Chapter 1.

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In the Second Book and Twenty-sixth Chapter of Blackstone, the poacher might read as follows: "With regard likewise to wild animals, all mankind had by the original grant of the Creator a right to pursue and take away any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the waters, and any beast or reptile of the field: and this natural right still continues in every individual, unless where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country. And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while living, his qualified property, or, if dead, are absolutely his own: so that to steal them, or otherwise invade this property, is, according to the respective values, sometimes a criminal offence, sometimes only a civil injury."

Poachers do not read this; but that reason which is common to all mankind tells them that this is true, and tells them, also, what to think of any positive law that is made to restrain them from this right granted by the Creator. Before I proceed further in commenting upon the case immediately before me, let me once more quote this English Judge, who wrote fifty years ago, when the Game Code was mild indeed, compared to the one of the present day. "Another violent alteration," says he, "of the English Constitution consisted in the depopulation of whole countries, for the purposes of the King's royal diversion; and subjecting both them, and all the ancient forests of the kingdom, to the unreasonable severities of forest laws imported from the continent, whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man. In the Saxon times, though no man was allowed to kill or chase the King's deer, yet he might start any game, pursue and kill it upon his own estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions vested the sole property of all the game in England in the King alone; and no man was entitled to disturb any fowl of the air, or any beast of the field, of such kinds as were specially reserved for the royal amusement of the Sovereign, without express license from the King, by a grant of a chase or free warren: and those franchises were granted as much with a view to preserve the breed of animals, as to indulge the subject. From a similar principle to which, though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung up a bastard slip, known by the name of the Game-Law, now arrived to and wantoning in its highest vigour: both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures; and both productive of the same tyranny to the commons: but with this difference; that the forest laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land, the game-laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor." (Book 4, Chapter 33.)

When this was written nothing was known of the present severity of the law. Judge Blackstone says that the Game Law was then wantoning in its highest vigour; what, then, would he have said, if any one had proposed to make it felony to resist a gamekeeper? He calls it tyranny to the commons, as it existed in his time; what would he have said of the present Code; which, so far from being thought a thing to be softened, is never so much as mentioned by those humane and gentle creatures, who are absolutely supporting a sort of reputation, and aiming at distinction in Society, in consequence of their incessant talk about softening the Criminal Code?

The Law may say what it will, but the feelings of mankind will never be in favour of this Code; and whenever it produces putting to death, it will, necessarily, excite horror. It is impossible to make men believe that any particular set of individuals should have a permanent property in wild creatures. That the owner of land should have a quiet possession of it is reasonable and right and necessary; it is also necessary that he should have the power of inflicting pecuniary punishment, in a moderate degree, upon such as trespass on his lands; but his right can go no further according to reason. If the law give him ample compensation for every damage that he sustains, in consequence of a trespass on his lands, what right has he to complain?

The law authorises the King, in case of invasion, or apprehended invasion, to call upon all his people to take up arms in defence of the country. The Militia Law compels every man, in his turn, to become a soldier. And upon what ground is this? There must be some reason for it, or else the law would be tyranny. The reason is, that every man has rights in the country to which he belongs; and that, therefore, it is his duty to defend the country. Some rights, too, beyond that of merely living, merely that of breathing the air. And then, I should be glad to know, what rights an Englishman has, if the pursuit of even wild animals is to be the ground of transporting him from his country? There is a sufficient punishment provided by the law of trespass; quite sufficient means to keep men off your land altogether! how can it be necessary, then, to have a law to transport them for coming upon your land? No, it is not for coming upon the land, it is for coming after the wild animals, which nature and reason tells them, are as much theirs as they are yours.

It is impossible for the people not to contrast the treatment of these two men at Winchester with the treatment of some gamekeepers that have killed or maimed the persons they call poachers; and it is equally impossible for the people, when they see these two men hanging on a gallows, after being recommended to mercy, not to remember the almost instant pardon, given to the exciseman, who was not recommended to mercy, and who was found guilty of wilful murder in the County of Sussex!

It is said, and, I believe truly, that there are more persons imprisoned in England for offences against the game-laws, than there are persons imprisoned in France (with more than twice the population) for all sorts of offences put together. When there was a loud outcry against the cruelties committed on the priests and the seigneurs, by the people of France, Arthur Young bade them remember the cruelties committed on the people by the game-laws, and to bear in mind how many had been made galley-slaves for having killed, or tried to kill, partridges, pheasants, and hares!

However, I am aware that it is quite useless to address observations of this sort to you. I am quite aware of that; and yet, there are circumstances, in your present situation, which, one would think, ought to make you not very gay upon the hanging of the two men at Winchester. It delights me, I assure you, to see the situation that you are in; and I shall, therefore, now, once more, and for the last time, address you upon that subject. We all remember how haughty, how insolent you have been. We all bear in mind your conduct for the last thirty-five years; and the feeling of pleasure at your present state is as general as it is just. In my ten Letters to you, I told you that you would lose your estates. Those of you who have any capacity, except that which is necessary to enable you to kill wild animals, see this now, as clearly as I do; and yet you evince no intention to change your courses. You hang on with unrelenting grasp; and cry "pauper" and "poacher" and "radical" and "lower orders" with as much insolence as ever! It is always thus: men like you may be convinced of error, but they never change their conduct. They never become just because they are convinced that they have been unjust: they must have a great deal more than that conviction to make them just.

* * * * *

Such was what I then addressed to the Landlords. How well it fits the present time! They are just in the same sort of mess, now, that they were in 1822. But, there is this most important difference, that the paper-money cannot now be put out, in a quantity sufficient to save them, without producing not only a "late panic," worse than the last, but, in all probability, a total blowing up of the whole system, game-laws, new trespass-laws, tread-mill, Sunday tolls, six-acts, sun-set and sun-rise laws, apple-felony laws, select-vestry laws, and all the whole THING, root and trunk and branch! Aye, not sparing, perhaps, even the tent, or booth of induction, at Draycot Foliot! Good Lord! how should we be able to live without game-laws! And tread-mills, then? And Sunday-tolls? How should we get on without pensions, sinecures, tithes, and the other "glorious institutions" of this "mighty empire"? Let us turn, however, from the thought; but, bearing this in mind, if you please, Messieurs the game-people; that if, no matter in what shape and under what pretence; if, I tell you, paper be put out again, sufficient to raise the price of a Southdown ewe to the last year's mark, the whole system goes to atoms. I tell you that; mind it; and look sharp about you, O ye fat parsons; for tithes and half-pay will, be you assured, never, from that day, again go in company into parson's pocket.

In this North of Hampshire, as everywhere else, the churches and all other things exhibit indubitable marks of decay. There are along under the north side of that chain of hills, which divide Hampshire from Berkshire, in this part, taking into Hampshire about two or three miles wide of the low ground along under the chain, eleven churches along in a string in about fifteen miles, the chancels of which would contain a great many more than all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, sitting at their ease with plenty of room. How should this be otherwise, when, in the parish of Burghclere, one single farmer holds by lease, under Lord Carnarvon, as one farm, the lands that men, now living, can remember to have formed fourteen farms, bringing up, in a respectable way, fourteen families. In some instances these small farmhouses and homesteads are completely gone; in others the buildings remain, but in a tumble-down state; in others the house is gone, leaving the barn for use as a barn or as a cattle-shed; in others the out-buildings are gone, and the house, with rotten thatch, broken windows, rotten door-sills, and all threatening to fall, remains as the dwelling of a half-starved and ragged family of labourers, the grand-children, perhaps, of the decent family of small farmers that formerly lived happily in this very house.

This, with few exceptions, is the case all over England; and, if we duly consider the nature and tendency of the hellish system of taxing, of funding, and of paper-money, it must do so. Then, in this very parish of Burghclere, there was, until a few months ago, a famous cock-parson, the "Honourable and Reverend" George Herbert, who had grafted the parson upon the soldier and the justice upon the parson; for he died, a little while ago, a half-pay officer in the army, rector of two parishes, and chairman of the quarter sessions of the county of Hants!! Mr. HONE gave us, in his memorable "House that Jack built," a portrait of the "Clerical Magistrate." Could not he, or somebody else, give us a portrait of the military and of the naval parson? For such are to be found all over the kingdom. Wherever I go, I hear of them. And yet, there sits Burdett, and even Sir Bobby of the Borough, and say not a word upon the subject! This is the case: the King dismissed Sir Bobby from the half-pay list, scratched his name out, turned him off, stopped his pay. Sir Bobby complained, alleging, that the half-pay was a reward for past services. No, no, said the Ministers: it is a retaining fee for future services. Now, the law is, and the Parliament declared, in the case of parson Horne Tooke, that once a parson always a parson, and that a parson cannot, of course, again serve as an officer under the crown. Yet these military and naval parsons have "a retaining fee for future military and naval services!" Never was so barefaced a thing before heard of in the world. And yet there sits Sir Bobby, stripped of his "retaining fee," and says not a word about the matter; and there sit the big Whigs, who gave Sir Bobby the subscription, having sons, brothers, and other relations, military and naval parsons, and the big Whigs, of course, bid Sir Bobby (albeit given enough to twattle) hold his tongue upon the subject; and there sit Mr. Wetherspoon (I think it is), and the rest of Sir Bobby's Rump, toasting "the independence of the Borough and its member!"

"That's our case," as the lawyers say: match it if you can, devil, in all your roamings up and down throughout the earth! I have often been thinking, and, indeed, expecting, to see Sir Bobby turn parson himself, as the likeliest way to get back his half-pay. If he should have "a call," I do hope we shall have him, for parson at Kensington; and, as an inducement, I promise him, that I will give him a good thumping Easter-offering.

In former RIDES, and especially in 1821 and 1822, I described very fully this part of Hampshire. The land is a chalk bottom, with a bed of reddish, stiff loam, full of flints, at top. In those parts where the bed of loam and flints is deep the land is arable or woods: where the bed of loam and flints is so shallow as to let the plough down to the chalk, the surface is downs. In the deep and long valleys, where there is constantly, or occasionally, a stream of water, the top soil is blackish, and the surface meadows. This has been the distribution from all antiquity, except that, in ancient times, part of that which is now downs and woods was corn-land, as we know from the marks of the plough. And yet the Scotch fellows would persuade us, that there were scarcely any inhabitants in England before it had the unspeakable happiness to be united to that fertile, warm, and hospitable country, where the people are so well off that they are above having poor-rates!

The tops of the hills here are as good corn-land as any other part; and it is all excellent corn-land, and the fields and woods singularly beautiful. Never was there what may be called a more hilly country, and all in use. Coming from Burghclere, you come up nearly a mile of steep hill, from the top of which you can see all over the country, even to the Isle of Wight; to your right a great part of Wiltshire; into Surrey on your left; and, turning round, you see, lying below you, the whole of Berkshire, great part of Oxfordshire, and part of Gloucestershire. This chain of lofty hills was a great favourite with Kings and rulers in ancient times. At Highclere, at Combe, and at other places, there are remains of great encampments, or fortifications; and Kingsclere was a residence of the Saxon Kings, and continued to be a royal residence long after the Norman Kings came. KING JOHN, when residing at Kingsclere, founded one of the charities which still exists in the town of Newbury, which is but a few miles from Kingsclere.

From the top of this lofty chain, you come to Uphusband (or the Upper Hurstbourn) over two miles or more of ground, descending in the way that the body of a snake descends (when he is going fast) from the high part, near the head, down to the tail; that is to say, over a series of hill and dell, but the dell part going constantly on increasing upon the hilly part, till you come down to this village; and then you, continuing on (southward) towards Andover, go up, directly, half a mile of hill so steep, as to make it very difficult for an ordinary team with a load to take that load up it. So this Up-hurstbourn (called so because higher up the valley than the other Hurstbourns), the flat part of the road to which, from the north, comes in between two side-hills, is in as narrow and deep a dell as any place that I ever saw.

The houses of the village are, in great part, scattered about, and are amongst very lofty and fine trees; and, from many, many points round about, from the hilly fields, now covered with the young wheat, or with scarcely less beautiful sainfoin, the village is a sight worth going many miles to see. The lands, too, are pretty beyond description. These chains of hills make, below them, an endless number of lower hills, of varying shapes and sizes and aspects and of relative state as to each other; while the surface presents, in the size and form of the fields, in the woods, the hedgerows, the sainfoin, the young wheat, the turnips, the tares, the fallows, the sheep-folds and the flocks, and, at every turn of your head, a fresh and different set of these; this surface all together presents that which I, at any rate, could look at with pleasure for ever. Not a sort of country that I like so well as when there are downs and a broader valley and more of meadow; but a sort of country that I like next to that; for, here, as there, there are no ditches, no water-furrows, no dirt, and never any drought to cause inconvenience. The chalk is at bottom, and it takes care of all. The crops of wheat have been very good here this year, and those of barley not very bad. The sainfoin has given a fine crop of the finest sort of hay in the world, and, this year, without a drop of wet.

I wish, that, in speaking of this pretty village (which I always return to with additional pleasure), I could give a good account of the state of those, without whose labour there would be neither corn nor sainfoin nor sheep. I regret to say, that my account of this matter, if I give it truly, must be a dismal account indeed! For I have, in no part of England, seen the labouring people so badly off as they are here. This has made so much impression on me, that I shall enter fully into the matter with names, dates, and all the particulars in the IVth Number of the "POOR MAN'S FRIEND." This is one of the great purposes for which I take these "Rides." I am persuaded, that, before the day shall come when my labours must cease, I shall have mended the meals of millions. I may over-rate the effects of my endeavours; but, this being my persuasion, I should be guilty of a great neglect of duty, were I not to use those endeavours.

Andover, Sunday, 15th October.

I went to Weyhill, yesterday, to see the close of the hop and of the cheese fair; for, after the sheep, these are the principal articles. The crop of hops has been, in parts where they are grown, unusually large and of super-excellent quality. The average price of the Farnham hops has been, as nearly as I can ascertain, seven pounds for a hundredweight; that of Kentish hops, five pounds, and that of the Hampshire and Surrey hops (other than those of Farnham), about five pounds also. The prices are, considering the great weight of the crop, very good; but, if it had not been for the effects of "late panic" (proceeding, as Baring said, from a "plethora of money,") these prices would have been a full third, if not nearly one half, higher; for, though the crop has been so large and so good, there was hardly any stock on hand; the country was almost wholly without hops.

As to cheese, the price, considering the quantity, has been not one half so high as it was last year. The fall in the positive price has been about 20 per cent., and the quantity made in 1826 has not been above two-thirds as great as that made in 1825. So that, here is a fall of one-half in real relative price; that is to say, the farmer, while he has the same rent to pay that he paid last year, has only half as much money to receive for cheese, as he received for cheese last year; and observe, on some farms, cheese is almost the only saleable produce.

After the fair was over, yesterday, I came down from the Hill (3 miles) to this town of Andover; which has, within the last 20 days, been more talked of, in other parts of the kingdom, than it ever was before from the creation of the world to the beginning of those 20 days. The Thomas Asheton Smiths and the Sir John Pollens, famous as they have been under the banners of the Old Navy Purser, George Rose, and his successors, have never, even since the death of poor Turner, been half so famous, they and this Corporation, whom they represent, as they have been since the Meeting which they held here, which ended in their defeat and confusion, pointing them out as worthy of that appellation of "Poor Devils," which Pollen thought proper to give to those labourers without whose toil his estate would not be worth a single farthing.

Having laid my plan to sleep at Andover last night, I went with two Farnham friends, Messrs. Knowles and West, to dine at the ordinary at the George Inn, which is kept by one Sutton, a rich old fellow, who wore a round-skirted sleeved fustian waistcoat, with a dirty white apron tied round his middle, and with no coat on; having a look the eagerest and the sharpest that I ever saw in any set of features in my whole life-time; having an air of authority and of mastership, which, to a stranger, as I was, seemed quite incompatible with the meanness of his dress and the vulgarity of his manners; and there being, visible to every beholder, constantly going on in him a pretty even contest between the servility of avarice and the insolence of wealth. A great part of the farmers and other fair-people having gone off home, we found preparations made for dining only about ten people. But, after we sat down, and it was seen that we designed to dine, guests came in apace, the preparations were augmented, and as many as could dine came and dined with us.

After the dinner was over, the room became fuller and fuller; guests came in from the other inns, where they had been dining, till, at last, the room became as full as possible in every part, the door being opened, the door-way blocked up, and the stairs, leading to the room, crammed from bottom to top. In this state of things, Mr. Knowles, who was our chairman, gave my health, which, of course, was followed by a speech; and, as the reader will readily suppose, to have an opportunity of making a speech was the main motive for my going to dine at an inn, at any hour, and especially at seven o'clock at night. In this speech, I, after descanting on the present devastating ruin, and on those successive acts of the Ministers and the Parliament by which such ruin had been produced; after remarking on the shuffling, the tricks, the contrivances from 1797 up to last March, I proceeded to offer to the company my reasons for believing, that no attempt would be made to relieve the farmers and others, by putting out the paper-money again, as in 1822, or by a bank-restriction. Just as I was stating these my reasons, on a prospective matter of such deep interest to my hearers, amongst whom were land-owners, land-renters, cattle and sheep dealers, hop and cheese producers and merchants, and even one, two or more, country bankers; just as I was engaged in stating my reasons for my opinion on a matter of such vital importance to the parties present, who were all listening to me with the greatest attention; just at this time, a noise was heard, and a sort of row was taking place in the passage, the cause of which was, upon inquiry, found to be no less a personage than our landlord, our host Sutton, who, it appeared, finding that my speech-making had cut off, or, at least, suspended, all intercourse between the dining, now become a drinking, room and the bar; who, finding that I had been the cause of a great "restriction in the exchange" of our money for his "neat" "genuine" commodities downstairs, and being, apparently, an ardent admirer of the "liberal" system of "free trade"; who, finding, in short, or, rather, supposing, that, if my tongue were not stopped from running, his taps would be, had, though an old man, fought, or, at least, forced his way up the thronged stairs and through the passage and door-way, into the room, and was (with what breath the struggle had left him) beginning to bawl out to me, when some one called to him, and told him that he was causing an interruption, to which he answered, that that was what he had come to do! And then he went on to say, in so many words, that my speech injured his sale of liquor!

The disgust and abhorrence, which such conduct could not fail to excite, produced, at first, a desire to quit the room and the house, and even a proposition to that effect. But, after a minute or so, to reflect, the company resolved not to quit the room but to turn him out of it who had caused the interruption; and the old fellow, finding himself tackled, saved the labour of shoving, or kicking, him out of the room, by retreating out of the door-way with all the activity of which he was master. After this I proceeded with my speech-making; and, this being ended, the great business of the evening, namely, drinking, smoking, and singing, was about to be proceeded in by a company, who had just closed an arduous and anxious week, who had before them a Sunday morning to sleep in, and whose wives were, for the far greater part, at a convenient distance. An assemblage of circumstances more auspicious to "free trade" in the "neat" and "genuine," has seldom occurred! But, now behold, the old fustian-jacketed fellow, whose head was, I think, powdered, took it into that head not only to lay "restrictions" upon trade, but to impose an absolute embargo; cut off entirely all supplies whatever from his bar to the room, as long as I remained in that room. A message to this effect, from the old fustian man, having been, through the waiter, communicated to Mr. Knowles, and he having communicated it to the company, I addressed the company in nearly these words: "Gentlemen, born and bred, as you know I was, on the borders of this county, and fond, as I am of bacon, Hampshire hogs have, with me, always been objects of admiration rather than of contempt; but that which has just happened here, induces me to observe, that this feeling of mine has been confined to hogs of four legs. For my part, I like your company too well to quit it. I have paid this fellow six shillings for the wing of a fowl, a bit of bread, and a pint of small beer. I have a right to sit here; I want no drink, and those who do, being refused it here, have a right to send to other houses for it, and to drink it here."

However, Mammon soon got the upper hand downstairs, all the fondness for "free trade" returned, and up came the old fustian-jacketed fellow, bringing pipes, tobacco, wine, grog, sling, and seeming to be as pleased as if he had just sprung a mine of gold! Nay, he, soon after this, came into the room with two gentlemen, who had come to him to ask where I was. He actually came up to me, making me a bow, and, telling me that those gentlemen wished to be introduced to me, he, with a fawning look, laid his hand upon my knee! "Take away your paw," said I, and, shaking the gentlemen by the hand, I said, "I am happy to see you, gentlemen, even though introduced by this fellow." Things now proceeded without interruption; songs, toasts, and speeches filled up the time, until half-past two o'clock this morning, though in the house of a landlord who receives the sacrament, but who, from his manifestly ardent attachment to the "liberal principles" of "free trade," would, I have no doubt, have suffered us, if we could have found money and throats and stomachs, to sit and sing and talk and drink until two o'clock of a Sunday afternoon instead of two o'clock of a Sunday morning. It was not politics; it was not personal dislike to me; for the fellow knew nothing of me. It was, as I told the company, just this: he looked upon their bodies as so many gutters to drain off the contents of his taps, and upon their purses as so many small heaps from which to take the means of augmenting his great one; and, finding that I had been, no matter how, the cause of suspending this work of "reciprocity," he wanted, and no matter how, to restore the reciprocal system to motion. All that I have to add is this: that the next time this old sharp-looking fellow gets six shillings from me, for a dinner, he shall, if he choose, cook me, in any manner that he likes, and season me with hand so unsparing as to produce in the feeders thirst unquenchable.

To-morrow morning we set off for the New Forest; and, indeed, we have lounged about here long enough. But, as some apology, I have to state, that, while I have been in a sort of waiting upon this great fair, where one hears, sees, and learns so much, I have been writing No. IV. of the "Poor Man's Friend," which, price twopence, is published once a month.

I see, in the London newspapers, accounts of dispatches from Canning! I thought that he went solely "on a party of pleasure!" So, the "dispatches" come to tell the King how the pleasure party gets on! No: what he is gone to Paris for is to endeavour to prevent the "Holy Allies" from doing anything which shall sink the English Government in the eyes of the world, and thereby favour the radicals, who are enemies of all "regular Government," and whose success in England would revive republicanism in France. This is my opinion. The subject, if I be right in my opinion, was too ticklish to be committed to paper: Granville Levison Gower (for that is the man that is now Lord Granville) was, perhaps, not thought quite a match for the French as a talker; and, therefore, the Captain of Eton, who, in 1817, said, that the "ever living luminary of British prosperity was only hidden behind a cloud;" and who, in 1819, said, that "Peel's Bill had set the currency question at rest for ever;" therefore the profound Captain is gone over to see what he can do.

But, Captain, a word in your ear: we do not care for the Bourbons any more than we do for you! My real opinion is, that there is nothing that can put England to rights, that will not shake the Bourbon Government. This is my opinion; but I defy the Bourbons to save, or to assist in saving, the present system in England, unless they and their friends will subscribe and pay off your debt for you, Captain of toad-eating and nonsensical and shoe-licking Eton! Let them pay off your debt for you, Captain; let the Bourbons and their allies do that; or they cannot save you; no, nor can they help you, even in the smallest degree.

Rumsey (Hampshire), Monday Noon, 16th Oct.

Like a very great fool, I, out of senseless complaisance, waited, this morning, to breakfast with the friends, at whose house we slept last night, at Andover. We thus lost two hours of dry weather, and have been justly punished by about an hour's ride in the rain. I settled on Lyndhurst as the place to lodge at to-night; so we are here, feeding our horses, drying our clothes, and writing the account of our journey. We came, as much as possible, all the way through the villages, and, almost all the way, avoided the turnpike-roads. From Andover to Stockbridge (about seven or eight miles) is, for the greatest part, an open corn and sheep country, a considerable portion of the land being downs. The wheat and rye and vetch and sainfoin fields look beautiful here; and, during the whole of the way from Andover to Rumsey, the early turnips of both kinds are not bad, and the stubble turnips very promising. The downs are green as meadows usually are in April. The grass is most abundant in all situations, where grass grows. From Stockbridge to Rumsey we came nearly by the river side, and had to cross the river several times. This, the River Teste, which, as I described, in my Ride of last November, begins at Uphusband, by springs, bubbling up, in March, out of the bed of that deep valley. It is at first a bourn, that is to say, a stream that runs only a part of the year, and is the rest of the year as dry as a road. About 5 miles from this periodical source, it becomes a stream all the year round. After winding about between the chalk hills, for many miles, first in a general direction towards the south-east, and then in a similar direction towards the south-west and south, it is joined by the little stream that rises just above and that passes through the town of Andover. It is, after this, joined by several other little streams, with names; and here, at Rumsey, it is a large and very fine river, famous, all the way down, for trout and eels, and both of the finest quality.

Lyndhurst (New Forest), Monday Evening, 16th October.

I have just time, before I go to bed, to observe that we arrived here, about 4 o'clock, over about 10 or 11 miles of the best road in the world, having a choice too, for the great part of the way, between these smooth roads and green sward. Just as we came out of Rumsey (or Romsey), and crossed our River Teste once more, we saw to our left, the sort of park, called Broadlands, where poor Charles Smith, who (as mentioned above) was hanged for shooting at (not killing) one Snellgrove, an assistant-gamekeeper of Lord Palmerston, who was then our Secretary at War, and who is in that office, I believe, now, though he is now better known as a Director of the grand Mining Joint-Stock Company, which shows the great industry of this Noble and "Right Honourable person," and also the great scope and the various nature and tendency of his talents. What would our old fathers of the "dark ages" have said, if they had been told, that their descendants would, at last, become so enlightened as to enable Jews and loan-jobbers to take away noblemen's estates by mere "watching the turn of the market," and to cause members, or, at least, one Member, of that "most Honourable, Noble, and Reverend Assembly," the King's Privy Council, in which he himself sits: so enlightened, I say, as to cause one of this "most Honourable and Reverend body" to become a Director in a mining speculation? How one pities our poor, "dark-age, bigoted" ancestors, who would, I dare say, have been as ready to hang a man for proposing such a "liberal" system as this, as they would have been to hang him for shooting at (not killing) an assistant game-keeper! Poor old fellows! How much they lost by not living in our enlightened times! I am here close by the Old Purser's son George Rose's!


RIDE: FROM LYNDHURST (NEW FOREST) TO BEAULIEU ABBEY; THENCE TO SOUTHAMPTON AND WESTON; THENCE TO BOTLEY, ALLINGTON, WEST END, NEAR HAMBLEDON; AND THENCE TO PETERSFIELD, THURSLEY, GODALMING.

But where is now the goodly audit ale? The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail? The farm which never yet was left on hand? The marsh reclaim'd to most improving land? The impatient hope of the expiring lease? The doubling rental? What an evil's peace! In vain the prize excites the ploughman's skill, In vain the Commons pass their patriot Bill; The Landed Interest--(you may understand The phrase much better leaving out the Land)-- The land self-interest groans from shore to shore, For fear that plenty should attain the poor. Up, up again, ye rents! exalt your notes, Or else the Ministry will lose their votes, And patriotism, so delicately nice, Her loaves will lower to the market price.

LORD BYRON, Age of Bronze.

Weston Grove, Wednesday, 18 Oct., 1826.

Yesterday, from Lyndhurst to this place, was a ride, including our round-abouts, of more than forty miles; but the roads the best in the world, one half of the way green turf; and the day as fine an one as ever came out of the heavens. We took in a breakfast, calculated for a long day's work, and for no more eating till night. We had slept in a room, the access to which was only through another sleeping room, which was also occupied; and, as I had got up about two o'clock at Andover, we went to bed, at Lyndhurst, about half-past seven o'clock. I was, of course, awake by three or four; I had eaten little over night; so that here lay I, not liking (even after day-light began to glimmer) to go through a chamber, where, by possibility, there might be "a lady" actually in bed; here lay I, my bones aching with lying in bed, my stomach growling for victuals, imprisoned by my modesty. But, at last, I grew impatient; for, modesty here or modesty there, I was not to be penned up and starved: so, after having shaved and dressed and got ready to go down, I thrusted George out a little before me into the other room; and through we pushed, previously resolving, of course, not to look towards the bed that was there. But, as the devil would have it, just as I was about the middle of the room, I, like Lot's wife, turned my head! All that I shall say is, first, that the consequences that befel her did not befal me, and, second, that I advise those, who are likely to be hungry in the morning, not to sleep in inner rooms; or, if they do, to take some bread and cheese in their pockets. Having got safe downstairs, I lost no time in inquiry after the means of obtaining a breakfast to make up for the bad fare of the previous day; and finding my landlady rather tardy in the work, and not, seemingly, having a proper notion of the affair, I went myself, and, having found a butcher's shop, bought a loin of small, fat, wether mutton, which I saw cut out of the sheep and cut into chops. These were brought to the inn; George and I ate about 2lb. out of the 5lb., and, while I was writing a letter, and making up my packet, to be ready to send from Southampton, George went out and found a poor woman to come and take away the rest of the loin of mutton; for our fastings of the day before enabled us to do this; and, though we had about forty miles to go, to get to this place (through the route that we intended to take), I had resolved, that we would go without any more purchase of victuals and drink this day also. I beg leave to suggest to my well-fed readers; I mean, those who have at their command more victuals and drink than they can possibly swallow; I beg to suggest to such, whether this would not be a good way for them all to find the means of bestowing charity? Some poet has said, that that which is given in charity gives a blessing on both sides; to the giver as well as the receiver. But I really think that if, in general, the food and drink given, came out of food and drink deducted from the usual quantity swallowed by the giver, the blessing would be still greater, and much more certain. I can speak for myself, at any rate. I hardly ever eat more than twice a day; when at home, never; and I never, if I can well avoid it, eat any meat later than about one or two o'clock in the day. I drink a little tea, or milk and water at the usual tea-time (about 7 o'clock); I go to bed at eight, if I can; I write or read, from about four to about eight, and then hungry as a hunter, I go to breakfast, eating as small a parcel of cold meat and bread as I can prevail upon my teeth to be satisfied with. I do just the same at dinner time. I very rarely taste garden-stuff of any sort. If any man can show me, that he has done, or can do, more work, bodily and mentally united; I say nothing about good health, for of that the public can know nothing; but I refer to the work: the public know, they see, what I can do, and what I actually have done, and what I do; and when any one has shown the public, that he has done, or can do, more, then I will advise my readers attend to him, on the subject of diet, and not to me. As to drink, the less the better; and mine is milk and water, or not-sour small beer, if I can get the latter; for the former I always can. I like the milk and water best; but I do not like much water; and, if I drink much milk, it loads and stupefies and makes me fat.

Having made all preparations for a day's ride, we set off, as our first point, for a station, in the Forest, called New Park, there to see something about plantations and other matters connected with the affairs of our prime cocks, the Surveyors of Woods and Forests and Crown Lands and Estates. But, before I go forward any further, I must just step back again to Rumsey, which we passed rather too hastily through on the 16th, as noticed in the RIDE that was published last week. This town was, in ancient times, a very grand place, though it is now nothing more than a decent market-town, without anything to entitle it to particular notice, except its church, which was the church of an Abbey Nunnery (founded more, I think, than a thousand years ago), and which church was the burial place of several of the Saxon Kings, and of "Lady Palmerstone," who, a few years ago, "died in child-birth"! What a mixture! But there was another personage buried here, and who was, it would seem, a native of the place; namely, Sir William Petty, the ancestor of the present Marquis of Lansdown. He was the son of a cloth-weaver, and was, doubtless, himself a weaver when young. He became a surgeon, was first in the service of Charles I.; then went into that of Cromwell, whom he served as physician-general to his army in Ireland (alas! poor Ireland), and, in this capacity, he resided at Dublin till Charles II. came, when he came over to London (having become very rich), was knighted by that profligate and ungrateful King, and he died in 1687, leaving a fortune of 15,000l. a year! This is what his biographers say. He must have made pretty good use of his time while physician-general to Cromwell's army, in poor Ireland! Petty by nature as well as by name, he got, from Cromwell, a "patent for double-writing, invented by him;" and he invented a "double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and tide, a model of which is still preserved in the library of the Royal Society," of which he was a most worthy member. His great art was, however, the amassing of money, and the getting of grants of lands in poor Ireland, in which he was one of the most successful of the English adventurers. I had, the other day, occasion to observe that the word Petty manifestly is the French word Petit, which means little; and that it is, in these days of degeneracy, pleasing to reflect that there is one family, at any rate, that "Old England" still boasts one family, which retains the character designated by its pristine name; a reflection that rushed with great force into my mind, when, in the year 1822, I heard the present noble head of the family say, in the House of Lords, that he thought that a currency of paper, convertible into gold, was the best and most solid and safe, especially since Platina had been discovered! "Oh, God!" exclaimed I to myself, as I stood listening and admiring "below the bar;" "Oh, great God! there it is, there it is, still running in the blood, that genius which discovered the art of double writing, and of making ships with double-bottoms to sail against wind and tide!" This noble and profound descendant of Cromwell's army-physician has now seen that "paper, convertible into gold," is not quite so "solid and safe" as he thought it was! He has now seen what a "late panic" is! And he might, if he were not so very well worthy of his family name, openly confess that he was deceived, when, in 1819, he, as one of the Committee, who reported in favour of Peel's Bill, said that the country could pay the interest of the debt in gold! Talk of a change of Ministry, indeed! What is to be gained by putting this man in the place of any of those who are in power now?

To come back now to Lyndhurst, we had to go about three miles to New Park, which is a farm in the New Forest, and nearly in the centre of it. We got to this place about nine o'clock. There is a good and large mansion-house here, in which the "Commissioners" of Woods and Forests reside, when they come into the Forest. There is a garden, a farm-yard, a farm, and a nursery. The place looks like a considerable gentleman's seat; the house stands in a sort of park, and you can see that a great deal of expense has been incurred in levelling the ground, and making it pleasing to the eye of my lords "the Commissioners." My business here was to see, whether anything had been done towards the making of Locust plantations. I went first to Lyndhurst to make inquiries; but I was there told that New Park was the place, and the only place, at which to get information on the subject; and I was told, further, that the Commissioners were now at New Park; that is to say those experienced tree planters, Messrs. Arbuthnot, Dawkins, and Company. Gad! thought I, I am here coming in close contact with a branch, or at least a twig, of the great THING itself! When I heard this, I was at breakfast, and, of course, dressed for the day. I could not, out of my extremely limited wardrobe, afford a clean shirt for the occasion; and so, off we set, just as we were, hoping that their worships, the nation's tree planters, would, if they met with us, excuse our dress, when they considered the nature of our circumstances. When we came to the house, we were stopped by a little fence and fastened gate. I got off my horse, gave him to George to hold, went up to the door, and rang the bell. Having told my business to a person, who appeared to be a foreman, or bailiff, he, with great civility, took me into a nursery which is at the back of the house; and I soon drew from him the disappointing fact that my lords, the tree-planters, had departed the day before! I found, as to Locusts, that a patch were sowed last spring, which I saw, which are from one foot to four feet high, and very fine and strong, and are, in number, about enough to plant two acres of ground, the plants at four feet apart each way. I found that, last fall, some few Locusts had been put out into plantations of other trees already made; but that they had not thriven, and had been barked by the hares! But a little bunch of these trees (same age), which were planted in the nursery, ought to convince my lords, the tree-planters, that, if they were to do what they ought to do, the public would very soon be owners of fine plantations of Locusts, for the use of the navy. And, what are the hares kept for here? Who eats them? What right have these Commissioners to keep hares here, to eat up the trees? Lord Folkestone killed his hares before he made his plantation of Locusts; and, why not kill the hares in the people's forest; for the people's it is, and that these Commissioners ought always to remember. And then, again, why this farm? What is it for? Why, the pretence for it is this: that it is necessary to give the deer hay, in winter, because the lopping down of limbs of trees for them to browse (as used to be the practice) is injurious to the growth of timber. That will be a very good reason for having a hay-farm, when my lords shall have proved two things; first, that hay, in quantity equal to what is raised here, could not be bought for a twentieth part of the money that this farm and all its trappings cost; and, second, that there ought to be any deer kept! What are these deer for? Who are to eat them? Are they for the Royal Family? Why, there are more deer bred in Richmond Park alone, to say nothing of Bushy Park, Hyde Park, and Windsor Park; there are more deer bred in Richmond Park alone, than would feed all the branches of the Royal Family and all their households all the year round, if every soul of them ate as hearty as ploughmen, and if they never touched a morsel of any kind of meat but venison! For what, and for whom, then, are deer kept, in the New Forest; and why an expense of hay-farm, of sheds, of racks, of keepers, of lodges, and other things attending the deer and the game; an expense, amounting to more money annually than would have given relief to all the starving manufacturers in the North! And again I say, who is all this venison and game for? There is more game even in Kew Gardens than the Royal Family can want! And, in short, do they ever taste, or even hear of, any game, or any venison, from the New Forest?

What a pretty thing here is, then! Here is another deep bite into us by the long and sharp-fanged Aristocracy, who so love Old Sarum! Is there a man who will say that this is right? And that the game should be kept, too, to eat up trees, to destroy plantations, to destroy what is first paid for the planting of! And that the public should pay keepers to preserve this game! And that the people should be transported if they go out by night to catch the game that they pay for feeding! Blessed state of an Aristocracy! It is pity that it has got a nasty, ugly, obstinate DEBT to deal with! It might possibly go on for ages, deer and all, were it not for this DEBT. This New Forest is a piece of property, as much belonging to the public as the Custom-House at London is. There is no man, however poor, who has not a right in it. Every man is owner of a part of the deer, the game, and of the money that goes to the keepers; and yet, any man may be transported, if he go out by night to catch any part of this game! We are compelled to pay keepers for preserving game to eat up the trees that we are compelled to pay people to plant! Still however there is comfort; we might be worse off; for the Turks made the Tartars pay a tax called tooth-money; that is to say, they eat up the victuals of the Tartars, and then made them pay for the use of their teeth. No man can say that we are come quite to that yet: and, besides, the poor Tartars had no DEBT, no blessed Debt to hold out hope to them.

The same person (a very civil and intelligent man) that showed me the nursery, took me, in my way, back, through some plantations of oaks, which have been made amongst fir-trees. It was, indeed, a plantation of Scotch firs, about twelve years old, in rows, at six feet apart. Every third row of firs was left, and oaks were (about six years ago) planted instead of the firs that were grubbed up; and the winter shelter, that the oaks have received from the remaining firs, has made them grow very finely, though the land is poor. Other oaks planted in the open, twenty years ago, and in land deemed better, are not nearly so good. However, these oaks, between the firs, will take fifty or sixty good years to make them timber, and, until they be timber, they are of very little use; whereas the same ground, planted with Locusts (and the hares of "my lords" kept down), would, at this moment, have been worth fifty pounds an acre. What do "my lords" care about this? For them, for "my lords," the New Forest would be no better than it is now; no, nor so good as it is now; for there would be no hares for them.

From New Park, I was bound to Beaulieu Abbey, and I ought to have gone in a south-easterly direction, instead of going back to Lyndhurst, which lay in precisely the opposite direction. My guide through the plantations was not apprised of my intended route, and, therefore, did not instruct me. Just before we parted, he asked me my name: I thought it lucky that he had not asked it before! When we got nearly back to Lyndhurst, we found that we had come three miles out of our way; indeed, it made six miles altogether; for we were, when we got to Lyndhurst, three miles further from Beaulieu Abbey than we were when we were at New Park. We wanted, very much, to go to the site of this ancient and famous Abbey, of which the people of the New Forest seemed to know very little. They call the place Bewley, and even in the maps it is called Bauley. Ley, in the Saxon language, means place, or rather open place; so that they put ley in place of lieu, thus beating the Normans out of some part of the name at any rate. I wished, besides, to see a good deal of this New Forest. I had been, before, from Southampton to Lyndhurst, from Lyndhurst to Lymington, from Lymington to Sway. I had now come in on the north of Minstead from Romsey, so that I had seen the north of the Forest and all the west side of it, down to the sea. I had now been to New Park and had got back to Lyndhurst; so that, if I rode across the Forest down to Beaulieu, I went right across the middle of it, from north-west to south-east. Then, if I turned towards Southampton, and went to Dipten and on to Ealing, I should see, in fact, the whole of this Forest, or nearly the whole of it.

We therefore started, or, rather, turned away from Lyndhurst, as soon as we got back to it, and went about six miles over a heath, even worse than Bagshot-Heath; as barren as it is possible for land to be. A little before we came to the village of Beaulieu (which, observe, the people call Beuley), we went through a wood, chiefly of beech, and that beech seemingly destined to grow food for pigs, of which we saw, during this day, many, many thousands. I should think that we saw at least a hundred hogs to one deer. I stopped, at one time, and counted the hogs and pigs just round about me, and they amounted to 140, all within 50 or 60 yards of my horse. After a very pleasant ride, on land without a stone in it, we came down to the Beaulieu river, the highest branch of which rises at the foot of a hill, about a mile and a half to the north-east of Lyndhurst. For a great part of the way down to Beaulieu it is a very insignificant stream. At last, however, augmented by springs from the different sand-hills, it becomes a little river, and has, on the sides of it, lands which were, formerly, very beautiful meadows. When it comes to the village of Beaulieu, it forms a large pond of a great many acres; and on the east side of this pond is the spot where this famous Abbey formerly stood, and where the external walls of which, or a large part of them, are now actually standing. We went down on the western side of the river. The Abbey stood, and the ruins stand, on the eastern side.

Happening to meet a man, before I got into the village, I, pointing with my whip across towards the Abbey, said to the man, "I suppose there is a bridge down here to get across to the Abbey." "That's not the Abbey, Sir," says he: "the Abbey is about four miles further on." I was astonished to hear this; but he was very positive; said that some people called it the Abbey; but that the Abbey was further on; and was at a farm occupied by farmer John Biel. Having chapter and verse for it, as the saying is, I believed the man; and pushed on towards farmer John Biel's, which I found, as he had told me, at the end of about four miles. When I got there (not having, observe, gone over the water to ascertain that the other was the spot where the Abbey stood), I really thought, at first, that this must have been the site of the Abbey of Beaulieu; because, the name meaning fine place, this was a thousand times finer place than that where the Abbey, as I afterwards found, really stood. After looking about it for some time, I was satisfied that it had not been an Abbey; but the place is one of the finest that ever was seen in this world. It stands at about half a mile's distance from the water's edge at high-water mark, and at about the middle of the space along the coast, from Calshot castle to Lymington haven. It stands, of course, upon a rising ground; it has a gentle slope down to the water. To the right, you see Hurst castle, and that narrow passage called the Needles, I believe; and, to the left, you see Spithead, and all the ships that are sailing or lie anywhere opposite Portsmouth. The Isle of Wight is right before you, and you have in view, at one and the same time, the towns of Yarmouth, Newton, Cowes and Newport, with all the beautiful fields of the island, lying upon the side of a great bank before, and going up the ridge of hills in the middle of the island. Here are two little streams, nearly close to the ruin, which filled ponds for fresh-water fish; while there was the Beaulieu river at about half a mile or three quarters of a mile to the left, to bring up the salt-water fish. The ruins consist of part of the walls of a building about 200 feet long and about 40 feet wide. It has been turned into a barn, in part, and the rest into cattle-sheds, cow-pens, and inclosures and walls to inclose a small yard. But there is another ruin, which was a church or chapel, and which stands now very near to the farm-house of Mr. John Biel, who rents the farm of the Duchess of Buccleugh, who is now the owner of the abbey-lands and of the lands belonging to this place. The little church or chapel, of which I have just been speaking, appears to have been a very beautiful building. A part only of its walls is standing; but you see, by what remains of the arches, that it was finished in a manner the most elegant and expensive of the day in which it was built. Part of the outside of the building is now surrounded by the farmer's garden: the interior is partly a pig-stye and partly a goose-pen. Under that arch which had once seen so many rich men bow their heads, we entered into the goose-pen, which is by no means one of the nicest concerns in the world. Beyond the goose-pen was the pig-stye, and in it a hog, which, when fat, will weigh about 30 score, actually rubbing his shoulders against a little sort of column which had supported the font and its holy water. The farmer told us that there was a hole, which, indeed, we saw, going down into the wall, or rather, into the column where the font had stood. And he told us that many attempts had been made to bring water to fill that hole, but that it never had been done.

Mr. Biel was very civil to us. As far as related to us, he performed the office of hospitality, which was the main business of those who formerly inhabited the spot. He asked us to dine with him, which we declined, for want of time; but, being exceedingly hungry, we had some bread and cheese and some very good beer. The farmer told me that a great number of gentlemen had come there to look at that place; but that he never could find out what the place had been, or what the place at Beuley had been. I told him that I would, when I got to London, give him an account of it; that I would write the account down, and send it down to him. He seemed surprised that I should make such a promise, and expressed his wish not to give me so much trouble. I told him not to say a word about the matter, for that his bread and cheese and beer were so good that they deserved a full history to be written of the place where they had been eaten and drunk. "God bless me, Sir, no, no!" I said, I will, upon my soul, farmer. I now left him, very grateful on our part for his hospitable reception, and he, I dare say, hardly being able to believe his own ears, at the generous promise that I had made him, which promise, however, I am now about to fulfil. I told the farmer a little, upon the spot, to begin with. I told him that the name was all wrong: that it was no Beuley but Beaulieu; and that Beaulieu meant fine place; and I proved this to him, in this manner. You know, said I, farmer, that when a girl has a sweet-heart, people call him her beau? Yes, said he, so they do. Very well. You know, also, that we say, sometimes, you shall have this in lieu of that; and that when we say lieu, we mean in place of that. Now the beau means fine, as applied to the young man, and the lieu means place; and thus it is, that the name of this place is Beaulieu, as it is so fine as you see it is. He seemed to be wonderfully pleased with the discovery; and we parted, I believe, with hearty good wishes on his part, and, I am sure, with very sincere thanks on my part.

The Abbey of Beaulieu was founded in the year 1204, by King John, for thirty monks of the reformed Benedictine Order. It was dedicated to the blessed Virgin Mary; it flourished until the year 1540, when it was suppressed, and the lands confiscated, in the reign of Henry VIII. Its revenues were, at that time, four hundred and twenty-eight pounds, six shillings and eight pence a year, making, in money of the present day, upwards of eight thousand five hundred pounds a year. The lands and the abbey, and all belonging to it, were granted by the king, to one Thomas Wriothesley, who was a court-pander of that day. From him it passed by sale, by will, by marriage or by something or another, till, at last, it has got, after passing through various hands, into the hands of the Duchess of Buccleugh. So much for the abbey; and, now, as for the ruins on the farm of Mr. John Biel: they were the dwelling-place of Knights' Templars, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The building they inhabited was called an Hospital, and their business was to relieve travellers, strangers, and persons in distress; and, if called upon, to accompany the king in his wars to uphold christianity. Their estate was also confiscated by Henry VIII. It was worth, at the time of being confiscated, upwards of two thousand pounds a year, money of the present day. This establishment was founded a little before the Abbey of Beaulieu was founded; and it was this foundation and not the other that gave the name of Beaulieu to both establishments. The Abbey is not situated in a very fine place. The situation is low; the lands above it rather a swamp than otherwise; pretty enough altogether; but by no means a fine place. The Templars had all the reason in the world to give the name of Beaulieu to their place. And it is by no means surprising that the monks were willing to apply it to their Abbey.

Now, farmer John Biel, I dare say that you are a very good Protestant; and I am a monstrous good Protestant too. We cannot bear the Pope, nor "they there priests that makes men confess their sins and go down upon their marrow-bones before them." But, master Biel, let us give the devil his due; and let us not act worse by those Roman Catholics (who by-the-bye were our forefathers) than we are willing to act by the devil himself. Now then, here were a set of monks, and also a set of Knights' Templars. Neither of them could marry; of course, neither of them could have wives and families. They could possess no private property; they could bequeath nothing; they could own nothing; but that which they owned in common with the rest of their body. They could hoard no money; they could save nothing. Whatever they received, as rent for their lands, they must necessarily spend upon the spot, for they never could quit that spot. They did spend it all upon the spot: they kept all the poor; Beuley, and all round about Beuley, saw no misery, and had never heard the damned name of pauper pronounced, as long as those monks and Templars continued! You and I are excellent Protestants, farmer John Biel; you and I have often assisted on the 5th of November to burn Guy Fawkes, the Pope and the Devil. But, you and I, farmer John Biel, would much rather be life holders under monks and Templars, than rack-renters under duchesses. The monks and the knights were the lords of their manors; but the farmers under them were not rack-renters; the farmers under them held by lease of lives, continued in the same farms from father to son for hundreds of years; they were real yeomen, and not miserable rack-renters, such as now till the land of this once happy country, and who are little better than the drivers of the labourers, for the profit of the landlords. Farmer John Biel, what the Duchess of Buccleugh does, you know, and I do not. She may, for anything that I know to the contrary, leave her farms on lease of lives, with rent so very moderate and easy, as for the farm to be half as good as the farmer's own, at any rate. The Duchess may, for anything that I know to the contrary, feed all the hungry, clothe all the naked, comfort all the sick, and prevent the hated name of pauper from being pronounced in the district of Beuley; her Grace may, for anything that I know to the contrary, make poor-rates to be wholly unnecessary and unknown in your country; she may receive, lodge, and feed the stranger; she may, in short, employ the rents of this fine estate of Beuley, to make the whole district happy; she may not carry a farthing of the rents away from the spot; and she may consume, by herself, and her own family and servants, only just as much as is necessary to the preservation of their life and health. Her Grace may do all this; I do not say or insinuate that she does not do it all; but, Protestant here or Protestant there, farmer John Biel, this I do say, that unless her Grace do all this, the monks and the Templars were better for Beuley than her Grace.

From the former station of the Templars, from real Beaulieu of the New Forest, we came back to the village of Beaulieu, and there crossed the water to come on towards Southampton. Here we passed close along under the old abbey walls, a great part of which are still standing. There is a mill here which appears to be turned by the fresh water, but the fresh water falls, here, into the salt water, as at the village of Botley. We did not stop to go about the ruins of the abbey; for you seldom make much out by minute inquiry. It is the political history of these places; or, at least, their connexion with political events, that is interesting. Just about the banks of this little river, there are some woods and coppices, and some corn-land; but, at the distance of half a mile from the water-side, we came out again upon the intolerable heath, and went on for seven or eight miles over that heath, from the village of Beaulieu to that of Marchwood. Having a list of trees and enclosed lands away to our right all the way along, which list of trees from the south-west side of that arm of the sea which goes from Chalshot castle to Redbridge, passing by Southampton, which lies on the north-east side. Never was a more barren tract of land than these seven or eight miles. We had come seven miles across the forest in another direction in the morning; so that a poorer spot than this New Forest, there is not in all England; nor, I believe, in the whole world. It is more barren and miserable than Bagshot heath. There are less fertile spots in it, in proportion to the extent of each. Still, it is so large, it is of such great extent, being, if moulded into a circle, not so little, I believe, as 60 or 70 miles in circumference, that it must contain some good spots of land, and, if properly and honestly managed, those spots must produce a prodigious quantity of timber. It is a pretty curious thing, that, while the admirers of the paper-system are boasting of our "waust improvements Ma'am," there should have been such a visible and such an enormous dilapidation in all the solid things of the country. I have, in former parts of this ride, stated, that, in some counties, while the parsons have been pocketing the amount of the tithes and of the glebe, they have suffered the parsonage-houses either to fall down and to be lost, brick by brick, and stone by stone, or to become such miserable places as to be unfit for anything bearing the name of a gentleman to live in; I have stated, and I am at any time ready to prove, that, in some counties, this is the case in more than one half of the parishes!

And now, amidst all these "waust improvements," let us see how the account of timber stands in the New Forest! In the year 1608, a survey of the timber, in the New Forest, was made, when there were loads of oak timber fit for the navy, 315,477. Mark that, reader. Another survey was taken in the year 1783; that is to say, in the glorious Jubilee reign. And, when there were, in this same New Forest, loads of oak timber fit for the navy, 20,830. "Waust improvements, Ma'am," under "the Pilot that weathered the storm," and in the reign of Jubilee! What the devil, some one would say, could have become of all this timber? Does the reader observe that there were three hundred and fifteen thousand, four hundred and seventy-seven loads? and does he observe that a load is fifty-two cubic feet? Does the reader know what is the price of this load of timber? I suppose it is now, taking in lop, top and bark, and bought upon the spot (timber fit for the navy, mind!), ten pounds a load at the least. But let us suppose that it has been, upon an average, since the year 1608, just the time that the Stuarts were mounting the throne; let us suppose that it has been, on an average, four pounds a load. Here is a pretty tough sum of money. This must have gone into the pockets of somebody. At any rate, if we had the same quantity of timber now that we had when the Protestant Reformation took place, or even when Old Betsy turned up her toes, we should be now three millions of money richer than we are; not in bills; not in notes payable to bearer on demand; not in Scotch "cash credits;" not, in short, in lies, falseness, impudence, downright blackguard cheatery and mining shares and "Greek cause" and the devil knows what.

I shall have occasion to return to this New Forest, which is, in reality, though, in general, a very barren district, a much more interesting object to Englishmen than are the services of my Lord Palmerston, and the warlike undertakings of Burdett, Galloway and Company; but I cannot quit this spot, even for the present, without asking the Scotch population-mongers and Malthus and his crew, and especially George Chalmers, if he should yet be creeping about upon the face of the earth, what becomes of all their notions of the scantiness of the ancient population of England; what becomes of all these notions, of all their bundles of ridiculous lies about the fewness of the people in former times; what becomes of them all, if historians have told us one word of truth, with regard to the formation of the New Forest, by William the Conqueror. All the historians say, every one of them says, that this King destroyed several populous towns and villages in order to make this New Forest.


RIDE: FROM WESTON, NEAR SOUTHAMPTON, TO KENSINGTON.

Western Grove, 18th Oct. 1826.

I broke off abruptly, under this same date, in my last Register, when speaking of William the Conqueror's demolishing of towns and villages to make the New Forest; and I was about to show that all the historians have told us lies the most abominable about this affair of the New Forest; or, that the Scotch writers on population, and particularly Chalmers, have been the greatest of fools, or the most impudent of impostors. I, therefore, now resume this matter, it being, in my opinion, a matter of great interest, at a time, when, in order to account for the present notoriously bad living of the people of England, it is asserted, that they are become greatly more numerous than they formerly were. This would be no defence of the Government, even if the fact were so; but, as I have, over and over again, proved, the fact is false; and, to this I challenge denial, that either churches and great mansions and castles were formerly made without hands; or, England was, seven hundred years ago, much more populous than it is now. But what has the formation of the New Forest to do with this? A great deal; for the historians tell us that, in order to make this Forest, William the Conqueror destroyed "many populous towns and villages, and thirty-six parish churches!" The devil he did! How populous, then, good God, must England have been at that time, which was about the year 1090; that is to say, 736 years ago! For, the Scotch will hardly contend that the nature of the soil has been changed for the worse since that time, especially as it has not been cultivated. No, no; brassy as they are, they will not do that. Come, then, let us see how this matter stands.

This Forest has been crawled upon by favourites, and is now much smaller than it used to be. A time may, and will come, for inquiring HOW George Rose, and others, became owners of some of the very best parts of this once-public property; a time for such inquiry must come, before the people of England will ever give their consent to a reduction of the interest of the debt! But this we know, that the New Forest formerly extended, westward, from the Southampton Water and the River Oux, to the River Avon, and northward, from Lymington Haven to the borders of Wiltshire. We know that this was its utmost extent; and we know, also, that the towns of Christchurch, Lymington, Ringwood, and Fordingbridge, and the villages of Bolder, Fawley, Lyndhurst, Dipden, Eling, Minsted, and all the other villages that now have churches; we know, I say (and, pray mark it), that all these towns and villages existed before the Norman Conquest: because the Roman names of several of them (all the towns) are in print, and because an account of them all is to be found in Doomsday Book, which was made by this very William the Conqueror. Well, then, now Scotch population-liars, and you Malthusian blasphemers, who contend that God has implanted in man a principle that leads him to starvation; come, now, and face this history of the New Forest. Cooke, in his Geography of Hampshire, says, that the Conqueror destroyed here "many populous towns and villages, and thirty-six parish churches." The same writer says, that, in the time of Edward the Confessor (just before the Conqueror came), "two-thirds of the Forest was inhabited and cultivated." Guthrie says nearly the same thing. But let us hear the two historians, who are now pitted against each other, Hume and Lingard. The former (vol. II. p. 277) says: "There was one pleasure to which William, as well as all the Normans and ancient Saxons, was extremely addicted, and that was hunting: but this pleasure he indulged more at the expense of his unhappy subjects, whose interests he always disregarded, than to the loss or diminution of his own revenue. Not content with those large forests, which former Kings possessed, in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new Forest, near Winchester, the usual place of his residence: and, for that purpose, he laid waste the county of Hampshire, for an extent of thirty miles, expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their property, even demolished churches and convents, and made the sufferers no compensation for the injury." Pretty well for a pensioned Scotchman: and now let us hear Dr. Lingard, to prevent his Society from presenting whose work to me, the sincere and pious Samuel Butler was ready to go down upon his marrow bones; let us hear the good Doctor upon this subject. He says (vol. I. pp. 452 and 453), "Though the King possessed sixty-eight forests, besides parks and chases, in different parts of England, he was not yet satisfied, but for the occasional accommodation of his court, afforested an extensive tract of country lying between the city of Winchester and the sea coast. The inhabitants were expelled: the cottages and the churches were burnt; and more than thirty square miles of a rich and populous district were withdrawn from cultivation, and converted into a wilderness, to afford sufficient range for the deer, and ample space for the royal diversion. The memory of this act of despotism has been perpetuated in the name of the New Forest, which it retains at the present day, after the lapse of seven hundred and fifty years."

"Historians" should be careful how they make statements relative to places which are within the scope of the reader's inspection. It is next to impossible not to believe that the Doctor has, in this case (a very interesting one), merely copied from HUME. Hume says, that the King "expelled the inhabitants;" and Lingard says "the inhabitants were expelled;" Hume says that the King "demolished the churches;" and Lingard says that "the churches were burnt;" but Hume says, churches "and convents," and Lingard knew that to be a lie. The Doctor was too learned upon the subject of "convents" to follow the Scotchman here. Hume says that the King "laid waste the country for an extent of thirty miles." "The Doctor says that a district of thirty square miles was withdrawn from cultivation, and converted into a wilderness." Now, what HUME meaned by the loose phrase, "an extent of thirty miles," I cannot say; but this I know, that Dr. Lingard's "thirty square miles" is a piece of ground only five and a half miles each way! So that the Doctor has got here a curious "district," and a not less curious "wilderness;" and what number of churches could WILLIAM find to burn, in a space five miles and a half each way? If the Doctor meaned thirty miles square, instead of square miles, the falsehood is so monstrous as to destroy his credit for ever; for here we have Nine Hundred Square Miles, containing five hundred and seventy-six thousand acres of land; that is to say, 56,960 acres more than are contained in the whole of the county of Surrey, and 99,840 acres more than are contained in the whole of the county of Berks! This is "history," is it! And these are "historians."

The true statement is this: the New Forest, according to its ancient state, was bounded thus: by the line, going from the river Oux to the river Avon, and which line there separates Wiltshire from Hampshire; by the river Avon; by the sea from Christchurch to Calshot Castle; by the Southampton Water; and by the river Oux. These are the boundaries; and (as any one may, by scale and compass, ascertain), there are, within these boundaries, about 224 square miles, containing 143,360 acres of land. Within these limits there are now remaining eleven parish churches, all of which were in existence before the time of William the Conqueror; so that, if he destroyed thirty-six parish churches, what a populous country this must have been! There must have been forty-seven parish churches; so that there was, over this whole district, one parish church to every four and three quarters square miles! Thus, then, the churches must have stood, on an average, at within one mile and about two hundred yards of each other! And observe, the parishes could, on an average, contain no more, each, than 2,966 acres of land! Not a very large farm; so that here was a parish church to every large farm, unless these historians are all fools and liars.

I defy any one to say that I make hazardous assertions: I have plainly described the ancient boundaries: there are the maps: any one can, with scale and compass, measure the area as well as I can. I have taken the statements of historians, as they call themselves: I have shown that their histories, as they call them, are fabulous; OR (and mind this or) that England was, at one time, and that too, eight hundred years ago, beyond all measure more populous than it is now. For, observe, notwithstanding what Dr. Lingard asserts; notwithstanding that he describes this district as "rich," it is the very poorest in the whole kingdom. Dr. Lingard was, I believe, born and bred at Winchester; and how, then, could he be so careless; or, indeed, so regardless of truth (and I do not see why I am to mince the matter with him), as to describe this as a rich district? Innumerable persons have seen Bagshot-Heath; great numbers have seen the barren heaths between London and Brighton; great numbers, also, have seen that wide sweep of barrenness which exhibits itself between the Golden Farmer Hill and Black-water. Nine-tenths of each of these are less barren than four-fifths of the land in the New Forest. Supposing it to be credible that a man so prudent and so wise as William the Conqueror; supposing that such a man should have pitched upon a rich and populous district wherewith to make a chase; supposing, in short, these historians to have spoken the truth, and supposing this barren land to have been all inhabited and cultivated, and the people so numerous and so rich as to be able to build and endow a parish church upon every four and three quarters square miles upon this extensive district; supposing them to have been so rich in the produce of the soil as to want a priest to be stationed at every mile and 200 yards, in order to help them to eat it; supposing, in a word, these historians not to be the most farcical liars that ever put pen upon paper, this country must, at the time of the Norman conquest, have literally swarmed with people; for, there is the land now, and all the land, too: neither Hume nor Dr. Lingard can change the nature of that. There it is, an acre of it not having, upon an average, so much of productive capacity in it as one single square rod, taking the average, of Worcestershire; and if I were to say one single square yard, I should be right; there is the land; and if that land were as these historians say it was, covered with people and with churches, what the devil must Worcestershire have been! To this, then, we come at last: having made out what I undertook to show; namely, that the historians, as they call themselves, are either the greatest fools or the greatest liars that ever existed, or that England was beyond all measure more populous eight hundred years ago than it is now.

Poor, however, as this district is, and culled about as it has been for the best spots of land by those favourites who have got grants of land or leases or something or other, still there are some spots here and there which would grow trees; but never will it grow trees, or anything else to the profit of this nation, until it become private property. Public property must, in some cases, be in the hands of public officers; but this is not an affair of that nature. This is too loose a concern; too little controllable by superiors. It is a thing calculated for jobbing, above all others; calculated to promote the success of favouritism. Who can imagine that the persons employed about plantations and farms for the public, are employed because they are fit for the employment? Supposing the commissioners to hold in abhorrence the idea of paying for services to themselves under the name of paying for services to the public; supposing them never to have heard of such a thing in their lives, can they imagine that nothing of this sort takes place, while they are in London eleven months out of twelve in the year? I never feel disposed to cast much censure upon any of the persons engaged in such concerns. The temptation is too great to be resisted. The public must pay for everything à pois d'or. Therefore, no such thing should be in the hands of the public, or, rather, of the government; and I hope to live to see this thing completely taken out of the hands of this government.

It was night-fall when we arrived at Eling, that is to say, at the head of the Southampton Water. Our horses were very hungry. We stopped to bait them, and set off just about dusk to come to this place (Weston Grove), stopping at Southampton on our way, and leaving a letter to come to London. Between Southampton and this place, we cross a bridge over the Itchen river, and, coming up a hill into a common, which is called Town-hill Common, we passed, lying on our right, a little park and house, occupied by the Irish Bible-man, Lord Ashdown, I think they call him, whose real name is French, and whose family are so very well known in the most unfortunate sister-kingdom. Just at the back of his house, in another sort of paddock-place, lives a man, whose name I forget, who was, I believe, a coachmaker in the East Indies, and whose father, or uncle, kept a turnpike gate at Chelsea, a few years ago. See the effects of "industry and enterprise"! But even these would be nothing, were it not for this wondrous system by which money can be snatched away from the labourer in this very parish, for instance, sent off to the East Indies, there help to make a mass to put into the hands of an adventurer, and then the mass may be brought back in the pockets of the adventurer and cause him to be called a 'Squire by the labourer whose earnings were so snatched away! Wondrous system! Pity it cannot last for ever! Pity that it has got a Debt of a thousand millions to pay! Pity that it cannot turn paper into gold! Pity that it will make such fools of Prosperity Robinson and his colleagues!

The moon shone very bright by the time that we mounted the hill; and now, skirting the enclosures upon the edge of the common, we passed several of those cottages which I so well recollected, and in which I had the satisfaction to believe that the inhabitants were sitting comfortably with bellies full by a good fire. It was eight o'clock before we arrived at Mr. Chamberlayne's, whom I had not seen since, I think, the year 1816; for in the fall of that year I came to London, and I never returned to Botley (which is only about three miles and a half from Weston) to stay there for any length of time. To those who like water-scenes (as nineteen-twentieths of people do) it is the prettiest spot, I believe, in all England. Mr. Chamberlayne built the house about twenty years ago. He has been bringing the place to greater and greater perfection from that time to this. All round about the house is in the neatest possible order. I should think that, altogether, there cannot be so little as ten acres of short grass; and when I say that, those who know anything about gardens will form a pretty correct general notion as to the scale on which the thing is carried on. Until of late, Mr. Chamberlayne was owner of only a small part, comparatively, of the lands hereabouts. He is now the owner, I believe, of the whole of the lands that come down to the water's edge and that lie between the ferry over the Itchen at Southampton, and the river which goes out from the Southampton Water at Hamble. And now let me describe, as well as I can, what this land and its situation are.

The Southampton Water begins at Portsmouth, and goes up by Southampton, to Redbridge, being, upon an average, about two miles wide, having, on the one side, the New Forest, and on the other side, for a great part of the way, this fine and beautiful estate of Mr. Chamberlayne. Both sides of this water have rising lands divided into hill and dale, and very beautifully clothed with trees, the woods and lawns and fields being most advantageously intermixed. It is very curious that, at the back of each of these tracts of land, there are extensive heaths, on this side as well as on the New Forest side. To stand here and look across the water at the New Forest, you would imagine that it was really a country of woods; for you can see nothing of the heaths from here; those heaths over which we rode, and from which we could see a windmill down among the trees, which windmill is now to be seen just opposite this place. So that the views from this place are the most beautiful that can be imagined. You see up the water and down the water, to Redbridge one way and out to Spithead the other way. Through the trees, to the right, you see the spires of Southampton, and you have only to walk a mile, over a beautiful lawn and through a not less beautiful wood, to find, in a little dell, surrounded with lofty woods, the venerable ruins of Netley Abbey, which make part of Mr. Chamberlayne's estate.

The woods here are chiefly of oak; the ground consists of a series of hill and dale, as you go long-wise from one end of the estate to the other, about six miles in length. Down almost every little valley that divides these hills or hillocks, there is more or less of water, making the underwood, in those parts, very thick, and dark to go through; and these form the most delightful contrast with the fields and lawns. There are innumerable vessels of various sizes continually upon the water; and, to those that delight in water-scenes, this is certainly the very prettiest place that I ever saw in my life. I had seen it many years ago; and, as I intended to come here on my way home, I told George, before we set out, that I would show him another Weston before we got to London. The parish in which his father's house is, is also called Weston, and a very beautiful spot it certainly is; but I told him I questioned whether I could not show him a still prettier Weston than that. We let him alone for the first day. He sat in the house, and saw great multitudes of pheasants and partridges upon the lawn before the window: he went down to the water-side by himself, and put his foot upon the ground to see the tide rise. He seemed very much delighted. The second morning, at breakfast, we put it to him, which he would rather have; this Weston or the Weston he had left in Herefordshire; but, though I introduced the question in a way almost to extort a decision in favour of the Hampshire Weston, he decided instantly and plump for the other, in a manner very much to the delight of Mr. Chamberlayne and his sister. So true it is that, when people are uncorrupted, they always like home best, be it, in itself, what it may.

Everything that nature can do has been done here; and money most judiciously employed has come to her assistance. Here are a thousand things to give pleasure to any rational mind; but there is one thing, which, in my estimation, surpasses, in pleasure, to contemplate, all the lawns and all the groves and all the gardens and all the game and everything else; and that is, the real, unaffected goodness of the owner of this estate. He is a member for Southampton; he has other fine estates; he has great talents; he is much admired by all who know him; but he has done more by his justice, by his just way of thinking with regard to the labouring people, than in all other ways put together. This was nothing new to me; for I was well informed of it several years ago, though I had never heard him speak of it in my life. When he came to this place, the common wages of day-labouring men were thirteen shillings a week, and the wages of carpenters, bricklayers, and other tradesmen, were in proportion. Those wages he has given, from that time to this, without any abatement whatever. With these wages, a man can live, having, at the same time, other advantages attending the working for such a man as Mr. Chamberlayne. He has got less money in his bags than he would have had, if he had ground men down in their wages; but if his sleep be not sounder than that of the hard-fisted wretch that can walk over grass and gravel, kept in order by a poor creature that is half-starved; if his sleep be not sounder than the sleep of such a wretch, then all that we have been taught is false, and there is no difference between the man who feeds and the man who starves the poor: all the Scripture is a bundle of lies, and instead of being propagated it ought to be flung into the fire.

It is curious enough that those who are the least disposed to give good wages to the labouring people, should be the most disposed to discover for them schemes for saving their money! I have lately seen, I saw it at Uphusband, a prospectus, or scheme, for establishing what they call a County Friendly Society. This is a scheme for getting from the poor a part of the wages that they receive. Just as if a poor fellow could put anything by out of eight shillings a week! If, indeed, the schemers were to pay the labourers twelve or thirteen shillings a week; then these might have something to lay by at some times of the year; but then, indeed, there would be no poor-rates wanted; and it is to get rid of the poor-rates that these schemers have invented their society. What wretched drivellers they must be: to think that they should be able to make the pauper keep the pauper; to think that they shall be able to make the man that is half-starved lay by part of his loaf! I know of no county where the poor are worse treated than in many parts of this county of Hants. It is happy to know of one instance in which they are well treated; and I deem it a real honour to be under the roof of him who has uniformly set so laudable an example in this most important concern. What are all his riches to me? They form no title to my respect. 'Tis not for me to set myself up in judgment as to his taste, his learning, his various qualities and endowments; but of these his unequivocal works I am a competent judge. I know how much good he must do; and there is a great satisfaction in reflecting on the great happiness that he must feel, when, in laying his head upon his pillow of a cold and dreary winter night, he reflects that there are scores, aye, scores upon scores, of his country-people, of his poor neighbours, of those whom the Scripture denominates his brethren, who have been enabled, through him, to retire to a warm bed after spending a cheerful evening and taking a full meal by the side of their own fire. People may talk what they will about happiness; but I can figure to myself no happiness surpassing that of the man who falls to sleep with reflections like these in his mind.

Now observe, it is a duty, on my part, to relate what I have here related as to the conduct of Mr. Chamberlayne; not a duty towards him; for I can do him no good by it, and I do most sincerely believe, that both he and his equally benevolent sister would rather that their goodness remained unproclaimed; but it is a duty towards my country, and particularly towards my readers. Here is a striking and a most valuable practical example. Here is a whole neighbourhood of labourers living as they ought to live; enjoying that happiness which is the just reward of their toil. And shall I suppress facts so honourable to those who are the cause of this happiness, facts so interesting in themselves, and so likely to be useful in the way of example; shall I do this, aye, and, besides this, tacitly give a false account of Weston Grove, and this, too, from the stupid and cowardly fear of being accused of flattering a rich man?

Netley Abbey ought, it seems, to be called Letley Abbey, the Latin name being Lætus Locus, or Pleasant Place. Letley was made up of an abbreviation of the Lætus and of the Saxon word ley, which meaned place, field, or piece of ground. This Abbey was founded by Henry III. in 1239, for 12 Monks of the Benedictine order; and when suppressed by the wife-killer, its revenues amounted to 3,200l. a year of our present money. The possessions of these monks were, by the wife-killing founder of the Church of England, given away (though they belonged to the public) to one of his court sycophants, Sir William Paulet, a man the most famous in the whole world for sycophancy, time-serving, and for all those qualities which usually distinguish the favourites of kings like the wife-killer. This Paulet changed from the Popish to Henry the Eighth's religion, and was a great actor in punishing the papists; when Edward VI. came to the throne, this Paulet turned protestant, and was a great actor in punishing those who adhered to Henry VIIIth's religion: when Queen Mary came to the throne, this Paulet turned back to papist, and was one of the great actors in sending protestants to be burnt in Smithfield: when Old Bess came to the throne, this Paulet turned back to protestant again, and was, until the day of his death, one of the great actors in persecuting, in fining, in mulcting, and in putting to death those who still had the virtue and the courage to adhere to the religion in which they and he had been born and bred. The head of this family got, at last, to be Earl of Wiltshire, Marquis of Winchester, and Duke of Bolton. This last title is now gone; or, rather, it is changed to that of "Lord Bolton," which is now borne by a man of the name of Orde, who is the son of a man of that name, who died some years ago, and who married a daughter (I think it was) of the last "Duke of Bolton."

Pretty curious, and not a little interesting, to look back at the origin of this Dukedom of Bolton, and, then, to look at the person now bearing the title of Bolton; and, then, to go to Abbotston, near Winchester, and survey the ruins of the proud palace, once inhabited by the Duke of Bolton, which ruins, and the estate on which they stand, are now the property of the Loan-maker, Alexander Baring! Curious turn of things! Henry the wife-killer and his confiscating successors granted the estates of Netley, and of many other monasteries, to the head of these Paulets: to maintain these and other similar grants, a thing called a "Reformation" was made: to maintain the "Reformation," a "Glorious Revolution" was made: to maintain the "Glorious Revolution" a Debt was made: to maintain the Debt, a large part of the rents must go to the Debt-Dealers, or Loan-makers: and thus, at last, the Barings, only in this one neighbourhood, have become the successors of the Wriothesleys, the Paulets, and the Russells, who, throughout all the reigns of confiscation, were constantly in the way, when a distribution of good things was taking place! Curious enough all this; but, the thing will not stop here. The Loan-makers think that they shall outwit the old grantee-fellows; and so they might, and the people too, and the devil himself; but they cannot out-wit events. Those events will have a thorough rummaging; and of this fact the "turn-of-the-market" gentlemen may be assured. Can it be law (I put the question to lawyers), can it be law (I leave reason and justice out of the inquiry), can it be law, that, if I, to-day, see dressed in good clothes, and with a full purse, a man who was notoriously penniless yesterday; can it be law, that I (being a justice of the peace) have a right to demand of that man how he came by his clothes and his purse? And, can it be law, that I, seeing with an estate a man who was notoriously not worth a crown piece a few years ago, and who is notoriously related to nothing more than one degree above beggary; can it be law, that I, a magistrate, seeing this, have not a right to demand of this man how he came by his estate? No matter, however; for, if both these be law now, they will not, I trust, be law in a few years from this time.

Mr. Chamberlayne has caused the ancient fish-ponds, at Netley Abbey, to be "reclaimed," as they call it. What a loss, what a national loss, there has been in this way, and in the article of water fowl! I am quite satisfied that, in these two articles and in that of rabbits, the nation has lost, has had annihilated (within the last 250 years) food sufficient for two days in the week, on an average, taking the year throughout. These are things, too, which cost so little labour! You can see the marks of old fish-ponds in thousands and thousands of places. I have noticed, I dare say, five hundred, since I left home. A trifling expense would, in most cases, restore them; but now-a-days all is looked for at shops: all is to be had by trafficking: scarcely any one thinks of providing for his own wants out of his own land and other his own domestic means. To buy the thing, ready made, is the taste of the day; thousands, who are housekeepers, buy their dinners ready cooked; nothing is so common as to rent breasts for children to suck: a man actually advertised, in the London papers, about two month ago, to supply childless husbands with heirs! In this case the articles were, of course, to be ready made; for to make them "to order" would be the devil of a business; though in desperate cases even this is, I believe, sometimes resorted to.

Hambledon, Sunday, 22nd Oct. 1826.

We left Weston Grove on Friday morning, and came across to Botley, where we remained during the rest of the day, and until after breakfast yesterday. I had not seen "the Botley Parson" for several years, and I wished to have a look at him now, but could not get a sight of him, though we rode close before his house, at much about his breakfast time, and though we gave him the strongest of invitation that could be expressed by hallooing and by cracking of whips! The fox was too cunning for us, and do all we could, we could not provoke him to put even his nose out of kennel. From Mr. James Warner's at Botley we went to Mr. Hallett's, at Allington, and had the very great pleasure of seeing him in excellent health. We intended to go back to Botley, and then to go to Titchfield, and, in our way to this place, over Portsdown Hill, whence I intended to show George the harbour and the fleet, and (of still more importance) the spot on which we signed the "Hampshire Petition," in 1817; that petition which foretold that which the "Norfolk Petition" confirmed; that petition which will be finally acted upon, or.... That petition was the very last thing that I wrote at Botley. I came to London in November 1816; the Power-of-Imprisonment Bill was passed in February, 1817; just before it was passed, the Meeting took place on Portsdown Hill; and I, in my way to the hill from London, stopped at Botley and wrote the petition. We had one meeting afterwards at Winchester, when I heard parsons swear like troopers, and saw one of them hawk up his spittle, and spit it into Lord Cochrane's poll! Ah! my bucks, we have you now! You are got nearly to the end of your tether; and, what is more, you know it. Pay off the Debt, parsons! It is useless to swear and spit, and to present addresses applauding Power-of-Imprisonment Bills, unless you can pay off the Debt! Pay off the Debt, parsons! They say you can lay the devil. Lay this devil, then; or, confess that he is too many for you; aye, and for Sturges Bourne, or Bourne Sturges (I forget which), at your backs!

From Arlington, we, fearing that it would rain before we could get round by Titchfield, came across the country over Waltham Chase and Soberton Down. The chase was very green and fine; but the down was the very greenest thing that I have seen in the whole country. It is not a large down; perhaps not more than five or six hundred acres; but the land is good, the chalk is at a foot from the surface, or more; the mould is a hazel mould; and when I was upon the opposite hill, I could, though I knew the spot very well, hardly believe that it was a down. The green was darker than that of any pasture or even any sainfoin or clover that I had seen throughout the whole of my ride; and I should suppose that there could not have been many less than a thousand sheep in the three flocks that were feeding upon the down when I came across it. I do not speak with anything like positiveness as to the measurement of this down; but I do not believe that it exceeds six hundred and fifty acres. They must have had more rain in this part of the country than in most other parts of it. Indeed, no part of Hampshire seems to have suffered very much from the drought. I found the turnips pretty good, of both sorts, all the way from Andover to Rumsey. Through the New Forest, you may as well expect to find loaves of bread growing in fields as turnips, where there are any fields for them to grow in. From Redbridge to Weston, we had not light enough to see much about us; but when we came down to Botley, we there found the turnips as good as I had ever seen them in my life, as far I could judge from the time I had to look at them. Mr. Warner has as fine turnip fields as I ever saw him have, Swedish turnips and white also; and pretty nearly the same may be said of the whole of that neighbourhood for many miles round.

After quitting Soberton Down, we came up a hill leading to Hambledon, and turned off to our left to bring us down to Mr. Goldsmith's at West End, where we now are, at about a mile from the village of Hambledon. A village it now is; but it was formerly a considerable market-town, and it had three fairs in the year. There is now not even the name of market left, I believe; and the fairs amount to little more than a couple or three gingerbread-stalls, with dolls and whistles for children. If you go through the place, you see that it has been a considerable town. The church tells the same story; it is now a tumble-down rubbishy place; it is partaking in the fate of all those places which were formerly a sort of rendezvous for persons who had things to buy and things to sell. Wens have devoured market-towns and villages; and shops have devoured markets and fairs; and this, too, to the infinite injury of the most numerous classes of the people. Shop-keeping, merely as shop-keeping, is injurious to any community. What are the shop and the shop-keeper for? To receive and distribute the produce of the land. There are other articles, certainly; but the main part is the produce of the land. The shop must be paid for; the shop-keeper must be kept; and the one must be paid for and the other must be kept by the consumer of the produce; or, perhaps, partly by the consumer and partly by the producer.

When fairs were very frequent, shops were not needed. A manufacturer of shoes, of stockings, of hats; of almost any thing that man wants, could manufacture at home in an obscure hamlet, with cheap house-rent, good air, and plenty of room. He need pay no heavy rent for shop; and no disadvantages from confined situation; and, then, by attending three or four or five or six fairs in a year, he sold the work of his hands, unloaded with a heavy expense attending the keeping of a shop. He would get more for ten shillings in a booth at a fair or market, than he would get in a shop for ten or twenty pounds. Of course he could afford to sell the work of his hands for less; and thus a greater portion of their earnings remained with those who raised the food and the clothing from the land. I had an instance of this in what occurred to myself at Weyhill fair. When I was at Salisbury, in September, I wanted to buy a whip. It was a common hunting-whip, with a hook to it to pull open gates with, and I could not get it for less than seven shillings and sixpence. This was more than I had made up my mind to give, and I went on with my switch. When we got to Weyhill fair, George had made shift to lose his whip some time before, and I had made him go without one by way of punishment. But now, having come to the fair, and seeing plenty of whips, I bought him one, just such a one as had been offered me at Salisbury for seven and sixpence, for four and sixpence; and, seeing the man with his whips afterwards, I thought I would have one myself; and he let me have it for three shillings. So that, here were two whips, precisely of the same kind and quality as the whip at Salisbury, bought for the money which the man at Salisbury asked me for one whip. And yet, far be it from me to accuse the man at Salisbury of an attempt at extortion: he had an expensive shop, and a family in a town to support, while my Weyhill fellow had been making his whips in some house in the country, which he rented, probably for five or six pounds a year, with a good garden to it. Does not every one see, in a minute, how this exchanging of fairs and markets for shops creates idlers and traffickers; creates those locusts, called middle-men, who create nothing, who add to the value of nothing, who improve nothing, but who live in idleness, and who live well, too, out of the labour of the producer and the consumer. The fair and the market, those wise institutions of our forefathers, and with regard to the management of which they were so scrupulously careful; the fair and the market bring the producer and the consumer in contact with each other. Whatever is gained is, at any rate, gained by one or the other of these. The fair and the market bring them together, and enable them to act for their mutual interest and convenience. The shop and the trafficker keeps them apart; the shop hides from both producer and consumer the real state of matters. The fair and the market lay everything open: going to either, you see the state of things at once; and the transactions are fair and just, not disfigured, too, by falsehood, and by those attempts at deception which disgrace traffickings in general.

Very wise, too, and very just, were the laws against forestalling and regrating. They were laws to prevent the producer and the consumer from being cheated by the trafficker. There are whole bodies of men; indeed, a very large part of the community, who live in idleness in this country, in consequence of the whole current of the laws now running in favour of the trafficking monopoly. It has been a great object with all wise governments, in all ages, from the days of Moses to the present day, to confine trafficking, mere trafficking, to as few hands as possible. It seems to be the main object of this government to give all possible encouragement to traffickers of every description, and to make them swarm like the lice of Egypt. There is that numerous sect, the Quakers. This sect arose in England: they were engendered by the Jewish system of usury. Till excises and loanmongering began, these vermin were never heard of in England. They seem to have been hatched by that fraudulent system, as maggots are bred by putrid meat, or as the flounders come in the livers of rotten sheep. The base vermin do not pretend to work: all they talk about is dealing; and the government, in place of making laws that would put them in the stocks, or cause them to be whipped at the cart's tail, really seem anxious to encourage them and to increase their numbers; nay, it is not long since Mr. Brougham had the effrontery to move for leave to bring in a bill to make men liable to be hanged upon the bare word of these vagabonds. This is, with me, something never to be forgotten. But everything tends the same way: all the regulations, all the laws that have been adopted of late years, have a tendency to give encouragement to the trickster and the trafficker, and to take from the labouring classes all the honour and a great part of the food that fairly belonged to them.

In coming along yesterday, from Waltham Chase to Soberton Down, we passed by a big white house upon a hill that was, when I lived at Botley, occupied by one Goodlad, who was a cock justice of the peace, and who had been a chap of some sort or other, in India. There was a man of the name of Singleton, who lived in Waltham Chase, and who was deemed to be a great poacher. This man, having been forcibly ousted by the order of this Goodlad and some others from an encroachment that he had made in the forest, threatened revenge. Soon after this, a horse (I forget to whom it belonged) was stabbed or shot in the night-time in a field. Singleton was taken up, tried at Winchester, convicted and transported. I cannot relate exactly what took place. I remember that there were some curious circumstances attending the conviction of this man. The people in that neighbourhood were deeply impressed with these circumstances. Singleton was transported; but Goodlad and his wife were both dead and buried, in less, I believe, than three months after the departure of poor Singleton. I do not know that any injustice really was done; but I do know that a great impression was produced, and a very sorrowful impression, too, on the minds of the people in that neighbourhood.

I cannot quit Waltham Chase without observing, that I heard, last year, that a Bill was about to be petitioned for, to enclose that Chase! Never was so monstrous a proposition in this world. The Bishop of Winchester is Lord of the Manor over this Chase. If the Chase be enclosed, the timber must be cut down, young and old; and here are a couple of hundred acres of land, worth ten thousand acres of land in the New Forest. This is as fine timber land as any in the wealds of Surrey, Sussex or Kent. There are two enclosures of about 40 acres each, perhaps, that were simply surrounded by a bank being thrown up about twenty years ago, only twenty years ago, and on the poorest part of the Chase, too; and these are now as beautiful plantations of young oak trees as man ever set his eyes on; many of them as big or bigger round than my thigh! Therefore, besides the sweeping away of two or three hundred cottages; besides plunging into ruin and misery all these numerous families, here is one of the finest pieces of timber land in the whole kingdom, going to be cut up into miserable clay fields, for no earthly purpose but that of gratifying the stupid greediness of those who think that they must gain, if they add to the breadth of their private fields. But if a thing like this be permitted, we must be prettily furnished with Commissioners of woods and forests! I do not believe that they will sit in Parliament and see a Bill like this passed and hold their tongues; but if they were to do it, there is no measure of reproach which they would not merit. Let them go and look at the two plantations of oaks, of which I have just spoken; and then let them give their consent to such a Bill if they can.

Thursley, Monday Evening, 23rd October.

When I left Weston, my intention was, to go from Hambledon to Up Park, thence to Arundel, thence, to Brighton, thence to East-bourne, thence to Wittersham in Kent, and then by Cranbrook, Tunbridge, Godstone and Reigate to London; but when I got to Botley, and particularly when I got to Hambledon, I found my horse's back so much hurt by the saddle, that I was afraid to take so long a stretch, and therefore resolved to come away straight to this place, to go hence to Reigate, and so to London. Our way, therefore, this morning, was over Butser-hill to Petersfield, in the first place; then to Lyphook and then to this place, in all about twenty-four miles. Butser-hill belongs to the back chain of the South Downs; and, indeed, it terminates that chain to the westward. It is the highest hill in the whole country. Some think that Hindhead, which is the famous sand-hill over which the Portsmouth road goes at sixteen miles to the north of this great chalk-hill; some think that Hindhead is the highest hill of the two. Be this as it may, Butser-hill, which is the right-hand hill of the two between which you go at three miles from Petersfield going towards Portsmouth; this Butser-hill, is, I say, quite high enough; and was more than high enough for us, for it took us up amongst clouds that wet us very nearly to the skin. In going from Mr. Goldsmith's to the hill, it is all up hill for five miles. Now and then a little stoop; not much; but regularly, with these little exceptions, up hill for these five miles. The hill appears, at a distance, to be a sharp ridge on its top. It is, however, not so. It is, in some parts, half a mile wide or more. The road lies right along the middle of it from west to east, and, just when you are at the highest part of the hill, it is very narrow from north to south; not more, I think, than about a hundred or a hundred and thirty yards.

This is as interesting a spot, I think, as the foot of man ever was placed upon. Here are two valleys, one to your right and the other to your left, very little less than half a mile down to the bottom of them, and much steeper than a tiled roof of a house. These valleys may be, where they join the hill, three or four hundred yards broad. They get wider as they get farther from the hill. Of a clear day you see all the north of Hampshire; nay, the whole county, together with a great part of Surrey and of Sussex. You see the whole of the South Downs to the eastward as far as your eye can carry you; and, lastly, you see over Portsdown Hill, which lies before you to the south; and there are spread open to your view the isle of Portsea, Porchester, Wimmering, Fareham, Gosport, Portsmouth, the harbour, Spithead, the Isle of Wight and the ocean.

But something still more interesting occurred to me here in the year 1808, when I was coming on horseback over the same hill from Botley to London. It was a very beautiful day and in summer. Before I got upon the hill (on which I had never been before), a shepherd told me to keep on in the road in which I was, till I came to the London turnpike road. When I got to within a quarter of a mile of this particular point of the hill, I saw, at this point, what I thought was a cloud of dust; and, speaking to my servant about it, I found that he thought so too; but this cloud of dust disappeared all at once. Soon after, there appeared to arise another cloud of dust at the same place, and then that disappeared, and the spot was clear again. As we were trotting along, a pretty smart pace, we soon came to this narrow place, having one valley to our right and the other valley to our left, and, there, to my great astonishment, I saw the clouds come one after another, each appearing to be about as big as two or three acres of land, skimming along in the valley on the north side, a great deal below the tops of the hills; and successively, as they arrived at our end of the valley, rising up, crossing the narrow pass, and then descending down into the other valley and going off to the south; so that we who sate there upon our horses, were alternately in clouds and in sunshine. It is an universal rule, that if there be a fog in the morning, and that fog go from the valleys to the tops of the hills, there will be rain that day; and if it disappear by sinking in the valley, there will be no rain that day. The truth is, that fogs are clouds, and clouds are fogs. They are more or less full of water; but they are all water; sometimes a sort of steam, and sometimes water that falls in drops. Yesterday morning the fogs had ascended to the tops of the hills; and it was raining on all the hills round about us before it began to rain in the valleys. We, as I observed before, got pretty nearly wet to the skin upon the top of Butser-hill; but we had the pluck to come on and let the clothes dry upon our backs.

I must here relate something that appears very interesting to me, and something, which, though it must have been seen by every man that has lived in the country, or, at least, in any hilly country, has never been particularly mentioned by anybody as far as I can recollect. We frequently talk of clouds coming from dews; and we actually see the heavy fogs become clouds. We see them go up to the tops of hills, and, taking a swim round, actually come and drop down upon us and wet us through. But I am now going to speak of clouds coming out of the sides of hills in exactly the same manner that you see smoke come out of a tobacco pipe, and rising up, with a wider and wider head, like the smoke from a tobacco-pipe, go to the top of the hill or over the hill, or very much above it, and then come over the valleys in rain. At about a mile's distance from Mr. Palmer's house at Bollitree, in Herefordshire, there is a large, long beautiful wood, covering the side of a lofty hill, winding round in the form of a crescent, the bend of the crescent being towards Mr. Palmer's house. It was here that I first observed this mode of forming clouds. The first time I noticed it, I pointed it out to Mr. Palmer. We stood and observed cloud after cloud come out from different parts of the side of the hill, and tower up and go over the hill out of sight. He told me that that was a certain sign that it would rain that day, for that these clouds would come back again, and would fall in rain. It rained sure enough; and I found that the country people, all round about, had this mode of the forming of the clouds as a sign of rain. The hill is called Penyard, and this forming of the clouds they call Old Penyard's smoking his pipe; and it is a rule that it is sure to rain during the day if Old Penyard smokes his pipe in the morning. These appearances take place, especially in warm and sultry weather. It was very warm yesterday morning: it had thundered violently the evening before: we felt it hot even while the rain fell upon us at Butser-hill. Petersfield lies in a pretty broad and very beautiful valley. On three sides of it are very lofty hills, partly downs and partly covered with trees: and, as we proceeded on our way from the bottom of Butser-hill to Petersfield, we saw thousands upon thousands of clouds, continually coming puffing out from different parts of these hills and towering up to the top of them. I stopped George several times to make him look at them; to see them come puffing out of the chalk downs as well as out of the woodland hills; and bade him remember to tell his father of it when he should get home, to convince him that the hills of Hampshire could smoke their pipes as well as those of Herefordshire. This is a really curious matter. I have never read, in any book, anything to lead me to suppose that the observation has ever found its way into print before. Sometimes you will see only one or two clouds during a whole morning, come out of the side of a hill; but we saw thousands upon thousands, bursting out, one after another, in all parts of these immense hills. The first time that I have leisure, when I am in the high countries again, I will have a conversation with some old shepherd about this matter; if he cannot enlighten me upon the subject, I am sure that no philosopher can.

We came through Petersfield without stopping, and baited our horses at Lyphook, where we stayed about half an hour. In coming from Lyphook to this place, we overtook a man who asked for relief. He told me he was a weaver, and, as his accent was northern, I was about to give him the balance that I had in hand arising from our savings in the fasting way, amounting to about three shillings and sixpence; but, unfortunately for him, I asked him what place he had lived at as a weaver; and he told me that he was a Spitalfields weaver. I instantly put on my glove and returned my purse into my pocket, saying, go, then, to Sidmouth and Peel and the rest of them "and get relief; for I have this minute, while I was stopping at Lyphook, read in the Evening Mail newspaper, an address to the King from the Spitalfields' weavers, for which address they ought to suffer death from starvation. In that address those base wretches tell the King, that they were loyal men: that they detested the designing men who were guilty of seditious practices in 1817; they, in short, express their approbation of the Power-of-imprisonment Bill, of all the deeds committed against the Reformers in 1817 and 1819; they, by fair inference, express their approbation of the thanks given to the Manchester Yeomanry. You are one of them; my name is William Cobbett, and I would sooner relieve a dog than relieve you." Just as I was closing my harangue, we overtook a country-man and woman that were going the same way. The weaver attempted explanations. He said that they only said it in order to get relief; but that they did not mean it in their hearts. "Oh, base dogs!" said I: "it is precisely by such men that ruin is brought upon nations; it is precisely by such baseness and insincerity, such scandalous cowardice, that ruin has been brought upon them. I had two or three shillings to give you; I had them in my hand: I have put them back into my purse: I trust I shall find somebody more worthy of them: rather than give them to you, I would fling them into that sand-pit and bury them for ever."

How curiously things happen! It was by mere accident that I took up a newspaper to read: it was merely because I was compelled to stay a quarter of an hour in the room without doing anything, and above all things it was miraculous that I should take up the Evening Mail, into which, I believe, I never before looked, in my whole life. I saw the royal arms at the top of the paper; took it for the Old Times, and, in a sort of lounging mood, said to George, "Give me hold of that paper, and let us see what that foolish devil Anna Brodie says." Seeing the words "Spitalfields," I read on till I got to the base and scoundrelly part of the address. I then turned over, and looked at the title of the paper and the date of it, resolving, in my mind, to have satisfaction, of some sort or other, upon these base vagabonds. Little did I think that an opportunity would so soon occur of showing my resentment against them, and that, too, in so striking, so appropriate, and so efficient a manner. I dare say, that it was some tax-eating scoundrel who drew up this address (which I will insert in the Register, as soon as I can find it); but that is nothing to me and my fellow sufferers of 1817 and 1819. This infamous libel upon us is published under the name of the Spitalfields weavers; and, if I am asked what the poor creatures were to do, being without bread as they were, I answer by asking whether they could find no knives to cut their throats with; seeing that they ought to have cut their throats ten thousand times over, if they could have done it, rather than sanction the publication of so infamous a paper as this.

It is not thus that the weavers in the north have acted. Some scoundrel wanted to inveigle them into an applauding of the Ministers; but they, though nothing so infamous as this address was proposed to them, rejected the proposition, though they were ten times more in want than the weavers of Spitalfields have ever been. They were only called upon to applaud the Ministers for the recent Orders in Council; but they justly said that the Ministers had a great deal more to do, before they would merit their applause. What would these brave and sensible men have said to a tax-eating scoundrel, who should have called upon them to present an address to the King, and in that address to applaud the terrible deeds committed against the people in 1817 and 1819! I have great happiness in reflecting that this baseness of the Spitalfields weavers will not bring them one single mouthful of bread. This will be their lot; this will be the fruit of their baseness: and the nation, the working classes of the nation, will learn, from this, that the way to get redress of their grievances, the way to get food and raiment in exchange for their labour, the way to ensure good treatment from the Government, is not to crawl to that Government, to lick its hands, and seem to deem it an honour to be its slaves.

Before we got to Thursley, I saw three poor fellows getting in turf for their winter fuel, and I gave them a shilling apiece. To a boy at the bottom of Hindhead, I gave the other sixpence, towards buying him a pair of gloves; and thus I disposed of the money which was, at one time, actually out of my purse, and going into the hand of the loyal Spitalfields weaver.

We got to this place (Mr. Knowles's of Thursley) about 5 o'clock in the evening, very much delighted with our ride.

Kensington, Thursday, 26th Oct.

We left Mr. Knowles's on Thursday morning, came through Godalming, stopped at Mr. Rowland's at Chilworth, and then came on through Dorking to Colley Farm, near Reigate, where we slept. I have so often described the country from Hindhead to the foot of Reigate Hill, and from the top of Reigate Hill to the Thames, that I shall not attempt to do it again here. When we got to the river Wey, we crossed it from Godalming Pismarsh to come up to Chilworth. I desired George to look round the country, and asked him if he did not think it was very pretty. I put the same question to him when we got into the beautiful neighbourhood of Dorking, and when we got to Reigate, and especially when we got to the tip-top of Reigate Hill, from which there is one of the finest views in the whole world; but ever after our quitting Mr. Knowles's, George insisted that that was the prettiest country that we had seen in the course of our whole ride, and that he liked Mr. Knowles's place better than any other place that he had seen. I reminded him of Weston Grove; and I reminded him of the beautiful ponds and grass and plantations at Mr. Leach's; but he still persisted in his judgment in favour of Mr. Knowles's place, in which decision, however, the greyhounds and the beagles had manifestly a great deal to do.

From Thursley to Reigate inclusive, on the chalk-side as well as on the sand-side, the crops of turnips, of both kinds, were pretty nearly as good as I ever saw them in my life. On a farm of Mr. Drummond's at Aldbury, rented by a farmer Peto, I saw a piece of cabbages, of the large kind, which will produce, I should think, not much short of five and twenty tons to the acre; and here I must mention (I do not know why I must, by the bye) an instance of my own skill in measuring land by the eye. The cabbages stand upon half a field and on the part of it furthest from the road where we were. We took the liberty to open the gate and ride into the field, in order to get closer to the cabbages to look at them. I intended to notice this piece of cabbages, and I asked George how much ground he thought there was in the piece. He said, two acres: and asked me how much I thought. I said that there were above four acres, and that I should not wonder if there were four acres and a half. Thus divided in judgment, we turned away from the cabbages to go out of the field at another gate, which pointed towards our road. Near this gate we found a man turning a heap of manure. This man, as it happened, had hoed the cabbages by the acre, or had had a hand in it. We asked him how much ground there was in that piece of cabbages, and he told us, four acres and a half! I suppose it will not be difficult to convince the reader that George looked upon me as a sort of conjuror. At Mr. Pym's, at Colley farm, we found one of the very finest pieces of mangel wurzel that I had ever seen in my life. We calculated that there would be little short of forty tons to the acre; and there being three acres to the piece, Mr. Pym calculates that this mangel wurzel, the produce of these three acres of land, will carry his ten or twelve milch-cows nearly, if not wholly, through the winter. There did not appear to be a spurious plant, and there was not one plant that had gone to seed, in the whole piece. I have never seen a more beautiful mass of vegetation, and I had the satisfaction to learn, after having admired the crop, that the seed came from my own shop, and that it had been saved by myself.

Talking of the shop, I came to it in a very few hours after looking at this mangel wurzel; and I soon found that it was high time for me to get home again; for here had been pretty devils' works going on. Here I found the "Greek cause," and all its appendages, figuring away in grand style. But I must make this matter of separate observation.

I have put an end to my Ride of August, September, and October, 1826, during which I have travelled five hundred and sixty-eight miles, and have slept in thirty different beds, having written three monthly pamphlets, called the "Poor Man's Friend," and have also written (including the present one) eleven Registers. I have been in three cities, in about twenty market towns, in perhaps five hundred villages; and I have seen the people nowhere so well off as in the neighbourhood of Weston Grove, and nowhere so badly off as in the dominions of the Select Vestry of Hurstbourn Tarrant, commonly called Uphusband. During the whole of this ride, I have very rarely been a-bed after day-light; I have drunk neither wine nor spirits. I have eaten no vegetables, and only a very moderate quantity of meat; and, it may be useful to my readers to know, that the riding of twenty miles was not so fatiguing to me at the end of my tour as the riding of ten miles was at the beginning of it. Some ill-natured fools will call this "egotism." Why is it egotism? Getting upon a good strong horse, and riding about the country has no merit in it; there is no conjuration in it; it requires neither talents nor virtues of any sort; but health is a very valuable thing; and when a man has had the experience which I have had in this instance, it is his duty to state to the world and to his own countrymen and neighbours in particular, the happy effects of early rising, sobriety, abstinence and a resolution to be active. It is his duty to do this: and it becomes imperatively his duty, when he has seen, in the course of his life, so many men; so many men of excellent hearts and of good talents, rendered prematurely old, cut off ten or twenty years before their time, by a want of that early rising, sobriety, abstinence and activity from which he himself has derived so much benefit and such inexpressible pleasure. During this ride I have been several times wet to the skin. At some times of my life, after having indulged for a long while in codling myself up in the house, these soakings would have frightened me half out of my senses; but I care very little about them: I avoid getting wet if I can; but it is very seldom that rain, come when it would, has prevented me from performing the day's journey that I had laid out beforehand. And this is a very good rule: to stick to your intention whether it be attended with inconveniences or not; to look upon yourself as bound to do it. In the whole of this ride, I have met with no one untoward circumstance, properly so called, except the wounding of the back of my horse, which grieved me much more on his account than on my own. I have a friend, who, when he is disappointed in accomplishing anything that he has laid out, says that he has been beaten, which is a very good expression for the thing. I was beaten in my intention to go through Sussex and Kent; but I will retrieve the affair in a very few months' time, or, perhaps, few weeks. The COLLECTIVE will be here now in a few days; and as soon as I have got the Preston Petition fairly before them, and find (as I dare say I shall) that the petition will not be tried until February, I shall take my horse and set off again to that very spot, in the London turnpike-road, at the foot of Butser-hill, whence I turned off to go to Petersfield, instead of turning the other way to go to Up Park: I shall take my horse and go to this spot, and, with a resolution not to be beaten next time, go along through the whole length of Sussex, and sweep round through Kent and Surrey till I come to Reigate again, and then home to Kensington; for I do not like to be beaten by horse's sore back, or by anything else; and, besides that, there are several things in Sussex and Kent that I want to see and give an account of. For the present, however, farewell to the country, and now for the Wen and its villanous corruptions.


RURAL RIDE: TO TRING, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

Barn-Elm Farm, 23rd Sept. 1829.

As if to prove the truth of all that has been said in The Woodlands about the impolicy of cheap planting, as it is called, Mr. Elliman has planted another and larger field with a mixture of ash, locusts, and larches; not upon trenched ground, but upon ground moved with the plough. The larches made great haste to depart this life, bequeathing to Mr. Elliman a very salutary lesson. The ash appeared to be alive, and that is all: the locusts, though they had to share in all the disadvantages of their neighbours, appeared, it seems, to be doing pretty well, and had made decent shoots, when a neighbour's sheep invaded the plantation, and, being fond of the locust leaves and shoots, as all cattle are, reduced them to mere stumps, as it were to put them upon a level with the ash. In The Woodlands, I have strongly pressed the necessity of effectual fences; without these, you plant and sow in vain: you plant and sow the plants and seeds of disappointment and mortification; and the earth, being always grateful, is sure to reward you with a plentiful crop. One half acre of Mr. Elliman's plantation of locusts before-mentioned, time will tell him, is worth more than the whole of the six or seven acres of this cheaply planted field.

Besides the 25,000 trees which Mr. Elliman had from me, he had some (and a part of them fine plants) which he himself had raised from seed, in the manner described in The Woodlands under the head "Locust." This seed he bought from me; and, as I shall sell but a very few more locust plants, I recommend gentlemen to sow the seed for themselves, according to the directions given in The Woodlands, in paragraphs 383 to 386 inclusive. In that part of The Woodlands will be found the most minute directions for the sowing of this seed, and particularly in the preparing of it for sowing; for, unless the proper precautions are taken here, one seed out of one hundred will not come up; and, with the proper precautions, one seed in one hundred will not fail to come up. I beg the reader, who intends to sow locusts, to read with great care the latter part of paragraph 368 of The Woodlands.

At this town of Tring, which is a very pretty and respectable place, I saw what reminded me of another of my endeavours to introduce useful things into this country. At the door of a shop I saw a large case, with the lid taken off, containing bundles of straw for platting. It was straw of spring wheat, tied up in small bundles, with the ear on; just such as I myself have grown in England many times, and bleached for platting, according to the instructions so elaborately given in the last edition of my Cottage Economy; and which instructions I was enabled to give from the information collected by my son in America. I asked the shopkeeper where he got this straw: he said, that it came from Tuscany; and that it was manufactured there at Tring, and other places, for, as I understood, some single individual master-manufacturer. I told the shopkeeper, that I wondered that they should send to Tuscany for the straw, seeing that it might be grown, harvested, and equally well bleached at Tring; that it was now, at this time, grown, bleached, and manufactured into bonnets in Kent; and I showed to several persons at Tring a bonnet, made in Kent, from the straw of wheat grown in Kent, and presented by that most public-spirited and excellent man, Mr. John Wood, of Wettersham, who died, to the great sorrow of the whole country round about him, three or four years ago. He had taken infinite pains with this matter, had brought a young woman from Suffolk at his own expense, to teach the children at Wettersham the whole of this manufacture from beginning to end; and, before he died, he saw as handsome bonnets made as ever came from Tuscany. At Benenden, the parish in which Mr. Hodges resides, there is now a manufactory of the same sort, begun, in the first place, under the benevolent auspices of that gentleman's daughters, who began by teaching a poor fellow who had been a cripple from his infancy, who was living with a poor widowed mother, and who is now the master of a school of this description, in the beautiful villages of Benenden and Rolvenden, in Kent. My wife, wishing to have her bonnet cleaned some time ago, applied to a person who performs such work, at Brighton, and got into a conversation with her about the English Leghorn bonnets. The woman told her that they looked very well at first, but that they would not retain their colour, and added, "They will not clean, ma'am, like this bonnet that you have." She was left with a request to clean that; and the result being the same as with all Leghorn bonnets, she was surprised upon being told that that was an "English Leghorn." In short, there is no difference at all in the two; and if these people at Tring choose to grow the straw instead of importing it from Leghorn; and if they choose to make plat, and to make bonnets just as beautiful and as lasting as those which come from Leghorn, they have nothing to do but to read my Cottage Economy, paragraph 224 to paragraph 234, inclusive, where they will find, as plain as words can make it, the whole mass of directions for taking the seed of the wheat, and converting the produce into bonnets. There they will find directions, first, as to the sort of wheat; second, as to the proper land for growing the wheat; third, season for sowing; fourth, quantity of seed to the acre, and manner of sowing; fifth, season for cutting the wheat; sixth, manner of cutting it; seventh, manner of bleaching; eighth, manner of housing the straw; ninth, platting; tenth, manner of knitting; eleventh, manner of pressing.

I request my correspondents to inform me, if any one can, where I can get some spring wheat. The botanical name of it is, Triticum Æstivum. It is sown in the spring, at the same time that barley is; these Latin words mean summer wheat. It is a small-grained, bearded wheat. I know, from experience, that the little brown-grained winter wheat is just as good for the purpose: but that must be sown earlier; and there is danger of its being thinned on the ground, by worms and other enemies. I should like to sow some this next spring, in order to convince the people of Tring, and other places, that they need not go to Tuscany for the straw.

Of "Cobbett's Corn" there is no considerable piece in the neighbourhood of Tring; but I saw some plants, even upon the high hill where the locusts are growing, and which is very backward land, which appeared to be about as forward as my own is at this time. If Mr. Elliman were to have a patch of good corn by the side of his locust trees, and a piece of spring wheat by the side of the corn, people might then go and see specimens of the three great undertakings, or rather, great additions to the wealth of the nation, introduced under the name of Cobbett.

I am the more desirous of introducing this manufacture at Tring on account of the very marked civility which I met with at that place. A very excellent friend of mine, who is professionally connected with that town, was, some time ago, apprised of my intention of going thither to see Mr. Elliman's plantation. He had mentioned this intention to some gentlemen of that town and neighbourhood; and I, to my great surprise, found that a dinner had been organized, to which I was to be invited. I never like to disappoint anybody; and, therefore, to this dinner I went. The company consisted of about forty-five gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood; and, certainly, though I have been at dinners in several parts of England, I never found, even in Sussex, where I have frequently been so delighted, a more sensible, hearty, entertaining, and hospitable company than this. From me, something in the way of speech was expected, as a matter of course; and though I was, from a cold, so hoarse as not to be capable of making myself heard in a large place, I was so pleased with the company, and with my reception, that, first and last, I dare say I addressed the company for an hour and a half. We dined at two, and separated at nine; and, as I declared at parting, for many, many years, I had not spent a happier day. There was present the editor, or some other gentleman, from the newspaper called The Bucks Gazette and General Advertiser, who has published in his paper the following account of what passed at the dinner. As far as the report goes, it is substantially correct; and, though this gentleman went away at a very early hour, that which he has given of my speech (which he has given very judiciously) contains matter which can hardly fail to be useful to great numbers of his readers.

MR. COBBETT AT TRING.

"Mr. Elliman, a draper at Tring, has lately formed a considerable plantation of the locust tree, which Mr. Cobbett claims the merit of having introduced into this country. The number he has planted is about 30,000, on five acres and a half of very indifferent land, and they have thrived so uncommonly well, that not more than 500 of the whole number have failed. The success of the plantation being made known to Mr. Cobbett, induced him to pay a visit to Tring to inspect it, and during his sojourn it was determined upon by his friends to give him a dinner at the Rose and Crown Inn. Thursday was fixed for the purpose; when about forty persons, agriculturists and tradesmen of Tring and the neighbouring towns, assembled, and sat down to a dinner served up in very excellent style, by Mr. Northwood, the landlord: Mr. Faithful, solicitor, of Tring, is the chair.

"The usual routine toasts having been given,

"The Chairman said he was sure the company would drink the toast with which he should conclude what he was about to say, with every mark of respect. In addressing the company, he rose under feelings of no ordinary kind, for he was about to give the health of a gentleman who had the talent of communicating to his writings an energy and perspicuity which he had never met with elsewhere; who conveyed knowledge in a way so clear, that all who read could understand. He (the Chairman) had read the Political Register, from the first of them to the last, with pleasure and benefit to himself, and he would defy any man to put his finger upon a single line which was not in direct support of a kingly government. He advocated the rights of the people, but he always expressed himself favourable to our ancient form of government; he certainly had strongly, but not too strongly, attacked the corruption of the government; but had never attacked its form or its just powers. As a public writer, he considered him the most impartial that he knew. He well recollected--he knew not if Mr. Cobbett himself recollected it--a remarkable passage in his writings: he was speaking of the pleasure of passing from censure to praise, and thus expressed himself. 'It is turning from the frowns of a surly winter, to welcome a smiling spring come dancing over the daisied lawn, crowned with garlands, and surrounded with melody.' Nature had been bountiful to him; it had blessed him with a constitution capable of enduring the greatest fatigues; and a mind of superior order. Brilliancy, it was said, was a mere meteor; it was so: it was the solidity and depth of understanding such as he possessed, that were really valuable. He had visited this place in consequence of a gentleman having been wise and bold enough to listen to his advice, and to plant a large number of locust trees; and he trusted he would enjoy prosperity and happiness, in duration equal to that of the never-decaying wood of those trees. He concluded by giving Mr. Cobbett's health."

"Mr. Cobbett returned thanks for the manner in which his health had been drunk, and was certain that the trees which had been the occasion of their meeting would be a benefit to the children of the planter. Though it might appear like presumption to suppose that those who were assembled that day came solely in compliment to him, yet it would be affectation not to believe that it was expected he should say something on the subject of politics. Every one who heard him was convinced that there was something wrong, and that a change of some sort must take place, or ruin to the country would ensue. Though there was a diversity of opinions as to the cause of the distress, and as to the means by which a change might be effected, and though some were not so deeply affected by it as others, all now felt that a change must take place before long, whether they were manufacturers, brewers, butchers, bakers, or of any other description of persons, they had all arrived at the conviction that there must be a change. It would be presumptuous to suppose that many of those assembled did not understand the cause of the present distress, yet there were many who did not; and those gentlemen who did, he begged to have the goodness to excuse him if he repeated what they already knew. Politics was a science which they ought not to have the trouble of studying; they had sufficient to do in their respective avocations, without troubling themselves with such matters. For what were the ministers, and a whole tribe of persons under them, paid large sums of money from the country but for the purpose of governing its political affairs. Their fitness for their stations was another thing. He had been told that Mr. Huskisson was so ignorant of the cause of the distress, that he had openly said, he should be glad if any practical man would tell him what it all meant. If any man present were to profess his ignorance of the cause of the distress it would be no disgrace to him; he might be a very good butcher, a very good farmer, or a very good baker: he might well understand the business by which he gained his living; and if any one should say to him, because he did not understand politics, 'You are a very stupid fellow!' he might fairly reply, 'What is that to you?' But it was another thing to those who were so well paid to manage the affairs of the country to plead ignorance of the cause of the prevailing distress.

* * * * *

"Mr. Goulburn, with a string of figures as long as his arm, had endeavoured to prove in the House of Commons that the withdrawal of the one-pound notes, being altogether so small an amount, little more than two millions, would be of no injury to the country, and that its only effect would be to make bankers more liberal in discounting with their fives. He would appeal to the company if they had found this to be the case. Mr. Goulburn had forgotten that the one-pound notes were the legs upon which the fives walked. He had heard the Duke of Wellington use the same language in the other House. Taught, as they now were, by experience, it would scarcely be believed, fifty years hence, that a set of men could have been found with so little foresight as to have devised measures so fraught with injury.

"He felt convinced that if he looked to the present company, or any other accidentally assembled, that he would find thirteen gentlemen more fit to manage the affairs of the kingdom than were those who now presided at the head of Government; not that he imputed to them any desire to do wrong, or that they were more corrupt than others; it was clear, that with the eyes of the public upon them they must wish to do right; it was owing to their sheer ignorance, their entire unfitness to carry on the Government, that they did no better. Ignorance and unfitness were, however, pleas which they had no business to make. It was nothing to him if a man was ignorant and stupid, under ordinary circumstances; but if he entrusted a man with his money, thinking that he was intelligent, and was deceived, then it was something; he had a right to say, 'You are not what I took you for, you are an ignorant fellow; you have deceived me, you are an impostor.' Such was the language proper to all under such circumstances: never mind their titles!

"A friend had that morning taken him to view the beautiful vale of Aylesbury, which he had never before seen; and the first thought that struck him, on seeing the rich pasture, was this, 'Good God! is a country like this to be ruined by the folly of those who govern it?' When he was a naughty boy, he used to say that if he wanted to select Members for our Houses of Parliament, he would put a string across any road leading into London, and that the first 1000 men that ran against his string, he would choose for Members, and he would bet a wager that they would be better qualified than those who now filled those Houses. That was when he was a naughty boy; but since that time a Bill had been passed which made it banishment for life to use language that brought the Houses of Parliament into contempt, and therefore he did not say so now. The Government, it should be recollected, had passed all these Acts with the hearty concurrence of both Houses of Parliament; they were thus backed by these Houses, and they were backed by ninety-nine out of one hundred of the papers, which affected to see all their acts in rose-colour, for no one who was in the habit of reading the papers, could have anticipated, from what they there saw, the ruin which had fallen on the country. Thus we had an ignorant Government, an ignorant Parliament, and something worse than an ignorant press; the latter being employed (some of them with considerable talent) to assail and turn into ridicule those who had the boldness and honesty to declare their dissent from the opinion of the wisdom of the measures of Government. It was no easy task to stand, unmoved, their ridicule and sarcasms, and many were thus deterred from expressing the sentiments of their minds. In this country we had all the elements of prosperity; an industrious people, such as were nowhere else to be found; a country, too, which was once called the finest and greatest on the earth (for whatever might be said of the country in comparison with others, the turnips of England were worth more, this year, than all the vines of France). It was a glorious and a great country until the Government had made it otherwise; and it ought still to be what it once was, and to be capable to driving the Russians back from the country of our old and best ally--the Turks. During the time of war, we were told that it was necessary to make great sacrifices to save us from disgrace. The people made those sacrifices; they gave up their all. But had the Government done its part; had it saved us from disgrace? No: we were now the laughing-stock of all other countries. The French and all other nations derided us; and by and by it would be seen that they would make a partition of Turkey with the Russians, and make a fresh subject for laughter. Never since the time of Charles had such disgrace been brought upon the country; and why was this? When were we again to see the labourer receiving his wages from the farmer instead of being sent on the road to break stones? Some people, under this state of things, consoled themselves by saying things would come about again; they had come about before, and would come about again. They deceived themselves, things did not come about; the seasons came about, it was true; but something must be done to bring things about. Instead of the neuter verb (to speak as a grammarian) they should use the active; they should not say things will come about, but things must be put about. He thought that the distress would shortly become so great, perhaps, about Christmas, that the Parliamentary gentlemen, finding they received but a small part of their rents, without which they could not do, any more than the farmer, without his crops, would endeavour to bring them about; and the measures they would propose for that purpose, as far as he could judge, would be Bank restriction, and the re-issue of one-pound notes, and what the effect of that would be they would soon see. One of those persons who were so profoundly ignorant, would come down to the House prepared to propose a return to Bank restriction and the issue of small notes, and a bill to that effect would be passed. If such a bill did pass, he would advise all persons to be cautious in their dealings; it would be perilous to make bargains under such a state of things. Money was the measure of value; but if this measure was liable to be three times as large at one time as at another, who could know what to do? how was any one to know how to purchase wheat, if the bushel was to be altered at the pleasure of the Government to three times its present size? The remedy for the evils of the country was not to be found in palliatives; it was not to be found in strong measures. The first step must be taken in the House of Commons, but that was almost hopeless; for although many persons possessed the right of voting, it was of little use to them; whilst a few great men could render their votes of no avail. If we had possessed a House of Commons that represented the feelings and wishes of the people, they would not have submitted to much of what had taken place; and until we had a reform we should never, he believed, see measures emanating from that House which would conduce to the glory and safety of the country. He feared that there would be no improvement until a dreadful convulsion took place, and that was an event which he prayed God to avert from the country.

"The Chairman proposed 'Prosperity to Agriculture,' when

"Mr. Cobbett again rose, and said the Chairman had told him he was entitled to give a sentiment. He would give prosperity to the towns of Aylesbury and Tring; but he would again advise those who calculated upon the return of prosperity, to be careful. Until there was an equitable adjustment, or Government took off part of the taxes, which was the same thing, there could be no return of prosperity."

After the reporter went away, we had a great number of toasts, most of which were followed by more or less of speech; and, before we separated, I think that the seeds of common sense, on the subject of our distresses, were pretty well planted in the lower part of Hertfordshire, and in Buckinghamshire.

The gentlemen present were men of information, well able to communicate to others that which they themselves had heard; and I endeavoured to leave no doubt in the mind of any man that heard me, that the cause of the distress was the work of the Government and House of Commons, and that it was nonsense to hope for a cure until the people had a real voice in the choosing of that House. I think that these truths were well implanted; and I further think that if I could go to the capital of every county in the kingdom, I should leave no doubt in the minds of any part of the people. I must not omit to mention, in conclusion, that though I am no eater or drinker, and though I tasted nothing but the breast of a little chicken, and drank nothing but water, the dinner was the best that ever I saw called a public dinner, and certainly unreasonably cheap. There were excellent joints of meat of the finest description, fowls and geese in abundance; and, finally, a very fine haunch of venison, with a bottle of wine for each person; and all for seven shillings and sixpence per head. Good waiting upon; civil landlord and landlady; and, in short, everything at this very pretty town pleased me exceedingly. Yet, what is Tring but a fair specimen of English towns and English people? And is it right, and is it to be suffered, that such a people should be plunged into misery by the acts of those whom they pay so generously, and whom they so loyally and cheerfully obey?

As far as I had an opportunity of ascertaining the facts, the farmers feel all the pinchings of distress, and the still harsher pinchings of anxiety for the future; and the labouring people are suffering in a degree not to be described. The shutting of the male paupers up in pounds is common through Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Left at large during the day, they roam about and maraud. What are the farmers to do with them? God knows how long the peace is to be kept, if this state of things be not put a stop to. The natural course of things is, that an attempt to impound the paupers in cold weather will produce resistance in some place; that those of one parish will be joined by those of another; that a formidable band will soon be assembled; then will ensue the rummaging of pantries and cellars; that this will spread from parish to parish; and that, finally, mobs of immense magnitude will set the law at open defiance. Jails are next to useless in such a case: their want of room must leave the greater part of the offenders at large; the agonizing distress of the farmers will make them comparatively indifferent with regard to these violences; and, at last, general confusion will come. This is by no means an unlikely progress, or an unlikely result. It therefore becomes those who have much at stake, to join heartily in their applications to Government, for a timely remedy for these astounding evils.


NORTHERN TOUR.

Sheffield, 31st January 1830.

On the 26th instant I gave my third lecture at Leeds. I should in vain endeavour to give an adequate description of the pleasure which I felt at my reception, and at the effect which I produced in that fine and opulent capital of this great county of York; for the capital it is in fact, though not in name. On the first evening, the play-house, which is pretty spacious, was not completely filled in all its parts; but on the second and the third, it was filled brim full, boxes, pit and gallery; besides a dozen or two of gentlemen who were accommodated with seats on the stage. Owing to a cold which I took at Huddersfield, and which I spoke of before, I was, as the players call it, not in very good voice; but the audience made allowance for that, and very wisely preferred sense to sound. I never was more delighted than with my audience at Leeds; and what I set the highest value on, is, that I find I produced a prodigious effect in that important town.

There had been a meeting at Doncaster, a few days before I went to Leeds from Ripley, where one of the speakers, a Mr. Becket Denison, had said, speaking of the taxes, that there must be an application of the pruning hook or of the sponge. This gentleman is a banker, I believe; he is one of the Beckets connected with the Lowthers; and he is a brother, or very near relation of that Sir John Becket who is the Judge Advocate General. So that, at last, others can talk of the pruning hook and the sponge, as well as I.

From Leeds I proceeded on to this place, not being able to stop at either Wakefield or Barnsley, except merely to change horses. The people in those towns were apprised of the time that I should pass through them; and, at each place, great numbers assembled to see me, to shake me by the hand, and to request me to stop. I was so hoarse as not to be able to make the post-boy hear me when I called to him; and, therefore, it would have been useless to stop; yet I promised to go back if my time and my voice would allow me. They do not; and I have written to the gentlemen of those places to inform them, that when I go to Scotland in the spring, I will not fail to stop in those towns, in order to express my gratitude to them. All the way along, from Leeds to Sheffield, it is coal and iron, and iron and coal. It was dark before we reached Sheffield; so that we saw the iron furnaces in all the horrible splendour of their everlasting blaze. Nothing can be conceived more grand or more terrific than the yellow waves of fire that incessantly issue from the top of these furnaces, some of which are close by the way-side. Nature has placed the beds of iron and the beds of coal alongside of each other, and art has taught man to make one to operate upon the other, as to turn the iron-stone into liquid matter, which is drained off from the bottom of the furnace, and afterwards moulded into blocks and bars, and all sorts of things. The combustibles are put into the top of the furnace, which stands thirty, forty, or fifty feet up in the air, and the ever blazing mouth of which is kept supplied with coal and coke and iron stone, from little iron wagons forced up by steam, and brought down again to be re-filled. It is a surprising thing to behold; and it is impossible to behold it without being convinced that, whatever other nations may do with cotton and with wool, they will never equal England with regard to things made of iron and steel. This Sheffield, and the land all about it, is one bed of iron and coal. They call it black Sheffield, and black enough it is; but from this one town and its environs go nine-tenths of the knives that are used in the whole world; there being, I understand, no knives made at Birmingham; the manufacture of which place consists of the larger sort of implements, of locks of all sorts, and guns and swords, and of all the endless articles of hardware which go to the furnishing of a house. As to the land, viewed in the way of agriculture, it really does appear to be very little worth. I have not seen, except at Harewood and Ripley, a stack of wheat since I came into Yorkshire; and even there, the whole I saw; and all that I have seen since I came into Yorkshire; and all that I saw during a ride of six miles that I took into Derbyshire the day before yesterday; all put together would not make the one-half of what I have many times seen in one single rick-yard of the vales of Wiltshire. But this is all very proper: these coal-diggers, and iron-melters, and knife-makers, compel us to send the food to them, which, indeed, we do very cheerfully, in exchange for the produce of their rocks, and the wondrous works of their hands.

The trade of Sheffield has fallen off less in proportion than that of the other manufacturing districts. North America, and particularly the United States, where the people have so much victuals to cut, form a great branch of the custom of this town. If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver. A gross of knives and forks is sold to the Americans for less than three knives and forks can be bought at retail in a country store in America. No fear of rivalship in this trade. The Americans may lay on their tariff, and double it, and triple it; but as long as they continue to cut their victuals, from Sheffield they must have the things to cut it with.

The ragged hills all round about this town are bespangled with groups of houses inhabited by the working cutlers. They have not suffered like the working weavers; for, to make knives, there must be the hand of man. Therefore, machinery cannot come to destroy the wages of the labourer. The home demand has been very much diminished; but still the depression has here not been what it has been, and what it is, where the machinery can be brought into play. We are here just upon the borders of Derbyshire, a nook of which runs up and separates Yorkshire from Nottinghamshire. I went to a village, the day before yesterday, called Mosborough, the whole of the people of which are employed in the making of sickles and scythes; and where, as I was told, they are very well off even in these times. A prodigious quantity of these things go to the United States of America. In short, there are about twelve millions of people there continually consuming these things; and the hardware merchants here have their agents and their stores in the great towns of America, which country, as far as relates to this branch of business, is still a part of old England.

Upon my arriving here on Wednesday night, the 27th instant, I by no means intended to lecture until I should be a little recovered from my cold; but, to my great mortification, I found that the lecture had been advertised, and that great numbers of persons had actually assembled. To send them out again, and give back the money, was a thing not to be attempted. I, therefore, went to the Music Hall, the place which had been taken for the purpose, gave them a specimen of the state of my voice, asked them whether I should proceed, and they, answering in the affirmative, on I went. I then rested until yesterday, and shall conclude my labours here to-morrow, and then proceed to "fair Nottingham," as we used to sing when I was a boy, in celebrating the glorious exploits of "Robin Hood and Little John." By the by, as we went from Huddersfield to Dewsbury, we passed by a hill which is celebrated as being the burial-place of the famed Robin Hood, of whom the people in this country talk to this day.

At Nottingham, they have advertised for my lecturing at the play-house, for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of February, and for a public breakfast to be given to me on the first of those days, I having declined a dinner agreeably to my original notification, and my friends insisting upon something or other in that sort of way. It is very curious that I have always had a very great desire to see Nottingham. This desire certainly originated in the great interest that I used to take, and that all country boys took, in the history of Robin Hood, in the record of whose achievements, which were so well calculated to excite admiration in the country boys, this Nottingham, with the word "fair" always before it, was so often mentioned. The word fair, as used by our forefathers, meant fine; for we frequently read in old descriptions of parts of the country of such a district or such a parish, containing a fair mansion, and the like; so that this town appears to have been celebrated as a very fine place, even in ancient times; but within the last thirty years, Nottingham has stood high in my estimation, from the conduct of its people; from their public spirit; from their excellent sense as to public matters; from the noble struggle which they have made from the beginning of the French war to the present hour: if only forty towns in England equal in size to Nottingham had followed its bright example, there would have been no French war against liberty; the Debt would have been now nearly paid off, and we should have known nothing of those manifold miseries which now afflict, and those greater miseries which now menace, the country. The French would not have been in Cadiz; the Russians would not have been at Constantinople; the Americans would not have been in the Floridas; we should not have had to dread the combined fleets of America, France, and Russia; and, which is the worst of all, we should not have seen the jails four times as big as they were; and should not have seen Englishmen reduced to such a state of misery as for the honest labouring man to be fed worse than the felons in the jails.