Rural Rides Part 30

_Cambridge, 28th March, 1830._

I went from Hargham to Lynn on Tuesday, the 23rd; but owing to the disappointment at Thetford, everything was deranged. It was market-day at Lynn, but no preparations of any sort had been made, and no notification given. I therefore resolved, after staying at Lynn on Wednesday, to make a short tour, and to come back to it again. This tour was to take in _Ely_, Cambridge, St. Ives, Stamford, Peterborough, Wisbeach, and was to bring me back to Lynn, after a very busy ten days.

I was particularly desirous to have a little political preaching at Ely, the place where the flogging of the English local militia under a guard of German bayonets cost me so dear.

I got there about noon on Thursday, the 25th, being market-day; but I had been apprised even before I left Lynn, that no place had been provided for my accommodation. A gentleman at Lynn gave me the name of one at Ely, who, as he thought, would be glad of an opportunity of pointing out a proper place, and of speaking about it; but just before I set off from Lynn, I received a notification from this gentleman, that he could do nothing in the matter. I knew that Ely was a small place, but I was determined to go and see the spot where the militia-men were flogged, and also determined to find some opportunity or other of relating that story as publicly as I could at Ely, and of describing the _tail_ of the story; of which I will speak presently. Arrived at Ely, I first walked round the beautiful cathedral, that honour to our Catholic forefathers, and that standing disgrace to our Protestant selves. It is impossible to look at that magnificent pile without _feeling_ that we are a fallen race of men. The cathedral would, leaving out the palace of the bishop, and the houses of the dean, canons, and prebendaries, weigh more, if it were put into a scale, than all the houses in the town, and all the houses for a mile round the neighbourhood if you exclude the remains of the ancient monasteries. You have only to open your eyes to be convinced that England must have been a far greater and more wealthy country in those days than it is in these days. The hundreds of thousands of loads of stone, of which this cathedral and the monasteries in the neighbourhood were built, must all have been brought by sea from distant parts of the kingdom. These foundations were laid more than a thousand years ago; and yet there are vagabonds who have the impudence to say that it is the Protestant religion that has made England a great country.

Ely is what one may call a miserable little town: very prettily situated, but poor and mean. Everything seems to be on the decline, as, indeed, is the case everywhere, where the clergy are the masters. They say that this bishop has an income of 18,000 a year. He and the dean and chapter are the owners of all the land and t.i.thes, for a great distance round about, in this beautiful and most productive part of the country; and yet this famous building, the cathedral, is in a state of disgraceful irrepair and disfigurement. The great and magnificent windows to the east have been shortened at the bottom, and the s.p.a.ce plastered up with brick and mortar, in a very slovenly manner, for the purpose of saving the expense of keeping the gla.s.s in repair. Great numbers of the windows in the upper part of the building have been partly closed up in the same manner, and others quite closed up. One door-way, which apparently had stood in need of repair, has been rebuilt in modern style, because it was cheaper; and the churchyard contained a flock of sheep acting as vergers for those who live upon the immense income, not a penny of which ought to be expended upon themselves while any part of this beautiful building is in a state of irrepair. This cathedral was erected "to the honour of G.o.d and the Holy Church." My daughters went to the service in the afternoon, in the choir of which they saw G.o.d honoured by the presence of _two old men_, forming the whole of the congregation. I dare say, that in Catholic times, five thousand people at a time have been a.s.sembled in this church. The cathedral and town stand upon a little hill, about three miles in circ.u.mference, raised up, as it were, for the purpose, amidst the rich fen land by which the hill is surrounded, and I dare say that the town formerly consisted of houses built over a great part of this hill, and of, probably, from fifty to a hundred thousand people. The people do not now exceed above four thousand, including the bedridden and the babies.

Having no place provided for lecturing, and knowing no single soul in the place, I was thrown upon my own resources. The first thing I did was to walk up through the market, which contained much more than an audience sufficient for me; but, leaving the market people to carry on their affairs, I picked up a sort of labouring man, asked him if he recollected when the local militia-men were flogged under the guard of the Germans; and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, I asked him to go and show me the spot, which he did; he showed me a little common along which the men had been marched, and into a piece of pasture-land, where he put his foot upon the identical spot where the flogging had been executed. On that spot, I told him what I had suffered for expressing my indignation at that flogging. I told him that a large sum of English money was now every year sent abroad to furnish half pay and allowances to the officers of those German troops, and to maintain the widows and children of such of them as were dead; and I added, "You have to work to help to pay that money; part of the taxes which you pay on your malt, hops, beer, leather, soap, candles, tobacco, tea, sugar, and everything else, goes abroad every year to pay these people: it has thus been going abroad ever since the peace; and it will thus go abroad for the rest of your life, if this system of managing the nation's affairs continue;" and I told him that about one million seven hundred thousand pounds had been sent abroad on this account, _since the peace_.

When I opened, I found that this man was willing to open too; and he uttered sentiments that would have convinced me, if I had not before been convinced of the fact, that there are very few, even amongst the labourers, who do not clearly understand the cause of their ruin. I discovered that there were two Ely men flogged upon that occasion, and that one of them was still alive and residing near the town. I sent for this man, who came to me in the evening when he had done his work, and who told me that he had lived seven years with the same master when he was flogged, and was bailiff or head man to his master. He has now a wife and several children; is a very nice-looking, and appears to be a hard-working, man, and to bear an excellent character.

But how was I to harangue? For I was determined not to quit Ely without something of that sort. I told this labouring man who showed me the flogging spot, my name, which seemed to surprise him very much, for he had heard of me before. After I had returned to my inn, I walked back again through the market amongst the farmers; then went to an inn that looked out upon the market-place, went into an up-stairs room, threw up the sash, and sat down at the window, and looked out upon the market.

Little groups soon collected to survey me, while I sat in a very unconcerned att.i.tude. The farmers had dined, or I should have found out the most numerous a.s.semblage, and have dined with them. The next best thing was, to go and sit down in the room where they usually dropped in to drink after dinner; and, as they nearly all smoke, to take a pipe with them. This, therefore, I did; and, after a time, we began to talk.

The room was too small to contain a twentieth part of the people that would have come in if they could. It was hot to suffocation; but, nevertheless, I related to them the account of the flogging, and of my persecution on that account; and I related to them the account above stated with regard to the English money now sent to the Germans, at which they appeared to be utterly astonished. I had not time sufficient for a lecture, but I explained to them briefly the real cause of the distress which prevailed; I warned the farmers particularly against the consequences of hoping that this distress would remove itself. I portrayed to them the effects of the taxes; and showed them that we owe this enormous burden to the want of being fairly represented in the Parliament. Above all things, I did that which I never fail to do, showed them the absurdity of grumbling at the six millions a year given in relief to the poor, while they were silent, and seemed to think nothing of the sixty millions of taxes collected by the Government at London, and I asked them how any man of property could have the impudence to call upon the labouring man to serve in the militia, and to deny that that labouring man had, in case of need, a clear right to a share of the produce of the land. I explained to them how the poor were originally relieved; told them that the revenues of the livings, which had their foundation in _charity_, were divided amongst the poor. The demands for repair of the churches, and the clergy themselves; I explained to them how church-rates and poor-rates came to be introduced; how the burden of maintaining the poor came to be thrown upon the people at large; how the nation had sunk by degrees ever since the event called the Reformation; and, pointing towards the cathedral, I said, "Can you believe, gentlemen, that when that magnificent pile was reared, and when all the fine monasteries, hospitals, schools, and other resorts of piety and charity, existed in this town and neighbourhood; can you believe, that Ely was the miserable little place that it now is; and that that England which had never heard of the name of _pauper_, contained the crowds of miserable creatures that it now contains, some starving at stone-cracking by the way-side, and others drawing loaded wagons on that way?"

A young man in the room (I having come to a pause) said: "But, Sir, were there no poor in Catholic times?" "Yes," said I, "to be sure there were.

The Scripture says, that the poor shall never cease out of the land; and there are five hundred texts of Scripture enjoining on all men to be good and kind to the poor. It is necessary to the existence of civil society, that there should be poor. Men have two motives to industry and care in all the walks of life: one, to acquire wealth; but the other and stronger, to avoid poverty. If there were no poverty, there would be no industry, no enterprise. But this poverty is not to be made a punishment unjustly severe. Idleness, extravagance, are offences against morality; but they are not offences of that heinous nature to justify the infliction of starvation by way of punishment. It is, therefore, the duty of every man that is able; it is particularly the duty of every government, and it was a duty faithfully executed by the Catholic Church, to take care that no human being should perish for want in a land of plenty; and to take care, too, that no one should be deficient of a sufficiency of food and raiment, not only to sustain life, but also to sustain health." The young man said: "I thank you, Sir; I am answered."

I strongly advised the farmers to be well with their work-people; for that, unless their flocks were as safe in their fields as their bodies were in their beds, their lives must be lives of misery; that if their sacks and barns were not places of as safe deposit for their corn as their drawers were for their money, the life of the farmer was the most wretched upon earth, in place of being the most pleasant, as it ought to be.

_Boston, Friday, 9th April, 1830._

Quitting Cambridge and Dr. Chafy and Serjeant Frere, on Monday, the 29th of March, I arrived at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, about one o'clock in the day. In the evening I harangued to about 200 persons, princ.i.p.ally farmers, in a wheelwright's shop, that being the only _safe_ place in the town, of sufficient dimensions and sufficiently strong. It was market-day; and this is a great cattle-market. As I was not to be at Stamford in Lincolnshire till the 31st, I went from St. Ives to my friend Mr. Wells's, near Huntingdon, and remained there till the 31st in the morning, employing the evening of the 30th in going to Chatteris, in the Isle of Ely, and there addressing a good large company of farmers.

On the 31st, I went to Stamford, and, in the evening, spoke to about 200 farmers and others, in a large room in a very fine and excellent inn, called Standwell's Hotel, which is, with few exceptions, the nicest inn that I have ever been in. On the 1st of April, I harangued here again, and had amongst my auditors some most agreeable, intelligent, and public-spirited yeomen, from the little county of Rutland, who made, respecting the _seat in Parliament_, the proposition, the details of the purport of which I communicated to my readers in the last Register.

On the 2nd of April, I met my audience in the playhouse at Peterborough; and though it had snowed all day, and was very wet and sloppy, I had a good large audience; and I did not let this opportunity pa.s.s without telling my hearers of the part that their _good_ neighbour, Lord Fitzwilliam, had acted with regard to the _French war_, with regard to _Burke and his pension_; with regard to the _dungeoning law_, which drove me across the Atlantic in 1817, and with regard to the putting into the present Parliament, aye, and for that very town, that very Lawyer Scarlett, whose state prosecutions are now become so famous.

"Never," said I, "did I say that behind a man's back that I would not say to his face. I wish I had his face before me: but I am here as near to it as I can get: I am before the face of his friends: here, therefore, I will say what I think of him." When I had described his conduct, and given my opinion on it, many applauded, and not one expressed disapprobation.

On the 3rd, I speechified at Wisbeach, in the playhouse, to about 220 people, I think it was; and that same night, went to sleep at a friend's (a total stranger to me, however) at St. Edmund's, in the heart of the Fens. I stayed there on the 4th (Sunday), the morning of which brought a hard frost: ice an inch thick, and the total destruction of the apricot blossoms.

After pa.s.sing Sunday and the greater part of Monday (the 5th) at St.

Edmund's, where my daughters and myself received the greatest kindness and attention, we went, on Monday afternoon, to Crowland, where we were most kindly lodged and entertained at the houses of two gentlemen, to whom also we were personally perfect strangers; and in the evening, I addressed a very large a.s.semblage of most respectable farmers and others, in this once famous town. There was another hard frost on the Monday morning; just, as it were, to _finish_ the apricot bloom.

On the 6th I went to Lynn, and on that evening and on the evening of the 7th, I spoke to about 300 people in the playhouse. And here there was more _interruption_ than I have ever met with at any other place. This town, though containing as good and kind friends as I have met with in any other, and though the people are generally as good, contains also, apparently, a large proportion of _dead-weight_, the offspring, most likely, of the _rottenness of the borough_. Two or three, or even _one_ man, may, if not tossed out at once, disturb and interrupt everything in a case where constant attention to _fact_ and _argument_ is requisite, to insure utility to the meeting. There were but _three_ here; and though they were finally silenced, it was not without great loss of time, great noise and hubbub. Two, I was told, were _dead-weight_ men, and one a sort of _higgling merchant_.

On the 8th I went to Holbeach, in this n.o.ble county of Lincoln; and, gracious G.o.d! what a _contrast_ with the scene at Lynn! I knew not a soul in the place. Mr. Fields, a bookseller and printer, had invited me by letter, and had, in the nicest and most unostentatious manner, made all the preparations. Holbeach lies in the midst of some of the richest land in the world; a small market-town, but a parish more than twenty miles across, larger, I believe, than the county of Rutland, produced an audience (in a very nice room, with seats prepared) of 178, apparently all wealthy farmers, and men in that rank of life; and an audience so _deeply_ attentive to the dry matters on which I had to address it, I have very seldom met with. I was delighted with Holbeach; a neat little town; a most beautiful church with a spire, like that of "the man of Ross, pointing to the skies;" gardens very pretty; fruit-trees in abundance, with blossom-buds ready to burst; and land, dark in colour, and as fine in substance as flour, as fine as if sifted through one of the sieves with which we get the dust out of the clover seed; and when cut deep down into with a spade, precisely, as to substance, like a piece of hard b.u.t.ter; yet nowhere is the _distress_ greater than here. I walked on from Holbeach, six miles, towards Boston; and seeing the fatness of the land, and the fine gra.s.s and the never-ending sheep lying about like _fat hogs_, stretched in the sun, and seeing the abject state of the labouring people, I could not help exclaiming, "G.o.d has given us the best country in the world; our brave and wise and virtuous fathers, who built all these magnificent churches, gave us the best government in the world, and we, their cowardly and foolish and profligate sons, have made this once-paradise what we now behold!"

I arrived at Boston (where I am now writing) to-day, (Friday, 9th April) about ten o'clock. I must arrive at Louth before I can say _precisely_ what my future route will be. There is an immense fair at Lincoln next week; and a friend has been _here_ to point out the proper days to be there; as, however, this Register will not come from the press until after I shall have had an opportunity of writing something at Louth, time enough to be inserted in it. I will here go back, and speak of the country that I have travelled over, since I left Cambridge on the 29th of March.

From Cambridge to St. Ives the land is generally in open, unfenced fields, and some common fields; generally stiff land, and some of it not very good, and wheat, in many places, looking rather thin. From St. Ives to Chatteris (which last is in the Isle of Ely), the land is better, particularly as you approach the latter place. From Chatteris I came back to Huntingdon and once more saw its beautiful meadows, of which I spoke when I went thither in 1823. From Huntingdon, through Stilton, to Stamford (the two last in Lincolnshire), is a country of rich arable land and gra.s.s fields, and of beautiful meadows. The enclosures are very large, the soil red, with a whitish stone below; very much like the soil at and near Ross in Herefordshire, and like that near Coventry and Warwick. Here, as all over this country, everlasting fine sheep. The houses all along here are built of the stone of the country: you seldom see brick. The churches are large, lofty, and fine, and give proof that the country was formerly much more populous than it is now, and that the people had a vast deal more of wealth in their hands and at their own disposal. There are three beautiful churches at Stamford, not less, I dare say, than three [_quaere_] hundred years old; but two of them (I did not go to the other) are as perfect as when just finished, except as to the _images_, most of which have been destroyed by the ungrateful Protestant barbarians, of different sorts, but some of which (_out of the reach_ of their ruthless hands) are still in the niches.

From Stamford to Peterborough is a country of the same description, with the additional beauty of _woods_ here and there, and with meadows just like those at Huntingdon, and not surpa.s.sed by those on the Severn near Worcester, nor by those on the Avon at Tewkesbury. The cathedral at Peterborough is exquisitely beautiful, and I have great pleasure in saying, that, contrary to the _more magnificent_ pile at Ely, it is kept in good order; the Bishop (Herbert Marsh) residing a good deal on the spot; and though he _did_ write a pamphlet to justify and urge on the war, the ruinous war, and though he _did_ get a _pension_ for it, he is, they told me, very good to the poor people. My daughters had a great desire to see, and I had a great desire they should see, the burial-place of that ill-used, that savagely-treated, woman, and that honour to woman-kind, Catherine, queen of the ferocious tyrant, Henry the Eighth. To the infamy of that ruffian, and the shame of after ages, there is no _monument_ to record her virtues and her sufferings; and the remains of this daughter of the wise Ferdinand and of the generous Isabella, who sold her jewels to enable Columbus to discover the new world, lie under the floor of the cathedral, commemorated by a short inscription on a plate of bra.s.s. All men, Protestants or not Protestants, feel as I feel upon this subject; search the _hearts_ of the bishop and of his dean and chapter, and these feelings are there; but to do _justice_ to the memory of this ill.u.s.trious victim of tyranny, would be to cast a reflection on that event to which they owe their rich possessions, and, at the same time, to suggest ideas not very favourable to the descendants of those who divided amongst them the plunder of the people arising out of that event, and which descendants are their patrons, and give them what they possess. From this cause, and no other, it is, that the memory of the virtuous Catherine is unblazoned, while that of the tyrannical, the cruel, and the immoral Elizabeth, is recorded with all possible veneration, and all possible varnishing-over of her disgusting amours and endless crimes.

They relate at Peterborough, that the same s.e.xton who buried Queen Catherine, also buried here Mary, Queen of Scots. The remains of the latter, of very questionable virtue, or, rather, of unquestionable vice, were removed to Westminster Abbey by her son, James the First; but those of the virtuous Queen were suffered to remain unhonoured! Good G.o.d! what injustice, what a want of principle, what hostility to all virtuous feeling, has not been the fruit of this Protestant Reformation; what plunder, what disgrace to England, what shame, what misery, has that event not produced! There is nothing that I address to my hearers with more visible effect than a statement of _the manner in which the poor-rates and the church-rates came_. This, of course, includes an account of _how the poor were relieved in Catholic times_. To the far greater part of people this is information _wholly new_; they are _deeply interested_ in it; and the impression is very great. Always before we part, Tom Cranmer's church receives a considerable blow.

There is in the cathedral a very ancient monument, made to commemorate, they say, the murder of the abbot and his monks by the Danes. Its date is the year 870. Almost all the cathedrals, were, it appears, originally churches of monasteries. That of Winchester and several others, certainly were. There has lately died, in the garden of the bishop's palace, a tortoise that had been _there_ more, they say, than two hundred years; a fact very likely to be known; because, at the end of thirty or forty, people would begin to talk about it as something remarkable; and thus the record would be handed down from father to son.

From Peterborough to Wisbeach, the road, for the most part, lies through the _Fens_, and here we pa.s.sed through the village of Thorney, where there was a famous abbey, which, together with its valuable domain, was given by the savage tyrant, Henry VIII., to John Lord Russell (made a lord by that tyrant), the founder of the family of that name. This man got also the abbey and estate at Woburn; the priory and its estate at Tavistock; and in the next reign he got Covent Garden and other parts adjoining; together with other things, all then _public property_. A history, a _true history_ of this family (which I hope I shall find time to write) would be a most valuable thing. It would be a nice little specimen of the way in which these families became possessed of a great part of their estates. It would show how the poor-rates and the church-rates came. It would set the whole nation _right_ at once. Some years ago I had a set of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (Scotch), which contained an account of every other _great family_ in the kingdom; but I could find in it no account of _this_ family, either under the word Russell or the word Bedford. I got into a pa.s.sion with the book, because it contained no account of the mode of raising the birch-tree; and it was sold to _a son_ (as I was told) of Mr. Alderman Heygate; and if that gentleman look into the book, he will find what I say to be true; but if I should be in error about this, perhaps he will have the goodness to let me know it. I shall be obliged to any one to point me out any printed account of this family; and particularly to tell me where I can get an old folio, containing (amongst other things) Bulstrode's argument and narrative in justification of the sentence and execution of Lord William Russell, in the reign of Charles the Second. It is impossible to look at the now-miserable village of Thorney, and to think of its once-splendid abbey; it is impossible to look at the _twenty thousand acres_ of land around, covered with fat sheep, or bearing six quarters of wheat or ten of oats to the acre, without any manure; it is impossible to think of these without feeling a desire that the whole nation should know all about the _surprising merits_ of the possessors.

Wisbeach, lying farther up the arm of the sea than Lynn, is, like the latter, a little town of commerce, chiefly engaged in exporting to the south, _the corn_ that grows in this productive country. It is a good solid town, though not handsome, and has a large market, particularly for corn.

To Crowland, I went, as before stated, from Wisbeach, staying two nights at St. Edmund's. Here I was in the heart of the Fens. The whole country as _level_ as the table on which I am now writing. The horizon like the sea in a dead calm: you see the morning sun come up, just as at sea; and see it go down over the rim, in just the same way as at sea in a calm.

The land covered with beautiful gra.s.s, with sheep lying about upon it, as fat as hogs stretched out sleeping in a stye. The kind and polite friends, with whom we were lodged, had a very neat garden, and fine young orchard. Everything grows well here: earth without a stone so big as a pin's head; gra.s.s as thick as it can grow on the ground; immense bowling-greens separated by ditches; and not the sign of dock or thistle or other weed to be seen. What a contrast between these and the heath-covered sand-hills of Surrey, amongst which I was born! Yet the labourers, who spuddle about the ground in the little _dips_ between those sand-hills, are better off than those that exist in this fat of the land. _Here_ the grasping system takes _all_ away, because it has the means of coming at the value of all: _there_, the poor man enjoys _something_, because he is thought too poor to have anything: he is there allowed to have what is deemed _worth nothing_; but here, where every inch is valuable, not one inch is he permitted to enjoy.

At Crowland also (still in the Fens) was a great and rich _abbey_, a good part of the magnificent ruins of the church of which are still standing, one corner or part of it being used as the _parish church_, by the worms, which have crept out of the dead bodies of those who lived in the days of the founders;

"And wond'ring man could want the larger pile, Exult, and claim the corner with a smile."

They tell you, that all the country at and near Crowland was a mere swamp, a mere bog, _bearing nothing_, bearing nothing worth naming, until the _modern drainings_ took place! The thing called the "Reformation," has lied common sense out of men's minds. So _likely_ a thing to choose a barren swamp whereon, or wherein, to make the site of an abbey, and of a benedictine abbey too! It has been always observed, that the monks took care to choose for their places of abode, pleasant spots, surrounded by productive land. The likeliest thing in the world for these monks to choose a swamp for their dwelling-place, surrounded by land that produced nothing good! The thing gives the lie to itself: and it is impossible to reject the belief, that these Fens were as productive of corn and meat a thousand years ago, and more so, than they are at this hour. There is a curious triangular bridge here, on one part of which stands the statue of one of the ancient kings. It is all of great age; and everything shows that Crowland was a place of importance in the earliest times.

From Crowland to Lynn, through Thorney and Wisbeach, is all Fens, well besprinkled, formerly, with monasteries of various descriptions, and still well set with magnificent churches. From Lynn to Holbeach you get out of the real Fens, and into the land that I attempted to describe, when, a few pages back, I was speaking of Holbeach. I say attempted; for I defy tongue or pen to make the description adequate to the matter: to know what the thing is, you must _see_ it. The same land continues all the way on to Boston: endless gra.s.s and endless fat sheep; not a stone, not a weed.

_Boston, Sunday, 11th April, 1830._

Last night, I made a speech at the playhouse to an audience, whose appearance was sufficient to fill me with pride. I had given notice that I should perform _on Friday_, overlooking the circ.u.mstance that it was Good Friday. In apologising for this inadvertence, I took occasion to observe, that even if I had persevered, the clergy of the church could have nothing to object, seeing that they were now silent while a bill was pa.s.sing in Parliament to put _Jews_ on a level with _Christians_; to enable Jews, the blasphemers of the Redeemer, to sit on the bench, to sit in both Houses of Parliament, to sit in council with the King, and to be kings of England, if ent.i.tled to the Crown, which, by possibility, they might become, if this bill were to pa.s.s; that to this bill _the clergy had offered no opposition_; and that, therefore, how could they hold sacred the anniversary appointed to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ by the hands of the blaspheming and b.l.o.o.d.y Jews? That, at any rate, if this bill pa.s.sed; if those who called Jesus Christ an _impostor_ were thus declared to be _as good_ as those who adored him, there was not, I hoped, a man in the kingdom who would pretend, that it would be just to compel the people to pay t.i.thes, and fees, and offerings, to men for _teaching Christianity_. This was a _clincher_; and as such it was received.

This morning I went out at six, looked at the town, walked three miles on the road to Spilsby, and back to breakfast at nine. Boston (_bos_ is Latin for _ox_) though not above a fourth or fifth part of the size of its _daughter_ in New England, which got its name, I dare say, from some persecuted native of this place, who had quitted England and all her wealth and all her glories, to preserve that _freedom_, which was still more dear to him; though not a town like New Boston, and though little to what it formerly was, when agricultural produce was the great staple of the kingdom and the great subject of foreign exchange, is, nevertheless, a very fine town; good houses, good shops, pretty gardens about it, a fine open place, nearly equal to that of Nottingham, in the middle of it a river and a ca.n.a.l pa.s.sing through it, each crossed by a handsome and substantial bridge, a fine market for sheep, cattle, and pigs, and another for meat, b.u.t.ter, and fish; and being, like Lynn, a great place for the export of corn and flour, and having many fine mills, it is altogether a town of very considerable importance; and, which is not to be overlooked, inhabited by people none of whom appear to be in misery.

The great pride and glory of the Bostonians, is _their church_, which is, I think, 400 feet long, 90 feet wide, and has a tower (or steeple, as they call it) 300 feet high, which is both a land-mark and a sea-mark. To describe the richness, the magnificence, the symmetry, the exquisite beauty of this pile, is wholly out of my power. It is impossible to look at it without feeling, first, admiration and reverence and grat.i.tude to the memory of our fathers who reared it; and next, indignation at those who affect to believe, and contempt for those who do believe, that, when this pile was reared, the age was _dark_, the people rude and ignorant, and the country _dest.i.tute of wealth_ and _thinly peopled_. Look at this church, then; look at the heaps of white rubbish that the parsons have lately stuck up under the "_New-church Act_," and which, after having been built with money forced from the nation by odious taxes, they have stuffed full of _locked-up pens_, called _pews_, which they let for money, as cattle- and sheep- and pig-pens are let at fairs and markets; nay, after having looked at this work of the "_dark_ ages," look at that great, heavy, ugly, unmeaning ma.s.s of stone called St. PAUL'S, which an American friend of mine, who came to London from Falmouth and had seen the cathedrals at Exeter and Salisbury, swore to me, that when he first saw it, he was at a loss to guess whether it were a _court-house_ or a _jail_; after looking at Boston Church, go and look at that great, gloomy lump, created by a Protestant Parliament, and by taxes wrung by force from the whole nation; and then say which is the age really meriting the epithet _dark_.

St. Botolph, to whom this church is dedicated, while he (if saints see and hear what is pa.s.sing on earth) must lament that the piety-inspiring ma.s.s has been, in this n.o.ble edifice, supplanted by the monotonous hummings of an oaken hutch, has not the mortification to see his church treated in a manner as if the new possessors sighed for the hour of its destruction. It is taken great care of; and though it has cruelly suffered from _Protestant repairs_; though the images are gone and the stained gla.s.s; and though the glazing is now in squares instead of lozenges; though the nave is stuffed with _pens_ called pews; and though other changes have taken place detracting from the beauty of the edifice, great care is taken of it as it now is, and the inside is not disfigured and disgraced by a _gallery_, that great and characteristic mark of Protestant taste, which, as nearly as may be, makes a church like a playhouse. Saint Botolph (on the supposition before mentioned) has the satisfaction to see, that the base of his celebrated church is surrounded by an iron fence, to keep from it all offensive and corroding matter, which is so disgusting to the sight round the magnificent piles at Norwich, Ely and other places; that the churchyard, and all appertaining to it, are kept in the neatest and most respectable state; that no money has been spared for these purposes; that here the eye tells the heart, that grat.i.tude towards the fathers of the Bostonians is not extinguished in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their sons; and this the Saint will know that he owes to the circ.u.mstances, that the parish is a poor vicarage, and that the care of his church is in the hands of _the industrious people_, and not in those of a fat and luxurious dean and chapter, wallowing in wealth derived from the people's labour.

_Horncastle, 12th April._

A fine, soft, showery morning saw us out of Boston, carrying with us the most pleasing reflections as to our reception and treatment there by numerous persons, none of whom we had ever seen before. The face of the country, for about half the way, the soil, the gra.s.s, the endless sheep, the thickly-scattered and magnificent churches, continue as on the other side of Boston; but, after that, we got out of the low and level land.

At Sibsey, a pretty village five miles from Boston, we saw, for the first time since we left Peterborough, land rising above the level of the horizon; and, not having seen such a thing for so long, it had struck my daughters, who overtook me on the road (I having walked on from Boston), that the sight had an effect like that produced by the first _sight of land_ after a voyage across the Atlantic.

We now soon got into a country of hedges and dry land and gravel and clay and stones; the land not bad, however; pretty much like that of Suss.e.x, lying between the forest part and the South Downs. A good proportion of woodland also; and just before we got to Horncastle, we pa.s.sed the park of that Mr. Dymock who is called "the Champion of England," and to whom, it is said hereabouts, that we pay out of the taxes eight thousand pounds a year! This never can be, to be sure; but if we pay him only a hundred a year, I will lay down my _glove_ against that of the "Champion," that we do not pay him even _that_ for five years longer.

It is curious, that the moment you get out of the _rich land_, the churches become _smaller_, _mean_, and with scarcely anything in the way of _tower_ or _steeple_. This town is seated in the middle of a large valley, not, however, remarkable for anything of peculiar value or beauty; a purely agricultural town; well built, and not mean in any part of it. It is a great rendezvous for horses and cattle, and sheep-dealers, and for those who sell these; and accordingly, it suffers severely from the loss of the small paper-money.

_Horncastle, 13th April, Morning._

I made a speech last evening to from 130 to 150, almost all farmers, and most men of apparent wealth to a certain extent. I have seldom been better pleased with my audience. It is not the clapping and huzzaing that I value so much as the _silent attention_, the _earnest look_ at me from _all eyes_ at once, and then when the point is concluded, the _look and nod at each other_, as if the parties were saying, "_Think of that!_" And of these I had a great deal at Horncastle. They say that there are _a hundred parish churches within six miles of this town_. I dare say that there was one farmer from almost every one of those parishes. This is sowing the seeds of truth in a very sure manner: it is not scattering broadcast; it is really _drilling the country_.

There is one deficiency, and that, with me, a great one, throughout this country of corn and gra.s.s and oxen and sheep, that I have come over during the last three weeks; namely, the want of _singing birds_. We are now just in that season when they sing most. Here, in all this country, I have seen and heard only about four sky-larks, and not one other singing bird of any description, and, of the small birds that do not sing, I have seen only one _yellow-hammer_, and it was perched on the rail of a pound between Boston and Sibsey. Oh! the thousands of linnets all singing together on one tree, in the sand-hills of Surrey! Oh! the carolling in the coppices and the dingles of Hampshire and Suss.e.x and Kent! At this moment (5 o'clock in the morning) the groves at Barn Elm are echoing with the warblings of thousands upon thousands of birds. The _thrush_ begins a little before it is light; next the _black-bird_; next the _larks_ begin to rise; all the rest begin the moment the sun gives the signal; and, from the hedges, the bushes, from the middle and the topmost twigs of the trees, comes the singing of endless variety; from the long dead gra.s.s comes the sound of the sweet and soft voice of the _white-throat_ or _nettle-tom_, while the loud and merry song of the _lark_ (the songster himself out of sight) seems to descend from the skies. MILTON, in his description of paradise, has not omitted the "song of earliest birds." However, everything taken together, here, in Lincolnshire, are more good things than man could have had the conscience to _ask_ of G.o.d.

And now, if I had time and room to describe the state of _men's affairs_ in the country through which I have pa.s.sed, I should show that the people at Westminster would have known, how to turn paradise itself into h.e.l.l. I must, however, defer this until my next, when I shall have been at Hull and Lincoln, and have had a view of the whole of this rich and fine country. In the meanwhile, however, I cannot help congratulating that _sensible_ fellow, Wilmot Horton, and his co-operator, Burdett, that Emigration is going on at a swimming rate. Thousands are going, and that, too, _without mortgaging the poor-rates_. But, _sensible_ fellows!

it is not the _aged_, the _halt_, the _ailing_; it is not the _paupers_ that are going; but men with from 200_l._ to 2,000_l._ in their pocket!

This very year, from two to five millions of pounds sterling will actually be carried _from England_ to the United States. The Scotch, who have money to pay their pa.s.sages, go to New York; those who have none get carried to Canada, that they may thence get into the United States.