Rural Rides Part 12

_Tenterden (Kent), Sunday, 31 August._

Here I am after a most delightful ride of twenty-four miles, through Frant, Lamberhurst, Goudhurst, Milkhouse Street, Benenden, and Rolvenden. By making a great stir in rousing waiters and "boots" and maids, and by leaving behind me the name of "a d--d noisy, troublesome fellow," I got clear of "_the Wells_," and out of the contagion of its Wen-engendered inhabitants, time enough to meet the first rays of the sun, on the hill that you come up in order to get to Frant, which is a most beautiful little village at about two miles from "_the Wells_."

Here the land belongs, I suppose, to Lord Abergavenny, who has a mansion and park here. A very pretty place, and kept, seemingly, in very nice order. I saw here what I never saw before: the bloom of the _common heath_ we wholly overlook; but it is a very pretty thing; and here, when the plantations were made, and as they grew up, heath was _left to grow_ on the sides of the roads in the plantations. The heath is not so much of a dwarf as we suppose. This is four feet high; and, being in full bloom, it makes the prettiest border that can be imagined. This place of Lord Abergavenny is, altogether, a very pretty place; and, so far from grudging him the possession of it, I should feel pleasure at seeing it in his possession, and should pray G.o.d to preserve it to him, and from the unholy and ruthless touch of the Jews and jobbers; but I cannot forget this Lord's _sinecure_! I cannot forget that he has, for doing nothing, received of the public money more than sufficient to buy such an estate as this. I cannot forget that this estate may, perhaps, have actually been bought with that money. Not being able to forget this, and with my mind filled with reflections of this sort, I got up to the church at Frant, and just by I saw a _School-house_ with this motto on it: "_Train up a child as he should walk_," &c. That is to say, try to breed up the Boys and Girls of this village in such a way that they may never know anything about Lord Abergavenny's sinecure; or, knowing about it, that they may think it _right_ that he should roll in wealth coming to him in such a way. The projectors deceive n.o.body but themselves! They are working for the destruction of their own system. In looking back over "_the Wells_" I cannot but admire the operation of the gambling system. This little _toad-stool_ is a thing created entirely by the gamble; and the means have, hitherto, come out of the wages of labour.

These means are _now_ coming out of the farmer's capital and out of the landlord's estate; the labourers are stripped; they can give no more: the saddle is now fixing itself upon the right back.

In quitting Frant I descended into a country more woody than that behind me. I asked a man whose fine woods those were that I pointed to, and I fairly gave _a start_ when he said the Marquis Camden's. Milton talks of the _Leviathan_ in a way to make one draw in one's shoulders with fear; and I appeal to any one, who has been at sea when a whale has come near the s.h.i.+p, whether he has not, at the first sight of the monster, made a sort of involuntary movement, as if to _get out of the way_. Such was the movement that I now made. However, soon coming to myself, on I walked my horse by the side of my pedestrian informant. It is Bayham Abbey that this great and awful sinecure placeman owns in this part of the county. Another great estate he owns near Sevenoaks. But here alone he spreads his length and breadth over more, they say, than ten or twelve thousand acres of land, great part of which consists of oak-woods. But, indeed, what estates might he not purchase? Not much less than thirty years he held a place, a sinecure place, that yielded him about thirty thousand pounds a-year! At any rate, he, according to Parliamentary accounts, has received, of public money, little short of a million of guineas. These, at 30 guineas an acre, would buy thirty thousand acres of land. And what did he have all this money _for_?

Answer me that question, Wilberforce, you who called him a "bright star," when he gave up _a part_ of his enormous sinecure. He gave up all but the _trifling_ sum of nearly three thousand pounds a-year! What a bright star! And _when_ did he give it up? When the _Radical_ had made the country ring with it. When his name was, by their means, getting into every mouth in the kingdom; when every Radical speech and pet.i.tion contained the name of Camden. Then it was, and not till then, that this "bright star" let fall part of its "brilliancy." So that Wilberforce ought to have thanked the _Radicals_, and not Camden. When he let go his grasp, he talked of the merits of his father. His father was a lawyer, who was exceedingly well paid for what he did without a million of money being given to his son. But there is something rather out of common-place to be observed about this father. This father was the contemporary of Yorke, who became Lord Hardwicke. Pratt and Yorke, and the merit of Pratt was that he was constantly opposed to the principles of Yorke. Yorke was called a _Tory_ and Pratt a _Whig_; but the devil of it was, both got to be Lords; and, in one shape or another, the families of both have, from that day to this, been receiving great parcels of the public money! Beautiful system! The Tories were for _rewarding Yorke_; the Whigs were for _rewarding Pratt_. The Ministers (all in good time!) humoured both parties; and the stupid people, divided into _tools of two factions_, actually applauded, now one part of them, and now the other part of them, the squandering away of their substance. They were like the man and his wife in the fable, who, to spite one another, gave away to the cunning mumper the whole of their dinner bit by bit. _This species_ of folly is over at any rate. The people are no longer fools enough to be _partisans_. They make no distinctions. The nonsense about "court party" and "country party" is at an end. Who thinks anything more of the name of _Erskine_ than of that of _Scott_? As the people told the two factions at Maidstone when they, with Camden at their head, met to congratulate the Regent on the marriage of his daughter, "they are all tarred with the same brush;" and tarred with the same brush they must be, until there be a real reform of the Parliament. However, the people are no longer deceived. They are not duped. They _know_ that the thing is that which it is. The people of the present day would laugh at disputes (carried on with so much gravity!) about the _principles_ of Pratt and the _principles_ of Yorke. "You are all tarred with the same brush," said the sensible people of Maidstone; and, in those words, they expressed the opinion of the whole country, borough-mongers and tax-eaters excepted.

The country from Frant to Lamberhurst is very woody. I should think five-tenths woods and three gra.s.s. The corn, what there is of it, is about the same as farther back. I saw a hop-garden just before I got to Lamberhurst, which will have about two or three hundredweight to the acre. This Lamberhurst is a very pretty place. It lies in a valley with beautiful hills round it. The pastures about here are very fine; and the roads are as smooth and as handsome as those in Windsor Park.

From the last-mentioned place I had three miles to come to Goudhurst, the tower of the church of which is pretty lofty of itself, and the church stands upon the very summit of one of the steepest and highest hills in this part of the country. The church-yard has a view of about twenty-five miles in diameter; and the whole is over a very fine country, though the character of the country differs little from that which I have before described.

Before I got to Goudhurst, I pa.s.sed by the side of a village called Horsenden, and saw some very large hop-grounds away to my right. I should suppose there were fifty acres; and they appeared to me to look pretty well. I found that they belonged to a Mr. Springate, and people say that it will grow half as many hops as he grew last year, while people in general will not grow a tenth part so many. This hop growing and dealing have always been a _gamble_; and this puts me in mind of the horrible treatment which Mr. Waddington received on account of what was called his _forestalling_ in hops! It is useless to talk: as long as that gentleman remains uncompensated for his sufferings there can be no hope of better days. Ellenborough was his counsel; he afterwards became Judge; but nothing was ever done to undo what Kenyon had done. However, Mr. Waddington will, I trust, yet live to obtain justice. He has, in the meanwhile, given the thing now-and-then a blow; and he has the satisfaction to see it reel about like a drunken man.

I got to Goudhurst to breakfast, and as I heard that the Dean of Rochester was to preach a sermon in behalf of the _National Schools_, I stopped to hear him. In waiting for his Reverence I went to the Methodist Meeting-house, where I found the Sunday School boys and girls a.s.sembled, to the almost filling of the place, which was about thirty feet long and eighteen wide. The "Minister" was not come, and the Schoolmaster was reading to the children out of a _tract-book_, and shaking the brimstone bag at them most furiously. This schoolmaster was a _sleek_-looking young fellow: his skin perfectly tight: well fed, I'll warrant him: and he has discovered the way of living, without work, on the labour of those that do work. There were 36 little fellows in smock-frocks, and about as many girls listening to him; and I dare say he eats as much meat as any ten of them. By this time the _Dean_, I thought, would be coming on; and, therefore, to the church I went; but to my great disappointment I found that the parson was operating _preparatory_ to the appearance of the Dean, who was to come on in the afternoon, when I, agreeably to my plan, must be off. The sermon was from 2 Chronicles, ch. 31. v. 21., and the words of this text described King Hezekiah as a most _zealous man_, doing whatever he did _with all his heart_. I write from _memory_, mind, and, therefore, I do not pretend to quote exact words; and I may be a little in error, perhaps, as to chapter or verse. The object of the preacher was to hold up to his hearers the example of Hezekiah, and particularly in the case of the school affair. He called upon them to subscribe with all their hearts; but, alas! how little of _persuasive power_ was there in what he said!

No effort to make them see _the use of the schools_. No inducement _proved_ to exist. No argument, in short, nor anything to move. No appeal either to the _reason_, or to the _feeling_. All was general, common-place, cold observation; and that, too, in language which the far greater part of the hearers could not understand. This church is about 110 feet long and 70 feet wide in the clear. It would hold _three thousand people_, and it had in it 214, besides 53 Sunday School or National School boys; and these sat together, in a sort of lodge, up in a corner, 16 feet long and 10 feet wide. Now, will any Parson Malthus, or anybody else, have the impudence to tell me that this church was built for the use of a population not more numerous than the present? To be sure, when this church was built, there could be no idea of a Methodist meeting coming to _a.s.sist_ the church, and as little, I dare say, was it expected that the preachers in the church would ever call upon the faithful to subscribe money to be sent up to one Joshua Watson (living in a Wen) to be by him laid out in "promoting Christian knowledge;" but, at any rate, the Methodists cannot take away above four or five hundred; and what, then, was this great church built _for_, if there were no more people, in those days, at Goudhurst, than there are now? It is very true that the _labouring_ people have, in a great measure, ceased to go to church. There were scarcely any of that cla.s.s at this great country church to-day. I do not believe there were _ten_.

I can remember when they were so numerous that the parson could not attempt to begin till the rattling of their nailed shoes ceased. I have seen, I am sure, five hundred boys and men in smock-frocks coming out of church at one time. To-day has been a fine day: there would have been many at church to-day, if ever there are; and here I have another to add to the many things that convince me that the labouring cla.s.ses have, in great part, ceased to go to church; that their way of thinking and feeling with regard to both church and clergy are totally changed; and that there is now very little _moral hold_ which the latter possess.

This preaching for money to support the schools is a most curious affair altogether. The King sends a _circular letter_ to the bishops (as I understand it) to cause subscriptions for the schools; and the bishops (if I am rightly told) tell the parish clergy to send the money, when collected, to Joshua Watson, the Treasurer of a Society in the Wen, "for promoting Christian Knowledge!" What! the church and all its clergy put into motion to get money from the people to send up to one Joshua Watson, a wine-merchant, or, late a wine-merchant, in Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street, London, in order that the said wine-merchant may apply the money to the "promoting of Christian Knowledge!" What! all the deacons, priests, curates perpetual, vicars, rectors, prebends, doctors, deans, archdeacons and fathers in G.o.d, right reverend and most reverend; all! yea all, engaged in getting money together to send to a wine-merchant that he may lay it out in the promoting of Christian knowledge _in their own flocks_! Oh, brave wine-merchant! What a prince of G.o.dliness must this wine-merchant be! I say wine-merchant, or late wine-merchant, of Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street, London. And, for G.o.d's sake, some good parson, do send me up a copy of the King's circular, and also of the bishop's order to send the money to Joshua Watson; for some precious sport we will have with Joshua and his "Society" before we have done with them!

After "service" I mounted my horse and jogged on through Milkhouse Street to Benenden, where I pa.s.sed through the estate, and in sight of the house of Mr. Hodges. He keeps it very neat and has planted a good deal. His _ash_ do very well; but the _chestnut_ do not, as it seems to me. He ought to have the American chestnut, if he have any. If I could discover _an everlasting hop-pole_, and one, too, that would grow faster even than the ash, would not these Kentish hop-planters put me in the Kalendar along with their famous Saint Thomas of Canterbury? We shall see this one of these days.

Coming through the village of Benenden, I heard a man at my right talking very loud about _houses! houses! houses!_ It was a Methodist parson, in a house close by the roadside. I pulled up, and stood still, in the middle of the road, but looking, in silent soberness, into the window (which was open) of the room in which the preacher was at work. I believe my stopping rather disconcerted him; for he got into shocking _repet.i.tion_. "Do you _know_," said he, laying great stress on the word _know_: "do you _know_, that you have ready for you houses, houses I say; I say do you know; do you know that you have houses in the heavens not made with hands? Do you know this from _experience_? Has the blessed Jesus _told you so_?" And on he went to say that, if Jesus had told them so, they would be saved, and that if He had not, and did not, they would be d.a.m.ned. Some girls whom I saw in the room, plump and rosy as could be, did not seem at all daunted by these menaces; and, indeed, they appeared to me to be thinking much more about getting houses for themselves _in this world first_; just to _see a little_ before they entered, or endeavoured to enter, or even thought much about, those "_houses_" of which the parson was speaking: _houses_ with pig-styes and little snug gardens attached to them, together with all the other domestic and conjugal circ.u.mstances, these girls seemed to me to be preparing themselves for. The truth is, these fellows have no power on the minds of any but the miserable.

Scarcely had I proceeded a hundred yards from the place where this fellow was bawling, when I came to the very situation which he ought to have occupied, I mean the _stocks_, which the people of Benenden have, with singular humanity, fitted up with a _bench_, so that the patient, while he is receiving the benefit of the remedy, is not exposed to the danger of catching cold by sitting, as in other places, upon the ground, always damp, and sometimes actually wet. But I would ask the people of Benenden what is the _use_ of this humane precaution, and, indeed, what is the use of the stocks themselves, if, while a fellow is ranting and bawling in the manner just described, at the distance of a hundred yards from the stocks, the stocks (as is here actually the case) are almost hidden by gra.s.s and nettles? This, however, is the case all over the country; not nettles and gra.s.s indeed smothering the stocks, but I never see any feet peeping through the holes anywhere, though I find Methodist parsons everywhere, and though _the law compels the parishes to keep up_ all the pairs of stocks that exist in all parts of them; and, in some parishes, they have to keep up several pairs. I am aware that a good part of the use of the stocks is the _terror_ they ought to produce. I am not supposing that they are of no use because not continually furnished with legs. But there is a wide difference between _always_ and _never_; and it is clear that a fellow who has had the stocks under his eye all his lifetime, and has _never_ seen a pair of feet peeping through them, will stand no more in awe of the stocks than rooks do of an old shoyhoy, or than the Ministers or their agents do of Hobhouse and Burdett. Stocks that never pinch a pair of ankles are like Ministerial responsibility; a thing to talk about, but for no other use; a mere mockery; a thing laughed at by those whom it is intended to keep in check. It is time that the stocks were again _in use_, or that the expense of keeping them up were put an end to.

This mild, this gentle, this good-humoured sort of correction is _not enough_ for our present rulers. But mark the consequence; gaols ten times as big as formerly; houses of correction; tread-mills; the hulks; and the country filled with _spies_ of one sort and another, _game-spies_, or other spies, and if a hare or pheasant come to an untimely death, _police-officers_ from the Wen are not unfrequently called down to find out and secure the b.l.o.o.d.y offender! _Mark this_, Englishmen! Mark how we take to those things which we formerly ridiculed in the French; and take them up too just as that brave and spirited people have shaken them off! I saw, not long ago, an account of a Wen police-officer being sent into the country, where he a.s.sumed _a disguise_, joined some poachers (as they are called), got into their secrets, went out in the night with them, and then (having laid his plans with the game-people) a.s.sisted to take them and convict them.

What! is this _England_! Is this the land of "manly hearts?" Is this the country that laughed at the French for their submissions? What! are police-officers kept for this? Does the law say so? However, thank G.o.d Almighty, the estates are pa.s.sing away into the hands of those who have had borrowed from them the money to uphold this monster of a system. The Debt! The blessed Debt, will, at last, restore to us freedom.

Just after I quitted Benenden, I saw some bunches of _straw_ lying upon the quickset hedge of a cottage garden. I found upon inquiry, that they were bunches of the straw of gra.s.s. Seeing a face through the window of the cottage, I called out and asked what that straw was for. The person within said, it was to make _Leghorn-plat_ with. I asked him (it was a young man) how he knew how to do it. He said he had got a little book that had been made by Mr. Cobbett. I told him that I was the man, and should like to see some of his work; and asked him to bring it out to me, I being afraid to tie my horse. He told me that he was a _cripple_, and that he could not come out. At last I went in, leaving my horse to be held by a little girl. I found a young man, who has been a cripple for fourteen years. Some ladies in the neighbourhood had got him the book, and his family had got him the gra.s.s. He had made some very nice plat, and he had knitted the greater part of the crown of a bonnet, and had done the whole very nicely, though, as to the knitting, he had proceeded in a way to make it very tedious. He was knitting upon a block. However, these little matters will soon be set to rights. There will soon be persons to teach knitting in all parts of the country. I left this unfortunate young man with the pleasing reflection that I had, in all likelihood, been the cause of his gaining a good living, by his labour, during the rest of his life. How long will it be before my calumniators, the false and infamous London press, will, take the whole of it together, and leave out its evil, do as much good as my pen has done in this one instance! How long will it be ere the ruffians, the base hirelings, the infamous traders who own and who conduct that press; how long ere one of them, or all of them together, shall cause a cottage to smile; shall add one ounce to the meal of the labouring man!

Rolvenden was my next village, and thence I could see the lofty church of Tenterden on the top of a hill at three miles distance. This Rolvenden is a very beautiful village; and, indeed, such are all the places along here. These villages are not like those in the _iron_ counties, as I call them; that is, the counties of flint and chalk. Here the houses have gardens in front of them as well as behind; and there is a good deal of show and finery about them and their gardens. The high roads are without a stone in them; and everything looks like _gentility_. At this place I saw several _arbutuses_ in one garden, and much finer than we see them in general; though, mind, this is no proof of a mild climate; for the arbutus is a native of one much colder than that of England, and indeed than that of Scotland.

Coming from Benenden to Rolvenden I saw some Swedish turnips, and, strange as the reader will think it, the first I saw after leaving Worth! The reason I take to be this: the farms are all furnished with gra.s.s-fields as in Devons.h.i.+re about Honiton. These gra.s.s-fields give hay for the sheep and cattle in winter, or, at any rate, they do all that is not done by the white turnips. It may be a question whether it would be more _profitable_ to break up and sow Swedes; but this is the reason of their not being cultivated along here. White turnips are more easily got than Swedes; they may be sown later; and, with good hay, they will fat cattle and sheep; but the Swedes will do this business without hay. In Norfolk and Suffolk the land is not generally of a nature to make hay-fields. Therefore the people there resort to Swedes. This has been a sad time for these hay-farmers, however, all along here. They have but just finished haymaking; and I see, all along my way, from East Grinstead to this place, hay-ricks the colour of dirt and _smoking_ like dung-heaps.

Just before I got to this place (Tenterden), I crossed a bit of marsh land, which I found, upon inquiry, is a sort of little branch or spray running out of that immense and famous tract of country called _Romney Marsh_, which, I find, I have to cross to-morrow, in order to get to Dover, along by the sea-side, through Hythe and Folkestone.

This Tenterden is a market town, and a singularly bright spot. It consists of one street, which is, in some places, more, perhaps, than two hundred feet wide. On one side of the street the houses have gardens before them, from 20 to 70 feet deep. The town is upon a hill; the afternoon was very fine, and, just as I rose the hill and entered the street, the people had come out of church and were moving along towards their houses. It was a very fine sight. _Shabbily-dressed people do not go to church._ I saw, in short, drawn out before me, the dress and beauty of the town; and a great many very, very pretty girls I saw; and saw them, too, in their best attire. I remember the girls in the _Pays de Caux_, and, really, I think those of Tenterden resemble them. I do not know why they should not; for there is the _Pays de Caux_ only just over the water, just opposite this very place.

The hops about here are not so very bad. They say that one man, near this town, will have eight tons of hops upon ten acres of land! This is a great crop any year: a very great crop. This man may, perhaps, sell his hops for 1,600 pounds! What a _gambling_ concern it is! However, such hop-growing always was and always must be. It is a thing of perfect hazard.

The church at this place is a very large and fine old building. The tower stands upon a base thirty feet square. Like the church at Goudhurst, it will hold three thousand people. And let it be observed that, when these churches were built, people had not yet thought of cramming them with _pews_, as a stable is filled with stalls. Those who built these churches had no idea that wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d meant going to _sit_ to hear a man talk out what he called preaching. By _wors.h.i.+p_ they meant very different things; and, above all things, when they had made a fine and n.o.ble building, they did not dream of disfiguring the inside of it by filling its floor with large and deep boxes made of deal boards.

In short, the floor was the place for the wors.h.i.+ppers to stand or to kneel; and there was _no distinction_; no _high_ place and no _low_ place; all were upon a level _before G.o.d_ at any rate. Some were not stuck into pews lined with green or red cloth, while others were crammed into corners to stand erect or sit on the floor. These odious distinctions are of Protestant origin and growth. This lazy lolling in pews we owe to what is called the _Reformation_. A place filled with benches and boxes looks like an eating or a drinking place; but certainly not like a place of wors.h.i.+p. A Frenchman, who had been driven from St. Domingo to Philadelphia by the Wilberforces of France, went to church along with me one Sunday. He had never been in a Protestant place of _wors.h.i.+p_ before. Upon looking round him, and seeing everybody comfortably seated, while a couple of good stoves were keeping the place as warm as a slack oven, he exclaimed: "_Pardi! On sert Dieu bien a son aise ici?_" That is: "Egad! they serve G.o.d very much at their ease here!" I always think of this, when I see a church full of pews; as, indeed, is now always the case with our churches. Those who built these churches had no idea of this: they made their calculations as to the people to be contained in them, not making any allowance for _deal boards_. I often wonder how it is that the present parsons are not ashamed to call the churches _theirs_! They must know the origin of them; and how they can look at them, and at the same time revile the Catholics, is astonis.h.i.+ng to me.

This evening I have been to the Methodist Meeting-house. I was attracted, fairly drawn all down the street, by the _singing_. When I came to the place the parson was got into prayer. His hands were clenched together and held up, his face turned up and back so as to be nearly parallel with the ceiling, and he was bawling away, with his "do thou," and "mayest thou," and "may we," enough to stun one. Noisy, however, as he was, he was unable to fix the attention of a parcel of girls in the gallery, whose eyes were all over the place, while his eyes were so devoutly shut up. After a deal of this rigmarole called prayer, came the _preachy_, as the negroes call it; and a _preachy_ it really was. Such a mixture of whining cant and of foppish affectation I scarcely ever heard in my life. The text was (I speak from memory) one of Saint Peter's epistles (if he have more than one) the 4th Chapter and 18th Verse. The words were to this amount: that, _as the righteous would be saved with difficulty, what must become of the unG.o.dly and the sinner_! After as neat a dish of nonsense and of impertinences as one could wish to have served up, came the distinction between the _unG.o.dly_ and the _sinner_. The sinner was one who did moral wrong; the unG.o.dly, one who did no moral wrong, but who was not regenerated. _Both_, he positively told us, were to be d.a.m.ned. One was just as bad as the other.

Moral rect.i.tude was to do nothing in saving the man. He was to be d.a.m.ned unless born again, and how was he to be born again unless he came to the regeneration-shop and gave the fellows money? He distinctly told us that a man perfectly moral might be d.a.m.ned; and that "the vilest of the vile and the basest of the base" (I quote his very words) "would be saved if they became regenerate; and that colliers, whose souls had been as black as their coals, had by regeneration become bright as the saints that sing before G.o.d and the Lamb." And will the _Edinburgh Reviewers_ again find fault with me for cutting at this bawling, canting crew? Monstrous it is to think that the Clergy of the Church really encourage these roving fanatics. The Church seems aware of its loss of credit and of power. It seems willing to lean even upon these men; who, be it observed, seem, on their part, to have taken the Church under their protection. They always pray for the _Ministry_; I mean the ministry at _Whitehall_. They are most "loyal" souls. The THING _protects them_; and they lend their aid _in upholding the_ THING. What silly; nay, what base creatures those must be who really give their money, give their pennies, which ought to buy bread for their own children; who thus give their money to these lazy and impudent fellows, who call themselves ministers of G.o.d, who prowl about the country living easy and jovial lives upon the fruit of the labour of other people. However, it is, in some measure, these people's fault. If they did not give, the others could not receive. I wish to see every labouring man well fed and well clad; but, really, the man who gives any portion of his earnings to these fellows deserves to want: he deserves to be pinched with hunger: misery is the just reward of this worst species of prodigality.

The _singing_ makes a great part of what pa.s.ses in these meeting-houses.

A number of women and girls singing together make very sweet sounds. Few men there are who have not felt _the power_ of sounds of this sort. Men are sometimes pretty nearly bewitched without knowing how. _Eyes_ do a good deal, but _tongues_ do more. We may talk of sparkling eyes and snowy bosoms as long as we please; but what are these with a croaking, masculine voice? The parson seemed to be fully aware of the importance of this part of the "service." The subject of his hymn was something about _love_: Christian love; love of Jesus; but still it was about _love_; and the parson read, or gave out, the verses in a singularly _soft_ and _sighing_ voice, with his head on one side, and giving it rather a swing. I am satisfied that the singing forms great part of the _attraction_. Young girls like to sing; and young men like to hear them.

Nay, old ones too; and, as I have just said, it was the singing that _drew_ me three hundred yards down the street at Tenterden, to enter this meeting-house. By-the-by, I wrote some Hymns myself, and published them in "_Twopenny Trash_." I will give any Methodist parson leave to put them into his hymn-book.

_Folkestone (Kent), Monday (Noon), 1 Sept._

I have had a fine ride, and, I suppose, the Quakers have had a fine time of it at Mark Lane.

From Tenterden I set off at five o'clock, and got to Appledore after a most delightful ride, the high land upon my right, and the low land on my left. The fog was so thick and white along some of the low land, that I should have taken it for water, if little hills and trees had not risen up through it here and there. Indeed, the view was very much like those which are presented in the deep valleys, near the great rivers in New Brunswick (North America) at the time when the snows melt in the spring, and when, in sailing over those valleys, you look down from the side of your canoe and see the lofty woods beneath you! I once went in a log-canoe across a _sylvan sea_ of this description, the canoe being paddled by two Yankees. We started in a stream; the stream became a wide water, and that water got deeper and deeper, as I could see by the trees (all was woods), till we got to sail amongst the _top branches of the trees_. By-and-by we got into a large open s.p.a.ce; a piece of water a mile or two, or three or four wide, with _the woods under us_! A fog, with the tops of trees rising through it, is very much like this; and such was the fog that I saw this morning in my ride to Appledore. The church at Appledore is very large. Big enough to hold 3,000 people; and the place does not seem to contain half a thousand old enough to go to church.

In coming along I saw a wheat-rick making, though I hardly think the wheat can be dry under the bands. The corn is all good here; and I am told they give twelve s.h.i.+llings an acre for reaping wheat.

In quitting this Appledore I crossed a ca.n.a.l and entered on Romney Marsh. This was gra.s.s-land on both sides of me to a great distance. The flocks and herds immense. The sheep are of a breed that takes its name from the marsh. They are called Romney Marsh sheep. Very pretty and large. The wethers, when fat, weigh about twelve stone; or, one hundred pounds. The faces of these sheep are white; and, indeed, the whole sheep is as white as a piece of writing-paper. The wool does not look dirty and oily like that of other sheep. The cattle appear to be all of the _Suss.e.x_ breed. Red, loosed-limbed, and, they say, a great deal better than the Devons.h.i.+re. How curious is the _natural economy_ of a country!

The _forests_ of Suss.e.x; those miserable tracts of heath and fern and bushes and sand, called Ashdown Forest and Saint Leonard's Forest, to which latter Lord Erskine's estate belongs; these wretched tracts and the not much less wretched farms in their neighbourhood, _breed the cattle_, which we see _fatting_ in Romney Mars.h.!.+ They are calved in the spring; they are weaned in a little bit of gra.s.s-land; they are then put into stubbles and about in the fallows for the first summer; they are brought into the yard to winter on rough hay, peas-haulm, or barley-straw; the next two summers they spend in the rough woods or in the forest; the two winters they live on straw; they then pa.s.s another summer on the forest or at _work_; and then they come here or go elsewhere to be fatted. With cattle of this kind and with sheep such as I have spoken of before, this Marsh abounds in every part of it; and the sight is most beautiful.

At three miles from Appledore I came through Snargate, a village with five houses, and with a church capable of containing two thousand people! The vagabonds tell us, however, that we have a wonderful increase of population! These vagabonds will be hanged by-and-by, or else justice will have fled from the face of the earth.

At Brenzett (a mile further on) I with great difficulty got a rasher of bacon for breakfast. The few houses that there are are miserable in the extreme. The church here (only a _mile_ from the last) nearly as large; and n.o.body to go to it. What! will the _vagabonds_ attempt to make us believe that these churches were _built for nothing_! "_Dark ages_"

indeed those must have been, if these churches were erected without there being any more people than there are now. But _who_ built them?

Where did the _means_, where did the hands come from? This place presents another proof of the truth of my old observation: _rich land_ and _poor labourers_. From the window of the house, in which I could scarcely get a rasher of bacon, and not an egg, I saw numberless flocks and herds fatting, and the fields loaded with corn!

The next village, which was two miles further on, was Old Romney, and along here I had, for great part of the way, corn-fields on one side of me and gra.s.s-land on the other. I asked what the amount of the crop of wheat would be. They told me better than five quarters to the acre. I thought so myself. I have a sample of the red wheat and another of the white. They are both very fine. They reap the wheat here nearly two feet from the ground; and even then they cut it three feet long! I never saw corn like this before. It very far exceeds the corn under Portsdown Hill, that at Gosport and Tichfield. They have here about eight hundred large, very large, sheaves to an acre. I wonder how long it will be after the end of the world before Mr. Birbeck will see the American "Prairies" half so good as this Marsh. In a garden here I saw some very fine onions, and a prodigious crop; sure sign of most excellent land. At this Old Romney there is a church (two miles only from the last, mind!) fit to contain one thousand five hundred people, and there are, for the people of the parish to live in, twenty-two, or twenty-three, houses!

And yet the _vagabonds_ have the impudence to tell us that the population of England has vastly increased! Curious system that depopulates Romney Marsh and peoples Bagshot Heath! It is an unnatural system. It is the _vagabond's_ system. It is a system that must be destroyed, or that will destroy the country.

The rotten borough of New Romney came next in my way; and here, to my great surprise, I found myself upon the sea-beach; for I had not looked at a map of Kent for years, and, perhaps, never. I had got a list of places from a friend in Suss.e.x, whom I asked to give me a route to Dover, and to send me through those parts of Kent which he thought would be most interesting to me. Never was I so much surprised as when I saw _a sail_. This place, now that the _squanderings_ of the THING are over, is, they say, become miserably poor.

From New Romney to Dimchurch is about four miles: all along I had the sea-beach on my right, and, on my left, sometimes gra.s.s-land and sometimes corn-land. They told me here, and also further back in the Marsh, that they were to have 15s. an acre for reaping wheat.

From Dimchurch to Hythe you go on the sea-beach, and nearly the same from Hythe to Sandgate, from which last place you come over the hill to Folkestone. But let me look back. Here has been the squandering! Here has been the pauper-making work! Here we see some of these causes that are now sending some farmers to the workhouse and driving others to flee the country or to cut their throats!

I had baited my horse at New Romney, and was coming jogging along very soberly, now looking at the sea, then looking at the cattle, then the corn, when my eye, in swinging round, lighted upon a great round building standing upon the beach. I had scarcely had time to think about what it could be when twenty or thirty others, standing along the coast, caught my eye; and, if any one had been behind me, he might have heard me exclaim, in a voice that made my horse bound, "The _Martello Towers_ by ----!" Oh, Lord! To think that I should be destined to behold these monuments of the wisdom of Pitt and Dundas and Perceval! Good G.o.d!

Here they are, piles of bricks in a circular form about three hundred feet (_guess_) circ.u.mference at the base, about forty feet high, and about one hundred and fifty feet circ.u.mference at the top. There is a door-way, about midway up, in each, and each has two windows. Cannons were to be fired from the top of these things in order to defend the country against the French Jacobins!

I think I have counted along here upwards of thirty of these ridiculous things, which, I dare say, cost five, perhaps ten, thousand pounds each; and one of which was, I am told, _sold_ on the coast of Suss.e.x the other day for two hundred pounds! There is, they say, a chain of these things all the way to Hastings! I dare say they cost millions. But far indeed are these from being all, or half, or a quarter of the squanderings along here. Hythe is half _barracks_; the hills are covered with barracks; and barracks most expensive, most squandering, fill up the side of the hill. Here is a ca.n.a.l (I crossed it at Appledore) made for the length of thirty miles (from Hythe, in Kent, to Rye, in Suss.e.x) to _keep out the French_; for those armies who had so often crossed the Rhine and the Danube were to be kept back by a ca.n.a.l, made by Pitt, thirty feet wide at the most! All along the coast there are works of some sort or other; incessant sinks of money; walls of immense dimensions; ma.s.ses of stone brought and put into piles. Then you see some of the walls and buildings falling down; some that have never been finished. The whole thing, all taken together, looks as if a spell had been, all of a sudden, set upon the workmen; or, in the words of the Scripture, here is the "_desolation of abomination, standing in high places_." However, all is right. These things were made with the hearty good will of those who are now coming to ruin in consequence of the Debt, contracted for the purpose of making these things! This is all _just_. The load will come, at last, upon the right shoulders.

Between Hythe and Sandgate (a village at about two miles from Hythe) I first saw the French coast. The chalk cliffs at Calais are as plain to the view as possible, and also the land, which they tell me is near Boulogne.

Folkestone lies under a hill here, as Reigate does in Surrey, only here the sea is open to your right as you come along. The corn is very early here, and very fine. All cut, even the beans; and they will be ready to cart in a day or two. Folkestone is now a little place; probably a quarter part as big as it was formerly. Here is a church one hundred and twenty feet long and fifty feet wide. It is a sort of little Cathedral.

The church-yard has evidently been three times as large as it is now.

Before I got into Folkestone I saw no less than eighty-four men, women, and boys and girls gleaning or leasing, in a field of about ten acres.

The people all along here complain most bitterly of the _change of times_. The truth is, that the squandered millions are gone! The nation has now to suffer for this squandering. The money served to silence some; to make others bawl; to cause the good to be oppressed; to cause the bad to be exalted; to "crush the Jacobins:" and what is the _result_? What is the _end_? The _end_ is not yet come; but as to the result thus far, go, ask the families of those farmers who, after having for so many years threatened to shoot Jacobins, have, in instances not a few, shot themselves! Go, ask the ghosts of Pitt and of Castlereagh what has thus far been the _result_! Go, ask the Hamps.h.i.+re farmer, who, not many months since, actually blowed out his own brains with one of those very pistols which he had long carried in his Yeomanry Cavalry holsters, to be ready "to keep down the Jacobins and Radicals!" Oh, G.o.d!

inscrutable are Thy ways; but Thou art just, and of Thy justice what a complete proof have we in the case of these very Martello Towers! They were erected to keep out the Jacobin French, lest they should come and a.s.sist the Jacobin English. The _loyal_ people of this coast were fattened by the building of them. Pitt and his loyal _Cinque Ports_ waged interminable war against Jacobins. These very towers are now used to keep these _loyal_ Cinque Ports themselves in order. These towers are now used to lodge men, whose business it is to sally forth, not upon Jacobins, but upon _smugglers_! Thus, after having sucked up millions of the nation's money, these loyal Cinque Ports are squeezed again: kept in order, kept down, by the very towers which they rejoiced to see rise to keep down the Jacobins.

_Dover, Monday, Sept. 1st, Evening._

I got here this evening about six o'clock, having come to-day thirty-six miles; but I must defer my remarks on the country between Folkestone and this place; a most interesting spot, and well worthy of particular attention. What place I shall date from after Dover I am by no means certain; but be it from what place it may, the continuation of my Journal shall be published in due course. If the Atlantic Ocean could not cut off the communication between me and my readers, a mere strip of water, not much wider than an American river, will hardly do it. I am, in real truth, undecided, as yet, whether I shall go on to France or back to the _Wen_. I think I shall, when I go out of this Inn, toss the bridle upon my horse's neck, and let him decide for me. I am sure he is more fit to decide on such a point than our Ministers are to decide on any point connected with the happiness, greatness, and honour of this kingdom.