I do not mean to leave town till the Woburn meeting, but I am restless, and want to get away. This is a common folly, and ought carefully to be checked. It is the spirit that wastes half a life, ever looking to a future moment and never enjoying the present, which is that alone that is truly our own.[[224]]
There is not a more valuable lesson than to learn how to apply every portion of time to use, and not to suffer the expectation of, or waiting for, any future moment to make the intermediate ones tiresome or unpleasant. It is wasting life and time that is never to return.
Yesterday, at 7 P.M., I dined with Mr. Anson—a farming party: Duke of Bedford, Earl of Galloway, Earl of Albemarle, Lord Somerville, Sir Robert Lowley, Sir John Wrottesley, Mr. Coke, Mr. Motteaux, Mr. Child, Sir G. Pigot, Mr. Western, Mr. Wilbraham, all M.P.’s or in high life.
Nothing but a farming conversation makes the company of these people proper for me to have anything to do with; and that it is not to be conceived how little they know on the subject, considering it’s a favourite pursuit. Such great fortunes and a life of luxury and bustle and motion are hostile to every kind of knowledge; and the conversation abounds with information for those who watch for and have a memory to retain it, yet it demands a good deal of knowledge previously digested and arranged to make a due use of it. A splendid house, one of the best in London; magnificent furniture, plate, servants, wines, and everything, equal to 30,000l. or 40,000l. a year, but he has no such income.
I have—I think I have—no envy of these doings. Such situations are so hostile to the religious principle that ought to animate the soul, that I should think of them with fear and trembling. I hate parties, and my heart condemns me whenever I go to them, in which not a word ever occurs to give God the glory due to His Holy Name, which is sometimes profaned but never honoured, where Grace before and after meat is discarded. And this is a sort of denial of Christ which gives me no slight disquiet and remorse, and ought entirely to banish me from all such company; it works in me, and I cordially hope it will soon produce that effect, for the pleasure I receive is little and the offence to God I fear is much. ‘Come out from among them and touch not the unclean thing,’ is applicable to more cases than I have applied it to. I am determined to go only to Woburn this year and not to Holkham; four days of noise and bustle are too much, I will get away in three; but a whole fortnight is horrible. I will get to Cambridge by Saturday, and I hope Jane will meet me there to spend Sunday, and perhaps Monday, with Simeon, and make him promise to meet Fry at Bradfield. Yesterday and this day hurry, bustle, packing up, paying bills, and recollection on the stretch lest anything should be forgotten. Wrote to Cordell, the bookseller, to settle with me for the Irish Tour. It has been years out of print, and the last settlement in 1795. I have half the sale; 154 were then left, my half, 30l. at least, and it never came into my head before. Very careless indeed, and in money to receive! Such busy days are unpleasant because both mind and body are fatigued.
18th at Woburn. Came with Lord Sheffield yesterday. I detest this profanation of the Sabbath, but he urged me so to accompany him that I yielded like a fool. A great dinner, Lords Albemarle, Ossory, Ludlow, Duke of Manchester, Sir H. Fetherstone, Sir R. Pigot, the Wilbrahams, &c., twenty in all. Several apartments newly furnished, and many very expensive articles, clocks, &c., from Paris to the amount of 2,000l. Much done to the greenhouse, and everywhere a profusion of expense. The late rains have given a fine verdure, and the place in full beauty. Such a flow of worldly blessings as are seen in one of these very great residences makes me melancholy when I reflect on the immense temptation and dreadful responsibility that attaches. What have not these people to answer for if they forget the Giver in the profusion of His gifts? and where am I to go to find a great house and establishment with a society and conversation that shows the Gospel of our Lord to be held in reverence and affection?
This poor Duke of Bedford, whose nominal income is so enormous, will, I fear, involve himself with the same imprudence. Cartwright has built him a steam engine (700l.) for threshing and grinding: 12 per cent. interest in the least to be calculated, or 84l., and yet a one-horse mill, price 50l., would thresh all the corn that will ever be brought to this yard.
An extravagant duchess, Paris toys, a great farm, little economy, and immense debts, will prove a canker in all the rosebuds of his garden of life. The providence of the Almighty governs all, and will not permit an utter forgetfulness of Him to produce even the temporal happiness which is alone sought for.
I am tired of the whole, and long for the retirement and quiet of Bradfield after so many weeks of London, and this finishing of hurry and bustle. I would not have another week of it for a hundred pounds. What has a Christian to do with such scenes? How a person of fortune and the world can be one I know not. They are never cool, and have no time for reading or thought. It is madness to continue in such a state, but to travel 120 miles in order to enter a fresh scene of it, and perhaps within earshot of such a profane beast and fool as that Captain G. I sat near last year—this would be insanity. What a spectacle at Woburn was that miserably swearing profligate, Major B., of Sussex, at the age of eighty-one, sticking to the last moment to worldly dissipation, and utterly regardless of what is to become of him hereafter. Like Lord Lauderdale, who declared that he feared nothing in this world nor in the next either! These people call themselves Deists; I think they must be atheists, or they are utterly in contradiction to themselves. It is a sin, and ought to be repented of, to go into such company. I feel myself here, looking on the tranquil bosom of the Ouse, as having escaped from a multiplicity of temptations, and that this is the first moment of my summer holidays, quiet and alone. This morning I had a letter from Jane, by which I find it is quite uncertain whether I shall meet her at Cambridge. She asks my directions, but had she thought, must have known that she could not receive an answer in time. I hope to hear Simeon[[225]] twice on Sunday, and much wish that she may be there, as I wrote before to request it; and she says she should like it of all things.
24th: Cambridge.—I dined here yesterday. Inquired for that great and good man, Simeon, but he was not to be in town till the evening. I walked behind Trinity and John’s, &c., twice—a delightful day. Wrote and left a letter for him; at nine he came, and will certainly meet Fry at Bradfield. Thank God! I shall hear him twice to-day and Mr. Thomason once, for I shall go thrice to Trinity Church. I mentioned Fry’s calculation of three millions of Christians; but he very properly thought it very erroneous. He thinks Cambridge a fair average, and in 10,000 people knows but of 110 certainly vital Christians—more than 150 can scarcely be from a seventy-fifth to a hundredth part therefore! There are, I am rejoiced to hear it, many very pious young men in the colleges.