be equally ardent, the circumstances 
 equally fitting, and the personal qualifications 
 alike, I should expect that among the Quakers, 
 rather than any other community, persons would 
 be found to take up a project like this, with the 
 ardour that is required for it ; because their in- 
 stitutions favour both the disposition and the 
 direction of it. A Quakeress does not extrava- 
 gate when she engages in such an enterprize, as 
 that of attempting to reform the wretched inha- 
 bitants of a London prison : she not only believes 
 herself to be keeping the straight path of duty 
 when upon such a pursuit, but is confirmed in 
 that belief by the principles of her sect, and the 
 opinion of the little world in which she moves ; 
 in many of her own faitli she meets with active 
 co-operation as well as sincere sympathy, a still 
 greater number regard her with admiration, and 
 to the whole body, both in America and Great 
 Britain, she becomes an object of respect and 
 honour and pride. The discipline of the Quakers 
 which breaks in its members to habits of quie- 
 tude, forbearance, meekness, and exemplary self- 
 command, allows large licence to enthusiasm, 
 and, indeed, sets no bounds to it when it takes 
 the course of benevolent exertion. 7\monu- ns it
 
 BEGUINES. 233 
 
 would require a high degree of excitement, for a 
 woman, however beneficent and pious, to venture 
 upon what a Quakeress would undertake in her 
 habitual state of mind : the former would incur 
 the reproach, or the suspicion of insanity, for 
 what, if done by the latter, would call forth no 
 surprize. The usages of society restrain us 
 here, more perhaps than the spirit of our Church, 
 which however tends insensibly to torpify what 
 it always avoids to stimulate. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 Ex illo retro finer e et suhlapsa referri 
 Res Danaiim ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I would reply to the Trojan who should tell 
 me so, that its tide is not ebbing, but holds on 
 in the quietness of its even course, a deep and 
 mighty stream, in omne voluhilis ceviim. If the 
 tendency of the national church is to produce a 
 sober uniformity of which torpor or indifterence 
 is the besetting sin, rather than to excite or en- 
 courage what may be called an extramundane 
 zeal, this has not arisen from any mispersuasion^ 
 or error prepense. There has been no lack of 
 heroic virtue in the English Church, whenever 
 unhappy times have called for its manifestation : 
 witness the noble army of its martyrs under the 
 bloody reign ; witness its confessors during the
 
 234 BEGUINES. 
 
 Great Rebellion ; witness tlie resistance, in the 
 next generation, to those measures which, if not 
 so resisted, would have re-established popery 
 and arbitrary power in these kingdoms. In 
 forming, or rather in reforming, our ecclesias- 
 tical establishment, Cranmer and Ridley, and 
 their more fortunate successors, had on the one 
 hand to guard against the pomps and vanities of 
 Romish superstition, on the other, against the ex- 
 travagances of enthusiasm, running wild as soon 
 as it had broken its reins : but they were doubly 
 fearful of enthusiasm, because they saw on both 
 sides the evils and abominations to which it may 
 be perverted ; for the frantic crimes of the Ana- 
 baptists are not more revolting than the blas- 
 phemous legends which the Romish Church has 
 sent abroad and ratified with the stamp of its 
 infallibility, whenever some wretched friar or nun 
 was found insane enough to be its tool, or im- 
 pious enough to become its agent. Tlius it has 
 come to pass, that in its righteous desire of 
 shunning all evil, or occasion of evil, our Church 
 has foregone a powerful, though a dangerous 
 means of doing good. For the same reason that 
 we have had no Ida of Louvain, no Catharine of 
 Sienna or Bologna, no Veronica, no Mary Mag- 
 dalene of Pazzi, no Sister Providence or Sister 
 Nativitr, . . lor that same reason wc have had no 
 Louise dc Gras.
 
 BEGUINES. 235 
 
 Wherefore Protestantism lias not liad its Be- 
 guines, may thus be explained with regard to 
 England, The community had no establishment 
 here before the Reformation, and for the reason 
 which has been assigned, its institution after- 
 wards was not to be expected ; but why they are 
 not found in the Protestant parts of the conti- 
 nent, is a question which cannot be answered so 
 creditably for the Reformed Churches. Nothing 
 in ecclesiastical history is more uncertain than 
 the origin of the Beo^uines. Their numbers were 
 greatly increased during the Crusades ; for very 
 many women of the higher and middle ranks, 
 being, in that age of enthusiastic military devo- 
 tion, left by their husbands and other natural 
 protectors, enrolled themselves for security in a 
 sisterhood, who enjoyed the respectability and 
 comparative safety of a religious order, but were 
 neither bound by vows, nor subjected to any 
 unnatural austerities. But because of these ex- 
 emptions, and also because, being a most useful 
 society, they were favoured by the people, they 
 became objects of jealousy to the whole regi- 
 mented forces of the Romish Church. The nuns 
 hated them because they envied their liberty. 
 The Tertiaries, both Dominican and Franciscan, 
 regarded them as rivals in public opinion, and 
 thus drew upon them the enmity of the two great
 
 23G BEGUINES. 
 
 mendicant orders, who never acted with unani- 
 mity except it was to persecute, and then they 
 always heartily co-operated. The clergy dis- 
 countenanced and opposed them, thinking every 
 thing ill bestowed which was not bestowed upon 
 themselves ; and the Beguines, deservedly popu- 
 lar as they were, had to contend against the 
 selfishness of common nature, . . for persons, who 
 would have been well pleased if a female rela- 
 tion took the veil as a nun, opposed her entrance 
 into a Beguinage, because in that case, not be- 
 coming dead to the world, she retained her pro- 
 perty. These concurring causes drew on them 
 much vexation, and no small share of persecu- 
 tion ; notwithstanding which they became so 
 numerous, that in the fourteenth century the 
 Bishop of Strasburg estimated them at 200,000. 
 Among such numbers, where the forlorn sought 
 for protection, the unhappy and the bereaved 
 for the peace of mind which accompanies the 
 consciousness of being virtuously employed, and 
 the enthusiastic for sympathy and for the oppor- 
 tunity of laying up a treasure of good works, 
 there it must needs have been that many would 
 seek admission for mixed motives, and with less 
 worthy intentions, and that licentiousness would 
 sometimes be found \uidcr the hood and habit of 
 hypocrisy. The abuses which thus occurred were
 
 BEGUINES. 237 
 
 incident to the order, not arising (as in convents) 
 from an original error in its constitution, and there- 
 fore inherent in it ; they were remedied by a pru- 
 dent law, prescribing- that no woman should be 
 admitted into the community till she was forty 
 years of age. When the Beghards were perse- 
 cuted, the Beguines came under the same imputa- 
 tion of heresy, and both were said to have derived 
 their heretical opinions from reading the Scrip- 
 tures in their own tongue. Many of the Beg- 
 hards, in the hope of escaping martyrdom, took 
 shelter in the ranks of the Observant Francis- 
 cans, a limb of the Seraphic tree, whose branches 
 continually afforded loppings for the bonfires 
 of the inquisition ; but at the Reformation, 
 both Beghards and Beguines, throughout Ger- 
 many, very generally became Lutherans. The 
 Beghards are heard of no more ; how it came to 
 pass that the Beguines should from that time 
 have continued to exist exclusively as a Romish 
 community, is thus to be explained, . . that in 
 Roman Catholic countries they continued to hold 
 their possessions, while in those parts of the con- 
 tinent where the Reformation prevailed, the ra- 
 pacity which impoverished the Church made no 
 distinction between them and the superstitious 
 orders : such sisters, therefore, in those parts, as 
 adhered to the Romish Church, or who, regard-
 
 238 BEGUINES. 
 
 ing- little tlie difference of belief, were dutifully 
 attached to their own way of life, removed to the 
 Beguinages which had escaped the storm*. They 
 were then favoured instead of being persecuted 
 as in former times ; and there they have continued 
 to flourish, for the credit of the Romish Church, 
 and for the good of humanity. Scandal has 
 ceased to attack them; and though they were 
 plundered during- the first years of the Revolu- 
 tion, yet even then their utility was so generally 
 acknowledged, that (like the Hospital Nuns in 
 France) they were supported by public feeling 
 against the madness of the times. 
 
 * The best account of the Beguines is in Mosheim's posthu- 
 mous work, De Beghardis et Begiiinabus. (Lipsioe, 1790.) 
 He has very well characterised the work of his predecessor, 
 Ryckel, in which there is a great deal of curious matter, with 
 the least possible information concerning the real history of 
 the order. Tlie title of this book is, Vita S. Beggee, Dncissee 
 Brabanlia;, Andetennenmim, Begginamm et Beggardorum 
 Fv ndatricis : vetvs, hactemts 71011 edita, et Commcntario illus- 
 trata. Adjuncta est Jlistoria Begginasiorvm Belgii. Auc- 
 tore Josrpho Geldolpho a Ryckd ab Oorbceck, Abbate S. 
 Gertrudis Lovanivnsn. Lovanii, 1631. (small 4to.) Ano- 
 ther work of Kyckel's should accompany it, Historia S. Ger- 
 trudis, Priiicipis Virgiiiis, PrivKs Nivdlcnsis Abbalissa:. 
 Nolis et Jiguris ccneis subinde ilhistrata opera et impensd 
 Joscphi Gerdolphi a liyckel, Abbatis S. Gertrudis Lovanii. 
 Bruxellue, l(i37. (small 4to.) These crude, curious, and 
 amusing works, written by a man of much learning and more 
 credulity, are rarely to be procured.
 
 BEGUINES. 239 
 
 The Protestants were formerly reproached for 
 making no exertions to spread the Gospel among- 
 heathen nations. That reproach has been done 
 away. Within the course of thirty years, I have 
 seen the unpromising commencement of the Pro- 
 testant missions, their patient progress, and the 
 success with which God is blessing them. Thirty 
 years hence, this other reproach may also be 
 effaced, and England have its Beguines and its 
 Sisters of Charity. It is grievously in need of 
 them ! There is nothing Romish, nothing su- 
 perstitious, nothing fanatical in such associations; 
 nothing but what is righteous and holy ; nothing 
 but what properly belongs to that ^qria-xsla, that 
 religious service which the Apostle James, the 
 brother of our Lord, has told us is pure and un- 
 defiled before God and the Father. They who 
 shall see such societies instituted and flourishing 
 here, may have a better hope that it may please 
 the Almighty to continue his manifold mercies 
 to this island, notwithstanding the errors which 
 endanger it, and the offences which cry to 
 Heaven*. 
 
 * I will add here an account of the Beguinage in Client, 
 extracted from a journal written in 1815. 
 
 ' The indst interesting object in Ghent to me, and indeed 
 ' the most remarkable, is the Beguinage, which is the principal 
 ' establishment of the order, and very much the largest. It is
 
 240 BEGUINES. 
 
 at one end of the city, and entirely enclosed, being indeed a 
 little town of itself. You enter through a gateway, over which 
 there is an image of Queen St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the 
 Patron Saint, or Saint- Patroness of the institution. The sjxace 
 inclosed cannot be less than the area of the whole town of 
 Keswick ; but the Beguinage is unlike alms-house, college, 
 village, or town. It is a collection of contiguous houses of 
 different sizes, each with a small garden in front, and a high 
 well-built brick wall inclosing them all. Upon every door is 
 the name, not of the tenants, but of the Saint under whose 
 protection the tenement is placed ; there is no opening in the 
 door through which anything can be seen, so that in this re- 
 spect the clausure is complete. There are several streets 
 thus built, with houses on both sides. The silence and soli- 
 tude of such streets may easily be imagined, and the effect is 
 very striking upon entering there from the busy streets of 
 Ghent : you seem to be in a different worhl. There is a large 
 church within the precincts ; a burial ground, in wliich there 
 are no monuments ; a brancli from one of the many rivers 
 or canals wherewith Ghent is intersected, in which the wash- 
 ing of the community is performed, from a large boat ; and 
 a large piece of ground planted with trees, where the clotlies 
 are dried. 
 
 ' Our ajjpcarance here, and the evident curiosity with which 
 we were perambulating a place seldom visited by strangers, 
 attracted notice ; and we were at length courteously accosted 
 by a sister, who proved to be the second personage in the 
 community. She showed us the interior, and gave us such 
 explanations as we desired. It is curious that she seemed to 
 know nothing of the origin of the order, nor by whom it is 
 said to have been founded ; nor could she refer me to any 
 book containing either its history or its rule. 
 
 * According to this lady, there are at this lime about si.\
 
 BEGUINES. 241 
 
 thousand Cegulnes in Brabant and Flanders, to uhicli coun- 
 tries they are confined ; six hundred and twenty of these are 
 resident liere. They were ricli before the Revolution ; then, 
 in the general spoliation, their lands were taken from them, 
 and they were commanded to lay aside their distinguishing 
 dress ; but this mandate was only obeyed in part, because 
 public opinion, even then, was strongly in their favour, and 
 they were of such manifest utility to all ranks, that very few, 
 however otherwise malignant, were disposed to injure them. 
 They receive the sick who come to them for succour, and they 
 support as well as attend them as long as the case may re- 
 quire. They go out also to nurse the sick, when their ser- 
 vices are asked for. They are not bound by any vows, and 
 Madame Devolder (this was the name of our obliging in- 
 formant) assured us with an air of becoming pride, that no 
 instance of a Beguine withdrawing from the order had ever 
 been known. The reason was obvious ; the institution is in 
 itself reasonable and useful, as well as hvunane and religious; 
 no person is compelled to enter it, because there is no vow, 
 no clausure, and no person who wished to withdraw could be 
 compelled to stay : and I suppose their numbers are generally, 
 if not wholly, filled up by women who, when their youth is 
 gone by, seek a retirement, or need an asylum, from the 
 world. Madame Devolder herself entered after the death of 
 her husband. The property which a Beguine brings with 
 her, reverts to her heirs-at-law upon her decease. 
 ' During the Revolution, the church of this Beguinage was 
 sold, as being confiscated property belonging to a suppressed 
 order. The sale was a mere device, or, in English phrase, a 
 job, to accommodate some partizan of the ruling demagogues 
 with ready money. Such a person bought it for a nominal 
 price, and in the course of two or three weeks sold it for 300 
 Louis-d'or to Madame Devolder and another sister ; who, as 
 
 VOL. II. It
 
 242 BEGUINES. 
 
 ' soon as they could, made it over once more to the com- 
 ' munity. 
 
 ' The sisters dine in the Refectory, if they please, but any 
 ' one who chooses may have dinner sent from thence to her 
 
 * o\\Ti apartments. We were taken into three of these cham- 
 ' bers ; they are small, and furnished with little more than 
 ' necessary comforts, but those comforts are there, and they 
 ' are rem.arkably clean. In one, a sister who has been bed- 
 ' ridden many years, was sitting up in bed, knitting : we were 
 ' introduced into her chamber, because Madame De voider said 
 ' it amused her to see visitors, though she could not converse 
 
 * with us, for she spoke no French, and there was no Flemish 
 ' tongue in our party. Two sisters were spinning in another 
 ' chamber, one of whom was 83 years of age, the other 85. 
 
 ' The habit of the Beguines is not inconvenient, but it is 
 
 * abominably ugly ; as the habit of every female order is, I be- 
 
 * lieve, without exception.' 
 
 Ryckel (§71, p. 315) says, this Beguinage was founded 
 about the year 1234, by Joanna and Margareta, countesses of 
 Flanders. None of the present buildings appear to be as old 
 as his own days ; the former edifices were probably destroyed 
 during some of the sieges which Ghent has sustained. Before 
 the religious wars, lie says, it had sometimes contained 7U0 
 inhabitants, when lie wrote they did not exceed 400. Est 
 locus amplissimiis trhim et amplivs botiariorvm terrce. Ad- 
 ditus et ampUtudini decor ; adco vt q%ii mvlla vidi'runt,fai€an- 
 tur se pnlchrius nvllum vidisse. Olim a prima sua origine 
 Juit extimum civitati, nunc intra pomeeria conclusum est.
 
 243 
 
 COLLOQUY XIV. 
 
 THE LIBRARY. 
 
 I WAS in my library, making room upon the 
 shelves for some books which had just arrived 
 from New England, removing to a less conspi- 
 cuous station others which were of less value 
 and in worse dress, when Sir Thomas entered. 
 You are employed, said he, to your heart's con- 
 tent. Why, Montesinos, with these books, and 
 the delight you take in their constant society, 
 what have you to covet or desire ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Nothing, . . except more books. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Crescit, indiilgens sibi, dims hydrops, 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least 
 is no diseased desire ! If I covet more, it is 
 for the want I feel and the use which I should 
 make of them. ' Libraries,' says my good old 
 friend George Dyer, a man as learned as he 
 is benevolent, . . ' libraries are the wardrobes 
 ' of literature, whence men, properly informed, 
 ' might bring forth something for ornament, 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE LIBRARY. 
 
 ' mucli for curiosity, and more for use*.' These 
 books of mine, as you well know, are not drawn 
 up here for display, however much the pride of 
 the eye may be gratified in beholding them ; 
 they are on actual service. Whenever they may 
 be dispersed, there is not one among them that 
 will ever be more comfortably lodged, or more 
 highly prized by its possessor ; and generations 
 may pass away before some of them will again 
 find a reader ... It is well that we do not moralize 
 too much upon such subjects, . . 
 
 For foresight is a melanclioly gift, 
 
 AVliicli bares tlie bald, and speeds the all-too-svvift. 
 
 H. T. 
 But the dispersion of a library, whether in re- 
 trospect or in anticipation, is always to me a 
 melancholy thing. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 How many such dispersions must have taken 
 place to have made it possible that these books 
 should thus be brought together here among 
 the Cumberland mountains ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Many, indeed; and in many instances most 
 disastrous ones. Not a few of these volumes 
 have been cast up IVoni the wreck of the family 
 or convent libraries during the late llevolu- 
 
 * History of Cambridge, vol. i. i). G.
 
 THE LIBRARY. 245 
 
 tion. Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the 
 Capuchines, at Ghent. This book of St. Brid- 
 get's Revelations, in which not only all the 
 initial letters are illuminated, but every capital 
 throughout the volume was coloured, came from 
 the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges. That copy of 
 Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits' College at 
 Louvain ; that Imago Primi Scecidi Societatis, 
 from their college at Ruremond. Here are books 
 from Colbert's library ; here others from the 
 Lamoignon one. And here are two volumes 
 of a work*, not more rare than valuable for its 
 contents, divorced, unhappily, and it is to be 
 feared, for ever, from the one which should stand 
 between them ; they were printed in a convent 
 at Manila, and brought from thence when that 
 city was taken by Sir William Draper ; they 
 have given me, perhaps, as many pleasurable 
 hours (past in acquiring information which I 
 could not otherwise have obtained) as Sir Wil- 
 liam spent years of anxiety and vexation in vainly 
 soliciting the reward of his conquest. 
 
 About a score of the more out-of-the-way 
 works in my possession belonged to some un- 
 known person, who seems carefully to have 
 
 * Chronicles of tlie bare-footed Franciscans in the Phi- 
 lipines, Chma, Japan, &c. Lam indebted for this very curious 
 book to the kindness of my friend Sir Robert Harry Inghs,
 
 24G THE LIBRARY. 
 
 gleaned the hook-stalls a little before and after 
 the year 1790. He marked them with certain 
 ciphers, always at the end of the volume. They 
 are in various languages, and I never found his 
 mark in any book tliat was not worth buying, 
 or that I should not have bought without that 
 indication to induce me. All were in ragged 
 condition, and having been dispersed, upon the 
 owner^s death, probably as of no value, to the 
 stalls they had returned ; and there I found this 
 portion of them, just before my old haunts as a 
 book-hunter in the metropolis were disforested, 
 to make room for the improvements between 
 Westminster and Oxford Road. I have endea- 
 voured, without success, to discover the name 
 of their former possessor. He must have been 
 a remarkable man ; and the whole of his collec- 
 tion, judging of it by that part which has come 
 into my hands, must have been singularly curi- 
 ous. A book is the more valuable to me when 
 I know to whom it has belonged, and through 
 what ' scenes and changes ' it lias past. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You would have its history recorded in the 
 fly leaf, as carefully as the pedigree of a race- 
 horse is preserved. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 I confess that T have much of that feeling in
 
 WALTER LANDOR. 247 
 
 which the superstition concerning relics has ori- 
 ginated ; and I am sorry when I see the name 
 of a former owner obliterated in a book, or the 
 plate of his arms defaced. Poor memorials 
 though they be, yet they are something saved 
 for awhile from oblivion; and I should be almost 
 as unwilling to destroy them, as to efface the 
 Hie jacet of a tombstone. There may be some- 
 times a pleasure in recognizing them, sometimes 
 a salutary sadness. 
 
 Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Da- 
 miam de Goes, and yonder General History of 
 Spain, by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by 
 their respective authors. The minds of these 
 laborious and useful scholars are in their 
 works ; but you are brought into a more per- 
 sonal relation with them when you see the page 
 upon which you know that their eyes have 
 rested, and the very characters which their 
 hands have traced. This copy of Casaubon's 
 Epistles was sent to me from Florence, by Wal- 
 ter Landor. He had perused it carefully, and to 
 that perusal we are indebted for one of the most 
 pleasing of his Conversations : these letters had 
 carried him in spirit to the age of their writer, 
 and shown James I. to him in the light whereni 
 James was regarded by contemporary scholars ; 
 and under the impression thus produced, Landor
 
 248 THE LIBRARY. 
 
 has written of him in his happiest mood, calmly, 
 philosophically, feelingly, and with no more of 
 favourable leaning- than justice will always ma- 
 nifest when justice is in good humour, and in 
 charity with all men. The book came from the 
 palace library at Milan, . . how, or when ab- 
 stracted, I know not ; but this beautiful dialog'ue 
 would never have been written had it remained 
 there in its place upon the shelf, for the worms 
 to finish the work which they had begun. Isaac 
 Casaubon must be in your society, Sir Thomas, 
 . . for where Erasmus is, you will be, and there 
 also Casaubon will have his place among the 
 wise and the good. Tell him, I pray you, that 
 due honour has in these days been rendered to 
 his name by one who, as a scholar, is qualified 
 to appreciate his merits, and whose writings will 
 be more durable than monuments of brass or 
 marble. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Is there no message to him from Walter Lan- 
 der's friend? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Say to him, since you encourage me to such 
 boldness, that his letters could scarcely have 
 boon perused with deeper interest by the persons 
 to whom they were addressed, than they have 
 been by one, at the foot of Skiddaw, who is
 
 THE LIBRARY. 
 
 249 
 
 never more contentedly employed than when 
 learning from the living minds of other ages ; 
 one who would gladly have this expression of re- 
 spect and gratitude conveyed to him ; and who 
 trusts that, when his course is finished here, he 
 shall see him face to face. 
 
 Here is a book with which Lauderdale amused 
 
 himself, when Cromwell kept him prisoner in 
 
 Windsor Castle : he has recorded his state of 
 
 mind during that imprisonment by inscribing in 
 
 it, with his name, and the dates * of time and 
 
 place, the Latin word Durate, and the Greek 
 
 'Oia-reov xa) eXTTicrreov. . . Here is a memorial of a 
 
 different kind, inscribed in this ' Rule t of 
 
 ' Penance of St. Francis, as it is ordered for re- 
 
 ' ligious women.' . . ' I beseech my deare mother 
 
 ' humbly to accept of this exposition of our holy 
 
 ' rule, the better to conceive what your poor 
 
 ' child ought to be, who daly beges your bless- 
 
 ' ing. Constantia Francisco.'. .And here in the 
 
 Apophthegmata, collected by Conrad Lycos- 
 
 thenes, and published after drastic expurgation, 
 
 by the Jesuits, as a common-place book, some 
 
 * The date is 22 Oct. 1657. The book is the Pia Hilaria 
 Angelini Gaz^ei, of which an edition in two volumes, 12nio. 
 was that year published in London by E. Pepper, of Christ's 
 College, Cambridge 
 
 t Douay, 1644.
 
 250 THE LIBRARY. 
 
 Portugueze has entered a hearty vow * that he 
 would never part with the book, nor lend it to 
 any one. . .Very different was the disposition of 
 my poor old Lisbon acquaintance, the Abbe, 
 who, after the old humaner form, wrote in all 
 his books (and he had a rare collection) Ex Ubris 
 Francisci Ganiierj et amicorum. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 How peaceably they stand together, . . Papists 
 and Protestants side by side ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Their very dust reposes not more quietly in 
 the cemetery. Ancient and Modern, Jew and 
 Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French 
 and English, Spaniards and Portugueze, Dutch 
 and Brazilians, fighting their old battles, silently 
 now, upon the same shelf: Fernam Lopez and 
 Pedro de Ayala ; John de Laet and Barlaeus, 
 with the historians of Joam Fernandes Vieira; 
 Fox's Martyrs and the Three Conversions of 
 Father Persons ; Cranmer and Stephen Gar- 
 diner ; Dominican and Franciscan ; Jesuit and 
 P/tilosophc (equally misnamed) ; Churchmen and 
 Sectarians ; Roundheads and Cavaliers ! 
 
 * Fago voto a Jesu Christo da nao largar este livro da mad 
 e eniprcslalhc a algucm. Anno Dni. 1664.
 
 LITERATURE. 251 
 
 Here are God's conduits, grave divines ; and here 
 
 Is nature's secretary, the philosopher : 
 
 And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie 
 
 The sinews of a city's mystic body ; 
 
 Here gathering chroniclers : and by them stand 
 
 Giddy fantastic poets of each land. 
 
 Donne. 
 
 Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, 
 the harvest of so many generations, laid up in 
 my garners : and when I go to the window, there 
 is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and 
 the illimitable sky. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Felicemqiie voco pariter studiique locique ! 
 
 MONTESINOS, 
 — meritoque probas artesque locumque. 
 
 The simile of the bees. 
 
 Sic vos non vobis mellijicatis apes, 
 has often been applied to men who have made 
 literature their profession ; and they among 
 them to whom worldly wealth and worldly 
 honours are objects of ambition, may have rea- 
 son enough to acknowledge its applicability. 
 But it will bear a happier application, and with 
 equal fitness ; for, for whom is the purest honey 
 hoarded that the bees of this world elaborate, 
 if it be not for the man of letters ? The exploits 
 of the kings and heroes of old, serve now to 
 fill story books for his amusement and instruc-
 
 252 LITERATURE. 
 
 tion. It was to deliglit his leisure and call 
 forth his admiration that Homer sung-, and 
 Alexander conquered. It is to gratify his cu- 
 riosity that adventurers have traversed deserts 
 and savage countries^ and navigators have ex- 
 plored the seas from pole to pole, lire revo- 
 lutions of the planet which he inhabits are but 
 matters for his speculation ; and the deluges 
 and conflagrations which it has undergone, 
 problems to exercise his philosophy, . . or fancy. 
 He is the inheritor of whatever has been dis- 
 covered by persevering labour, or created by 
 inventive genius. The wise of all ages have 
 heaped up a treasure for him, which rust doth 
 not corrupt, and which thieves cannot break 
 through and steal ... I must leave out the moth, 
 . . for even in this climate care is required against 
 its ravages. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Yet, Montesinos, how often does the worm- 
 eaten volume outlast the reputation of the worm- 
 eaten author ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Of the living one also ; for many there are of 
 whom it may be said, in the words of Vida, that. . . 
 
 ipsi 
 
 SfBpe suis supcranl monwnenlis ; iUaudaliqne 
 ExlremiLm ante diem fcclits Jicverc caducon, 
 Vivenlcsriue smcc vidcrunl fnurra fam(C.
 
 LITERATURE. 253 
 
 Some literary reputations die in the birth ; a 
 few are nibbled to death by critics, . . but they 
 are weakly ones that perish thus, such only as 
 must otherwise soon have come to a natural 
 death. Somewhat more numerous are those 
 which are overfed with praise, and die of the 
 surfeit. Brisk reputations, indeed, are like bot- 
 tled twopenny, or pop, . . ' they sparkle, are 
 exhaled, and fly,' . . not to heaven, but to the 
 Limbo. To live among books is, in this respect, 
 like living among the tombs; . .you have in them 
 speaking remembrancers of mortality. ' Behold 
 this also is vanity* ! ' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Has it proved to you ' vexation ' of spirit also ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Oh no ! for never can any man's life have 
 been past more in accord with his own inclina- 
 tions, nor more answerably to his own desires. 
 Excepting that peace which, through God's in- 
 finite mercy, is derived from a higher source, 
 it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am 
 
 * ' If,' says Bishop Bull, ' we would have our hearts brought 
 ' off to God, and the serious pursuit of eternal things, let us 
 ' daily study the vanity of this world, . . . Study it, did I say ? . . 
 ' There seems little need of study, or deep search into this 
 ' matter. This is a thing that thrusts itself upon our thoughts, 
 ' so that wc must think of it, unless we thrust it from us.' — 
 Vol. i. p. 211.
 
 254 LITERATURE. 
 
 beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, 
 but for every blessing which I enjoy;. . health 
 of mind and activity of mind, contentment, 
 cheerfulness, continual employments, and there- 
 with continual pleasure. Siiavissima vita indies 
 sentire se fieri meliorem ; and this, as Bacon has 
 said, and Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that 
 a studious man enjoys in retirement. To the 
 studies which I have faithfully pursued, I am 
 indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will 
 be deemed an honour to have lived in friendship ; 
 and as for the enemies which they have pro- 
 cured to me in sufficient numbers, . . happily 
 I am not of the thin-skinned race, . . they might 
 as well fire small shot at a rhinoceros, as direct 
 their attacks* upon me. In omnibus requiem 
 qiicesivi, said Thomas a Kempis, seel non invent 
 nisi in angulis et libellis. I too have found re- 
 pose where he did, in books and retirement, but 
 it was there alone I sought it : to these my 
 nature, under the direction of a merciful Provi- 
 dence, led me betimes, and the world can offer 
 nothing which should tempt me from them. 
 
 * ' De odio improhorum adversus pietatem, non est quod 
 ' te lantopere. moveat : hoc debebat, si hoc novum esset, bo?ios 
 ' primum nunc ab improbis laccssi. A Deo incipiunt; in 
 ' 7io« miliores esse nonpossujil. Ego in hac mililia veieranus 
 * su7n.' Scaligcr, Isacio Cusaubono. Epiat. p. 165/
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF BOOKS. 255 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 If wisdom were to be found in the multitude 
 of books, what a progress must this nation have 
 made in it since my head was cut off! A man 
 in my days might offer to dispute de omni scibile, 
 and in accepting the challenge I, as a young 
 man, was not guilty of any extraordinary pre- 
 sumption, for all which books could teach was, 
 at that time, within the compass of a diligent 
 and ardent student. Even then we had diffi- 
 culties to contend with which were unknown 
 to the ancients. The curse of Babel fell lightly 
 upon them. The Greeks despised other nations 
 too much, to think of acquiring their languages 
 for the love of knowledge, and the Romans con- 
 tented themselves with learning only the Greek. 
 But tongues which, in my lifetime, were hardly 
 formed, have since been refined and cultivated, 
 and are become fertile in authors ; and others, 
 the very names of which were then unknown 
 in Europe, have been discovered and mastered 
 by European scholars, and have been found rich 
 in literature. The circle of knowledge has thus 
 widened in every generation ; and you cannot 
 now touch the circumference of what mio-ht for- 
 merly have been claspt. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 We are fortunate, methinks, who live in an
 
 256 MULTIPLICATION OF BOOKS. 
 
 age when books are accessible and numerous, 
 and yet not so multiplied as to render a com- 
 petent, not to say thorough acquaintance with 
 any one branch of literature, impossible. He 
 has it yet in his power to know much, who can 
 be contented to remain in ignorance of more, 
 and to say with Scaliger, non sum ex illis glorio- 
 sidis qui nihil ignorant. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 If one of the most learned men whom the 
 world has ever seen, felt it becoming in him to 
 say this two centuries ago, how infinitely smaller 
 in these days must the share of learning, which 
 the most indefatigable student can hope to at- 
 tain, be in proportion to what he must wish to 
 learn ! The sciences are simplified as they are 
 improved ; old rubbish and demolished fabrics 
 serve there to make a foundation for a new 
 scaftolding, and more enduring superstructures ; 
 and every discoverer in physics bequeaths to 
 those who follow him, greater advantages than 
 he possessed at the commencement of his la- 
 bours. The reverse of this is felt in all the 
 higher branches of literature. You have to ac- 
 quire what the learned of the last age acquired, 
 and in addition to it, what they themselves have 
 added to the stock of learning : thus the task is 
 greater in every succeeding generation, and in
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF BOOKS. ^57 
 
 a very few more it must become manifestly im- 
 possible. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 Pope Ganganelli is said to have expressed a 
 whimsical opinion, that all the books in the 
 world mio;ht be reduced to six thousand volumes 
 in folio, . .by epitomizing, expurg-ating, and de- 
 stroying whatever the chosen and plenipotential 
 committee of literature should in their wisdom 
 think proper to condemn. It is some consolation 
 to know that no Pope, or Nero, or Buonaparte, 
 however great their power, can ever think such 
 a scheme sufficiently within the bounds of pos- 
 sibility, for them to dream of attempting it : . . 
 otherwise the will would not be wanting. The 
 evil which you anticipate is already perceptible 
 in its eifects. Well would it be if men were as 
 moderate in their desire of wealth, as those who 
 enter the ranks of literature, and lay claim to 
 distinction there, are in their desire of know- 
 ledge ! A slender capital suffices to begin with, 
 upon the strength of which they claim credit, 
 and obtain it as readily as their fellow adven- 
 turers in trade. If they succeed in setting up 
 a present reputation, their ambition extends no 
 further. The very vanity which finds its present 
 food, produces in them a practical contempt for 
 any fame beyond what they can live to enjoy; 
 
 VOL. II. s
 
 258 HISTORY. 
 
 and tliis sense of its insionificance to themselves, 
 is what better minds hardly attain, even in their 
 saddest wisdom, till this world darkens upon 
 them, and they feel that they are on the con- 
 fines of eternity. But every age has had its 
 sciolists, and will continue to have them; and 
 in every age literature has also had, and will 
 continue to have its sincere and devoted follow- 
 ers, few in number, but enough to trim the 
 everlasting lamp. It is when sciolists meddle 
 with state affairs that they become the pests of a 
 nation ; and this evil, for the reason which you 
 have assigned, is more likely to increase than 
 to be diminished. In your days all extant his- 
 tory lay within compassable bounds : it is a 
 fearful thing to consider now what length of 
 time would be required, to make a studious 
 man as conversant with the history of Europe 
 since those days, as he ought to be, if he w^ould 
 be properly qualified for holding a place in the 
 councils of a kinG:dom. Men who take the 
 course of public life will not, nor can they be 
 expected to wait for this. Youth and ardour, 
 and amljition and impatience, are here in accord 
 with worldly prudence ; if they would reach the 
 goal for which they start, they must begin the 
 career betimes ; and such among them as may 
 be conscious that their stock of knowledge is
 
 HISTORY. 259 
 
 less than it ought to be for such a profession, 
 would not hesitate on that account to take an 
 active part in public affairs, because they have 
 a more comfortable consciousness, that they are 
 quite as well informed as the contemporaries*, 
 
 * The Comte de Puisaye speaking in his Memoirs of 
 ' Vetonnante viuUiplicite de pretentions que les approches de 
 
 * la revolution Jirent naitre;' observes, ' dest cette egalite de 
 *■ foiblesse, cette monotonie, si jose rrCexprimer ainsi, d'im- 
 ' puissance on de mediocrite, qui enhardissent Vigiiorance et 
 la presomption.' Not many days after the Chamber of Nobles 
 had begun their sittings, ' U7i homme de la cour,' he proceeds 
 to say, ' aupres de qui le hasard m'avoii place, me Jit part de 
 ' la satisfaction quit eprouvoit, de n'avoir rien entendu, 
 
 * disoit-il, qui put V intimider ; et je commence a croire, 
 
 * ajouta-t-il, queje serai deforce .... Cette legereteft sur mon 
 ' esprit une impression que la suite des evenemens a ete peu 
 
 * propre a effacer. Seroit-il done vrai quit na manque 
 ' quun ho7nme d'un vrai talent, qu'un homme de genie, pour 
 
 * intimider, pour forcer an silence, ces parleurs u tout propos, 
 ' qui se sont tant defois dispute la tribune; et pour detourner 
 
 * de dessus leurs tetes, de dessus de celles de leurs families, et de 
 ' leurs concitoyens, une partie des maux qxie leur sotte vanite 
 ' y a accumules !' — T. i. 222. 
 
 Nothing better than the two first volumes of these Memoirs 
 has been written concerning the causes and commencement of 
 the French Revolution: the latter volumes relate to the 
 miserable intrigues of the emigrant court, I believe Puisaye 
 to have been a much-injured, as well as a most able man. I 
 never remember to have met with any person whose eye in- 
 dicated more sagacity, nor whose countenance would more 
 
 S 2
 
 260 HISTORY. 
 
 Avitli wliom tlicy shall liave to act, or to con- 
 tend. The quanhdiim at which Oxenstern ad- 
 mired would be a large allowance now. For 
 any such person to suspect himself of deficiency 
 would, in this age of pretension, be a hopeful 
 symptom ; but should he endeavour to supply 
 it, he is like the mail-coach traveller, who is to 
 be conveyed over macadamized roads at the 
 rate of nine miles an hour, including stoppages, 
 and must therefore take at his minuted meals 
 whatever food is readiest. He must get infor- 
 mation for immediate use, and with the smallest 
 cost of time ; and therefore it is sought in ab- 
 stracts and epitomes, which afford meagre food 
 to the intellect, though they take away the un- 
 easy sense of inanition. Tout abbrcgt siir un 
 hon livre est un sot abbregc, says Montague ; and 
 of all abridgements there are none by which a 
 reader is so liable, and so likely, to be deceived 
 as by epitomized histories. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Call to mind, I pray you, my foliophagous 
 friend, what was the extent of Michael Mon- 
 tague's library ; and that if you had past a 
 winter in his chateau, you must^ with that ap- 
 
 readily liavc (jblained confidence, from any one who was accus- 
 tomed lo trust the credentials of nature.
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 261 
 
 petite of yours, have put yourself upon short 
 allowance there. Historical knowledge is not 
 the first thing- needful for a statesman, nor the 
 second. And yet do not hastily conclude, that 
 I am about to disparage its importance. A 
 sailor might as well put to sea without chart or 
 compass, as a minister venture to steer the ship 
 of the state without it. For as ' the strong and 
 strange varieties *' in human nature are repeated 
 in every age, so ' the thing which hath been, 
 ' it is that which shall be. Is there anything 
 ' whereof it may be said. See, this is newf • • • it 
 ' hath been already of old time which was be- 
 ' fore us.f 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 For things forepast are precedents to us, 
 AVhereby we may things present now, discuss, 
 
 as the old poet§ said who brought together a 
 tragical collection of precedents in the Mirror 
 of Magistrates. This is what Lord Brooke calls 
 
 * Lord Brooke. 
 
 t Ecclesiastes. i. 9, 10. 
 
 J ' . . . vedi che mutati soiio i visi degli uomini, ed i colori 
 <■ estrinseci ; le cose medesime tutte ritornano, ne vediamo acci- 
 ' dente alcuno, che a altri iemjn non sia stato veduto.' — Guic 
 ciardini in a Letter to MachiaveUi. Opere di Machiavelli, 
 1813. Vol. viii. 160. 
 
 § Thomas Newton,
 
 262 HISTORY. 
 
 the second light of government : 
 Whicli stories yield, and no time can disseason : 
 
 ' the common standard of man's reason,' he holds 
 
 to be the first lioht which the founders of a new 
 
 state, or the governors of an old one, ought to 
 
 follow. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Rightly : for though the most sagacious author 
 that ever deduced maxims of policy from the 
 experience of former ages, has said* that the 
 misgovernment of states, and the evils conse- 
 quent thereon, have arisen more from the neg- 
 lect of that experience, . . that is, from historical 
 ignorance, . . than from any other cause, the sum 
 and substance of historical knowledge for prac- 
 tical purposes consists in certain general prin- 
 ciples : and he who understands those principles, 
 
 * Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra Livio. Vol. iii. p. 7. 
 
 ' Ei si conosce facibnenie per chi consider a le cose presenti e 
 ' le antichc, come in tutle le cilia e in tutli i popoli sono quelli 
 ' mede.si?ni desiderj, e quelli mcdesimi umori, e come vi furono 
 
 * sempre. In modo ch' egli e facil cosa a chi esajnina con 
 ' diligenza le cose passate, prevedere in og7ii rcpiibblica le 
 ^future, c farvi quelli remedj, che dagli anlichi sono slali 
 ' 7isali, o non ne trovando degli usali, pensarne de nuovi, per 
 ' lasimililudine degli accidenii. Maperche quesie conside.ra- 
 
 * zioni sono neglellc, o non intesc da chi Icgge, o se le sono 
 ' intrse, non sono conosciuie da chi governa, ne seguita che 
 ' sempre so7io i medesimi scandcU in ogni iempo.^ — lb. ib. 
 p. 120.
 
 MACHIAVELLI. 263 
 
 and has a due sense of their importance, has 
 always, in the darkest circumstances, a star 
 in sight by which he may direct his course 
 surely. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The British ministers who began and con- 
 ducted the first war against revolutionary France, 
 were once reminded in a memorable speech*, 
 that if they had known, or knowing had borne in 
 mind, three maxims of Machiavelli, they would 
 not have committed the errors which cost this 
 country so dearly. They would not have relied 
 upon bringing the war to a successful end by 
 aid of a party among the French : they would 
 not have confided in the reports of emigrants ; 
 and they would not have supposed that because 
 the French finances were in confusion, France 
 
 * By Mr. Nicholls, Pari. History, Vol. xxxvi. 599. He is 
 there represented as referring to ' a late writer,' but it was to 
 Machiavelli that he referred, who has one chapter in his Dis- 
 courses on Livy (lib. ii. c. 25) showing, ' Che lo assaltare 
 ' una citta disunita, per occiiparla mediante sua disunione, 
 ' e partito contrario ;' and another (lib. ii. c. 31) to show, 
 
 * Quanto sia pericoloso credere agli shanditi:* and who says 
 concerning the means of war, (lib. ii. c, 10) ' Son hen 
 ' necessari i danari in secondo luogo, ma e una necessitd die 
 
 * i soldati buoni per se medesimi la vincono ; perche e im- 
 ' possihile che a' buoni soldati manchino i danari, come che i 
 ' danari per lore medesimi trovino i buoni soldati.'
 
 264 MACHIAVELLI. 
 
 was therefore incapable of carrying on war with 
 vigour and ability ; men and not money being 
 the sinews of war, as Machiavelli had taught, 
 and the revolutionary rulers and Buonaparte 
 after them had learnt. Each of these errors they 
 committed, though all were marked upon the 
 chart ! 
 
 sill THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Such maxims are like beacons on a dangerous 
 shore, not the less necessary, because the seaman 
 may sometimes be deceived by false lights, and 
 sometimes mistaken in his distances; but the 
 possibility of l)eing so misled will be borne in 
 mind by the cautious. Machiavelli is always 
 sagacious, but the tree of knowledge of which 
 he had gathered, grew not in Paradise ; it had 
 a bitter root, and the fruit savours thereof, even to 
 deadliness. He believed men to be so malignant* 
 by nature that they always act malevolently 
 from choice, and never well except by compulsion; 
 a devilish doctrine, to be accounted for rather 
 than excused by the circumstances of his age and 
 
 * ' ... 6' neceaaario a chi dhpone mm repiihhlica, ed ordina 
 ' leg^i in qxidla, presvppore txdti gli uomiiii essere cailivi, e 
 * che gli abbiano sr.mprc ad usare la malignita dell' animo 
 ' loro, qnalunquc. volla ne abbiano libera occasionr. . . Gli 
 ' uomini no?i opcraiio mai nulla bene se non j)er necessilci.'-^ 
 Discorsi, 1. 1. c. 3. vol. iii. p. 20.
 
 STATESMEN. 265 
 
 country. For he lived in a land wliere intellect 
 was higldy cultivated, and morals thorouglily 
 corrupted, the papal Church* having by its 
 doctrines, its practices, and its example, made 
 one part of the Italians heathenish and supersti- 
 tious, the other impious. . . and both wicked. 
 
 The rule of policy as well as of private morals 
 is to be found in the Gospel ; and a religious 
 sense of duty towards God and man is the first 
 thing needful in a statesman : herein he has an 
 unerring guide when knowledge fails him f, and 
 experience affords no light. This, with a clear 
 head and a single heart, will carry him through 
 all difficulties ; and the just confidence which, 
 having these, he will then have in himself, will 
 
 * ' , , . qvelli popoli die sono piu propinqui alia Chiesa 
 ' Romana, capo della Religio7ie nostra, hanno meno Religione. 
 ' . . Per gli esempi rei di quella carte, qiiesta provincia (Italia) 
 '■ha perduto ogni devozione ed ogni Religione ; il che si tira 
 "■ dietro i/ijiniti inconvenienti e injiniti disordini. . . Abbiamo 
 ' adinique con la Chiesa e coi Preti, noi Italiani questo prima 
 ' obbligo, d'esse)-e diventaii senza Religione e caitivi.' — lb. 
 1. 1. c. 12. p. 54. 
 
 t ' . . . The rise and fall of kingdoms commonly outreach 
 any one man's age or observation ; and such as follow, mark 
 the occurrences of their own times, more than their connection 
 with former : whence it is that secular jjoliticians are always 
 learning, and never attain unto tlie knowledge of what they 
 seek.' — Jackson, ii. 204.
 
 266 STATESMEN. 
 
 obtain for him the confidence of the nation. In 
 every nation indeed which is conscious of its 
 strenoth, the minister who takes the highest 
 tone, will invariably be the most popular ; let 
 him uphold, even haughtily, the character * of 
 his country, and the heart and voice of the people 
 will be with him. But haughtiness implies 
 always something that is hollow : the tone of a 
 wise minister will be firm, but calm. He will 
 neither truckle to his enemies in the vain hope 
 of conciliating them by a specious candour, which 
 they at the same time flatter and despise; nor 
 will he stand aloof from his friends, lest he 
 should be accused of regarding them with par- 
 tiality ; and thus while he secures the attachment 
 of the one he will command the respect of the 
 other. He will not, like the Lacedemonians ')', 
 think anv measures honourable which accord 
 with his inclinations, and just if they promote 
 his views; but in all cases he will do that which 
 is lawful and right, holding this for a certain 
 truth, tliat in politics, the straight path is the 
 sure one ! Such a minister will hope for the 
 best, and expect the best; by acting openly, 
 
 * Lord Chatham, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Canning, arc proofs of 
 
 I lii 
 
 + '. . . ra /Mv riiia xuKa, ta/Ai^cvri, ra, "hX^vfi^i^oyra, VtKUiK.' — lllUCyUldeS, 
 
 E. §. 105.
 
 STATESMEN. 267 
 
 Steadily, and bravely, lie will act always for the 
 best : and so acting, be the issue what it may, 
 he will never dishonour himself or his country, 
 nor fall under the ' sharp judgement*,' of which 
 they that are in ' high places' are in danger. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I am pleased to hear you include hopefulness 
 among the needful qualifications. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 It was a Jewish maxim that the spirit of pro- 
 phecy rests only upon eminent, happy, and cheer- 
 ful men. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 A wise woman, by which I do not mean, in 
 vulgar parlance, one who pretends to prophecy, 
 has a maxim to the same effect : toma este aviso, 
 she says, guardate de aquel que no tiene esperanza 
 de bien ! t take care of him who hath no hope of 
 good ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 * Of whole heart cometh hope,' says old Piers 
 Plouo-hman. And these maxims are warranted 
 by philosophy, divine and human : • . by human 
 wisdom, because he who hopes little will attempt 
 little; fear is ' a betrayal of the succours which 
 
 * Wisdom, vi. 3. t Dona Oliva Sabuco. if. 46
 
 268 STATESMEN. 
 
 reason offeretli/ and in difficult times, pericida 
 ma^'iia non nisi ptrkulis depelli solent*; . . by reli- 
 gion, because tlie ways of Providence are not so 
 changed under the dispensation of Grace, from 
 what they were under the old law, but that he 
 who means well, and acts well, and is not want- 
 ing to himself, may rightfully look for a blessing 
 upon the course which he pursues. The upright 
 individual may rest his head in peace upon this 
 hope; the upright minister who conducts the 
 affairs of a nation may trust in itf; for as na- 
 tional sins bring after them in sure consequence:]: 
 their merited punishment, so national virtue, 
 which is national wisdom, obtains in like man- 
 ner its temporal and visible reward. 
 
 Blessings and curses are before you, and 
 which are to be your portion depends upon the 
 direction of public opinion. The march of in- 
 
 * Cardan, de propria vila. 271. 
 
 t Louis XIV. states this anion j^ the other considerations 
 wliicli encouraged liiiii under ;ill diiliculties ; ' qu^en toutes les 
 entrcpriscsjustes ct legitimes, le temps, I'aclion meme, leseconrs 
 du del, ouvrcnt cC ordinaire mille voies et deconvrent mille fa- 
 cilitesquon n'atteiidoit pas.' — Mem. Ilistoriques, t. i. 13. 
 
 + ' For God, in liis usual course of justice, so suits his 
 punishments to llie most accustomed habits and in-edominant 
 sins, lliat unlo men, religiously observant of times and seasons, 
 the growth and process of the one will give a certain crisis Oi 
 the other.' — Jackson, i. -179.
 
 LITERATURE. 269 
 
 tellect is proceeding at quick time ; and if its 
 progress be not accompanied by a corresponding 
 improvement in morals and religion, the faster it 
 proceeds, \vitli the more violence will you be 
 hurried down the road to ruin. 
 
 One of the first effects of printing was to make 
 proud men look upon learning as disgraced, by 
 beino' thus brouo-ht within reach of the common 
 people. Till that time learning, such as it was, 
 had been confined to courts and convents, the 
 low birth of the clergy being overlooked, because 
 they were privileged by their order. But when 
 laymen in humble life were enabled to procure 
 books, the pride of aristocracy took an absurd 
 course, insomuch that at one time it was deemed 
 derogatory for a nobleman if he could read or 
 write. Even scholars themselves complained 
 that the reputation of learning, and the respect 
 due to it, and its rewards, were lowered when 
 it was thrown open to all men ; and it was seri- 
 ously proposed to prohibit the printing of any 
 book that could be afforded for sale below the 
 price of three soldi'^. This base and invidious 
 feeling was perhaps never so directly avowed in 
 other countries as in Italy, the land where lite- 
 rature was first restored ; and yet in this more 
 
 * Lodovico Domiuichi, Diuloghi, p. 389.
 
 270 LITERATURE. 
 
 liberal island, ignorance was for some genera- 
 tions considered to be a mark of distinction by 
 which a man of gentle birth f chose, not unfre- 
 quently, to make it apparent that he was no 
 more obliged to live by the toil of his brain, than 
 by the sweat of his brow. The same changes in 
 society which rendered it no longer possible for 
 this class of men to pass their lives in idleness, 
 have completely put an end to this barbarous 
 pride. It is as obsolete as the fashion of long- 
 finger nails, which in some parts of the east are 
 still the distinctive mark of those who labour not 
 with their hands. All classes are now brought 
 within the reach of your current literature, . . 
 that literature which, like a moral atmosphere, 
 is, as it were, the medium of intellectual life, and 
 on the quality of which, according as it may be 
 salubrious or noxious, the health of the public 
 mind depends. There is, if not a general desire 
 for knowledge, a general appearance of such a 
 desire. Authors of all kinds have increased 
 and are increasing among you. Romancers . . . 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 — some of whom attempt things which had 
 
 t ' Can you write and read tlien ? 
 
 ' Bus: As most of your gentlemen do — my bond has been 
 
 ' taken with my mark at it.' 
 
 Dckkcr, Wonder of a Kingdojn,
 
 LITERATURE. 271 
 
 hitherto been unattempted yet in prose or 
 rhyme, because among all the extravagant in- 
 tellects, with which the world has teemed, none 
 were ever before so utterly extravagant as to 
 chuse for themselves themes of such revoltino- 
 monstrosity. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Poets . . . 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Tartti Roma non ha preti, o dottori 
 Bologna. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Critics. . . 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 More numerous yet ; for this is a corps in 
 which many who are destined for better things 
 engage, till they are ashamed of the service ; 
 and a much greater number who endeavour to 
 distinguish themselves in higher walks of litera- 
 ture, and fail, take shelter in it ; as they cannot 
 attain reputation themselves, they endeavour to 
 prevent others from being more successful, and 
 find in the gratification of envy some recompense 
 for disappointed vanity. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Philosophers. . . 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 True and false ; the philosophers and the phi-
 
 272 LITKRATURIU. 
 
 losopliists; some of tlie former so full, that it 
 would require, as the Rabbics say of a certain 
 pedigree in the Book of Chronicles, four hun- 
 dred camel-loads of commentaries to expound the 
 difficulties in their text ; others so empty, that 
 nothing can approximate so nearly to the notion 
 of an infinitesimal quantity as their meaning. 
 
 sill THOMAS MOKE. 
 
 With this multiplication of books, which in its 
 proportionate increase marvellously exceeds that 
 of your growing population, are you a wiser, a 
 more intellectual, or more imaginative people 
 than when, as in my days, the man of learning, 
 while he sat at his desk, had his whole library 
 within arm's-length? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 If we are not wiser, it must be because the 
 means of knowledge, which are now both abun- 
 dant and accessible, are either neglected or mis- 
 used. 
 
 The sciences are not here to be considered : 
 in these our progress has been so great, that 
 seeing the moral and religious improvement of 
 the nation has in no degree kept pace Avith it, 
 you have reasonably questioned whether we have 
 not advanced, in certain branches, farther and 
 faster tlian is conducive to, or perhaps consistent 
 with, the general good. But there can be no
 
 TRAVELS. 273 
 
 question tliat great advancement lias been made 
 in many departments of literature conducive to 
 innocent recreation, (which would be alone no 
 trifling- good, even were it not, as it is, itself 
 conducive to health both of body and of mind,) 
 to sound knowledge, and to moral and political 
 improvement. There are now few portions of 
 the habitable earth which have not been ex- 
 plored, and with a zeal and perseverance which 
 had slept from the first age of maritime discovery 
 till it was revived under George III. In con- 
 sequence of this revival, and the awakened spirit 
 of curiosit}^ and enterprise, every year adds to 
 our ample store of books relating to the manners 
 of other nations, and the condition of men in 
 states and stages of society different to our own. 
 And of such books we cannot have too many ; 
 the idlest reader may find amusement in them of 
 a more satisfactory kind than he can gather from 
 the novel of the day or the criticism of the day ; 
 and there are few among them so entirely wortli- 
 less, that the most studious man may not derive 
 from them some information, for which he ought 
 to be thankful. Some memorable instances we 
 have had in this o-eneration of the absurdities 
 and errors, sometimes affecting seriously the 
 public service and the national character, which 
 have arisen from the want of such knowledge as 
 
 VOL. IT. T
 
 274 TRAVELS, 
 
 by means of such books is now generally diffused. 
 Skates and warming pans will not again be sent 
 out as ventures to Brazil. The Board of Admi- 
 ralty will never again attempt to ruin an enemy's 
 port by sinking a stone-ship, to the great amuse- 
 ment of that enemy, in a tide harbour. Nor will 
 a cabinet minister think it sufficient excuse for 
 himself and colleagues, to confess that they were 
 no better informed than other people, and had 
 everything to learn concerning the interior of a 
 country into which they had sent an army. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This is but a prospective benefit, and of a 
 humble kind, if it extend no further than to save 
 you from any future exposure of an ignorance 
 which might deserve to be called disgraceful. 
 We profited more by our knowledge of other 
 countries in the age when 
 
 Hops and turkeys, carp and beer, 
 Came into England all in one year. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 And yet in that age you profited slowly by the 
 commodities which the eastern and western parts 
 of the world afforded. Gold, pearls, and spices, 
 were your first imports. For the honour of science 
 and of humanity, medicinal plants were soon 
 sought for. But two centuries elapsed before 
 tea and potatoes, . . the most valuable products of
 
 TRAVELS. 275 
 
 the east and west, . . which have contributed far 
 more to the general good than all their spices, 
 and gems, and precious metals, . . came into com- 
 mon use ; nor have they yet been generally 
 adopted on the continent, while tobacco found 
 its way to Europe an hundred years earlier ; and 
 its filthy abuse, though here happily less than in 
 former times, prevails everywhere. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Proh pudor ! There is a snuff-box on the man- 
 telpiece, . . and thou revilest tobacco ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Distinguish, I pray you, gentle Ghost ! I 
 condemn the abuse of tobacco as filthy, implying 
 in those words that it has its allowable and proper 
 use. To smoke, is, in certain circumstances, a 
 wholesome practice : it may be regarded with a 
 moral complacency as the poor man's luxury, and 
 with liking by any one who follows a lighted pipe 
 in the open air. But whatever may be pleaded 
 for its soothing and intellectualizing effects, the 
 odour within doors of a defunct pipe is such an 
 abomination, that I join in anathematizing it with 
 James, the best natured of kings, and Josuah 
 Sylvester, the most voluble of poets. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Thou has written verses in praise of snuff ! 
 
 T 2
 
 27G TRAVELLERS. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 And if tliy nose, Sir Spirit, were anything 
 more than the ghost of an olfactor, I would offer 
 it a propitiatory pinch, that you might the more 
 feelingly understand the merit of the said verses, 
 and admire them accordingly. But I am no 
 more to be deemed a snuff-taker, because I carry 
 a snuff-box when travelling, and keep one at 
 hand for occasional use, than I am to be reckoned 
 a casuist or a pupil of the Jesuits because the 
 Moral Philosophy of Escobar and the Spiritual 
 Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola are on my 
 shelves . . . Thank Heaven I bear about with me 
 habits which I cannot hiy aside as easily as my 
 clothes. 
 
 The age is past in which travellers could add 
 much to the improvement, the comfort, or the 
 embellishment of this country, by imparting any- 
 thing which they have newly observed in foreign 
 parts. We have happily more to communicate 
 now than to receive. Yet when I tell you that 
 since the commencement of the present century, 
 there have been every year, upon an average, 
 more than an hundred and fifty plants which 
 were previously unknown here, introduced into 
 the nurseries and market gardens about London, 
 you will acknowledge that, in this branch, at 
 least, a constant desire is shown of enriching 
 ourselves with the produce of other lands.
 
 BOTANICAL TRAVELLERS. 277 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Philosophers of old travelled to observe the 
 manners of men, and study their institutions. 
 I know not whether they found more pleasure in 
 the study, or derived more advantages from it, 
 than the adventurers reap, who, in these latter 
 times, have crossed the seas, and exposed them- 
 selves to dangers of every kind, for the purpose 
 of extending the catalogue of plants. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Of all travels, those of the mere botanist are 
 the least instructive . . 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 . . To any but botanists, . . but for them alone 
 they are written. Do not depreciate any pursuit 
 which leads men to contemplate the works of 
 their Creator ! The Linnean traveller who, when 
 you look over the pages of his journal, seems to 
 you a mere botanist, has in his pursuit, as you 
 have in yours, an object that occupies his time, 
 and fills his mind, and satisfies his heart. It is 
 as innocent as yours, and as disinterested,, .per- 
 haps more so, because it is not so ambitious. 
 Nor is the pleasure which he partakes in investi- 
 gating the structure of a plant less pure, or less 
 worthy, than what you derive from perusing the 
 noblest productions of human genius. . . You look
 
 278 SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 at me as if you thought this reprehension were 
 undeserved ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The eye, then, Sir Thomas, is proditorious, 
 and I will not gainsay its honest testimony : yet 
 would I rather endeavour to profit by the repre- 
 hension, than seek to show that it was uncalled 
 for. If I know myself, I am never prone to 
 undervalue either the advantages or acquirements 
 which I do not possess. That knowledge is said 
 to be of all others the most difficult ; whether 
 it be the most useful, the Greeks themselves 
 differ, for if one of their wise men left the words 
 yvfd^i (Tsaurov as his maxim to posterity, a poet, 
 who perhaps may have been not less deserving 
 of the title, has controverted it, and told us that 
 for the uses of the world, it is more advantageous 
 for us to understand the character of others, than 
 to know ourselves.^' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Here lies the truth; he who best understands 
 himself is least likely to be deceived in others : 
 you judge of others by yourselves, and therefore 
 measure them by an erroneous standard when- 
 ever your autometry is false. This is one reason 
 
 KuTcc "ToXk' liv itriv uo KaXu; iietif^ivov 
 
 To yvuft fficcuTov ^^ria'i//,cort^ov ya^ »v 
 
 To ywh ms aXXvf- 
 
 Menander.
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 279 
 
 why the empty critic is usually contumelious 
 and flippant, the competent one as generally 
 equitable and humane. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 This justice I would render to the Linnean 
 school, that it produced our first devoted tra- 
 vellers; the race to which they succeeded em- 
 ployed themselves chiefly in visiting museums 
 and cataloguing pictures, and now and then 
 copying inscriptions ; even in their books notices 
 are found for which they who follow them may 
 be thankful : and facts are sometimes, as if by 
 accident, preserved, for useful application. They 
 went abroad to accomplish or to amuse them- 
 selves, . . to improve their time, or to get rid of it: 
 the botanists travelled for the sake of their fa- 
 vourite science, and many of them, in the prime 
 of life, fell victims to their ardour, in the unwhole- 
 some climates to which they were led. Latterly, 
 we have seen this ardour united with the highest 
 genius, the most comprehensive knowledge, and 
 rarest qualities of perseverance, prudence, and 
 enduring patience. This generation will not 
 leave behind it two names more entitled to the 
 admiration of after ages than Burckhardt and 
 Humboldt. The former purchased this pre-emi- 
 nence at the cost of his life : the latter lives, and 
 long may he live to enjoy it.
 
 280 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This very important branch of literature can 
 scarcely be said to have existed in my time ; 
 the press was then too much occupied in preserv- 
 ing such precious remains of antiquity as could 
 be rescued from destruction, and in matters which 
 inflamed the minds of men, as indeed they con- 
 cerned their dearest and most momentous interests. 
 Moreover, reviving literature took the natural 
 course of imitation, and the ancients had left 
 nothing in this kind to be imitated. Nothing 
 therefore appeared in it, except the first inesti- 
 mable relations of the discoveries in the cast and 
 v/est, and these belong rather to the department 
 of history. As travels, we had only the chance 
 notices which occurred in the Latin correspond- 
 ence of learned men, when their letters found 
 their way to the public. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 Precious remains these are, but all too few. . . 
 The first travellers whose journals or memoirs 
 have been preserved were ambassadors; then 
 came tlie adventurers of whom you speak ; and 
 it is remarkal)le that two centuries afterward, 
 wc should find men of the same stamp among 
 the Buccaneers, who recorded in like manner 
 Avilh laithlul diligence whatever they had op- 
 portunity of observing in their wild and nefarious 
 course of life.
 
 BUCCANEERS. 281 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 You may deduce from thence two conclu- 
 sions, apparently contrarient, yet both warranted 
 by the fact which you have noticed. It may 
 be presumed that men who, while engaged in 
 such an occupation, could thus meritoriously 
 employ their leisure, were rather compelled by 
 disastrous circumstances to such a course, than 
 engaged in it by inclination : that it was their 
 misfortune rather than their fault if they -were 
 not the benefactors and ornaments of society, 
 instead of being its outlaws; and that under a 
 wise and parental government such persons 
 never would be lost. This is a charitable con- 
 sideration, nor will I attempt to impugn it ; the 
 other may seem less so, but is of more prac- 
 tical importance. For these examples are proof, 
 if proof were needed, that intellectual attain- 
 ments and habits are no security for good con- 
 duct, unless they are supported by religious 
 principles ; without religion the highest endow- 
 ments of intellect can only render the possessor 
 more dangerous if he be ill disposed, if well dis- 
 posed only more unhappy. 
 
 The conquerors, as they called themselves, 
 were followed by missionaries. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Our knowledge of the remoter parts of the
 
 282 ROMISH MISSIONARIES. 
 
 world, during the first part of the seventeenth 
 century, must chiefly be obtained from their 
 recitals. And there is no difiiculty in separating 
 what may be believed from their fables, because 
 their falsehoods being systematically devised and 
 circulated in pursuance of what they regarded 
 as part of their professional duty, they told 
 truth when they had no motive for deceiving the 
 reader. Let any person compare the relations 
 of our Protestant missionaries, with those of the 
 Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, or any other 
 Romish order, and the difference which he can- 
 not fail to perceive between the plain truth of the 
 one, and the audacious and elaborate mendacity 
 of the other, may lead him to a just inference 
 concerning the two churches. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Their fables were designed, by exciting ad- 
 miration, to call forth money for the support of 
 missions, which, notwithstanding such false pre- 
 tences, were piously undertaken and heroically 
 pursued. They scrupled therefore as little at 
 interlardin": their chronicles and annual letters 
 with such miracles, as poets at the use of ma- 
 chinery in their verses. Think not that I am 
 excusing them ; but thus it was that they justi- 
 fied their system of imposition to themselves, and
 
 ROMISH MISSIONARIES. 283 
 
 this part of it must not be condemned as if it 
 proceeded from an evil intention. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Yet, Sir Thomas, the best of those mission- 
 aries are not more to be admired for their ex- 
 emplary virtue, and pitied for the superstition 
 w^hich debased their faith, than others of their 
 respective orders are to be abominated for the 
 deliberate wickedness with which, in pursuance 
 of the same system, they imposed the most blas- 
 phemous and atrocious legends upon the credu- 
 lous, and persecuted with fire and sword those 
 who opposed their deceitful villainy. One rea- 
 son wherefore so few travels were written in the 
 age of which we are speaking, is, that no English- 
 man, unless he were a Papist, could venture into 
 Italy, or any other country where the Romish 
 religion was established in full power, without 
 danger of being seized by the Inquisition ! 
 
 Other dangers by sea and by land, from cor- 
 sairs and banditti, including too the chances of 
 war and of pestilence, were so great in that age, 
 that it was not unusual for men when they set 
 out upon their travels to put out a sum upon 
 their own lives, which, if the}^ died upon the 
 journey, was to be the underwriter's gain, but 
 to be repaid if they returned, with such increase 
 as might cover their intervening expenses. The
 
 284 EFFECTS OF DANGER. 
 
 chances against them seem to have been con- 
 sidered as nearly three to one. But danger, 
 \vithin a certain degree, is more likely to pro- 
 voke adventurers than to deter them. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 There thou hast uttered a comprehensive 
 truth. No legislator has yet so graduated his 
 scale of punishment as to ascertain that degree 
 uliich shall neither encourage hope, nor excite 
 the audacity of desperate guilt. It is certain 
 that there are states of mind in which the con- 
 sciousness that he is about to play for life or 
 death stimulates a gamester to the throw. This 
 will apply to most of those crimes which are 
 committed for cupidity, and not attended with 
 violence. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Well then may these hazards have acted as 
 incentives where there was the desire of honour, 
 the spirit of generous enterprise, or ev(!n the 
 love of notoriety. By the first of these motives 
 Pietro della Valle (the most romantic in his 
 adventures of all true travellers) was led abroad; 
 tlie latter spring set in motion my comical 
 countryman Tom Coriat, who by the engraver's 
 lielp has represented himself at one time in full 
 dress, making a leg to a courtesan at Venice,
 
 JEWELLERS. 285 
 
 and at another dropping- from his rags the all- 
 too-lively proofs of prolific poverty. 
 
 Perhaps literature has never been so directly 
 benefited by the spirit of trade as it was in the 
 seventeenth century, when European jewellers 
 found their most liberal customers in the courts 
 of the East. Some of the best travels which we 
 possess, as well as the best materials for Persian 
 and Indian history, have been left us by persons 
 engaged in that trade. From that time travelling 
 became less dangerous, and more frequent in 
 every generation ; except during the late years, 
 when Englishmen were excluded fi'om the con- 
 tinent by that military tyrant, whom (with God's 
 blessing on a rightful cause) we have beaten 
 from his imperial throne. And now it is more 
 customary for females in the middle rank of life 
 to visit Italy, than it was for them in your days 
 to move twenty miles from home. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Is this a salutary or an injurious fashion ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 According to the subject, and to the old school 
 maxim, quicquid recipitur, recipitur in modiim rt- 
 cipientis. The wise come back wiser : the well- 
 informed with richer stores of knowledge : the 
 empty and the vain return as they went ; and
 
 28G TRAVELLERS, 
 
 there are some who bring home foreign vanities 
 and vices in addition to their own. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And what has been imported by such trarellers 
 for the good of their country ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Coffee in the seventeenth century; inocula- 
 tion in tliat which followed : since which we 
 have had now and then a new dance, and a new 
 game at cards ; curry and malagatany soup 
 from the East Indies, turtle from the West, and 
 that earthly nectar to which the East contri- 
 butes it arrack, and the West its limes and 
 its rum. In the language of men it is called 
 Punch ; I know not what may be its name in the 
 Olympian speech. But tell not the Englishmen 
 of George the Second's age, lest they should be 
 troubled for the degeneracy of their grandchil- 
 dren, that the punch bowl is now become a relic 
 of antiquity, and their beloved beverage almost 
 as obsolete as metheglin, hippocras, clary or 
 morat ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 It is well for thee that thou art not a young 
 beagle instead of a grey-headed bookman, or that 
 rambling vein of thine would often bring thee 
 under the lash of the whipper-in ! Ofl' thou art 
 and iiway in pursuit of the smallest game that 
 rises before thee.
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 287 
 
 MONTESINOS, 
 
 Good Ghost, there was once a wise Lord 
 Chancellor, who in a dialogue upon weighty 
 matters thought it not unbecoming to amuse* 
 himself with discursive merriment concerning 
 St. Appollonia and St. Uncumber. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Good Flesh and Blood, that was a nipping- 
 reply ! And happy man is his dole who retains 
 in grave years, and even to gi'ey hairs, enough 
 of green youth's redundant spirits for such ex- 
 cursiveness ! He who never relaxes into sportive- 
 ness is a wearisome companion ; but beware of 
 him who jests at everything ! Such men disparage 
 by some ludicrous association all objects which are' 
 presented to their thoughts, and thereby render 
 themselves incapable of any emotion which can 
 either elevate or soften them ; they bring upon 
 their moral beino- an influence more witherino- 
 than the blast of the desert. A countenance if 
 it be wrinkled either with smiles or with frowns 
 is to be shunned : the furrows which the latter 
 leave show that the soil is sour ; those of the 
 former are symptomatic of a hollow heart. 
 
 * The interlocutor in tliis ' Dialoge,' says to Sir Thomas, 
 ' Ye use, my mayster sayth, to look so sadly whan ye mene 
 ' mei'ely, yt many tymes men doubte whyther ye speke in sporte 
 ' whann ye mene good ernest.' — lb. 18.
 
 288 WALKING STEWART, 
 
 None of your travellers have reached Utopia, 
 and brou^'ht from thence a fuller account of its 
 institutions I 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There was one, methinks, who must have had. 
 it in view when he walked over the world to 
 discover the source of moral motion. He was 
 atllicted witli a tympany of mind produced by 
 metaphysics, which was at that time a common 
 complaint, though attended in him with unusual 
 symptoms : but his heart was healthy and strong, 
 and mio-ht in former aoes have enabled him to 
 acquire a distinguished place among the Saints 
 of the Thebais or the Philosophers of Greece. 
 
 But although we have now no travellers em- 
 ployed in seeking undiscoverable countries, and 
 although Eldorado, the city of the Cesares, and 
 the Sabbatical River, are expunged even from 
 the maps of credulity and imagination, Welsh- 
 men have gcjne in search of Madoc's descendants, 
 and scarcely a year passes without adding to the 
 melancholy list of lliose who have ])erished in 
 exploring the interior of Africa. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 AA lienever there shall exist a civilized and 
 Christian negro state. Providence will open that 
 country to civilization and Cln-istianity : mean- 
 time to risk strength, and enterprise and sci-
 
 AFRICA. 
 
 289 
 
 eiice against climate, is contending against the 
 course of nature. Have these travellers yet ob- 
 tained for you the secret of the Psylli ? 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 
 We have learnt from savages the mode of pre- 
 paring their deadliest poisons ; the more useful 
 knowledge by which they render the human 
 body proof against the most venomous serpents 
 has not been sought with equal diligence ; there 
 are however scattered notices * which may per- 
 haps afford some clue to the discovery. The 
 writino's of travellers are not more rich in ma- 
 
 * To the notices wliich I have elsewhere collected upon this 
 subject, Omniana, vol. ii. § 239. p. 259,) I take this oppor- 
 tunity of adding 'the following passage from a letter of An- 
 chieta's, first published in 1812. Anchieta is one of those 
 Jesuits of whom the most enormous falsehoods have been re- 
 lated, but who was himself a good man, and to be believed in 
 whatever he asserts upon liis own knowledge. He states and 
 vouches for the fact, that a person who has once been bitten 
 by a venomous snake, and escaped death, suffers much less 
 pain if he should be bitten a second time, and incurs no 
 danger. ' Porro id apud Indos sic habet, ut si semel icti a 
 ' coluhro mortem evadant, percussi deinceps non solum in dis- 
 ' crimen vitts non veniant sed multo etiain minus sentiant 
 ' doloris, quod tion semel experti sumus.' 
 
 Epistola quamplurimarum rerum naturalium quae S. Vin- 
 centii (nunc S. Pauli) provinciam incolunt, sistens descrip- 
 tionem. § 13, Memorias para a Historia das Nafoeiis 
 Vltraniarinas. T. 1. Num. 3. 
 
 VOL. II. U
 
 290 TRAVELS. 
 
 terials for the poet and the historian than they 
 are in useful notices, deposited there like seeds 
 which lie deep in the earth till some chance 
 brings them within reach of air, and then they 
 germinate. These are fields in which some- 
 thing may always be found by the gleaner ; and 
 therefore those general collections in which the 
 works are curtailed would be to be reprobated, 
 even if epitomizers did not seem to possess a 
 certain instinct of generic doltishness which leads 
 them curiously to omit whatever ought especially 
 to be preserved. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 If ever there come a time, Montesinos, when 
 beneficence shall be as intelligent, and wisdom 
 as active, as the spirit of trade, you will then 
 draw from foreign countries other things beside 
 those which now pay duties at the customhouse, 
 or are cultivated in nurseries for the conserva- 
 tories of the wealthy. Not that I regard with 
 dissatisfaction these latter importations of luxury, 
 however far tliey may be brought, or at whatever 
 cost ; for of all mere pleasures, those of a garden 
 arc the most salutary, and approach nearest to a 
 moral enjoyment. But you will then (should 
 that time come) seek and find in the laws, usages, 
 and experience of other nations, palliatives for 
 some of those evils and diseases which have
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 291 
 
 hitherto been inseparable from society and human 
 nature, and remedies, perhaps, for others. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Happy the travellers who shall be found in- 
 strumental to such good ! One advantage be- 
 longs to authors of this description ; because 
 they contribute to the instruction of the learned, 
 their reputation suffers no diminution by the 
 course of time : age rather enhances their value. 
 In this respect they resemble historians, to whom, 
 indeed, their labours are in a great degree sub- 
 sidiary. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 They have an advantage over them, my friend, 
 in this, that rarely can they leave evil works 
 behind them, which, either from a mischievous 
 persuasion, or a malignant purpose, may heap 
 condemnation upon their own souls as long as 
 such works* survive them. Even if they should 
 
 * ' The desire of fame is so universal, and seems to be so 
 ' instinctive in our nature, and operates so powerfully to do 
 ' good when it seeks its object through laudable pursuits, that 
 ' it is not a chimerical possibility that it may be something 
 ' more to us than a voice which we cannot hear, or than a 
 ' breath which evaporates as it is uttered. The reputation 
 * which we attain during this life may follow our being where- 
 ■' ever that may be situated hereafter, with all its momentous 
 ' consequences ; creating benefit and pleasure to us there, 
 ' whenever it has arisen from what piety and virtue sanction 
 
 U 2
 
 292 AUTHORS. 
 
 manifest pernicious opinions and a wicked will, 
 the venom is, in a great degree, sheathed by the 
 vehicle in which it is administered. And this is 
 something ; for let me tell thee, thou consumer 
 of goosequills, that of all the Devil's laboratories, 
 there is none in which more poison is concocted 
 for mankind than in the inkstand ! 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 ' My withers are unwrung ! ' 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Be thankful, therefore, in life, as thou wilt in 
 death. 
 
 A principle of compensation may be observed 
 in literary pursuits as in other things. Repu- 
 tations that never flame continue to glimmer 
 for centuries after those which blaze highest 
 have o-one out. And what is of more moment, 
 the humblest occupations are morally the safest. 
 Rhadamanthus never puts on his black cap to 
 
 ' and perpetuate licre ; but causing; to us personal and sentient 
 ' evil and disgrace in our future abode, if it has sprung from 
 ' actions, writings, or character, which have been repugnant 
 ' to moral reason, to human welfare, or to religious truth. It 
 ' is the soundest inference to believe that all fame will be an 
 ' unceasing companion to its possessor, for good or for evil, 
 ' as long as the spirit shall exist anywhere in conscious sen- 
 ♦ sitivity.' — Turner's Modern History of England, part ii. 
 p. 735. 
 
 In this feeling of my excellent friend I heartily concur.
 
 AUTHORS. 293 
 
 pronounce sentence upon a dictionary-maker, or 
 the compiler of a county-history. 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 I am to understand, then, that in the arch- 
 angel's balance a little book may sink the scale 
 toward the pit ; while all the tomes of Thomas 
 Hearne and good old John Nicholls will be" 
 weighed among their good works ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Sport as thou wilt in allusions to allegory and 
 fable ; but bear always in thy most serious mind 
 this truth, that men hold under an awful respon- 
 sibility the talents with which they are entrusted. 
 Kings have not so serious an account to render 
 as they who exercise an intellectual influence 
 over the minds of men ! 
 
 MOXTESINOS. 
 
 If evil works, so long as they continue to pro- 
 duce evil, heap up condemnation upon the au- 
 thors, it is well for some of the wickedest writers 
 that their works do not survive them. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Sucli men, my friend, even by the most perish- 
 able of their wicked works, lay up sufficient 
 condemnation for themselves. The maxim that 
 malitia supplet a'tatem, is rightfully admitted in 
 human laws : should there not, then, by parity 
 of justice, be cases where, when the secrets of
 
 294 CURRENT LITERATURE. 
 
 the heart are seen, the intention shall be regarded 
 rather than the act ? 
 
 The greatest portion of your literature, at 
 any given time, is ephemeral ; indeed, it has 
 ever been so since the discovery of printing ; 
 and this portion it is which is most influential, 
 consequently that by which most good or mis- 
 chief is done. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Ephemeral it truly may be called ; it is now 
 looked for by the public as regularly as their 
 food; and, like food, it affects the recipient 
 surely and permanently, even when its effect is 
 slow, according as it is wholesome or noxious. 
 But how great is the diff"erence between the cur- 
 rent literature of this and of any former time ! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 From that complacent tone, it may be pre- 
 sumed that you see in it proof both of moral and 
 intellectual improvement. Montesinos, I must 
 disturb that comfortable opinion, and call upon 
 you to examine how much of this refinement 
 which passes for improvement is superficial. 
 True it is that controversy is carried on with 
 more decency than it was by Martin Luther and 
 a certain Lord Chancellor, to whom you just now 
 alluded ; but if more courtesy is to be found in
 
 EPHEMERAL LITERATURE. 295 
 
 polemical writers, who are less sincere than either 
 the one or the other, there is as much acerbity 
 of feeling, and as much bitterness of heart. You 
 have a class of miscreants which had no existence 
 in those days, . . the panders of the press, who 
 live by administering to the vilest passions of 
 the people, and encouraging their most danger- 
 ous errors, practising upon their ignorance, and 
 inculcating whatever is most pernicious in prin- 
 ciple and most dangerous to society. This is 
 their golden age ; for though such men would in 
 any age have taken to some villainy or other, 
 never could they have found a course at once so 
 gainful and so safe. Long impunity has taught 
 them to despise the laws which they defy, and 
 the institutions which they are labouring to sub- 
 vert ; any further responsibility enters not into 
 their creed, if that may be called a creed in 
 which all the articles are negative. If we turn 
 from politics to what should be humaner litera- 
 ture, and look at the self-constituted censors of 
 whatever has past the press, there also we shall 
 find that they who are the most incompetent 
 assume the most authority, and that the public 
 favour such pretensions ; for, in quackery of 
 every kind, whether medical, political, critical, 
 or hypocritical, quo qids impiidcntior co doctior 
 habetur.
 
 296 EPHEMERAL LITERATURE. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 The pleasure whicli men take in acting mali- 
 ciously, is properly called by Barrow a rascally 
 delifrht. But this is no new form of malice. 
 ' Avant nous,' says the sagacious but iron- 
 hearted Montluc, . . ' avant nous ces envies out 
 ' regne, et regneront encore apres nous, si Dieu ne 
 
 * nous vouloit tous rcfondre.' Its worst effect is 
 that which Ben Jonson * remarked : ' the gentle 
 
 * reader,' says he, ' rests happy to hear the 
 ' worthiest works misrepresented, the clearest 
 ' actions obscured, the innocentest life traduced ; 
 ' and in such a license of lying, a field so fruitful 
 ' of slanders, how can there be matter wanting 
 ' to his laughter ? Hence comes the epidemical 
 ' infection: for how can they escape the conta- 
 
 * gion of tlie writings whom the virulency of the 
 ' calumnies hath not staved off from readino; ?' 
 
 There is another mischief, arising out of ephe- 
 meral literature, whicli was noticed by the same 
 great author. ' Wheresoever '|' manners and 
 ' fashions are corrupted,' says he, ' language is. 
 < It imitates the pul)lic riot. The excesses of 
 
 * feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state ; 
 
 * Ltiul the wantonness of lanouao'c of a sick mind.' 
 I'll is was the observation of a man well versed 
 in fli(! history of tlie ancients and in their litera- 
 
 * Gifl'unrs Edit. vol. i.\. p. 102. t l^- V- IBG.
 
 CORRUPTION OF STYLE. 297 
 
 ture. The evil prevailed in his time to a con- 
 siderable degree ; but it was not permanent, 
 because it proceeded rather from the affectation 
 of a few individuals than from any general cause : 
 the great poets were free from it ; and our prose 
 writers then, and till the end of that century, 
 were preserved, by their sound studies and logical 
 habits of mind, from any of those faults into 
 which men fall who write loosely because they 
 think loosely. The pedantry of one class and 
 the colloquial vulgarity of another had their day; 
 the faults of each were strongly contrasted, 
 and better writers kept the mean between them. 
 More lasting effect was produced by translators, 
 who, in later times, have corrupted our idiom 
 as much as, in early ones, they enriched our 
 vocabulary ; and to this injury the Scotch have 
 greatly contributed : for composing in a language 
 which is not their mother tongue, they neces- 
 sarily acquire an artificial and formal style, 
 which, not so much through the merit of a few 
 as owing to the perseverance of others, who for 
 half a century seated themselves on the bench 
 of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular 
 English of Addison and Swift. Our journals, 
 indeed, have been the great corrupters of our 
 style, and continue to be so ; and not for this 
 reason only. Men who write in newspapers,
 
 298 CORRUPTION OF STYLK 
 
 and map^azines, and reviews, write for present 
 eifect ; in most cases tliis is as much their natural 
 and proper aim, as it would be in public speak- 
 ing- ; but when it is so they consider, like public 
 speakers, not so much what is accurate or just, 
 either in matter or manner, as what will be ac- 
 ceptable to those whom they address. Writing 
 also under the excitement of emulation and ri- 
 valry, they seek, by all the artifices and efforts of 
 an ambitious style, to dazzle their readers ; and 
 they are wise in their generation, experience 
 having shown that common minds are taken by 
 glittering faults, both in prose and verse, as larks 
 are with looking-glasses. 
 
 In this school it is that most writers are now 
 trained ; and, after such training, anything like 
 an easy and natural movement is as little to be 
 looked for in their compositions as in the step of 
 a dancing-master. To the vices of style which 
 are thus generated, there must be added the in- 
 accuracies inevitably arising from haste, when 
 a certain quantity of matter is to be supplied for 
 a daily or weekly publication which allows of 
 no delay, . . the slovenliness that confidence as 
 well as fatigue and inattention will produce, . . 
 and the barbarisms wliich are the effect of igno- 
 rance, or that smattering of knowledge which 
 serves only to render ignorance presumptuous.
 
 MIXED LANGUAGES. 299 
 
 These are the causes of corruption in our current 
 style; and when these are considered, there 
 would be ground for apprehending that the best 
 writings of the last century might become as 
 obsolete as yours in the like process of time, 
 if we had not in our Liturgy and our Bible a 
 standard from which it will not be possible wholly 
 to depart. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Will the Liturgy and the Bible keep the lan- 
 guage at that standard in the colonies, where 
 little or no use is made of the one, and not much, 
 it may be feared, of the other ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 A sort of hybrid speech, a Lingua Anglica 
 more debased perhaps than the Lingua Franca 
 of the Levant, or the Portugueze of Malabar, 
 is likely enough to grow up among the South 
 Sea Islands ; like the mixture of Spanish with 
 some of the native languages in South America, 
 or the mingle-mangle which the negroes have 
 made with French and English, and probably 
 with other European tongues in the colonies of 
 their respective states. The spirit of mercantile 
 adventure may produce in this part of the new 
 world a process analogous to what took place 
 throughout Europe on the breaking up of the 
 Western Empire; and in the next millennium
 
 300 EPHEMERAL LITERATURE. 
 
 these derivatives may become so many cultivated 
 tonirues, having; each its literature. These will 
 be like varieties in a flower-garden, which the 
 florist raises from seed ; but in the colonies, as 
 in our orchards, the graft takes with it and 
 will preserve the true characteristics of the stock. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 But the same causes of deterioration will be 
 at work there also. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Not nearly in the same degree, nor to an 
 equal extent. Now and then a word with the 
 American impress comes over to us which has 
 not been struck in the mint of analogy. But the 
 Americans are more likely to be infected by the 
 corruption of our written language, than we are 
 to have it debased by any importations of this 
 kind from them. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Tlierc is a more important coilsideration be- 
 longing to this subject. The cause which you 
 have noticed as the principal one of this cor- 
 ruption must have a farther and more mis- 
 chievous cflect : for it is not in tlic vices of an 
 ambitious style tliat these ephemeral writers, 
 who live upon the breath of popular Jipplause, 
 will rest. Great and lasting reputations, both 
 in ancient and modern times, have been raised
 
 POETS. 301 
 
 notwithstanding that defect, when the ambition 
 from which it proceeded was of a worthy kind, 
 and was sustained by great powers and adequate 
 acquirements. But this ambition, which looks 
 beyond the morrow, has no place in the writers 
 of a day. Present effect is their end and aim ; 
 and too many of them, especially the ablest, who 
 have wanted only moral worth to make them 
 capable of better things, are persons who can 
 
 * desire * no other mercy from after ages than 
 
 * silence and oblivion.' Even with the better part 
 of the public that author will always obtain 
 the most favourable reception, who keeps most 
 upon a level with them in intellectuals, and 
 puts them to the least trouble of thinking. He 
 who addresses himself with the whole endea- 
 vours of a powerful mind to the understanding 
 faculty, may find fit readers ; but they vvill be 
 few. He who labours for posterity in the fields 
 of research, must look to posterity for his re- 
 ward. Nay, even they whose business is with 
 the feelings and the fancy, catch most fish 
 when they angle in shallow waters. Is it not 
 so, Piscator? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 In such honest anglers. Sir Thomas, I should 
 look for as many virtues, as good old happy 
 
 * Bishop Kennet,
 
 302 POETS. 
 
 Izuak Walton found in his brethren of the rod 
 and line. Nor will you, I think, disparage them; 
 for you Avere of the Rhymers' Company, and at 
 a time when things appear to us in their true 
 colours and proportion, (if ever while we are 
 yet in the body,) you remembered your verses* 
 with more satisfaction than your controversial 
 writings, even though you had no misgivings 
 concerning the part which you had chosen. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 My verses, friend, had none of the athanasia 
 in their composition. Though they have not yet 
 perished, they cannot be said to have a living 
 existence ; even you, I suspect, have sought for 
 
 * Sir Thomas More made these verses for his pastime while 
 he was prisoner in the Tower of London : — 
 
 Davy the Dvcer. 
 
 Long was I, Lady Lucke, your serving man, 
 And now liave lostagayne all that I gat; 
 
 Wiicrfore wlian I thinke on you novve and than, 
 And ill my mynde remember this and that, 
 Ye may not blame me thougli I beshrew your cat: 
 
 IJut ill I'uyih I l^lessc you agayne a thousand times, 
 
 I'or lending me now some leysure to mak rhymes. 
 
 ' Tindal tellcth me,' says Sir Thomas, in liis answer to that 
 Reformer, ' I have been so longe used in my f'ygures of 
 
 * poetry, that when I erre most, I do now as he suj)poscth, by 
 ' reesoii oi' ;i long custume, byleve myself. As for my poetry, 
 
 • veraly 1 can lytell ellys, and yet not that neytlicr." pp. 126.
 
 POETS, 303 
 
 them rather because of our personal acquaint- 
 ance than for any other motive. Had I been 
 only a poet, those poems, such as they were, 
 would have preserved my name ; but being re- 
 membered for other grounds, better and worse, 
 the name which I have left has been one cause 
 why they have past into oblivion, sooner than 
 their perishable nature would have carried them 
 thither. If in the latter part of my mortal exist- 
 ence I had misgivings concerning any of my 
 writings, they were of the single one, which is 
 still a living work, and which will continue so to 
 be. I feared that speculative opinions, which 
 had been intended for the possible but remote 
 benefit of mankind, might, by unhappy circum- 
 stances, be rendered instrumental to great and 
 immediate evil ; . . an apprehension however which 
 was altogether free from self-reproach. 
 
 But my verses will continue to exist in their 
 mummy state, long after the worms shall have 
 consumed many of those poetical reputations 
 which are at this time in the cherry-cheek'd 
 bloom of health and youth. Old poets will 
 always retain their value for antiquaries and 
 philologists; modern ones are far too numerous 
 ever to acquire an accidental usefulness of this 
 kind, even if the language were to undergo 
 greater changes than any circumstances are
 
 304 
 
 POETS. 
 
 likely to produce. There will now be more 
 poets* in every generation than in that which 
 preceded it ; they will increase faster than your 
 population ; and as their number increases, so 
 must the proportion of those who will be re- 
 membered necessarily diminish. Tell the Fitz- 
 Muses this ! It is a consideration, Sir Poet, 
 which may serve as a refrigerant for their ar- 
 dour. Those of the tribe who may flourish 
 hereafter (as the flourishing phrase is) in any 
 particular age, will be little more remembered in 
 the next than the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs who 
 were their contemporaries. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Father in verse, if you had not put ofl' flesh 
 and blood so long, you would not imagine that 
 this consideration will diminish their number. 
 I am sure it would not have affected me forty 
 years ago, had I seen this truth then as clearly 
 as I perceive and feel it now. Though it were 
 
 * ' Poets increase and nuiltiply to that stupendous degree/ 
 says Lady Mary Wortlcy Montagu (writing in 1723), ' you 
 ' see tliem at every turn, even in embroidered coats, and pink- 
 ' coloured top-knots : making verses is become ahnost as coni- 
 ' mon as taking snufT, and God can tell what miserable stuff 
 ' pioplc carry about in their pockets and ofl'cr to all their 
 ' acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and 
 • taking a pinch.' — Vol, iii. p. 135.
 
 POETRY. 305 
 
 manifest to all men that not one poet in an age, 
 in a century, ..a millennium, could establish 
 his claim to be for ever known, every aspirant 
 would persuade himself that he is the happy 
 person for whom the inheritance of fame is re- 
 served. And when the dream of immortality is 
 dispersed, motives enough remain for reasonable 
 ambition. 
 
 It is related of some good man, (I forget who) 
 that upon his death-bed he recommended his son 
 to employ himself in cultivating a garden, and in 
 composing verses, . . thinking these to be at once 
 the happiest and the most harmless of all pur- 
 suits. Poetry may be, and too often has been 
 wickedly perverted to evil purposes, . . what in- 
 deed is there that may not, when religion itself 
 is not safe from such abuses ! but the good which 
 it does inestimably exceeds the evil. It is no 
 trifling good to provide means of innocent and 
 intellectual enjoyment for so many thousands, in 
 a state like ours ; an enjoyment, heightened, as 
 in every instance it is within some little circle, 
 by personal considerations, raising it to a degree 
 which may deserve to be called happiness. It is 
 no trifling good to win the ear of children with 
 verses which foster in them the seeds of huma- 
 nity and tenderness and piety, awaken their 
 fancy, and exercise pleasurably and wholesomely 
 
 VOL. ir. X
 
 306 POETRY. 
 
 their imaginative and meditative powers. It is 
 no trifling benefit to provide a ready mirror for 
 the young, in which they may see their own 
 best feelings reflected, and wherein ' whatsoever 
 ' tilings are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 * whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
 ' are lovely,' are presented to them in the most 
 attractive form. It is no trifling benefit to send 
 abroad strains which may assist in preparing the 
 heart for its trials, and in supporting it under 
 them. But there is a greater good than this, . . 
 a farther benefit. . .Although it is in verse that 
 the most consummate skill in composition is to 
 be looked for, and all the artifice of language 
 displayed, yet it is in verse only that we throw 
 off the yoke of the world, and are as it were 
 privileged to utter our deepest and holiest feel- 
 ings. Poetry in this respect may be called the 
 salt of the earth ; we express in it, and receive in 
 it sentiments for which, were it not for this per- 
 mitted medium, the usages of the world would 
 neither allow utterance nor acceptance. And 
 who can tell in our heart-chilling and heart- 
 hardening society, how much more selfish, how 
 much more debased, Ikjw much worse we should 
 have been, in all moral and intellectual respects, 
 had it not been for the unnoticed and unsuspected 
 influence of this preservative ? Even much of that
 
 POETS. 307 
 
 poetry, wliicli is in its composition worthless, or 
 absolutely bad, contributes to this good. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Such poetry then, according to your view, is 
 to be regarded with indulgence. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Thank Heaven, Sir Thomas, I am no farther 
 critical than every author must necessarily be 
 who makes a careful study of his own art. To 
 understand the principles of criticism is one 
 thing ; to be what is called critical, is another ; 
 the first is like being versed in jurisprudence, 
 the other like being litigious. Even those poets 
 who contribute to the mere amusement of their 
 readers, while that amusement is harmless, are 
 to be regarded with complacency if not respect. 
 They are the butterflies of literature, who, during 
 the short season of their summer, enliven the gar- 
 den and the field. It were pity to touch them 
 even with a tender hand, lest we should brush 
 the down from their wings. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 These are they of whom I spake as angling in 
 shallow waters. You will not regard with the 
 same complacency those who trouble the stream; 
 still less those who poison it. 
 
 X 2
 
 308 CURRENT LITERATURK. 
 
 MOXTESIXOS. 
 Vesanum tetigisse ti7nent, fiigiiintque poetam 
 Qui sapiunt ; agitant pueri, incaulique seqiauitur. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This brings ns again to the point at which 
 you bolted. The desire of producing present 
 effect, the craving for immediate reputation, have 
 led to another vice, analogous to, and connected 
 with, that of the vicious style, which the same 
 causes are producing, but of worse consequences. 
 The corruption extends from the manner to the 
 matter; and they who brew for the press, like 
 some of those who brew for the publicans, care 
 not, if the potion has but its desired strength, 
 how deleterious may be the ingredients which 
 they use. Horrors at which the innocent heart 
 quails, and the healthy stomach heaves in 
 loathing, are among the least hurtful of their 
 stimulants. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 This, too, Sir Thomas, is no new evil. An ap- 
 petite for horrors is one of the diseased cravings 
 of tlie human mind; and in old times the trage- 
 dies which most abounded in them, were for that 
 reason the most popular. The dramatists of our 
 best age, great Ben and greater Shakspeare ex- 
 cepted, were guilty of a farther sin, with which 
 tlic writers whom you censure arc also to be
 
 CURRENT LITERATURE. 309 
 
 reproached ; they excited their auditors by the 
 representation of monstrous crimes, . . crimes out 
 of the course of nature. Such fables mio-ht Uxw- 
 fully be brought upon the Grecian stage, because 
 the belief of the people divested them of their 
 odious and dangerous character ; there they were 
 well known stories, regarded with a religious 
 persuasion of their truth ; and the personages, 
 being represented as under the over-ruling in- 
 fluence of dreadful Destiny, were regarded there- 
 fore with solemn commiseration, not as voluntary 
 and guilty agents. There is nothing of this to 
 palliate or excuse the production of such stories 
 in later times ; the choice, and, in a still greater 
 degree, the invention of any such, implies in the 
 author not merely a want of judgement, but a 
 defect in moral feeling. Here, however, the 
 dramatists of that age stopt. They desired to 
 excite in their audience the pleasure of horror, 
 and this was an abuse of the poet's art : but they 
 never aimed at disturbing their moral perceptions, 
 at presenting wickedness in an attractive form, 
 exciting sympathy with guilt, and admiration for 
 villainy, thereby confounding the distinctions 
 between right and wrong. This has been done 
 in our days ; and it has accorded so well with 
 the tendency of other things, that the moral drift 
 of a book is no long-er reo^arded, and the severest
 
 310 COPYRIGHT. 
 
 censure which can be past upon it is to say that 
 it is in bad taste ; such is the phrase, . . and the 
 phrase is not confined to books alone. Anything 
 may be written, said, or done, in bad feeling, and 
 with a wicked intent ; and the public are so to- 
 lerant of these, that he who should express a 
 displeasure on that score, would be censured for 
 bad taste himself! 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 And yet you talked of the improvement of the 
 age, and of the current literature as exceeding in 
 worth that of any former time ! 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 The portion of it which shall reach to future 
 times will justify me; for we have living minds 
 who have done their duty to their own age, and 
 to posterity. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Has the age, in return, done its duty to them ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 They complain not of the age, but they com- 
 pkiin of an anomalous injustice in the laws. 
 They complain that authors are deprived of a 
 perpetual property in the produce of their own 
 labours, when all other persons enjoy it as an 
 indefeasible and acknowledged right. And they 
 ask upon what principle, with what equity, or 
 under what pretence of public good they are
 
 COPYRIGHT. 
 
 311 
 
 subjected to this injurious enactment? Is it be- 
 cause their labour is so lig'ht, the endowments 
 which are required for it so common, the attain- 
 ments so cheaply and easily acquired, and the 
 present remuneration in all cases so adequate, so 
 ample, and so certain ? 
 
 The act whereby authors are deprived of that 
 property in their own works, which, upon every 
 principle of reason, natural justice, and common 
 law, they ought to enjoy, is so curiously injurious 
 in its operation, that it bears with most hardship 
 upon the best works. For books of great im 
 mediate popularity have their run, and come to 
 a dead stop : the hardship is upon those which 
 win their way slowly and difhcultly, but keep the 
 field at last. And it will not appear surprising 
 that this should generally have been the case 
 with books of the highest merit, if we consider 
 what obstacles to the success of a work may be 
 opposed by the circumstances and obscurity of 
 the author, when he presents himself as a candi- 
 date for fame, by the humour, or the fashion of 
 the times ; the taste of the public, . . more likely 
 to be erroneous than right at any time ; and the 
 incompetence, or personal malevolence of some 
 unprincipled critic, who may take upon himself 
 to guide the public opinion, and who, if he feels 
 in his own heart that the fame of the man whom
 
 312 COPYRIGHT. 
 
 he hates is invuhierable, lays in wait for that 
 reason the more vigilantly to wound him in his 
 fortunes. In such cases, when the copyright, as 
 by the existing law, departs from the author's 
 family at his death, or at the end of twenty-eight 
 years from the first publication of every work, 
 (if he dies before the expiration of that term,) his 
 representatives are deprived of their property 
 just as it would begin to prove a valuable in- 
 heritance. 
 
 The last descendants of Milton died in poverty. 
 The descendants of Shakspeare are living in 
 poverty, and in the lowest condition of life. Is 
 this just to these individuals? Is it grateful to 
 the memory of those who are the pride and boast 
 of their country ? Is it honourable or becoming 
 to us as a nation, holding, . . the better part of us 
 assuredly, and the majority affecting to hold, . . 
 the names of Shakspeare and Milton in venera- 
 tion? To have placed the descendants of Shak- 
 speare and Milton in respectability and comfort, 
 . . in that sphere of life where, with a full pro- 
 vision for our natural wants and social enjoyments, 
 free scope is given to the growth of our intellec- 
 tual and immortal part, simple justice was all that 
 wns ro([uircd ; . . only that they should have pos- 
 sessed tlic perpetual copyright of their ancestors' 
 works, . . only that they should not have been 
 dej)rived of their proper inheritance.
 
 COPYRIGHT. 3 1 3 
 
 The decision which time pronounces upon the 
 reputation of authors, and upon the permanent 
 rank which they are to hold in the estimation of 
 posterity, is unerring* and final. Restore to them 
 that perpetuity in the property of their works, of 
 which the law has deprived them, and the reward 
 of literary labour will ultimately be in just pro- 
 portion to its deserts. 
 
 However slight might be the hope of obtaining 
 any speedy redress, there is some satisfaction in 
 earnestly protesting against this injustice. And, 
 believing as I do, that if society continues to 
 improve, no injustice will long be permitted to 
 continue after it has been fairly exposed, and 
 is clearly apprehended, I cannot but believe 
 that a time must come wdien the rights of lite- 
 rature will be acknowledged, and its wrongs re- 
 dressed ; and that those authors hereafter who 
 shall deserve well of posterity, will have no cause 
 to reproach themselves for having sacrificed the 
 interests of their children when they disregarded 
 the pursuit of fortune for themselves.
 
 314 
 
 COLLOQUY XV. 
 
 THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Here, Sir Thomas, is the opinion which I have 
 attempted to maintain concerning the progress 
 and tendency of society, placed in a proper 
 position, and inexpugnably entrenched there 
 according to the rules of art, by the ablest of 
 all moral engineers. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Who may this political Achilles be whom 
 you have called in to your assistance ? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 Whom Fortune rather has sent to my aid, for 
 my reading has never been in such authors. I 
 have endeavoured always to drink from the spring- 
 head, but never ventured out to fish in the deep 
 waters. Thor, himself, when he had hooked 
 the Great Serpent, was unable to draw him up 
 from the abyss. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The waters in which you have now been ang-
 
 KANT. 315 
 
 ling have been shallow enough, if the pamph- 
 let in your hand is, as it appears to be, a 
 magazine. 
 
 MONfESINOS. 
 
 ' Ego sum is,' said Scaliger*, * qui ab omnibus 
 ' discere volo ; neqiie tarn malum librum esse piito, 
 ' ex quo lion aliquem fnictum colligere possum.' I 
 think myself repaid, in a monkish legend, for 
 examining a mass of inane fiction, if I discover 
 a single passage which elucidates the real his- 
 tory or manners of its age. In old poets of the 
 third and fourth order we are contented with a 
 little ore, and a great deal of dross. And so in 
 publications of this kind, prejudicial as they are 
 to public taste and public feeling, and therefore 
 deeply injurious to the real interests of litera- 
 ture, something may sometimes be found to com- 
 pensate for the trash and tinsel and insolent flip- 
 pancy, which are now become the staple com- 
 modities of such journals. This number con- 
 tains Kant's idea of a Universal History on a 
 Cosmo-Political plan; and that Kant is as pro- 
 found a philosopher as his disciples have pro- 
 claimed him to be, this little treatise would 
 fully convince me, if I had not already believed 
 it, in reliance upon one of the very few men 
 
 * Epist. 59. p. 172
 
 316 KANTS PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 who are capable of forming a judg-ment upon 
 such a writer. 
 
 The sum of his argument is this : that as 
 deaths, births, and marriages, and the oscilla- 
 tions of the weather, irregular as they seem to 
 be in themselves, are, nevertheless, reduceable 
 upon the great scale to certain rules ; so tliere 
 may be discovered in the course of human his- 
 tory, a steady and continuous, though slow de- 
 velopement of certain great predispositions in 
 human nature : and that although men neither 
 act under the law of instinct like brute animals, 
 nor under the law of a preconcerted plan like 
 rational cosmopolites, tlie great current of human 
 actions flows in a regular stream of tendency to- 
 ward this developement : individuals and nations, 
 while pursuing their own peculiar and often 
 contradictory purposes, following the guidance 
 of a great natural purpose, and thus promoting 
 a process, which even if they perceived it, they 
 would little regard. What that process is he 
 states in the following series of propositions : — 
 
 1st. All tendencies of any creature, to which 
 it is predisposed by nature, are destined in the 
 end to develope themselves perfectly, and agree- 
 ably to their final purpose. 
 
 2d. In man, as the sole rational creature 
 upon earth, those tendencies which have the
 
 KANT'S PROPOSITIONS. 317 
 
 use of his reason for their object are destined to 
 obtain their perfect developement in the species 
 only, and not in the individual. 
 
 3d. It is the will of nature that man should 
 owe to himself alone everything which trans- 
 cends the mere mechanic constitution of his 
 animal existence, and that he should be suscep- 
 tible of no other happiness or perfection than 
 what he has created for himself, instinct apart, 
 through his own reason. 
 
 4th. The means which nature employs to bring 
 about the developement of all the tendencies 
 she has laid in man, is the antagonism of those 
 tendencies in the social state, . . no farther, how- 
 ever, than to that point at which this antago- 
 nism becomes the cause of social arrangements 
 founded in law. 
 
 5th. The highest problem for the human spe- 
 cies, to the solution of which it is irresistibly 
 urged by natural impulses, is the establishment 
 of a universal civil society, founded on the 
 empire of political justice. 
 
 6th. This problem is, at the same time, the 
 most difficult of all, and the one which is latest 
 solved by man. 
 
 7th. The problem of the establishment of a 
 perfect constitution of society depends upon the 
 problem of a system of international relations,
 
 318 KANTS PROPOSITIONS, 
 
 adjusted to law, and apart from this latter pro- 
 blem cannot be solved. 
 
 8tli. The history of the human race, as a 
 whole, may be regarded as the unravelling of a 
 hidden plan of nature for accomplishing a per- 
 fect state of civil constitution for society in its 
 internal relations, (and as the condition of that, 
 by the last proposition, in its external relations 
 also,) as the sole state of society in which the 
 tendencies of human nature can be all and fully 
 developed. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 This is indeed a master of the sentences, upon 
 whose text it may be profitable to dwell. Let 
 us look to his propositions. From the first this 
 conclusion must follow ; that as nature has given 
 man all his faculties for use, any system of 
 society in which the moral and intellectual powers 
 of any portion of the people are left undeve- 
 loped for want of cultivation, or receive a per- 
 verse direction, is plainly opposed to the system 
 of Nature, in other words, to the will of God. 
 Is there any Government upon earth that will 
 bear this test? 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 I should rather ask of you, . . will there ever 
 be one ?
 
 KANT'S PROPOSITIONS. 319 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Not till there be a system of Government, con- 
 ducted in strict conformity to the precepts of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 Offer these truths to Power, will she obey ? 
 It prunes her pomp, perchance ploughs up the root. 
 
 Lord Brooke. 
 
 Yet in conformity to those principles alone it 
 is that subjects can find their perfect welfare, 
 and states their full security. Christianity may 
 be long in obtaining the victory over the powers 
 of this world, but when that consummation shall 
 have taken place, the converse of his second 
 proposition will hold good ; for the species hav- 
 ing obtained its perfect developement, the con- 
 dition of society must then be such, that indi- 
 viduals will obtain it also as a necessary con- 
 sequence. 
 
 SIR THOMAS IMORE. 
 
 Here you and your Philosopher part company. 
 For he asserts that man is left to deduce from 
 his own unassisted reason every thing which 
 relates not to his mere material nature. 
 
 MONTESINOS. 
 
 There, indeed, I must diverge from him ; and 
 what in his language is called the hidden plan of 
 Nature, in mine will be the revealed will of God.
 
 320 DANGERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The will is revealed ; but the plan is hidden. 
 Let man dutifully obey that will, and the per- 
 fection of society and of human nature will be the 
 result of such obedience; but upon obedience 
 they depend. Blessings and curses are set be- 
 fore you, . . for nations as for individuals, . . yea 
 for the human race. 
 
 Flatter not yourself with delusive expecta- 
 tions ! The end may be according to your hope ; 
 whether it will be so, (which God grant !) is 
 as inscrutable for Angels as for men. But to 
 descry that great struggles are yet to come is 
 within reach of human foresight, .. that great tri- 
 bulations must needs accompany them, . . and that 
 these may be . . you know not how near at hand ! 
 
 Throughout what is called the Christian world 
 there will be a contest between Impiety and 
 Religion ; the former everywhere is gathering 
 strength, and wherever it breaks loose the foun- 
 dations of human societv will be shaken. Do 
 not suppose that you are safe from this danger 
 because you are blessed with a pure creed, a 
 reformed ritual, and a tolerant Church ! Even 
 here the standard of impiety has been set up ; 
 und the drummers who beat the march of intel- 
 lect through your streets, lanes, and market- 
 places, are enlisted under it.
 
 DANGERS OF SOCIETY. 321 
 
 The struggle between Popery and Protestantism 
 is renewed. And let no man deceive himself by 
 a vain reliance upon the increased knowledge, or 
 Unproved humanity of the times ! Wickedness 
 is ever the same ; and vou never were in so much 
 dano-er from moral weakness. 
 
 Co-existent with these struggles is that be- 
 tween the feudal system of society as variously 
 modified throughout Europe, and the levelling 
 principle of democracy. That principle is ac- 
 tively and indefatigably at work in these king- 
 doms, allying itself as occasion may serve with 
 Popery or with Dissent, with Atheism or with 
 Fanaticism, with Profligacy or with Hypocrisy, 
 ready confederates, each having its own sinister 
 views, but all acting to one straight forward end. 
 Your rulers meantime seem to be trying that 
 experiment with the British Constitution which 
 Mithridates is said to have tried upon his own ; 
 they suffer poison to be administered in daily 
 doses, as if they expected that by such a course 
 the public mind would at length be rendered 
 poison-proof ! 
 
 The first of these struggles will affect all 
 Christendom ; the third may once again shake 
 the monarchies of Europe. The second will be 
 felt widely ; but nowhere with more violence than 
 in Ireland, that unhappy country, wherein your 
 
 VOL. ir. Y
 
 322 D-\NGERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Government, after the most impolitic measures 
 into which weakness was ever deluded or pusil- 
 lanimity intimidated, seems to have abdicated 
 its functions, contenting itself with the semblance 
 of an authority which it has wanted either wis- 
 dom or courao'C to exert. 
 
 There is a fourth danger, the growth of your 
 \^ manufacturing system ; and this is peculiarly 
 your own. You have a great and increasing po- 
 pulation, exposed at all times by the fluctuations 
 of trade to suffer the severest privations in the 
 midst of a rich and luxurious society, under little 
 or no restraint from religious principle, and if 
 not absolutely disaffected to the institutions of 
 the country, certainly not attached to them: a 
 class of men aware of their numbers and of their 
 strength ; experienced in all the details of com- 
 bination ; improvident when they are in the re- 
 ceipt of good wages, yet feeling themselves in- 
 jured when those wages, during some failure of 
 demand, are so lowered as no longer to afford 
 the means of comfortable subsistence ; and di- 
 recting against the Government and the laws of 
 the country their resentment and indignation for 
 the evils which have been brought upon them 
 by competition and the spirit of rivalry in trade. 
 They have among them intelligent heads and 
 daring minds ; and you have already seen how
 
 DANGERS OF SOCIETY. 323 
 
 perilously they may be wrought upon by sedi- 
 tious journalists and seditious orators, in a time 
 of distress. 
 
 On what do you rely for security against these 
 dangers ? On public opinion ? You might as 
 well calculate upon the constancy of wind and 
 weather in this uncertain climate. On the pro- 
 gress of knowledge? it is such knowledge as 
 serves only to facilitate the course of delusion. 
 On the laws 1 the law, which should be like a 
 sword in a strong hand, is weak as a bulrush if 
 it be feebly administered in time of danger. On 
 the people ? they are divided. On the Parlia- 
 ment? every faction will be fully and formidably 
 represented there. On the Government? it suf- 
 fers itself to be insulted and defied at home, and 
 abroad it has shown itself incapable of maintain- 
 ing the relations of peace and amity with its 
 allies, so far has it been divested of power by 
 the usurpation of the press. It is at peace with 
 Spain, and it is at peace with Turkey ; and 
 althouo^h no o-overnment was ever more desirous 
 of acting with good faith, its subjects are openly 
 assisting the Greeks with men and money against 
 the one, and the Spanish Americans against the 
 other. Athens, in the most turbulent times of 
 its democracy, was not more effectually domi- 
 neered over by its demagogues than you are by 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 DANGERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 the press, . . a press which is not only without 
 restraint, but without responsibility ; and in the 
 management of which those men will always 
 have most power M'ho have least probity, and 
 have most completely divested themselves of all 
 sense of honour, and all regard for truth. 
 
 The root of all your evils is in the sinfulness 
 of the nation. The principle of duty is weak- 
 ened among you ; that of moral obligation is 
 loosened ; that of religious obedience is de- 
 stroyed. Look at the worldliness of all classes, 
 . . the greediness of the rich . . the misery of the 
 poor, .. and the appalling depravity* which is 
 spreading among the lower classes through town 
 and country ; . . a depravity which proceeds un- 
 checked because of the total want of discipline, 
 and for which there is no other corrective than 
 Avhat may be supplied by fanaticism, which is 
 itself an evil. 
 
 If tliere be nothing exaggerated in this repre- 
 sentation, you must acknowledge that though the 
 human race, considered upon the great scale, 
 
 * The Rejjort of llic (loiiiniittee for inquiring into llu; 
 cause of the increase of Conimitments and Convictions in 
 Lijuiloii and Middlesex, states, that notwitiistandiui^ all we 
 hi-iir of scliools and the j)rogress of education, juvenile de- 
 pravity was never so unlimited in decree, or so desjierate in 
 character.
 
 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 325 
 
 should be proceeding toward the perfectibility 
 for which it may be designed, the present as- 
 pects in these kingdoms are nevertheless rather 
 for evil than for good . . . Sum you up now upon 
 the hopeful side. 
 
 MONTESIXOS. 
 
 First, then, I rest in a humble but firm re- 
 liance upon that Providence which sometimes in 
 its mercy educes from the errors of men a hap- 
 pier issue than could ever have been attained 
 by their wisdom ; . . that Providence which has 
 delivered this nation from so many and such 
 imminent dangers heretofore. 
 
 Looking, then, to human causes, there is hope 
 to be derived from the humanizing eifects of lite- 
 rature, which has now first begun to act upon all 
 ranks. Good principles are indeed used as the 
 stalking horse under cover of which pernicious 
 designs may be advanced ; but the better seeds 
 are thus disseminated and fructify after the ill 
 design has failed. 
 
 The cruelties of the old criminal law have 
 been abrogated. Debtors are no longer indis- 
 criminately punished by indefinite imprisonment. 
 The iniquity of the slave trade has been acknow- 
 ledged, and put an end to, so far as the power of 
 this country extends ; and although slavery is 
 still tolerated, and must be so for awhile, mea-*
 
 326 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 
 
 sures have been taken for alleviating it while it 
 continues, and preparing the way for its gradual 
 and safe removal. These are good works of the 
 Government. And when I look upon the con 
 duct of that Government in all its foreign rela- 
 tions, though there may be some things to 
 disapprove, and some sins of omission to regret, 
 it has been, on the whole, so disinterested, so 
 magnanimous, so just, that this reflection gives 
 me a reasonable, and a religious ground of hope. 
 And the reliance is strengthened when I call 
 to mind that missionaries from Great Britain are 
 at this hour employed in spreading the glad 
 tidings of the Gospel far and wide among hea- 
 then nations. 
 
 Descending from these wider views to the 
 details of society, there, too, I perceive ground, 
 if not for confidence, at least for hope. There 
 is a general desire throughout the higher ranks 
 for bettering the condition of the poor, a subject 
 to which the Government also has directed its 
 patient attention : minute inquiries have been 
 made into their existing state, and the increase 
 of pauperism and of crimes. In no other country 
 have the wounds of the commonwealth Ijeen so 
 carefully probed. By means of colonization, of 
 an improved parocliial order, and of a more 
 efficient police, the further increase of these evils
 
 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 327 
 
 may be prevented; while, by education, by pro- 
 viding means of religious instruction for all, by 
 Saving-Banks, and perhaps by the establishment 
 of Owenite communities among themselves, the 
 labourins: classes will have their comforts en- 
 larged, and their well-being secured, if they are 
 not wanting to themselves in prudence and good 
 conduct. A beginning has been made, . . an 
 impulse given : it may be hoped . . . almost, I will 
 say, it may be expected . . . that in a few genera- 
 tions this whole class will be placed within the 
 reach of moral and intellectual gratifications, 
 whereby they may be rendered healthier, hap- 
 pier, better in all respects, an improvement 
 which will be not more beneficial to them as 
 individuals, than to the whole body of the com- 
 monweal. 
 
 The diffusion of literature, though it has ren- 
 dered the acquirement of general knowledge 
 impossible, and tends inevitably to diminish the 
 number of sound scholars, while it increases the 
 multitude of sciolists, carries with it a beneficial 
 influence to the lower classes. Our booksellers 
 already perceive that it is their interest to pro- 
 vide cheap publications for a wide public, instead 
 of looking to the rich alone as their customers. 
 There is reason to expect that, in proportion as 
 this is done, . . in proportion as the common peo-
 
 328 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 
 
 pie are supplied with wholesome entertainment, 
 (and wholesome it is, if it be only harmless) they 
 will be less liable to be acted upon by fanaticism 
 and sedition. 
 
 You have not exao-o-erated the influence of the 
 newspaper press, nor the profligacy of some of 
 those persons by whom this unrestrained and 
 irresponsible power is exercised. Nevertheless 
 it has done and is doino; o-reat and essential 
 good. The greatest evils in society proceed 
 from the abuse of power; and this, though abun- 
 dantly manifested in the newspapers themselves, 
 they prevent in other quarters. No man engaged 
 in public life could venture now upon such trans- 
 actions as no one, in their station, half a century 
 ago, would have been ashamed of. There is an 
 end of that scandalous jobbing which at that 
 time existed in eveiy department of the state, 
 and in every branch of the public service ; and 
 a check is imposed upon any scandalous and 
 unfit promotion, civil or ecclesiastical. By what- 
 ever persons the government may be adminis- 
 tered, they are now well aware tliat they must 
 do nothing which will Jiot boar daylight and 
 strict investigation. The magistrates also are 
 closely observed by tliis self-constituted ccnsor- 
 shij) ; ;iih1 llic inferior officers cannot escape 
 exposure for any perversion of justice, or undue
 
 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 329 
 
 exei'cise of authority. Public nuisances are 
 abated by the same means, and public griev- 
 ances, which the legislature might else overlook, 
 are forced upon its attention. Thus, in ordinarv 
 times, the utility of this branch of the press is so 
 great, that one of the worst evils to be appre- 
 hended from the abuse of its power at all times, 
 and the wicked purposes to which it is directed 
 in dangerous ones, is the ultimate loss of a liberty 
 which is essential to the public good, but which, 
 when it passes into licentiousness, and effects the 
 overthrow of a state, perishes in the ruin it has 
 brought on. 
 
 In the fine arts, as well as in literature, a 
 levelling principle is going on, fatal perhaps to 
 excellence, but favourable to mediocrity. Such 
 facilities are afforded to imitative talent, that 
 whatever is imitable will be imitated. Genius 
 will often be suppressed by this_, and when it 
 exerts itself, will find it far more difiicult to 
 obtain notice than in former times. There is 
 the evil here, that ingenious persons are seduced 
 into a profession which is already crowded with 
 unfortunate adventurers ; but, on the other hand, 
 there is a great increase of individual and do- 
 mestic enjoyment. Accomplishments which were 
 almost exclusively professional in the last ao-e, 
 are now to be found in every family within a
 
 330 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 
 
 certain rank of life. Wherever there is a dispo- 
 sition for the art of design, it is cultivated ; and 
 in consequence of the general proficiency in this 
 most useful of the fine arts, travellers represent 
 to our view the manners and scenery of the 
 countries which they visit, as well by the pencil 
 as the pen. By means of two fortunate dis- 
 coveries in the art of engraving, these graphic 
 representations are brought within the reach of 
 whole classes who were formerly precluded by 
 the expense of such things from these sources of 
 gratification and instruction. Artists and en- 
 gravers of great name are now, like authors and 
 booksellers, induced to employ themselves for 
 this lower and wider sphere of purchasers. In 
 all this I see the cause as well as the eflfect of a 
 progressive refinement, which must be beneficial 
 in many ways. This very diffusion of cheap 
 books and cheap prints may, in its natural con- 
 sequences, operate rather to diminish than to 
 increase the number of adventurers in literature 
 and iu the arts. For though at first it will 
 create employment for greater numbers, yet in 
 another generation imitative talent will become 
 so common, that neither parents nor possessors 
 \\\\\ mistake it for an indication of extraordinary 
 genius, and many will thus be saved from a 
 ruinous delusion. More pictures will be painted,
 
 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 331 
 
 but fewer exhibited,, .more poetry written, but 
 less published : and in both arts, talents which 
 might else have been carried to an overstocked 
 and unprofitable market, will be cultivated for 
 their own sakes, and for the gratification of pri- 
 vate circles, becoming thus a source of sure en- 
 joyment, and indirectly of moral good. Scientific 
 pursuits will, in like manner, be extended, and 
 pursuits which partake of science, and afford 
 pleasures within the reach of humble life. 
 
 Here, then, is good in progress which will 
 hold on its course, and the growth of which will 
 only be suspended, not destroyed, during any of 
 those political convulsions which may too pro- 
 bably be apprehended ; . .too probably, I say, be- 
 cause when you call upon me to consider the 
 sinfulness of this nation, my heart fails. There 
 can be no health, no soundness in the state, till 
 Government shall regard the moral improvement 
 of the people as its first great duty. The same 
 remedy is required for the rich and for the poor. 
 Relio'ion ouofht to be so blended with the whole 
 course of instruction, that its doctrines and pre- 
 cepts should indeed ' drop as the rain, and distil 
 * as the dew, as the small rain upon the tende - 
 ' herb, and as the showers upon the grass ;' . . the 
 young plants would then imbibe it, and the heart 
 and intellect assimilate it with their growth.
 
 332 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 
 
 We are, in a great degree, what our institutions 
 make us. Gracious God ! were those institutions 
 adapted to Thy Avill and word, . . were we but 
 broken in from chiklliood to Thy easy yoke,.. 
 were we but carefully instructed to believe and 
 obey, , . in that obedience and belief we should 
 surely find our temporal welfare and our eternal 
 liappiness ! 
 
 Here, indeed, I tremble at the prospect ! Could 
 I look beyond the clouds and the darkness which 
 close upon it, I should then think that there may 
 come a time when that scheme for a perpetual 
 peace among the states of Christendom which 
 Henri IV. formed, and wdiicli has been so ably 
 digested by the Abbe St. Pierre, will no longer 
 be regarded as the speculation of a visionary. 
 The Holy Alliance, imperfect and unstable as it 
 is, is in itself a recognition of the principle. At 
 this day it would be practicable, if one part of 
 Europe were as well prepared for it as the other ; 
 but this cannot be, till good shall have tri- 
 umphed over evil in the struggles which are 
 brooding, or shall have obtained such a predo- 
 minance as to allay the conllict of opinions be- 
 fore it breaks into open war. 
 
 God in his mercy grant that it be so! If I 
 looked to secondary causes alone, my fears would 
 preponderate. But 1 conclude as I began, in
 
 HOPES OF SOCIETY. 
 
 333 
 
 firm reliance upon Him who is the beginning 
 and the end. Our sins are manifold ; our danger 
 is great ; but His mercy is infinite. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Rest there in full faith. I leave you to your 
 dreams ; draw from them what comfort you can. 
 And now, my friend, farewell ! 
 
 The look which he fixed on me, as he dis- 
 appeared, was compassionate and thoughtful ; it 
 impressed me with a sad feeling, as if I were 
 not to see him ag-ain till we should meet in the 
 w^orld of spirits.
 
 APPENDIX.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Protestant Sisters of Charity. 
 Vol. II. p. 223. 
 
 " My friend C is a country clerg\'man. In his youth 
 
 he was an officer in the amiy, and served during several cam- 
 paigns in the late war in tlie Peninsula. Having a pleasing 
 figure and countenance, very animated manners, an amiable 
 disposition, and l)uoyant spirits, he was a great favourite both 
 with men and women in the numerous circle of his acquaint- 
 ance, and indulged in all that gaiety and dissipation for which 
 the warm southern nations of the continent offer such tempt- 
 ing and boundless opportunities. At the conclusion of the 
 war, he quitted the army, looked round for a profession, and, 
 unsuitable as it may appear, fixed on the church ; and having 
 
 passed the requisite time at College, Cambridge, in 
 
 lionest and earnest study, he took orders, married, and ob- 
 tained a curacy. He is now living in the retired and beautiful 
 
 village of , in the county of . The contemplations 
 
 and active duties of religion have generated in him a mood of 
 mind adapted to his holy office. He is naturally eloquent ; 
 he has a ready command of language — a warm and tender 
 heart, which often trembles in his voice during the more touch- 
 ing and empassioned parts of his sermons. His congregation, 
 of course, think him the most eloquent of preachers. But this 
 is not all : to the distressed he is active in giving and pro- 
 curing relief — to the sick, or those in sorrow, in offering 
 support and consolation — in short, he is an excellent parish 
 priest. In talking about the contrast between his past and 
 present modes of life, he often declares that he was never 
 happy till now, and that although his income is so narrow as 
 to require the utmost frugality to render it equal to his ex- 
 penses, he would not exchange the tranquil happiness which 
 
 VOL. II. Z
 
 338 APPENDIX. 
 
 lie derives from the (hities, the contemplations, and tlie pro- 
 spects of religion, for all the splendid gaiety, the intoxicating 
 excitement, and the lavish expenses of his youth. He some- 
 times comes to town to visit me. On one of these occasions 
 he was complaining of the difficulty of procuring medical at- 
 tendance for the sick poor of his parish, many of whom lived 
 far from the town where the parish surgeon resides. The 
 surgeon himself was too busy in visiting his rich patients — his 
 assistant was ignorant and inattentive — and my friend was 
 convinced that his poor sick flock often suffered a length of 
 illness, and sometimes death, which earlier and better care 
 might have prevented. This gave him great pain, and he 
 was wishing that it was possible to procure a few women of 
 a superior order to the generality of nurses, and taught by 
 a residence in the hospitals to recognize and relieve the most 
 common kinds of illness. ' They should be,' he added, ' ani- 
 mated with religion. Science and mere humanity cannot be 
 relied on. An order of women such as these, distributed 
 among the country parishes in the kingdom, would be of in- 
 calculable value. It was formerly the boast of the Catholics 
 that the Protestants had no missionaries. That boast is 
 silenced, but they may still affirm that Protestantism has not 
 yet produced her Sisters of Charity.' 
 
 " When I was in Flanders a short time ago, I saw at Bruges 
 and Ghent some of this singular and useful order of Nuns — 
 they are all of a respectable station in society, and I was told 
 that it is not uncommon for the females of the most wealthy, 
 and even noble families, voluntarily to quit the world and its 
 pleasures, and enter this order, and dedicate themselves to 
 the most menial attendance on the sick. I went one morning 
 to the hospital at Bruges ; all the nurses are ' Beguines,' 
 and it was a striking sight to see these women, whose coun- 
 tenances, manners, and a something in the quality, or clean- 
 ness of their stifi" white hoods, and black russet gowns, ex- 
 ])ressive of a station suj)eri()r to their office, one with a pail in 
 her hand, another down on her knees washing the floor of the 
 chaj)el. The ])hysician to the hospital sj)oke in the highest 
 terms of the humility and tenderness with which they nursed
 
 APPENDIX. 339 
 
 his patients. When I fell ill myself, wliich I did during my 
 stay in this town, I was near having a Sister of Charity for 
 my nurse. 
 
 " My friend is right. The attendants on the sick, wliether 
 professional or menial, are commonly actuated by scientific 
 zeal, by mere natural humanity, or by mercenary motives ; 
 but these cannot be trusted to for steady attention — the one 
 subsides with the solution of a question, the other hardens by 
 habit, the last requires jealous inspection — there are long in- 
 tervals of indifference, and apathy, and inattention — we want 
 an actuating motive of a more steady and enduring nature, 
 which requires neither curiosity, nor emotion, nor avarice to 
 keep it alive, which still burns in the most tranquil states of 
 mind, and out of the reach of human inspection, and this 
 motive is religion. 
 
 " I have often seen, and still often see (for I must let out 
 the secret that I am a physician), cases in which the sufferings 
 of illness are much increased, and I have every reason to be- 
 lieve the chances of recovery much diminished by a want of 
 persevering attention to the sick ; but an example occurred 
 to me when I was a young man, which at the time when it 
 happened affected me much, and has left on my mind an 
 indelible impression. AVhilst I was a student at the university 
 
 of , and during one Oi the long vacations wliich I was 
 
 spending at ■ on the coast of , an English frigate 
 
 captured a French frigate, brought her into the roads, and the 
 sick and wounded were sent on shore to a temporary hospital 
 which was fitted up for the purpose. As the ordinary medical 
 attendants were insufficient to attend upon the sufferers, others 
 were invited to assist them, and I was entrusted with the 
 care of two small wards, one of them full of Frenchmen. 
 They were an orderly and peaceable set of men, received the 
 attentions which I paid them with thankfulness, and when 
 those who were cured were sent from the hospital to the 
 prison, they used to come to me before departing, in a cluster, 
 with a spokesman at their head, who, with an air of courtesy 
 which is seldom seen among English sailors, expressed the 
 general gratitude of the whole parly for the huaianity witli 
 
 z 2
 
 340 APPENDIX. 
 
 which tlicy had been attended. Among these poor fellows 
 there was one who excited unusual interest in me — his name 
 was Pierre * * * * ; he was a tall slender young man, about 
 two and twenty years of age, with a sallow countenance, a 
 full dark eye, and hair of the deepest black. You would 
 have been certain that he was a foreigner, and have guessed 
 that he was an Italian — he had received a severe wound in 
 his right leg, which had affected the knee with pain and 
 swelling. The principal surgeons at the hospital deliberated 
 whether or no to remove the limb ; a humane desire to save 
 it if possible, led them to postpone the operation for several 
 weeks, but the time at length arrived when it was obviously 
 necessary to sacrifice tlie limb, in order to save his life, and 
 the operation was ])crformed above the knee. Pierre went 
 through it with admirable firmness — I had the command of 
 the tourniquet. After the removal of the limb the blood- 
 vessels were secured with ligatures — the wound was closed 
 and bandaged, a cotton night-cap was drawn over the stump, 
 and poor Pierre was lifted from tlic operation-table, and 
 gently placed in a warm, clean, comfortable bed. For several 
 weeks his chief suffering had been pain in the knee. In the 
 evening after the operation I went to see him, and as I entered 
 the ward, I heard him comjjlaining aloud of })ain in the knee. 
 I told him it was impossibh; that he could have pain in that 
 knee, as it had been cut oft" in the morning, but tliis did not 
 satisfy him ; he still called out loudly about i)ain in his knee. 
 I lii'ted up the bed-clothes, and shewed him that his knee was 
 gone ; he looked at it for a moment, and then raising his eyes, 
 earnestly said, ' Then it is the ghost of my knee.' The truth 
 is, that he really felt pain ; but by an error which surgeons 
 often witness, and metaphysicians have often described, re- 
 ferred it to a part which was gone. 
 
 " The stump healed slowly ; at length it did heal, but now 
 wc had a new difficulty to encounter. From long lying in 
 bed upon his back, the skin on the loins began to come off, 
 first in liule ])!aces, which, gradually extending, joined, and 
 formcrl a large wound ; and this began to slough, as surgeons 
 called it, that is, portions of the flesli died and fell away. What
 
 APPENDIX. 341 
 
 was to be done ? As long as he continued to lie on liis back, 
 the pressure on the flesh, which was able to cause this ulcera- 
 tion, would, of course, be able to prevent its healing. No 
 good was to be hoped for unless we could lift him off" his 
 back. I need not relate the difficulties which I encountered 
 in this task, the various contrivances which I employed, and 
 the pains and time which I spent in effecting my object ; but 
 I did eff"ect it. I so adjusted his bed and pillows, that one 
 day he lay on one side, another day on the other, and never 
 on his back. The consequence was, that the ulceration and 
 sloughing stopped ; the wound began to look healthy, filled 
 up with new flesh, then skinned over; and at the same time 
 Pierre was recovering his health and looks ; he slept well, 
 enjoyed his food, gained flesh, and began to look another 
 man. The wound was nearly healed, when, just at this 
 critical period, the time arrived for my return to the Univer- 
 sity ; and I took leave of poor Pierre and my other patients. 
 I did not, however, go straight to the university, but went first 
 to spend ten days or a fortnight with my relations. As I 
 WTite this I feel a pang of self-reproach. On my way to the 
 university I had to go back through the town, and, of course, 
 visited the hospital to see how my patients were going on. 
 That visit was a painful one. I shall never forget it. During 
 my absence Pierre had fallen under the care of a young man, 
 an assistant-surgeon, who, although good tempered, and not 
 deficient in sense or in knowledge of his profession, was in- 
 corrigibly indolent and inattentive. Pierre was allowed to 
 roll on his back again ; the young skin and flesh soon ulcerated 
 and sloughed ; a hectic fever followed ; he lost his appetite, 
 and wasted to a skeleton. He was in this state when I 
 returned and visited the hospital. As I opened the door of 
 the ward in which Pierre lay, it so happened that his eyes, 
 always large and prominent, but now larger and more promi- 
 nent from the emaciated appearance of his fiice, were turned 
 towards the door, and he instantly caught sight of me. Poor 
 fellow ! I think I now see him first lay his left cheek on his 
 pillow, then turn his face toward me again, clasp his hands, 
 burst into tears, and exclaim that he should now die happy.
 
 342 APPENDIX. 
 
 He had been for some days aware of his approaching disso- 
 lution, had been writing verses on me in French, aiid re- 
 peatedly expressed a hope tliat he should live till I returned, 
 tliat he micht see me once more, and take leave of me for 
 ever. He had his wish, and that was all. He died that niglit. 
 " Let the Church, or if not, let that class of Christians in 
 whom, above all others, religion is not a mere Sunday cere- 
 mony, but tlie daily and hourly principle of their thoughts 
 and actions, and of whom I have only to complain for a little 
 error in doctrine, and more than a little cant at least in lan- 
 guage, which latter peculiarity is perpetually preventing the 
 success of their religious appeals, at least to educated minds, 
 and which is as great an obstacle to the first steps in religion 
 as technical jargon to the first steps in science — let all serious 
 Christians, I say, join, and found an order of women like the 
 Sisters of Charity in Catholic countries ; let them be selected 
 for good plain sense, kindness of disposition, indefatigable 
 mdustry, and deep piety ; let them receive not a technical 
 and scientific, but a practical medical education ; for this pur- 
 pose, let them be placed both as nurses and pupils in the hos- 
 pitals of Edinburgh or London, or in the county hospitals ; 
 let their attention be pointed by the attending physician 
 to the particular symptoms by which he distinguishes the 
 disease ; let them be made as familiar with the best remedies, 
 which arc always few, as they are with barlev- water, gruel, 
 and beef-tea. Let them learn the rules by which these reme- 
 dies are to be employed : let them be examined frequently on 
 these subjects, in order to see tliat they carry these rules 
 clearly in their heads ; let books be framed for them, con- 
 taining the essential rides of practice, briefly, clearly, and 
 untechnically written ; let such women, thus educated, be 
 distributed among the country ])arishes of the kingdom, and 
 be maintained by the parish allowance, which now goes to the 
 parish surgeon, who should be resorted to only in di/Iicult 
 cases ; let them be examined every half year by competent 
 physicians about the state of their medical knowledge ; let 
 this be done, and I fearlessly predict that my friend, and all 
 those who are similarly situated, and zealous with himself,
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 343 
 
 will no longer complain that their sick flock suffered from 
 medical neglect. 
 
 " It may be objected, that women with such an education 
 would form a bad substitute for a scientific medical attendant. 
 Be it remembered, however, that the choice is not between 
 such women and a profound and perfect physician or surgeon, 
 (if there is such a person,) but between such women and the 
 ordinary run of country apothecaries ; the latter labouring 
 under the additional disadvantage of wanting time for the ap- 
 plication of what skill they have." 
 
 Medical Attendance on the Country Poor. 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " Tliose who live much in the country, at a distance from 
 towns and cities, especially parish priests, charitable ladies, 
 and that hard-working and useful class of medical men, who, 
 in a worldly point of view, may be said to have the misfortune 
 to have settled in these thinly-peopled districts, well know the 
 deplorable medical attendance which the poor receive in sick- 
 ness. Those who live in cities or large towns are generally 
 near some hospital, infirmary, or dispensary, where they find 
 as good medical attendance for nothing as those above them 
 in society can procure for money — less ceremoniously admi- 
 nistered, it is true, but in all essential respects as good. But 
 what is the condition of the poor man, whose self, or whose 
 family, is overtaken by sickness in the country ? He is at a 
 distance from the surgeon of the neighbouring town — he is 
 too poor to pay for advice from such a distance — he applies 
 to the parish, and receives from the overseers an order for the 
 attendance of the parish surgeon. What this attendanc,e is 
 may be learnt, partly fi-om the way in which it is purchased, 
 and partly from the experience of those who have witnessed it. 
 Now, on these topics, the best sources of information are 
 country clergymen and country surgeons ; and to such per- 
 sons I turn with this remark, that 1 know enough from my 
 own experience to bear out their statements.
 
 344 APPENDIX. 
 
 " In most instances the medical attendance oh a parish is 
 farmed, that is, it is given to the surgeon who will do it on 
 the lowest terms, with little or no regard to his skill, attention, 
 or place of residence, which throw a probable light on the 
 way in which he will fulfil his task. The terms of the con- 
 tract are incredibly low — so low as not to api)roach remu- 
 neration for his skill, time, trouble, and drugs, and conse- 
 quently to aflbrd a constant temptation to a neglect of his 
 duty. The contract is commonly at the rate of from thirty to 
 fifty shillings a hundred for the whole popuhition of the parish, 
 that is, at the rate of sixpence a head for the year. ' Many 
 country surgeons contract with three, four, or even five pa- 
 rishes. Parislies containing five or six hundred paupers have 
 been taken for five or six pounds ; twenty or thirty parishes 
 have been farmed by one practitioner, and even a large parish 
 actually farmed for one guinea per annum *.' Those who 
 have seen how this plan works, assert, in the strongest terms, 
 that the result, as might have been expected, is disgraceful to 
 the parish surgeon, and injurious to the poor ; and they relate, 
 how sickness is often prolonged, and hfe lost from neglect. 
 They agree, however, in stating, that notwithstanding this 
 vile plan, the most respectable surgeons of a neighbourhood 
 midertake the task far oftener than might have been expected ; 
 but the secret is this — if they did not, some other person would, 
 and this might lead to the introduction of a new rival into the 
 neitihbourhood ; besides, attendance on the poor leads to 
 attendance* on the middling and higher classes in the neighbour- 
 hood, and the surgeon seldom goes on a parish journey but he 
 picks up more than he expected. Let us follow liim on one of 
 liis distant visits, and we shall soon understand the motive 
 which induces him to accept these degrading terms. He 
 receives an order from the overseer to visit a parisli jjatient : 
 the time is winter — the weather bad — the roads ahnost im- 
 passable, and the patient several miles off — nevertheless our 
 rural Esculapius mounts his nag, envelops his throat in a hand- 
 
 * Stc Report of a Committee for condiictin}; an IiKjuiry into the State 
 of the Sick Poor. ^VarAvick, September, lb-7.
 
 APPENDIX. 345 
 
 kerchief, buttons his fear-nouglit close about his cliin, and, 
 wrapping its skirts about his knees, off he sets through sleet 
 and snow, along road and lane, over hill and common. Here 
 he dismounts to open a gate — there his horse is knee-deep — 
 crossing the common, he is nearly thrown in passing some 
 snow- covered hole; but at length he arrives at the place of 
 his destination, and, hanging the bridle on the rails, enters the 
 brick-paved cottage of his pauper patient. I will not stop to 
 inquire how he performs his task — I know enough of the in- 
 dustry, the professional zeal, and tlie benevolent disposition of 
 this meritorious class of my brethren, to feel assured that it is 
 often performed far better than might have been expected. 
 But for such a journey and back again, sixpence a-head for 
 the whole parish, and the whole year, is hard work and poor 
 pay : but a country surgeon is too important a person to pass 
 incog, through the most solitary hamlet. The labouring man 
 doffs his hat as he passes, the female cottager drops him a 
 curtsy, and the little urchins stop their play to smile at ' the 
 Doctor.' It is soon known far and wide that this important 
 personage is within reach ; the farmer's wife engages him to 
 attend her in her confinement ; the parson has a hoarse 
 cough ; the publican is plethoric ; the wheelwright has cut his 
 leg ; and the neighbouring squire is lain up with the gout. 
 He is consulted about them all, and returns home heavy laden 
 with orders for pills, draughts, blisters, plasters, and fomenta- 
 tions. 
 
 " Nevertheless he is constantly meeting with temptations to 
 neglect liis parish duties, and is constantly neglecting them. 
 Whenever he has messages from rich patients in one, and 
 pauper patients in an opposite direction, and this is conti- 
 nually occurring, it cannot happen otherwise than that the 
 latter are neglected. And here I shall let ' the Country 
 Clergyman * ' speak for me, one of the best parish priests in 
 the land, and one who is minutely acquainted with the scenes 
 he depicts. The following picture is not overcharged : — 
 
 * A Letter to the Bishop of London on a Plan for admmistering Medi- 
 cal Advice to the Sick Poor. 1 826,
 
 346 APPENDIX. 
 
 ' It may be as well if we look to the situation of a poor 
 labourinpf or manufacturinij man, during the sickness of liim- 
 self or his family, according to the jjresent state of things. 
 He is taken ill at his labour with the symptoms of incipient 
 fever; his nerveless limbs refuse the excitement to work, 
 wliich, nevertheless, he continues for several days. Over- 
 powered at length, he applies to the overseer, who gives him 
 a note to the parish doctor; this he takes to the doctor's 
 residence at tlie next town, five, six, seven, or possibly eight 
 miles off. Here, if he is fortunate enough to meet with the 
 doctor himself, he has some medicines given him, and he is 
 told to go home and go to bed, and come back the next day. 
 By the time the man arrives at his cottage, however, he is in 
 no condition to obey the latter order if it should have been 
 given, but instinctively complies with the former, whether 
 o-iven or not. He lies in bed day after day till the doctor's 
 assistant calls ; the result of the visit is, that the patient is 
 desired to send to the doctor's for more medicine ; for this the 
 wife must leave her husband's bed-side, if she has no child old 
 enough to go for her, or can get no neighbour to undertake 
 the journey. If the man's constitution be strong enough to 
 carry him through his illness, nature does her work, and in 
 spite of everything he recovers; but if his constitution be 
 unable to struggle with the disease, he grows worse. Some- 
 body tells the clergyman, who fnids the poor man in danger, 
 and speaks to the doctor or the overseer, and then more atten- 
 tion is paid — the doctor comes himself, but too late : and the 
 man dies, or at best is brought, with difficulty, through a long 
 course of debility, to a tardy and imperfect recovery.' 
 
 " Such is the account given by a country clergyman who is 
 miiuitcly acquainted with what is going on in the cottages of 
 the poor, and well knows their sullerings and wants in sick- 
 ness. There may be in it an unreasonable though natural dis- 
 j)Osition to underrate the skill of the surgeon's assistant ; but 
 this is certain, that the visits on the sick pauper are continually 
 delayed, are ])aid as seldom as possible, and that, in numerous 
 instances, <;!spwially in lubrilc and inllannnatory diseases, he 
 has not the fair chance of benefit which our art (feeble, it is
 
 APPENDIX. 347 
 
 true, in many cases, but in many, also, all-powerful) is able to 
 afford. 
 
 " To supply the poor with medical attendance more ade- 
 quate to their wants ; to relieve more speedily their suflFer- 
 ings ; shorten their illnesses, and, in some instances, save their 
 lives, two plans have been proposed which I shall proceed to 
 describe. 
 
 " In the year 18"23, some opulent and benevolent persons 
 held a meeting at Southam, a small country town of Warwick- 
 shire, near Stratford-upon-Avon, when Mr. Smith, a surgeon 
 of the town, proposed the establishment of a dispensary for 
 the sick poor of that neighbourhood. The funds for the sup- 
 port of this dispensary were to be drawn from three sources — 
 parochial contributions ; the subscriptions of opulent persons, 
 and, lastly, voluntary subscriptions from the poor themselves. 
 There would be two classes of patients, those who would have 
 a claim on the dispensary from tlie subscriptions of their 
 parish, and those whose claim would depend on their own sub- 
 scriptions. The latter were to have the encouraging appella- 
 tion of ' independent poor ; ' their annual subscription was to 
 be 3s. 6d. for an adult, and 2s. for a child, and this would 
 give them a right to medical attendance whenever they re- 
 quired it. The medical attendants on this dispensary were to 
 be all respectable surgeons of the neighbourhood, who were to 
 take care of the sick poor of Southam and the surrounding 
 country within six miles ; and for this the income of the dis- 
 pensary, after paying its expenses, was to be divided among 
 the surgeons, according to the number of miles travelled and 
 visits made. Attendance was to be given at the dispensary 
 one hour every day, excepting Sunday, when those patients 
 who were able to go, received advice : these who were too ill 
 to go out, were to be visited at their own houses. As they 
 were no longer dependent on one surgeon, they were not 
 likely to be neglected, for it was not probable that all would 
 be busy, or out of the way at the same time. 
 
 " The Southam Dispensary has now been in operation four 
 years, and the result appears to be highly satisfactory to the 
 members. It has been wholly maintained by parish subscri])-
 
 348 APPENDIX. 
 
 tions for the pauper patients, and by the voUnitary subscriptions 
 of the independent poor, witliout any assistance liitherto from 
 opulent persons. At a vestry meeting at Southam, in March 
 of this year, it was resolved that, of two hundred persons 
 amon<if the ])00r subscribers to the Southam Dispensary, one 
 half would have been on the parish, if it had not been for this 
 institution, and they strongly recommend the formation of 
 similar dispensaries all over the kingdom. 
 
 " Although the Southam Dispensary is said to have suc- 
 ceeded, much of its success is attributed to the personal exer- 
 tions, and even pecuniary sacrifices of the founder, which can- 
 not of course be calculated on in future. It is not probable 
 that its success sliould be permanent and considerable, unless 
 its funds are enriched by the subscriptions of the opulent. In 
 an explanatory note by Mr. Smith, it is stated that the amount 
 of the subscriptions for half a year was 61/, 9.9. 3d.., from 
 which, after paying the expenses of the charity, only \SL 
 14.V. llrZ. remained to be divided among the medical men. 
 
 " The other plan proposed for supplying the sick jjoor in 
 the country with medical attendance more adequate to their 
 wants, is to form an order of women similar to the Beguines 
 in Flanders, and the Soeurs de la Charite of France ; to in- 
 struct theui in medicine, as far as it can be done as a prac- 
 tical art ; and to station tliem in the country parishes of Eng- 
 land. What I know about these singular and admirable 
 orders of women, and how they might be adojited, and 
 adapted to the station for which they are proposed, I will 
 relate in a subse(|uent letter. 
 " I am, Sir, 
 
 " Your obedient humble servant, 
 
 " A Country Clergyman." 
 
 " I concluded my former letter by remarking tliat another 
 l)lan for supplying the sick poor in the country with better 
 medical uUL-ndance than what they now receive, was to form 
 an order of women similar to the JJeguines of Flanders, and 
 the Suiurs de la Charite of France ; to give them such prac-
 
 APPENDIX. 340 
 
 tical instructions in medicine as would enable them to detect 
 and relieve the common forms of disease, and to station them 
 in the country parishes of England. This plan was first pro- 
 posed two years ago by an anonymous writer in BlackwoocTs 
 Magazine, in a paper entitled ' Protestant Sisters of Charity.' 
 The proposal was soon followed by a pamphlet under the same 
 title, addressed to the Bishop of London, and signed ' A Coun- 
 try Clergyman,' in which the proposal of the anonymous 
 writer was adopted and enforced. Some efforts were made to 
 induce the established church to put the plan to the test of 
 experiment, but without success. 
 
 " A few summers ago I passed tlirough Flanders on my 
 way to Germany, and at the hospital at Bruges saw some of 
 the Beguines, and heard the physician, with whom I was inti- 
 mate, speak in strong terms of their services ; he said, ' There 
 are no such nurses.' I saw them in the wards attendino; on 
 the sick, and in the chapel of the hospital on their knees, 
 washing the floor. They were obviously a superior class of 
 women, and the contrast was striking between these menial 
 offices, and the respectability of their dress and appearance ; 
 but the Beguinage of Ghent is one of their principal establish- 
 ments, and spending a Sunday there, I went in the evening to 
 vespers. It was twilight when I entered the chapel. It was 
 dimly lighted by two or three tall tapers before the altar, and 
 a kvf candles at the remotest end of tlie building in tlie 
 orchestra, but the body of the chapel was in deep gloom, filled 
 from end to end with several hundred of these nuns seated in 
 rows, in their dark dresses and white cowls, silent and mo- 
 tionless, excepting now and then when one of them started up, 
 and stretching out her arms in the attitude of the crucifixion, 
 stood in that posture many minutes, then sank and disap- 
 peared among the crowd. The gloom of the chapel — the long 
 lines of these unearthly looking figures, like so many corpses 
 propped up in their grave-clothes — the dead silence of the 
 building, once only interrupted by a few voices in the distant 
 orchestra chanting vespers — was one of the most striking 
 sights I ever beheld. To some readers, the occasional atti- 
 tude of the nuns may seem an absurd exiiression of fanaticism,
 
 350 APPENDIX. 
 
 but tliey are anything but fanatics. Whoever is accustomed 
 to the manners of the continental nations, knows that they 
 employ grimace in everything. I much doubt whether, apart 
 from the internal emotion of piety, the external expression of 
 it is graceful in any one, save only in a little child in his 
 night -shirt, on his knees saying his evening prayer. 
 
 " Tlie Bcguinagc, or residence of the Beguines at Ghent, 
 is a little town of itself, adjoining the city, and inclosed from 
 it. The transition from the crowded streets of Ghent, to the 
 silence and solitude of the Beguinage is very striking. The 
 houses in which the Beguines reside are contiguous, each 
 having its small garden, and on tlie door the name, not of the 
 resident, but of the protecting saint of the house ; these 
 liouses are ranged into streets. There is also the large 
 church, which we visited, and a burial-ground, in which there 
 are no monuments. There are upwards of six hundred of 
 these nuns in the Beguinage of Ghent, and about six thou- 
 sand in Brabant and Flanders. They receive sick persons 
 into tlie Beguinage, and not only nurse but support them until 
 they are recovered ; they also go out to nurse the sick. They 
 are bound by no vow excepting to be chaste and obedient 
 while they remain in the order ; they have the power of quitting 
 it anil returning again into the world whenever they please, 
 but tills it is said they seldom or never do. They are most 
 of them women unmarried, or widows past the middle of life. 
 Jn 1244, a synod at Fritzlau decided that no Beguine should 
 be younger th.in forty years of age. They generally dine 
 together in the refectory ; their apartments are barely yet 
 C(nnfortably furnished, and, like all the habitations of Flan, 
 ders, remarkably clean. About their origin and name little 
 is known by the Beguines themselves, or is to be found in 
 books. lor the following particulars I am chiefly indebted to 
 the Ilisloire des Ordres Mojiastiques, (tome viii.) Some attri- 
 bute both their origin and name to St. Besfirhe, who lived in 
 the seventh century ; others to Lambert le Begue, who lived 
 about the end of the twelfth century. This latter saint is said 
 to Ijave founded two connnunities of tliem at Liege, one for 
 women, in 1173, liie other for men, in 1177. After his death
 
 APPENDIX. 351 
 
 they multiplied fast, and were introduced by Saint Louis to 
 Paris, and other French cities. The plan flourished in France, 
 and was adopted under other forms and names. In 1443, 
 Nicholas Rollin, Chancellor to Philip the Good, Duke of 
 Burgundy, founded a hospital at Beaune, and brought six Be- 
 guines from Malines to attend upon it, and the hospital became 
 so famed for the care of its patients, that the opulent people of 
 the neighbourhood when sick were often removed to it, pre- 
 ferring its attendance to what they received at home. In one 
 part of the hospital there was a large square court, bordered 
 with galleries leading to apartments suitable to such patients ; 
 when they quitted the hospital the donations which they left 
 were added to its funds. 
 
 " The Sceurs de la Charite of France are another order of 
 religious nurses, but different from the Beguines in being 
 bound by monastic vows. They originated in a charity ser- 
 mon, perhaps the most useful and extensive in its influence 
 that ever was preached. Vincent de Paul, a celebrated mis- 
 sionary, preaching at Chatillon, in 1617, recommended a poor 
 sick family of the neighbourhood to the care of his congrega- 
 tion. At the conclusion of the sermon a number of persons 
 visited tlie sick family with bread, wine, meat, and other com- 
 forts. This led to the formation of a committee of charitable 
 women, under the direction of Vincent de Paul, who went 
 about relieving the sick poor of the neighbourhood, and met 
 every month to give an account of their proceedings to their 
 superior. Such was the origin of the celebrated order of the 
 Soeurs de la Charite. Wherever this missionary went he 
 attempted to form similar establishments. From the country 
 they spread to cities, and first to Paris, where, in 1629, they 
 were established in the j)arish of St. Saviour. 
 
 " About 1625, a female devotee, named Le Gras, joined the 
 order of les Soeurs de la Charite^. She was married young to 
 M. Le Gras, one of whose family had founded a hospital at Piiy, 
 but becoming a widow in 1625, in the thirty-fourth year of her 
 age, she made a vow of celibacy, and dedicated the rest of her 
 life to the service of the poor. In her, Vincent de Paul found 
 a great accession. Under his direction she took many jour-
 
 352 APPENDIX. 
 
 nies, visitinf^ and inspecting the esta])lishmcnts whicli lie had 
 founded. She was commonly accompanied by a few pious 
 ladies. Many women of (juality enrolled themselves in the 
 order, but the superiors were assisted by inferior servants. 
 The Hotel Dicu was the first hospital in Paris where they 
 exercised their vocations. This they visited every day, sup- 
 I)lving the patients with comforts above what the hospital 
 afforded, and administering, besides, religious consolation. By 
 degrees they spread into all the provinces of France, and at 
 length the Queen of Poland requested Mademoiselle Le Gras, 
 for though a widow that was her title, to send her a supply of 
 Soeurs de la Charite', who were thus established in Varsovia, in 
 1652. At length, after a long life spent in the service of cha- 
 rity and religion, Mademoiselle Le Gras died on the 15th of 
 March, 1660, nearly seventy years of age, and for a day and 
 a half her body lay exposed to the gaze of the pious. 
 
 " The Country Clergyman, who spent several years in 
 various parts of France, gives an account of the present state of 
 the order, which, together with what I have gathered from 
 other sources, is in substance as follows : — It consists of 
 women of all ranks, many of them of the higher orders. 
 After a year's noviciate in the convent, they take a vow, which 
 hinds them to the order for the rest of their lives. They 
 have two objects — to attend the sick, and to educate the 
 ])oor; they are sj)read all over Franco, are the superior 
 nurses at the hospitals, and arc to be found in every town, and 
 often even in villages. Go into the Paris hospitals at almost 
 any liour of the day, and you will see one of these respec- 
 liible looking women in lier black gown and white liood, 
 passing slowly from bed to bed, and stopi)ing to inquire of 
 some poor wretch what little comfort he is fancying will alle- 
 viate his suflerings. J f a ])arochial cure wants assistance in 
 the care of bis llock, he applies to the order of les Soeurs de 
 la Charite. Two of them (for they generally go in couples) 
 Bct out on their cliaritable mission — wherever they travel their 
 dress ])rolects them. ' Fven more enlightened persons than 
 the conniion ptnisantry hail it as a haj)py omen when on a 
 journey a Sceur de la Charite happens to travel witii them.
 
 APPENDIX. 353 
 
 and even instances are recorded in which their presence has 
 saved travellers from the attacks of robbers.' During the 
 Revohition they were rarely molested. They were the only 
 religious order permitted openly to wear their dress and 
 pursue their vocation. Government gives a hundred francs 
 a-year to each sister, besides her traveUing expenses ; and if 
 the jDarish wliere they go cannot maintain them, they are sup- 
 ported out of tlie funds of the order. In old age they retire 
 to their convent, and spend the rest of their lives in educating 
 the noviciates. Thus, like the vestal virgins of old, the first 
 part of their life is spent in learning their duties, the second 
 in practising them, and the last in teacliing them. 
 
 " If an attempt should be made to introduce Sisters of 
 Charity into England, I would advise tlie experiment to be 
 made at first on a small scale. They should not be mere 
 nurses, and religious instructors, but a set of religious female 
 physicians. I would select two or three women — not super- 
 annuated servants in search of a quiet livelihood, who are 
 thinking of nothing but how to make money with the least 
 trouble, and vvlio would apply, or be recommended in crowds 
 for such a purpose — but women originally and habitually of 
 a higlier order, young enough to learn, yet old enough to be 
 sick of worldly vanities ; in short, with strong sense, a good 
 education, and something of the devotee, (there are many 
 such). I would place them in some hospital under an expe- 
 rienced, clear-headed, practical physician, who should explain 
 to them in untechnical language, as tliey went from bed to 
 bed, the signs by which he is guided in the choice of his 
 remedies : why, in one case, the prominent symptom of which 
 is a cough, he gives opium, and in another, in which the pro- 
 minent symptom is still a cough, he draws blood : wliy, in one 
 case, in which the prominent symptom is pain, he emplovs 
 fomentations and opiates ; and in anotlier, in which the promi- 
 nent symptom is still pain, he draws blood, gives purgatives, 
 and low diet. I would sharpen their attention, and assist 
 their memories by frequent examinations into their know- 
 ledge ; always remembering that it is not safely deposited in 
 the mind until the student can state it and apply it herself. 
 
 VOL. ir. 2 A
 
 354 APPEXDIX. 
 
 This system of instruction slioukl continue until my Sisters of 
 Charity have acquired a readiness in detecting all ordinary 
 diseases, in selecting the guiding symptom or symptoms, and 
 in the use of tliat short list of remedies which even medical 
 men find sufficient in pauper practice. When they are ripe 
 for niv purpose, I would (taking a hint from les Sceurs de la 
 Charite) station two of them, of suitahle dispositions, in a cot- 
 tage placed in the centre of some country district. I would 
 have them maintained partly from the parish funds, partly by 
 the voluntary subscrijrtions of the opulent people of the neigh- 
 bourhood, and partly by those of the charitable and religious 
 world. Their kindness and care would soon ensure the good- 
 will of the poor. A few cures would be followed by medical 
 reputation, and the cottagers of the district would soon have 
 reason to bless the hour when these useful women settled in 
 their neighbourhood. 
 
 " Objections, of course, will be made to this plan. Tiie 
 Country Clergyman alludes to a strange one ; that, although 
 it has succeeded in the hands of Catholics, it will not in those 
 of Protestants, because Catholicism, it is said, is a religion of 
 works. If Protestantism is not, the sooner we are Catholics 
 the better ; but this is a strange objection to make to the 
 religion of Christ, who tells us, ' inasmuch as ye have done it 
 (visited the sick, &c.) unto one of the least of these, my 
 brethren, ye have done it unto me.* Another is, that it is not 
 adapted to the manners and habits of England. The best 
 answer to this, is the fact that it has already been adopted by 
 the Irish Catholics, and that those of England are supporting 
 and joining it. An order of Sisters of Charity was founded 
 in Ireland in 1815; there are three houses, two in Dublin, 
 and one in Cork ; they nurse the sick, receive the poor into an 
 asylum, console the dying, and educate the young. A female 
 friend of mine belongs to the order ; she says it is difficult to 
 conceive the appalling scenes of misery which they witness, 
 and tlc'scribes herself as supremely happy in her duties. My 
 jocose readers will remind me of Corporal Trim's adventure 
 witli the lieguine. I am well aware of Burton's maxim, in 
 liis Anatomy of Melancholy, that the chief cause of love is
 
 APPENDIX. 355 
 
 juxtaposition, but it would be easy to show, by facts, that this 
 is as great an objection to the employment of young men as 
 of middle-aged devotees. 
 
 " Many will think that it is impossible to impart a usefiil 
 knowledge of medicine to women who are ignorant of ana- 
 tomy, physiology, and pathology. A profound knowledge, of 
 course, could not, but a very useful degree of it might : a 
 degree which, combined with kindness and assiduity, would 
 be far superior to that which the country poor receive at pre- 
 sent. I have known matrons and sisters of hospitals with 
 more practical tact in the detection and treatment of disease, 
 than half of the yovmg surgeons by whom the country poor 
 are commonly attended. One of the best practitioners — one 
 who afforded more relief, and effected more cures than almost 
 any man I have ever known, troubled his head very little 
 about anatomy, physiology, and pathology; the favourite 
 objects of his study through life were the powers of remedies. 
 Wherever a patient recovered from a disease which baffled 
 others, he never rested till he had made out what occasioned 
 the recovery, and he never forgot it. In tliis way, during 
 a long life of great activity, he treasured up prodigious re- 
 sources in the treatment of disease, and when he died left a 
 void in the provincial neighbourhood in which he had lived, 
 which has never been filled. 
 
 " There are only two classes of people whom I have any 
 hope of influencing in favour of this plan — one are the Church 
 Methodists, the other the Society of Friends. Surely a little 
 of that zeal and money which are flowing so plentifully into 
 Bible and Missionary Societies might be spared for so de- 
 sirable and promising an experiment as this. Could not 
 Mrs. Fry divert a little of her zeal from the female convicts in 
 Newgate to the sick poor in the country ? or could not her 
 friend, Mrs. Opie, the daughter of a j)hysician ; and, if her 
 writings are to be trusted, a tender-hearted woman, become 
 the Mademoiselle Le Gras to an order of female religious phy- 
 sicians, by which they might bless their country and im- 
 mortalize their names ? 
 
 " The object of my two letters has been to make known to 
 
 2 A 2
 
 356 APPENDIX. 
 
 the benevolent public the wants of the sick poor in tlie country, 
 and the two plans which have been recommended for their 
 relief. I must now leave my statement to its flUe, earnestly 
 wishing that it may be as successful as Vincent de Paul's 
 
 charity sermon. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 A Country Surgeon." 
 London Medical Gazette, vol. i.
 
 NOTES 
 
 ANU 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS.
 
 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 . . . the infamy of his nature. 
 Vol. I. p. 2, 
 
 I SUSPECT that Sir Thomas Brown wrote infimy, a word 
 which, though not regularly formed, would be more in his 
 manner, and more in place. 
 
 Anthony Wood speaks in his own Life (p. 190) of " a 
 young heir who put his father's papers to injimous uses." 
 
 Question of apparitions. 
 Vol. I. p. 7. 
 
 In contradiction to the view of this important question 
 which I have taken, and in which there is the opinion of John- 
 son to support me, Dean Sherlock, who has brought forward 
 with irrefragable force the Natural Arguments for the Immor- 
 tality of the Soul and a Future State, has shown " of what 
 dangerous consequence it is to want any other arguments, or 
 to build our faith upon any other arguments than the Gospel 
 Revelation." And he alludes to the indiscreet stress which 
 Glanville, and other writers of his stamp, laid upon super- 
 natural stories. " For," says he, " in the first place, this is a 
 spice of infidelity; it is an inclination towards it; and such 
 men are disposed to be infidels, or at least to be practised on 
 by infidels. For did we heartily believe the Gospel, we could 
 want no other arguments of a future state, and should be 
 satisfied we could have no better. And would men then so 
 greedily catch at every story of an apparition, and contend as 
 zealously for it, as if the belief of another world depended on 
 it ? As if they wanted some better evidence, or some more 
 credible story than the Resurrection of our Saviour?" — Of the 
 JmmortalUy of the Soul, p. 7.
 
 360 NOTES AND 
 
 And again. " Now Abraliam was certainly in the right, 
 tliat though Moses and tlie Prophets have not given us the 
 highest evidence that can be given of Immortal Life, yet they 
 have given us much better evidence of it than the a])paritions 
 of ghosts and s])irits could do ; and that those who v.ould not 
 believe Moses and the Prophets would much less believe an 
 apparition of Lazarus, whatever he should tell them of the 
 other world, and of the state of their brother Dives in it. For 
 what authority hatli a Gliost or Apparition ! Who knows 
 what it is ? AViiether it be the jjcrson it represents, or some 
 deluding and counterfeit spirit? And then who can tell 
 whether it speaks true or false? And is this to be compared 
 to the authority of a standing Eevelation, which, though it do 
 not speak so plainly as the Gospel does, or give such unde- 
 niable proofs of iramortah'ty, yet is certainly to be credited 
 beyond any apparitions, which have no authority at all ; which 
 may a little awaken and terrify men at present ; but the fright 
 will soon be over, and they will believe and live just as they 
 didbefore?"— /6/rf. p. 37L 
 
 Burnet the Theorist, in expressing his disbelief of such 
 apparitions, admits an hypothesis which is surely less credible. 
 ' Fatcor mihi,' he says, ' nondum constare, nee persuader! 
 
 • posse, animas mortuorum apparere unquam, aut apparituras 
 
 • esse, ante diem Judicii. Genii forsan, aut drcmones, vim 
 ' illam habent, compingendi aiirem, aut ])ropria vchicula, in 
 ' speciem humanam aut brutani ; eamque cxcrcent ali(|uando, 
 
 • maxime ajjud gentes barbaras aut semibarbaras : scd hive 
 ' rarius apud nos fieri cxistimo, et e sexcentis narratiunculis de 
 ' spectris, vix unam reperiri historiam veram. His pascilur 
 ' utcunque vulgus, viticque futura^ renovatur memoria, et con- 
 ' firmatur fides.' — De Statu Mortuorum, \). 91. 
 
 " That there are such finite, incorporeal beings," says 
 South, " as we call Spirits, I take to be a point of that mo- 
 ment, that the belief of it ought to be established upon much 
 surer proofs that such as are commonly taken from visions 
 and a])])ariti()ns, and tlu" reports which use to go of theme it 
 having hitherto been held for solid reasoning, to argue from 
 what seems to what exists, or, in other words, from appear-
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 361 
 
 ances to things ; especially since it has been found so frequent, 
 for the working of a strong fancy and a weak judgment to 
 pass with many for apparitions." — Soitfk, vol. iii. p. 451. 
 
 In that very curious work the Recognitions of Clement, 
 which one should think no person except Winston could ever 
 have supposed to have been anything but a Romance, Clement, 
 in whose name it is written, relates at the commencement his 
 own feelings upon this subject, before he had received the 
 light of the Gospel. 
 
 " I will go to Egypt, and there will I enter into familiarity 
 with the Hierophantce or Prophets, who are the Presidents of 
 the sacred Recesses : and when for money they have procured 
 me a magician, I will intreat him to bring me up a Soul from 
 the infernal Regions, by the art of Necromancy as they call it ; 
 as though I would inquire about some particular affair. But 
 my inquiry shall be this ; Whether the Soul be Immortal ? 
 Now the proof for this Immortality of the Soul shall by me 
 be esteemed certain, not from the Ghost's saying so, and my 
 hearing him say it, but from my seeing this Soul itself; that 
 beholding it with my own eyes, I may ever afterwards enter- 
 tain an undoubted belief of its immortality. For after that, 
 the fallacy of Words or uncertainty of Hearing can no more 
 disturb me, as to what I have seen with my eyes. Yet, after 
 all this, when I gave a philosopher of my acquaintance an 
 account of this design of mine, he advised me by no means to 
 venture upon it. ' For,' says he, ' if the Soul does not come 
 up at the command of the Magician, you will afterwards sup- 
 pose there is nothing after Death, and so live more dissolutely 
 than before ; as having also ventured upon unlawful arts. 
 But if you seem to see somewhat, what sort of religion or of 
 piety will that be, which has its foundation from unlawful and 
 impious practices V " 
 
 Witches. 
 Vol. I. p. 8. 
 
 " As for witches," says Hobbes (^Leviathan, p. 7), " I think 
 not that their witchcraft is any real power, but yet that they
 
 362 NOTES AND 
 
 are justly punished for the false belief they have that they can 
 do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they 
 can : their trade being nearer to a new religion, tlian to a 
 craft or science." 
 
 Supernatural tales attested by judicious and credible 
 
 men. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 9. 
 
 ' Que penser de la Magie et du Sortilege ? La tht^orie en 
 ' est obscure, les principes vagues, incertains, et qui approchent 
 ' du visionnaire : mais il y a des faits embarrassans, aifirm^s 
 
 * par des hommes graves qui les ont vus, ou qui les ont appris 
 ' de personnes qui leur ressemblent, Les admettre tous, ou 
 
 * les nier tous, paroit un 6ga\ inconvenient, et j'ose dire qu'en 
 ' cela, comme dans toutes choses extraordinaires et qui sortent 
 ' des communes regies, il y a un parti a trouver entre les ames 
 ' crt^dules et les esprits forts.' — La Bniyere, vol. ii. p. 242. 
 
 In the scale of existences there may be as many orders 
 above us as below. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 9. 
 
 Burnet, of the Charter House (the greatest of the name), 
 has a fine passage upon this subject. 
 
 * Su3pe autem ex ipsa aviditate augendie scientioe, in errores 
 ' delabimur; vel ob pru^cipitem animi assensum ante examen 
 ' peractum, vel earuni rerum cognition! inhiando, in quibus 
 ' nullum examen locum habere ])otest : nempe quu3 viribus 
 ' nostris attingi ncqucunt, nequc ullo lumine, vel anatura nobis 
 ' dato, vel ccelilus admisso. Hujusmodi sunt speculationes 
 ' ilke de Mundo Angelico, ipsiusque apparatu; in quot summa 
 ' genera, et subaltcrnas classes distribuitur hierarchia coelestis : 
 ' quid agunt, quae loca habitant. Facile credo plures esse 
 ' naturas invisibilcs quam visibiles in rcruni univcrsitate ; ])lu- 
 ' rcscjuc Aiigelorum ordincs in ca'lo, quam sunt j)isces in 
 ' mari. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et 
 ' gradus, et cognationes, et discrimina, et singulorum munera?
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 363 
 
 Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium Immanum, 
 
 * numquam attigit. — Juvat utique, non diffiteor, quandoque in 
 ' aninio, tanquam in tabula, majoris et melioris niundi ima- 
 ' ginem contemplari ; ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitte minu- 
 
 * tiis, se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogita- 
 ' tiones. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque 
 ' servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus. 
 ' Sapientis enim est, non tantum ea quoe sciri possunt, scire ; 
 ' sed etiam, quae sciri non possunt, discernere et discriminare.' 
 — ArchcEologieB Philosophicce, p, 67. 
 
 Ordeals. 
 Vol. I. p. 10. 
 
 John Gavan, a Jesuit, who was one of Gates' and Dugdale's 
 victims in the Popish Plot, and who defended himself on 
 liis trial with remarkable eloquence and presence of mind, 
 " offered, when nothing else would do, to commit himself to 
 the ordeal trial, as the laws, still unrepealed, gave hberty. 
 This was rejected by the Court, as a piece of ostentation. 
 Again the King's counsel alleged that the ordeal trial was an 
 obsolete law, and of no signification, by disuse. Upon this 
 Mr. Gavan acquiesced, yet desired the Bench to consider, that 
 nothing but innocence could provoke him to make that offer." 
 — Dodd's Church History, vol. iii. p. 316. 
 
 Dodd, who is one of the worst of historians in all respects, 
 has omitted to state the ground upon which this able and 
 innocent man required the ordeal. Gates was the only wit- 
 ness against him. " My Lord," said he, " seeing there is 
 only his oath for it, and my denial, I have only one demand : 
 I do not know whether it be an extravagant one or no ; if it 
 be, I do not desire to have it granted." L. C. J. " What is 
 that demand ?" Gavan. " You know that in the beginning of 
 the Church (this Learned and Just Court must needs know 
 that) that for 1000 years together, it was a custom, and grew 
 to a constant law, for the trial of persons accused of any 
 capital offence, where there was only the accuser's oath and the 
 accused's denial, for the prisoner to put himself upon the trial
 
 3G4 NOTES AND 
 
 of ordeal, to evidence las own innoccncy." lie was answered 
 by the Lord Chief Justice North, that we have no such law 
 now, and by Scroggs, more at lengtli, with a disgraceful 
 asperity, as if his object had been to impose upon the Court, 
 by asking a thing which sounded much of a pretence to 
 innocencv, and which he knew he could not have. — Howell's 
 State Trials. 
 
 The ordeal, as a mode of trial, was abolished in our Courts 
 of Justice by an act of parliament in 3 Hen. III., according to 
 Sir Edward Coke, or rather by an order of the King in Coun- 
 cil. — Blackstojie, lib. iv. c. 27. 
 
 It appears in Edward the Confessor's laws, tliat although 
 condemnation by the ordeal was considered a certain proof of 
 guilt, an acquittal was not regarded as so clear a proof of 
 innocence. ' Die illo quo judicium fieri debet, veniat illuc 
 ' minister Episcopi cum clericis suis, et similiter justitia Regis 
 ' cum legalibus hominibus ^JrovincicC illius, qui videant ct 
 ' audiant ut reque omnia fiant ; et quos Dominus per miseri- 
 ' cordiam snam^ non per merita salvare volucrit, quieti sint, et 
 ' libere rccedant ; et quos iniquitas culpue non Dominus dam- 
 ' naverit, justitia Regis de ipsis justitiam faciat.' 
 
 The marks of martyrdom are our insignia of honour. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 15. 
 
 This assertion I have found confirmed by the grave autho- 
 rity of V. jM. Le Ilcurt, Doctor in Theology, and Guardian 
 of the Cordeliers' Convent at Poictiers, in which city his Trea- 
 tise on La Philosophic das Esjjritz was print(!d in 1612. ' Et 
 ' pour le general des martyrs,' he says (p. 455-6), ' nous disons 
 ' que le Sauveur, qui a jjromis de rendre cent fois an double les 
 ' biens de fortune delaissez pour I'amour de luy, sjaura tres 
 ' bien rcstituer la forme ct la bcautd aux corps mutile's pour Ic 
 ' souslicn de sa cause. Car comme luy mesme rcssuscitant a 
 ' rctenu en scs pieds, en ses mains, et en son coste les pertuits 
 ' dc8 clouz et de la lance, pour marques tres honorables de son 
 ' victorieux combat contrc 1' Enfer et laMort, ainsi les martyrs, 
 ' outre I'eiicharpc sanguine le Icur ordrc, auront en leurs corj)s
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 3G5 
 
 * les cicatrices de leurs playes resplendissaiites d'un lustre, 
 ' d'une grace, et d'une beaute admirable, qui met en Evidence 
 ' leur vertu, leur merite, leur honneur et gloire.' 
 
 This passage occurs in his Discourse des Aureoles. ' Par 
 
 * les Aureoles,' he says (p. 463), ' nous entendons les marques 
 ' et livriies des trois principaux ordres des bien-heureux, qui 
 ' sent les Martyrs, les Docteurs, et les Vierges. Si en una 
 ' bataille le Roy voit un de ses gendarmes, qui se fiice remar- 
 ' quer homme de recommendable vertu, par des effects advan- 
 ' tageux pour la victoire generale, il ne faudra de la gratifier k 
 ' la tin du combat, et voluntiers luy donnera I'ordre do sa che- 
 ' Valerie, qui n'est point une richesse, mais un honneur grand, 
 ' et digne recompense de sa vevtu. Or nous sommes en con- 
 ' tinuelle guerre contre les trois ennemis dc Dieu, le monde, le 
 
 * diable, ct la sensualite. Et ceux qui remportcnt d' cux quel- 
 
 * que victoire signalee, Dieu le Crtsateur leur donne la livree 
 ' honorable de ses ordres, pour tesmoigner a toutes ses crea- 
 ' tares la fidelle affection qu'ils ont eue a son service. Ceste 
 ' livrde, on remarque (quant au corps) est un special ornement 
 
 * et decoration, demonstrant de quel ennemy triomphe celuy 
 ' qui porte ceste parurc. De sorte que du premier traict d'a-il 
 ' que Ton jettera sur la personne. Ton cognoistra s'il est ou 
 ' Martyr, ou Predicateur, ou Vierge.' 
 
 Still more authentically is it confirmed by the Revelations of 
 Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge, who was one of the Sister Nati- 
 vites of the twelfth century. Every saint's day this nun saw 
 the saint of the festival : this gave her ample opportunities of 
 observing their costume ; and she says of the martyrs, ' habe- 
 ' bant autem et ipsi signa victoriic atque martyrii, videlicet 
 
 * fulgidasin manibus palmas, et coronas in capitibus valde radi- 
 ' antes, et rubore signatas in fronte. Talibus enim insigniis 
 ' decorati videntur sancti martyres, quandocumque mihi appa- 
 ' rere dignantur.' — Acta SS. Jun. tom. iii. p. G13. 
 
 The purple collar remained after a stupendous miracle, . . 
 in proof of which charters have been produced and altars 
 erected. The Moors were besieging Montemor ; there was 
 no hope of relief or of escape ; and a certain Abbot D. Joam, 
 who then acted as governor, proposed at last, that to save the
 
 36G NOTES AND 
 
 women and children from perishinor by hmiger, or the worse 
 fate of falling into the hand of the unbelievers, he and his 
 companions should put them to death with their own hands, and 
 then sally to take vengeance, and to die. He set the example 
 by cutting the throats of his sister and her children, . . . the 
 others followed his example ; . . . tliey then sallied, and, to 
 their astonishment, completely routed the besiegers. But, to 
 their greater astonishment, they found all the persons whom 
 they had killed, alive and well again on their return, and each 
 with a red line, like a scarlet thread, in remembrance of the 
 miracle, . . which mark also appeared at the same time upon 
 the image of N. Scnhora de Cey^a, and of the infant in her 
 arms, that it might be known by whom the miracle was 
 wrought. . . . And, moreover, children have sometimes been 
 born in Montemor with tlie same mark. The whole story, 
 which is related at length by many veracious historians, may 
 be found in Bernardo de Brito's Chronica de Cister, lib. vi. 
 c, 27, 28, and in the Santuario Moriano, tom. iv. lib. ii. tit. 14. 
 The physicians at Prague once obtained the King's per- 
 mission to put on the head of a criminal, if they could, after it 
 had been cut off. The subject was a young man : no sooner 
 was the head off than some of the assistants applied an unguent 
 to the vessels, others in an instant rej)laced the head, a third 
 party were ready with a j)laster and warm bandages, and a 
 fourth applied the most restorative ])erfumcs to his nostrils. 
 This, it is said, made him wink, at which, as a liopeful symp- 
 tom, a great shout was set up by the spectators. ' Elcvatus 
 ' deiiule lentissinie, et tractus magis (|uam ductus in vicinam 
 ' domum, jjostquam parva vitue indicia dedisset, inter medi- 
 ' corum et chirurgorum manus, sine dubio vulnere illo debili- 
 ' tatus, et sanguine forsitan qui scmel efferbuerat, et contineri 
 ' jam non poterat, expiravit.' If the exj)criment liad suc- 
 ceeded, this j)erson would have liad a mark upon his neck.— 
 Uannann. da Miraciilin j\Iortuoru7n, lib. ii. tit. 5. § 45.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 367 
 
 Earthly affections after death. 
 Vol.Lp. 17. 
 
 " It was a question," says Jackson, "amongst the Heathen 
 philosophers, an res posterorum pertineant ad defunctos ? 
 whether the ill or welfare of posterity did any way increase or 
 diminish the happiness of their deceased ancestors ? The nega- 
 tive part is determined by the great Philosopher in his Morals. 
 And I know no just cause or reason why any Christian Divine 
 should either^appeal from his determination or raise the doubt." 
 — vol. ii. p. 270. 
 
 Sir Thomas More was "fond of seeing strange birds 
 and beasts, and kept an ape, a fox, a weasel, and a 
 ferret.^' 
 
 Vol. I. p. 22. 
 
 Erasmus gives the same account of Sir Thomas More's 
 fondness for animals. ' Prsecipua illi voluptas est spectare 
 ' formas, ingenia, et aftectus diversorum animantium. Proinde 
 ' nullum fere genus est avium quod domi non alat, si quod 
 ' aliud animal vulgo rarum, veluti simia, vulpes, vivera, mus- 
 ' tela, et his consimilia. Ad hsec si quid exoticum, aut alioqui 
 ' spectandum occurrat, avidissime mercari solet, atque his rebus 
 ' undique domum habet instructam, ut nusquam non sit obvium 
 ' quod oculos ingredientium demoretur : ac toties sibi renovat 
 ' voluptatem, quoties alios conspicit oblectari.' — Ejiist. lib. x. 
 ' ep. 30. p. 536. 
 
 Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth ! 
 
 Vol. I. p. 26. 
 
 " It would be more easy than safe," says Jackson, after 
 alluding to the story of Abimelech and Jotham, " out of his- 
 tories of times ancient and modern, domestic and foreign, to 
 parallel this last instance so exactly, as well for success as 
 practice, as might be sufficient, if not to persuade the irreli-
 
 3G8 NOTES AND 
 
 rrioiis politician, yet to leave him without excuse for not heing" 
 persuaded, that there is an immortal King of Kings, and Lord 
 of Lords, from whose jurisdiction no corner of the earth 
 can be exempted ; an everlasting, wise, and righteous Judge, 
 which oversees the inventions of man's heart with a stedfast 
 eve, and measures theiv actions with a constant hand ; one 
 that visiteth the same irregularities by the same rule or canon ; 
 and fitteth like sins with like punishments, after thousands of 
 years distance in time, in places distant some thousands of 
 miles." — vol. ii. p. 249. 
 
 The Millennarians. 
 Vol. I. p. .36. 
 
 " Assuredly," says the Biographer of Josepli Mede, " the 
 happiness of the Millennial State shall take place in the w^orld 
 without that disorder and confusion which some men have 
 extravagantly imagined ; men of unhallowed minds and con- 
 sciences, who, judging of things according to the lust of am- 
 iMlion and love of the world reigning in them, have depraved 
 and stained this primitive tenet, the ancient, sober, and inno- 
 cent notion of the kingdom of Christ, as likewise every other 
 mystery, with not a few carnal conceits and intolerable fancies 
 of their own. And thus vnio them that arc. defiled is /lothhig 
 pure. Nor shall those tcmpora i-efrigerii . . . those ti77ies of 
 cool rrfrcshiiig, ever be brought in by hot fanatic zealots, men 
 set oil fire, (in the Psalmist's jjlirase,) and ready also to set on 
 fire the course of nature, (as St. James speaks,) such as are 
 skilful only to destroy and overturn : Destruction and wasting 
 arc in their ways, (they are good at making the world a mise- 
 raltle, uncomfortable, and uninhabitable place,) but the way of 
 peace they have not known ; and therefore the temjjcr and 
 frame of their spirit being perfectly contrary to the temj)er and 
 quality of those l)etter times, they are thereby rendered inca- 
 ])able cither ol' fuilliering and hasting the felicities of the New 
 Heaven and Earth, or of enjoying them, when the New Jeru- 
 saliMu shall lie conic down from God out of Heaven, and the 
 Tabernacle shall be with men. For the primary character of
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 360 
 
 that future state being universal righteousness and good will, 
 piety, and peace, it naturally follows that tliey who are men of 
 embittered passions and of a destroying spirit, altogether 
 devoid of civility, gentleness, and moderation, kindness and 
 benignity towards men, and altogether unacquainted with 
 what is lovely, decorous, venerable, praiseworthy, equitable, 
 and just, can have no part nor lot in this matter; so gross 
 and coarse a constitution of spirit as theirs is, speaks them 
 unqualified for the happiness of this better state. Nor can 
 they ever be made meet for the world to come, and the king- 
 dom of Christ, till they have got the victory over their self- 
 love and love of the world, over their pride and envy, their 
 wrath and bitterness, their enormous afFections, and the lusts 
 that war in their members, howsoever they may vainly conceit 
 and fancy themselves to be upon easier and cheaper terms 
 Kiiigs and Priests to God, fit and worthy to reign with Christ, 
 though they never sneered with him, nor was their old man 
 crucified with him, that the body of Sin might be destroyed." 
 —pp. 21, 22. 
 
 .... the Devil is below. 
 Vol. I. p. 37. 
 
 " Now I would this angel would bow the heavens and come 
 down, and bring his chain with him, and bind the Devil now, 
 . . for never was there more need ; never was it more time ; 
 for, if ever he were loose, he is loose in these times; and, if 
 ever he raged, he rageth in this nation. Alas ! for the inha- 
 bitants of England, for the Devil is come down among them, 
 having great wrath, . . and yet we know not how long his time 
 is. How lamentable and doleful is it, that that prophecy 
 should ever be so true of us (which is uttered against Babel) 
 as it is proved to be at this day, that Zijim, and Ijim, and 
 Ohim, satyrs, and fiends, and devils, should dance and domi- 
 neer, and rage and ravine, as they do in this nation ; and when 
 and how they shall be restrained we cannot tell ! Only there 
 is some comfort in the text, . . and this, indeed, is all the 
 comfort we have, that the Angel in the text can master the 
 
 VOL. II. 2 13
 
 370 NOTES AND 
 
 Devil if lie will but do it; and ho halli a chain in his hand that 
 will Innd him if he will but tie him in it."— Lightfoot, vol. vi. 
 p. 166. 
 
 Difiputing for the sake of Disputation. 
 Vol. I. p. 47. 
 
 "... Even in matters either by nature so abstract, or other- 
 wise so general, that our apprehension of them, or assent unto 
 them, cannot be directly hindered by any contrary natural in- 
 clinations, we may often find great incumbrances from indirect 
 or accidental opposition. Thus, desire of glory, or hope of 
 victory, in scholastic encounters, moves men often to disclaim 
 the truth which others have found out, or well illustrated, 
 whereunto, notwithstanding they would quickly yield their firm 
 assent, might the glory of the invention be reputed theirs, or 
 were it no prejudice to their high esteem of their own wits 
 to learn of others. For this reason, I have known of good 
 scholars, some out of jealousies lest their discoveries should be 
 published in another's name, some out of charity, refrain dis- 
 course amongst such as too much delight or glory in that 
 faculty ; for the most part so willing to contradict other's ob- 
 servations, that a man can hardly put forth a truth before them 
 without danger of thrusting them into the opposite error." — 
 Jackson, vol. i. p. 632. 
 
 Medical Police. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 56. 
 
 In the Evidence given before the Committee on Emigration, 
 1826, (pp. 110, 237,) itai)i)car8 that no case of measles, small- 
 pox, or hooping-cough, lias ever yet been known in New 
 ISoutli Wales. Of how much importance, then, is it, that if 
 either of these diseases should be imported, immediate and 
 eflectual means should be taken for preventing its extension ! 
 
 It is aflirmed in the same Rejiort, that no instance of typhus 
 fever lias ever api)eared in that country (p. 110), and that no 
 iullanuuatory or febrile diseases have hitherto been observed
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 371 
 
 there (p. 237). This is said to be a well-ascertained fact ; 
 but is it credible? Whatever may have been tlie origin of 
 small-pox and measles, it is certain that those diseases are 
 never in-bred ; a country, therefore, is safe from them as long 
 as the contagion is kept out. But inflammatory diseases are 
 naturally incident to the human frame, which is as liable to 
 them as it is to any derangement of the animal functions. 
 
 That strangely simple, but excellently good man, Louis 
 Buonaparte, has given an account, in his Documens Hisio- 
 riques sxir la HoUande, of his projected improvements in 
 medical police. The scheme is characteristic and curious, 
 
 ' Le roi projetait des ameliorations quant k la sante et h la 
 * salubrite du pays. Atteint par une maladie lente et extraor- 
 ' dinaire depuis I'age de 22 ans, il eut I'occasion de reflechir sur 
 ' cet objet important, et de se convaincre de quelques v^rites 
 ' certaines -i cet egard. La medecine existe, les plantes en grand 
 ' nombre ont des vertus reelles, il existe des remedes pour une 
 ' foule de maladies chroniques : tandis (]ue celles de ce genre 
 ' que Ton ne peut guerir, ou sont supportables, comme la goutte, 
 ' le rhumatisme, &c., ou sont en tres-petit nombre, et se redui- 
 ' sent a des vices organiques ; mais I'observation est difficile. 
 ' Quand un medecin est assez instruit pour pouvoir etre utile, il 
 ' meurt. Les maladies et les eftets des remedes different sur 
 ' chaque individu. Combien il fautde soins et de peine pour ne 
 ' pas se tromper aux symptomes et pour les bien distinguer ! 
 ' Le raisonnement est souvent en defaut et dementi par I'exp^- 
 ' rience, parce qu'il y a dans notre admirable organisation des 
 ' secrets et des subtilites qui echappent et echapperont toujours 
 ' au raisonnement et h ses recherches. Malgre cela, les mede- 
 ' cins aoissent comme si leur science etait certaine. Rousseau 
 ' avait raison de dire, " que la medecine vienne sans les me- 
 ' decins," mot plein de sens, qui explique parfaitement la diffi- 
 ' culte de cet art. Le meilleur moyen de I'exercer, k I'excep- 
 ' tion de quelques maladies aigues qui ont des regies certaines, 
 ' et que Ton gouverne pour ainsi dire, ce n'est point de partir 
 ' des principes de I'art comme dans les sciences exactes, mais 
 ' d'etudier I'effet des remedes et leur diflerence dans le nieme 
 ' cas sur les diverses constitutions. II aurait voulu etablir un 
 
 2 B 2
 
 372 ■ NOTES AND 
 
 ' college charge ile recueillir de toutes les parties tlu monde 
 ' conuLi tous les remedes possibles, et de les faire coiinaitre et 
 ' publier dans le royaume. II pensait que Ton aurait du faire 
 ' pour les maladies, en temps ordinaire, ce que Ton pratique 
 ' dans les temps de contagion, et etablir des maisons de con- 
 ' valescence, oil il fut impossible de s'ecarter du regime et de la 
 ' diete neccssaires au retablissement du malade, et cela meme 
 ' pour les premieres classes. II voulait aussi etablir une cri- 
 ' tique stJvere des medecins, juger leur conduite, et la publier 
 ' dans un journal expres, toutes les fois qu'un liomme mourrait ; 
 ' et au contrairc, recompcnser tous ccux qui auraient gueri des 
 ' maladies remarquables ; diminuer le nombre des medecins, 
 ' dtJfendre toutes les drogues qui ne seraient pas de la premiere 
 ' qualitc^ ; les faire donner gratis par I'ctat aux pauvres et aux 
 ' villages : il avait commence h etablir a Amsterdam une phar- 
 
 * macie royale, &c. 
 
 ' On ne pcut s'empeclier de remarquer quclques contradic- 
 
 * tions ou inconsequences sociales : par exemple, y a-t-il rien 
 ' de plus essentiel dans la societe que d' avoir de bons mede- 
 ' cins ? Cepcndant ceux qui exercent I'art de guerir sont si 
 ' nombreux ; combien ne serait-il pas avantageux d'en dimi- 
 ' nuer considerablement le nombre ! 11 faudrait etablir cntre 
 ' eux plusieurs classes, et indiquer au public quels sont reelle- 
 ' ment les meilleurs, ce qui empecberait les malades de placer 
 ' souvent si mal leur confiance. Deux autres projets I'inte- 
 ' ressaient vivenient, et cussent attire un jour toute son atten- 
 ' tion. 1°. Dcbarrasscr le ])ays petit a ])etit, autant que pos- 
 ' sible, des cstropie^, bossus, raclutiques, et de tous les enfans 
 ' malconformes, en facilitant leur etablisscment aux colonies. 
 ' Emp^cher les mariages entrc dc semblablos gens, et empC'- 
 ' clicr I'Gtablisscmcnt de tels malhcureux etransrers dans le 
 ' royaume, et nirme leur sdjour prolonge. 
 
 ' 2^. S'cntendre avec les autres pays pour extirper de I'Eu- 
 ' rope les maladies veneriennes, peste, fievrc jaunc, petite 
 ' verole, &c. ; etablir pour cela des lazarets, et prendre des 
 ' mesures analogues a celles que \\>u ihcikI contre la peste. 
 ' La Hocielc n'cst-cUe pas etablie pour radoucissement du sort 
 
 * des mallieureux mortel.s dc cette race, visiblcmcnt dc'gd-
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 373 
 
 ' neree, ct mise ici-bas comme dans ini lieu d'epreuves et 
 * d'epuration ? '— torn. i. p. 206. 10. 
 
 That part of the sclieme which relates to sending off de- 
 formed subjects seems to have been taken from the History 
 of the Severites, or Severambes, a poUtical romance written in 
 the latter part of the 17th century. I know not who was the 
 author. The first part was published in 1675, the second in 
 1679. The French edition (Amsterdam, 1702, in two vols.) 
 does not profess to be a translation, and is moreover consi- 
 derably altered and enlarged. It is more likely that the 
 author should have thus treated his own work, than that a 
 translator should have bestowed such supererogatory labour 
 upon his task ; and therefore I am inclined to think that it 
 may originally have been written in French. There is a want 
 of moral and religious feeling in tlie book, but it is no ordi- 
 nary work. 
 
 Slavery. 
 Vol.1, p. 71. 
 
 Berkley has expressed his opinion in favour of slaver)'^ as a 
 punishment. He asks in his Querist, 381, " Whether other 
 nations have not found great benefit from the use of slaves in 
 repairing higli roads, making rivers navigable, draining bogs, 
 erecting public buildings, bridges, and manufactures ? 382. 
 Whether temporary servitude will not be the best cure for 
 idleness and beggary? 384. Whether all sturdy beggars 
 should not be seized and made slaves to the public for a cer- 
 tain term of years? 385. AVhether he who is chained in a 
 gaol or dungeon hath not for the time lost his liberty? and 
 if so, whether temporary slavery be not already admitted 
 among us ?" 
 
 But in this country there is no kind of labour, however 
 hard, unwholesome, or disgusting, for which willing labourers 
 may not be found. 
 
 Feudal Slavery. 
 Vol. I. p. 79. 
 
 About forty years after the dissolution of Sallay Abbey, and
 
 374 NOTES AND 
 
 in the 22ncl year of Elizabeth's reign, the following petition 
 
 was addressed — 
 
 " To the Right Honourable George Earl of Cumberland. 
 In most humble manner complaining, sheweth 
 Your i)oor suppliants of the town of Feer Stayn- 
 forth. 
 " That whereas we and our ancestors have at all times here- 
 tofore been under the rule of your Honour's ancestors in the 
 time of service of the King or Queen's Majesty ; and foras- 
 much as we are now tenants to one Edward Darcye, Esq., 
 attending at the Court, who offereth to sell us, but holdeth it 
 at so unreasonable a price as we are never able to pay : and 
 for that we are in choice to purchase it ourselves, or to choose 
 our landlord, so it is, Right Honourable, that we of one of 
 our general assent are most heartily desirous that it would 
 please your Honour to buy and purchase us, so as we might 
 be wholly under your Honour's rule. And we will willingly 
 give unto you towards the purchase all the goods that we 
 have, moveable and immoveable, for good will, and the good 
 report we hear of your Honour. 
 
 " For truth is, Right Honourable, we have offered to give 
 unto our master, for leases of twenty-one years, twenty years' 
 fine ; or for the purchase threescore years' fine ; or otherwise 
 all the goods we have ; and none of this will satisfy him. 
 And now he takelh suit upon us, and meanelh to expulse us. 
 And we are in number sevenscore people and above, and have 
 no other living to go unto : so as, without your Honour's 
 goodness, wc know no way what to do. 
 
 " Your Honour's j)oor suppliants, 
 
 " The Inhabitants of Freer Staynforth." 
 
 I am almost induced to believe, says Dr. Whitaker, from 
 the language of this petition, that some remains of personal 
 slavery subsisted among these poor j)cople in the reign of 
 Elizabdli. It is well known that this unhappy condition, 
 though the subjects of it were treated with great gentleness, 
 was Hufl'cred to continue among the tenants of the religious 
 houses after it was abolished everywhere else. Whether there
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 375 
 
 are any instances of it upon their domains after the dissohition, 
 I do not recollect ; but in this place, the terms, to sell, to buy, 
 to purchase us, are scarcely capable of any other sense. 
 
 The petition, however, had no effect, for George Earl of 
 Cumberland was in circumstances which equally precluded 
 him from doing a generous act, and accepting a good offer ; 
 and it seems, after all, that either the tenants grew richer, or 
 the lord reasonable, so as to enable them, according to their 
 own expression, to buy themselves. — History of Craven, p. 136. 
 
 TVe sacrifice too much to prudence. 
 Vol. I. p. 83. 
 
 " Si le respect humain empeche I'eclat de bien des d^sordres, 
 ' il n' empeche pas moins la profession de bien des vertus. 
 ' La bienseance veut qu'on se retire des grands vices ; elle 
 ' defend qu'on embrasse les grandes vertus.' — La Bruyere, 
 vol. iv. p. 37. 
 
 Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands. 
 Vol. I. p. 85. 
 
 Sir Thomas More tells the story thus, in the fourth book of 
 his Dyaloge, fol. 145, edition 1530. 
 
 " And nowe where they laye for a profe that God were not 
 contented with batayle made agaynst infydelys, the loss and 
 mynyshment of Crystendome synce that guyse began, they 
 fare as dyd onys an old sage father fole in Kent, at suche tjTne 
 as dyvers men of worshyppe assembled olde folke of the 
 countre, to commune and devyse about the amendement of 
 Sandwyche haven. At whyche tyme as they began fyrst to 
 enserche by reason, and by the report of olde menne there 
 about, what thynge had bene the occasyon that so good an 
 haven was in so few yerys so sore decayed, and such sandys 
 rysen, and such shalow flattys made therewith, that ryght small 
 vessels had now moche worke to come in at dyvers tydys, 
 where great shyppys were, wythin fewe yerys passed, accus- 
 tumed to ryde wythout dyff^cultyc, and some layinge the faute
 
 376 NOTES AND 
 
 to Goodwyn Sandys, some to the landys inned by dyvers 
 owners in the lie of Tenate out of the chanell, in whyche the 
 so was wont to conipace the ilc, and brynge the vessels rounde 
 about it, whose course at the ebbe was wont to scoure the 
 liavcn, whiclie now tiie see excluded thense, for lacke of such 
 course and scourynge is choked up with sande : as they thus 
 alleged, dyvers men dyvers causes, there starte up one good 
 olde father, and sayd, ' Ye maysters saye every manne what 
 lie wyll, cha marked this matter well as some other. And by 
 God, I wote howc it waxed nought well ynoughe ; for I knewe 
 it good, and have marked, so chave, when it began to waxe 
 worse.' ' And what hath hurte it, good father V quod the 
 gcntyllmcn. ' By my foylhe, maysters,' quod he, ' yonder 
 same Tentorden ste])ell, and nothing ellys, that by the masse 
 choldc 'twere a fayrc sysshe i)olc.' ' Why hath the stcpell 
 hurle the haven, good father V quod they. ' Naye, byr Lady, 
 maysters,' quod he, ' yah can not tell you well why, but chote 
 well it hath. I'or by God, I knewe it a good haven tyll that 
 stepell was bylded; and by the Mary masse, cha marked it 
 well, it never throve synce.' " 
 
 It is worth while to annex Latimer's version of the story, 
 not merely as a specimen of his peculiar manner, but as an 
 example of the rajiid improvement which the English language 
 had undergone in one generation. 
 
 " But here is now an argument to prove the matter against 
 the preachers. Here was jncaching against covetousness all 
 the last yeare in Lent, and the next sommer followed rebellion: 
 ergo preaching against covetousness was the cause of the 
 rebellion. A goodly argument! Here was, I remember, an 
 argument of Maister M ore's, which he bringeth in a booke 
 that he made against Uilney : and here, by the way, T will tell 
 you a mery toy. Maister More was once sent in commission 
 into Kent, to help to trie out (if it might be) what was the 
 cause of Goodwin Sandes, and the shells that stopjjcd up Sand- 
 wich haven. Thether commeth Maister More, and calletli 
 the counlrye afore liini, sudi as were thought to be men of 
 cx]KTicnc(', and men thai ( ould of likeliliode best certify him 
 of thai matter, concerning the bloi)}»ing of Sandwicji h^ivcn,
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 377 
 
 Among others came in before him an olde man with a wliite 
 head, and one that was thought to be litle lesse than an hun- 
 dereth yeares olde. When Maister More saw this aged man, 
 he tliought it expedient to heare him say his minde in this 
 matter, for being so olde a man it was likely that he knew 
 most of any man in that presence and company. So Maister 
 More called this olde aged man unto him, and sayd, ' Father,' 
 sayd he, ' tell me if ye can, what is the cause of this great 
 arising of the sande and shelves here about this haven, the 
 which stop it up that no shippes can arive here ? Ye are the 
 oldest man that I can espie in all this companye, so that if 
 any man can tell any cause of it, ye of likelihode can say most 
 in it, or at least wise more than any other man here assembled.' 
 ' Yea forsooth, good maister,' quod this olde man, ' for I am 
 well nigh an hundreth yeares olde, and no man here in this 
 company anything neare unto mine age.' ' Well, then,' quod 
 Maister More, ' how say you in this matter ? What thinke ye 
 to be the cause of these shelves and flattes that stoppe up 
 Sandwiche haven V ' Forsooth, Syr,' quoth he, ' I am an olde 
 man : I thinke that Tenterton steeple is the cause of Goodwin 
 Sandes. For I am an olde man, Syr,' quod he, ' and I may 
 remember the building of Tenterton steeple, and I may re- 
 member when there was no steeple at all there. And before 
 that Tenterton steeple was in building, there was no maner of 
 speaking of any flats or sands that stopped the haven ; and 
 therefore I thinke that Tenterton steeple is the cause of the 
 destroying and decaying of Sandwich haven.' . . . And even so, 
 to my purpose, is preaching of God's worde the cause of 
 rebellion, as Tenterton steeple is a cause that Sandwich haven 
 is decayed." — Latimer's Sermons, fol. 109, edition 1575. 
 
 Large households of retainers, liable to be cast off. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 97. 
 
 " It is as usual," says Fuller, " to see a young serving man 
 an old beggar, as to see a light horse first from the great 
 saddle of a nobleman to come to the hackney-coach, and at 
 last die in drawing a car." — Holy Slate, p. 16.
 
 378 NOTES AND 
 
 Possibly this passage may have suggested to Dibdin his 
 song of" The high-meltled race-horse,". . . which ought to be 
 printed in every spelling-book, and learnt by heart in every 
 nursery. 
 
 Edward VI. 
 Vol. I. p. 101. 
 
 " Some foreign writers have observed, that the hope of this 
 land while he lived, Edward the Sixth, did die upon the self- 
 same day (after revolution of some years) in which his father 
 had put Sir Thomas More to death ; a man otherwise faulty, 
 yet so true a pattern of moral justice, as it cannot seem 
 strange, if the righteous Judge did take special notice of King 
 Henry's dealing with him, and insert the day of his death in 
 his everlasting kalendar, to be after signed with the untimely 
 death of King Henry's only son." — Jackson, vol. ii. p. 275. 
 
 Assuredly the sincere good-will will be accepted for the 
 
 deed. 
 Vol, I. p. 103. 
 
 " Verum ego" (ait apud Curtium Rex Macedo) " qui non 
 annos meos, sed victorias numero, si munera fortunoe bene 
 comi)Ulo, diu vixi." Quanio veriiis is, qui vitam siiam omtiem 
 Dc'u consccrat, suoque solu7n Domino placere siudet et servire, 
 fidenicr dical — " Ego, qui non annos meos, quibus Deo 
 servio, sed desideria mea numero, si bcneficia Domini mei 
 bene computo, diu vixi." 
 
 " Sic est profccl5 : Centum, imo millc annos, imo saecula 
 ' vivit, et Deo servit, quisquis ex animo vereque cupit centenis 
 ' vel millenis annis, aut multis sa3culis Deo servire, si vivere 
 ' tot annis liceret. Nam apud Deum voluntas pro facto sumi- 
 ' tur, apud quem serio voluisse facere, sffipe tantumdem est, 
 ' quantum fecisse." — Drexelius, ^ternitatis Prod. torn. i. p. 41.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 379 
 
 It is an observation ofMercier's, that despotism loves 
 large cities ;.. . insubordination and anarchy like them 
 quite as well. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 107. 
 
 Hobbes says, alluding to the part taken by London in the 
 Great Rebellion, " there can hardly arise a long or dangerous 
 rebellion, that lias not some such overgrown city with an army 
 or two in its belly to foment it." — (^Behemoth, p. 549 of his 
 Moral and Political Works.) 
 
 A preacher, who lived long enough to perceive the errors of 
 his early course, to choose the better part, and to leave behind 
 him a good and honourable name, speaks thus, in one of his 
 Sermons before the House of Commons, of the service which 
 London rendered to the Parliamentary cause : — 
 
 " London, the mirror of wonder, of love, zeal, constancy, 
 and bounty to you and your cause : London, the ark that hath 
 kept you safe in this deluge of blood that hath overflowed the 
 nation : London, your Ophir and India that supplied you with 
 masses of money and plate in all your wants : London, your 
 bank and stock of honours and hearts : London, yours so much 
 that you had not been what you are, if it had not been for 
 London : London, that, under a parliament, hath preserved 
 a nation ; and London, that, under God, hath preserved a 
 parliament ; . . Was it ever seen, or could it ever be related, 
 that any city under heaven ever did as London hath done, in 
 love and kmdness to your cause and you ?" — Lighffoot, vol. vi. 
 p. 120. 
 
 You might have seen me derive instruction while I was 
 
 giving it. 
 
 Vol. 1. p. 125. 
 
 The same thought is prettily expressed by Hurdis in his 
 Tragedy of " Sir Thomas More." 
 
 Sir Thomas. And what have you conversed of? 
 Cecilia. Nothing, Sir, 
 
 Worth your attention.
 
 380 NOTES AND 
 
 Sir Thomas. But perhaps it was. 
 I love to licarken to the simple cliat 
 Of prattling infants. From the lip of youth 
 I draw a sweeter pleasure to remark 
 How reason dawns toward her perfect day, 
 How jiassion kindles and impels the soul 
 To all the useful purposes of life. 
 
 Children. 
 
 Vol.1, p. 126. 
 
 •' Little children," said Luther, " stand on the best terms 
 with God. We old doting fools torment ourselves, and have 
 sorrow of heart with our disputings touching the Word, whether 
 it be true or not. But children with simple, pure faith, hold it 
 without all doubting. Now, if we would be saved, we must, 
 like them, give ourselves to the Word. But the wicked and 
 crafty Spirit, before we be aware, can cunningly draw us from 
 it, by ])resenting new dealings and business to keep us in 
 action. Therefore best it were for us early to die, and to be 
 covered over with the spade. 
 
 " Loving children live innocently, and know of no sins : 
 they arc without malice, wrath, covetousness, unbelief, &c. : 
 what they hear concerning Christ and the life to come, they 
 believe simjjly and plainly, and ])rattle joyfully thereof. From 
 whence Christ speaketh unto us old ones earnestly to follow 
 their example, when lie saith, ' whosoever shall not receive 
 the kingdom of Cod as a little child, shall in no wise enter 
 therein.' For children believe aright, and Christ loveth them 
 with their childish sports. On the contrary, he is an enemy 
 to the wisdom of the world." — CoUvquia Mensalia, p. 200. 
 
 John Fox, and the sight of a slaughter-house. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 129. 
 
 The passage alluded to is in a letter written by this excel- 
 lent man to Queen Elizabeth, interceding, unhai)pily without
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 381 
 
 effect ! for ten poor Anabaptists, who were condemned to the 
 flames, by tlie yet unrepealed laws which had been enacted 
 under the Romish clergy. He says, " Ac neque hominum 
 ' soliim, utinam et pecudibus ipsis opitulari possum. Ita enim 
 ' cum (stulte fortassis luec de meipso, at ver> dice) macellum 
 ' ipsum ubi mactantur etiam pecudes, vix pnetereo, quin tacito 
 ' quodam doloris sensu mens refugiat." 
 
 There is a beautiful passage upon this subject in a late ser 
 mon by Mr. "Woodward, which the reader who lias not seen 
 it, may thank me for here presenting to his notice. 
 
 " Here we live in the very region of death. The whole 
 creation, irrational as well as rational, groaneth and travaileth 
 in pain together, under the iron sceptre of this king of terrors. 
 And surely, if life in every other respect yielded the purest 
 happiness, it would be some abatement of it, to see the inferior 
 animals all around, silently submissive to that curse which our 
 sins have brought down upon them. Nor is it possible to 
 survey the cattle upon a thousand liills, the sheep that orna- 
 ment our fields, innocent, defenceless, and unsuspecting, with- 
 out some feeling for that allotment by which they will all be 
 summoned from their pleasant pastures, to die by the hand of 
 slaughter. Into this mysterious arrangement I do not pre- 
 sume to enter fully ; nor would I take upon me, with a late 
 truly excellent minister of the gospel, to lay down as a posi- 
 tive doctrine (cheering as the prospect may be) tliat these 
 animals will rise aoain to a new and blessed life. But this I 
 will say, because the Scripture says it, that the meanest of 
 such creatures is the care of Heaven ; that God fecdeth the 
 young ravens that call upon him ; that not even a sparrow 
 falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father. In these 
 hands we should be satisfied to leave tliem ; assured that they 
 wnll be considerately and mercifully dealt with. One thing, 
 however, is clear, that while they are the objects of such care, 
 it is a more serious thing than some imagine to trifle with 
 their pains, to make their miseries our sport, or to put them to 
 one moment's needless suflering. These sentiments, I am 
 well aware, will pass with many for unmanly, childish weak- 
 ijess : but alas ! do we consider how much of that high mettle,
 
 382 NOTES AND 
 
 which we call manliness, must come down ? Do we remem- 
 ber that we must become as little children, if we would enter 
 into the kingdom of Heaven ? In that world, then, of angelic 
 innocence, of divine simplicity, tenderness and love, where he, 
 who was himself once led as a lamb to the slaughter, sitteth 
 upon the throne — it will, I say, be a part of its blessedness, to 
 feel assured that no creatures are doomed to suffer for our 
 use : to look around, perhaps, and see various orders of happy 
 beings, who range its everlasting hills, and rejoice in security 
 on every side ; to see its vallies smile with flocks, against 
 which no hand of violence shall be raised, and which shall re- 
 pose upon their pastures during the days of an endless life.'' — 
 Irish Pulpit, 1827, p. 20. 
 
 There is a miracle related of St. Columba, which is in a 
 better spirit than is often found in monkish miracles. St- 
 Adamnan records it, and the Irish Friar, whose abridgement 
 of tlie life was published at St. Omer's, (with the lives of 
 St. Patrick and St. Bridget, 1625,) supposes" none will be so 
 impudent as to deny what hath been delivered from so holy 
 and innocuous a pen." But this Friar having, like most 
 abridgement-makers, a happy tact for omitting what is most 
 worthy of notice, has not inserted the story which follows it. 
 
 " One day a certain brother, by name Molua, the grandson 
 of Briun, came to the Saint when he was writing, and said to 
 liim, ' Bless, I pray thee, this iron which I have in my hand.' 
 He stretching out liis hand with the reed in it, signed and 
 blessed it, his face still being turned toward the book whence 
 lie was writing. But as the brother was departing, the Saint 
 asked of another what it was that he had blessed. Diermid, 
 his pious attendant, made answer, ' Thou hast blessed a knife 
 whidi is to cuttlK; throats of the cattle.' Then said the Saint, 
 ' I trust in the Lord that the iron which I have blessed shall 
 never hurt either man or beast.' In the same day what the 
 Saint thus said was aj)proved. For when the brother, going 
 out of the monastery, attempted to kill an ox, three times 
 he tried with all his strength, and was not able to pierce the 
 skin. The monks, understanding this, took the knife, and 
 heated the blade and beat it out, and put part of the metal
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 383 
 
 upon all the iron instruments in tlie monastery. Nor from 
 that time forward could they inflict a wound upon any flesh, 
 the blessing of the Saint remaining in its strength." — Acta 
 SS. Jun. tom. ii. p. 320, 
 
 From a diff'erent version of this story in another life, Baert, 
 the BoUandist, argues, " ea solummodo ferramenta sic illita 
 ' fuisse, quae aliis usibus destinata, fortuitum poterant vulnus 
 ' facere : quis enim non videt inconsultum fuisse, ut nullum 
 ' esset in monasterio ferrum, quo cutis cujusquam perstringi 
 ' posset, ad usum valetudinarii vel macelli ? " — p. 224. It is 
 edifying to observe the gravity with which such legends are 
 treated by such men ! 
 
 Butchers. 
 Vol. I. p. 129. 
 
 A representation from the Butchers in the difl'erent king- 
 doms and provinces of Spain, was presented to the Cortes in 
 1811, to show that they were comprehended in a certain ordi- 
 nance of March 8, 1783, and consequently free from the note 
 of infamy which was placed upon them, being equal in rights 
 to other honourable subjects and honest men, and conse- 
 quently capable of holding offices in the service of the com- 
 monwealth, and of serving in the army and navy. They 
 prayed, therefore, that that part of the Ordonnance of 1 800 
 which prejudiced them, might be abrogated. Copies of an 
 essay were presented at the same time to prove " que el oficio 
 de cortador dc carnes es una ocupacion honesta que no in- 
 fama d sus operarios." The matter was referred to the Com- 
 mission of Legislation, one of the members observing that it 
 was a subject which deserved the attention of the Cortes; that 
 in this point the laws required alteration, and that it was expe- 
 dient to do away with stigmas of this kind, which depended 
 wholly upon prejudice, and rendered infamous many employ- 
 ments which were useful to society. — Diario de las Cortes, 
 t. iv. p. 152.
 
 384 NOTES AND 
 
 . . . An intolerant and bitter -minded hi<jot, who, as 
 Warhurton saijs, " counterworks his Creator, makes 
 God after man's image, and chooses the ivorst model 
 he can find) himself!" 
 
 Vol. I. p. 133. 
 
 There is a freshness in this sentence and a vigour which 
 evince its originality. Something, however, which niiglit have 
 suwo-ested it, may be found in the following extract from a 
 divine of a better school than Warburton's : — 
 
 " There is no Christian man, I am persuaded, this day living 
 (unless he be stark mad), who, if this interrogatory were pro- 
 pounded unto him in express terms, ' Whether do you think 
 yoxir self altogether as wise as God the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost ?' but would answer negatively, ' I am not* And yet 
 how many writers in our time, through forgetfulness to put 
 this or the like interrogatory to themselves, when they set pen 
 to paper, have continued for many years together grievously 
 sick of our first parents' first disease, whatsoever that were ; 
 yet not sick of it in explicit desires or attempts to be every 
 way equal with God, but in im])licit ])rcsum])tions that they 
 are altugelher equal with him in wisdom and knowledge, at 
 least for the governing of this universe, from the beginning of 
 it to the end, and for the dispensing of mercy and justice 
 towards men and angels, before they had any beginning of 
 being, and for ever, even world without end, after this middle 
 worKl shall be dissolved. To give a true and punctual answer 
 to all their presumptuous contrivances, or to accept their chal- 
 lenges in this kind, would rcijuire more skill in arts than most 
 men are endowed with, and a great deal more time than any 
 wise man or skilful artist can be persuaded to mispend. It 
 would be a very hard task for the cunningcst needle-woman, 
 or other professor of manual or finger mysteries, to unweave 
 or dissolve a sj)ider's web, thread by thread, after the same 
 mann(;r which she did weave it ; and yet a mean housewife or 
 child may, with a wing or besom, in a moment undo all that 
 the spiiler halh wrouu'ht in a whole year. And so may every
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 385 
 
 novice in Arts unbubble all that some great clerks or school- 
 men have been twenty or thirty years in contriving or work- 
 ing (as in setting forth maps or systems of the manner of 
 God's decrees before all times, or disputes about election or 
 reprobation, as they are immanent acts in him), with tliat 
 common but useful exception, ant nihil, aid nimiiim. Their 
 conclusions might (for aught I know) be unanswerable and 
 sound, upon supposition that they are every whit as wise as 
 God. But this being not granted them, or the contradictory 
 being granted, ' that the Omnipotent Creator is Vis ^ix ttccjuiv, 
 wiser than they are;' the most elaborate and longest-studied 
 treatises, which it hath been my hap upon these arguments to 
 see, afford no document of greater strength or cunning than is 
 exhibited in the spider's web. The authors of them tell us 
 only (and herein we believe them) what they themselves would 
 have done, if they had been delegated to make decrees or acts 
 for the government of men and angels, or what God should 
 have done, if they had been of his privy council, when he made 
 all things, visible and invisible. But what God doth, hath 
 done, or will do according to the sole council of his most holy 
 will, that, they shew us not, nor go about to shew, wliile they 
 run the clear contrary way to that which God our Father, and. 
 the Church our Mother, hath prescribed us to follow. Now 
 the way which the English Church, from the warrant of God's 
 word, to this purpose prescribes, is to admire, not to determine 
 the equity of God's decrees before all times from contempla- 
 tion of tlie manner of their execution, or sweet disposition of 
 his providence in time. It is a preposterous presumption to 
 determine the manner how they have been, or shall be exe- 
 cuted, by prying into tlie projection or contrivance of the 
 Almighty Judge, before man or angel, or anything besides 
 God himself had any bein"-. 
 
 " He sinned grievously that said in his heart, or secret un- 
 examined thought, similis ero altissimo (whether this be meant 
 of Nebuchadnezzar, or some other earthly tyrant onlv, or 
 literally of one or more of them, and mystically of Lucifer'). 
 But they sin no less for the act, which say in their hearts, or 
 presuppose in their implicit thoughts, altissimus est similli7nus 
 VOL. II. 2 C
 
 38G NOTES AND 
 
 mihi: the most liigh God hath determined notliing concernmg 
 men or angels, otlierwise than we would luvve done, if we had 
 been in his place. They preposterously usurp the same power 
 which God in his first creation did justly exercise; who, 
 though not expressly, yet by inevitable consequence, and by 
 implicit thoughts, make a God after their own image and 
 similitude ; a God, not according to the reliques of that image 
 wherein he made our first parents, but after the corruptions or 
 defacements of it, through partiality, envy, pride, and hatred 
 towards their fellow-creatures." — Jackson, vol. ii. p. 781. 
 
 Hours of rising. 
 Vol. I. p. 149. 
 
 The most curious statement that I have anywhere met with 
 concerning the apportionment of time for sleep, occurs in Dr. 
 Clarke's Travels. Speaking of the Norwegians, he says, 
 ♦' The lower order of people in summer sit up the whole night, 
 and take no sleep for a considerable length of time. Sunday 
 is in fact their sleeping day : if they do not go to church, they 
 spend the greater part of the sabbath in sleep ; and in winter 
 they amplv repay themselves for any privation of their liours 
 of repose during summer." — (vol. x. p. 215.) 
 
 Archbishop Williams is said to have slept only three hours 
 in the four-and-twenty, " so that he lived three times as long, 
 (says his biographer) as one that lived no longer." This is a 
 marvellous fact, for Williams was a man who employed all his 
 waking hours, and moreover was not of the most tranquil dis- 
 position. 13ut 1 believe that any one who should attempt to 
 follow his example, would severely suffer for his imprudence. 
 The mind requires regular rest as much as the body, and does 
 not so soon recover from any excess of exertion. But it is 
 the tendency of the present state of society in England to pro- 
 duce unnatural exertions. Stage-coach horses, and walkers 
 against time, are not the only creatures that are worked to 
 dcatli in this country. Many are the labourers (and it is the 
 most sober and industrious upon whom the evil falls), who by
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 387 
 
 task-work, or by working what are called days and quarters, 
 prepare for themselves a premature old age. And many are 
 the youths who, while they are studying for university honours, 
 rise early and sit up late, have recourse to art for the purpose 
 of keeping their jaded faculties wakeful, and irretrievably 
 injure their health for ever, if this intemperance of study does 
 not cost them their lives. 
 
 We are bound over to the service of the world. 
 Vol. L p. 166. 
 
 ' Quod a prisco* poet§, dictum est, verum esse non dubitem : 
 " Exigua pars est vitee quam nos vivimus." 
 
 ' Caeterum quidem omne vitte spatium, non vita, sed tempus 
 ' est. Urgentia nos circumstant cum negotia, turn vitia, et in 
 ' cupiditatibus infixos premunt. Vix unquam nobis ad nos re- 
 ' currere licet: nobis ipsi rarissimfe vacamus, sed aliis : nemo 
 ' fere suus est. Qui pecuniam suam dividere velit, nuUus est; 
 ' vitam miserrime laceramus, et modo in haec, modo in ilia 
 ' negotia partimur, sijepe vana et inutilia. Ita magnam partem 
 ' exigimus non vivendo ; certe non coelo, non Deo vivimus.' — 
 Drexelius, torn. i. p. 45. iEtern. Prod. 
 
 An anonymous poet of the Puritan age has some remarkable 
 verses upon this subject among many bad ones of the rankest 
 raving fanaticism. 
 
 Pass, World, along with all thy pompous train ! 
 Go ruffling in thy pride, thy richest show. 
 Drawn in thy stateliest chariot! Thou art too low. 
 Too base an object for my high disdain. 
 
 Contemn the World?. . I would, were it worth contempt ! 
 Or give my indignation footing, or 
 On what shall it trample ? 
 
 * Publio miraographo. 
 
 2 C 2
 
 388 NOTES AND 
 
 I'd liave the AVorld at will ; and yet I care 
 No more for't than to buy me food and frieze : 
 I'd have it the obedient tool I'd make to rear 
 My building soul ; and when my master sees 
 It meet, lay it by. 
 
 And this is all I care for the careful World, 
 To keep it by my hand, and from my heart." 
 
 Soliliquies Theological, by J. S. gent. 1641. pp. 1S7-8. 
 
 JVe are as it ivere bound over to the service of the fforld. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 166. 
 
 " Many of us," says Paley, " are brought up with this 
 world set before us, and nothing else. Whatever promotes 
 tliis world's prosperity is praised; whatever hurts and ob- 
 structs and prejudices this world's prosperity, is blamed; and 
 there all praise and censure end. We see mankind about us 
 in motion and action, but all these motions and actions directed 
 to worldly objects. We hear their conversation, but it is all 
 the same way. And this is what we see and hear from the 
 first. The views which are continually placed before our 
 eyes, regard tliis life alone and its interests. Can it then be 
 wondered at, that an early worldly-mindedness is bred in our 
 liearts so strong as to shut out heavenly-mindedness entirely ?" 
 — Sermon I. 
 
 There is a nation of warriors in Hindostan who call 
 their Deitxj AU-Steel. 
 
 Vol.1, p. 169. 
 
 Tlie Siklis, who arc at present the most formidable people in 
 that country. They are required to have steel about them in 
 sjme shape, wliich is generally that of a knife or dagger. In 
 suj)port of this ordinance they quote these verses of Guru Go- 
 vind, who made them a military sect : " The protection of the 
 infiniti! Lord is over us: thou art the Lord, the cutlass, the 
 knife, and tlic dagger. The jjrotection of the Innnortal Being
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 380 
 
 is over us: the protection of All-Steel is over us: the pro- 
 tection of All Time is over us : tlie protection of All-.Steel 
 is constantly over us." — Sir John Malcolm. Asiatic Researches, 
 vol. ii. p. 253. 8vo. edition. 
 
 They address tlie Goddess Bhavani Diirga thus : " Tliou 
 art the edge of the sword : tliou art the arrow, the sword, tlie 
 knife, and tlie dagger." (Ibid. 283.) " Durga," says Guru 
 Govind, " appeared to me when I was asleep, arrayed in all 
 lier glory. The Goddess put into my hand the hilt of a bright 
 scimitar, which she had before held in her own. ' The 
 country of the Mahommedans,' said the Goddess, ' shall be 
 conquered by thee, and numbers of that race shall be slain.' 
 After I had heard this, I exclaimed. This steel shall be the 
 guard to me and my followers, because in its lustre the splen- 
 dour of thy countenance, O Goddess ! is always reflected." — 
 Ibid. p. 287. 
 
 . . . Rather than have been born and bred to a large 
 fortune, I should deem it better for myself always to 
 live precariously, and die j^oor at last. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 193. 
 
 Nicolas Clenard has left a pleasant picture of a scholar's 
 feeling concerning riches in the little volume of his Letters. 
 
 ' Memini me quandoque leviter abs te castigatum, quod ad 
 ' rem parum attentus essem, et parandum etiam senectutis via- 
 ' ticum. Hactenus non induxi animun), ut aliquid prospice- 
 ' rem in jiosterum, nee adhuc mihi possum illud imperare. 
 ' Spero dabit locus exilii mei victum exuli, quocunque me 
 ' Deus miserit: quod si nihil reiiquum est in patria, quod me 
 ' reducem queat alere, moriar peregre, et studiis meis morem 
 ' geram, potius quam illic nemini. Nam de parandis hie 
 ' opibus, quemadmodum jjlerique putant, ut bene saginatus 
 ' domum revertar, id vero somnium est. Habentes victum et 
 ' amictum, his contenti simus, et ut cum Flacco dicam, 
 " Lietus in praesens aninuis, quod ultra est 
 Oderit curare."
 
 390 NOTES AND 
 
 ' Spes numinaria uon nie fecit erronem, sed ocii desiderium ; 
 ' id volente Domino consecutus sum profuiidissimmn ; non est 
 ' animus praesenti oblata occasione non uti. Valeant qui cras- 
 
 • tina curant. Scio te ridere stultitiam meam, ipse tamen me 
 ' lioc nomine non possum ridere, et ideo tibi forsitan magis 
 
 * ridiculus videor. Verum quid facias, si aliquis me ita incan- 
 ' tavit, ut nolim ullo pacto sollicitus esse de crastino ? . . . 
 ' Unicus semper milii fuit scopus, e turbis illis eripi quas 
 ' pruebebat patria, satis mihi beatus videor, quod vel tandem 
 ' peregre contigerit. Nihil amplius opto, quam ut Deus banc 
 ' nientem mihi sempiternet, ocium pruescns conservct, et qui 
 ' vivere non cupiam valde dives, ne unquam sic desipeam, ut 
 ' dives velim mori. '" — Nic. Cletmrdi Peregrinatiojitim, ac de 
 rebus Machometicis Episiolce. Lovanii. 1551. 
 
 Aerostation attempted in Portugal in 1709. 
 Vol.1, p. 201. 
 
 In 1759 Pedro Norberto de Aucourt e Padilha published 
 a book entitled Raridades de Natureza e da Arte, divididas 
 pelos quuiro Elementos. It contains a short article upon the 
 various attempts which men have made at flying ; and it is 
 there stated that P. Bartholomeu Lourenqo de Gusman la- 
 boured at this project, and in fact raised himself into the air, 
 in a machine of pasteboard, or strong paper, in the ])resence 
 of King .loam V. " O Padre Bartholomeu Louren^o de Gus- 
 mao Irabalhou no mcsmo projccto, e com cfleito em huma 
 maquina de papelam se elevou na presen^a do Senhor Rey D. 
 Joam V."— p. 428. 
 
 An imaginary representation of this aerostatic machine was 
 ])ul)lishcd at Lisbon in 1774... //« Ojjicina de Simani Thaddeo 
 I'trreira. . .with this inscription — 
 
 ' Maquina Aerostatica 
 
 ' que pcla primeira vez se vio na Europa, inventada pelo celebre 
 
 ' Bartholomeu Louren^o, 
 
 ' por Autonomasia o Voador, Irmani do insigne 
 
 ' Alexandre de Gusmao :
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 391 
 
 ' Lanqada ao Ar no Castello de S. Jorge de Lisboa ; donde o 
 'Author desceo nella ao Terreiro do Pa^o em 20 da Abril 
 
 de 1709.' 
 
 Tlie representation is absurd, and the explanation not less 
 so. The elevating, or as it is there called, the attractive 
 secret, is placed on two metallic globes. In all parts this is 
 merely imaginary. A note says, that " notwithstanding the 
 author of the machine has affirmed that the magnet, by virtue 
 of which the boat was made to rise in the air, was contained 
 in the globes, the elevation was in fact not occasioned by any 
 attractive virtue, but by the force of gas confined within those 
 globes, which the author called the secret, and which he would 
 not reveal, having perhaps good reasons for concealing it. 
 Certain it is that the author was a man of talents, and of great 
 capacity, and that trial was made of such a machine, according 
 to the testimonies of certain respectable old persons, who are 
 still living in our Court, in spite of there being some who deny 
 it, perhaps for malice, or for ignorance." 
 
 The print is so fantastic, and the explanation accompanying 
 it so impossible, that the fact of P. Bartholomeu's ascent 
 would be rather discredited than confirmed by them, if it were 
 not for the testimony which has been previously adduced. I 
 happen, however, to possess a copy of the petition presented 
 to the Court by P. Bartholomeu, in which he states the sup- 
 posed uses of his invention. It is in a manuscript collection 
 of Portugueze and Spanish Tracts and Letters, in nine vols, 
 folio, quoted in my History of Brazil as the Pinheiro Collec- 
 tion, from the name of the Dezembargador, to whom it seems 
 originally to have belonged. He had discovered, he says, an 
 instrument for travelling through the air as easily as on land 
 or sea, and with much greater expedition, even at the rate of 
 more than 200 leagues a day. By this means important 
 despatches might be transmitted to the armies and to the re- 
 motest countries almost in the very time that they are resolved 
 on: and in this the King of Portugal was interested much 
 more than any other sovereign, by reason of the greater dis- 
 tance of his dominions. By this means misgovernment in the 
 conquests might be speedily put an end to, arising as they did
 
 392 NOTES AND 
 
 mainly because of the length of time which elapsed before in- 
 telligence from them could reach the court. Their treasures 
 moreover mio-ht be remitted with much greater speed and 
 security: merchants could transmit their letters and remit- 
 tances with the same celerity : besieged places might be rem- 
 forced with men, munition, and su])plies ; and those persons 
 who wished to retire from them might at any time be brought 
 away, without the enemy being able to impede them. The 
 regions which are nearest to the pole might be discovered, 
 and the glory of that discovery which other nations had so 
 often in vain attempted, would be secured for the Portugueze 
 nation. The true longitude of all parts of the world might 
 be ascertained, owing to the want of which knowledge, and the 
 errors of the charts in consequence, so many shipwrecks were 
 occasioned. Other infinite advantages there were, some of 
 which were obvious, and others which time would show, alto- 
 gether making it well worthy his Majesty's attention. There 
 were inconveniences also, which would arise when men had 
 the power of passing so certainly from one kingdom to ano- 
 ther ; but these might be prevented by giving tlic exclusive 
 privilege of using it to one person, who should at all times 
 execute the orders which were given. The petitioner there- 
 fore requested that privilege for himself and his heirs ; and 
 that no person in Portugal or its conquests should make use 
 of the instrument, nor ever make one, without his consent, 
 on pain of confiscation of all his property, half to the informer, 
 half to the inventor, besides such other penalties as his Ma- 
 jesty might think the importance of the business required, 
 lie petitioned also for a reward for so great a discovery. 
 
 The answer of the Dezembargo do Papo is given, whicli is 
 an unanimous opinion, upon sight of the invention, that the 
 reward should be increased. The answer is dated April 20, 
 1709, the day on which the pamphlet says the ascent was 
 made ; but in the MS. the ascent is said to have been made 
 from the India House. 
 
 I sul)join the original as accurately as I can transcribe it 
 frcmi a very indistinct hand. It seems to have been incorrectly 
 written or transcribed. The transcript must have been made
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 393 
 
 before the year 1750, and it establishes the fact of an ascent, 
 and that the machine must have been a balloon, which the 
 projector expected he should be able to guide. 
 
 ' Peticjam que fez o P. Bartholomeu Louren^o ao Dezem- 
 ' bargo do Pa^o, para que se Ihe concedesse fazer hum invento 
 ' que havia andar pelo ar ; e com effeito, se Ihe concedeo ; o 
 ' qual fez elevando — o a Caza da India, o fez subir ao ar. 
 
 ' Senhor 
 ' Diz o P. Bartholomeu Louren^o, que elle tern descuberto 
 hum instrumento para se andar pello ar, da mesma sorte do 
 que pella terra, e pella mar, e com muito mais brevidade, 
 fazendo llie muitas vezes duzentas e mais legoas por dia ; no 
 qual instrumento se poderam levar os avizos de mais impor- 
 tancia aos exercitos, e as terras muito remotas quasi no 
 mesmo tempo em que se rezolveram. Em que enteressa 
 Vossa Magestade muito mais que nenhum dos outros Prin- 
 cipes, pella mayor distancia dos sens dominios, cortandose 
 desta sorte os desgovernos das conquistas, que procedem em 
 grande parte de chegar muito tarde as noticias dellas a Vossa 
 Magestade ; alem do que podera Vossa Magestade mandar 
 vir o preciozo dellas muito mas brevemente e mas seguro, 
 poderam os homems de negocio passar letras e cabedaes com 
 a mesma brevedade ; todas as pra^as sitiadas poderam ser 
 socorridas tanto de gente como de municoens e viveres, a 
 todo o tempo retiraremse dellas todas as pessoas que quize- 
 rem, sem que o inimigo o possa impedir ; descubrirse hao as 
 regioens que ficam mais vizinhas ao Polo do Mundo, sendo 
 da Nacam Portugueza a gloria deste descobrimento, que 
 tantas vezes tem intentado inutilmente os estrangeiros ; 
 saberse hao as verdadejTas longitudes de todo mundo, que 
 por estarem erradas nas mapas cauzam muitos ^naufragios, 
 alem de infinitas conveniencias que mostrara o tempo, e 
 outros que por se sam notorias, que todas merecem a real 
 atencjam de Vossa Magestade. Por que deste invento tarn 
 util se pode seguir muitos discordios, e facilitandose muito 
 mais na confian9a de se poder passar logo a outro reyno,
 
 394 NOTES AND 
 
 ' estaiido restricto o dito uzo a luima so pessoa, a quern se 
 ' mandem a todo o tempo as ordens qui forem convenientes a 
 ' respeito do dito transporte proliibendose a todas as mais, sob 
 ' (Traves penas, c he bem se remunera ao suplicaute o invento 
 « de tanta iniportancia. 
 
 ' Pide a Vossa Magestade seja servido conceder ao supli- 
 ' cante o privilegio de que, pondo por obra o dito invento, 
 ' nenhuma pessoa de qualquier qualidade que for, possa uzar 
 ' delle em nenhum tempo neste reyno e seus conquistas, com 
 ' quaesquer pretextos, sem licenqa do suplicante, ou de seus 
 ' lierdeyros, sob pena do perdimento de todos os seus bens ; a 
 ' metade para o suplicante, e outra a metade para quem o 
 ' acuzar, e sobre mais penas que Vossa Magestade Ihe parecer 
 ' que pide a importancia deste negocio ; as quaes todas teram 
 ' luoar tanto que constar que algum faz o dito invento, ainda 
 ' que nam tinlia uzado delle, para que non fique frustada as 
 ' ditas penas ausentandose o que as tiver encorrido. 
 
 ' Despacho do Dezembargo de Pa^o. 
 
 • Consultouse no Dezembargo do Pa^o a favor do requiri- 
 ' mento com todos os votos, a que devia augmentarse o premio 
 ' a vista da obra.' — Lishoa, 20 Abril, 1709. 
 
 Sylvius, in his continuation of Aiizema's great history, has 
 an account of a French adventurer who perished miserably in 
 an attempt at flying at Regensburg, in the year 1673. The 
 relation is far from clear, which Sylvius himself regrets. 
 Dressed in wet clothes, he was to fly from a high tower on an 
 outstretched sail, with some sort of fireworks fastened on his 
 back and to his hands and feet. This should seem the mere 
 feat of a desj)erate exhibitor ; but then it is said that by means 
 of these fireworks the flight was to be performed ; that he had 
 often performed it successfully, and that when he lost his 
 balance and hung by one hand, he held the other to his nostrils 
 to prevent suffocation from the smoke and stench, and that he 
 fell in consequence, not of burning, but of sufl'ocation. From 
 this it nii^fht seem that what was called his fireworks was an 
 apitaralus for producing gas, though the manner of applying
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 395 
 
 it is inexplicable. Had it been a niere descent, set off with 
 crackers, Sylvius would not have expressed his wish for a 
 clearer and more intelligible relation. For those who may 
 be interested in the history of such experiments, the original 
 passage is subjoined, 
 
 1673. ' Toen was het dat tot Regensburg dese saak voor- 
 viel. Een persoon van Grenoble gebooren, Charles Bernovin 
 geneemt, was onlangs aldaar gekomen, hebbende den naam 
 van goede kennisse in de heelkonsttehebben : daar-en-boven 
 konde hy een vuur werk toe-rechten, door het welke men op 
 een gespannen zeyl, van hooge gebouwen in de lucht konde 
 vhegen ; dat hadde hy op verscheydene plaatsen besocht, 
 daar het hem wel gelukt was, en wilde het ook alhier in het 
 werk stellen. Hy dan maakt al sijnen toestei vaardig, en 
 hem wierd een hoogen tooren tot het werk gegeven, daar men 
 al den toestei op-bracht. Wanneer nu alles vaardig was, 
 begaf hy sich des morgens ten seven uuren op het hoogste 
 van den tooren, en leyde sich, in het aanschouwen van veel 
 1000 menschen, met een nat hemde en nat linnen gewaat aan, 
 (om door de brand niet beschadigt te worden,) op dat ges- 
 pannen zeyl neder, latende sich de bestelde vuur-werken op 
 den rugge, en aan handen en voeten binden ; en als alles nu 
 klaar was, beval hy sijn dienaar, die het aan sou steken, 
 goede acht op hem te slaan : aldus voegde hy sich op het 
 zeyl in sijn gevvicht, en beval sijn knecht aan te steken ; die 
 sulks dede. Maar alsoo deselve wat harder aan het eene als 
 aan het andere eynde aan-gingen, geraakte hy uyt het gewicht 
 van het zeyl, en bleef aan sijn armen hangen, seggende, O 
 Jesu mijn leven is verlooren ! Aldus bleef hy met een hand 
 hangen, en hield met de andere den neus toe, om door de 
 rook en stank niet te verstikken : maar des niet-tegenstaande 
 begost den brand sov hevig en geweldig, dat hy, genoegsaam 
 verstikt, van boven neder viel, daar hy op-genomen, en by de 
 Capucijnen begraven wiert. Ik wenschte de beschrijving 
 hier van wel wat duydelijker te hebben gehad, om de selve 
 den leser ook alsoo te beter te konnen voordragen. Altoos 
 desen hoogen vlieger heeft, na de gewoonte van sulke hoog- 
 geleerde lieden, een lagen val gedaan : latende, soo als ik
 
 396 NOTES AND 
 
 ' geloof, weynig leerlingen na, om die konst te leeren.* — 
 Sylvius. Hisiorien oiises Tyds. 1669 tot 1679. p. 551. 
 
 In that very curious work, tlie Recognitions of Clement, is 
 a passage concerning Zoroaster, which if were not evidently 
 fabulous as being related of one who is there identified with 
 Misraim, and of whose real history nothing is known, might 
 be understood to imply that he practised electricity for the 
 purpose of deluding tlie people, and was killed in one of his 
 experiments. The story is thus given in AVhiston's translation. 
 
 ' This man then being veiy much and very often intent 
 upon thi;; stars, and desirous to seem a God among men, began 
 to produce, as it were, certain sparks from the stars, and to 
 show them to men ; that so the unskilful and ignorant might 
 be led into astonishment at the miracle : and he being desirous 
 to increase the opinion they liad of him, often attempted these 
 wonders, till at length he was set on fire, and consumed therein 
 by that very Demon he had been so conversant with. But 
 the foolish people that then were, when they ought certainly 
 to have laid aside the opinion they before had of liim, since 
 they liad found that that opinion was confuted by the penal 
 manner of his death, extolled him now more than ever. For 
 they built a monument in honour of him, as of the friend of 
 God, and one that was conveyed to heaven by thunder, as by 
 a chariot ; and they ventured to adore him and worship him, 
 as a living star. For hence it came that afier his death he had 
 the name of Zoroaster, that is, the Living Star, amonof those 
 that, after one generation, were skilled in the Greek language. 
 Nay, to conclude, it is in imitation of this example, that even 
 now many worship those who have died by thunder, and 
 lionour them with monuments, as the friends of God.' — Book 
 iv. §§27, 28. p. 197. 
 
 Anthcmins. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 201. 
 
 The story is thus related by Agathias. 
 ' There was much discourse at that lime upon the subject 
 of <xlialali(jns. Aristotle was talked of in all conversations.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 397 
 
 Some praised him for having discovered the true origin of 
 eartliquakes ; others maintained that liis opinion was not con- . 
 formable to truth. Some, to confirm the opinion whicli tliey 
 held, that these furious movements proceeded from a black 
 and thick vapour sliut up in the concavities of the earth, 
 referred to a certain machine which Anthemius had invented. 
 This Anthemius was a native of the town of Tralles. He fol- 
 lowed the profession of the engineers, who, joining the know- 
 ledge of geometry to that of physics, construct works whose 
 effects are similar to those of animated creatures. He excelled 
 not less in mathematics than his brother Metrodorus in gram- 
 mar, I hold that their mother must have been happy in 
 having contributed to the birth of two such great men. She 
 had yet for sons Olympius, a person very learned in jurispru- 
 dence, and well versed in the affairs of the bar, Dioscorus 
 and Alexander, both very skilful in Medicine. Dioscorus 
 passed all his life in his own country, wliere he exercised his 
 profession with a rare ability, Alexander was sent to Rome, 
 where he became very celebrated. The reputation of Anthe- 
 mius and of Metrodorus spread itself through all the empire, 
 and came even to the ears of the Emperor, who sent for them 
 even to Constantinople, where they gave ample proofs of their 
 capacity and of their merit. The latter instructed children of 
 the best houses, and instilled into them a marvellous passion 
 for eloquence. The other constructed in Constantinople, and 
 in many other towns of the empire, an infinity of fine: works, 
 which will support, as long as they exist, the glory of their 
 author, without our undertaking to enhance it by our words. 
 I must now speak of that which led me to mention him. 
 There lived at Constantinople a man named Zenon, celebrated 
 in the profession of eloquence, and known to the Emperor, 
 who was so near a neighbour of Anthemius that their houses 
 were joined by a common wall. There arose between them a 
 law-suit, either on account of new holes made in the wall, or 
 for the elevation of some building which took away the light, 
 or for some other such cause as may hap])en between neigli- 
 bours. Anthemius having been overcome by the eloquence of 
 his opponent, who was the plaintiff and accuser, and knowing
 
 398 NOTES AND 
 
 that he had not like him the advantage of words, sought in the 
 art in which lie excelled a means of revenging himself for the 
 loss of his cause. Zenon had a very spacious house, enriched 
 with many ornaments, where he frequently received his friends. 
 He had one apartment joining the house of Antliemius ; it was 
 in this place that the latter bethought him of putting many 
 large vessels, full of water, to which he attached leathern pipes, 
 which were large enough to cover the vessels entirely, and 
 very narrow at the top, where he attached them to the joists 
 of the floor of his neighbour, so that the air which was en- 
 closed there should rise up without dissipating itself in any 
 way ; he afterwards kindled up a great fire under the vessels. 
 When the water began to boil, it cast out a thick vapour, which 
 raised itself with great violence, because the vessels in which 
 it was enclosed were narrower at the top than the bottom. 
 When it reached the beams it shook them in such a manner 
 that the floor trembled. Those who were within the house 
 came out quickly, and fled into the streets and public places, 
 seized with fear. Zenon having gone to the Court, asked 
 his friends whom he found there, what they thought of this 
 earthquake, and if they had suflered no injury from it. 
 When they were surprised and displeased at what he said, 
 that he should hold to them language of such evil augury, 
 they put him into a still greater perplexity, for he could not 
 doubt tlie truth of that which he had experienced in his own 
 house, and he dared not contest obstinately against persons of 
 quality, who would be offended by his discourse. Those who 
 maintain that earthquakes proceed from exhalations and from 
 confined vaj)0urs, make use of this example, and maintain that 
 this learned engineer, knowing tlie true cause of these violent 
 movements, had found the art of imitating nature. Some, 
 even at that time, said that they could not seriously believe 
 it: for myself it a])pcarcd to me ingeniously imagined, but 
 nevertheless that did not convince me. When cats are run- 
 ning iq)on the jtlanks of a granary, tliey make a similar move- 
 ment. I think, nevertheless, that there is no person who 
 would wish to take this for an example of that which shakes 
 the carlh and overthrows provinces. It is true that their
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS, 399 
 
 mechanical inventions are admirable, but that does not explain 
 the true beginning of these disorders of which we speak. 
 Anthemius fabricated against Zenon divers other tricks ; one 
 amongst otliers, that of causing his house to be struck by 
 lightning. He received into a concave mirror all the collected 
 rays of the sun ; then turning it all at once towards the house 
 of Zenon, he filled it with an extraordinary light, at which 
 those who were within were dazzled and frightened. He ex- 
 cited also, by a collision of certain bodies proper to render a 
 great sound, a noise capable of astonishing the most bold, 
 even equal to that of thunder, when it rolls in the bosom of 
 a cloud. Zenon, having at last discovered by what artifice all 
 these surprising effects were produced, threw himself at the 
 feet of the Emperor to complain of the evil offices his neigh- 
 bour rendered to him. They say that anger made him say 
 some very good things upon this occasion ; for making allu- 
 sion to some ancient verses, he said in the Senate House that, 
 being a man, he was not sulticiently strong to resist an enemy 
 who cast forth thunder hke Jupiter, and who shook the earth 
 like Neptune. These effects are wonderful, although they 
 are only the sport and invention of man. But they do not 
 serve any thing to discover the true origin of that done by 
 Nature.' 
 
 I annex the original of that part which describes the manner 
 in which Anthemius apphed the power of steam to this neigh- 
 bourly purpose. 
 
 O Oi {Avhfiiosj ix TVS oiKi'ict; aurov avriXv^wt ri^vfii t^ovu roiati- ^ofj-oi 
 TDia, wzi^uov Zyjvcav iKixmro iv^riv ti Xixv xa.) ^la-r^lTtj xai •^ipiioyoTa.ra 
 •ri'ToixiXfcivov, iv a dfi ra ^roXXd if/,<piXo^a^uv huihi, xai Krriay toi; fikTarois' 
 reOrov ei roc t^os toji iiaipii ivhaiTrifmra t»s Avh/xia ovra iriy^avi fioiga;, us 
 TO fiira^u Tiyos, to f/.iv I; o^oiptf/, to Se If (haffiv •jraoa.riTUcrSar \yruZ(ce, V/i out 
 Xi^nrecs /ayaXois vdccTos ifiVXwa; oiocx^i^ov 'icryiffi ttoXXoc^h t5 ^a/xaro; avXoi} 
 di avTots (^uhv rxuTivots vi^ifiaXuv, xa.Tu f/,\v ivpuvafcivois us ct^cctrav Tnv ffTi^uvttv 
 ■^l^i^ipiV(r(a.r i%ns Ss xa^dvi^ trecXTiyyec v'ToffTiXXofiivois xa) i; to avaXoySv 
 TiXiuTuvTa; , Wi'Tvi^i Toits ioKoTs xcci rai; traviffi to. avoXnyovTa xoc) s; to axgi/iis 
 dviTi^ovnirtv, us xa) tov Iv kvTols d'TliXtififjuvov di^a d(pcTov ft,iv £;^E'V ttiv xva (fofiav 
 oia tTis xivoTYiTos dviovTo., xa) yvfivtj T^otr^aviit Trt o^o(p7i xaTu, to Ta^iTxov xai 
 Tri (ivpirfi Tipii^oftivov, 'nxiara as \s Ta Ixtos Oiappiiv xa) uvix(pipir^ai- TovTa S^ 
 euv Ik tov aipavcvs xaTaimjffd/Jdvos, sruj ivtixt ffipo^^ov ii^e to)s tum Xi(!>r,Tuy 
 wiftivecs, k») ^X'oya i^ri-^t fttyaXnv durixa Je ri vixro; liah^f/,aivofiiv» xa)
 
 400 NOTES AND 
 
 avuKaxXilXivrt); arfio; I'Trioro -ToXu; tea) auppirr'iZ.im rapf^l; ri xa) 'ri'Tvxvufityos- 
 ovK 'ix"* ^^ ''^^ iiaxudtx, i'r't to); uuXo); avl^'Xi nai tS ffrtvorrtri •prii^ofiivos, 
 fiiaioripov avt^ifi'Ttro, tea; tt, ffriyyi ir^oirVTCciu)! itliXiXi^reiTK, ido\)r,inva,va.ffa,v 
 xxl^iiffiiiriy'ofov vvorpi/niv rioifiit kcci ^larBr^iyfiUai ra %uXx,L o\ af/.(pi tov Z»vo»a 
 iruodTTovTO xx'i i^iifictivov xcc) a/^(p) rhv Xsaipi^iv i^iviTro)i ■mrviuf/.iioi xai (ioavri;, 
 xa) r* luvii xaTecTi-rXtiyf4.Uoi.' — Agathias. Parisiis, 1660. lib. v. p. 150. 
 
 Pope Silvesfer''s Steam-Organ. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 201. 
 
 ' . . . fecit arte mechanica liorologium, et organa idraulica, 
 ' ubi mirum in modum, per aquie calefacta^ violentiam implet 
 ' ventus emergens concavitatem barbati, et per multiforaliles 
 ' tractus, ccreye fistulaj modulatos clamores emittunt.' — Fjaj- 
 centius Dclvaccnsis, lib. xxiv. c. 98. 
 
 It was at Rheims, according to Vincentius, that this organ 
 was made ; and though tlie account wliich he gives of Silvester 
 is mere romance, this statement may be admitted. The same 
 passage is given by Du Cange from WiUiam of Malmesbury. 
 Baronias makes no mention of it; he liked Silvester too little 
 to record any thing in his praise, tliougli he acquits him from 
 the charge of having dealt with tlie Devil to obtain the Pa- 
 pacy. Silvester obtained it from the Emperor, which, in Ba- 
 ronius's opinion, was as bad, or, perhaps, worse. 
 
 Amatory Shoe-printing. 
 Vol.1, p. 202. 
 
 I learn this from one of Vicyra's Sermons, wliere the fact is 
 thus stated on the authority of Clemens Alexandrinus. 
 
 ' Conta Clemente Alexaiulrino, que era fineza naquelle 
 
 • tempo usada dos cspiritos mais generosos, et que mais se 
 ' prezavam de amar, trazer entalhadas nas solas do cal^ado as 
 ' ten(;oens, ou saudacjoens do seu amor, para que em qualquer 
 
 • parte onde fixasseni os i)assos, ficasse impresso e cstampado 
 
 • ])or modo de sinete o quanto e a quern amavani : soleis 
 ' quoque ainatorias sakitationes impiiniunt, ut vtl per terram 
 ' numcrosi incedentes, amatorios spiritus in incessu inscul- 
 ' pant.' — Tom. ix. p. 15.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 401 
 
 Vieyra supposes the sole to have been cut like a seal. The 
 Latin interpreter, whose words he gives, seems rather to ex- 
 press that the letters were raised, and consequently stamped, 
 that is, imprinted in the ground. 
 
 Johannes de Rupescissa. 
 Vol. I. p. 204.; 
 
 ' Remedium contra tiraorem et inconstantiam ac destruc- 
 * tionem cordis, et amissionem fortitudinis, et magisterium ad 
 ' reparandum audaciam, fortitudinem, et virtutem.' 
 
 Cap. VIII. 
 
 ' Non dixi tibi in vanum, quod nee intellectus potest capere, 
 nee nostra lingua narrare, miraculosas virtutes quas creavit 
 Deus quinta Essentia : et non solum in ea, sed etiam in 
 ejus matre, scilicet aqua ardente. Recipe ergo paeoniam et 
 herbam (vel radiceni) angelicam, quae aliter dicitur angelaria, 
 et crocum, et quintam Essentiam auri et perlarum, et misce 
 cum quinta Essentia : nam subito quasi miraculose, si homo, 
 qui nimio terrore correjitus est, heec sumpserit, timorem 
 amittet, fortitudinem ex timore perditam recuperabit, auda- 
 ciam assumet, mortem contemnet, in periculis non pavescet, 
 supra modum efficietur audax, ita ut appareat hominibus 
 quod sit muros ferreos penetrare paratus. Experto crede, 
 quia pro certo verum et certum dico experimentum probatum : 
 ideo est cautela, ut princeps popvdi Christiani in ordine bel- 
 lorum habeat sic in doliis aquam ardentem paratam, ut cuili- 
 bet pugili tribuat medium scyphum, vel cii'ca, in principio 
 bellicosi contjressus, et debet hoc arcanum omnibus inimicis 
 Ecclesiae occultari, immo, nee principes, nee alii ministran- 
 tes debent hoc alicui revelare.' 
 
 Ambitious views of the French. 
 Vol. I. p. 231. 
 
 The first sentence of M. Targe's Histoire de I'Aveneinent de 
 la Maison de Bourbon an Trone de I'Espagne, is a noticeable 
 VOL. II. 2 D
 
 402 NOTES AND 
 
 one : ' La monarchie Fran9oise paroissoit 6tre parvenue au 
 ' comble de sa grandeur d la fin du dix-septieme siecle : il ne 
 ' manquoit plus h la gloire de I'auguste maison de Bourbon, 
 ' que d'etendre sa domination sur des monarchies t5trangeres.' 
 
 Scovgnl used to say that, abstracted from the will of 
 
 God, mere curiosity would make him long for another 
 
 world. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 243. 
 
 The anonymous Puritanical poet has expressed this feeling 
 with true passion. 
 
 " Did not I fear thee, Lord ! 
 The world hath not the cord 
 Could bind this strong desire 
 From what it doth require ! 
 
 'I* fie 'Iv if^ 
 
 Oh were I not so free. 
 
 Or had more liberty." — p. 189. 
 
 " Oh could I keep me in this option, I 
 Would wish to live, because I wish to die. 
 How like a little God I would converse 
 With men, let down awhile here to rehearse 
 Those joys above, till I had drawn up more, 
 Harbour'd their hearts upon thy haven's shore. 
 He only lives, who enthron'd in 's mansion, can 
 Yet condescend to sojourn with, for man. 
 
 * ♦ 'T' 3r ^ 
 
 Oh how I strive, I wrestle to be rid 
 Of half myself stands in its own light ! But bid 
 Tiiou dost my stay, and I'll obey, 
 Till Thou shalt call, who art my all." — p. 193.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 403 
 
 Graves, when they have been opened, have let abroad the 
 infection which for generations they had covered. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 250. 
 
 An epidemic fever in the county of Mearns, wliich in the 
 year 1781 raged about Montrose, was supposed to have arisen 
 from the indiscretion of some country people, who, for some 
 unexplained reason, opened the graves of those who died of 
 the plague in the preceding century, and had been buried in 
 the Moss of Arnhall. 
 
 Small pox, I believe, has in several cases been thus com- 
 municated. The infection might be retained as long as the 
 hair lasts. 
 
 A more extraordinary case is noticed in Dr. Franklin's 
 Works (vol. vi. p. 300) as having occurred in London about 
 1763. Several medical men, who assisted at the dissection of 
 a mummy, died of a malignant fever, which it was supposed 
 they caught from the dried and spiced Egyptian. 
 
 Infidelity and Popery. 
 Vol. I. p. 260. 
 
 Berkeley's Euphranor, when arguing against the Minute 
 Philosophers, says to them, " Suppose you should prevail and 
 destroy tliis Protestant Church and Clergy ; how could you 
 come at the Popish ? I am credibly informed there is a great 
 number of emissaries of the Church of Rome disguised in 
 England : who can tell what harvest a Clergy so numerous, 
 so subtle, and so well furnished with arguments to work on 
 vulgar and uneducated minds, may be able to make in a 
 country despoiled of all religion, and feeling the want of it ? 
 Who can tell whether the spirit of free-thinking ending with 
 the opposition, and the vanity with the distinction, wlien the 
 whole nation are alike infidels, — who can tell, I say, whether 
 in such a juncture the men of genius themselves may not 
 affect a new distinction, and be the first converts to Popery ?" 
 Lys. " And suppose they should . . . Between friends it would 
 
 2 D 3
 
 404 NOTES AND 
 
 be no gi'cat matter. These are our maxims: in the first 
 place we hold it would be best to have no religion at all : 
 secondly, we hoUl that all religions are indifferent. If there- 
 fore, upon trial, we find the country cannot do without a reli- 
 gion, why not Popery as well as another? I know several 
 ingenious men of our sect who, if we had a Popish Prince on 
 the throne, would turn Papists to-morrow? This is a paradox, 
 but I shall explain it. A Prince whom we compliment with 
 our religion must be grateful." Eupii. " I imderstand you. 
 But what becomes of free-thinking all the while ? " Lys. " Oh ! 
 we should have more than ever of that, for we should keep it 
 all to ourselves. As for the amusement of retailing it, the 
 want of this would be largely compensated by solid advan- 
 tages of another kind." Euph. " It seems, then, by this 
 account, the tendency you observed in the nation towards 
 something great and new, proves a tendency towards Popery 
 and Slavery." Lys. "Mistake us not, good Euphranor. 
 The thing first in our intention is consummate liberty. But 
 if this will not do, and there must after all be such things 
 tolerated as religion and government, we are wisely willing to 
 make the best of both." Cri. "Tin's j)uts me in mind of a 
 thougbt I have often had. The Minute Piiilosophers arc 
 dupes of the Jesuits." — Berkeley s Akqjhron, vol. i. p. 147. 
 
 Bishop Bedell. 
 Vol. I. p. 271. 
 
 The following extract from Burnett's Life of this excellent 
 man has a peculiar value at this time. 
 
 " He observed with much regret that the Englinh had all 
 along neglected the Jris/i, as a nation not only conquered but 
 uudiscijjlinal)le, and that the clergy had scarce considered 
 llicm as a part of their charge, but had left them wholly into 
 the hands of their own priests, without taking any other care 
 of them but the making them pay their tithes. And, indeed, 
 their ])ri('Hts were a strange sort of peo])l(\ tliat knew generally 
 nothing but the reading their ofhces, which were not so much
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 405 
 
 as understood by many of them : and they taught the people 
 nothing but the saying their Paters and Aves in Latin : so that 
 the state both of the clergy and laity was such that it could 
 not but raise great compassion in a man that had so tender a 
 sense of the value of those souls that Christ had purchased 
 with his blood ; therefore he resolved to set about that Apos- 
 tolical work of converting the natives with the zeal and care 
 that so great an undertaking required. He knew the gaining 
 on some of the more knowing of their priests was like to be 
 the quickest way, for by their means he hoped to spread the 
 knowledge of the reformed religion among the natives, or 
 rather of the Christian religion, to speak more strictly. For 
 they had no sort of notion of Christianity, but only knew that 
 they were to depend upon their priests, and were to confess 
 such of their actions as they call sins to them, and were to pay 
 them tithes. The Bishop prevailed on several priests to 
 change, and he was so well satisfied with the truth of their 
 conversion, that he provided some of them ecclesiastical bene- 
 fices, which was thought a strange thing, and was censured 
 by many, as contrary to the interest of the English nation. 
 For it now was believed that all those Irish converts were still 
 papists at heart, and might be so much the more dangerous 
 than otherwise by that disguise which they had put on. But 
 he, on the other hand, considered chiefly the duty of a 
 Christian Bishop ; he also thought the true interest of Eng- 
 land v.as to gain the Irish to the knowledge of religion, and 
 to bring them by the means of that, which only turns the 
 heart, to love the English nation. And so he judged the wis- 
 dom of that course was apparent, as well as the piety of it. 
 Since such as changed their religion would become thereby so 
 odious to their own clergy, that this would provoke them to 
 further degrees of zeal in gaining others to come over after 
 them. And he took great care to work in those whom he 
 trusted with the care of souls, a full conviction of the truth of 
 religion, and a deep sense of the importance of it. And 
 in this he was so happy, that of all the converts that he had 
 raised to benefices, there was but one only that fell back when 
 the rebellion broke out ; and he not only apostatized, but both
 
 406 NOTES AND 
 
 plundered and killed the English among the first. But no 
 wonder if one murderer was among our Bishop's converts, 
 since there was a traitor among the twelve that followed our 
 Saviour. There was a convent of friars very near him, on 
 whom he took much pains, with very good success. That he 
 niif^ht furnish his converts with the means of instructing 
 others, he made a short catechism to he printed in one sheet, 
 being English on the one page, and Irish on the other ; which 
 contained the elements and most necessary things of the 
 Christian religion, together with some forms of prayer, and 
 some of the most instructing and edifying passages of Scrip- 
 ture. This he sent about all over his diocese, and it was re- 
 ceived with great joy by many of the Imh, who seemed to be 
 hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and received this 
 beginning of knowledge so well, that it gave a good encou- 
 raacment to hope well upon further endeavours. The Bishop 
 did also set himself to learn the Irish tongue ; and though it 
 was too late for a man of his years to learn to speak it, yet he 
 came to understand it to such a degree as to compose a com- 
 plete grammar of it, (which was the first that ever was made, 
 as I have been told,) and to be a critic in it : he also had 
 Common Prayer read in Irish every Sunday in his cathedral 
 for the benefit of the converts he had made, and was always 
 present at it himself; and he engaged all his clergy to set up 
 schools in their parishes ; for there were so very few bred to 
 read or write, tliat this obstructed the conversion of the nation 
 very much. The New Testament and the Book of Common 
 Prayer were already put in the Irish tongue ; but he resolved 
 to have the whole Bible, the Old Testament, as well as the 
 New, put also into the hands of the Irish ; and therefore he 
 laboured much to find out one that understood the language 
 Bo well that he might be employed in so sacred a work. And 
 by the advice of the Primate, and several other eminent per- 
 sons, he pitched on one King, that had been converted many 
 years before, and was believed to be the elegantcst writer of 
 the Irish tongue then alive, both for prose and poetry. He 
 was tiif-n uhout seventy ; but notwithstanding his age and the 
 disadvantages of his education, yet the Bishop thought him
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 407 
 
 not only capable of this employment, but qualified for an 
 higher character ; therefore he put him in orders, and gave 
 him a benefice in his diocese, and set him to work, in order 
 to the translating the Bible, which he was to do from the Ejig- 
 lish translation, since there were none of the nation to be found 
 that knew anything of the originals. The Bishop set himself 
 so much to the revising of this work, that always after dinner 
 or supper he read over a chapter ; and as he compared the 
 Irish translation with the English, so he compared the English 
 with the Hebrew and the seventy interpreters, or with Dio- 
 datt's Italian translation, which he valued highly ; and he 
 corrected the Irish where he found the English translation had 
 failed. He thought the use of the Scriptures was the only 
 way to let the knowledge of religion in among the Irish, as 
 it had first let the Reformation into the other parts of Europe. 
 And he used to tell a passage of a sermon that he heard Ful- 
 geniio preach at Venice, with which he was much pleased. It 
 was on these words of Christ : Have ye not read ? and so he 
 took occasion to tell the auditory, that if Christ were now to 
 ask tliis question. Have ye not read ? all the answer they 
 could make to it was, No : for they were not suffered to do it. 
 Upon which he taxed with great zeal the restraint put on the 
 use of the Scriptures by the see of Rome. This was not un- 
 like what the same person delivered in another sermon, 
 preaching upon Pilate % question. What is Tnith ? He told 
 them, at last, after many searches, he had found it out, and 
 held out a New Testament, and said, There it was in his hand ; 
 but then he put it in his pocket, and said coldly, But the 
 book is prohibited; which was so suited to the Italian genius, 
 that it took mightily with the auditory. The Bishop had 
 observed, that in the primitive times, as soon as nations, how 
 barbarous soever they were, began to receive the Christian 
 religion, they had the Scriptures translated into their vulgar 
 tongues ; and that all people were exhorted to study them : 
 therefore he not only undertook and began this work, but 
 followed it with so much industry, that in a very few years he 
 finished the translation and resolved to set about the printing 
 of it, for the bargain was made with one that engaged to per-
 
 408 
 
 NOTES AND 
 
 form it. And as he had been at tlie great trouble of examining 
 the translation, so lie resolved to run the venture of the im- 
 pression, and took that expense upon himself 
 
 Queen EUxaheth and Moiintjoy. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 274. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth writes thus to Mountjoy in 1603, when 
 that noble-minded person (one of the best and wisest men in 
 an illustrious age) would, if means had been afforded him, 
 have laid the sure foundation of good government in Ireland : 
 " Because AVe know your affection is so well mixed with un- 
 derstanding of the state We stand in both here and there, as 
 you can well consider of what importance it is to TJs to ease 
 our kingdom of those great or rather infinite charges which 
 we have thus long sustained, which still continuing in that 
 height, would take away the true feeling of our victories. We 
 have thought good to deliver you Our pleasure in that behalf; 
 for it were almost as good for us to lack a great part of their 
 reduction, as to be driven to that charge in keeping them, 
 which our crown of England cannot endure, without the ex- 
 treme diminution of the greatness and felicity thereof, and 
 alienation of Our people's mind from Us, considering that for 
 these only rebellions in Ireland, We have been forced to part 
 with many of Our ancient possessions, which are part of Our 
 flowers of Our Crown, and to draw from our subjects (a thing 
 contrary to Our nature) those great payments, which (but for 
 the hope they had that tl)is same should serve to work their 
 future ease and respiration) they would not so willingly have 
 borne, nor We so justly could have imposed u])()n them." 
 And she then gives directions for reduction and retrenchment. 
 " If it had pleased her Majesty," says Mountjoy, " to have 
 longer continued her army in greater strength, I should the 
 better have provided for what these clouds do threaten, and 
 sooner and more easily either have made this country a rased 
 taljjc, whereon she might have written her own laws, or have 
 tier! tilt; ill-disi)osed and rebellious hands till 1 had surely 
 planted such a government as would have overgrown and killed
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 409 
 
 any weeds that should have risen under it." — Fynes Moryson, 
 Part ii. pp. 245—268. 
 
 Ireland and the Jews. 
 Vol. I. p. 277. 
 
 Harrington's scheme for establishing the Jews in Ireland is 
 thus stated in his Introduction to the Oceana. 
 
 " Panopea, the soft mother of a slothful and jjusillanimous 
 people, is a neighbour island, anciently subjected by the arms 
 of Oceana ; since almost depopulated for shaking the yoke, 
 and at length replenished with a new race. But (through what 
 virtues of tlie soil or vice of the air soever it be) they come 
 still to degenerate. Wherefore, seeing it is neither likely to 
 yield men fit for arms, nor necessary it should, it had been 
 the interest of Oceana so to have disposed of this province, 
 being both rich in the nature of the soil, and full of commo- 
 dious ports for trade, that it might have been ordered for the 
 best in relation to her purse ; which, in my opinion, (if it had 
 been thought upon in time,) might have been best done by 
 planting it with Jews, allowing them their own rites and laws ; 
 for that would have brought them suddenly from all parts of 
 the world, and in sufficient numbers. And though the Jews 
 be now altogether for merchandise, yet in the land of Canaan 
 (except since their exile, from whence they have not been land- 
 lords,) they were altogether for agriculture ; and there is no 
 cause why a man should doubt, but having a fruitful country, 
 and excellent ports too, they would be good at both. Pano- 
 pea, well peopled, would be worth a matter of four millions 
 dry rents : that is besides the advantage of the agriculturer's 
 trade, which, with a nation of that industry, comes at least to 
 as much more : wherefore, Panopea being farmed out to the 
 Jews and their heirs for ever, for the pay of a provincial army 
 to protect them during the term of seven years, and for two 
 millions annual revenue from that time forward, besides the 
 customs, which would pay the provincial army, would have 
 been a bargain of such advantage both to them and this com-
 
 410 NOTES AND 
 
 monwealth, as is not to be found otherwise by either. To 
 receive the Jews after any other manner into a commonwealth, 
 were to maim it ; for they of all nations never incorporate, but 
 takiii"- up the room of a limb, are of no use or office to the 
 bodv, while they suck tlie nourishment which would sustain a 
 natural and useful member." 
 
 Our Ancestors knew this. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 284. 
 
 " In all councils and conferences," said the Lord Keeper, 
 Sir Nicholas Bacon, addressing the House of Peers in Queen 
 Elizabeth's name,. . " in all councils and conferences, first and 
 chiefly there should be sought the advancement of God's 
 honour and glory, as the sure and infallible foundation where- 
 upon the policy of every good public weal is to be erected 
 and built ; and as the straight line whereby it is principally to 
 be directed and governed, and as the chief pillar and buttress 
 wherewith it is continually to be sustained and maintained." 
 
 Desire of Death. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 243, 
 
 " Albeit the glass of my years," says Sir George Mackenzie, 
 " hath not yet turned five-and-twenty, yet the curiosity I have 
 to know the difl'erent limbos of departed souls, and to view 
 the card of the region of Death, would give me abundance of 
 courage to encounter this King of Terrors, though I were a 
 Pagan. 13ut when I consider what joys are prepared for 
 them who fear the Almighty, and what craziness attends such 
 as sleep in Methusalem's cradle, I pity them who make long 
 life one of the oftest repeated petitions of their Pater Noster." 
 — The Virtuoso, or Stoic. Moral Essays, p. 81.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 411 
 
 St. Kenfigern. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 307. 
 
 It appears, from the brief notice of this saint in that valu- 
 able little volume, the Cambrian Biography, that the fables 
 concerning Kentigern were not current in Wales. " Cyndeyrn 
 Garthwys, son of Owain ab Urien, or Kentigern, one of the 
 most distinguished British saints, to whom several churches 
 are dedicated. He lived about the middle of the sixth century. 
 The Triads record that he was Chief Bishop, or Primate of 
 the Northern Britons under Gwrthmwl, who was chief elder, 
 under the sovereignty of Arthur ; and that his see was at 
 Penryn Rliionydd, a place situated probably in the neighbour- 
 hood of Glasgow. He seems to have had the ecclesiastical 
 epithet of Mvvyngu or Urbanus ; hence he is called St. Mungo, 
 in old authors." 
 
 There is a life of St. Kentigern among the Cotton MSS. 
 (Vitellius, c. viii. 12.) by which it appears that he was also 
 called Inglaschu. 
 
 o 
 
 Punishment of death for incontinence said, in the 
 Legend of St. Kentigern, to have been established among 
 the Picts. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 309. 
 
 The Jesuit F. Alford has a remark upon this subject, which 
 is equally worthy of his sagacity and his candour, . . of his 
 sagacity in arguing from this part of the fable as if it were an 
 historical fact, of his candour in the description which lie gives 
 of British morals after the Reformation. ' Vide Lector, (he 
 ' says,) inter barbaros et infideles castissimam legem matri- 
 ' moniis faventem : et puta falli eos, qui vel communes uxores, 
 ' vel promiscuos amplexus, huic Insulye affinxerunt. Si enim 
 
 * Britannorum incultissimi, ad montes et Septentrionem positi, 
 ' quique ad civilitatem componi nunquam potuerunt, adeo 
 
 * modesti fuerunt ; id multo rectius de Australibus sentiendum.
 
 412 NOTES AND 
 
 ' Ut Saxo etiam matrimonia sancte coluerit, dixi supra. Sic 
 ' omni stcculo a castitatis laude commendavi meruit Insula, 
 ' donee nova lex, e duplici divortio uxoris Fideique nata, per- 
 ♦ misit omni ordiui, instituto, sexui, prae Graecia lascivire.' — 
 Annalcs Ecc. Anglo-Saxonicce, t. ii. p. 20. 
 
 * Men and brethren, why marvel ye ?' 
 Vol. I. p. 318. 
 
 ' Viri fratres, quid admiramini, aspicientes verbum hoc ? 
 
 * Credite milii, antcquam homo inobediens suo Conditori exis- 
 ' tcret, non solum animalia, sed etiam cleraenta obtemperabant 
 
 • illi. Nunc vero ob ipsius pryevaricationem onniibus in adversa 
 ' versis, leo lacerave, lupus devorare, serpens sauciare, aqua 
 
 * submergere, ignis comburere, aer corrumpere, terra saepe 
 
 ♦ ferrea effecta fame subrucre consuevit ; et ad cumulum con- 
 
 ♦ sueti mali, homo non solum hominem sed ipse homo in seipso 
 ' ])ccc:mdo contra seipsum sponte desyevit. Sed quoniam 
 ' pleriquc sancti in vera innocentia, et pura obcdientia, in 
 ' sanctitate, dilcctione, fide et justitia coram Domino perfecti 
 ' invcnti sunt, quasi antiquum jus et naturale dominium a 
 ' Domino recuperant, dum bestiis ct dementis, morbis et mor- 
 ' tibus imperare solcnt.* — Acta Sanctonim, 13 Jan. t. i. 818. 
 
 The same thought, but not derived from this beautiful pas- 
 sage, is expressed in lloderick. 
 
 As we put off 
 The cares and passions of this fretful world, 
 It may be, too, that we thus far approach 
 To elder nature, and regain in part 
 The; ])rivilcge through sin in Eden lost. 
 The timid liare soon learns that she may trust 
 The solitary penitent ; and birds 
 Will light upon the hermit's harmless lumd. 
 
 One of Borri's heretical fancies was an opinion that saints, 
 even in tliis life, have the same dominion over the animal 
 world invested in them, as was enjoyed by Adam before his 
 fall. — Itdazione ddla vita (hi Cav. Boi-ri, ]). 357.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 413 
 
 <S'^. Kentigern's consecration. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 322, 
 
 Father Alford argues at some lengtli, J7iore sua, upon this 
 part of the legend, m the liope of proving tliat the British 
 church always acknowledged its dependence upon the Bishop 
 of Rome, He has introduced a good illustration in support 
 of this untenable position: — ' Probatuv etiam ex Eclipsi quam 
 ' hie in Kentigerno habemus. Si enim Paganorum infestatio 
 
 * seu nubes, obscuritatem fecit, Solisque lucis influxum impe- 
 ' divit ; adeo ut defectus ille notatus, et castigatus sit, et posteris 
 ' in cautionem transcriptus ; sequitur sudo coelo, et amotis 
 ' nubibus, nullum defectum, et omnia recta fuisse. Imo sequitur 
 
 * stante Eclipsi, debere sed non posse, astrum influere, debere 
 ' sed non posse terram recipere influxum ; non nativa aliqua, 
 ' sed prieter naturam causa. Cum igitur hactenus Roma in- 
 ' fluxerit, ritusque dictaverit Insuke, ut ostensumest ; et modo 
 
 * Saxone omnia occupante dictata plene excipere non potuerit 
 ' Insula ; die, sinetergiversatione, Britanniam de jure a Romani 
 ' Solis influxu pendere ; sed injuria privatam non potuisse per- 
 
 * fecte solitoque more, lucis radium omnem excipere, sed in 
 ' aliquo defecisse.' — T. ii. p. 48. 
 
 Death of St. Kentlrjcrn. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 331. 
 
 Father Cressy professes to relate the manner of St. Kenti- 
 gern's death from this very legend as it stands in Capgrave, 
 and yet omits all mention of this miracle. Fatiier Alford also 
 skipa it, though he says ' videaraus ut se ad mortem pnepara- 
 
 * verit, et in qua demum fide mortuus, quia inde Britannorum 
 ' omnium scnsa colligam' — (T. ii. p. 149.) Undoubtedly the 
 Jesuit was conscious that the parts which he has dropt would 
 Iiave shown somewhat too plainly in what faith the whole 
 legend was composed. St. Asaph is said to have written the 
 life of his preceptor and predecessor. The Bollandists treat 
 the Britisli, and more especially the Irish, saints with a degree
 
 414 NOTES AND 
 
 of freedom whicli tliey are far from showing toward the 
 atrocious legends of later ages. They qualify the history of 
 St, Kentigern, saying — " si vera sunt quye in ejus vita tiadun- 
 tur," and thus license the reader to believe as little of it as he 
 may think fit. 
 
 " These miracles of St. Kentigern, I the rather instance," 
 says Stiliingfleet, " because one being oflfended at the miracles 
 contained in the lives of these saints as published by Cap- 
 grave, Bollandus offered him the life of St. Kentigern for a 
 trial, and asked him what he disliked in it as he had published 
 it. Wlien he had read it, saith Bollandus, he confessed if the 
 lives of the saints were so published, they could not but please 
 learned men !" — Second Discoiuse in vindication of the Pro- 
 testant ground of faith, p. 540. Ed. 1673. 
 
 Saints of the blood-royal. 
 Vol. I. p. 332. 
 
 In his instructions to the Archbisliops and Bishops of Scot- 
 land, Charles I. charges them, "that in the Kalendar you keep 
 such Catliolic saints as are in the English ; that you pester 
 it not Willi too many, but such as you insert of the peculiar 
 saints of that our kingdom that they be of the most aj)proved ; 
 and hore to have regard to those of the blood-royal, and such 
 Holy Bishops in every see most renowned : but in no case 
 omit St. George and Patrick." — Rns/iwori/i, ii. 343. 
 
 St. Mungo's name occurs in a list of fairs, appended to the 
 kalendar prefixed to the " Psalmes of David in meter, with the 
 prose, for the use of the kirk of Scotland. — Middelburgh, 1602." 
 This fair, which was held at Glasgow, contriljuted to keep the 
 name alive. 
 
 St. Herbert. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 336. 
 
 This story is beautifully told by Bede, and not less beauti- 
 fully in verse by Mr. Wordsworth ; but Mr. Wordsworth lias
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 415 
 
 departed from the legend, which, as the annexed passage from 
 Bede will show, was designed for the honour of St. Cuthbert. 
 
 ' Erat enim quidam presbyter, vitae et morum probitate vene- 
 ' rabilis, nomine Herebertus, jamdudum viro Dei spiritalis 
 
 * amicitiae foedere copulatus ; qui in insula stagni illius per- 
 ' grandis, de quo Daruuentionis fluvii primordia erumpunt, 
 ' vitam ducens solitariam, annis singulis eum visitare, et 
 ' monita perpetuse ab eo salutus audire solebat. Hie cum 
 ' audiret eum ad civitatem Lugubaliam devenisse, venit ex 
 ' more cupiens salutaribus ejus exhortationibus ad superna 
 ' desideria magis magisque accendi. Qui dum sese alterutrum 
 ' coelestis vitee poculis ebriarent, dixit inter alia antistes, 
 ' Memento frater Hereberte, ut modo quicquid opus habes, 
 ' me interroges, mecumque loquaris, postquam enim abin- 
 ' vicem digressi fuerimus, non ultra nos in hoc saeculo carnis 
 ' obtutibus invicem aspiciemus ; certus sum namque, quia 
 ' tempus meae resolutionis instat, et velox est depositio taber- 
 ' naculi mei. Qui haec audiens, provolutus est ejus vestigiis, 
 ' et fusis cum gemitu lachrymis, Obsecro, inquit, per Dominum, 
 ' ne me deseras : sed tui memor sis fidelissimi sodalis, rogesque 
 ' supernani pietatem, ut cui simul in terris servivimus, ad ejus 
 
 * videndam gratiam simul transeamus ad ccelos, Nosti etiam 
 
 * quia ad tui oris imperium semper vivere studui, et quicquid 
 ' ignorantiA vel fragilitate deliqui, aeque ad tuae voluntatis 
 ' examen mox emendare curavi. Incubuit precibus antistes ; 
 ' statimque edoctus in spiritu impetrasse se quod petebat k 
 
 * Domino, Surge, inquit, frater mi, et noli plorare, sed gaudio 
 
 * gaude ; quia quod rogavimus, superna nobis dementia dona- 
 
 * vit. Cujus promissi et prophetiae veritatem sequens rerum 
 ' astruxit eventus : quia et digredientes abinvicem non se ultra 
 
 * corporaliter viderunt, sed uno eodemque die, hoc est, Kalen- 
 ' darum Aprilium tertia decima, egredientes e corpore spiritus 
 
 * eorum, mox beata invicem visione conjunct! sunt, atque an- 
 ' gelico ministerio pariter ad regnum cceleste translati. Sed 
 
 * Herebertus diutina prius infirmiiate decoquitur, ilia ut credi- 
 ' bile est dispensatione Dominicae pietatis, ut si quid minus 
 
 * haberet meriti a beato Cudberto, suppleret hoc castigans 
 
 * longae eegritudinis dolor, quatenus ijequatus gratia sue inter-
 
 41 G NOTES AND 
 
 ' cessori, sicut imo eotlem(|ue tempore cum eo de corpore 
 ' egredi, ita ctiam una atque indissimili sedc perpetuce beatitu- 
 ' dinis meruisset recipi.' — Eccl. Hist. 1. iv. c. 29. Cuihberti 
 Vita, c. 28. 
 
 Tliis passage is tlius translated by Father Cressy. " There 
 was a certain venerable Priest, named Herbert, who for many 
 years before had been joined in spiritual friendship to the 
 Holi/ Bishop. This man led a solitary life in a little island, 
 situated in the vast lake out of which the river Derwent 
 flows ; and his custom was every year to visit the man of 
 God; and to receive from him documents of piety and salva- 
 tion. He being informed that St. Cuthbert was to make 
 some stay in the foresaid City, came to him, as his manner 
 had been, with a desire to be more inflamed in heavenly 
 desires by his wholesome exhortations. They being thus met 
 together, and interchangeably communicating to one another 
 draughts of celestial wiselom, among other discourses St. 
 Cuthbert said to him, ' Be mindful, Brother Herbert, to 
 propose now to me whatsoever doubts you desire to be re- 
 solved in, for after we have parted, we shall never see one 
 the other in this life. For I am assured tliat the time of my 
 dissolution approaches, and that I shall very shortly put off 
 this my mortal tabernacle.' The devout Hermit, having 
 heard these words, cast himself at his feet, and with many tears 
 .and groans said, ' I beseech you by our Lord, that you will 
 not forsake nor forget your old companion, but make your 
 petition to the Divine mercy, that as we have jointly served 
 our Lord together on earth, we may likewise together pass 
 out of this world to see his glory. For you know that I have 
 always been diligent to conform my life to your admonitions, 
 and likewise according to your will to correct whatsoever 
 faults I have any time committed through ignorance or 
 frailty,' Hereupon the Holy Bishop betook himself to prayer, 
 and being inwardly taught in spirit, that his petitions were 
 granted by our Lord, he said to him, ' Arise, dear brother, 
 weep no longer, but rather rejoice, for the Divine Clemency 
 has mercifully granted our desires.' 
 
 " Tiic truth of this prophetical promise was really confirmed
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 417 
 
 by the event : for after they were parted they never saw one 
 the other corporally : and m the same moment of time tlieir 
 Spirits were delivered from their mortal bodies, and by the 
 m'mhtry of Angels translated to the beatifical vision of Gorf 
 But the devout Hermit, before liis death, was purified by a 
 tedious and painful infirmity, which probably happened to him 
 by a merciful divine dispensation, to the end that the torments 
 of a long sickness might instrumentally supply the defect in 
 which he came short of the Holy Bi^lLop's merits, that so 
 being made equal in grace with his pious Intercessor, he might 
 not only in the same moment of time, but with an equal parti- 
 cipation, enjoy eternal glory together with him." — Cressi/s 
 Church History of Britain, p. 768. 
 
 Provide7ice. 
 Vol. I. p. 342, 
 " To make our reliance upon Providence both pious and 
 rational, we should in every great enterprize we take in hand, 
 prepare all things with that care, diligence and activity, as if 
 there were no such thing as Providence for us to depend 
 upon ; and again, when we have done all this, we should as 
 wholly and humbly depend upon it, as if we had made no 
 such preparations at all. And this is a rule of practice 
 which will never fail, or shame any who shall venture all 
 that they have or are upon it : for as a man, by exerting his 
 utmost force in any action or business, has all that an human 
 strength can do for him therein ; so in the next place, by 
 quitting his confidence in the same, and placing it only in 
 God, he is sure also of all that Omnipotence can do in his 
 heha\f"—South, iv. 27. 
 
 The Dissenters themselves have long been ashamed of 
 those fanatical objections to the Established Church, 
 which were the original grounds of their separation. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 353. 
 " I remember those blessed times," says the Ghost of Prynne, 
 VOL. II. 2 E
 
 418 NOTES AND 
 
 in one of T. Brown's Dialogues, " when every thing in the 
 world that was displeasing and offensive to the brethren, 
 went under the name of horrid, abominable, popish supersti- 
 tion : . . Organs and May poles ; Bishops' Courts and the Bear 
 Garden ; surplices and long hair ; cathedrals and play-houses ; 
 set-forms and painted glass ; fonts and apostle-spoons ; church 
 music and bull baiting ; altar rails and rosemary on brawn ; 
 nay, fiddles, Whitsun ale, pig at Bartholomew fair, plum- 
 porridge, puppet-shews, carriers' bills, figures in ginger-bread: 
 and at last Moses and Aaron, the Decalogue, the Creed, and 
 the Lord's Prayer — 
 
 Hick. . . . passed all for Antichristian carnal devices, rags of 
 popery, things of human invention, set up by the man of sin 
 to scandalize the saints and pervert the unstable. 
 
 Prynne. You say right ; and so was every thing you can 
 name, except a black satin cap. 
 
 Hick. Because it savoureth of gravity. 
 
 Prynne. A sack-posset. 
 
 Hick. For lo ! it encourageth the minister in his ministry. 
 
 Prynne. A sir-loin of beef. 
 
 Hick. Because the saints are, verily, gross feeders. 
 
 Prynne. A long cloak. 
 
 Hick. Because, like charity, it covereth a multitude of 
 sins. 
 
 Prynne. A long prayer. 
 
 Hick. Because widows and orphans are not palatable 
 without 'em. 
 
 Prynne. A long allegory. 
 
 Hick. For behold it is very refreshing to the white aprons. 
 Likewise, except long ears, Mr. Prynne. There I think I 
 have bobbed you (aside). 
 
 Prynne. An extempore sermon. 
 
 Hick. Because extempore nonsense is more excusable than 
 studied nonsense. 
 
 Prynne. An ordinance of both Houses. 
 
 Hick. Because a king is virtually included in them. 
 
 Prynne. A fat capon and a bagpipe. 
 
 Hick. Because the one is a Geneva dish, and the other a
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 419 
 
 Scotch covenanting instrument. Lastly, Mr. Prynne, to sum 
 up all the evidence together, because we would not lose time ; 
 except committee men and lay elders ; battle and murder ; 
 free quarter and famine ; sequestrations and decimations ; 
 compositions and monthly excise ; and all this was but neces- 
 sary and requisite, in order to humble the profane, to mortify 
 the ungodly, and pull down the pride of the wicked malig- 
 nants; that so being sequestered from the vanities of this 
 world, they might have nothing else to mind, but how to lick 
 themselves whole in another. 
 
 Prynne. Then, my dear friend, we carried on the blessed 
 work of the reformation, as far as zeal, inspired with interest, 
 could carry it. We reformed the almanacks ; new-christened 
 the festivals ; unsainted the apostles ; set the chimes to 
 psalm-tunes, and gutted the Bible of the Service book and 
 Apocrypha. A crown, a cross, an angel, and bishoji's head 
 could not be endured, so much as in a sign. Our garters, 
 bellows, and warming-pans wore godly mottoes ; our band- 
 boxes were lined with wholesome instructions, and even our 
 trunks with the Assembly-men's sayings. Ribbons were con- 
 verted to Bible strings. 
 
 Hick. And so were graces to long prayers, and churches 
 to stables. 
 
 Prynne. Nay, in our zeal we visited the gardens and 
 apothecaries' shops. So U/ignentum ApostoUcum was com- 
 manded to take a new name ; and besides to find security for 
 its good behaviour for the future. Cardnus Benedictus, An- 
 gelica, St. Johns Wort, and Our Lady's Thistle, were sum- 
 moned before a class, and forthwith ordered to distinguish 
 themselves by more sanctified appellations." — p. 292. 
 
 Sanderson in the Preface to his Fourteen Sermons (re- 
 printed 1657), speaks of " those men, who being themselves 
 of late years fallen out, grievously fallen out, (for what cause, 
 he says, I know not,) with the ancient Government, Liturgy 
 and Ceremonies of tlie Church, are angry with all those that 
 retain any good opinion of them. AVhereunto yet themselves, 
 when time was seemed to be, and if they dissembled not 
 
 2 E 2
 
 420 NOTES AND 
 
 (whicli we are unwilling to believe), were indeed reasonably 
 well-affected. For they submitted to the Government, used 
 the Liturgy, and observed the Ceremonies appointed, accord- 
 ing to Laws and Orders, and their own professed approbation 
 of tlie same, as well by professed words from their mouths, as 
 by subscription under their hands yet remaining upon record. 
 AVhat hath wrought this change in them (evidence of reason 
 or worldly interest), and how far it hath wrought upon them 
 (in reality, or but in com])liance), and in what order too (by 
 immediate assaults upon their judgment, or by dealing under- 
 hand first with the aliections), themselves do, or should best 
 know. It highly concerneth them, even as much as the peace 
 of their consciences is worth, and much more than so, to be 
 well assured that their hearts are upright in this affair. And 
 in order thereunto, not to content themselves with a slight and 
 overly examination (there is more wickedness and deceitfulness 
 in the hearts of all men, than most men arc aware of) : but to 
 make the most diligent, discreet and impartial search possible, 
 into the true causes and motions of this change. And for so 
 much as fears and hopes have been ever found the fittest and 
 the readiest engines to work such feats, to inquire particu- 
 larly what influences or operation either the fear of losing 
 what they had, or the hope of getting more, might have in 
 this work, towards the producing of such an eflect. It will 
 best become others to judge as charitably as they may ; but 
 doubtless it would be safest for them, to be very jealous over 
 themselves, lest so great a change could not have been wrought 
 in so short a space, without a strong infusion, cither of the 
 one, or the other, or both, into the medicine that wrought it. 
 Especially since the conjuncture of time wherein this change 
 hajjpcned, may very probably raise some suspicion that the 
 fvar of the sword might have, and the visible advantage some 
 have found thereby since, as ])robably that the Iiopr of gain 
 h.id, some co-operation at least, with whatsoever was the prin- 
 cipal cause of this so sudden a metamorphosis. If nor so, 
 nor HO, but that they find themselves clearly convinced in their 
 judgments of their former error, and that they are fully per- 
 suaded they arc now in a better way, than that wherein they
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 42 1 
 
 formerly walked, it is happy for them ; and I doubt not but 
 they will find matter of rejoicing in it, if they be not mistaken 
 (a thing not impossible), in the trial of their own hearts. Of 
 the sincerity whereof, the likeliest way to give satisfaction to 
 the world, and to add some strengthening withall to their own 
 assurance, is, by sliewing comjjassion to those their brethren 
 tliat cannot yet tell how to recover themselves out of the snare 
 of the same common error, from which they are so happily 
 escaped. At leastwise so far as not to despise them ; nor to 
 pass their censures upon them, with so much freedom and 
 severity as some have done. If it be a fault, sure it is a very 
 pardonable one, for a man in the change of times, to remain 
 unchanged in his mind and opinion, and to hold to his former 
 and (as he thinketh) well-grounded principles, so long as he 
 can neither appreliend any reason of sufficient strength to 
 convince his understanding that he is in the wrong, or to ma- 
 nifest unto him the necessity of making such a change ; nor 
 is able with the l)est wit he hath, to discern anything so lovely 
 in the effects and consequents of such change since it was 
 made, as might win over his aflections to any tolerable liking 
 thereof upon the post fact." 
 
 The Preshyterians lapsed info Arianism first, then 
 into Socinianism. 
 
 Vol. L p. 354. 
 
 So their fellow Calvinists have done at Geneva, and in New 
 England, verifying thus the opinion which Bishop Bull ex- 
 pressed, in his sermon upon the usefulness and necessity of 
 prescribed forms of prayer. " Prescribed prayers in the 
 church arc necessary to secure the established doctrine and 
 faith of the church. If the ministers of the church be left to 
 themselves, to pray as they list, they will be very apt (and it 
 will be very difficult for them to avoid it) to vent their own 
 private ojjinions and notions in points of religion in their 
 prayers ; fur men will pray as they think and believe, and all 
 their doctrhies will have a tincture of their private notions and
 
 422 NOJES AND 
 
 conceptions, which may not be always sound and orthodox. 
 Pleterodoxes, false doctrines, yea, and heresies, may be pro- 
 pagated by prayer as well as preaching, and by the former 
 perhaps more effectually than by the latter. For when poor 
 ifrnorant people shall hear tlieir minister venting a notion in 
 his address to Almighty God, they will be apt to conclude, and 
 not without reason, that he is fully assured of the truth of it, 
 yea that he hath very good grounds for it, or else he would 
 not dare to utter it to the face of God himself. And thus the 
 confidence of the minister easily at first begets in the simple 
 hearer a good opinion of it, which by degrees grows to a 
 steadfast belief and persuasion. But now, on the other side, 
 set forms of prayer, composed and prescribed by the wisdom 
 of the Church, are an excellent defence and security against 
 innovations in faith. For to be sure the Church will take care 
 that her Liturgv and Common Prayers shall not contradict or 
 interfere with her Articles of Religion, but rather confirm 
 them, and by prudent methods insinuate the knowledge and 
 belief of them into the hearers. Indeed the ancient Liturgies 
 were so framed, that they were a kind of system of orthodox 
 divinity, and antidotes against heresy. And in this the Liturgy 
 of our Church comes behind none of the ancient Liturgies. 
 For therein we are obliged to confess the faith of ail the 
 ancient creeds. But more especially our frequent doxologies 
 to the most holy and ever-blessed Trinity, do abundantly se- 
 cure us against Arianism and Socinianism, the prevailing 
 heresies of our unhappy times, and of all other iicrcsics the most 
 dangerous. In sliort, no heretic can Iieartily join in the offices 
 of prayer and praise, and confessions of faith, prescribed in 
 the Liturgy of our Church. But on the otiier side, in those 
 congregations where there is no prescribed Liturgy, or office 
 of ])iiblic prayer, no creed or confession of faith to be re- 
 hearsed, all sorts of heretics may easily, and witliout discovery, 
 find slielter to themselves. Wliich is one and the main reason, 
 1 doubt not, why at this day the Arians and Socinians among 
 us arc all declared enemies to the public worship of tlie 
 Cliurch of England, as it is by law established, and shake 
 hands with the Dissenters. For they know full well, that as
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 423 
 
 long as our Liturgy stands, their heresies can never prevail." 
 —Vol. i. p. 338. 
 
 The practice of travelling to solicit orders for goods 
 began among the Quakers, as an incidental consequence 
 of the life led by their errant-preachers. 
 
 Vol. I. p. 359. 
 
 Francis Bugg, of unsavoury name, tells us this. " We no 
 sooner had our liberty," he says, " but all our London 
 preachers spread themselves, like locusts, all over England 
 and Wales ; some went east, some west, yea, north and south; 
 and being generally tradesmen, we not only got our quarters 
 free, our horses free and well maintained in our travels ; a 
 silver watch here, a beaver there, a piece of hair-camblet, and 
 sometimes other things ; but moreover ... we got into great 
 trades, and by spreading ourselves in the country, into great 
 acquaintance, and thereby received orders of the best of the 
 country tradesmen, for parcels, whilst the Protestant trades- 
 men in London, who had not this advantage, stood still, and in 
 their shops had little to do, whilst we filled our coffers. Wit- 
 ness Thomas Green, for one instance, whose wife would scarce 
 suffer him at home, she being willing (according to the pro- 
 verb) to ' make hay whilst the sun shines ; ' insomuch that in 
 a little time he raised his small beginning to many thousands. 
 Since I printed this, Thomas Green is dead, and died worth, 
 as is said, six or eight thousand pounds, who was a poor 
 mason when he set up for a preaching Quaker." — The Pilgrim's 
 Progress from Quakerism to Christianity, p. 215. 
 
 There is a stir of business among them, , . a perpetual 
 
 bustle of confederacy . 
 
 Vol. I. p. 361. 
 
 I am tempted here to transcribe a lively passage from the 
 letter of a friend. 
 
 " I am sick," she says, " of the very sound of societies,
 
 424 NOTES AND 
 
 committees, associations, &c., &;c., and all the joint-stock com- 
 panies for religious purposes, to such extravagances do they 
 proceed, and so is the world gone after them ! particularly the 
 female part of it, . . always well-jjlcased to find itself of con- 
 sequence, and certainly an indefatifrable engine when set to 
 work, and the wheels well oiled with flattery, . . which the 
 saints of your sex supply very profusely and with good 
 policy, in the organization of their female branch societies! 
 One lady \» president of this, another vice of that association, 
 Then what with secretaries, treasurers, collectors, tract-bearers, 
 expounders, heaven have mercy on us ! all womankind is 
 whirling round in a vortex of religious dissipation ; and their 
 energies, once roused, pass my comprehension, . . their un- 
 wearied activity of body and mind ... or rather of animal 
 spirits. Go where one will the subject is forced upon one. 
 One lady's drawing-room is full of little charity boxes, placed 
 here and there amongst the ornamental litter. Anolher keeps 
 a stall of trumpery knickknacks, ' Ladies' work,' to lay her 
 visitors under contribution. Another asks you to work for 
 her. And there a whole bevy of damsels sit congregated 
 together, pasting and painting, and sewing and gilding, and 
 what not, to get up a booth at the next religious fair. All 
 this pious activity is going on round me, and no wonder if it 
 bewilders my brain, and olfends my taste, and (I hope) right 
 feeling, because when I see its ill effects on society, . . on 
 domestic comfort, . . in the neglect of private duties, . . and 
 the oblrusivencss of religious j)rctensions, I feci sure that there 
 is something unsound in the foundation of these crazy castles. 
 Lately men were employed to walk about— with banners 
 begging for the Jews, and directing people to the Ladies' Re- 
 ]jository in aid of the funds for their conversion; and we had 
 a fair here for something similar. Pray do not encourage 
 this mania, or you will deserve that it should spread ^o 
 Keswick,"
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 425 
 
 The Church in other reformed countries starved by 
 
 the Government. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 1. 
 
 " Look abroad," says that good man, Edward Waterhous, 
 in his ' Apology for Learning,' (p. 106,) " Look abroad, and 
 see what a ministry small allowances have left in the reformed 
 Churches of France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland ! I 
 speak of the generality of them, their professors and some 
 few of the rest of them, whose tathers and marriages, or other 
 casualties, have left or made fortunate, are eminent. But 
 from the most, their learning is lost with their lands and 
 glebes. God wot, they are fain to crouch to unlearned men 
 (who have wit enough to get and hold wealth), almost in tlie 
 language of Eli's sons, ' put me, I pray thee, into one of the 
 priest's offices ; that I may eat a piece of bread.' " 
 
 There was some danger of the same kind in England, even 
 after the Restoration. " If we consider the treatment of the 
 clergy in these nations," says South, " since popery was driven 
 out, both as to the language and usage which tliey find from 
 most about them ; I do from all that I have read, heard, or 
 seen, confidently aver (and T wish I could speak it loud 
 enough to reach all the corners and quarters of the whole 
 world), that there is no nation or people under heaven. Chris- 
 tian or not Christian, which despise, hate, and trample upon 
 their clergy or priesthood comparably to the English, So that 
 (as matters have been carried) it is really no small argument 
 of the predominance of conscience over interest, that tiiere are 
 yet parents who can be willing to breed up any of their sons 
 (if hopefully endowed) to so discouraged and discouraging a 
 profession." — Vol. iv. 141. 
 
 That cold business in which a man misspends the 
 better part of life. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 6, 
 
 " Is it not a madness for a rational soul, for whom all the 
 world was created, to observe nothing iu this world, but whe-
 
 426 NOTES AND 
 
 ther another manages liis process well ; with what harmony 
 strikes another man's pulse ; or how to brigue the favour of a 
 minion? acts so extrinsic to the nature of an immaterial crea- 
 ture, such as the soul, that if men got not money by these 
 employments, they would themselves condemn them as ridi- 
 culous." — Sir George Mackenzie s Essays, 107. 
 
 Religious education in Switzerland. 
 Vol. II. p. 11. 
 
 In Vevey the youth of both sexes go through a two-years 
 course of religious instruction. " This duty is allotted to one 
 clergyman in the town as his exclusive charge, with a full and 
 regular stipend from the Government for its peculiar per- 
 formance. A gratuity, suitable to the circumstances of the 
 instructed, follows its completion ; but this is wholly optional, 
 and matter of complimentary civility." — Webb's Minutes of 
 Remarks on Subjects Picturesque., Moral and Miscellaneous, 
 made in a course along the Rhine, and during a residence in 
 Switzerland and Italy, in the years 1822 and 1823. Vol. i. 81. 
 
 After observing in his remarks made at Vevey, that educa- 
 tion is compulsorily enforced upon all classes, from the very 
 poorest upwards, this very amusing, singular, right-headed, 
 right-hearted writer proceeds to say, " it is surely not so 
 much the reading and writing, and arithmetic, learned by 
 the poor at these schools . . truly valuable acquisitions though 
 these are . . as the moral discipline inculcated in the process of 
 their acquirement, that constitutes the main utility of this edu- 
 cation. The moral lessons thus taught, and the habits ac- 
 quired during several years training are efficient for life. The 
 man upiiolds for his own control the restraints first imposed for 
 the comfort and welfare of tlie child. And the universality of 
 the disci])line, is the establishment of propriety, sobriety, and 
 morals, co-extensive with the State's populaticm. Combine 
 with this, as they ought ever to be combined, the lessons of 
 religion ; and then with all man's proneness to depravity, 
 what a l)asis is there not laid for a whole nation's prosperity, 
 and the ])ursuit of man's loftiest destinies ! " — Vol. i. 90.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 427 
 
 Church property , 
 Vol. 11. p. 34. 
 
 Berkeley with his cliaracteristic sagacity has asked, 
 
 " Whether there be not two general methods, whereby men 
 become sharers in the national stock of wealth or power, . . 
 industry and inheritance ? and whether it would be wise in a 
 civil society to lessen that share which is allotted to merit and 
 industry ? 
 
 " Whether all ways of spending a fortune be of equal 
 benefit to the public ? and what sort of men are aptest to run 
 into an improper expense ? 
 
 " If the revenues allotted for the encouragement of religion 
 and learning were made hereditary, in the hands of a dozen 
 lay lords, and as many over- grown commoners, whether the 
 public would be much the better for it ? 
 
 " Whether the Church's patrimony belongs to one tribe 
 alone ? and whether every man's son, brother, or himself, may 
 not, if he pleases, be qualified to share therein ? 
 
 " AVhat is there in the clergy to create a jealousy in the 
 public ? Or what would the public lose, by it, if every squire 
 in the land wore a black coat, said his prayers, and was 
 obhged to reside ? "—Querist, § 338—342. 
 
 Poor scholars. 
 Vol. II. p. 42. 
 
 " O Giggleswick," says the scholar in Randolph's Aristip- 
 pus, " thou happy place of education ! . . . O what had become 
 of me, if I had not gone barefoot to my praeceptor, with a 
 satchel at my back !" 
 
 And again in the same strain, " the whole University is 
 full of your honest fellows, that breaking loose from a York- 
 shire belfrey, have walked to Cambridge with satchels on their 
 shoulders."
 
 428 NOTES AND 
 
 Intended College at Durham. 
 Vol. II. p. 56. 
 
 George Fox, witli characteristic complacency, takes to him- 
 self the credit of frustrating this design. He says in his 
 Journal (first edition, p. 281.) ..." we came to Durham 
 (A. D. 1657), where was a Man come down from London, 
 to set up a College, there, to make Ministers of Christ, as they 
 said : I went, with some others, to reason with the Man, and 
 to let him see, ' That to teach Men Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, 
 and the Seven Arts,' which was all but the Teachings of the 
 Natural Man, was not ' the IFay to make them Ministers of 
 Christ.' For the Languages began at Babel: and to tlie 
 Greeks, tliat spake Greek, as their Mother-Tongue, tlie Preach- 
 ing of the Cross of Christ was foolishness ; and to the Jews, 
 that spake Hcbrexu, as their Mother-Tongue, Christ was a 
 stuinbling-block. And as for the Romans, who had the Latin 
 and Italian, they persecuted the Christians ; and Pilat, one of 
 the Roman Governours, set Hebrew, Greek, and Latin a top of 
 Christ, when he Crucified him. So he might see, the many 
 Lani^uages began at Babel, and they set them a top of 
 Christ the IFord when they Crucified him. And John the 
 Divine who* preached the fFord, that was in the beginning, 
 said, That the Beast, and the Whore have Power over Tongues 
 a?id Languages, and they are as Waters. Thus, I told him, 
 lie might see, the Whore and Beast have Power over the 
 Tongues and the many Languages, which are in Mystery 
 Babylon : for they began at Babel ; and the Persecutors of 
 Christ Jesus set them over him, when he was Crucified by 
 them : but he is Risen over them all, who was before them all. 
 Now (said I to this Man) Dost thou think to make Ministers 
 of Christ by these natural, confused Languages which sprang 
 from Babel, are admired in Babylon and set a top of Christ, 
 the Life, by a Persecutor? Oh no ! ' .So the man confest to 
 many of these things. Then we shewed him further, ' That 
 Christ madi; his IMinistcrs himself, and gave gifts unto them ; 
 ;ni(l bid ihuni Pray to the Lord of the Harvest, to send forth
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 429 
 
 Labourer.t. And Peter and John, tliougli unlearned and igno- 
 rant (as to School-learning) preached Christ Jesus the JVord, 
 which was in the beginning, before Babel was. Paul also 
 was made nn Apostle not of iVf«n, nor by Man, neither received 
 he the Gospel from Man, but from Jesus Christ ; who is the 
 same now, and so is his Gospel, as it was at that Day! When 
 we had thus discoursed with the Man^ he became very loving 
 and tender : and after he had considered further of it, he never 
 set up his College." 
 
 Sewell, who takes the matter in as simple a light as George 
 Fox himself, says the man was " puzzled a little by this." 
 
 In every country, hoivever poor, there is something of 
 'free Nature''s grace.' 
 
 Vol. II. p. 60. 
 
 That lively and gentle-hearted writer, Ligon, says in his 
 History of Barbadoes, " there is no place so void and empty, 
 where some lawful pleasure is not to be had, for a man that 
 hath a free heart, and a good conscience." (p. 3.) Poor fellow, 
 he wrote these words in a prison ! 
 
 I care not, Fortune, what you me deny : 
 
 You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace ; 
 
 You cannot shut the windows of the sky. 
 
 Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ; 
 
 You cannot bar my constant feet to trace 
 
 The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve ; 
 
 Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace. 
 
 And I their toys to the great children leave. 
 
 Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. 
 
 Castle of Indolence. Canto 2. st. 3. 
 
 The origin of this beautiful and well-known passage, is, I 
 think, to be found in Patrick's Parable of the Pilgrim, a book 
 in which, though the Parable is poorly imagined and ill- 
 sustained, there is a great deal of sound instruction conveyed 
 in a sober, manly, and not unfrequently, a felicitous manner.
 
 430 NOTES AND 
 
 The passaf^e which Thomson probably had in his mind is 
 this : tlie Pilgrims, ' as they passed by a fair field, espied a 
 poor man in very ragged clothes, under a large beech tree, 
 who was listening to the music which the birds made in the 
 nei"-hbouring grove, and sometimes whistled himself to bear 
 them company in their melodies. They were much taken 
 with the innocence of his looks, and the contentment which 
 they thought they read in his face' .... they enter into con- 
 versation with him, and he says...' this music which you 
 saw me listening to, this music of God's own creating, gives 
 me the greater ravishment, because I consider that none can 
 rob me of it, and leave me my liberty and life. They that 
 have taken away my goods, cannot hinder the earth from 
 putting forth the flowers, nor the trees from yielding their 
 fruit, nor the birds from singing among the branches ; no, 
 nor me from entertaining myself with all these pleasures,. . . 
 at least from being contented.' — p. 406. 
 
 You feel as if in another region, . . , almost in another 
 world. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 61. 
 
 This feeling is beautifully expressed in a very pleasing 
 volume, which ought to send some of our tourists to Ireland. 
 Describing a scene among the mountains of Donegal, the 
 writer says, ' you seemed lifted as it were out of the turmoil 
 of the world into some planetary Paradise, into some such 
 place as the Apostle in the Ai)ocalyj)se was invited to, when 
 the voice said, " Come up hither !" You might have supposed 
 that sound had no existence here ; were it not that now and 
 then a hawk shrieked while cowering over the mountain top, 
 or a lamb bleated beneath as it ran to its mother. I could 
 have gone to sleep here, and dreamt of heaven purchased for 
 poor sinners like me, by a Saviour's blood. I did, at any 
 rate, praise the God of nature and of grace, and draw near to 
 him in Christ, grateful for all his blessings, and all his 
 wonders of creating and redeeming love !'
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS, 431 
 
 Sketches hi Ireland : descriptive of interesting and hitherto 
 unnoticed districts in the North and South. — p. 10, 
 
 Readers who have not seen this little volume may thank me 
 for recommending it to their notice.. 
 
 Llywarch Hen. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 63. 
 
 His remaining poems were published with a literal transla- 
 tion, by Mr. William Owen, in 1792. Their authenticity has 
 been proved by Mr, Turner, and they are exceedingly curious, 
 as some of the oldest remains of Keltic poetry. They are 
 also of some historical value. The loss of his sons he imputes 
 to some indiscretion of his own, concerning which there is 
 probably no tradition extant, as his translator has given no 
 comment upon the passage, 
 
 Four-and-twenty sons, the offspring of my body ; 
 By the means of my tongue they were slain : 
 Justly come is my budget of misfortunes. 
 
 The general strain of these poems is as melancholy as it is 
 rude. He laments for his friends, his patrons, and his chil- 
 dren, and complains of old age, infirmity, and sickness. 
 
 Before I appeared with crutches, I was eloquent : 
 Before I appeared with crutches, I was bold : 
 I was admitted into the congress house. 
 Before I appeared on crutches, I was comely ; 
 My lance was the foremost of the spears ; 
 My round back was first in vigour. I am heavy ; 
 
 I am wretched. — 
 My wooden crook, be thou a contented branch 
 To support a mourning old man. 
 Llywarch accustomed much to talk. 
 My wooden crook, thou hardy branch, 
 Bear with me, — 
 
 My wooden crook, be thou steady, 
 So that thou mayest support me the better.—
 
 432 NOTES AND 
 
 Feeble is the aged ; slowly dotli he move. 
 
 What I loved when I was a youth are hateful to me now, 
 
 The stranger's daughter and the grey steed : 
 
 Am I not for them unmeet ? 
 
 Tlie four most hateful things to me through life, 
 
 They have met together with one accord. 
 
 The cough, old age, sickness, and grief. 
 
 I am old, I am alone, I am decrepit and cold, 
 
 After the sumptuous bed of honour, 
 
 I am wretched, I am triply bent. 
 
 Those that loved me once, now love me not. 
 
 Young virgins love me not. I am resorted to by none. 
 
 I cannot move myself along. 
 
 Ah Death, why will he not befriend me ? 
 
 I am befriended by neither sleep nor gladness. 
 
 Wretched is the fate that was fated 
 
 For Llywarch, on the night he was born, 
 
 Long pains without being delivered of his load of trouble. 
 
 I annex also some extracts from his verses on the Cuckoo. 
 
 Sitting to rest on a hill, cruelly inclined is my mind, 
 
 And yet it doth not impel me onward : 
 
 Short is my journey and my dwelling wretched. 
 
 Sharply blows the gale, it is base punishment to live. 
 When the trees array tliemselves in their summer finery j 
 Violent is my pain this day. 
 
 I am no follower of the chace, I keep no hound, 
 
 I cannot move myself abroad. 
 
 As long as it seemeth good to the Cuckoo, let her sing! 
 
 The loud-voiced Cuckoo sings with the dove 
 Her melodious notes in the dales of Cuawir ; 
 ' Better the liberal than the miser.' * 
 
 * It seems, says Mr. Owen, Uiat tliis proverb is to be considered a song 
 of the Cuckoo, — G well cor awg na ^'jbijdd.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 433 
 
 By the waters of Cuawg the Cuckoos sing 
 
 On the blossom-covered branches ; 
 
 AVoe to the sick that hears their contented notes ! 
 
 By the waters of Cuawg Cuckoos are singing ; 
 
 To my mind grating is tlie sound. 
 
 Oh may others that hear not sicken Uke me ! 
 
 Have I not listened to the Cuckoo on the tree encircled 
 
 with ivy, 
 And did it not cause me to hang down my shield ! 
 But hateful is what I loved. If I loved, hence shall it cease. 
 
 On a hill that overlooked the merry oak, 
 
 I have listened to the song of birds. 
 
 The loud Cuckoo that is in every lover's thoughts. 
 
 Sweet songstress with her song of content, her voice creates 
 
 longing : 
 
 She is fated to wander ; like the liawk scuds 
 
 The loud Cuckoo by the waters of Cuawg. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 The birds are clamorous, the beach is wet : 
 Let the leaves fall, the exile is unconcerned ; 
 I will not conceal it : I am sick this niglit. 
 
 The birds are clamorous, the strand is wet : 
 Clear is the welkin, high swells the wave. 
 The heart is palsied with longing. 
 
 The birds are clamorous, the strand is wet, 
 Bright is the wave, taking its ample range. . . . 
 
 Clamorous are the birds on the scent of the prey ; 
 Loud is the cry of the dogs in the desert. . . . 
 
 When the harbinger of summer comes, every varied seed is 
 
 gay- 
 
 When the warriors hasten to the conflict, 
 I do not go, infirmity prevents me. 
 
 Wiien the summer comes, glorious on the impatient steeds 
 Seem the warriors, when hastening to the field of battle ; 
 I shall not go, infirmity keeps me back. 
 VOL. II. 2 F
 
 434 NOTES AND 
 
 There are frequent expressions of religious belief in these 
 poems, but Llyvvarch never appears to derive consolation 
 from it. 
 
 The Shepherd Lord Clifford. 
 Vol. II. p. 64. 
 
 ' So in the condition of a shepherd's boy at Lonsborrow, 
 where his mother then lived for the most part, did this Lord 
 Clifford spend his youth, till he was about fourteen years of 
 age, about which time his mother's father, Henry Bromflett, 
 Lord Vesey, deceased. But a little after his death it came to 
 be rumoured, at the Court, that his daughter's two sons were 
 alive ; about which their mother was examined : but her an- 
 swer was, that she had given directions to send them both 
 beyond seas, to be bred there ; and she did not know whether 
 they were dead or alive. 
 
 ' And as this Henry Lord Clifford did grow to more years, 
 he was still the more capable of his danger, if he had been 
 discovered. And therefore presently after his grandfather, 
 the Lord Vesey, was dead, the said rumour of his being alive, 
 being more and more whispered at the Court, made his said 
 loving mother, by the means of her second husband, Sir 
 Lancelot Thrclkeld, to send him away with the said shep- 
 herds and their wives into Cumberland, to be kept as a 
 shepherd there, sometimes at Threlkeld, and amongst his 
 father-in-law's kindred, and sometimes upon the borders of 
 Scotland, where they took lands, purposely for these shep- 
 herds that had the custody of him ; where many times his 
 father-in-law came purposely to visit him, and sometimes his 
 mother, though very secretly. By which mean kind of 
 breeding this inconvenience befell him, that he could neither 
 write nor read ; for they durst not bring him up in any kind 
 of learning lest by it his birth should be discovered. Yet 
 after he came to his lands and honours he learnt to write his 
 name * only. 
 
 • By a fac-simile in Nicolson and Burn's History of Westmoreland, it 
 should seem that his sign manual weut no farther than the first letter of his 
 name, the remainder being supplied by another hand. — Vol.i. 286,
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 435 
 
 " Notwithstanding which disadvantage, after he came to be 
 possessed again, and restored to the enjoyment of his fatlier's 
 estate, he came to be a very wise man, and a very good mana- 
 ger of his estate and fortunes. 
 
 " This Henry Lord ChfFord, after he came to be possessed 
 of his said estate, was a great buikler and repairer of all his 
 castles in the North, which had gone to decay when he came 
 to enjoy them ; for they had been in stranger's hands about 
 twenty-four or twenty-five years. Skipton Castle, and the 
 lands about it, had been given to William Stanley, by King 
 Edward IV., which William Stanley's head was cut off about 
 the tenth year of King Henry "VII. ; and Westmoreland was 
 given by Edward IV. to his brother Richard, Duke of 
 Gloucester, wlio was afterwards King of England, and was 
 slain in battle, the 22nd of August, 1485. 
 
 " This Henry Lord Clifford did, after he came to his 
 estate, exceedingly delight in astronomy, and the contem- 
 plation of the course of the stars, which it is likely he was 
 seasoned in during the course of his shepherd's life. He 
 built a great part of Barden Tower, (which is now much de- 
 cayed,) and there he lived much; which it is thought he did 
 the rather because in that place he had furnished himself with 
 instruments for that study. 
 
 " He was a plain man, and lived for the most part a country 
 life, and came seldom either to the Court or London, but 
 when he was called thither to sit in them as a peer of the 
 realm, in which Parliament, it is reported, he behaved himself 
 wisely, and nobly, and like a good Englishman. 
 
 " About the twenty-first year of Henry VII., he, the said 
 Lord Cliflbrd, was in some disgrace with the said King ; so 
 as the said King caused him to bring him into Court all his 
 evidences, to show by what right he held his lands in West- 
 moreland, and the sheriffwick of that county : as appears by 
 some records, which pleadings and records did much help for- 
 ward to the manifestation of the title of Anne, Countess Dow- 
 ager of Pembroke, to the said lands and sheriffwick. 
 
 " This Henry Lord Clifibrd, by the prudent management of 
 
 2 F 2
 
 436 NOTES AND 
 
 his estate, grew to be a very rich man, both in money, chattels, 
 and goods, and great store of grounds. 
 
 " But lie was very unfortunate in liaving great unkindness 
 between himself and his oldest son Henry Clifl"ord, for some 
 seven or eight years before his death. For that son, after 
 his mother, Anne St. John, Lady Clifford, her death, and 
 that his father was married again to a second wife, grew into 
 f>-reat ano-er aixainst his father's wife, and his father's servants, 
 as appears by some letters which are still extant ; which anger 
 betwixt them was a great misfortune to them both, and to all 
 that appertained unto them. 
 
 " Tlie unhappy feeling on the part of this son towards his 
 father seems, however, to have had a deeper cause than the 
 displeasure which a second marriage might have occasioned. 
 For in these foithful records it is said, that towards the latter 
 end of his mother's life, ' her husband was unkind to her, 
 and had two or three base children by another woman ; so as 
 by reason of that, and her husband taking part with some 
 of the Commons about taxes, against the said King Henry 
 VII., in the latter end of his reign, he was in some disgrace 
 witli the said king,' " 
 
 The shepherd Lord is said to have been more beliolden 
 for the restoration of his estates to the relationship of this 
 wife with Henry VII., than to any gratitude on that king's 
 part, for the services and the sufferings of the House of 
 Clifford in the Lancastrian cause. This ladv, " Anne St. 
 John, only daughter to Sir John St. John of Bletso, was 
 cousin-german to King Henry VII., for her fatlier was half- 
 brother to tliat king's mother, Margaret, Countess of Rich- 
 mond and Derljy. A\'liich king did then restore the said 
 Lord (Clifford to his lands and honours, and estate, the rather 
 because he did then marry tliat cousin-geriiian of his, for 
 though the said king favoured liim, because his father and 
 grandfather were slain in the service of the House of Lan- 
 caster, yet by tradition it is resolved, tliat the cause chiefly 
 why he recovered his lands and honours, was because lie 
 married the said king's cousin-german, Anne St. John."
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 437 
 
 " This Anne St. John, Lady Clifford, of whom we now treat, 
 was a woman of great goodness and piety, and devotion, and 
 lived for the most part a comitry life, in her husband's castles 
 in the North, during the time she lived his wife, which was 
 about twenty-one years. 
 
 " This wife of his was so great a housewife, as that she 
 caused tapestry hangings to be made, which was then a rare 
 thing here in England ; and some of them are remaining until 
 this time, with the arms of herself and husband wrought in 
 them." — Sinnmary of the Lives of the Veteriponts and Clif- 
 fords, 8fc. MSS. 
 
 Second marriage of Isabella cle Berkeley. 
 Vol. II. p. 75. 
 
 By the old Spanish laws, a deed of gift might be revoked, 
 if the person in whose favour it was made, had afterwards 
 shown himself ungrateful by speaking ill of the donor, 
 faziendole grand desonra dc jJolabra ; but a mother who 
 having made a gift to her son after she was left a widow, 
 contracted a second marriage, could not annul the grant 
 upon this plea. Such was the feeling concerning second 
 marriage. — Partida 5. Tit. 4. Ley 10. 
 
 Thomas Lord Clifford. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 79. 
 
 Buchanan accuses him (I know not on what authority) of 
 having assassinated Douglas at Dantzic, in consequence of an 
 enmity arising from his claims to the Douglas estates, as 
 having been granted to his grandfather by Edward Balliol. 
 ' Eodem anno Gulielmus Duglassius, Nithiaj Regulus, (quern 
 ' diximus virtutis crga generum k TJege ascitum,) Dantisci ad 
 ' Vistulam occisus fuit, percussoribus h Cliffordo Anglo in 
 ' eum submissis. Duglassius enim rebus domi tranquillis, ne 
 ' in ocio languesceret, in Borussiam ad bellum sacrum profec- 
 ' tus, tale specimen virtutis dedit, ut universte classi, quoc
 
 438 NOTES AND 
 
 ' maxima et ornatissima erat, proeficeretur. Orta vero alter- 
 ' catione cum Anglo, ex antiqua cnemulatione eum honorem 
 ' molesle fercnte, ad certamen singulare ab eo fuit provocatus. 
 ' Provocator secum cogitans, in quam ancipitem martis aleam 
 ' se clemissurus esset, hominem per sicarios toUendum curat.' — 
 Rev. Scot. 1. ix. § 67. 
 
 In the summary of the Lives of the CUffords, it is properly 
 observed upon this foul charge, that " the malice between 
 the two nations was so great then, as this may well be false." 
 The motive of cowardice which Buchanan assigns, may safely 
 be pronounced to be so ; a Cliflord who went to the Vistula, 
 for tiie mere sake of war, was not a man to shrink from a 
 single combat. 
 
 Buchanan is certainly wrong in the date which he has 
 given, which is 1390 ; Clifford's father died July 13, 1391, 
 and it was not till after his father's death that he went to serve 
 with the Teutonic knights. 
 
 Political influence of the Pulpit. 
 Vol. II. p. 116. 
 
 " It was observed of Queen Elizabeth, that when she had 
 any business to bring about amongst the people, she used to 
 tune the pulpits, as her saying was, that is to say, to have 
 some preachers in and about London, and other great audi- 
 tories in the kingdom, ready at command to cry up her de- 
 sign, as well in their public sermons, as their private confer- 
 ences." — Htylyn's Life of Laud, p. 153. 
 
 Hobbes had a great dislike to the Universities, which, 
 he said, were the core of rel)ellion : but he said also, that 
 perhaps, the only course which could " make our peace 
 amongst ourselves constant, was to discipline them well, that 
 they might send out well-i)rincipled preachers." No man ever 
 more clearly perceived that power can be permanently main- 
 tained only by opinion. " For if men know not their duty, 
 what is there can force them to obey the laws? An army 
 you'll say.. but what shall force the army? Was not the 
 Trained Bands an army ? Were they not Janizaries that not
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS, 439 
 
 long ago slew Osman in his own palace at Constantinople ? " 
 — Behemoth. Moral and Pol. Works, p. 516. 
 
 The vulgar clamour against those clergy who have man- 
 fully and dutifully stood forth in defence of the Protestant 
 Establishment, may be sufficiently answered in the words of 
 that excellent man, Robert Nelson: " It is all times the 
 indispensable obligation of all the bishops and pastors of the 
 Church, to behave themselves with an holy boldness and un- 
 daunted resolution, in the affairs of God and religion, with- 
 out being awed or biassed by the torrent of the times, or made 
 sordidly to crouch to a prevailing power of worldly politicians, 
 who are for carrying on their own sinister designs at any rate, 
 though always under the most specious pretexts." — Life of 
 Bishop Bull, p. 356. Ed. 1827. 
 
 We may be thankful that the Church of England is, at this 
 time, according to the prayer of her own true poet : . . . 
 
 For her defence, replenished with a band 
 
 Of strenuous champions, in scholastic arts 
 
 Thoroughly disciplined : nor (if in course 
 
 Of the revolving world's disturbances 
 
 Cause should recur, which righteous Heaven avert ! 
 
 To meet such trial) from their spiritual lives 
 
 Degenerate, who, constrained to wield the sword 
 
 Of disputation, shrunk not, tho' assailed 
 
 With hostile din, and combating in sight 
 
 Of angry umpires, partial and unjust. 
 
 TVordswortKs Excursions, p. 252. 
 
 Increase of Nobles. 
 Vol. IL p. 121. 
 
 Major Beake, in Richard Cromwell's Parliament, spoke 
 thus upon the question of giving the Protector the power of 
 creating peers. 
 
 "You have no cause to fear the new nobility. . .Suppose 
 the sinirle person should nominate five hundred peers, or 
 more, to grow up over us and overtop us, such a numerous
 
 440 NOTES AND 
 
 nobility will rather strengthen your hands than liis ; for by 
 experience we found the numerous nobility of King James 
 was the destruction of his son. When King Charles began 
 to multiply lords, they struck in with you, and deserted the 
 
 king. 
 
 " Though God in his providence hath taken away the 
 nobility, yet what God doth providentially, he not always 
 approves. That he did approve it, is not clear to me. To 
 untie this knot, we may say he did not do it approvingly. I 
 take the single person and tlie commons as two scales, the 
 House of Lords as the beam. Both scales are subject to 
 factions, and tyranny, and extravagances. The beam is pru- 
 dential. The power for seven hundred years transmitted to 
 them, they have as much right to as the gentleman has to 
 his cloak. Usage is a good right, if ancient. If nothing be 
 rif^ht but what is natural, he hath not right to his victuals, 
 his meat and drink: so that there is but a tuntum non to make 
 it natural. It is so twisted with the Constitution, that five 
 hundred for one upon the poll, would be for a House of Lords. 
 The Parliament might as well take away meian and tuum as 
 a House of Lords." — Burton's Journal, iii. 362. 
 
 Number of the House of Commons. 
 Vol. II. p. M6. 
 
 This subject was incidentally noticed in the debates upon 
 the union with Ireland. Mr. Grey observed that in the plan 
 of Parliamentary reform, which he had brought forward, it 
 was not proposed to increase the number of members ; and 
 that the plan proposed by Mr. Pitt went uj)on the principle 
 of preserving the number the same, by extinguishing a num- 
 ber of boroughs to balance the number of members that 
 were to be introduced by a more popular election. (Pari. 
 History, xxxv. p. 70-1.) " As to that number," said he, 
 " which may be convenient for a deliberative assembly, I 
 should consider 558, {f/iat of the House before the Union,) 
 a numijer as great as would be consistent with order. The
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 441 
 
 human voice even may afford some criterion, as the number 
 ought not to be greater than could be able to hear the dis- 
 cussion. It has rarely happened of late,; indeed, that the 
 attendance has been great, or that parties have been very 
 nicely balanced ; if, however, the attendance were to be 
 regular, and an additional hundred members were to be in- 
 troduced, it would be quite impossible for you, Sir, with all 
 that wisdom, dignity, and firmness by which you are dis- 
 tinguished, to preserve order amidst the conflict of nicely 
 balanced parties." (lb. 99.) He suggested, therefore, " that 
 forty-four of the most decayed boroughs should be struck 
 off, which would lead to a vacancy of eighty-eight mem- 
 bers ; that the ratio at which Ireland was to have one hun- 
 dred members, should be preserved, which, for the remainder 
 478, would give 85 for that country." — lb. 101. 
 
 The gloss of Drusius upon a verse of St. James (M?/ 
 TToWoi ^tcaaKaXoi rjtueaOe ace\(f)oi ytis, iii. 1) may here be 
 remembered and applied : ' Summa summarum ; quo pauci- 
 ' ores sunt magistri, eo melius agitur cum populo. Nam ut 
 ' medicorum olim Cariam, ita doctorum et magistrorum nunc 
 ' multitude perdit rempublicam. Utinam vanus sim ! ' — 
 Quoted by Bishop Bull, vol. i. 139. 
 
 Intellectual obliquity of vision. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 155. 
 
 " There is a squint eye that looks side-long ; to look upon 
 riches and honours on the left hand, and long life here, on 
 the right, is a squint eye. There is a squint eye that looks 
 upwards and downwards ; to look after God and Mammon 
 is a squint eye. There are squint eyes that look upon one 
 another ; to look upon one's own beauty, or wisdom, or 
 power, is a squint eye. The direct look is to look inward 
 upon their own conscience ; not with Nebuchadnezzar ; ' Is 
 not this great Babylon which I have built by the might of my 
 power, and for the honour of my majesty ? ' but with David, 
 Quid retribuam ! for if tliou look upon them with a clear 
 eye, thou wilt see that though thou hast them, tliou hast but
 
 442 NOTES AND 
 
 found them,. . .thou hast them but by chance, by contingency, 
 by fortune.' — Donne s Sermons, Ixx. p. 711. 
 
 Clothmahers. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 158. 
 
 " I liear say there is a certain cunning come up in mixing 
 of wares. How say you, were it not a wonder to hear that 
 Clothmakers should become Poticaries ;. .yea, and as I hear 
 say, in sucli a ])lace wlicreas tliey have ])rofessed the Gospel, 
 and the word of God most earnestly of a long time ? See how 
 busy the Devil is to slander the word of God ! Thus the 
 poor Gospel goeth to wreck. If his cloth be seventeen 
 yards long, he will set him on a rack, and stretch him out 
 with ropes, and rack him till tlie sinews shrink again, while 
 he hath brought him to eighteen yards. When they have 
 brought him to that perfection, thay have a pretty feat to 
 thick him again. He makes me a powder for it, and plays 
 the Poticary ; they call it flock-powder : they do so incorpo- 
 rate it to the cloth, that it is wonderful to consider ; truly a 
 good invention. Oh that so goodly wits should be so ill 
 applied I they may well deceive the people, but they cannot 
 deceive God. They were wont to make beds of flocks, and 
 it was a good bed too; now they have turned flocks into 
 powder to play the false thieves with it. O wicked Devil ! 
 what can he not invent to blaspheme God's word ? These 
 mixtures come of covetousness. They are plain theft. Woe 
 worth that these flocks should slander the word of God : as 
 He said to the Jews, the wine is mingled with water, so 
 might he have said to us of this land, thy cloth is mingled 
 with fl ock-powder." — Latimer. 
 
 St. Pauls School. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 1G5. 
 
 Ujjon this subject Erasmus speaks more fully in his Dialogue 
 De Pronuncialione.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 443 
 
 ' Ursus. Proinde Joannes Coletus, vir seterna dignus me- 
 ' moria, quum templo divi Pauli scliolam puerilem addidisset, 
 ' nulla cura magis torquebatur, quam in quos ejus rei praefec- 
 ' turam delegaret. Episcopi judicant banc rem indignam su3, 
 ' solicitudine. Scholasteres censibus recipiendis se potius quam 
 ' scholfB curandae datos arbitratui-, et pulchre sibi videntur suo 
 * functi officio, si ludimagistros non deciment. In collegiis 
 ' canonicorum fere semper deterior pars superat. Magistratus 
 ' vel judicio carent, vel indulgent privatis affectibus. Leo. 
 ' Quid tandem consilii reperit ? Urs. Hominem conjugatum 
 ' et liberis divitem scliolse preefecit : provisionem delegavit 
 ' aliquot e civibus laicis, quorum probitatem habere sibi vide- 
 ' batur exploratam, ut ab his in lueredes proximos derivetur. 
 ' Leo. Num ea providentia securum reddidit ? Urs. Minima ; 
 ' sed his aiebat sibi videri minimum esse periculi, ut turn habe- 
 ' bant res humanee.' 
 
 There is no profession which may more truly deserve 
 to be called liberal, when carried on by a just and 
 honourable man. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 165. 
 
 A writer who has been condemned by Dryden to be held 
 in worse remembrance than he deserved, has left this character 
 of an English Merchant resident in foreign parts. 
 
 " He is one, who goes abroad with a stock of honour, as 
 well as money, to traffic with and manage either bravely ; 
 being a master and not a slave to wealth, and such a master 
 as honours it by commands, making it only to serve to noble 
 ends. He neither sticks at trivial expense nor gain, nor anti- 
 cipates poverty for fear of being poor, (like those who kill 
 themselves for fear of death,) nor accelerates it by vain glory 
 of appearing rich, (like those who gild over ruinous palaces,) 
 but look in his accompts aiid warehouse, and you find him a 
 wealthy merchant ; but look in all the rest of his house and 
 family, and you find him a noble and gallant-minded gentle- 
 man. In brief, he neither starves the channel with penurious- 
 ness, nor exhausts the spring with prodigality, but has a
 
 444 NOTES AND 
 
 particular art to keep a full stream still running, and tlie fount 
 still full, so as we may well say of him in these dead times, 
 that there is none lives hut he ; who, whilst greatest landed 
 men are outed of all they have, as long as the sea is open, is 
 sure of his coming in. To conclude, he is the honour of his 
 nation abroad, and therefore his nation should be very dis- 
 honourable and unworthy, should it not always honour him." 
 ■^Fkckiio's Relation of Ten Years' Travels, p. 89. 
 
 Few appreciate the blessings of competence and lei- 
 sure. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 168. 
 
 "It is the sin of many of the gentry, whom God hath fur- 
 nished with means and abilities to do much good, to spend 
 their whole days and lives in an unprofitable course of doing 
 either nothing, or as good as nothing, or worse than nothing. 
 I cannot be so either stupid as not to apprehend, or rigorous, 
 as not to allow, a diflerence in the manner of employment, 
 and in other circumstances thereto belonging, between those 
 that are nobly or generously born or bred, and those of the 
 meaner and ordinary rank. Manual, and servile, and mechanic 
 trades and arts are for men of a lower condition. But yet no 
 man is born, no man should be bred unto idleness. There 
 are f^enerous and ingenuous and liberal employments, sortablc 
 to the greatest births and educations. For some man, whom 
 God hath blessed with power and authority in his country, with 
 fair livings and large revenues, with a numerous family of ser- 
 vants, retainers, and tenants, and the like, it may be a suffi- 
 cient calling, and enough to take up his whole time, even to 
 keep hospitality, and to order and overlook his family, and to 
 dispose of his lands and rents, and to make peace and pre- 
 serve love and neighbourhood among them that live near or 
 under him. He that doth but this as he ought to do, or is 
 otherwise industrious for the common good, must be acknow- 
 ledged a worthy member of the commonwealih, and his course 
 of life, a calling (although perhaps not so toilsome, yet) in sua
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 445 
 
 genere as necessary and profitable, as that of the husbandman, 
 merchant, lawyer, mmister, or any other. 
 
 " But for our meer, or parcel-gallants, who live in no 
 settled course of life, but spend half the day in sleeping, lialf 
 the night in gaming, and the rest of their time in other 
 pleasures and vanities, to as little purpose as they can devise, 
 as if they were born for nothing else but to eat and drink, 
 and snort and sport ; who are spruce and trim as the lilies, 
 (Solomon in all his royalty was not clothed like one of these,) 
 yet they neither sow, nor reap, nor carry into the barn ; they 
 neither labour, nor spin, nor do anything else for the good of 
 human society ; let them blush, there is not the poorest con- 
 temptible creature that crieth oysters and kitclien-stuff in the 
 streets, but deserveth his bread better than they, and his 
 course of life is of better esteem with God, and every sober 
 wise man, than theirs. A horse that is neither good for the 
 way, nor the cart, nor the race, nor the wars, nor any other 
 service ; let him be of never so good a breed, never so well 
 marked and shaped, yet he is but a jade ; his master setteth 
 no store by him, thinketh his meat ill-bestowed upon him ; 
 every man will say, better knock him on the head than keep 
 him ; his skin, though not much wortli, is yet better worth 
 than the whole beast besides. 
 
 " Consider this, you that are of noble or generous birtli. 
 Look unto tlie rock whence you were hewn, and to tlie pit 
 whence you were digged. Search your pedigrees ; collect 
 the scattered monuments and liistories of your ancestors, and 
 observe by what steps your wortliy progenitors raised their 
 liouses to the height of gentry, or nobility. Scarce shall you 
 find a man of them that gave any accession, or brought any 
 noted eminency to his house, but either serving in the camp, 
 or sweating at the bar, or waiting at Court, or adventuring 
 on the seas, or trucking in his shop, or some other way 
 industriously bestirring himself in some settled calling and 
 course of life. You usurp their arms, if you inherit not their 
 virtues ; and those ensigns of honour and gentry, which they 
 by industry atchieved, sit no otherwise upon your shoulders, 
 than as rich trappings ujoon asses' backs, which serve but to
 
 446 NOTES AND 
 
 render the poor beast more ridiculous. If you by brutisli 
 sensuality, and spending your time in swinish luxury, stain 
 the colours and embase the metals of those badges of your 
 gentry and nobility, which you claim by descent, think, when 
 we worship or honour you, we do but flout you ; and know 
 the titles we in courtesy give you, we bestow upon their 
 memory, whose degenerate offspring you are, and whose 
 arms you unworthily bear ; and they do no more belong to 
 you, than the reverence the good man did to Isis, belonged 
 to the ass that carried her image." — Sanderson. Fourteen 
 Sermons. 248. 
 
 Nunneries. 
 Vol.11, p. 211. 
 
 " We are apt," says ]\Ir. Barrow, in his Remarks on Madeira 
 (Voyage to Cochin-china) " to attach a hvely interest to young 
 females who are thus so cruelly, as we suppose, separated for 
 ever from all society, except that of each other : but it is 
 extremely doubtful if they possess those exalted sentiments, 
 nice feelings, and sound understandings, which prevail among 
 females of those countries where they are allowed to enjoy 
 unrestrained freedom." — True. But can it be doubted whether 
 they possess natural feelings? the question is not concerning 
 nice ones. Nunneries are useful as Bedlams, which crazy 
 women choose for themselves ; but they are not Bedlams ; 
 they are Prisons ; and it is not necessary that women should 
 possess exalted sentiments for them to be very miserable in 
 confinement. 
 
 Books from New England. 
 Vol. II. p. 243. 
 
 Two of these are of some importance in the history of 
 Qiiakerisii), and of great rarity in the Bibiiotheca Quakeriana. 
 It is a pleasing example of the literary intercourse subsisting 
 between New England and the Mother Country, that these
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 447 
 
 books should have been procured by one man of letters in 
 Massachusetts for the use of another at the foot of Skiddavv, 
 I am obliged for them to my friend, Professor Ticknor — one of 
 those persons who were more especially in my mind when I 
 spoke in the Introduction (p. 3) of American travellers in 
 England. 
 
 I subjoin the titles of these books, as characteristic in their 
 kind. 
 
 George Fox digged out of his Burrowes. Or an offer of 
 Disputation on fourteen Proposals made this last summer, 
 1672, (so called) unto G. Fox, then present on Rode Island 
 in New England, by R(oger) AV(illiams.) As also how, G. 
 Fox slily departing, the Disputation went on, being managed 
 three days at Newport on Rode Island, and one day at Pro- 
 vidence, between John Stubs, -John Burnet (Burnyeat), and 
 William Edmundson, on the one part, and R. W. on the 
 other. In which many quotations out of G. Fox and Ed. Bur- 
 rowes Book in folio are alledged, with an appendix of some 
 scores of G. F., his simple lame answers to his opposites in 
 that Book, quoted and replyed to. By R. W. of Providence 
 in N. E. — Boston, Printed by John Foster, 1676. Small 4to. 
 
 A New England Fire Brand quenched, being an Answer 
 mito a Slanderous Book entituled George Fox digged out of 
 his Burrowes, &c. Printed at Boston in the year 1676, by 
 Roger Williams, of Providence in New England. Which he 
 dedicateth to the King, with desires that, if the Most High 
 please. Old and New England may flourish when the Pope 
 and Mahomet, Rome and Constantinople are in their ashes. 
 Of a Dispute upon 14 of his Proposals held and debated be- 
 twixt him, the said Roger AVilliams on the one part, and John 
 Stubs, William Edmundson, and John Burnyeat on the other, 
 at Providence and Newport in Rode Island in the year 1672. 
 In which his cavils are refuted, and his Reflections reproved. 
 In two parts. As also an Answer to R. W.'s appendix, &c. 
 with a Postscript confuting its blasphemous assertions, viz. 
 of the Blood of Christ that was shed, its being corruptible 
 and corrupted ; and that Salvation was by a man that was 
 corruptible, &c. Whereunto is added a Catalogue of hia
 
 448 NOTES AND 
 
 Railery, Lies, scorn, and blaspliemies : and liis Temporizing 
 Spirit made manifest. Also the letters of W. Coddington of 
 Rode Island, and R. Scot of Providence in New England con- 
 cerning R. W. And lastly some Testimonies of Ancient and 
 Modem Authors concerning the light, scriptures, Rule, and 
 the Soul of i\Ian. By George Fox and John Burnyeat. 
 Printed in the year 1679, 
 
 Enjoyment of Books. 
 Vol. II. p. 254. 
 
 There is a beautiful passage in Machiavelli's Letters, de- 
 scribing the delight which he enjoyed in his studies. After a 
 lively picture of his daily occupations in the country, he says, 
 Venuta la sera mi ritorno a casa, ed entro in mio Scrittojo ; 
 ed in suU' uscio mi spoglio qucUa veste contadina, j)iena di 
 fango e di loto, e mi metto panni reali c curiali, e rivestito 
 condecentemente entro nelle antiche corti degli antichi uomini, 
 dove da loro ricevuto amorevolmente, mi pasco di quel cibo 
 die sohwi e mio, e che io nacqui per lui ; dove io non mi ver- 
 goo-no parlare con loro, c domandare della ragione delle loro 
 azioni ; c quelli per loro umanita mi rispondono ; e non sento 
 per quattro ore di tempo alcuna noja. Sdimentico ogni af- 
 fanno, non temo la poverta, non mi sbigottisce la morte ; 
 lutto mi trasferisco in loro. E perche Dante dice " che non 
 non fu scienza sonza ritcner Io intcso," io ho notato quello 
 di che ])er la loro conversazione ho fatto capitale, c coniposto 
 un oposcolo de Principalibus, dove io mi i)rofondo quanto io 
 posso nelle cogitazioni di questo subietto, disputando che cosa 
 e princij)ato, di (juali spezie sono, come e' si acquistano, 
 come e* si mantcngono, perch6 c' si pcrdono ; e si vi piacque 
 niai alcun mio ghiribizzo, questo non vi dovrcbbe dispiacorc; 
 e ad un principe, c massime ad un principe nuovo, dovrebbe 
 csscre accctto.' — Opere di Machiave.lli. IS 13. Vol. viii. 
 p. 96 
 
 lirasmus writes upon the same suliject, witli as much truth 
 and feeling as Machiavclli ; but there is less life in the letter, 
 more of the author, and less of the man.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 449 
 
 ' Quid verum faciam rogas ? Amicis operam do, liorum 
 ' consuetudine gratissima memet oblecto. Qaos tu tandem 
 ' amicos milii jactitas, inquis, homuncio levissime ? An quis- 
 ' quam te visum aut auditum velit? Equidem non diffiteor 
 ' fortunatorum amicos esse plurimos : at nee pauperibus de- 
 ' sunt amici et quidem isti non paulo turn cevtiores turn com- 
 ' modiores. Cum his me concludo in angulum aliquem, et 
 ' turbam ventorum fugiens, aut cum illis dulcia quoedam mus- 
 ' sito, aut eos aiiquid insusurrantes audio, cum his non secus 
 ' ac mecum loquor. An quicquam his commodius ? Arcana 
 ' ipsi sua celant nunquam, commissa summa cum fide conti- 
 ' nent : nihil forasquije Hberius inter familiares efl\uidere solemus, 
 ' renunciant : vocati praesto sunt, invocati non ingerunt sese : 
 ' jussi loquuntur, injussi tacent : loquuntur quce voles, quantum 
 ' voles, quoad voles ; nihil assentantur, fingunt nihil, nihil dis- 
 ' simulant ; vitia tua tibi libere indicant, neniini obtrectant : 
 ' aut jucunda dicunt, aut salutaria: secundis in rebus moderan- 
 ' tur, consolantur in afflictis, cum fortuna ininime variantur : 
 ' in omnia pericula te sequuntur, ad extremos usque rogoa 
 ' perdurant : nihil illis inter ipsos candidius. Committo sub- 
 ' inde, nunc hos, nunc illos, mihi asciscens, omnibus lequus. 
 ' Cum his amiculis optime N . . sepultus delitesco. Quas ego 
 ' tandem opes, aut quae sceptra cum hac desidia commutavero ? 
 ' Verum ne nostra te fallat metaphora, quicquid de amiculis 
 ' hactenus sum locutus, de libris dictum intelligas, quorum 
 ' familiaritas me plane beatum efFecit, hoc solo infortunatum, 
 ' quod non tecum mihi hrec felicitas contigcrit.' — L. iv. Ep, 31. 
 p. 297. 
 
 Multiplication of Books. 
 Vol. II. p. 255. 
 
 Leibnitz looked forward to the time when this would become 
 an evil, and proposed a plan for preserving wliat should be 
 most worthy of j^reservation ; . . but he foresaw also how diffi- 
 cult it would be to determine this. 
 
 ' Excerpendee essent ex scriptoribus, non solum quae semel 
 VOL. II. 2 G
 
 450 NOTES AND 
 
 * sed etiam quae primum dicta sunt a quolibet auctore. In- 
 ' cipieudum vero ab antiquissimis, sic perspicerc liceret quid a 
 ' quovis statutum. Non tamen quccvis, sed huniano generi 
 ' instruendo inservientia, delibanda forent. Si mundus adliuc 
 ' mille annos durabit, et tot libvi, ut hodie, conscribentur, vereor, 
 
 * ne e Bibliotliecis integrse civitates fiant : sed injuria tempo- 
 ' rum et casus varii multas perdent. Opus itaque esset, ut e 
 ' scriptoribus singularibus et arclietypis, qui alios non exscrip- 
 ' serunt, Eclogm Photiance conficerentur, res memorabiles ipsis 
 ' autorum verbis exponentes ; qusenam autem res sint alicujus 
 ' momenti, non cuivis ob diversitatem ingeniorum et discipli- 
 
 * narum dijudicare licet.' — Mantissa Miscellaneorum Leib- 
 nitianorum, § 26. 
 
 A point of honour among certain of the Italians in 
 the HJth century to be ignorant. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 270. 
 
 This appears from a passage in the curious dialogues of 
 Lodovico Domenichi (Vinegia, 1662.) 
 
 ' Ghe. rianno ancho un' altra infamia glihuomini litterati ; 
 
 * 6 questo e che non sono stimati nobili, riputandosi hoggidi 
 
 * cosa mecanica e vile lo attendere a gli studi delle buone 
 ' letterc. 
 
 * Her. Questae openione del vulgo. 
 
 ' Ghe. Anzi ci sono de gli huomini nati nobilmente, i quali 
 ' si recherebbono a vergogna sapere pure solamente scrivere il 
 ' nome loro, non che lettere. 
 
 ' Bat. Costoro che voi ci havetericordati non son purdegni 
 ' di chiamarsi huomini, non che gentili, e di corte. Ma las- 
 ' ciamo ire simili gcntaglie, a gran Lorto lioggiai favorite da 
 ' alcuni principi.' — p. 11. 
 
 But Domenichi himself thought learning had been vul- 
 garized too nmcli. This appears in his Dialogo ddla IStampa. 
 ' L'abondanza che la stainpa ha fatto venir de' libri, e stata 
 
 * cagione di molti inconvenienti. 
 
 ' LoL. Et quali son questi disordini ?
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 451 
 
 ' Coc. Prima, moltepersone nate vilmente, lequali con niag- 
 ' giore utility del mondosi sarebbonopotute impiegare inmolti 
 ' esercitii mecanici, et degni degli animi et corpi loro, tirate 
 ' dalla gran commodita di studiare, si son posto a leggere : 
 ' onde n' e poi seguito, die gl' huomini nobili, et dotti, sono 
 ' stati poco apprezzati et meno premiati. Et molti sdegnando 
 ' d' haver compagni le piu vili brigate nelle scienze, hanno 
 ' lasciato afFatto ogni buona disciplina, et cosi si sono marciti 
 ' neir ocio e nella lascivia. In questo modo la dignita, et la 
 ' riputatione dello studio delle lettere e venuta mancando : et 
 ' cessati sono ancho i premi, poi clie s'6 potutovedere la gran 
 
 * fticilita, et la poca fatica, clie e nel venir dotti et letterati.' — 
 lb. 383. 
 
 The Spaniards also in that age despised learning, as a thing 
 incompatible with a soldier's habits. Speaking of tlie ancient 
 Pliilosophers, Pietro Martire says, in an Epistle to the Arch- 
 bishop of Toledo, ' Ingens latumque chaos inter prseteritos 
 ' prsesentesque magistros fateor ; sed non strictius inter audi- 
 ' tores sentio interesse. Illi namque ab atavis illiteratum 
 ' hominem h belua nil distare crediderunt, eamque sibi in ma- 
 
 ♦ ternis uteris opinionem induebant ; Hispaniae contra juvenes 
 ' ab avis proavisque, ad nostram usque tempestatem, eum mi- 
 ' noris esse faciendum, qui literas sectetur, falso arbitrati sunt, 
 ' quia militise, cui soli invigilare honorificum putant, literas esse 
 ' impedimento hactenus crediderunt.' — Ep. cii. p. 59. 
 
 And again — ' Existimabat namque nobilitas atque absurde 
 ' arbitrabatur, militari disciplinaB literas adversari. Inde ab 
 ' illis tanquam ab hoste infensissimo, tergiversata est hactenus, 
 ' ex instituto majorum.' — Ep. ciii. 59. 
 
 Cataloguing Travellers. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 279. 
 
 Feller says of Leibnitz, ' Cum Anno 1671, iter in Galliam 
 ' ingrederetur, Monconysii Itineraruim, tanquam vise monstra- 
 ' torem in indagandis rebus literariis, pliysicis et mathematicis, 
 ' secum asportavit. Memini illustrem virum optasse aliquando, 
 
 2 G 2
 
 452 NOTES AND 
 
 ' ut de rebus hodiernis, visu dignis, similis liber conficeretur ; 
 ' vel ex Itinerariis colligerentur ad emendationem generis 
 ♦ Immani profutura, aut in rebus moralibus, politicis, &c. imi- 
 ' tabilia, quum et J3arbari siopius optimis institutis abundarent.' 
 — Supplementum Vitce Leibnitiance. 
 
 Travellers putti?ig out money on their oivn lives. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 283. 
 
 " Being newly returned home, I thought the going into more 
 remote parts would be of little use to me, yet I had an itching 
 desire to ""see Jerumlem, the fountain of Religion, and Con- 
 stantinople, of old the seat of Cliri'stian Emperors, and now 
 the seat of the Turkish Ottoman. Being of this mind when I 
 returned into England, it happened that my brother Henry 
 was then beginning that voyage, having to that purpose put out 
 some four hundred pounds, to be repaid twelve hundred pounds 
 upon his return from those two cities, and to lose it if he died 
 in the journey. I say he had thus put out the most part of his 
 small estate, which in England is no better with gentlemen's 
 younger sons, nor so good, as with bastards in other ])laces, 
 as well for the English law most unmeasurably fiivouring elder 
 brothers, as (let me boldly say it) for the ignorant pride of 
 fathers, who, to advance their eldest sons, drive the rest to 
 desperate courses, and make them unable to live, or to spend 
 any money in getting understanding and experience ; so as 
 they being in wants, and yet more miserable by their gentry 
 and jjh'ntirul education, must needs ruslj into all vices; for all 
 wise men confess, that nothing is more contrary to goodness 
 than j)ovcrty. My brother being partner witli other gentlemen 
 ia this fortune, thought this ))uttiiig out of money to be an 
 honest means of gaining, at least, the charges of his journey, 
 and the rather, because it had not then been heard in England, 
 that any man liad gone this longjourney by land, nor any like 
 it, (excepting only Master John Wrath, whom I name for 
 honour,) ami more especially he thought this gain most honest 
 and just, if this journey were compared with other base adven-
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 453 
 
 tures for gain, which long before this time had been, and were 
 then in use. And I confess, that this his resolution did not at 
 the first dislike me. For I remembered, that this manner of 
 gain had of old been in use among the inhabitants of the Low 
 Countries, and the Sea Coasts oiGerinany (and so it is yet in 
 use with them.) — 
 
 " Being led with these reasons, I liked his counsel, and 
 made mj-self his consort in that journey. And I had now given 
 out upon like condition money to some few friends, when, per- 
 ceiving the common opinion in this point to be much dif- 
 fering from mine, and thereupon better considering this matter, 
 and observing (as a stranger that had been long out of my 
 country) that these kinds of adventures were grown very fre- 
 quent, whereof some were indecent, some ridiculous, and that 
 they were in great part undertaken by bankrupts, and men of 
 base condition, I might easily judge that in short time they 
 would become disgraceful, whereupon I changed my mind. 
 
 " Only I gave out one hundred pound to receive three hun- 
 dred at my return among my brethren, and some few kinsmen 
 and dearest friends, of whom I would not shame to confess 
 that I received so much of gift. And lest by spending upon 
 the stock my patrimony should be wasted, I moreover gave 
 out to five friends, one hundred pound, with condition that 
 they should have it if I died, or after three years should repay 
 it with one hundred and fifty pound again if I returned; which 
 I hold a disadvantageous adventure to the giver of the money. 
 Neither did I exact this money of any man by suit of law 
 after my return, which they willingly and presently paid me, 
 only some few excepted, who retaining the very money I gave 
 them, dealt not therein so gentleman-like with me, as I did 
 with them. And by the great expenses of my journey, much 
 increased by the ill accidents of my brother's death, and my 
 own sickness, the three hundred and fifty pounds I was to 
 receive of gain after my return ; and the one hundre 1 pounds 
 which my brother and I carried in our purses, would not sa- 
 tisfy the five hundred pound we had spent, (though my brother 
 died within the compass of the first year) ; but I was forced to 
 pay the rest out of my own patrimony.
 
 454 NOTES AND 
 
 " Gentle reader, I will no longer trouble thee witli these 
 trifles : only in the behalf of them, who for a reasonable gain, 
 and upon long journies, and not upon ridiculous adventures, 
 have put out their money in this sort. Give leave to me 
 (however I desisted from that course) to add this: — All man- 
 ners of attire came first into the city and country from the 
 court, which being once received by the common people, and 
 by very stage-players themselves, the courtiers justly cast off, 
 and take new fashions, (though somewhat too curiously;) 
 and whosoever wears the old, men look upon him as upon a 
 picture in arras hangings. For it is proverbially said, that 
 we may cat according to our own appetites, but in our appa- 
 rel must follow the fashion of the multitude, with whom we 
 live. But in the mean time it is no reproach to any, who of 
 old did wear those garments, when they were in fashion. In 
 like sort, many dances and measures are used in Court, but 
 when they come to be vulgar and to be used upon very stages, 
 Courtiers and Gentlemen think them uncomely to be used ; 
 yet it is no reproach to any man who formerly had skill 
 therein. To conclude, (that I may not trouble you with like 
 examples, which are infinite,) I say that this manner of giv- 
 ing out money upon these adventures, was first used in Court, 
 and among the very Noblemen ; and when any of them 
 showed thereby extraordinary strength, the most censorious 
 ajjproved it, but when any performed a long journey, with 
 courage and discretion, no man was found who did not more 
 or less commend it, according to the condition of the journey 
 performed. Now in this age, if bankrupts, stage-players, and 
 men of base condition, have drawn this custom into contempt, 
 I grant that Courtiers and Gentlemen have reason to forbear 
 it, yet know not why they should be blamed, who have thus 
 put out their money in another age, when this custom was 
 approved. A man may justly say it is great injustice, that 
 our actions should be measured by opinion and not by rea- 
 son ; but when a man leaves any custom that hath been ap- 
 proved, lest he should oppose himself to the common people, 
 a monster, of many heads, the most envious hath nothing 
 whereat they may justly carp. And if any measure may be
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 455 
 
 imposed to deti-actors, surely they must spare them, who un- 
 dertake long voyages, full of great dangers, who do not put 
 out their money in Taverns, or at feasts to any man without 
 distinction, but dispose of their money with their friends upon 
 reasonable adventure of gain, (which in absence they cannot 
 otherwise dispose to profit;) Finally, who being not rich by 
 patrimony, take these journies only for experience, and to be 
 enabled to that expense, do condition this reasonable gain. 
 I say the detractors must spare these, and distinguish them 
 from others, who make cursory journies, without any desire 
 to better their understanding thereby, and more from those, 
 who in these courses rather make trial of their bodies strength, 
 than of their minds' ability. And most of all from those, 
 who expose themselves to the scorn of men, by base and ridi- 
 culous adventures, or that little differ from self-murderers, in 
 undertaking desperate actions for gain." — Fynes Morysons 
 Itinerary, Part i., p. 198. 
 
 Such speculations appear to have been called Adventures 
 vpon Return. They led to wild wagering undertakings, of 
 which no man engaged in more, or more hazardous ones, than 
 Taylor, the Water Poet. The last journey performed from a 
 like motive was probably that of Jerusalem Whalley. 
 
 >S'^. Appollonia. 
 Vol. II. p. 287. 
 
 " But as for your tethe I wene if they aked well, ye wold 
 yourself think it a thing worthy and not to simple, to ask help 
 of St. Appolyn and of God to. Ye mary, quod he, and of the 
 Devyll to, rather than fayle, as the Lombard did for the 
 gowte ; that when he had long called upon God and our Lady, 
 and all the holy company of Heaven, and yet felt himself never 
 the better, he began at last to call for help as fast upon the 
 Devyll. And when his wife and his friends sore abashed and 
 astonyed, rebuked him for calling on the Devyll which he 
 wist well was nought, and if that he holpe him it shold be for 
 no good, he cried out as loud as he could, ho§ni aiuto e bono,
 
 456 NOTES AND 
 
 all is good that helpetli. And so, I wcne, wolde I, quod he, 
 call on the Dovyll and all, rather than abyde in payne. Nay, 
 quod I, whatsoever ye say, I cannot think ye wolde byleve 
 in the Devyll as that Lumbard did : ye wolde rather fare like 
 another, that when the frere apposed him in confession, whe- 
 ther he meddled anything with witchcraft, or necromancy, or 
 had any byleve in the Devyll, he answered him. Credere en le 
 Dyable my syr no. To grannd fatyge a credere in Dio. 
 Byleve in the Devyll, quod he, naye, naye, Sir, I have work 
 enough to byleve in God, I. And so wolde I wene tliat ye 
 were far from all bylevying in the Devyl ; ye have so much 
 work to byleve in himself, that ye be lolhe methink to meddle 
 much with his Saints." — Sir T. More's Dialoge, p. 78. 
 
 St. Uncumher. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 287. 
 
 This appellation was given to St. Wilgefortis, famous for her 
 beard. The reason is whimsical, and might entitle her to be 
 the patroness of the Scotch Lawyers. 
 
 " St. Loy we make an horseleche ; and must let our horse 
 rather renne unshod and marre his hoofe, than to sho him on 
 his dav : which we must for that point more religiously kepe 
 liigh and holy than Ester day. And by cause one smyth is to 
 few at a forge, we set St. Ipolitus to helpe him. And on St. 
 Stevyns day we must let all our horses blood with a knyfe, 
 bycausc St. Stephen was kylled with stones. St. Appolyne 
 we make a tothe-drawer, and may speke to her of nothing 
 but of sore teeth. St. Sythe women set to seek their keys. 
 St. Roke we set to see to the great sykencs, bycause he had 
 a sore. And with him they joyn St. Sebastian, bycause he 
 was martyred with arrovves. Some serve for the eye onely. 
 And some for a sore breast. St. Gcrmayne onely for chil- 
 dren ; and yet will he not ones loke at them, but if the 
 mother bring with tliciii a white lofe, and a pot of good ale. 
 And yet is he wiser than St. Wylgeforte, for she, good soul, 
 is as tliey say served and content with otys. Whereof I can- 
 not perceive the reason, but if it be bycause she shold })ro-
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 457 
 
 vyde an horse for an evil liousbonde to ride to the Devyll 
 upon : for that is the thing that she is so sought for, as they 
 say. In so much that women liath therefore changed her 
 name, and in stede of St. Wylgeforte call her St. Uncumber, 
 bycause they reken that for a pecke of otys she will not fayle 
 to uncomber theym of theyr liousbondys.' — Sir T. Mores 
 Dialoge, p, 76. 
 
 Sir Thomas More's Poems. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 302. 
 
 Sir Thomas is mentioned by Taylor, the Water Poet, as one 
 of those poets whose verses were still in repute : the list which 
 Taylor gives is curious for this reason, that all the other names, 
 Dyer's excepted, retain their reputation. 
 
 In Paper many a Poet now survives, 
 
 Or else their hnes had perished with their lives. 
 
 Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More, 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney who the laurel wore ; 
 
 Spenser and Shakspeare did in art excel, 
 
 Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel, 
 
 Silvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington ; 
 
 Forgetfulness their works would over-run. 
 
 But that in Paper they immortally 
 
 Do live in spite of Death, and cannot die. 
 
 And many there are living at this day 
 AV'hich do in Paper their true worth display. 
 As Davis, Drayton, and the learned Donne, 
 Jolinson and Chapman, Marston, Middleton, 
 With Rowley, Fletcher, Wither, Massinger, 
 Heywood, and all the rest where'er they are, 
 Must say their lines but for the paper sheet 
 Had scarcely ground whereon to set their feet. 
 
 Praise of Hemp Seed.
 
 458 NOTES AND 
 
 Sir Thomas Mores latter thoiujhts of his Utopia. 
 Vol. II. p. 303. 
 
 " As touching Moria, in which Erasmus, under llie name 
 and ])erson of Moria (whyclie worde in greke sygnyfyeth foly), 
 doth merely towche and reprove suclie fautes and folyes as he 
 founde in any kynde of people, perusynge every state and 
 condycyon spyrytuall and temporall, Icvynge ahnost none 
 untouched, by whych boke Tyndale say th, that yf it were in 
 englyshe, every man sholde then well se that I was then ferre 
 otherwyse myndcd then I now wryte : yf thys be trew, then 
 tlie more cause have I to tlianke God of amendement. But 
 surely this is untrew. For God be thanked, I never hadde 
 that mynde in my lyfe to have holy Sayntes ymages, or theyr 
 holy relykes out of reverence. Nor yf thare were any suche 
 thynge in Moria, that thynge coude not yet make any man se 
 that I were myself of that mynde, the boke beynge made by 
 a nother man though he were my dcrlynge never so dere. 
 How be it that ))oke of Moria doetli in dede but jeste uppon 
 the abuses of suclie tliynges, after the manner of the dysours 
 jjarte in a playe, and yet not so farre neyther by a greate 
 deale, as the messenger doth in my dyalog, whyche I have 
 yet sufiercd to stande styll in my dyaloge, and that rather yet 
 by the counsayle of otlier men then of my selfe, 
 
 " For, all be yt that yt be lawful! to any man to mysselyke 
 the mysseuse of every good thynge, and that in my dyaloge 
 there not onely tliose evyll thynges rehersed, but answered 
 aUo and soyleii, and the goodnes of the thyng self well used 
 is playnely confyrmed and proved : yet hath Tyndale by er- 
 ronyouse bokes, in settynge forth Luthers pestylent heresyes, 
 8o envenemed the hartes of lewdly disposed persones, that men 
 can not almost now speke of such thynges in so mycli as a 
 play, but that such cvyll hercrs wax a grcte dele the worse. 
 
 " And therel'orc in these daycs in which Tyndale hath 
 (God amende hym I) with tlienfeccion of his contagyouse he- 
 rcsyics, so sore poyscned malycyouse and newfangle folks, 
 that the kynges hyghncs, and not wythout the counsayle and
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 459 
 
 advyce not of his nobles only, wyth his other counsaylours 
 attendynge uppou his gracys person, but also of the ryght 
 vertuouse and specyall well lerned men of eyther unyversyte 
 and other partyes of the realme specyally called thereto, hatha 
 after dylygent and long consyderacyon hadde therein, ben 
 fayne for the wliyle to prohybyte the scrypture of God to 
 be suffered in englyshe tonge amonge the peoples handes, leste 
 evyll folke by false drawyng of every good thynge they rede in 
 to the colour and mayntenauns of theyr owne fonde fantasyes, 
 and turnynge all hony in to poisyn, myght both dedly do hurte 
 unto theym selfe, and sprede also that infeccyone farther a 
 brode : I saye therfore, in these dayes in whyche men by theyr 
 owne defaute mysseconstre and take harme of the very scrip- 
 ture of God, untyll menne better amende, yf any man wolde 
 now translate Moria in to Englyshe, or some workes eyther 
 that I have my selfe wryten ere this, all be yt there be none 
 harme therein, folke yet beyng (as they be) geven to take 
 harme of tliat that is good, I wolde not onely my derlynges 
 bokes, but myne owne also, helpe to burne them both wyth 
 myne own handes, rather then folke sholde (though thorow 
 theyr own faute) take any harme of them, seynge that I se 
 them lykely in these days so to do." — Confutacyon ofTyn- 
 dal's Answer, 128. 
 
 Moral use of Poetry . 
 Vol. II. p. 306. 
 
 With how much greater force does this apply to religion ! 
 
 ' Nous Savons ovi nous sommes parvenus, ce que nous 
 ' sommes devenus, malgre les principes de religion et de 
 ' morale que i'on a cherche vainement h. nous inculquer des 
 ' I'enfance, et a nous faire pratiquer parfaitement : mais au 
 ' moins nous avons connu la verite et nos devoirs ; qui sait 
 ' combien nous serions tombes encore plus has si cela n'avait 
 ' pas eu lieu ? qui pent dire jusqu'ou arriverait notre perver- 
 ' site, si Ton nous prechait une fuusse doctrine toute contraire 
 ' k la religion et k la morale ?' — Louis Buonaparte. Documeiis 
 Historiques sur la HoUande, ii. 194.
 
 400 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 If I looked to secondary causes alone, my fears would 
 preponderate. 
 
 Vol. II. p. 332. 
 
 " Our whole system," says Horace Walpole, writing in 
 17S3, " is become a disjointed cliaos, and time must digest it 
 — or blow it up shortly. I see no way into it ; nor expect any 
 thing favourable but from chance, that often stops confusion 
 on a sudden. To restore us by any system, it would require 
 a single head furnished with wisdom, temper, address, forti- 
 tude, full and undivided power, and sincere patriotism di- 
 vested of all personal views. Where is that prodigy to be 
 found ? — and how should it have the power if it had all the 
 rest? and if it had the power, how could it be divested of 
 that power again ? and if it were not, how long would it retain 
 its virtues ? Power and wisdom would soon unite, like Antony 
 and Augustus, to annihilate their colleague virtue, for being a 
 poor creature like Lepidus." — Letters, vol. iv. 338. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London :— W, Clowes, Stamford-street. 
 
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