After I had vigorously assisted in hewing out some new prospects in the thicket, (at which we all lent a hand,) and planned a road through the park which is to be so far honoured as to bear my name, I took a cordial leave of this most estimable family, (who might serve as a pattern to the nobility of any country,) and returned to London, provided with many letters of introduction for Ireland.
July 8th.
As before I depart I mean to send you all sorts of things, with my horses, carriage and birds, (of the latter you will receive a complete cargo of the rarest sorts), I have had enough to do to-day to complete my purchases. In the course of this occupation I fell upon an exhibition of machinery and manufactures, among which are many interesting things; as, for instance, a machine which draws of itself, (if I may say so,) all the objects visible within its horizon, in perspective: a piano-forte which, besides serving the usual purpose, plays (extra) a hundred pieces by itself, which you may accompany with extemporary `fantasie’ on the keys: a very compendious domestic telegraph, which spares the servants half their labour, and us nearly all their burdensome presence: a washing machine, which requires only one woman to wash a great quantity of linen: a most elegant churn, with which you can make butter on your breakfast table in two minutes; and other novelties of the like kind.
From hence I drove to the greatest nursery garden in the neighbourhood of London, which I had long wished to see. The multifold wants of such a number of rich people raise private undertakings to a magnitude and extent in England which they reach nowhere else. On such a scale I found a collection of green-houses in this garden. In many were small leaden tubes, carried along the edges of the glass roof,—three or four on each side: the tubes are perforated with very small holes: by only turning a cock, a stream of water is carried through them; and in one moment the whole house is filled with a thick shower, just like natural rain. This makes the labour of watering almost unnecessary, has a much more powerful and uniform effect, and only requires some aid where the leaves are too large and thick to allow the rain to penetrate.
Without going into the details of the innumerable sorts of pines, roses, &c., I must only remark, that in the department of esculent vegetables, there were four hundred and thirty-five sorts of salad, two hundred and sixty-one of peas, and two hundred and forty of potatoes,—and all other articles of garden commerce in the same proportion.
On my way back I met the Tyrolers, who had been making holiday, and asked my old acquaintance (the girl) how she was pleased with her stay here. She declared with enthusiasm that her Saint must have brought her here; for that they had made 7000l. sterling in a few months, which they had earned—hard money—only with singing their dozen songs.
Prince Esterhazy has made this Gejodle[88] the fashion here, and fashion in England is every thing. Sontag and Pasta, with their wonderful talents, have chiefly this to thank for their success—they were the fashion; for Weber, who did not understand the art of making himself fashionable, gained, as is well known, almost nothing;—the two Bohrers, Kiesewetter, and other men of real genius, were not more fortunate.
While I am talking of fashion, it seems a suitable occasion, before I quit England, to enter a little more at large on the subject of the structure and tone of English society, which is certainly rather more striking to a stranger in this admired land, than fog, steam-engines, or stage-coaches. It is not necessary to remark here, that in such general descriptions only the most prominent and reigning peculiarities are taken into consideration, and that, in the censure which is passed on the whole, the hundred honourable exceptions which exhibit the praiseworthy contrast in such full perfection, are left wholly out of the account.
England is now—viewed, certainly, with relation to a totally different universal spirit of the age—in a similar state to that of France thirty years before the revolution. And it will fall out with her as with her great rival, if she does not avert the storm by radical but continuous reform. Nearly-allied fundamental evils are present here, as there. On the one side, the undue preponderance, misused power, inflexible stony arrogance, and heartless frivolity of the great; on the other, selfishness and rapacity are grown into the national character of the mass of the people. Religion no longer dwells in the heart and spirit, but is become a dead form; notwithstanding the most unenlightened spirit of Catholicism,—with fewer ceremonies, indeed, but combined with like intolerance, and a similar hierarchy; and which besides the bigotry and the pride of Rome, has this over and above, that it possesses an enormous share of the property of the country.[89]
Like causes have also given an analogous tone and direction to what is pre-eminently called, Society. Experience will confirm this to every man who has access to what is called high life in England; and it will be highly interesting to him to observe how different a growth and aspect the same plant has assumed in France and England, in consequence of the original difference of the soil; for in France it grew rather out of chivalry and poetry, combined with the dominant vanity of the nation, with levity of character, and a real delight in social existence:—in England, out of a brutal feudal tyranny, the commercial prosperity of later years, an ill-humour and moroseness innate in the nation, and a cold stony self-love.