A Morning's Walk From London To Kew Part 4

In a word, #WHATEVER IS, IS FIT; AND WHATEVER IS NOT FIT, IS NOT, OR SOON CEASES TO BE!#--Such seems to be the governing principle of Nature--the key of all her mysteries--the primary law of creation! All things are the proximate effects of a balance of immutable powers--those powers are results of a #PRIMORDIAL CAUSE#,--while that #CAUSE# is inscrutable and incomprehensible to creatures possessing but a relative being, who live only in #TIME# and #s.p.a.cE#, and who feel and act merely by the #IMPULSE# of limited senses and powers.

A lane, in the north-west corner of the Common, brought me to Barnes'

Elms, where now resides a Mr. h.o.a.re, a banker of London. The family were not at home; but, on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they a.s.sured me, with great simplicity, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Cat Club, as accustomed to a.s.semble here; but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule; and I was told that no such Club was held there; but, perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the Club that a.s.sembles at the public-house on the Common. Knowing, however, that I was at the right place, I could not avoid expressing my vexation, that the periodical a.s.semblage of the first men of their age, should be so entirely forgotten by those who now reside on the spot--when one of them exclaimed, "I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room."--"Aye," rejoined his comrade, "I remember somebody coming once before to see something of this sort, and my master sent him there." I requested then to be shewn to this room; when I was conducted across a detached garden, and brought to a handsome structure in the architectural style of the early part of the last century--evidently the establishment of the Kit-Cat Club!

A walk covered with docks, thistles, nettles, and high gra.s.s, led from the remains of a gate-way in the garden-wall, to the door which opened into the building. Ah! thought I, along this desolate avenue the finest geniuses in England gaily proceeded to meet their friends;--yet within a century, how changed--how deserted--how revolting! A cold chill seized me, as the man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and as I beheld the once-elegant hall, filled with cobwebs, a fallen ceiling, and acc.u.mulating rubbish. On the right, the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house! The door on the left led to a s.p.a.cious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, filled with dense cobwebs, which hung from the lofty ceiling, and seemed to be deserted even by the spiders!

The entire building, for want of ventilation, having become food for the fungus, called dry-rot, the timber had lost its cohesive powers. I ascended the staircase, therefore, with a feeling of danger, to which the man would not expose himself;--but I was well requited for my pains. Here I found the Kit-Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed in the days of its glory. It is eighteen feet high, and forty feet long, by twenty wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of its age; but the whole was falling to pieces, from the effects of the dry-rot.

My attention was chiefly attracted by the faded cloth-hanging of the room, whose red colour once set off the famous portraits of the Club, that hung around it. Their marks and sizes were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guidance of the hanger! Thus was I, as it were, by these still legible names, brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with many _hereditary_ n.o.bles, remembered, only because they were patrons of those _natural_ n.o.bles!--I read their names aloud!--I invoked their departed spirits!--I was appalled by the echo of my own voice!--The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs in the windows, and a swallow's nest in the corner of the ceiling, proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past age,--that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the anxious career of man! The blood of the reader of sensibility will thrill as mine thrilled! It was feeling without volition, and therefore incapable of a.n.a.lysis!

I could not help lingering in a place so consecrated by the religion of Nature; and, sitting down for a few minutes on some broken boards, I involuntarily shed a tear of sympathy for the departed great--for times gone by,--here brought before my eyes in so tangible a shape! I yielded to the unsophisticated sentiments which I could not avoid reading in this #VOLUME# of ruins; and felt, by irresistible a.s.sociation, that every object of our affections--that our affections themselves--and that all things that delight us, must soon pa.s.s away like this place and its former inhabitants! #Beginning yesterday--flourishing to-day--ceasing to-morrow!#--such is the sum of the history of all organized being!

Certain combinations excite, and the creative powers proceed with success, till balanced by the inertia of the materials--a contest of maturity arises, measured in length by the activity of the antagonist powers;--but the _unceasing_ inertia finally prevails over the original excitement and its accessary stimuli, and ultimately produces disorganization and dissolution! Such is the abstract view of the physical laws which, in the peculiar career of intellectual man, successively give rise to #HOPE# in youth--#PRIDE# in manhood--#REFLECTION# in decay--and #HUMILITY# in old age. He knows his fate to be inevitable--but every day's care is an epitome of his course, and every night's sleep affords an antic.i.p.ation of its end!--He is thus taught to die--and, if in spite of his vices or follies he should live till his world has pa.s.sed away before him, he will then contentedly await the termination of that vital action which, creating no pa.s.sion, affords no enjoyment.

Such, said I, is the scheme of #Benevolence#, which, by depriving the prospect of death of its terrors, makes room, without suffering, for a succession of new generations, to whose perceptions the world is ever young. The only wise use therefore which men can make of scenes like that before me, is to deduce from them a lesson of moderation and humility;--for, such as are these dumb, though visible cares of that generation--such will our own soon be!

On rejoining Mr. h.o.a.re's man in the hall below, and expressing my grief that so interesting a building should be suffered to go to decay for want of attention, he told me that his master intended to pull it down and unite it to an adjoining barn, so as to form of the two a riding-house; and I learn that this design has since been executed!

The Kit-Cat pictures were painted early in the eighteenth century, and, about the year 1710, were brought to this spot; but the room I have been describing was not built till ten or fifteen years afterwards. They were forty-two in number, and were presented by the members to the elder Tonson, who died in 1736. He left them to his great nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. They were then removed from this building to the house of his brother, at Water-Oakley, near Windsor; and, on his death, to the house of Mr.

Baker, of Hertingfordbury, where they now remain, and where I lately saw them splendidly lodged and in fine preservation. It may be proper to observe, that the house of Mr. h.o.a.re was not the house of Mr.

Tonson, and that Mr. Tonson's house stood nearer to the Kit-Cat Club-rooms, having a few years since been taken down. The situation is certainly not a happy one, being on a level with the Thames, and the adjacent grounds being deeply flooded at high tides. It is, however, completely sequestered from vulgar approach, and on that account was, perhaps, preferred as the retreat of a man of business.

At #Barnes' Elms# lived the virtuous minister of Elizabeth, Sir #Francis Walsingham#, and here he once entertained that chivalrous queen. #Cowley#, the poet, afterwards resided here; and, in a later age #Heydegger#, the buffoon, who gave an eccentric entertainment to the second Guelph, and contrived to gratify his listless mind by an ingenious surprize, in at first making him believe that he was not prepared to receive him, and then contriving a sudden burst of lights, music, and gaiety.

In returning through the lane which led from the Kit-Cat Club-room to Barnes Common, the keenest emotions of the human mind were excited by an unforeseen cause. I was admiring the luxuriance and grandeur of the vegetation, in trees which from the very ground expanded in immense double trunks, and in the profusion of weeds and shrubs which covered every part of the untrodden surface--when, on a sudden, I caught the distant sound of a ring of #VILLAGE BELLS#. Nothing could be more in accordance with the predispositions of my mind. All the melancholy which is created by the recurrence of the same succession of tones, instantly controlled and oppressed my feelings. I became the mere patient of these sounds; and I sank, as it were, under the force of gloomy impressions, which so completely lulled and seduced me, that I suffered without being able to exert an effort to escape from their magic spell. Seldom had the power of sound acquired a similar ascendency over me. I seemed to be carried back by it to days and events long pa.s.sed away. My soul, so to speak, was absorbed; and I leaned upon a gate, partly to indulge the reverie, partly as an effect of la.s.situde, and partly to listen more attentively to the sounds which caused so peculiar a train of feeling.

There were six bells; and they rang what might be designed for a merry peal, to celebrate some village festival; or, perhaps, thought I, they may be profaning a sanctuary of the religion of peace, and outraging a land of freedom, to announce some b.l.o.o.d.y victory, gained by legions of trained slaves, over patriots who have been a.s.serting the liberties and defending the independence of their country. Whichever might be the purpose, (for, alas! the latter, among my degenerated countrymen, is as likely as the former,) the recurring tones produced corresponding vibrations on my nerves, and I felt myself played upon like a concordant musical instrument. Presently, however, it occurred to me, that I was not an entire stranger to the tones of those bells, and that part of their fascination arose from an a.s.sociation between them and some of the earliest and dearest objects in my remembrance.

"Surely," I exclaimed, "they are #Chiswick bells#!--the very bells under the sound of which I received part of my early education, and, as a school-boy, pa.s.sed the happiest days of my life!--Well may their tones vibrate to my inmost soul--and kindle uncommon sympathies!" I now recollected that the winding of the river must have brought me nearer to that simple and primitive village than the profusion of wood had permitted me to perceive, and my nerves had been unconsciously acted upon by tones which served as keys to all the a.s.sociations connected with these bells, their church, and the village of Chiswick!

I listened again, and now discriminated the identical sounds which I had not heard during a period of more than thirty years. I distinguished the very words, in the successive tones, which the school-boys and puerile imaginations at Chiswick used to combine with them. In fancy, I became again a school-boy--"Yes," said I, "the six bells repeat the village-legend, and tell me that "_my dun cow has just calv'd_," exactly as they did above thirty years since!"--Did the reader ever encounter a similar key-note, leading to a mult.i.tude of early and vivid impressions; for in like manner these sympathetic tones brought before my imagination numberless incidents and personages, no longer important, or no longer in existence. My scattered and once-loved school-mates, their characters, and their various fortunes, pa.s.sed in rapid review before me;--my school-master, his wife, and all the gentry, and heads of families, whose orderly attendance at Divine service on Sundays, while those well-remembered bells were "chiming for church," (but now departed and mouldering in the adjoining graves!) were rapidly presented to my recollection. With what pomp and form they used to enter and depart from their house of G.o.d!--I saw with the mind's eye the widow Hogarth and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, dressed in their silken sacks, their raised headdresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high crook'd canes, preceded by their aged servant, Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, with his literary wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap! And oft-times the vivacious and angelic d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary distress, created by the luxury of charity! Nor could I forget the humble distinction of the aged s.e.xton Mortefee, whose skill in psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched groupe of singers, whom Hogarth so happily pourtrayed; whose performance with the tuning-fork excited so much wonder in little boys; and whose gesticulations and contortions of head, hand, and body, in beating time, were not outdone, even by Joah Bates in the commemorations of Handel! Yes, simple and happy villagers! I remember scores of you;--how fortunately ye had escaped the contagion of the metropolitan vices, though distant but five miles; and how many of you have I conversed with, who, at an adult age, had never beheld the degrading a.s.semblage of its knaveries and miseries!

I revelled in the melancholy pleasure of these recollections, yielding my whole soul to that witchery of sensibility, which magnifies the perception of being, till one of the bells was overset; when, the peal stopping, I had leisure to reflect on the rapid advance of the day, and on the consequent necessity of quickening my speed.

At the end of this lane I crossed a road, which I found led to Chiswick Ferry. The opening gave increased effect to the renewed peal, and I regretted that I could not then indulge in a nearer approach to that beloved spot. I pa.s.sed a farm-house and some neat villas, and presently came to the unostentatious, but interestingly-ancient structure of Barnes Church, situated on the Common, at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the village. I essayed to enter the church-yard to read some of the chronicles of mortality, particularly as it invited attention by the unusual object of a display of elegant _Roses_, which I afterwards learnt had been cultivated on the same spot about 150 years, to indulge the conceit of a person of the name of _Rose_, who was buried there, and left an acre of ground to the parish to defray the expence; but I found the gate locked, and was told it was never opened, except during service. I confess I was not pleased with this regulation, because it appeared to sever the affections of the living from their proper sympathy with the dead. I have felt in the same manner in regard to the inclosed cemeteries of the metropolis: they separate the dead too abruptly from surviving friends and relatives. Grief seeks to indulge itself un.o.bserved; it desires to be unrestrained by forms and hours, and to vent itself in perfect solitude. The afflicted wife longs to weep over the grave of her husband; the husband to visit the grave of a beloved wife; and the tender mother seeks the spot endeared by the remains of her child: but they cannot submit to the formality of asking permission, or allow their griefs to be intruded upon by strange attendants. Such tributes to our unsophisticated feelings are, however, denied by the locks, bolts, and walls, of the metropolitan cemeteries. The practised grave-digger wonders at the indulgence of unavailing woe--the unconscious tenants of his domain possess no peculiar claims on his sympathy--he cannot conceive how any can be felt by others--and, if he grant permission to enter, it must be for some cause more urgent, and more apparent, than that of bewailing over a grave! Did it never occur, however, to the clergymen who superintend these depositories of mortality, that more respect is due to the feelings of survivors? Is it necessary for any evident purpose, that the gates should be locked at any time, or for more than a few hours in the night? And, if even this privation be suffered merely from the fear of resurrection-men, is it not due to the best feelings of our nature that the severest punishment should attach to the crime of stealing dead bodies? What can now be learnt of anatomy which cannot be found in books and models, or be taught in the dissection of murderers? I would therefore rather bury a detected resurrection-man alive with the body he might be stealing, than shut out the living from all communion with the dead, and from all the sympathies and lessons addressed to the heart and understanding by their unrestricted intercourse.

#Barnes# consists of a few straggling houses opposite the Common, of a mean street leading to the water-side, and of a row of elegant houses facing the Thames, on a broad terrace nearly half a mile long. On the opposite side of the river is a tract of new-made swampy ground, shaped circularly by the winding of the river. The chord of this circle extends from Chiswick to Strand-on-the-Green; and upon it is seen the exquisitely beautiful villa of the Duke of Devonshire, where Charles James Fox lately terminated his patriotic career; and on the left are the house and extensive grounds long occupied by the amiable Valentine Morris, esq. who, on his death-bed in Italy, in 1786, bequeathed these premises and a competent annuity as a provision for about thirty aged horses and dogs,--and here some of them survived till within these seven years, dying, from the gradual decay of their vital powers, at the ages of forty and fifty.

The beauty and seclusion of this terrace have long invited the residence of persons of wealth and distinction. Many of those Frenchmen who, from interested connexions, or the prejudices of education, preferred exile and comparative poverty in foreign lands, to the reign of liberty and reason at home, came to reside on this spot. Here was acted the terrible tragedy of the #Count# and #Countess D'Antraigues#. These famous intriguants, after traversing Europe to enlist the vain prejudices of kings, and the sycophant spirit of courtiers, against the unalterable principles of the rights of man, settled themselves in a small house near the upper end of this terrace. Here their establishment consisted only of a single Italian footman, and two maid-servants. One day in every week they went to London, in a hired coach, to confer with their partizans; and it was on the morning of one of these excursions that these unhappy persons were suddenly butchered by their Italian footman. The coach stood at the door, and the Count and Countess had descended the stairs, when the servant, rushing from the parlour, fired a pistol at the Count; the ball of which struck, but did not injure him. It, however, so much surprised him as to throw him off his guard, when the wretch struck him with a stiletto between the shoulders. The Count at first reeled on the step of the door, but instantly rushed up stairs, as is supposed, to get arms from his bed-chamber, which he reached, but only to fall dead on the floor. In the mean time, the Countess, who was two or three paces in advance, and had reached the carriage-door, not aware of the cause of the report of the pistol, and of the Count's precipitate retreat, asked the man, peevishly, why he did not open the door? He advanced as if to do it; but instantly stabbed her in the breast to the hilt of his weapon: she shrieked, reeled a few yards, and fell dead beside the post which adjoins the house to the West, on the pavement near which her blood was lately visible. The villain himself fled up-stairs to the room where his master lay weltering in his blood, and then, with a razor, cut his own throat. I saw the coachman, who told me that scarcely five minutes elapsed between the time when he heard them approach the carriage and beheld them corpses!

The several acts were begun and over in an instant. At first he could not conceive what was pa.s.sing; and, though he leaped from the box to the aid of the dying lady, he had then no suspicion of the fate of the Count. I took pains to ascertain the a.s.sa.s.sin's motive for committing such horrid deeds; but none can be traced beyond a feeling of revenge, excited by a supposed intention of his master to discard him, and send him out of the kingdom; a design which, it is said, he discovered by listening on the stairs to the conversation of the Count and Countess, while they were enjoying the water-scene by moon-light, on the preceding evening, from their projecting windows. It was impossible to view the spot where such a tragedy had been acted, without horror, and without deep sympathy for the victims; yet it gratified me to find the house already inhabited by a respectable family, because it thus appeared that there are now dispersed through society many whose minds are raised above the artifices of superst.i.tion,--which, in no distant age, would have filled these premises with ghosts and hobgoblins, till they had become a bye-word and a heap of ruins!

Nearly adjoining and behind the residence of Count d'Antraigues, stand the premises and grounds long occupied by another distinguished emigrant, the Marquis de Chabanes, a relation of the notorious and versatile Talleyrand. This marquis here pursued two speculations, by which, at the time, he attracted attention and applause. In the first he undertook to give useful body and consistency to the dust of coals, of which thousands of tons, before their application to gas-lights, were annually wasted in the shipping and coal-wharfs; and for this purpose he erected a manufactory; but, after much loss of labour and property, found it necessary to abandon the project. In the second speculation, he proposed to introduce various French improvements into English horticulture, and undertook to supply the fruiterers of the metropolis with tender and unseasonable fruits and vegetables, in greater perfection, and at a lower rate, than they had heretofore been supplied by the English gardeners. For this purpose he built large and high walls, and very extensive hot-houses and conservatories; but, being unable to contend against the fickleness of our climate, he found it necessary to abandon this scheme also; when the gla.s.ses, the frames, &c. were sold by auction; and no vestiges now remain of his labours, but his vines and the ruins of his flues and foundation-walls.

During my inquiries of the working gardener who has succeeded him on the ground, I learnt some particulars in regard to the economy by which the metropolis receives its vast supplies of fruits and fresh vegetables. Mr. #Middleton#, in his philosophical Survey of Middles.e.x, estimates the quant.i.ty of garden-ground, within ten miles of the metropolis, at 15,000 acres, giving employment in the fruit-season to 60,000 labourers. The mode of conveying this vast produce to market creates habits among this numerous cla.s.s of people which are little suspected by the rest of the community. A gardener's life appears to be one of the most primitive and natural; but, pa.s.sed near London, it is as artificial and unnatural as any known to our forced state of society. Covent-garden market is held three days in the week, and other markets on the same or other days; and, as vegetables ought to be eaten as soon as possible after they are gathered, it is the business of the gardener to gather one day and sell the next; hence the intervening night is the period of conveyance from the places of growth to those of consumption. All the roads round London, therefore, are covered with market-carts, and waggons during the night, so that they may reach the markets by three, four, or five o'clock, when the dealers attend; and these markets are over by six or seven. The shops of retailers are then supplied by the aid of ill-paid Irish women, who carry loads of a hundredweight to all parts of London on their heads, to meet the demands of good house-wives, who, at ten or eleven, buy their garden-stuff for the day. This rapid routine creates a prodigious quant.i.ty of labour for men, women, and horses. Every gardener has his market-cart or carts, which he loads at sun-set; and, they depart at ten, eleven, twelve, or one o'clock, according to the distance from London. Each cart is accompanied by a driver, and also by a person to sell, generally the gardener's wife; who, having sold the load, returns with the team by nine or ten o'clock in the morning; and has thus finished the business of the day, before half the inhabitants of London have risen from their beds. Such is the economy of every gardener's family within ten miles of London,--of some every night, and of others every other night, during at least six months in the year. The high vegetable season in summer, as well as peculiar crops at other times, call for exertions of labour, or rather of slavery, scarcely paralleled by any other cla.s.s of people. Thus, in the strawberry season, hundreds of women are employed to carry that delicate fruit to market on their heads; and their industry in performing this task is as wonderful, as their remuneration is unworthy of the opulent cla.s.ses who derive enjoyment from their labour. They consist, for the most part, of Shropshire and Welsh girls, who walk to London at this season in droves, to perform this drudgery, just as the Irish peasantry come to a.s.sist in the hay and corn harvests. I learnt that these women carry upon their heads baskets of strawberries, or raspberries, weighing from forty to fifty pounds, and make two turns in the day, from Isleworth to market, a distance of thirteen miles each way; three turns from Brentford, a distance of nine miles; and four turns from Hammersmith; a distance of six miles. For the most part, they find some conveyance back; but even then these industrious creatures carry loads from twenty-four to thirty miles a-day, besides walking back unladen some part of each turn! Their remuneration for this unparalleled slavery is from 8_s._ to 9_s._ per day; each turn from the distance of Isleworth being 4_s._ or 4_s._ 6_d._; and from that of Hammersmith 2_s._ or 2_s._ 3_d._ Their diet is coa.r.s.e and simple, their drink, tea and small-beer; costing not above 1_s._ or 1_s._ 6_d._ and their back-conveyance about 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._; so that their net gains are about 5_s._ per day, which, in the strawberry season, of forty days, amounts to 10_l._ After this period the same women find employment in gathering and marketing vegetables, at lower wages, for other sixty days, netting about 5_l._ more. With this poor pittance they return to their native county, and it adds either to their humble comforts, or creates a small dowry towards a rustic establishment for life. Can a more interesting picture be drawn of virtuous exertion? Why have our poets failed to colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their favourite Shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! For beauty, symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs of Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circa.s.sia!

Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the workhouse! In keen suffering, they endure all that the imagination of a poet could desire; they live hard, they sleep on straw in hovels and barns, and they often burst an artery, or drop down dead from the effect of heat and over-exertion! Yet, such is the state of one portion of our female population, at a time when we are calling ourselves the most polished nation on earth, and pretending to be so wealthy that we give away millions a-year to foreigners unsolicited, and for no intelligible purpose! And such too is their dire necessity, that it would be most cruel to suggest or recommend any invention that might serve as a subst.i.tute for their slavery, and thereby deprive them of its wretched annual produce!

The transit from Barnes to Mortlake is but a few paces; a small elbow in the road forming their point of separation. Both of them contain some handsome villas, and they are pleasantly situated on the banks of the Thames; yet they are less beautiful than they might be rendered, by very slender attentions. There is no public taste, no love of natal soil, no pride of emulation apparent, though the scite is one of the finest in England. A few mansions of the opulent adorn both villages, and the country fascinates in spite of the inhabitants; but the third and fourth rate houses have a slovenly, and often a kind of pig-sty character, disgusting to those who, in the beautiful towns and villages of Ess.e.x, have seen what may be done, to improve the habitations even of humble life. Lovely Witham, and Kelvedon, and Coggeshall! what examples you set to all other towns in your neatly painted and whitened houses--unostentatious, though cheerful--and inviting, though chaste and modest! What a contrast do you present to the towns and villages in Middles.e.x and Surrey, and even in Kent! If poverty forbids a stuccoed or plastered wall, the cleanly and oft-repeated whitewash proves the generous public spirit of the occupant, while the outside seldom has occasion to blush for the inside. A spirit of harmony runs through the whole, and a pure habitation is indicative of pure inhabitants; thus, cleanliness in the house leads to neatness of apparel--both require order, and out of order grow moral habits, domestic happiness, and the social virtues.

Nor is this theory fanciful; Witham, Kelvedon, and Coggeshall, form a district which is at once the most beautiful, the least vicious, and the happiest, in the kingdom. One virtue is doubtless consequent on another, and one good habit generates another; the result is the harmonious triumph of virtue! If it be doubted whether the white-washed exterior is more than "an outward and visible sign" of the purity within, I reply--that virtue is so much the effect of habit, that whatever improves the habits improves the character; and that, if a house were frequently white-washed within and without, it could scarcely fail to banish personal filth from the inmates; while habits of cleanliness, which call for habits of industry, would produce the rest. I have, indeed, often thought that it would be an efficacious means of bettering the morals, as well as the health, of the London poor, if St. Giles's, Hockly-in-the-hole, Fleet-lane, Saffron-hill, and other dens of vice and misery, were by law lime-washed inside and outside twice in every year. But, in whatever degree this doctrine may be just, let me hope these observations will meet the eye of some active philanthropists, who, being thus taught to consider cleanliness as an auxiliary of morals and happiness, will be induced so to paint and whiten our dusky-coloured villages and dirty towns, as to render them worthy of virtuous residents, in the hope that, by reciprocation, they may render themselves worthy of their purified habitations.

I do not charge on Barnes and Mortlake exclusively the characteristics of filth--they are not inferior to other villages within ten miles; but the whole require improvement, and I recommend Witham, Kelvedon, and other places in that district of Ess.e.x, to their imitation.

Mortlake church-yard and its ancient church stand pleasantly on the north side of a large field, across which is a picturesque foot-path to East Sheen. I inquired eagerly for the tomb of Partridge, the almanack-maker and astrologer, and found it in the south-east corner, in a tottering condition. Relics so famous would, it might have been supposed, have extorted from the Parish Vestry a single hod of mortar, and an hour's labour of a mason, to sustain it: yet thus it is, not only at Mortlake, but every where. Nothing is conceded to public feeling, and the most venerable monuments are suffered to fall to decay for want of the most trifling repairs. The following inscription is still legible on the slab of the tomb:--

#Johannes Partridge#, Astrologus et Medicinae Doctor, natus est apud East-Sheen, in comitatu Surrey, 8 die Januarii, anno 1644, et mortuus est Londini 24 die Junii, anno 1715.

Medicinam fecit duobus Regibus unique Reginae; Carolo scilicet Secundo, Willielmo Tertio, Reginaeque Mariae. Creatus Medicinae Doctor Lugduni Batavorum.

How many are the a.s.sociations which grow out of this name of #Partridge#! He was one of the last of the learned votaries of Astrology, the mother of the sciences, though herself the daughter of superst.i.tion. His works on genitures, and on the errors of his favourite science, are specimens of acute reasoning, not exceeded by the ablest disquisitions on more worthy subjects. Yet he was held up by Swift as an impostor, though Swift himself lived by a show of faith in other mysteries, for which his reverence is very doubtful. Not so Partridge; he evidently believed sincerely that the stars were indices of fate, and he wrote and acted in that belief, however much he may have been deceived by appearances. He found, as all students in astrology find, that every horoscope enabled him to foretel with precision a certain number of events; and, if his prognostics failed in some cases, he ascribed the failure to no defect of his celestial intelligencers, but to the errors or short-sightedness of his art.

Good, and even wise men have, in all ages, been deceived by the same appearances. They found that the planets foretold some events; they thence inferred that the planets ruled those and all events; and, if the science often disappointed them, they found an apology for it in their own mistaken judgments, or in the errors introduced into it by different authors. Astrologers were therefore not impostors, as they are often described by the over-righteous, the hasty, or the ignorant.

They found a science reared on the observations and experience of the remotest antiquity, and their prognostications were deduced from its established laws. Its practices were directed by the unerring motions of the earth, moon, and planets; and it possessed characteristics of grandeur and sublimity, arising from the magnitude and solemnity of its sources, and from the eternal laws which regulated them.

The errors on which this science was reared, were not, however, peculiar to astrologers. They were engendered by ignorance, and nurtured by superst.i.tion and priestcraft. Every event happens in its own way, and cannot happen in any other way than that in which it has actually happened; or, in other words, an event cannot happen and not happen, or a thing cannot be and not be. This necessary determination of every event in a single manner, the consequence of commensurate proximate causes, which it is often difficult to a.n.a.lyse, served as a fruitful source of superst.i.tious feeling, and as a handle for the priests among the early nations of antiquity. In whatever way an event happened, that was said to be its Fate, notwithstanding a slight exercise of reason would have shewn that what has happened in one way could not, at the same time, happen in another way. But, as it did happen in one way rather than another, the way in which it did happen was said to be predetermined; the kind of cause was not examined which determined it to happen as it did happen; the effect was even said to rule the causes; and all the causes, remote and proximate, were said to be operative merely for the sake of producing the ultimate effect!

As every event must happen in the way an which it has happened, a description of it, is but an expression of the _certainty_, that it has happened in such or such a particular manner. If this result be fortunate, then all the circ.u.mstances which led to it, however remote, are deemed to have been _lucky_; though, if it prove unfortunate, the same train of causes are then called _unlucky_. There was, however, neither luck nor ill-luck in these trains, because the remote or necessary physical causes did not determine the proximate and fluctuating mental ones. There existed no _necessary_ connexion between these trains, besides the necessity or certainty that some result must be consequent on every train of events growing out of human life and action. These trains must, in all cases, produce some result, that is to say, a result of some kind, and not necessarily any particular result.

In considering the curious enigma in regard to #FATALITY#, men err in conceiving that all the remote causes which lead to an event, operate and combine for the sake of some particular result, instead of considering every personal or social event as the necessary single effect of the proximate causes; and they also confound the species of causes which produce events. There are two distinct sets of causes, the one physical and the other mental. The _physical_ are determined by fixed, and often by known laws, and hence we are enabled to _foretel_ the places of the planets and the moment when eclipses of the Sun and Moon will happen for a thousand years to come. The _mental_ are governed by the varying experience, caprice, and self-love, generated within animal minds; and, being therefore measured by no fixed laws, produce results which cannot be antic.i.p.ated, except in their proximate operation. These mental causes, so to speak, cross each other in every direction, and at one time may accelerate, though at another time they may r.e.t.a.r.d, or give novel directions to physical causes; and, as they are generated in every successive moment by the errors and pa.s.sions of fallible beings, and often have an extensive influence on the affairs of mankind, so they const.i.tute an infinite variety of original causes, which, as no law creates them, no law leads to their effects; of course, therefore, their effects are not necessary, and no knowledge can exist, enabling men to antic.i.p.ate that which is generated by no fixed laws, and which therefore is not necessary.

I lately met a friend, who justly pa.s.ses for a philosopher. He mentioned the distress of a family which he had just been relieving; "and, would you believe it," said he--"if I had not pa.s.sed along a street where I seldom go, and met a child of the family, I should have known nothing of their situation? Was it not evidently pre-ordained, therefore, that I should walk along that street, at that time, for the purpose of relieving that family?" "So, then," said I, "you make the consequence determine the cause, rather than take the trouble to examine whether the causes were not equal to the effect, without being themselves necessary or irresistible." "But then," he replied, "there was such an aptness, such a coincidence, such a final purpose!"--"Ah!"

I rejoined, "you cheat yourself by not extending your vocabulary--why not say there was sufficient affluence, guided by a benevolent heart--and such distress, that they were called into prompt exertion?

Is it to be regarded as a miracle, that a benevolent heart proved the sufficient cause of a good action, and that distress was an excitement equivalent to the effect which you describe? The street was a medium or stage of action, as capable of leading to evil as to good. You could not be in two places at the same time; nor could the result be and not be. Had you been in another place, some other family might have been relieved from the collision of the same causes; and each event would, in like manner, have appeared to have determined the causes, instead of being a single consequence of the causes. Nor were these causes more necessary than the result. Your feelings were spontaneous, but you may in future change the result by hardening your heart, like other rich men." "I will do neither," said he, quickly.--"No," said I, "I know you won't--you will not violate your habitual inclinations. In future, however, do them justice; and, when you perform a kind action, do not make the consequence the cause."[5]

[5] As doctrines about fate and necessity involve a numerous cla.s.s of mischievous superst.i.tions, and are the bases of the success of endless impostures, it seems worth while to turn aside for a moment from the high road of my narrative to examine them. Some philosophers a.s.sert, that we are the inert patients of necessary causes: others, that we do what we list, without any cause, on the spontaneous impulse of our will: while nine-tenths of the human race maintain that we are governed by an unalterable fate, which is predestined, and that all the events of life take place for the sake of accomplishing some end! What is our real condition? We exist on a globe which, by a balance of mechanical powers, moves round a centre of gravity between it and the centre of the sun; and also round its own centre of gravity, communicating its aggregate motions to all the particles that compose it, and thereby exciting them into various modes of action, producing and sustaining all the phenomena which we witness. The entire ma.s.s then is the patient of these arrangements, and every thing on the earth is physically subservient to them. But, in animal organizations, we find a set of powers different from those which characterize inert minerals or plants. An animal has his own powers of loco-motion--he moves on his own centre of gravity--and, though the earth is his stage and the place of his origin, yet he is an independent Microcosm. To a.s.sist his loco-motion, to enable him to determine his course, to preserve his being, and to choose between what is good for him, and what is evil to him; he is provided with senses, with which he sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels; with memory; and with powers of reasoning by a.n.a.logy, or his senses and his experience would be useless: and yet men say, that such a creature is as much the patient of physical causes, as a stone or a plant! On the contrary, is it not evident, that an animal possesses peculiar powers of sense and reason, in order that he may not be the patient and victim of physical circ.u.mstances? But, say they, his actions are determined by his motives, and these are governed by causes over which he has no control; those causes are necessary, and, therefore, his actions are necessary.

True--but these exterior causes (granting that they are always necessary links of a chain,) operate on a man only according to his estimate of them, which varies in different men, and in the same men at different times. The causes, at least as far as regards beings which are really their patients, may be regarded as necessary, and they may govern pa.s.sive existences with absolute dominion; but in all animals they have to encounter the principle of individuality, the feeling of independence, the desire of well-being, and the energies of self-love. These, so to speak, enter into an argument with the causes--a process of reasoning takes place--a decision of judgment is formed--and that judgment it is which directs the will and the action.

In other words, an erroneous and varying judgment interposes between the causes and the action; consequently, however absolute and necessary may be the causes, the action governed by an intervening imperfect judgment, and a varying estimate of these causes, is not equally absolute and necessary. Place ten men, or animals, in the same critical situation, and their judgment of the circ.u.mstances will lead each of them to act differently; though the necessary causes which ought to have governed their actions were the same; but their judgments, their knowledge, or their experience, were different, and, therefore, their actions. If animals were omniscient, they would have perfect judgments, which would exactly accord with the exterior or necessary circ.u.mstances, by which they might then be said to be governed; or, if they were stones and plants, they might be inert patients. But theirs is a mixed species of existence, they are neither plants nor G.o.ds. They have powers which plants have not, by which they can freely judge of the means of averting many palpable dangers; though their powers of judging are too limited to enable them to estimate all circ.u.mstances correctly, and therefore to move in necessary unison with the immutable physical laws that govern the changes and the motions of inert matter.

I sat on the tomb of Partridge, and thought it a fit place in which to ruminate on these involved points. Do the astrologers (said I) consider the stars as mere indices of pretended fates, or as the causes of the events which they are enabled to antic.i.p.ate by the antic.i.p.ated motions of the stars? In nativities, they seem to consider them as _indices_; but, in horary questions, as _causes_. They are treated as indices in all cases wherein arbitrary numbers or measures, or imaginary points are introduced; but deemed material causes when particular events are said to be coincident with actual positions.

Both hypotheses cannot, however, be well founded; and his reason will call on the astrologer to give up the doctrine of indices of fate, and prefer that of secondary causes. Here then a still greater difficulty presents itself; the causes are general, and they must operate on the whole earth and all its inhabitants alike. A [Symbol: square] of [Symbol: Mars] and [Symbol: Mercury], or a [Symbol: Triangle] of [Symbol: Saturn] and [Symbol: Jupiter], (that is, a square aspect of Mars and Mercury, or a trine of Saturn and Jupiter,) whenever they happen, are alike applicable to all the inhabitants and regions of the earth. It was plausible to talk of a planetary aspect as productive of rain or wind, when the geography of the astrologer did not extend beyond the plains of Chaldea, or the immediate banks of the Nile; but our better knowledge of cosmography now teaches us, that, at the time of every aspect, every variety of season and of weather is prevalent in different parts of the world; and every contrariety of fortune is happening to individuals in all countries. The doctrine that the planets are secondary causes, is, therefore, not supported by the circ.u.mstances of the phenomena.

But the astrologers are not content with natural positions, but, like the eastern priests with their G.o.ds, they a.s.sign different parts of the heavens, and different countries, to each planet; and then found prognostics on these local positions of the planets. It is evident, however, that the apparent position of a planet depends on the varying position of the earth, and that an inferior planet may be in exactly the same point of s.p.a.ce, and yet be seen from the earth in every sign of the zodiac; though, according to the astrologers, it would in that same place have very different powers! This doctrine was admissible when the earth was considered as the centre of the universe; when the geocentric phenomena were considered as absolute; and when the apparently quick and slow motions, the retrogradations, and the stationary positions, were ascribed to caprices of the planets themselves, or to motives of their prime mover, and therefore were received as signs of corresponding events and fates!

But the radical error of the art of prediction is more deeply seated than we are commonly aware of. There is a chance, however difficult it may be in all cases to reduce it to arithmetical precision, that any possible event may happen to a particular person. No possible event can indeed be conceived, that, with regard to a particular person, is not within the range of arithmetical probability; while all the probable events, such as predictors announce, are within very narrow limits. As an example, I a.s.sume, that, of any hundred ordinary events of human life, it may be an even chance that sixty of them will happen, or not happen; and, of the other forty, it may be as 20 to 1 that 10 of them will happen; as 10 to 1 that other 10 will happen; as 1 to 10 that other 10 will happen; and as 1 to 20 that the other 10 will happen. Then, by averaging all these chances, it will be found that it is an even chance that the whole will happen, or will not happen; or, in other words, that half will happen, and that half will not happen. If, therefore, a dextrous person foretel one hundred events, by means of _any_ prognosticating key, or any index whose powers are previously settled,--whether stars, cards, sediments of tea, lines of the hand or forehead, entrails of animals, or dreams, signs or omens,--by the doctrine of chances it is an even, or some other fixed chance, that half, or some other portion, of such events will come to pa.s.s. Superst.i.tion will triumph if only 1 in 5, or 1 in 10, happen as foretold; but, if 1 in 2 or 3 should happen by neutralizing or generalizing the predictions, then the prophet is accounted a favourite of Heaven, or a familiar of Satan! For this purpose it signifies not what it is that const.i.tutes the key of fate; it will sufficiently deceive the pract.i.tioner, if it relieve him from the responsibility of his announcements; and, if he prudently announce none but events highly probable, he will himself be astonished at the apparent verity of his art! In truth, he is all the while but the dupe of arithmetic; and a cool examination would shew him that, for the most part, it is an even chance that any predicted event will happen, which has been foretold by any key, or sign, or token. The planets, the signs of the zodiac, &c. serve as one set of these keys, or indices--dreams serve as another--the entrails of animals have been used as another--signs, noises, omens, tokens, sympathies, &c. are a fruitful source--lines of the hand, forehead, wrist, &c. are others--moles, marks, &c. furnish others--cards afford a rich variety--and the sediments of teacups, and I know not what besides, serve as means of announcing events by pre-arranged laws of a.s.sociation. The half, or more than half, of such events, must however necessarily happen by the averages of chances; and this unascertained and unsuspected coincidence has from age to age countenanced and confirmed the delusion.

All that a prophet or fortune-teller requires, therefore, is some set of _indices_, to each of which he can a.s.sign particular powers and significations, and then be able so to vary their order as to give them new and endless combinations, representing the fortunes of all mankind. When varied for a particular individual, he has merely to apply to that person the probable events indicated by the new combinations; and, according to the law of chances, he must necessarily succeed in a certain proportion of his prognostics, because it is within a certain numerical chance that any possible event will happen to any individual. The prognosticator in these cases is deceived, because he is solely directed by the order of his indices. As he finds that he has been enabled to _foretel_ by their means a certain number of events, he conceives either that these indices must govern the fates; that the finger of Providence or the agency of the Devil governed his indices; or, with many grave writers, that there is a soul of the world which harmonizes all things, producing an accordance between the #FORTUNES# of the #HUMAN RACE# and the sediments of tea-cups, the arrangements of cards, the aspects and positions of the planets, the lines in the hand or forehead, the indications of dreams, and the entrails of animals! On the other hand, the dupes of these prognostics, when fortunate, often direct their best exertions to fulfil them; or, when unfortunate, they sink into a feeling of despondency, which leads to their fulfilment. And, should one in ten of the predicted events take place, they become firm believers in the doctrines of fatality, necessity, and other superst.i.tions; "for," say they, "how could an event be foretold, if it had not been irrevocably decreed that it must happen?" What a powerful handle for priest-craft, state-craft, and all the crafts by which mankind have been abused in every age of the world!

That this exposition of the true cause of the popular errors, in regard to any supposed connexion between certain accidents of matter, and unconnected future events, will not be without its uses, must be evident from the known influence which some of the means of prognostication possess over every rank of society. Such scenes as that described in the Spectator, where so much unhappiness was created by spilling the salt, are still realized every day in nearly every family in Great Britain. All phenomena which cannot easily be accounted for, and hundreds of trivial incidents, are considered by the gravest as portentous signs of events to come. The coincidence of any event and its prognostic, though it might have been ten to one that it would happen, is received as evidence of their connexion, which it would be impiety to laugh at! But need I quote a more striking instance than the still prodigious annual sale of 300,000 of Partridge's and Moore's Almanacks, whose recommendations are their prognostications, and which a few years since lost most of their patrons, because the Stationers' Company, in the edition of the year, left out the predictions as an experiment on the public wisdom!

In returning from the tomb of Partridge, I beheld another, dear to patriotism and civic glory, that of Alderman Barber, Lord-mayor of London in 1733. His memory is still cherished among aged citizens, and the cause is recorded in the following inscription:--

"Under this stone were laid the remains of #John Barber#, esq.

alderman of London, a constant benefactor to the poor, true to his principles in church and state. He preserved his integrity, and discharged the duty of an upright magistrate.

Zealous for the rights of his fellow citizens, he opposed all attempts against them; and, being lord mayor in the year 1733, he defeated a scheme of a general Excise, which, had it succeeded, would have put an end to the liberties of his country."

Virtuous citizen! Happy was it that thou didst not live to suffer the mortification of seeing thy degraded country devoured by swarms of excis.e.m.e.n, and the third of its population fattening on the taxes collected from the other two-thirds. Too justly didst thou antic.i.p.ate that the terrors and corruptions growing out of such an inquisition as the excise, would destroy that st.u.r.dy spirit of independence, which in thy day const.i.tuted the chief glory of the English country-gentleman and London merchant. Till it was broken or undermined by the evil genius of Taxation, that spirit served as the basis of Britain's prosperity; but now, alas! it seems to be extinguished for ever.--Patriotic Lord-mayor of London! In thy day to watch with jealousy the never-ceasing encroachments of the regal prerogatives, and to render the ministers of the crown accountable at the bar of public opinion, were paths of honour leading to the highest civic distinctions! Many of the race that conducted to a wise end the glorious revolution of 1688 then survived--the genius of liberty continued to inspire the sons of Britain--the holy flame that punished two kings for trespa.s.sing on the rights of their people, was not entirely extinguished--the deadly paralysis of the Septennial Act had not then produced its blighting effects on the whole body politic. But London ceased to be influenced by the lost voice of #Barber#, and the Excise system triumphed--the barriers of freedom were pa.s.sed--trial by jury was, in certain cases, either dispensed with, or nullified by well-trained special juries--the public judgment was misled by venal conductors of the public press--patriotism was deemed faction--liberty was held up as another name for rebellion--and, in consequence, #FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF FOREIGN WAR# have disgraced #SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS# of our annals, though thirty years of foreign war served in the preceding three hundred years to vindicate every British interest!--Venerated name of #Barber#! Where is the monument to be found in the public buildings of London, to record thy virtues for the example of others? Would it not be a worthy companion to the statues of Beckford and Chatham? And would it not keep in countenance the honest exertions of the Waithmans--Woods--and Goodbeheres--who in our days have trod in thy steps, and who, it may be hoped, will have a long line of successors in the same honourable career?

Being anxious to view the inside of Mortlake church, a boy undertook to fetch the key from the house of the s.e.xton. In the mean time I examined around me the humble monuments raised by affection to the memory of the dead. Here were the pyramid, the obelisk, and the tumulus, in their most diminutive forms. Here lay decomposed the mineral parts of those ancestors from whom the contemporary generation have sprung. Yes, said I, we truly are all of one nature, and one family; and we suffer a common fate! We burst as germs into organization, we swell by a common progress into maturity, and we learn to measure by motion what we call Time, till, our motions and our time ceasing, we are thus laid side by side, generation after generation, serving as examples of a similar futurity to those who spring from us, and succeed us.

I reflected that, as it is now more than four hundred years since this ground became the depository of the dead, some of its earliest occupants might, without an hyperbole, have been ancestors of the whole cotemporary English nation. If we suppose that a man was buried in this church-yard 420 years ago, who left six children, each of whom had three children, who again had, on an average, the same number in every generation of thirty years; then, in 420 years, or fourteen generations, his descendants might be multiplied as under:

1st generation 6 2nd 18 3rd 54 4th 162 5th 486 6th 1458 7th 4374 8th 13122 9th 39366 10th 118098 11th 354274 12th 1062812 13th 3188436 14th 9565308

That is to say, #NINE MILLIONS AND A HALF# of persons; or, as nearly as possible, the exact population of South Britain, might at this day be descended in a direct line from any individual buried in this or any other church-yard in the year 1395, who left six children, each of whose descendants have had on the average three children! And, by the same law, every individual who has six children may be the root of as many descendants within 420 years, provided they increase on the low average of only three in every branch. His descendants would represent an inverted triangle, of which he would const.i.tute the lower angle.

To place the same position in another point of view, I calculated also that every individual now living must have had for his ancestor every parent in Britain living in the year 1125, the age of Henry the First, taking the population of that period at 8,000,000. Thus, as every individual must have had a father and a mother, or two progenitors, each of whom had a father and a mother, or four progenitors, each generation would double its progenitors every thirty years. Every person living may, therefore, be considered as the apex of a triangle, of which the base would represent the whole population of a remote age.

1815, Living individual 1 1785, His father and mother 2 1755, Their fathers and mothers 4 1725, ditto 8 1695, ditto 16 1665, ditto 32 1635, ditto 64 1605, ditto 128 1575, ditto 256 1545, ditto 512 1515, ditto 1024 1485, ditto 2048 1455, ditto 4096 1425, ditto 8192 1395, ditto 16384 1365, ditto 32768 1335, ditto 65536 1305, ditto 131072 1275, ditto 262144 1245, ditto 524288 1215, ditto 1048576 1185, ditto 2097152 1155, ditto 4194304 1125, ditto 8388608