Rural Rides Part 17

This is all in less than four score miles, from Reigate even to this place, where I now am. Oh! mighty rivulet of Whitchurch! All our properties, all our laws, all our manners, all our minds, you have changed! This, which I have noticed, has all taken place within forty, and most of it within _ten_ years. The _small gentry_, to about the _third_ rank upwards (considering there to be five ranks from the smallest gentry up to the greatest n.o.bility), are _all gone_, nearly to a man, and the small farmers along with them. The Barings alone have, I should think, swallowed up thirty or forty of these small gentry without perceiving it. They, indeed, swallow up the biggest race of all; but innumerable small fry slip down unperceived, like caplins down the throats of the sharks, while these latter _feel_ only the codfish. It frequently happens, too, that a big gentleman or n.o.bleman, whose estate has been big enough to resist for a long while, and who has swilled up many caplin-gentry, goes down the throat of the loan-dealer with all the caplins in his belly.

Thus the Whitchurch rivulet goes on, s.h.i.+fting property from hand to hand. The big, in order to save themselves from being "_swallowed up quick_" (as we used to be taught to say in our Church Prayers against Buonaparte), make use of their _voices_ to get, through place, pension, or sinecure, something back from the taxers. Others of them _fall in love_ with the _daughters_ and _widows_ of paper-money people, big brewers, and the like; and sometimes their daughters _fall in love_ with the paper-money people's sons, or the fathers of those sons; and, whether they be _Jews_, or not, seems to be little matter with this all-subduing pa.s.sion of love. But the _small gentry_ have no resource.

While _war_ lasted, "_glorious_ war," there was a resource; but _now_, alas! not only is there no war, but there is _no hope of war_; and not a few of them will actually come to the _parish-book_. There is no place for them in the army, church, navy, customs, excise, pension-list, or anywhere else. All these are now wanted by "their _betters_." A stock-jobber's family will not look at such penniless things. So that while they have been the active, the zealous, the efficient instruments, in compelling the working cla.s.ses to submit to half-starvation, they have at any rate been brought to the most abject ruin themselves; for which I most heartily thank G.o.d. The "harvest of war" is never to return without a total blowing up of the paper-system.

Spain must belong to France, St. Domingo must pay her tribute. America must be paid for slaves taken away in war, she must have Florida, she must go on openly and avowedly making a navy for the purpose of humbling us; and all this, and ten times more, if France and America should choose; and yet we can have _no war_ as long as the paper-system last; and, if _that cease_, then _what is to come_!

_Burghclere, Sunday Morning, 6th November._

It has been fine all the week until to-day, when we intended to set off for Hurstbourn-Tarrant, vulgarly called Uphusband, but the rain seems as if it would stop us. From Whitchurch to within two miles of this place it is the same sort of country as between Winchester and Whitchurch.

High, chalk bottom, open downs or large fields, with here and there a farmhouse in a dell sheltered by lofty trees, which, to my taste, is the most pleasant situation in the world.

This has been, with Richard, one whole week of hare-hunting, and with me, three days and a half. The weather has been amongst the finest that I ever saw, and Lord Caernarvon's preserves fill the country with hares, while these hares invite us to ride about and to see his park and estate, at this fine season of the year, in every direction. We are now on the north side of that Beacon Hill for which we steered last Sunday.

This makes part of a chain of lofty chalk-hills and downs, which divides all the lower part of Hamps.h.i.+re from Berks.h.i.+re, though the ancient ruler, owner, of the former took a little strip all along on the flat, on this side of the chain, in order, I suppose, to make the owners.h.i.+p of the hills themselves the more clear of all dispute; just as the owner of a field-hedge and bank owns also the ditch on his neighbour's side. From these hills you look, at one view, over the whole of Berks.h.i.+re, into Oxfords.h.i.+re, Gloucesters.h.i.+re and Wilts.h.i.+re, and you can see the Isle of Wight and the sea. On this north side the chalk soon ceases, and the sand and clay begin, and the oak-woods cover a great part of the surface. Amongst these is the farmhouse in which we are, and from the warmth and good fare of which we do not mean to stir until we can do it without the chance of a wet skin.

This rain has given me time to look at the newspapers of about a week old. Oh, oh! The Cotton Lords are tearing! Thank G.o.d for that! The Lords of the Anvil are snapping! Thank G.o.d for that too! They have kept poor souls, then, in a heat of 84 degrees to little purpose after all. The "great interests" mentioned in the King's Speech do not, _then_, all continue to flouris.h.!.+ The "prosperity" was not, then, "permanent,"

though the King was advised to a.s.sert so positively that it was!

"Anglo-Mexican and Pasco-Peruvian" fall in price, and the Chronicle a.s.sures me that "the respectable owners of the Mexican Mining shares mean to take measures to protect their _property_." Indeed! Like _protecting_ the Spanish Bonds, I suppose? Will the Chronicle be so good as to tell us the names of these "_respectable_ persons"? Doctor Black must know their names; or else he could not know them to be _respectable_. If the parties be those that I have heard, these mining works may possibly operate with them as an emetic, and make them throw up a part at least of what they have taken down.

There has, I see, at New York, been that confusion which I, four months ago, said would and must take place; that breaking of merchants and all the ruin which, in such a case, spreads itself about, ruining families and producing fraud and despair. Here will be, between the two countries, an interchange of cause and effect, proceeding from the dealings in _cotton_, until, first and last, two or three hundred thousands of persons have, at one spell of paper-money work, been made to drink deep of misery. I pity none but the poor English creatures, who are compelled to work on the wool of this accursed weed, which has done so much mischief to England. The slaves who cultivate and gather the cotton are well fed. They do not suffer. The sufferers are these who spin it and weave it and colour it, and the wretched beings who cover with it those bodies which, as in the time of old Fortescue, ought to be "clothed throughout in good woollens."

One newspaper says that Mr. Huskisson is gone to Paris, and thinks it _likely_ that he will endeavour to "inculcate in the mind of the Bourbons wise principles of _free trade_!" What the devil next! Persuade them, I suppose, that it is for _their good_ that English goods should be admitted into France and into St. Domingo with little or no duty?

Persuade them to make a treaty of commerce with him; and, in short, persuade them to make _France help to pay the interest of our debt and dead-weight_, lest our system of paper should go to pieces, and lest that should be followed by _a radical reform_, which reform would be injurious to "the monarchical principle!" This newspaper politician does, however, _think_ that the Bourbons will be "too dull" to comprehend these "_enlightened_ and _liberal_" notions; and I think so too. I think the Bourbons, or, rather, those who will speak for them, will say: "No thank you. You contracted your debt without our partic.i.p.ation; you made your _dead-weight_ for your own purposes; the seizure of our museums and the loss of our frontier towns followed your victory of Waterloo, though we were 'your Allies' at the time; you made us pay an enormous Tribute after that battle, and kept possession of part of France till we had paid it; you _wished_, the other day, to keep us out of Spain, and you, Mr. Huskisson, in a speech at Liverpool, called our deliverance of the King of Spain an _unjust and unprincipled act of aggression_, while Mr. Canning _prayed to G.o.d_ that we might not succeed. No thank you, Mr. Huskisson, no. No coaxing, Sir: we saw, then, too clearly the _advantage we derived from your having a debt and a dead weight_ to wish to a.s.sist in relieving you from either. 'Monarchical principle' here, or 'monarchical principle' there, we know that your mill-stone debt is our best security. We like to have your wishes, your prayers, and your abuse against us, rather than your _subsidies_ and your _fleets_: and so farewell, Mr. Huskisson: if you like, the English may drink French wine; but whether they do or not, the French shall not wear your rotten cottons. And as a last word, how did you maintain the 'monarchical principle,' the 'paternal principle,' or as Castlereagh called it, the 'social system,' when you called that an unjust and unprincipled aggression which put an end to the bargain by which the convents and other church-property of Spain were to be transferred to the Jews and Jobbers of London? Bon jour, Monsieur Huskisson, ci-devant membre et orateur du club de quatre vingt neuf!"

If they do not actually say this to him, this is what they will think; and that is, as to the effect, precisely the same thing. It is childishness to suppose that any nation will act from a desire of _serving all other nations, or any one other nation, as well as itself_.

It will make, unless compelled, no compact by which it does not think itself _a gainer_; and amongst its gains it must, and always does, reckon the injury to its rivals. It is a stupid idea that _all nations are to gain_ by anything. Whatever is the gain of one must, in some way or other, be a loss to another. So that this new project of "free trade"

and "mutual gain" is as pure a humbug as that which the newspapers carried on during the "glorious days" of loans, when they told us, at every loan, that the bargain was "equally advantageous to the contractors and to the public!" The fact is, the "free trade" project is clearly the effect of a _consciousness of our weakness_. As long as we felt _strong_, we felt _bold_, we had no thought of _conciliating_ the world; we upheld a system of _exclusion_, which long experience proved to be founded in _sound policy_. But we now find that our debts and our loads of various sorts cripple us. We feel our incapacity for the _carrying of trade sword in hand_: and so we have given up all our old maxims, and are endeavouring to persuade the world that we are anxious to enjoy no advantages that are not enjoyed also by our neighbours.

Alas! the world sees very clearly the cause of all this; and the world _laughs at us_ for our imaginary cunning. My old doggrel, that used to make me and my friends laugh in Long Island, is precisely pat to this case.

When his maw was stuffed with paper, How JOHN BULL did prance and caper!

How he foam'd and how he roar'd: How his neighbours all he gored!

How he sc.r.a.p'd the ground and hurl'd Dirt and filth on all the world!

But JOHN BULL of paper empty, Though in midst of peace and plenty, Is modest grown as worn-out sinner, As Scottish laird that wants a dinner; As WILBERFORCE, become content A rotten burgh to represent; As BLUE and BUFF, when, after hunting On Yankee coasts their "_bits of bunting_,"

Came softly back across the seas, And silent were as mice in cheese.

Yes, the whole world, and particularly the French and the Yankees, see very clearly the _course_ of this fit of modesty and of liberality into which we have so recently fallen. They know well that a _war_ would play the very devil with our national faith. They know, in short, that no Ministers in their senses will think of supporting the paper-system through another war. They know well that no Ministers that now exist, or are likely to exist, will venture to endanger the paper-system; and therefore they know that (for England) they may now do just what they please. When the French were about to invade Spain, Mr. Canning said that his last despatch on the subject was to be understood as a _protest_ on the part of England against permanent occupation of any part of Spain by France. There the French are, however; and at the end of two years and a half he says that he knows nothing about any intention that they have to quit Spain, or any part of it.

Why, Saint Domingo _was_ independent. We had traded with it as an independent state. Is it not clear that if we had said the word (and had been known to be able to _arm_), France would not have attempted to treat that fine and rich country as a colony? Mark how wise this measure of France! How _just_, too; to obtain by means of a tribute from the St.

Domingoians compensation for the _loyalists_ of that country! Was this done with regard to the loyalists of _America_ in the reign of the good jubilee George III.? Oh, no! Those loyalists had to be paid, and many of them have even yet, at the end of more than half a century, to be paid out of taxes raised on _us_, for the losses occasioned by their disinterested loyalty! This was a masterstroke on the part of France; she gets about seven millions sterling in the way of tribute; she makes that rich island yield to her great commercial advantages; and she, at the same time, paves the way for effecting one of two objects; namely, getting the island back again, or throwing our islands into confusion whenever it shall be her interest to do it.

This might have been prevented by _a word_ from us if we had been ready for _war_. But we are grown _modest_; we are grown _liberal_; we do not want to engross that which fairly belongs to our neighbours! We have undergone a change somewhat like that which marriage produces on a bl.u.s.tering fellow who while single can but just clear his teeth. This change is quite surprising, and especially by the time that the second child comes the man is _loaded_; he looks like a loaded man; his voice becomes so soft and gentle compared to what it used to be. Just such are the effects of _our load_: but the worst of it is our neighbours are _not_ thus loaded. However, far be it from me to _regret_ this, or any part of it. The load is the people's best friend. If that could, _without reform_: if that could be shaken off, leaving the seat-men and the parsons in their present state, I would not live in England another day! And I say this with as much seriousness as if I were upon my death-bed.

The wise men of the newspapers are for a repeal of the _Corn Laws_. With all my heart. I will join anybody in a pet.i.tion for their repeal. But this will not be done. We shall stop short of this extent of "liberality," let what may be the consequence to the manufacturers. The Cotton Lords must all go, to the last man, rather than a repeal, these laws will take place: and of this the newspaper wise men may be a.s.sured.

The farmers can but just rub along now, with all their high prices and low wages. What would be their state, and that of their landlords, if the wheat were to come down again to 4, 5, or even 6 s.h.i.+llings a bushels? Universal agricultural bankruptcy would be the almost instant consequence. Many of them are now deep in debt from the effects of 1820, 1821, and 1822. One more year like 1822 would have broken the whole ma.s.s up, and left the lands to be cultivated, under the overseers, for the benefit of the paupers. Society would have been nearly dissolved, and the state of nature would have returned. The Small-Note Bill, co-operating with the Corn Laws, have given a respite, and nothing more.

This Bill must remain _efficient_, paper-money must cover the country, and the corn-laws must remain in force; or an "equitable adjustment"

must take place; or, to a state of nature this country must return.

What, then, as _I want_ a repeal of the corn-laws, and also _want_ to get rid of the paper-money, I must want to see this return to a state of nature? By no means. I want the "equitable adjustment," and I am quite sure that no adjustment can be _equitable_ which does not apply _every penny's worth of public property_ to the payment of the fund-holders and dead-weight and the like. Clearly just and reasonable as this is, however, the very mention of it makes the FIRE-SHOVELS, and some others, half mad. It makes them storm and rant and swear like Bedlamites. But it is curious to hear them talk of the impracticability of it; when they all know that, by only two or three Acts of Parliament, Henry VIII. did ten times as much as it would now, I hope, be necessary to do. If the duty were imposed _on me_, no statesman, legislator or lawyer, but a simple citizen, I think I could, in less than twenty-four hours, draw up an Act that would give satisfaction to, I will not say _every man_, but to, at least, ninety-nine out of every hundred; an Act that would put all affairs of money and of religion to rights at once; but that would, I must confess, soon take from us that amiable _modesty_, of which I have spoken above, and which is so conspicuously shown in our works of free trade and liberality.

The weather is clearing up; our horses are saddled, and we are off.

RIDE, FROM BURGHCLERE TO PETERSFIELD.

_Hurstbourne Tarrant (or Uphusband), Monday, 7th November 1825._

We came off from Burghclere yesterday afternoon, crossing Lord Caernarvon's park, going out of it on the west side of Beacon Hill, and sloping away to our right over the downs towards Woodcote. The afternoon was singularly beautiful. The downs (even the poorest of them) are perfectly green; the sheep on the downs look, this year, like fatting sheep: we came through a fine flock of ewes, and, looking round us, we saw, all at once, seven flocks, on different parts of the downs, each flock on an average containing at least 500 sheep.

It is about six miles from Burghclere to this place; and we made it about twelve; not in order to avoid the turnpike-road, but because we do not ride about to _see_ turnpike-roads; and, moreover, because I had seen this most monstrously hilly turnpike-road before. We came through a village called Woodcote, and another called Binley. I never saw any inhabited places more recluse than these. Yet into these the all-searching eye of the taxing Thing reaches. Its Exciseman can tell it what is doing even in the little odd corner of Binley; for even there I saw, over the door of a place, not half so good as the place in which my fowls roost, "_Licensed to deal in tea and tobacco_." Poor, half-starved wretches of Binley! The hand of taxation, the collection for the sinecures and pensions, must fix its nails even in them, who really appeared too miserable to be called by the name of _people_. Yet there was one whom the taxing Thing had licensed (good G.o.d! _licensed!_) to serve out cat-lap to these wretched creatures! And our impudent and ignorant newspaper scribes talk of the _degraded state of the people of Spain_! Impudent impostors! Can they show a group so wretched, so miserable, so truly enslaved as this, in all Spain? No: and those of them who are not sheer fools know it well. But there would have been misery equal to this in Spain if the Jews and Jobbers could have carried the Bond-scheme into effect. The people of Spain were, through the instrumentality of patriot loan-makers, within an inch of being made as "enlightened" as the poor, starving things of Binley. They would soon have had people "licensed" to make them pay the Jews for permission to chew tobacco, or to have a light in their dreary abodes. The people of Spain were preserved from this by the French army, for which the Jews cursed the French army; and the same army put an end to those "bonds,"

by means of which _pious_ Protestants hoped to be able to get at the convents in Spain, and thereby put down "idolatry" in that country.

These bonds seem now not to be worth a farthing; and so after all the Spanish people will have no one "licensed" by the Jews to make them pay for turning the fat of their sheep into candles and soap. These poor creatures that I behold here _pa.s.s their lives amidst flocks of sheep_; but never does a morsel of mutton enter their lips. A labouring man told me, at Binley, that he had not tasted meat since harvest; and his looks vouched for the statement. Let the Spaniards come and look at this poor, shotten-herring of a creature; and then let them estimate what is due to a set of "enlightening" and loan-making "patriots." Old Fortescue says that "the English are clothed in good woollens throughout," and that they have "plenty of flesh of all sorts to eat." Yes; but at this time the nation was not mortgaged. The "enlightening" patriots would have made Spain what England now is. The people must never more, after a few years, have tasted mutton, though living surrounded with flocks of sheep.

_Easton, near Winchester, Wednesday Evening, 9th Nov._

I intended to go from Uphusband to Stonehenge, thence to Old Sarum, and thence through the New Forest, to Southampton and Botley, and thence across into Suss.e.x, to see Up-Park and Cowdry House. But, then, there must be no loss of time: I must adhere to a certain route as strictly as a regiment on a march. I had written the route: and Laverstock, after seeing Stonehenge and Old Sarum, was to be the resting-place of yesterday (Tuesday); but when it came, it brought rain with it after a white frost on Monday. It was likely to rain again to-day. It became necessary to change the route, as I must get to London by a certain day; and as the first day, on the new route, brought us here.

I had been three times at Uphusband before, and had, as my readers will, perhaps, recollect, described the bourn here, or the _brook_. It has, in general, no water at all in it from August to March. There is the bed of a little river; but no water. In March, or thereabouts, the water begins to boil up in thousands upon thousands of places, in the little narrow meadows, just above the village; that is to say a little higher up the valley. When the chalk hills are full; when the chalk will hold no more water; then it comes out at the lowest spots near these immense hills and becomes a rivulet first, and then a river. But until this visit to Uphusband (or Hurstbourne Tarrant, as the map calls it), little did I imagine that this rivulet, dry half the year, was the head of the river Teste, which, after pa.s.sing through Stockbridge and Rumsey, falls into the sea near Southampton.

We had to follow the bed of this river to Bourne; but there the water begins to appear; and it runs all the year long about a mile lower down.

Here it crosses Lord Portsmouth's out-park, and our road took us the same way to the village called Down Husband, the scene (as the broad-sheet tells us) of so many of that n.o.ble Lord's ringing and cart-driving exploits. Here we crossed the London and Andover road, and leaving Andover to our right and Whitchurch to our left, we came on to Long Parish, where, crossing the water, we came up again on that high country which continues all across to Winchester. After pa.s.sing Bullington, Sutton, and Wonston, we veered away from Stoke-Charity, and came across the fields to the high down, whence you see Winchester, or rather the Cathedral; for at this distance you can distinguish nothing else clearly.

As we had to come to this place, which is three miles _up_ the river Itchen from Winchester, we crossed the Winchester and Basingstoke road at King's Worthy. This brought us, before we crossed the river, along through Martyr's Worthy, so long the seat of the Ogles, and now, as I observed in my last Register, sold to a general or colonel. These Ogles had been deans, I believe; or prebends, or something of that sort: and the one that used to live here had been, and was when he died, an "admiral." However, this last one, "Sir Charles," the loyal address mover, is my man for the present. We saw, down by the water-side, opposite to "Sir Charles's" _late_ family mansion, a beautiful strawberry garden, capable of being watered by a branch of the Itchen which comes close by it, and which is, I suppose, brought there on purpose. Just by, on the greensward, under the shade of very fine trees, is an alcove, wherein to sit to eat the strawberries, coming from the little garden just mentioned, and met by bowls of cream coming from a little milk-house, shaded by another clump a little lower down the stream. What delight! What a terrestrial paradise! "Sir Charles" might be very frequently in this paradise, while that Sidmouth, whose Bill he so applauded, had many men shut up in loathsome dungeons! Ah, well! "Sir Charles," those very men may, perhaps, at this moment, envy neither you nor Sidmouth; no, nor Sidmouth's son and heir, even though Clerk of the Pells. At any rate it is not likely that "Sir Charles" will sit again in this paradise contemplating another _loyal address_, to carry to a county meeting ready engrossed on parchment, to be presented by Fleming and supported by Lockhart and the "Hamps.h.i.+re parsons."

I think I saw, as I came along, the new owner of the estate. It seems that he bought it "stock and fluke" as the sailors call it; that is to say, that he bought moveables and the whole. He appeared to me to be a keen man. I can't find out where he comes from, or what he or his father has been. I like to see the revolution going on; but I like to be able to trace the parties a little more _closely_. "Sir Charles," the loyal address gentleman, lives in London, I hear. I will, I think, call upon him (if I can find him out) when I get back, and ask how he does now?

There is one Hollest, a George Hollest, who figured pretty bigly on that same loyal address day. This man is become quite an inoffensive harmless creature. If we were to have another county meeting, he would not, I think, threaten to put the sash down upon anybody's head! Oh! Peel, Peel, Peel! Thy Bill, oh, Peel, did sicken them so! Let us, oh, thou offspring of the great Spinning Jenny promoter, who subscribed ten thousand pounds towards the late "glorious" war; who was, after that, made a Baronet, and whose biographers (in the Baronetage) tell the world that he had a "presentiment that he should be the founder of a family."

Oh, thou, thou great Peel, do thou let us have only two more years of thy Bill! Or, oh, great Peel, Minister of the interior, do thou let us have repeal of Corn Bill! Either will do, great Peel. We shall then see such _modest_ 'squires, and parsons looking so queer! However, if thou wilt not listen to us, great Peel, we must, perhaps (and only perhaps), wait a little longer. It is sure to come _at last_, and to come, too, in the most efficient way.

The water in the Itchen is, they say, famed for its clearness. As I was crossing the river the other day, at Avington, I told Richard to look at it, and I asked him if he did not think it very clear. I now find that this has been remarked by very ancient writers. I see, in a newspaper just received, an account of dreadful fires in New Brunswick. It is curious that in my Register of the 29th October (dated from Chilworth in Surrey) I should have put a question relative to the White-Clover, the Huckleberries, or the Raspberries, which start up after the burning down of woods in America. These fires have been at two places which I saw when there were hardly any people in the whole country; and if there never had been any people there to this day it would have been a good thing for England. Those colonies are a dead expense, without a possibility of their ever being of any use. There are, I see, a church and a barrack destroyed. And why a barrack? What! were there bayonets wanted already to keep the people in order? For as to an _enemy_, where was he to come from? And if there really be an enemy anywhere there about, would it not be a wise way to leave the worthless country to him, to use it after his own way? I was at that very Fredericton, where they say thirty houses and thirty-nine barns have now been burnt. I can remember when there was no more thought of there ever being a barn there than there is now thought of there being economy in our Government. The English money used to be spent prettily in that country. What do _we_ want with armies and barracks and chaplains in those woods? What does anybody want with them; but _we_, above all the rest of the world? There is nothing there, no house, no barrack, no wharf, nothing, but what is bought with taxes raised on the half-starving people of England. What do _we_ want with these wildernesses? Ah! but they are wanted by creatures who will not work in England, and whom this fine system of ours sends out into those woods to live in idleness upon the fruit of English labour. The soldier, the commissary, the barrack-master, all the whole tribe, no matter under what _name_; what keeps them? They are paid "by Government;" and I wish that we constantly bore in mind that the "Government" pays _our_ money. It is, to be sure, sorrowful to hear of such fires and such dreadful effects proceeding from them; but to me it is beyond all measure _more sorrowful_ to see _the labourers of England worse fed than the convicts in the gaols_; and I know very well that these worthless and jobbing colonies have a.s.sisted to bring England into this horrible state. The honest labouring man is allowed (aye, by the magistrates) less food than the felon in the gaol; and the felon is clothed and has fuel; and the labouring man has nothing allowed for these. These worthless colonies, which find places for people that the Thing provides for, have helped to produce this dreadful state in England. Therefore, any _a.s.sistance_ the sufferers should never have from me, while I could find an honest and industrious English labourer (unloaded with a family too) fed worse than a felon in the gaols; and this I can find in every part of the country.

_Petersfield, Friday Evening, 11th November._

We lost another day at Easton; the whole of yesterday, it having rained the whole day; so that we could not have come an inch but in the wet. We started, therefore, this morning, coming through the Duke of Buckingham's Park, at Avington, which is close by Easton, and on the same side of the Itchen. This is a very beautiful place. The house is close down at the edge of the meadow land; there is a lawn before it, and a pond, supplied by the Itchen, at the end of the lawn, and bounded by the park on the other side. The high road, through the park, goes very near to this water; and we saw thousands of wild-ducks in the pond, or sitting round on the green edges of it, while, on one side of the pond, the hares and pheasants were moving about upon a gravel walk on the side of a very fine plantation. We looked down upon all this from a rising ground, and the water, like a looking-gla.s.s, showed us the trees, and even the animals. This is certainly one of the very prettiest spots in the world. The wild water-fowl seem to take particular delight in this place. There are a great many at Lord Caernarvon's; but there the water is much larger, and the ground and wood about it comparatively rude and coa.r.s.e. Here, at Avington, everything is in such beautiful order; the lawn before the house is of the finest green, and most neatly kept; and the edge of the pond (which is of several acres) is as smooth as if it formed part of a bowling-green. To see so many _wild_-fowl in a situation where everything is in the _parterre_-order has a most pleasant effect on the mind; and Richard and I, like Pope's c.o.c.k in the farmyard, could not help _thanking_ the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess for having generously made such ample provision for our pleasure, and that, too, merely to please us as we were pa.s.sing along. Now this is the advantage of going about on _horseback_. On foot the fatigue is too great, and you go too slowly. In any sort of carriage you cannot get into the _real country places_. To travel in stage coaches is to be hurried along by force, in a box, with an air-hole in it, and constantly exposed to broken limbs, the _danger_ being much greater than that of s.h.i.+p-board, and the _noise_ much more disagreeable, while the _company_ is frequently not a great deal more to one's liking.

From this beautiful spot we had to mount gradually the downs to the southward; but it is impossible to quit the vale of the Itchen without one more look back at it. To form a just estimate of its real value, and that of the lands near it, it is only necessary to know that from its source at Bishop's Sutton this river has, on its two banks, in the distance of nine miles (before it reaches Winchester) thirteen parish churches. There must have been some _people_ to erect these churches. It is not true, then, that Pitt and George III. _created the English nation_, notwithstanding all that the Scotch _feelosofers_ are ready to swear about the matter. In short, there can be no doubt in the mind of any rational man that in the time of the Plantagenets England was, out of all comparison, more populous than it is now.

When we began to get up towards the downs, we, to our great surprise, saw them covered with _Snow_. "Sad times coming on for poor Sir Glory,"

said I to Richard. "Why?" said d.i.c.k. It was too cold to talk much; and, besides, a great sluggishness in his horse made us both rather serious.

The horse had been too hard ridden at Burghclere, and had got cold. This made us change our route again, and instead of going over the downs towards Hambledon, in our way to see the park and the innumerable hares and pheasants of Sir Harry Featherstone, we pulled away more to the left, to go through Bramdean, and so on to Petersfield, contracting greatly our intended circuit. And, besides, I had never seen Bramdean, the spot on which, it is said, Alfred fought his last great and glorious battle with the Danes. A fine country for a battle, sure enough! We stopped at the village to bait our horses; and while we were in the public-house an Exciseman came and rummaged it all over, taking an account of the various sorts of liquor in it, having the air of a complete master of the premises, while a very pretty and modest girl waited on him to produce the divers bottles, jars, and kegs. I wonder whether Alfred had a thought of anything like this when he was clearing England from her oppressors?

A little to our right, as we came along, we left the village of Kingston, where 'Squire Graeme once lived, as was before related. Here, too, lived a 'Squire Ridge, a famous fox-hunter, at a great mansion, now used as a farmhouse; and it is curious enough that this 'Squire's son-in-law, one Gunner, an attorney at Bishop's Waltham, is steward to the man who now owns the estate.

Before we got to Petersfield we called at an old friend's and got some bread and cheese and small beer, which we preferred to strong. In approaching Petersfield we began to descend from the high chalk-country, which (with the exception of the valleys of the Itchen and the Teste) had lasted us from Uphusband (almost the north-west point of the county) to this place, which is not far from the south-east point of it. Here we quit flint and chalk and downs, and take to sand, clay, hedges, and coppices; and here, on the verge of Hamps.h.i.+re, we begin again to see those endless little bubble-formed hills that we before saw round the foot of Hindhead. We have got in in very good time, and got, at the Dolphin, good stabling for our horses. The waiters and people at inns _look so hard at us_ to see us so liberal as to horse-feed, fire, candle, beds, and room, while we are so very very sparing in the article of _drink_! They seem to pity our taste. I hear people complain of the "exorbitant charges" at inns; but my wonder always is how the people can live with charging so little. Except in one single instance, I have uniformly, since I have been from home, thought the charges too low for people to live by.

This long evening has given me time to look at the Star newspaper of last night; and I see that, with all possible desire to disguise the fact, there is a great "_panic_" brewing. It is impossible that this thing can go on, in its present way, for any length of time. The talk about "speculations"; that is to say, adventurous dealings, or, rather, commercial gamblings; the talk about _these_ having been the cause of the breakings and the other symptoms of approaching convulsion is the most miserable nonsense that ever was conceived in the heads of idiots.

These are _effect_; not _cause_. The cause is the _Small-note Bill_, that last brilliant effort of the joint mind of Van and Castlereagh.