He stayed seven weeks with us, three of them in London. He travelled on foot to Richmond, Windsor, Oxford, Birmingham, and Matlock, with some experience of a stage coach on the way back; and when, in dread of being hurled from his perch on the top as the coach flew down hill, he tried a safer berth among the luggage in the basket, he had further experience. It was like that of Hood’s old lady, in the same place of inviting shelter, who, when she crept out, had only breath enough left to murmur, “Oh, them boxes!”
Pastor Moritz’s experience of inns was such as he hardly could pick up in these days of the free use of the feet. But in those days everybody who was anybody rode. And even now, there might be cold welcome to a shabby-looking pedestrian without a knapsack. Pastor Moritz had his Milton in one pocket and his change of linen in the other. From some inns he was turned away as a tramp, and in others he found cold comfort. Yet he could be proud of a bit of practical wisdom drawn by himself out of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” that taught him to conciliate the innkeeper by drinking with him; and the more the innkeeper drank of the ale ordered the better, because Pastor Moritz did not like it, and it did not like him. He also felt experienced in the ways of the world when, having taken example from the manners of a bar-maid, if he drank in a full room he did not omit to say, “Your healths, gentlemen all.”
Fielding’s Parson Adams, with his Æschylus in his pocket, and Parson Moritz with his Milton, have points of likeness that bear strong witness to Fielding’s power of entering into the spirit of a true and gentle nature. After the first touches of enthusiastic sentiment, that represent real freshness of enjoyment, there is no reaction to excess in opposite extreme. The young foot traveller settles down to simple truth, retains his faith in English character, and reports ill-usage without a word of bitterness.
The great charm of this book is its unconscious expression of the writer’s character. His simple truthfulness presents to us of 1886 as much of the England of 1782 as he was able to see with eyes full of intelligence and a heart full of kindness. He heard Burke speak on the death of his friend and patron Lord Rockingham, with sudden rebuke to an indolent and inattentive house. He heard young Pitt, and saw how he could fix, boy as he looked, every man’s attention.
“Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.”
And when the power is so friendly as that of the Pastor Moritz, we may, if wise, know ourselves better than from a thousand satires, but if foolish we may let all run into self-praise.
H. M.
CHAPTER I.
On the Thames, 31st May.
At length, my dearest Gedike, I find myself safely landed on the happy shores of that country, a sight of which has, for many years, been my most earnest wish; and whither I have so often in imagination transported myself. A few hours ago the green hills of England yet swam imperfectly before our eyes, scarcely perceptible in the distant horizon: they now unfold themselves on either side, forming as it were a double amphitheatre. The sun bursts through the clouds, and gilds alternately the shrubs and meadows on the distant shores, and we now espy the tops of two masts of ships just peeping above the surface of the deep. What an awful warning to adventurous men! We now sail close by those very sands (the Goodwin) where so many unfortunate persons have found their graves.