But the great delight of the English is in boxing, or pugilism, as it is more scientifically denominated. This practice might easily be suppressed; it is against the laws; the magistrates may interfere if they please; and its frequency therefore, under such circumstances, is an irrefragable proof of national barbarity. Cudgel-playing, quarter-staff, broad-sword, all of which, brutal as such gladiatorial exhibitions are, might have given to the soldiers a serviceable dexterity, have yielded to this more brutal sport, if that may be called sport which sometimes proves fatal. When a match is made between two prize-fighters, the tidings are immediately communicated to the public in the newspapers; and paragraphs occasionally appear, saying the rival are in training, what exercise they take, and what diet, for some of them feed upon raw beef as a preparative.—Meantime, the amateurs and the gamblers choose their party, and the state of the betts appears also in the public newspapers from time to time: not unfrequently the whole is a concerted scheme, that a few rogues may cheat a great many fools.—When the combat at length takes place, as regular a report is prepared for the newspapers as if it were a national victory—the particulars are recorded with a minuteness at once ridiculous and disgraceful; for every movement has its technical or slang name, and the unprecedented science of the successful combatant becomes the theme of general admiration.
Yet, notwithstanding all the attention which these people bestow upon this savage art, for which they have public schools, they are outdone by savages. When one of the English squadrons of discovery was at Tongataboo, several of the natives boxed with the sailors for love, as the phrase is, and in every instance the savage was victorious.
[20] The horns of the bull are tipt in Portugal, to preserve the horse. In Spain, where no such precaution is taken, it is not unusual to see the horse's entrails trailing along the ground.—Tr.
LETTER LXVIII.
The Abbé Barruel.—Journey of two Englishmen to Avignon to join a Society of Prophets.—Extracts from their prophetical Books.
I had prepared for you an account of a pseudo-prophet who excited much attention in London here at the beginning of the last war, when, almost by accident, I was made acquainted with some singular circumstances which are in some manner connected with him, and which therefore should previously be told. These circumstances are as authentic as they are extraordinary, and supply a curious fact for the history of the French Revolution.
We were talking one evening of the Abbé Barruel's proofs of a conspiracy against the governments, religion, and morality of Christendom. A friend of J.'s said, there was about as much truth in it as in one of Madame Scudery's romances; the characters introduced were real persons, to whom false motives and manners were imputed; a little of what was ascribed to them had really occurred, but the whole plot, colouring, and costume of the book, were fictitious. It was a work, said he, written to serve the purposes of a party, with the same spirit and the same intent as those which in old times led to such absurd and monstrous calumnies against the Jews; and, had its intent succeeded, there would have been a political St Bartholomew's day in England. True it was that a society had existed, whose object was to change or to influence the governments of Europe; it was well organized and widely extended, but enthusiasm, not infidelity, was the means which they employed.
In proof of this, he stated the sum of what I shall relate more at length from the book to which he referred as his authority, and which I obtained from him the next morning. Its title is this,—A revealed Knowledge of some Things that will speedily be fulfilled in the World, communicated to a Number of Christians brought together at Avignon, by the Power of the Spirit of God from all Nations; now published by his Divine Command, for the Good of all Men, by John Wright his Servant, and one of the Brethren. London, printed in the Year of Christ 1794. It is one of those innumerable pamphlets, which, being published by inferior booksellers, and circulating among sectarians and fanatics, never rise into the hands of those who are called the public, and escape the notice of all the literary journals. They who peruse them do it with a zeal which may truly be called consuming; they are worn out like a schoolboy's grammar; the form in which they are sent abroad, without covers to protect them, hastens their destruction, and in a few years they disappear for ever.
John Wright, the author of this narrative, was a working carpenter of Leeds, in Yorkshire; a man of strong devotional feelings, who seems, like the first Quakers, to have hungered and thirsted after religious truth in a land where there was none to impart it. Some travelling Swedenborgian preachers having heated his imagination, he was desirous of removing to London, to find out the New Jerusalem Church. It was no easy thing for a labouring man with a large family to remove to such a distance: however, by working over hours, he saved money enough to effect it. The New Jerusalem Church did not satisfy him; every thing was too definite and formal, too bodily and gross for a mind of his complexion. But it so happened that at this place of worship he entered into talk with a converted Jew, who, when he learnt his state of mind, and that he expected the restoration of the Jews would shortly be accomplished, said to him, I will tell you of a man who is just like yourself;—his name is William Bryan, and he lives in such a place.