A Morning's Walk From London To Kew Part 5

That is to say, if there have been a regular co-mixture of marriages, every individual of the living race must of necessity be descended from parents who lived in Britain in 1125. Some districts or clans may require a longer period for the co-mixture, and different circ.u.mstances may cut off some families, and expand others; but, in general, the lines of families would cross each other, and become interwoven _like the lines of lattice-work_. A single inter-mixture, however remote, would unite all the subsequent branches in common ancestry, rendering the cotemporaries of every nation members of one expanded family, after the lapse of an ascertainable number of generations!

This principle is curious; and, though in one view it has been applied to calculations of increasing population, yet I am not aware that it has previously received the moral application which I draw from it, in regard to the commixture of the human race. My ideas may be better conceived, if any person draw two parallel lines to represent the respective contemporary populations of two distinct epochs; and then set up on the lower line an indefinite number of triangles. In this scheme we shall have a just picture of the progressive generations of every nation, and we may observe how necessarily, in spite of artifice and pride, they must, by intermarriages, be blended as one family and one flesh, owing to the individuals of each pair springing from a different apex, and to every side being necessarily crossed by the sides of other triangles. By a converse reasoning, or by tracing the lines from the apex to the base, we may trace the descent as well as the ascent; and, by a glance of the eye, ascertain not only that every individual of a living generation must be descended from the whole of the parents of some generation sufficiently remote, but that every parent in such remote generation must necessarily have been the ancestor of every individual of a contemporary generation.

If, during the Crusades, any of the English intermarried with Greeks, or Syrians, or Italians, all of whom must, by intermingling, have been descendants of the great men of antiquity, so all the English of this age must be connected in blood with those intermarriages, and be descended from the heroes of the cla.s.sic ages. But let not pride triumph in this consideration; for every malefactor in every age, who left children, was equally an ancestor of the living race! The ancient union of France and England, and of Belgium and Germany with England, must have rendered those people near of kin; while each adjoining nation, mixing with its neighbours, must have blended the whole human race in one great family of remote common origin. This reasoning explains the cause of national physiognomy and character, the co-mixture of foreign nations being inconsiderable, and not sufficient to effect general characteristic changes; while each nation becomes, in the course of ages, one common and blended family, in physiognomy, character, and genius. May so plain a demonstration of this great truth be the means of promoting their concord, their love, the interchange of mutual good offices, and their common happiness!

The messenger having brought the key, I was admitted into Mortlake church, the first glance of whose venerable structure, carried my imagination back through many distant ages, and generated a mult.i.tude of interesting a.s.sociations. Every part of the building bore an air of antique simplicity; and it seemed truly worthy of being the place where the inhabitants of a village ought to meet periodically to receive lessons of moral instruction, and pour forth their thanksgivings to the First Cause of the effects which daily operate on them as so many blessings. Happy system!--so well adapted to the actual condition of society, and so capable, when well directed, of producing the most salutary effects on the temper and habits of the people. Thrice happy man, that parish-priest, who feels the extent and importance of his duties, and performs them for their own reward, not as acts of drudgery, or to gratify selfish feelings! Enviable seat, that pulpit, where power is conferred by law and by custom, of teaching useful truths, and of conveying happiness, through the force of principles, to the fire-sides of so many families! Delightful picture!--what more, or what better, could wisdom contrive?--A day of rest--a place sanctified for instruction--habits of attendance--a teacher of worth and zeal--his precepts carried from the church to the fire-side--and there regulating and governing all the actions and relations of life!

Such, however, is the composition of the picture, only as seen on a sunny day! Alas! the pa.s.sions and weaknesses of men deny its frequent realization! Authorised instructors cannot enjoy the reputation of superior wisdom without being excited by vanity, and led to play the fool--they cannot understand two or three dialects without becoming c.o.xcombs--they cannot wear a robe of office without being uplifted by pride--and they cannot be appointed expounders of the simple elements of morals, without fancying themselves in possession of _a second sight_, and discovering a _double_ sense in every text of Scripture!

From this weakness of human nature arise most of the mysteries which discredit religion,--hence the incomprehensible jargon of sects--hence the subst.i.tution of the shadow of faith for the substance of good works--hence the distraction of the people on theological subjects--and hence, in fine, its too common inefficacy and insufficiency in preserving public morals, evinced, among other bad effects, in its tolerance of vindictive Christian wars.

I appeal, therefore, to conscientious teachers of the people, whether it is not their duty to avoid discussions in the pulpit on mysteries which never edify, because never understood; and to confine their discourses to such topics as those indicated in _the Sermon of Jesus on the Mount_. Such, at least, appears to be the proper duty of a national establishment! Empirics may raise the fury of fanaticism about mysteries with impunity--every absurdity may, for its season, be embodied in particular congregations--and infidelity, of all kinds, may be proclaimed at the corners of the streets without danger, provided the #NATIONAL CHURCH# be founded on the broad principles of virtue, and on the practice of those morals which are so beautifully expounded in the New Testament; and provided the parochial clergy do not mix themselves with those visionary topics which depend for success more on zeal and credulity, than on argument or reason. Such a church must flourish, as long as common sense, and a respect for virtue, govern the majority. In this view, I lament, however, that a revision has not taken place of those _articles of faith_ which were promulgated in the sixteenth century, by men newly converted, and perhaps but half converted, from the Romish faith, and taught to a people then unprepared to receive all the changes which reason demanded. As a friend, therefore, to that religion which preserves the public morals, I hope to live to see many of those articles qualified which treat of mysteries conceived in the dark ages of monkish superst.i.tion, and countenanced by scholastic logic; considering that such qualification would probably lead to greater concord in matters of the highest importance to society, and serve to establish the Anglican Church on the immoveable bases of reason and truth. It seems, indeed, to be high time that Protestant churches, of all denominations, should come to some agreement in regard to the full extent of the errors which, during twelve centuries, were introduced into the Christian religion by the craft or ignorance of the Church of Rome. Did the early reformers detect the whole of them? And, if in the opinion of discreet persons they did not, or, as is reasonable to suppose, they could not, is it not important to examine conscientious doubts, and to restore the religion of Christ, which we profess, to its original purity, and to #THE ONLY STANDARD OF TRUTH#, which G.o.d has given to man, #THE LIGHT OF HIS EXPERIENCE AND REASON#.

Such were the considerations that forced themselves upon me, as I paced the aisles of this sanctuary of religion. Nor could I avoid reflecting on the false a.s.sociations which early prejudices attach to such enclosures of four walls. By day, they are an object of veneration; by night, an object of terror. Perhaps no person in Mortlake would singly pa.s.s a long night in this solemn structure, for the fee-simple of half the town! The objects of their fears none could, or would, justify; yet the antic.i.p.ated horrors of pa.s.sing a night in a church seems universal! Perhaps some expect, that the common elementary principles which once composed the bodies of the decomposed dead, would, for the occasion, be collected again from the general storehouse of the atmosphere and earth, and would exhibit themselves, on their re-organization, more hurtful than at first.

Perhaps others expect that some of those unembodied spirits, with which mythology and priestcraft have in all ages deluded the vulgar,--though no credible evidence or natural probability was ever adduced of the existence or appearance of any such spirits,--would without bodies appear to their visual organs, and torment or injure them!--Yes--monstrous and absurd though it be--such are the prevalent weaknesses created by superst.i.tion, and wickedly instilled into infant minds in the nursery, so as to govern the feelings and conduct of ninety-nine of every hundred persons in our comparatively enlightened society.

It should now be well understood, that what is contrary to uniform experience ought to be no object of faith--consequently what no man ever saw, none need expect to see--and what never did harm, none need fear! In this view our poets might aid the work of public education, by dispensing with their machinery of ideal personages, as tending to keep alive that superst.i.tion, which a #Wordsworth# has recently proved to be unnecessary, in a poem that rivals the efforts of the Rosicrucian school. Ought not the ghosts of Shakespeare to be _supposed_ merely as the effects of diseased vision, or a guilty imagination? Ought an enlightened audience to tolerate the mischievous impressions produced on the minds of ignorance or youth by the gross exhibitions which now disgrace our stage in Hamlet, Richard, and Macbeth? We all know that fever of the brain produces successions of spectres or images, the result of diseased organs; but no one ever conceived that such melancholy effects of disease could be seen by healthy by-standers, till our stage-managers availed themselves of vulgar credulity, and dared to give substance to diseased ideas as a means of gratifying their avarice? If Shakespeare intended to give visible substance to his numerous ghosts, he merely conformed himself to the state of knowledge in his day, when Demonology was sanctioned by royal authority, and when the calendars at the a.s.sizes were filled with victims of superst.i.tion, under charges of witchcraft! It is, however, time that we banish such credulity from the minds even of the lowest vulgar, as disgraceful to religion, education, morals, and reason!

Humanly speaking, I exclaimed--Am I not in the House of G.o.d? Is not this puny structure a tribute of man to the Architect of the Universe?

What a lesson for man's pride!--look at this building, and behold the Universe! Man is but a point of infinite s.p.a.ce, with intellectual powers, bound in their sphere of action to his body, and subject with it to the laws of motion and gravitation! For such a being this may properly be the house of G.o.d; but it ought never to be forgotten, that the only house of G.o.d is a universe as boundless as his powers, and as eternal as his existence! In relation to man and man's pride, what a sublime and overwhelming contrast is presented by the everlasting #NOW#, and the universal #HERE#! Yet how can the creature of mere relations, who exists by generating time, s.p.a.ce, and other sensations, conceive of the immutable #CAUSE OF CAUSES#, to whom his past and future, and his above and below, are as a #SINGLE TOTALITY#! Wisest of men is he who knows the most of such a Being; but, chained to a point, and governed in all our reasonings by mere relative powers, we can only conceive of _ubiquity_ by the contrast of our _locality_--of _infinity_ by our _dimensions_--of _eternity_ by our _duration_--and of _omniscience_ by our _reason_! Creatures of yesterday, surrounded by blessings, it is natural we should inquire in regard to the origin and cause of the novel state in which we find ourselves; but the _finite_ cannot reason on the _infinite_--the _transient_ on the _eternal_--or the _local_ on the _universal_; and on such subjects all we can ascertain, is the utter inadequacy of our powers to perceive them clearly. It seems, therefore, to be our duty to #ENJOY#, to #WONDER#, and to #WORs.h.i.+P#.

On every side of me I beheld records of the wrecks of man, deposited here merely to increase the sympathy of the living for the place.

Perhaps I was even breathing some of the gaseous effluvia which once composed their living bodies: but, the gas of a human body differing in no respect from the gas generated in the great laboratory of the earth's surface, which I breathe hourly; and being in itself innoxious in quant.i.ty, if not in quality, I felt no qualms from my consciousness of its source. The putrefactive process decomposes the bodies of all animals, and returns their generic principles to the common reservoirs of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen: through life, the same process, varied in its proportions, is going forward; and the body is constantly resolving itself into the generic principles of nature, which generic principles again serve the purposes of respiration in other animals, and renew other existences as suitably as though they had never before been employed for the same purposes. Hence it is probable that the identical atoms composing any of the elements of nature, may have existed in hundreds of different animals in different ages of the world; and hence we arrive at a principle of metempsychosis, without entangling ourselves in the absurdities with which priestcraft among the Eastern nations has clothed and disguised it.

Various tablets placed around the walls record departed worth in many persons of distinction. I could find no memorials of the impostor #Dee#, whose aged remains were deposited here. He was one of the last of the race of those men of science who made use of his knowledge to induce the vulgar to believe him a conjuror, or one possessed of the power of conversing with #SPIRITS#. His journals of this pretended intercourse were published after his death, by one of the Casaubons, in two folio volumes. Lilly's Memoirs record many of his impostures, and there is no doubt but in his time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagancies. The mob more than once destroyed his house, for being familiar with their devil; and, what is more extraordinary, he was often consulted, and even employed in negociations, by Queen Elizabeth. He pretended to see spirits in a small stone, lately preserved with his papers in the British Museum.

His spirits appear to have had bodies and garments thick enough to reflect rays of light, though they pa.s.sed freely in and out of his stone, and through the walls of his room; and organs for articulation, which they exercised within the gla.s.s! How slight an advance in knowledge exposes all such impostures! In his spiritual visions, Dee had a confederate of the name of Kelly, who, of course, confirmed all the oracles of his master. Both, however, in spite of their spiritual friends, died miserably--the man by leaping out of a window, and the master in great poverty. Dee is the less excusable, because he was a man of family and considerable learning, a fellow of Trinity-college, Cambridge, and a good mathematician. But, in an age in which one Queen imprisoned him for practising by enchantment against her life, and her successor required him to name a lucky day for her coronation, is it to be wondered that a mere man, like tens of thousands of our modern religious fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural powers?

Beneath the same pavement, resolved into kindred elements, though when in chemical union so different a totality, lie the remains of that ill.u.s.trious patriot, Sir John Barnard, who pa.s.sed a long life in opposing the encroachments on liberty of the ministers of the first and second of the #Guelphs#. His statue in the Royal Exchange, London, would attest his worth, if the same area was not disgraced by another, of the infamous Charles the Second, thereby confounding virtue and vice. Sir John, like Alderman Barber, acquired fame by his opposition to the Excise Laws, and by other exertions in defence of public liberty, I have been told by one who still remembers him, that he was an active little man, adored by the Common Hall, and much respected by various political parties for his long-tried worth.

On the south side of the Communion-table, I was so well pleased with some verses lately placed on a marble tablet, to record the virtues of the Viscountess Sidmouth, who died June 23, 1811, that I could not refrain from copying them. The Viscount and his family have a pew in the church, and, I am told, are constant attendants at the morning-service on Sundays.

Not that to mortal eyes thy spotless life Shew'd the best form of parent, child, and wife; Not that thy vital current seem'd to glide, Clear and unmix'd, through the world's troublous tide; That grace and beauty, form'd each heart to win, Seem'd but the casket to the gem within: Not hence the fond presumption of our love, Which lifts the spirit to the Saints above; But that pure Piety's consoling pow'r Thy life illum'd, and cheer'd thy parting hour; That each best gift of charity was thine, The liberal feeling and the grace divine; And e'en thy virtues humbled in the dust, In Heav'n's sure promise was thine only trust; Sooth'd by that hope, Affection checks the sigh, And hails the day-spring of eternity.

Whenever the remains of the lord of this amiable woman are deposited on the same spot, I venture humbly and respectfully to suggest, that the tablet to his memory should include a copy of the most eventful doc.u.ment of his life and times. He was prime-minister when, in March 1803, the ever-to-be-lamented message charging the French with making extensive military preparations in the ports of France and Holland, was advised by the ministry to be sent to both Houses of Parliament.

During the past year he had obtained the glory of concluding a treaty which restored tranquillity to a suffering world; and yet the virulence of a contemptible Opposition, and the empirical pretensions of an Ex-minister, led him and his colleagues tardily to execute the article which was to restore Malta to its Knights. A demand that this article should be executed, led to discussions since made public, but which, in my opinion, have not justified the character given of them in the message. Nor does it appear that the English amba.s.sador at Paris had inquired or remonstrated with the French Government on the subject of the pretended military preparations. The flame, however, was thus kindled, which spread in due time from kingdom to kingdom; covering the whole earth with blood and desolation, wasting millions of lives in battle, siege, imprisonment, or ma.s.sacre; and transferring all the rentals and industry of the people of England to the public creditors, to pay the interest of loans and other consequent obligations of the state!

Unhappily the #GENIUS# of #TRUTH# was hoodwinked at the time, by the general corruption of the press; and the #SPIRIT# of #PATRIOTISM# was overawed by the pa.s.sionate clamours of a whole people to be avenged for various alledged affronts! But at this distance of time these are merely topics for the lamentation of history! It is now, I fear, too late to inst.i.tute legislative inquiries; but the case will remain as a beacon to all people, who should be taught by it to consider ministers of the Crown, though as amiable in private life as an #Addington#, as fallible men, liable to be misled by intrigue or pa.s.sion, and therefore, in a public sense, not to be _credited_ without other evidence than their own a.s.sertions. Let an exemplary #INSCRIPTION# on the tomb of the minister of that day serve therefore to teach all ministers, never wilfully to depart in the most indifferent act of public policy from #THE TRUTH#; and warn them to pause before they commit the extensive interests of nations, while they or the people are under the influence of pa.s.sion. Alas! what frightful mischiefs might have been averted if these considerations had governed the English people, or the English ministry, during the fatal discussions of Lord Whitworth at Paris!

In charity, I hope the Ministry believed that this dispute might have ended with a mere demonstration; and I admit that no man can foresee all the consequences of an action: yet, as the feelings which excited that message and directed those deliberations, continued to influence the Ministry during twelve years warfare, and led to the rejection of seven overtures for peace, made at different times by #Napoleon#; the character of the age and the future security of the world against wars of aggression, seem to require that the origin of the late war should even yet become an object of solemn parliamentary inquiry. The Crown may have the const.i.tutional power of declaring war, but the ministers of the Crown are responsible for the abuse of that power; and let it be remembered, that the origin of every war is easily tried by tests to be found in #Grotius#, #Puffendorf#, #Vattel#, or other authorities on the laws of nations; and that, without the combination of justice and necessity in its origin, no true glory can be acquired in its progress or in its results.[6]

[6] While these pages were printing, the Common Council of London, the second deliberative a.s.sembly in the empire, have presented an address to the Throne, in which they describe the late devastating Wars as "RASH AND RUINOUS, UNJUSTLY COMMENCED, AND PERTINACIOUSLY PERSISTED IN, WHEN NO RATIONAL OBJECT WAS TO BE OBTAINED;" and they add, that "IMMENSE SUBSIDIES WERE GRANTED TO FOREIGN POWERS TO DEFEND THEIR OWN TERRITORIES, OR TO COMMIT AGGRESSIONS ON THOSE OF THEIR NEIGHBOURS." No friend of Truth could wish to see a more correct historical record of these melancholy events; and, whether the authors of them are allowed to drop into the grave by the course of nature, or should expiate their offences on a scaffold, there is not likely to be much difference of opinion about them in the year #THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED# and #SIXTEEN#. Perhaps #FIVE MILLIONS# of men, and as many women and children, have fallen victims, in the s.p.a.ce of twenty-five years, to attempts, as visionary as wicked, to destroy by the sword the a.s.sertion of Principles of Political Justice, which necessarily grew out of the cultivation of reason, and which were corollaries of that #INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY# of which #Bacon# laid the foundation, and which has been matured by #Selden#, #c.o.ke#, #Milton#, #Sidney#, #Locke#, #Bolingbroke#, #Montesquieu#, #Blackstone#, #Rousseau#, #D'alembert#, #Hume#, #De Lolme#, #Mirabeau#, and #Fox#. Rights of social man derived from such sources cannot be overwhelmed, though a divided people may have been overpowered, though hated dynasties may have been restored, and though Popery, the order of Jesuits, and the Holy Inquisition, may for a season have resumed their ascendency.

I learnt with regret that the improved Psalmody of #Gardiner# had not yet been introduced into the service of this church, and that the drawling-monkish tunes are preferred to those sublime pa.s.sages of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, which that gentleman has so ingeniously adapted to the Psalms of David. It might have been expected that every church in the enlightened vicinage of the metropolis would, ere this, have adopted a means of exalting the spirit of devotion, which has received the high sanction of the Regent and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and which exhibits among its patrons nearly the whole bench of bishops. I suspect, indeed, that the _shops_ of the mere trading Methodists attract as many auditors by their singing as by their preaching; consequently, enlarged churches and improved psalmody would serve to protect many of the people from becoming the dupes of that #CANT# and #CRAFT# of #FANATICISM#, which is so disgraceful to the age, so dangerous to religion, and so inimical to the progress of truth and knowledge.

Viewing this church in a statistical point of view, I counted 85 pews, capable of holding about 550 persons, and I learnt that about 100 charity-school and other children sit in the aisles. Hence, perhaps, 600 attend each service; and, if 300 attend in the afternoon who do not in the morning, then we may calculate the attendants on the church-service, in this parish, at about 900. The population is, however, about 2100; from which, deducting 300 children, it will appear that half the inhabitants are dissenters, methodists, or indifferents. Of these, about 200 belong to a chapel for the Independents, and perhaps others attend favourite preachers in the vicinity. Such are the religious divisions of this parish; yet, as there are no manufactories, and the clergyman is well respected, the attendants on the Church may be considered as above even the general average of the Establishment in other parishes.

I was induced to ascend into the belfry, where I found ropes for eight bells--those musical tones, which extend the sphere of the Church's influence, by a.s.sociations of pleasure, devotion, or melancholy, through the surrounding country. What an effective means of increasing the sympathies of religion, and exciting them by the fire-sides, and on the very pillows of the people! Who that, as bride or bridegroom, has heard them, in conjunction with the first joys of wedded love, does not feel the pleasurable a.s.sociations of their lively peal on other similar events? Who, that through a series of years has obeyed their calling chime on the Sabbath morning, as the signal of placid feelings towards his G.o.d, and his a.s.sembled neighbours, does not hear their weekly monotony with devotion? And who is there that has performed the last rites of friends.h.i.+p, or the melancholy duties of son, daughter, husband, wife, father, mother, brother, or sister, under the recurring tones of the awful Tenor, or more awful Dumb-peal, and does not feel, at every recurrence of the same ceremony, a revival of his keen, but unavailing, regrets for the mouldering dead? Thus does art play with our ingenuous feelings; and thus is an importance given to the established Church in the concords of man's nervous system, which renders it unnecessary for its priesthood to be jealous or invidious towards those who dissent from its doctrines for conscience sake. In truth, such is the imposing att.i.tude of the national Church, that, if the members leave the Church to sit under strange pulpits, the inc.u.mbent should suspect his doctrines, his zeal, his talents, or his charity in the collection of his dues and t.i.thes.

What but gross misconduct in the priest--what but doctrines incompatible with the intelligence of an enlightened age--or what but the odious impost of t.i.thes-in-kind, can separate the people from the building where they first heard the name of G.o.d, and which contains the bones of their ancestors?

In conceding to the influence of bells so many services to the establishment which monopolizes them, I must, however, not forget that the power they possess over the nerves, however agreeable or interesting in health, is pernicious, and often fatal, when the excitability is increased by disease? What medicine can allay the fever which is often exasperated by their clangor? What consoling hope can he feel who, while gasping for breath, or fainting from debility, hears a knell, in which he cannot but antic.i.p.ate his own?--Hundreds are thus murdered in great cities every year by noisy peals or unseasonable knells. Sleep, the antidote of diseased action, is destroyed by the one; and Hope, the first of cordials, is extinguished by the other. The interesting sympathies and services of bells appear to be, therefore, too dearly purchased. In all countries, death-knells and funeral-tollings ought to be entirely abolished; and even the ringing of peals should be liable to be interdicted, at the request of any medical pract.i.tioner. Nor ought the sanctuaries of the professed religion of peace and charity to be disgraced at any time, by celebrations of those murderous conflicts between man and man, which too often take place, to gratify the malice and pride of #WEAK PRINCES#, or sustain the avarice and false calculations of their #WICKED MINISTERS#. Even in justifiable wars of self-defence, such as the resistance to the unprincipled invasion of William the Norman, or of the English people against the tyrannical Charles, the church of Christ ought only to mourn at the unhappy price of the most decisive victory.

The solemn tick of the parish-clock reminding me of the progress of the day, I hastened down the worn stairs, which indicated the busy steps of generations long returned to their gazeous elements, into the church-yard. The all-glorious sun, mocking the fate of mortals, still shed a fascinating l.u.s.tre on the southern fields, and reminded me, that the village on my left was the eastern #Sheen#, so called from the very effect which I witnessed. Several pretty mansions skirted the fields, and the horizon was beautifully filled by the well-grown woods of Richmond Park, the walls of which were but half a mile distant. The path across the meadow would have tempted me to enjoy its rare beauty; but my course lay westward, and I turned from this brilliant scenery of Nature to the homely creations of man in the village street.

Contemptibly as I think of the morals of Dee, yet, as an able mathematician and an extraordinary character, I could not resist my curiosity to view the house in which he resided. It is now a Ladies'

boarding-school; and, on explaining the purpose of my visit, I was politely shown through the princ.i.p.al rooms. In two hundred years, it has of course undergone considerable alterations: yet parts of it still exhibit the architecture of the sixteenth century. From the front windows I was shown Dee's garden, on the other side of the road, still attached to the house; down the central path of which, through iron gates, yet standing, Queen Elizabeth used to walk from her carriage in the Sheen road, to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of love and war.

I found the gouvernante of this establishment perfectly intelligent on the subject of her proper business. Her unaffected politeness induced me to take a chair and recruit my strength with a gla.s.s of water and a crust of bread. We talked on Education, and particularly on that of females. She agreed that a female pedant is at best a ridiculous character, and that retired graces, personal accomplishments, and useful domestic acquirements, are best adapted to the destiny of woman. We approved of dancing, because it affords social recreation and wholesome exercise; and of music, for its own sake, and as a means of relieving the monotony of the domestic circle in long evenings and bad weather. She considered the study of a foreign language to be partly necessary, as a means of acquiring exact ideas of the science of language generally; and we agreed in preferring the French, for its conversational powers and its universality as a living tongue. Nor did we differ in our views of the necessity of making the future companions of well-educated men intimately acquainted with the leading facts of geography and history, and with the general principles of natural philosophy and chemistry. I ventured to suggest, that the great objection to female boarding-schools, the neglect of the arts of housewifery might be obviated, by causing two of the pupils, of a certain age, to a.s.sist in the management of the store-room and kitchen for a week in rotation, during which they should fill up the items of the house-keeper's account-book, and make purchases of the family tradesmen. At this the good lady smiled--Ah, sir, (said she,) yours is a plausible theory, but not one mother in ten would tolerate a practice which they would consider as a degradation of their daughters.--But, (said I,) is not household economy the chief pursuit of nine of every ten of the s.e.x; and is not the system of education incomplete, if not a waste of time, which does not embrace that pursuit as part of the plan? And just for that reason, (said she,) that one in every ten may not have occasion to concern herself in household affairs, the whole avoid them as degrading--each looks for the prize in the lottery of fortune, and therefore all pitch themselves too high--and it would be offensive to the pride and vanity of parents, to suppose that their daughter might have occasion to know any thing of the vulgar employments of the house and the kitchen.--It is the parents, then, (said I, in conclusion,) who require instruction as much as their children.--We agreed, however, in our estimate of the superior advantages which children of both s.e.xes enjoy in the present day, from the improved and extended views of the authors of school-books. She was warm in her praises of the Interrogative System of some recent authors; and I found she was no stranger to the merits of the Universal Preceptor, and of the elementary Grammars of Geography, History, and Natural Philosophy.

As I continued my course towards the site of the ancient residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, which lies at the western extremity of the village, I could not avoid asking myself, how, in a country abounding in such means of instruction, political fraud has continued so successful? Has education yet effected nothing for mankind, _owing to its servility to power_? Is the press but a more effective engine for promulgating sophistry, _owing to its ready corruption_? Is religion in the pulpit but a plausible means of palliating the crimes of statesmen, _owing to the ambition of its professors_? Would it now be possible to poison Socrates, banish Aristides, and crucify Jesus, for teaching truth and practising virtue? Alas! a respect for that same truth compelled me to say, Yes!--Yes, said I, there never was a country, nor an age, in which artful misrepresentation could be more successfully practised than at this day in Britain! Can the _press_ effectually sustain truth, while no penal law prevents the purse and patronage of ministers and magistrates from poisoning its channels of communication with the people? Can the _pulpit_ be expected to advocate political truth, while the patronage of the Church is in the hands of the Administration of the day? Can _education_ itself be free from the influence of corrupt patronage, or the force of numerous prejudices, while an abject conformity to the opinions of each previous age is the pa.s.sport to all scholastic dignities? Does any established or endowed school, and do any number even of private schools, make it part of their professed course to teach their pupils the value of freedom, the duties of freemen, and the free principles of the British const.i.tution? Is the system of the public schools, where our statesmen and legislators are educated, addressed to the #HEART# as well as the #HEAD#? Is poverty any where more degraded; cruelty to the helpless animal creation any where more remorselessly practised; or the pride of pedantry, and the vain-glory of human learning, any where more vaunted? In short, are the vices of gluttony, drunkenness, pugilism, and prodigality, any where more indulged? Yet, may we not say, as in the days of William of Wykeham, that "_Manners make the man!_"--and, on the subject of public duties, might we not derive a lesson even from the ancient inst.i.tutions of Lycurgus?

The best hopes of society are the progressive improvement of succeeding generations, and the prospect that each will add something to the stock of knowledge to that which went before it. But gloomy is the perspective, if the science of education be rendered stationary or retrograde by the iron hand of power and bigotry, and if errors by these means are propagated from age to age with a species of accelerated force. Yet, what signs of improvement are visible in our public schools, wherein are educated those youths who are destined to direct the fortunes of Britain in each succeeding age? Most of these schools were endowed at the epoch of the revival of learning; yet the exact course of instruction which was prescribed by the narrow policy of that comparatively dark age, is slavishly followed even to this hour! Instead of knowledge, moral and physical, being taught in them, as the true end of all education,--those dead languages, which in the 15th and 16th centuries were justly considered as the fountains of wisdom, are still exclusively taught; as though the English language, now, as then, contained no works of taste and information on a par with those of the ancients; and as though such writers as Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Locke, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Blackstone, Hume, Robertson, and Blair, had never lived! Is it not to mistake the means for the end, to teach any language, except as the medium of superior philosophy? And is it not a false inference, to ascribe exclusively to the study of languages, those habits of industrious application, which would grow with equal certainty out of the study of the useful sciences, if pursued with the same system, and for a similar period of time?

Reason demands, however, on this subject, those concessions from the #PRIDE# of #PEDANTRY# which that pride will never yield. We seem, therefore, to be destined, by the force of circ.u.mstances, to make slow or inconsiderable advances in civilization; and it remains for other nations, the bases of whose inst.i.tutions are less entangled in prejudices, to raise the condition of man higher in the scale of improvement than can be expected in Britain. We may, as a result of geographical position, attain a certain degree of national distinction; but, if our system of public education cannot be made to keep pace with knowledge, and is not calculated to generate a succession of patriots, who are qualified to sustain liberty at home and justice abroad, we cannot fail to sink in our turn to the level of modern Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Those hotbeds of human genius were ultimately degraded by the triumph of prejudices over principles, by the extinction of public spirit, by the preference of despotism over liberty, and by the glare of foreign conquests. The countries, the soil, and even the cities remain; but, as their youth are no longer trained in the love of truth and liberty, they exist but as beacons to warn other people of their fall and its causes.

I turned aside to view a manufactory of Delft and Stone ware, for which, among potters, Mortlake is famous. A silly air of mystery veiled these work-shops from public view; and, as I professed mine to be a visit of mere curiosity, the conductor's taciturnity increased with the variety of my unsatisfied questions. It was in vain I a.s.sured him that I was no potter--that experimental philosophy and chemistry had stript empiricism of its garb--and that no secret, worth preserving, could long be kept in a manufactory which employed a dozen workmen, at 20_s._ a week. The princ.i.p.al articles made here are those brown stone jugs, of which the song tells us, one was made of the clay of Toby Filpot; and I could not help remarking, that the groups on these jugs are precisely those on the common pottery of the Romans. I learnt, however, that the patterns employed here are not copied from the antique, but from those used at Delft, of which this manufactory is a successful imitation in every particular: and perhaps the Delft manufactory itself is but a continuation of a regular series of stone or earthenware manufactories, from the age of the Romans. Each may have continued to imitate the approved ornaments of its predecessors, till we trace in the productions of this contemporary pottery, the patterns used by the nations of antiquity when just emerging from barbarism. Hunting, the most necessary of arts to the vagrant and carnivorous savage, is the employment celebrated on all these vessels, A stag, followed by ferocious quadrupeds and hungry bipeds, forms their general ornament. I have picked up the same groups among Roman ruins, have often contemplated them in the cabinets of the curious, and here I was amused at viewing them in creations but a week old.

To take off ornamental impressions on plastic clay, was a contrivance which would present itself to the first potters--but perhaps it was the foundation of all our proud arts of sculpture, painting, hieroglyphic design, writing, seal-engraving, and, finally, of printing and copper-plate engraving! What an interesting series!--But I solemnly put the question, Have we arrived at the last of its terms?

Is the series capable of no further application, extension, or variation? Have we conceived the utmost limits of its abstractions?

Have we examined the powers of all its terms with equal care? In one sense, we may never get beyond a Phidias or a Canova--in another, beyond a Woollet or a Bartolozzi--or, in a third, beyond a Corregio or a David;--but have we sufficiently examined and husbanded the abstractions of Thoth or Cadmus?--Ought not the signs of ideas, ere this, to have become abstract representations; as universal in their signification as ideas themselves?--Ought we to be obliged to study all languages and many characters, in order to comprehend the ideas which are common to the whole human race? Are ideas more numerous than musical sounds, and tones, and tunes? Do not the powers of musical characters and of the telegraph prove the facility and capacity of very simple combinations? Does not the Christmas game of _Twenty_ indicate the narrow range of all our ideas? And is not a fact thereby ascertained, from which we may conceive the practicability of so combining hieroglyphic with arbitrary characters, as to be able to read men's ideas without the intervention of a hundred tongues?

On leaving this manufactory, I proceeded about a hundred yards, through the main street; and, turning a corner on the right, beheld the ancient gateway, now bricked up, and the ruined walls of an enclosure, sanctified, during five centuries, as the residence of thirty-four successors to the see of Canterbury. Learning that the enclosure was occupied by a market-gardener, I could not avoid observing, as a proof of the sagacity of gardeners, and of the luxury which manured these sites, that I have seldom visited decayed religious houses without finding them in possession of market-gardeners! Ah!

thought I, as I stopped before the gate, how many thousands of rich donations used to be brought to that portico by superst.i.tious votaries, who considered it as the emblem of the gate of St. Peter, and believed that, if welcomed at the one, they should be equally welcomed at the other! Poor souls--they and their spiritual protectors have alike pa.s.sed away--and we can now look with the eye of Philosophy on the impotent impostures of one party, and on the unsuspecting credulity of the other!

I was in haste---yet I could not avoid stopping five minutes--yes, reader, and it is a lesson to human pomp--I could wait but five minutes to contemplate the gate through which had pa.s.sed thirty-four successive Archbishops of Canterbury, from Anselm, in the time of William the Norman, to Warham and Cranmer, the pliant tools of the tyrant Tudor. As leaders of the Catholic Church, we may now, in this Protestant country, speak, without offence, of their errors and vices.

Ambition and the exercise of power were doubtless the ruling pa.s.sions of the majority, who have shown themselves little scrupulous as to the means by which those pa.s.sions might be gratified;--yet it would be uncandid not to admit that many men, like the present amiable Protestant archbishop, have filled this See, whose eminent virtue, liberality, and piety, were their princ.i.p.al recommendations--and who doubtless believed all those articles of the Church's faith which they taught to others. They were, in truth, wheels of a machine which existed before their time; and they honestly performed the part a.s.signed them, without disputing its origin or the sources of its powers; prudently considering that, if they endeavoured to pull it in pieces, they were likely themselves to become the first victims of their temerity. Thus doubtless it was with Cicero and the philosophers of antiquity; they found theological machinery powerful enough to govern society; and though, on the subject of the G.o.ds, they prudently conformed, or were silent, yet we are not at this day warranted in supposing that they obsequiously reverenced the absurd theology of the romance of Homer. Of the archbishops who have pa.s.sed this gate, St.

Thomas a Becket was perhaps the greatest bigot; but the exaltation of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power was the fas.h.i.+on of his day; and obedience and allegiance could scarcely be expected of a clergy who, owing all their dignities to the Pope, owned no authority superior to that of the keeper of Peter's Keys to the Gates of Heaven!

I could not, even in thus transiently glancing at these meagre remains, avoid the interesting recollection, that this portico once served as a sanctuary for the contrition of guilt against the unsparing malignity of law. In those days, when bigotry courted martyrdom as a pa.s.sport to eternal glory, and when, in consequence, the best principle of religion was enabled to triumph over the malice of weak princes and the tyranny of despots, this gate (said I) served as one of many avenues to the emblem of that Divinity to whom the interior was devoted. It justly a.s.serted the authority of the religion of charity, whose Founder ordered his disciples to pardon offences, though multiplied seventy times seven times. Yet, alas! in our days, how much is this divine precept forgotten! Is not the sanguinary power of law suffered to devour its victims for _first_ relapses from virtue, as unsparingly as for any number of repet.i.tions? Do not its sordid agents exult in the youth or inexperience of offenders, and often receive contrition and confession as aggravating proofs of more deliberate turpitude? Has not the modern sanctuary of Mercy long been shut, by forms of state, against the personal supplications of repentance, and against humble representations of venial errors of criminal courts? If sinners would approach that gate, are they not stopped at the very threshold, and obliged to rely on the intercession of some practised minister, or seek the good offices of illiberal clerks? Is this Christendom, the volume of whose faith tells its votaries to knock without fear at the gate of Mercy, and it shall be opened by an Heavenly Father?--or England, where a solemn law enacts, that it is the right of the subject to pet.i.tion the King, and that all commitments and prosecutions for such pet.i.tioning are illegal?--or civilized Europe, where it has so often been a.s.serted that the receiving of pet.i.tions, and granting their prayer, is the most enviable branch of royal prerogative? Alas! will the golden mean of reason never govern the practices of men? Must we for ever be the dupes of superst.i.tion, or the slaves of upstart authority? Are we doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies, a medium between the bigotry of the #Crozier#, the pride of the #Sceptre#, and the cruelty of the #Sword#?

Nor ought it to be forgotten, that the benevolence which flowed from this portico, served as a subst.i.tute for the poor's-rates, throughout the adjoining district. Thus #Food#, as well as #Mercy#, appeared to flow from Heaven, through the agency of the Romish priesthood! Thus they softened the effects of the monopolies of wealth, and a.s.suaged the severities of power! And thus, duration was conferred on a system which violated common sense in its tenets; but, in its practices, exhibited every claim on the affections and grat.i.tude of the people!

At this gate, and at a thousand others spread over the land, no poor man sought to satisfy his hunger in vain. He was not received by any grim-visaged overseer; not called on for equivocal proofs of legal claims; not required to sell his liberty in the workhouse as the price of a single meal; not terrified by the capricious justice of a vulgar constable; nor in fear of the infernal machine, called a pa.s.s-cart--but it was sufficient that he was an hungered, and they gave him to eat--or that he was sick, and they gave him medicine! Such was the system of those times; not more perfect for being ancient, but worthy of being remembered, because justified by long experience.

Thrice the relative wealth, and as much active benevolence, are at this day exerted to relieve the still unsatisfied wants of the poor, simply because our workhouses are not regularly provided with an hospitable monastic portico, where temporary wants might be supplied with a wholesome meal, without the formality of regular admission, without proofs of settlement, without the terrors of the House of Correction, or the horrors of a _middle-pa.s.sage_ in the pa.s.s-cart! The tenderest sympathy would then be able to excuse itself from the obligation of granting eleemosynary aid--the act of begging might be justly punished as a crime--and crimes themselves could never be palliated by pleas of urgent want.

This entire site was too much consecrated by historical a.s.sociations to be pa.s.sed without further examination. A slight expression of my feelings procured every attention from Penley, the gardener, who told me that his family had occupied it since the revolution, and that he remembered every part above fifty years. He took me to a summer-house, on the wall next the water, the ruins of which were of the architecture of the time of the Plantagenets; and, indeed, the entire wall, above half a mile in circuit, was of that age. Of the ancient palace no vestige remained; and he could guess its precise site only by means of the ma.s.ses of brickwork which he discovered by digging in certain parts of the garden.

If I was, however, little gratified by remains of the labours of man, I was filled with astonishment at certain specimens of vegetation, unquestionably as ancient as the last Catholic archbishops. Among these were two enormous walnut-trees, twelve feet round the trunk, the boughs of which were themselves considerable trees, spreading above twenty-six yards across. Each tree covered above a rood of ground; and so ma.s.sy were the lower branches, that it has been found necessary to support them with props. Their height is equal to their breadth, or about seventy feet; and I was surprised to find, that, notwithstanding their undoubted age, they still bear abundance of fine fruit. Mr.

Penley a.s.sured me, that in his time he had seen no variation in them; they had doubtless attained their full growth in his boyhood, but since then they had maintained a steady maturity. At present they must be considered as in a state of slow decay; but I have no doubt that in the year 1916 they will continue grand and productive trees.

I was equally struck with some box-trees, probably of far greater antiquity. They were originally planted in a semicircle to serve as an arbour; but in the progress of centuries they have grown to the prodigious height of thirty feet, and their trunks are from six to nine inches in diameter.[7] And what was strikingly curious, in the area which they enclose is seen the oval table of the arbour, evidently of the same age. It is of the species of stone called Plymouth marble,--ma.s.sy, and so well-wrought as to prove that it was not placed there at the cost of private revenues. It was interesting, and even affecting, to behold these signs of comfort and good cheer still remaining, so many ages after those who enjoyed them have pa.s.sed away like exhalations or transient meteors! I would have sat down, and, with a better conscience than Don Juan, have invoked their ghosts over a bottle of the honest gardener's currant-wine; but he had filled up the elliptical area of the trees with a pile of f.a.gots, of which the old table serves as a dry bas.e.m.e.nt.

[7] The box-wood used in England by the engravers on wood is often twelve inches in diameter; this, however, is not of English growth, but comes from Turkey, where it is held in slight estimation. Of course, when engravings on wood are larger than twelve inches in diameter, two blocks are joined together, for it is only the transverse section that can be wrought for this purpose. The most famous plantations of box in England are on the White-hill, near Dorking; but the trees there are mere sticks and shrubs compared with those at Mortlake; yet many of them are known to be two hundred years old.

What was less wonderful, though to the full as interesting--was the circ.u.mstance that the gardener has, at different times, in digging up the roots of his old fruit-trees, found them imbedded in skeletons of persons who were interred in or near the chapel of the archbishops. He told me, that a short time before my visit, in removing a pear-tree, he had taken up three perfect skeletons; and that one of them was p.r.o.nounced by a surgeon in the neighbourhood to be the frame-work of a man full seven feet high. This probably was an accidental circ.u.mstance; for it is not to be supposed that any of the interments on this spot took place in those rude ages when bulk and stature led to rank and distinction, and, by consequence, to costly funerals and encas.e.m.e.nts of stone, which often surprize us with specimens of an apparently gigantic race. Doubtless, however, here were interred hundreds of pious persons, who calculated, in their last moments, on the protection of this consecrated ground till "the Earth should be called to give up its Dead;" and now, owing to the unsatisfied pa.s.sion which the first "Defender of the Faith" felt for Anna Boleyn, this consecrated spot, and a thousand similar ones, have been converted into cabbage-gardens!

Perhaps more than one archbishop, many bishops, and scores of deans, angelic doctors, and other reverend personages, lie in this now profaned and dishonoured spot! So great an outrage might, one would have supposed, have led them, according to ordinary notions, again to walk the earth, to despoil the garden, and disturb the gardener's rest! I expressed my fears on this point to the worthy man; but he a.s.sured me, these good gentlefolks lie very quiet; and that, if they produced any visible effect, it was as manure, in rendering the part where they lie a little more productive than the other parts. I shuddered at this lesson of humility--Alas! thought I, is it for such ends that we pamper ourselves--that some of us boast of being better than others--that we seek splendid houses and superfine clothing--and render our little lives wretched by hunting after rank, and t.i.tles, and riches! After all, we receive a sumptuous funeral, and are affectionately laid in what is called consecrated ground, which some political revolution, or change of religion, converting into a market-garden, our bodies then serve but as subst.i.tutes for vulgar manure! If such an end of the ill.u.s.trious and proud men, whose remains now fertilize this garden, had been contemplated by them, how truly would they have become disciples of the humble Jesus--and how horror-struck would they have been at the fantastic airs which, in their lives, they were giving themselves!--Yet, is there a reader of these pages, the end of whose mortal career may not be similar to theirs?--and ought he not to apply to himself the lesson thus taught by the known fate of the former inhabitants of the archiepiscopal palace of Mortlake?

I shook my head at Penley, and told him, that he was a terrible "leveller," and that, in making manure of archbishops and bishops, he was one of the most effective moralists I had ever conversed with!

In walking round this garden, every part proved that its soil had been enriched from all the neighbouring lands. Whether, according to Dr.

#Creighton#, there are cla.s.ses of organic particles adapted to form vegetables and animals over and over again; or whether, according to the modern chemistry, all organized bodies consist of carbonaceous, metallic, and gaseous substances in varied combinations; it is certain, that the well-fed priesthood, who formerly dwelt within these walls, drew together for ages such a supply of the pabulum of vegetation, as will require ages to exhaust. All the trees of this garden are of the most luxuriant size: gooseberries and currants in other gardens grow as shrubs; but here they form trees of four or five feet in height, and a circ.u.mference of five or six yards. In short, a luxuriance approaching to rankness, and a soil remarkable for its depth of colour and fatness, characterize every part. The abundant produce, as is usual through all this neighbourhood, is conveyed to Covent-Garden market in the night, and there disposed of by salesmen that attend on behalf of the gardeners.