But I chiefly amused myself with ideas of the change that would be made in the world by the substitution of balloons to ships. I supposed our seaports to become deserted villages; and Salisbury Plain, Newmarket Heath (another canvass for alteration of ideas), and all downs (but the Downs) arising into dockyards for aerial vessels. Such a field would be ample in furnishing new speculations. But to come to my ship-news:
"The good balloon Dædalus, Captain Wingate, will fly in a few days for
China; he will stop at the top of the Monument to take in passengers.
"Arrived on Brand-sands, the Vulture, Captain Nabob; the Tortoisesnow, from Lapland; the Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. The Bubble, Sheldon, took fire, and was burnt to her gallery; and the Phoenix is to be cut down to a second-rate."
In those days Old Sarum will again be a town and have houses in it.
There will be fights in the air with wind-guns and bows and arrows; and
there will be prodigious increase of land for tillage, especially in
France, by breaking up all public roads as useless.
[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]
One of the Duke of Marlborough's generals, dining with the Lord Mayor, an Alderman who sat next to him said, "Sir, yours must be a very laborious profession." "No," replied the general, "we fight about four hours in the morning, and two or three after dinner, and then we have all the rest of the day to ourselves."
HIS MARRIAGE
[Sidenote: William Cobbett]
When I first saw my wife she was thirteen years old.[5] I was within a month of twenty-one.[6] She was the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, and I was the sergeant-major of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts near the city of St. John, in the province of New Brunswick. I sat in the same room with her for about an hour, in the company of others, and I made up my mind that she was the very girl for me. That I thought her beautiful is certain, for that, I had always said, should be an indispensable qualification; but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct … which has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of winter, and, of course, the snow several feet deep on the ground, and the weather piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had done my morning's writing, to go out at break of day to take a walk on a hill at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about three mornings after I had first seen her, I had, by an invitation to breakfast with me, got up two young men to join me in my walk; and our road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on the snow scrubbing out a washing-tub. "That's the girl for me," said I, when we had got out of hearing.
One of these young men came to England soon afterwards; and he, who keeps an inn in Yorkshire, came over to Preston at the time of the election (in 1826) to verify whether I were the same man. When he found that I was he appeared surprised; but what was his surprise when I told him that those tall young men whom he saw around me were the sons of that pretty little girl that he and I saw scrubbing out the washing-tub on the snow in New Brunswick at day-break in the morning!
From the day that I first spoke to her I never had a thought of her ever being the wife of any other man, more than I had a thought of her being transformed into a chest of drawers; and I formed my resolution at once, to marry her as soon as we could get permission, and to get out of the army as soon as I could. So that this matter was at once settled as firmly as if written in the book of fate. At the end of about six months my regiment, and I along with it, were removed to Fredericton, a distance of a hundred miles up the river of St. John; and, which was worse, the artillery was expected to go off to England a year or two before our regiment! The artillery went, and she along with them; and now it was that I acted a part becoming a real and sensible lover. I was aware that, when she got to that gay place Woolwich, the house of her father and mother, necessarily visited by numerous people, not the most select, might become unpleasant to her, and I did not like, besides, that she should continue to work hard. I had saved a hundred and fifty guineas, the earnings of my early hours, in writing for the paymaster, the quartermaster, and others, in addition to the savings of my own pay. I sent her all my money before she sailed, and wrote to her to beg of her, if she found her home uncomfortable, to hire a lodging with respectable people, and, at any rate, not to spare the money by any means, but to buy herself good clothes, and to live without hard work, until I arrived in England; and I, in order to induce her to lay out the money, told her that I should get plenty more before I came home.