Every building is rendered ornamental to the grounds. There is a botanical garden, which is filled with plants and flowers, which have been presented to Linnæus, from whom she received them, from every part of the globe. One of his pupils resided here, in an elegant habitation, in which there is a rotunda where lectures on botany are given: this fine room is surrounded with exotic plants. Mr Burt entirely concurred with Linnæus, in wishing, that gentlemen designed for theological studies were directed to apply as much time to the study of physics as they spent in metaphysics and logic, which he judges neither so indispensably necessary, nor useful as the former.
Lady Frances also erected an hospital for the reception of two hundred incurables; a thing much wanted in this kingdom, without paying any regard to their country, religion, or disease, requiring no security in case of death. The practice of most of the public hospitals in this country is widely different, the restrictions of admission being such as frequently deprive many from receiving the benefit first intended by the founder. But she had a fund of charity of another stamp, which gave her infinitely more pleasure, as it was free from the ostentation of those acts of public bounty. These were private donations to those whose circumstances were not yet so bad as to oblige them to beg publicly. If an industrious tradesman had a numerous family, little business, or a small stock, she found means to supply his wants, or put him in a way of carrying on his business to greater advantage, in such a manner, as that sometimes he himself did not know the source of his relief; at most, none but the party succoured, and Mr Burt, knew any thing of the matter, for this worthy man was her secret almoner, and searched out for the secret necessities of modest and industrious poor. She had the happiness arising from the consciousness of having maintained numerous families in decent plenty, who, without her well-timed and secret bounty, must have been a charge to the parish. But she was a great enemy to poor-rates, judging with Davenant, that they will be the bane of our manufactures.
Lady Frances was far from being alarmed at the great expenses of her undertakings. She thought her large fortune, and her nephew's long minority, as it put it in her power, could not be better employed than in works of national magnificence. The power and wealth of ancient Greece were most seen and admired in the splendor of the temples, and other sublime structures of Pericles. He boasted, that every art would be exerted, every hand employed, every citizen in the pay of the state, and the city, not only beautified, but maintained by itself. The sums Lady Frances expended in bringing these plans to perfection, diffused riches and plenty among the people, and has already doubled the estate. She has a fine collection of pictures.—The only way to raise a genius for painting, is to give encouragement: historical painters get so little by their profession, that we have very few. This Lady Frances made her particular object, to afford our youth ready access to good pictures: till these be multiplied in Great Britain, we shall never have the reputation of producing a good painter. If we expect to rival the Italian, the Flemish, or even the French school, our artists must have before their eyes the finished works of the greatest masters. It is a pity, that when an ingenious gentleman[7] last winter submitted to the parliament, as worthy of their attention, some considerations that might tend to the encouragement of useful knowledge, and the advancement in this kingdom of the arts and sciences, he did not with his usual intelligence, represent the bad consequences of the duty laid on pictures imported into Great Britain: Were the bad effects of this represented to our legislature, it is impossible but it must be amended. This gentleman took notice in his speech, that a remarkable opportunity of improving the national taste in painting, which was lately lost, he hoped would now be recovered. The incomparable Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some other great painters, who do honor to our country, generously offered to adorn the cathedral of St Paul's (a glorious monument of the magnificence of our ancestors) with some of their most valuable works: but the proposition was rejected by the late Bishop of London[8], though he flatters himself it will be renewed, and accepted by the gentleman at present in that fee[9], who is not only a man of solid piety, but of the soundest learning, and of exquisite classical taste. The great art of human life is not to eradicate the passions, but to adopt the proper objects of them: if mankind cannot think so abstractedly as a pure effort of unmixed reason implies, I presume it follows, that some degree of passion is warrantable in devotion. While we are in our present imperfect and embodied state, it will be found necessary to call in externals to our aid, for the proper discharge of religious worship. Even among those who in their private devotions are most sincere, external acts and ceremonies, when properly conducted, become real assistances; because the connection between the body and soul, between the senses and the imagination, between the passions and the reason of mankind, is so strong and mutual, that they uniformly act and re-act upon one another, and mutually raise the soul to new and higher degrees of fervor.
This was so much Lady Frances's opinion, that she had some fine pieces of painting in her chapel, which is also a very fine new building; the architecture and paintings do honor to the artists—She made it a rule to be constant in her attendance at church. Public acknowledgments of the goodness of God, and application for his blessings, contribute to give a whole community suitable apprehensions of him: and these, if it was her duty to entertain, it was equally her duty to propagate; both as the regard she paid the divine excellencies was expressed, and as the same advantage that she received from such apprehensions, was received by all whom they affected in the same manner.
She had not the smallest degree of superstition, having too much good sense to imagine the Deity can be persuaded to recede from the settled laws of the universe, and the immutability of his nature. But she knows the perfections of God are a ground and sufficient reason for prayer, and that it is both an act and a means of virtue.[10] She had a mind free from prejudice, adorned with knowledge, and filled with the best principles; a noble firmness in showing these principles, and in maintaining them; in short, every talent joined to the most amiable modesty. She was advised to call her elegant village by the name of Athens; but this she declined, naming it Munster Village: but she justly thought it deserved it; with this difference, that the inhabitants are too well informed to give into such gross superstitions, and so easily suffer themselves to be imposed upon by astrologers, divines, soothsayers, and many other sorts of conjurers, as the Grecians did.
They excelled in arts; their laws were wise; they had brought everything to perfection that makes life easy and agreeable: but they took little pains in the speculative sciences, geometry, astronomy, and physics. The anatomy of plants and animals, the knowledge of minerals and meteors, the shape of the earth, the course of the stars, and the whole system of the world, were still mysteries to them.
The Chaldeans and Egyptians, who knew something of them, kept it a great secret and never spoke of them but in riddles; so that until Alexander's time, and the reign of the Macedonians, they had made no great progress in such learning as might cure them of superstition. An immoderate love of the study of astrology, was a weakness which characterized also the fifteenth century. In the age of Lewis XIV, the court was infatuated with the notion of judicial astrology: many of the princes, through a superstitious pride, supposed that nature, to distinguish them, had writ their destiny in the stars. Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, father to the Duchess of Burgundy, had an astrologer always with him, even after his abdication. The same weakness which gave credit to the absurd chimera, judicial astrology, also occasioned the belief of sorcery and witchcraft; courts of justice composed of magistrates, who ought to have had more sense than the vulgar, were employed in trying persons accused of witchcraft.—Latest posterity must hear with astonishment that the Madame d'Ancre was burnt at the Gréve as a sorceress. This unfortunate woman, when questioned by counsellor Courtin concerning the kind of sorcery she had used to influence the will of Mary de Medecis, having answered, She had used that power only which great souls always have over weak minds; this sensible reply served only to precipitate the decree of her death[11].
It must be confessed there is a strong propensity in man's nature, to assign every thing uncommon to supernatural means. But though I am very apt to believe there is greater credulity in most minds, than will be candidly acknowledged, yet the degree of it must be in proportion to people's ignorance and want of information. Thus the famous doctors of the faculty at Paris, when John Faustus brought the first printed books that had then been seen in the world, or at least seen there, and sold them for manuscripts, were surprised at the performance, and questioned Faustus about it; but he affirming they were manuscripts, and that he kept a great many clerks employed to write them, they were satisfied. Looking further, however, into the work, and observing such an exact uniformity throughout the whole, that if there was a blot in one, it was the same in all, etc. etc. etc. their doubts were revived. The learned divines not being able to comprehend the thing, (and that was always sufficient) concluded it must be the devil; that it was done by magic and witchcraft; and that, in short, poor Faustus (who was indeed nothing but a mere printer) dealt with the devil.
They accordingly took him up for a magician and a conjurer, and one that worked by the Black Art, that is to say, by the help of the devil—and threatened to hang him; commencing a process against him in their criminal courts; when the fear of the gallows induced Faustus to discover the secret—that he had been a compositor to Koster of Harlem, the first inventor of printing.
Gardening made a much slower progress among the ancients, than architecture. The palace of Alcinous, in the seventh book of the Odyssey, is grand and highly ornamented; but his garden is no better than what we call a kitchen garden. This also Lady Frances excelled in. She had also a receptacle for all sorts of animals to retire to in their old age. It was of old the custom to bury the favourite dog near the master. To use those of the brute creation who toil for our pleasure, or labour for our profit, with hard and ungenerous treatment, is a species of inhumanity which all men allow to be derogatory from virtue. The authors of wanton cruelty towards the dumb creation, are justly execrated for their brutality. It is a crime which I believe many commit, without either considering the misery it produces, or the guilt it incurs: and many more, who in fits of causeless or capricious displeasure intend to inflict the misery, have yet no sense that they incur guilt. Lady Frances makes use of buffaloes to draw her ploughs. These animals are far stronger than oxen, and eat less. Why have we not them in this country, and dromedaries and camels?