RIDE: FROM CHILWORTH, IN SURREY, TO WINCHESTER.
Thursley, four miles from
Godalming, Surrey,
Sunday Evening, 23rd October, 1825.
We set out from Chilworth to-day about noon. This is a little hamlet, lying under the South side of St. Martha’s Hill; and, on the other side of that hill, a little to the North West, is the town of Guilford, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken, all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life. Here are hill and dell in endless variety. Here are the chalk and the sand, vieing with each other in making beautiful scenes. Here is a navigable river and fine meadows. Here are woods and downs. Here is something of everything but fat marshes and their skeleton-making agues. The vale, all the way down to Chilworth from Reigate, is very delightful.
We did not go to Guildford, nor did we cross the River Wey, to come through Godalming; but bore away to our left, and came through the village of Hambleton, going first to Hascomb, to show Richard the South Downs from that high land, which looks Southward over the Wealds of Surrey and Sussex, with all their fine and innumerable oak trees. Those that travel on turnpike roads know nothing of England.—From Hascomb to Thursley almost the whole way is across fields, or commons, or along narrow lands. Here we see the people without any disguise or affectation. Against a great road things are made for show. Here we see them without any show. And here we gain real knowledge as to their situation.—We crossed to-day, three turnpike roads, that from Guildford to Horsham, that from Godalming to Worthing, I believe, and that from Godalming to Chichester.
Thursley, Wednesday, 26th Oct.
The weather has been beautiful ever since last Thursday morning; but there has been a white frost every morning, and the days have been coldish. Here, however, I am quite at home in a room, where there is one of my American Fire Places, bought, by my host, of Mr. Judson of Kensington, who has made many a score of families comfortable, instead of sitting shivering in the cold. At the house of the gentleman, whose house I am now in, there is a good deal of fuel-wood; and here I see in the parlours, those fine and cheerful fires that make a great part of the happiness of the Americans. But these fires are to be had only in this sort of fire-place. Ten times the fuel; nay, no quantity, would effect the same object, in any other fire-place. It is equally good for coal as for wood; but, for pleasure, a wood-fire is the thing. There is, round about almost every gentleman’s or great farmer’s house, more wood suffered to rot every year, in one shape or another, than would make (with this fire-place) a couple of rooms constantly warm, from October to June. Here, peat, turf, saw-dust, and wood, are burnt in these fire-places. My present host has three of the fire-places.
Being out a-coursing to-day, I saw a queer-looking building upon one of the thousands of hills that nature has tossed up in endless variety of form round the skirts of the lofty Hindhead. This building is, it seems, called a Semaphore, or Semiphare, or something of that sort. What this word may have been hatched out of I cannot say; but it means a job, I am sure. To call it an alarm-post would not have been so convenient; for people not endued with Scotch intellect might have wondered why the devil we should have to pay for alarm-posts; and might have thought, that, with all our “glorious victories,” we had “brought our hogs to a fine market,” if our dread of the enemy were such as to induce us to have alarm-posts all over the country! Such unintellectual people might have thought that we had “conquered France by the immortal Wellington,” to little purpose, if we were still in such fear as to build alarm-posts; and they might, in addition, have observed, that, for many hundred of years, England stood in need of neither signal posts nor standing army of mercenaries; but relied safely on the courage and public spirit of the people themselves. By calling the thing by an outlandish name, these reflections amongst the unintellectual are obviated. Alarm-post would be a nasty name; and it would puzzle people exceedingly, when they saw one of these at a place like Ashe, a little village on the north side of the chalk-ridge (called the Hog’s Back) going from Guildford to Farnham. What can this be for? Why are these expensive things put up all over the country? Respecting the movements of whom is wanted this alarm-system? Will no member ask this in Parliament? Not one: not a man: and yet it is a thing to ask about. Ah! it is in vain, Thing, that you thus are making your preparations; in vain that you are setting your trammels! The DEBT, the blessed debt, that best ally of the people, will break them all; will snap them, as the hornet does the cobweb; and, even these very “Semaphores,” contribute towards the force of that ever-blessed debt. Curious to see how things work! The “glorious revolution,” which was made for the avowed purpose of maintaining the Protestant ascendancy, and which was followed by such terrible persecution of the Catholics; that “glorious” affair, which set aside a race of kings, because they were Catholics, served as the precedent for the American revolution, also called “glorious,” and this second revolution compelled the successors of the makers of the first, to begin to cease their persecutions of the Catholics! Then, again, the debt was made to raise and keep armies on foot to prevent reform of Parliament, because, as it was feared by the Aristocracy, reform would have humbled them; and this debt, created for this purpose, is fast sweeping the Aristocracy out of their estates, as a clown, with his foot, kicks field-mice out of their nests. There was a hope, that the debt could have been reduced by stealth, as it were; that the Aristocracy could have been saved in this way. That hope now no longer exists. In all likelihood the funds will keep going down. What is to prevent this, if the interest of Exchequer Bills be raised, as the broad sheet tells us it is to be? What! the funds fall in time of peace; and the French funds not fall, in time of peace! However, it will all happen just as it ought to happen. Even the next session of Parliament will bring out matters of some interest. The thing is now working in the surest possible way.
The great business of life, in the country, appertains, in some way or other, to the game, and especially at this time of the year. If it were not for the game, a country life would be like an everlasting honey-moon, which would, in about half a century, put an end to the human race. In towns, or large villages, people make a shift to find the means of rubbing the rust off from each other by a vast variety of sources of contest. A couple of wives meeting in the street, and giving each other a wry look, or a look not quite civil enough, will, if the parties be hard pushed for a ground of contention, do pretty well. But in the country, there is, alas! no such resource. Here are no walls for people to take of each other. Here they are so placed as to prevent the possibility of such lucky local contact. Here is more than room of every sort, elbow, leg, horse, or carriage, for them all. Even at Church (most of the people being in the meeting-houses) the pews are surprisingly too large. Here, therefore, where all circumstances seem calculated to cause never-ceasing concord with its accompanying dullness, there would be no relief at all, were it not for the game. This, happily, supplies the place of all other sources of alternate dispute and reconciliation; it keeps all in life and motion, from the lord down to the hedger. When I see two men, whether in a market-room, by the way-side, in a parlour, in a church-yard, or even in the church itself, engaged in manifestly deep and most momentous discourse, I will, if it be any time between September and February, bet ten to one, that it is, in some way or other, about the game. The wives and daughters hear so much of it, that they inevitably get engaged in the disputes; and thus all are kept in a state of vivid animation. I should like very much to be able to take a spot, a circle of 12 miles in diameter, and take an exact account of all the time spent by each individual, above the age of ten (that is the age they begin at), in talking, during the game season of one year, about the game and about sporting exploits. I verily believe that it would amount, upon an average, to six times as much as all the other talk put together; and, as to the anger, the satisfaction, the scolding, the commendation, the chagrin, the exultation, the envy, the emulation, where are there any of these in the country, unconnected with the game?
There is, however, an important distinction to be made between hunters (including coursers) and shooters. The latter are, as far as relates to their exploits, a disagreeable class, compared with the former; and the reason of this is, their doings are almost wholly their own; while, in the case of the others, the achievements are the property of the dogs. Nobody likes to hear another talk much in praise of his own acts, unless those acts have a manifest tendency to produce some good to the hearer; and shooters do talk much of their own exploits, and those exploits rather tend to humiliate the hearer. Then, a great shooter will, nine times out of ten, go so far as almost to lie a little; and, though people do not tell him of it, they do not like him the better for it; and he but too frequently discovers that they do not believe him: whereas, hunters are mere followers of the dogs, as mere spectators; their praises, if any are called for, are bestowed on the greyhounds, the hounds, the fox, the hare, or the horses. There is a little rivalship in the riding, or in the behaviour of the horses; but this has so little to do with the personal merit of the sportsmen, that it never produces a want of good fellowship in the evening of the day. A shooter who has been missing all day, must have an uncommon share of good sense, not to feel mortified while the slaughterers are relating the adventures of that day; and this is what cannot exist in the case of the hunters. Bring me into a room, with a dozen men in it, who have been sporting all day; or, rather let me be in an adjoining room, where I can hear the sound of their voices, without being able to distinguish the words, and I will bet ten to one that I tell whether they be hunters or shooters.
I was once acquainted with a famous shooter whose name was William Ewing. He was a barrister of Philadelphia, but became far more renowned by his gun than by his law cases. We spent scores of days together a-shooting, and were extremely well matched, I having excellent dogs and caring little about my reputation as a shot, his dogs being good for nothing, and he caring more about his reputation as a shot than as a lawyer. The fact which I am going to relate respecting this gentleman, ought to be a warning to young men, how they become enamoured of this species of vanity. We had gone about ten miles from our home, to shoot where partridges were said to be very plentiful. We found them so. In the course of a November day, he had, just before dark, shot, and sent to the farmhouse, or kept in his bag, ninety-nine partridges. He made some few double shots, and he might have a miss or two, for he sometimes shot when out of my sight, on account of the woods. However, he said that he killed at every shot; and, as he had counted the birds, when we went to dinner at the farmhouse and when he cleaned his gun, he, just before sun-set, knew that he had killed ninety-nine partridges, every one upon the wing, and a great part of them in woods very thickly set with largish trees. It was a grand achievement; but, unfortunately, he wanted to make it a hundred. The sun was setting, and, in that country, darkness comes almost at once; it is more like the going out of a candle than that of a fire; and I wanted to be off, as we had a very bad road to go, and as he, being under strict petticoat government, to which he most loyally and dutifully submitted, was compelled to get home that night, taking me with him, the vehicle (horse and gig) being mine. I, therefore, pressed him to come away, and moved on myself towards the house (that of old John Brown, in Bucks county, grandfather of that General Brown, who gave some of our whiskered heroes such a rough handling last war, which was waged for the purpose of “deposing James Madison”), at which house I would have stayed all night, but from which I was compelled to go by that watchful government, under which he had the good fortune to live. Therefore I was in haste to be off. No: he would kill the hundredth bird! In vain did I talk of the bad road and its many dangers for want of moon. The poor partridges, which we had scattered about, were calling all around us; and, just at this moment, up got one under his feet, in a field in which the wheat was three or four inches high. He shot and missed. “That’s it,” said he, running as if to pick up the bird. “What!” said I, “you don’t think you killed, do you? Why there is the bird now, not only alive, but calling in that wood;” which was at about a hundred yards distance. He, in that form of words usually employed in such cases, asserted that he shot the bird and saw it fall; and I, in much about the same form of words, asserted, that he had missed, and that I, with my own eyes, saw the bird fly into the wood. This was too much! To miss once out of a hundred times! To lose such a chance of immortality! He was a good-humoured man; I liked him very much; and I could not help feeling for him, when he said, “Well, Sir, I killed the bird; and if you choose to go away and take your dog away, so as to prevent me from finding it, you must do it; the dog is yours, to be sure.” “The dog,” said I, in a very mild tone, “why, Ewing, there is the spot; and could we not see it, upon this smooth green surface, if it were there?” However, he began to look about; and I called the dog, and affected to join him in the search. Pity for his weakness got the better of my dread of the bad road. After walking backward and forward many times upon about twenty yards square with our eyes to the ground, looking for what both of us knew was not there, I had passed him (he going one way and I the other), and I happened to be turning round just after I had passed him, when I saw him, putting his hand behind him, take a partridge out of his bag and let it fall upon the ground! I felt no temptation to detect him, but turned away my head, and kept looking about. Presently he, having returned to the spot where the bird was, called out to me, in a most triumphant tone; “Here! here! Come here!” I went up to him, and he, pointing with his finger down to the bird, and looking hard in my face at the same time, said, “There, Cobbett; I hope that will be a warning to you never to be obstinate again”! “Well,” said I, “come along:” and away we went as merry as larks. When we got to Brown’s, he told them the story, triumphed over me most clamorously; and, though he often repeated the story to my face, I never had the heart to let him know, that I knew of the imposition, which puerile vanity had induced so sensible and honourable a man to be mean enough to practise.
A professed shot is, almost always, a very disagreeable brother sportsman. He must, in the first place, have a head rather of the emptiest to pride himself upon so poor a talent. Then he is always out of temper, if the game fail, or if he miss it. He never participates in that great delight which all sensible men enjoy at beholding the beautiful action, the docility, the zeal, the wonderful sagacity of the pointer and the setter. He is always thinking about himself; always anxious to surpass his companions. I remember that, once, Ewing and I had lost our dog. We were in a wood, and the dog had gone out, and found a covey in a wheat stubble joining the wood. We had been whistling and calling him for, perhaps, half an hour, or more. When we came out of the wood we saw him pointing, with one foot up; and, soon after, he, keeping his foot and body unmoved, gently turned round his head towards the spot where he heard us, as if to bid us come on, and, when he saw that we saw him, turned his head back again. I was so delighted, that I stopped to look with admiration. Ewing, astonished at my want of alacrity, pushed on, shot one of the partridges, and thought no more about the conduct of the dog than if the sagacious creature had had nothing at all to do with the matter. When I left America, in 1800, I gave this dog to Lord Henry Stuart, who was, when he came home, a year or two afterwards, about to bring him to astonish the sportsmen even in England; but those of Pennsylvania were resolved not to part with him, and, therefore they stole him the night before his Lordship came away. Lord Henry had plenty of pointers after his return, and he saw hundreds; but always declared, that he never saw any thing approaching in excellence this American dog. For the information of sportsmen I ought to say, that this was a small-headed and sharp-nosed pointer, hair as fine as that of a greyhound, little and short ears, very light in the body, very long legged, and swift as a good lurcher. I had him a puppy, and he never had any breaking, but he pointed staunchly at once; and I am of opinion, that this sort is, in all respects, better than the heavy breed. Mr. Thornton, (I beg his pardon, I believe he is now a Knight of some sort) who was, and perhaps still is, our Envoy in Portugal, at the time here referred to was a sort of partner with Lord Henry in this famous dog; and gratitude (to the memory of the dog I mean), will, I am sure, or, at least, I hope so, make him bear witness to the truth of my character of him; and, if one could hear an Ambassador speak out, I think that Mr. Thornton would acknowledge, that his calling has brought him in pretty close contact with many a man who was possessed of most tremendous political power, without possessing half the sagacity, half the understanding, of this dog, and without being a thousandth part so faithful to his trust.
I am quite satisfied, that there are as many sorts of men as there are of dogs. Swift was a man, and so is Walter the base. But is the sort the same? It cannot be education alone that makes the amazing difference that we see. Besides, we see men of the very same rank and riches and education, differing as widely as the pointer does from the pug. The name, man, is common to all the sorts, and hence arises very great mischief. What confusion must there be in rural affairs, if there were no names whereby to distinguish hounds, greyhounds, pointers, spaniels, terriers, and sheep dogs, from each other! And, what pretty work, if, without regard to the sorts of dogs, men were to attempt to employ them! Yet, this is done in the case of men! A man is always a man; and, without the least regard as to the sort, they are promiscuously placed in all kinds of situations. Now, if Mr. Brougham, Doctors Birkbeck, Macculloch and Black, and that profound personage, Lord John Russell, will, in their forth-coming “London University,” teach us how to divide men into sorts, instead of teaching us to “augment the capital of the nation,” by making paper-money, they will render us a real service. That will be feelosofy worth attending to. What would be said of the ’Squire who should take a fox-hound out to find partridges for him to shoot at? Yet, would this be more absurd than to set a man to law-making who was manifestly formed for the express purpose of sweeping the streets or digging out sewers?
Farnham, Surrey,
Thursday, Oct. 27th.
We came over the heath from Thursley, this morning, on our way to Winchester. Mr. Wyndham’s fox-hounds are coming to Thursley on Saturday. More than three-fourths of all the interesting talk in that neighbourhood, for some days past, has been about this anxiously-looked-for event. I have seen no man, or boy, who did not talk about it. There had been a false report about it; the hounds did not come; and the anger of the disappointed people was very great. At last, however, the authentic intelligence came, and I left them all as happy as if all were young and all just going to be married. An abatement of my pleasure, however, on this joyous occasion was, that I brought away with me one, who was as eager as the best of them. Richard, though now only 11 years and 6 months old, had, it seems, one fox-hunt, in Herefordshire, last winter; and he actually has begun to talk rather contemptuously of hare hunting. To show me that he is in no danger, he has been leaping his horse over banks and ditches by the road side, all our way across the country from Reigate; and he joined with such glee in talking of the expected arrival of the fox-hounds, that I felt some little pain at bringing him away. My engagement at Winchester is for Saturday; but, if it had not been so, the deep and hidden ruts in the heath, in a wood in the midst of which the hounds are sure to find, and the immense concourse of horsemen that is sure to be assembled, would have made me bring him away. Upon the high, hard and open countries, I should not be afraid for him; but here the danger would have been greater than it would have been right for me to suffer him to run.
We came hither by the way of Waverley Abbey and Moore Park. On the commons I showed Richard some of my old hunting scenes, when I was of his age, or younger, reminding him that I was obliged to hunt on foot. We got leave to go and see the grounds at Waverley, where all the old monks’ garden walls are totally gone, and where the spot is become a sort of lawn. I showed him the spot where the strawberry garden was, and where I, when sent to gather hautboys, used to eat every remarkably fine one, instead of letting it go to be eaten by Sir Robert Rich. I showed him a tree, close by the ruins of the Abbey, from a limb of which I once fell into the river, in an attempt to take the nest of a crow, which had artfully placed it upon a branch so far from the trunk as not to be able to bear the weight of a boy eight years old. I showed him an old elm tree, which was hollow even then, into which I, when a very little boy, once saw a cat go, that was as big as a middle-sized spaniel dog, for relating which I got a great scolding, for standing to which I, at last, got a beating; but stand to which I still did. I have since many times repeated it; and I would take my oath of it to this day. When in New Brunswick I saw the great wild grey cat, which is there called a Lucifee; and it seemed to me to be just such a cat as I had seen at Waverley. I found the ruins not very greatly diminished; but it is strange how small the mansion, and ground, and everything but the trees, appeared to me. They were all great to my mind when I saw them last; and that early impression had remained, whenever I had talked or thought, of the spot; so that, when I came to see them again, after seeing the sea and so many other immense things, it seemed as if they had all been made small. This was not the case with regard to the trees, which are nearly as big here as they are anywhere else; and the old cat-elm, for instance, which Richard measured with his whip, is about 16 or 17 feet round.
From Waverley we went to Moore Park, once the seat of Sir William Temple, and when I was a very little boy, the seat of a Lady, or a Mrs. Temple. Here I showed Richard Mother Ludlum’s Hole; but, alas! it is not the enchanting place that I knew it, nor that which Grose describes in his Antiquities! The semicircular paling is gone; the basins, to catch the never-ceasing little stream, are gone; the iron cups, fastened by chains, for people to drink out of, are gone; the pavement all broken to pieces; the seats, for people to sit on, on both sides of the cave, torn up and gone; the stream that ran down a clean paved channel, now making a dirty gutter; and the ground opposite, which was a grove, chiefly of laurels, intersected by closely mowed grass-walks, now become a poor, ragged-looking alder-coppice. Near the mansion, I showed Richard the hill, upon which Dean Swift tells us he used to run for exercise, while he was pursuing his studies here; and I would have showed him the garden-seat, under which Sir William Temple’s heart was buried, agreeably to his will; but the seat was gone, also the wall at the back of it; and the exquisitely beautiful little lawn in which the seat stood, was turned into a parcel of divers-shaped cockney-clumps, planted according to the strictest rules of artificial and refined vulgarity.
At Waverley, Mr. Thompson, a merchant of some sort, has succeeded (after the monks) the Orby Hunters and Sir Robert Rich. At Moore Park, a Mr. Laing, a West Indian planter or merchant, has succeeded the Temples; and at the castle of Farnham, which you see from Moore Park, Bishop Prettyman Tomline has, at last, after perfectly regular and due gradations, succeeded William of Wykham! In coming up from Moore Park to Farnham town, I stopped opposite the door of a little old house, where there appeared to be a great parcel of children. “There, Dick,” said I, “when I was just such a little creature as that, whom you see in the door-way, I lived in this very house with my grand-mother Cobbett.” He pulled up his horse, and looked very hard at it, but said nothing, and on we came.
Winchester,
Sunday noon, Oct. 30.
We came away from Farnham about noon on Friday, promising Bishop Prettyman to notice him and his way of living more fully on our return. At Alton we got some bread and cheese at a friend’s, and then came to Alresford by Medstead, in order to have fine turf to ride on, and to see, on this lofty land that which is, perhaps, the finest beech-wood in all England. These high down-countries are not garden plats, like Kent; but they have, from my first seeing them, when I was about ten, always been my delight. Large sweeping downs, and deep dells here and there, with villages amongst lofty trees, are my great delight. When we got to Alresford it was nearly dark, and not being able to find a room to our liking, we resolved to go, though in the dark, to Easton, a village about six miles from Alresford down by the side of the Hichen River.
Coming from Easton yesterday, I learned that Sir Charles Ogle, the eldest son and successor of Sir Chaloner Ogle, had sold to some General, his mansion and estate at Martyr’s Worthy, a village on the North side of the Hichen, just opposite Easton. The Ogles had been here for a couple of centuries perhaps. They are gone off now, “for good and all,” as the country people call it. Well, what I have to say to Sir Charles Ogle upon this occasion is this: “It was you, who moved at the county meeting, in 1817, that Address to the Regent, which you brought ready engrossed upon parchment, which Fleming, the Sheriff, declared to have been carried, though a word of it never was heard by the meeting; which address applauded the power of imprisonment bill, just then passed; and the like of which address, you will not in all human probability, ever again move in Hampshire, and, I hope, nowhere else. So, you see, Sir Charles, there is one consolation, at any rate.”
I learned, too, that Greame, a famously loyal ’squire and justice, whose son was, a few years ago, made a Distributor of Stamps in this county, was become so modest as to exchange his big and ancient mansion at Cheriton, or somewhere there, for a very moderate-sized house in the town of Alresford! I saw his household goods advertised in the Hampshire newspaper, a little while ago, to be sold by public auction. I rubbed my eyes, or, rather, my spectacles, and looked again and again; for I remembered the loyal ’Squire; and I, with singular satisfaction, record this change in his scale of existence, which has, no doubt, proceeded solely from that prevalence of mind over matter, which the Scotch feelosofers have taken such pains to inculcate, and which makes him flee from greatness as from that which diminishes the quantity of “intellectual enjoyment;” and so now he,
“Wondering man can want the larger pile,
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile.”
And they really tell me, that his present house is not much bigger than that of my dear, good old grandmother Cobbett. But (and it may not be wholly useless for the ’Squire to know it) she never burnt candles; but rushes dipped in grease, as I have described them in my Cottage Economy; and this was one of the means that she made use of in order to secure a bit of good bacon and good bread to eat, and that made her never give me potatoes, cold or hot. No bad hint for the ’Squire, father of the distributor of Stamps. Good bacon is a very nice thing, I can assure him; and, if the quantity be small, it is all the sweeter; provided, however, it be not too small. This ’Squire used to be a great friend of Old George Rose. But his patron’s taste was different from his. George preferred a big house to a little one; and George began with a little one, and ended with a big one.
Just by Alresford, there was another old friend and supporter of Old George Rose, ’Squire Rawlinson, whom I remember a very great ’squire in this county. He is now a Police-’squire in London, and is one of those guardians of the Wen, respecting whose proceedings we read eternal columns in the broad-sheet.
This being Sunday, I heard, about 7 o’clock in the morning, a sort of a jangling, made by a bell or two in the Cathedral. We were getting ready to be off, to cross the country to Burghclere, which lies under the lofty hills at Highclere, about 22 miles from this city; but hearing the bells of the cathedral, I took Richard to show him that ancient and most magnificent pile, and particularly to show him the tomb of that famous bishop of Winchester, William of Wykham; who was the Chancellor and the Minister of the great and glorious King, Edward III.; who sprang from poor parents in the little village of Wykham, three miles from Botley; and who, amongst other great and most munificent deeds, founded the famous College, or School, of Winchester, and also one of the Colleges at Oxford. I told Richard about this as we went from the inn down to the cathedral; and, when I showed him the tomb, where the bishop lies on his back, in his Catholic robes, with his mitre on his head, his shepherd’s crook by his side, with little children at his feet, their hands put together in a praying attitude, he looked with a degree of inquisitive earnestness that pleased me very much. I took him as far as I could about the cathedral. The “service” was now begun. There is a dean, and God knows how many prebends belonging to this immensely rich bishopric and chapter; and there were, at this “service,” two or three men and five or six boys in white surplices, with a congregation of fifteen women and four men! Gracious God! If William of Wykham could, at that moment, have been raised from his tomb! If Saint Swithin, whose name the cathedral bears, or Alfred the Great, to whom St. Swithin was tutor: if either of these could have come, and had been told, that that was now what was carried on by men, who talked of the “damnable errors” of those who founded that very church! But it beggars one’s feelings to attempt to find words whereby to express them upon such a subject and such an occasion. How, then, am I to describe what I felt, when I yesterday saw in Hyde Meadow, a county bridewell, standing on the very spot, where stood the Abbey which was founded and endowed by Alfred, which contained the bones of that maker of the English name, and also those of the learned monk, St. Grimbald, whom Alfred brought to England to begin the teaching at Oxford!
After we came out of the cathedral, Richard said, “Why, Papa, nobody can build such places now, can they?” “No, my dear,” said I. “That building was made when there were no poor wretches in England, called paupers; when there were no poor-rates; when every labouring man was clothed in good woollen cloth; and when all had a plenty of meat and bread and beer.” This talk lasted us to the inn, where, just as we were going to set off, it most curiously happened, that a parcel which had come from Kensington by the night coach, was put into my hands by the landlord, containing, amongst other things, a pamphlet, sent to me from Rome, being an Italian translation of No. I. of the “Protestant Reformation.” I will here insert the title for the satisfaction of Doctor Black, who, some time ago, expressed his utter astonishment, that “such a work should be published in the nineteenth century.” Why, Doctor? Did you want me to stop till the twentieth century? That would have been a little too long, Doctor.
Storia
Della
Riforma Protestante
In Inghilterra ed in Irlanda
La quale Dimostra
Come un tal’ avvenimento ha impoverito
E degradato il grosso del popolo in que’ paesi
in una serie di lettere indirizzate
A tutti i sensati e guisti inglesi
Da
Guglielmo Cobbett
E
Dall’ inglese recate in italiano
Da
Dominico Gregorj.
Roma 1825.
Presso Francesco Bourlie.
Con Approvazione.
There, Doctor Black. Write you a book that shall be translated into any foreign language; and when you have done that, you may again call mine “pig’s meat.”