LETTER III.
Exeter Cathedral and Public Walk.—Libraries.—Honiton.—Dangers of English Travelling, and Cruelty with which it is attended.—Axminster.—Bridport.
Saturday, April 24.
If the outside of this New London Inn, as it is called, surprised me, I was far more surprised at the interior. Excellent as the houses appeared at which we had already halted, they were mean and insignificant compared with this. There was a sofa in our apartment, and the sideboard was set forth with china and plate. Surely, however, these articles of luxury are misplaced, as they are not in the slightest degree necessary to the accommodation of a traveller, and must be considered in his bill.
Exeter is an ancient city, and has been so slow in adopting modern improvements that it has the unsavoury odour of Lisbon. One great street runs through the city from east to west; the rest consists of dirty lanes. As you cross the bridge, you look down upon a part of the town below, intersected by little channels of water. The cathedral is a fine object from those situations where both towers are seen, and only half the body of the building, rising above the city. It cannot be compared with Seville, or Cordova, or Burgos; yet certainly it is a noble pile. Even the heretics confess that the arches, and arched windows, and avenues of columns, the old monuments, the painted altar, and the coloured glass, impress them with a feeling favourable to religion. For myself, I felt that I stood upon ground, which, desecrated as it was, had once been holy.
Close to our inn is the entrance of the Norney or public walk. The trees are elms, and have attained their full growth: indeed I have never seen a finer walk; but every town has not its Norney[[2]] as with us its alameda. I was shown a garden, unique in its kind, which has been made in the old castle ditch. The banks rise steeply on each side; one of the finest poplars in the country grows in the bottom, and scarcely overtops the ruined wall. Jackson, one of the most accomplished men of his age, directed these improvements; and never was accident more happily improved. He was chiefly celebrated as a musician; but as a man of letters, his reputation is considerable; and he was also a painter: few men, if any, have succeeded so well in so many of the fine arts. Of the castle itself there are but few remains; it was named Rougemont, from the colour of the red sandy eminence on which it stands, and for the same reason the city itself was called by the Britons The Red City.
[2]. The author seems to have mistaken this for a general name.—Tr.
In most of the English towns they have what they call circulating libraries: the subscribers, for an annual or quarterly payment, have two or more volumes at a time, according to the terms; and strangers may be accommodated on depositing the value of the book they choose. There are several of these in Exeter, one of which, I was told, was considered as remarkably good, the bookseller being himself a man of considerable learning and ability. Here was also a literary society of some celebrity, till the French revolution, which seems to have disturbed every town, village, and almost every family in the kingdom, broke it up. The inhabitants in general are behindhand with their countrymen in information and in refinement. The streets are not flagged, neither are they regularly cleaned, as in other parts of the kingdom; the corporation used to compel the townspeople to keep their doors clean, as is usual in every English town; but some little while ago it was discovered, that, by the laws of the city, they had no authority to insist upon this; and now the people will not remove the dirt from their own doors, because they say they cannot be forced to do it. Their politics are as little progressive as their police: to this day, when they speak of the Americans, they call them the rebels. Everywhere else, this feeling is extinguished among the people, though it still remains in another quarter. When Washington died, his will was published in the newspapers; but in those which are immediately under ministerial influence, it was suppressed by high authority. It was not thought fitting that any respect should be paid to the memory of a man whom the Sovereign considered as a rebel and a traitor.
The celebrated Priestley met with a singular instance of popular hatred in this place. A barber who was shaving him heard his name in the midst of the operation;—he dropt his razor immediately, and ran out of the room exclaiming, “that he had seen his cloven foot.”
I bought here a map of England, folded for the pocket, with the roads and distances all marked upon it. I purchased also a book of the roads, in which not only the distance of every place in the kingdom from London, and from each other, is set down, but also the best inn at each place is pointed out, the name mentioned of every gentleman’s seat near the road, and the objects which are most worthy a traveller’s notice. Every thing that can possibly facilitate travelling seems to have been produced by the commercial spirit of this people.