A Morning's Walk from London to Kew

by Sir R. Phillips

The observers at these telegraphs are not expected to keep their eye constantly at the glass, but look only every five minutes for the signal to make ready. The telescopes are Dolland’s Achromatics, at which one would wonder, if every thing done for governments were not converted into a job. The intention should have been to enable the observer to see the greatest number of hours; consequently the light should be intercepted by the smallest quantity of glass. Dollond’s achromatics contain, however, six lenses, and possess no recommendation but their enlarged field, and their freedom from prismatic colours in that field; points of no consequence in looking through a fixed glass at a fixed and circumscribed object. The field of the Galilean telescope is quite large enough, and, having but two lenses, one of which is a thin concave, it exhibits the object with greater brightness, and therefore ought to have been preferred for this purpose. It seems strange also, that, to ease the operator, it has never been contrived to exhibit the fixed spectrum on the principle of a portable camera, so that, without wearying the eye, the changes of the distant telegraph might have been exhibited on a plain surface, and seen with both eyes like the leaf of a book. The application of optical instruments, between a fixed station and fixed object, ought to have been made in an appropriate manner, and not influenced by the practices which prevail in regard to moveable telescopes for various objects.

I have long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd’s coffee-house; and commerce would be essentially served, if, during ’Change-hours at London, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, and Glasgow, communications could be interchanged relative to the state of markets, purchases, sales, and other transactions of business. How convenient too would be such a rapid intercourse between London and country bankers, in regard to balances, advances, and money transactions; how desirable in law business between London and country practitioners; and how important in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency! In family concerns, notices of deaths, births, accidents, progressive sickness, &c. it would often be deeply interesting. The state of elections, the issues of lawsuits, determinations of the legislature, questions for answers, and numberless events of more or less importance, would occur sufficient to keep telegraphs in constant requisition, and abundantly repay the cost of maintaining them. A guinea might be paid per hundred miles, for every five or six words, which, in matters of private concern, might, by pre-concert, be transmitted in cypher. Instead of sixty-four telegraphs, we might then require five hundred, and an establishment costing 100,000l. per annum; yet five hundred messages and replies per day, between different parts of the kingdom, taken at 2l. each, would in two hundred and fifty days produce 250,000l. or a net revenue of 150,000l. But to achieve so vast a purpose, and to confer on men a species of ubiquity, even if 50,000l. per annum were lost to the government, would it not be worth the sacrifice, thus to give to the people of England an advantage not possessed, and never likely to be possessed, by any other people on earth? What a triumph of civilization would be afforded by such an extension of the telegraphic system! The combinations of the TELESCOPE began what those of the TELEGRAPH would complete. United, they would produce a kind of finite ubiquity, rendering the intercourse of an industrious community independent of time and distance, and binding the whole in ties of self-interest, by means which could be achieved only in a high state of civilization through fortunate combinations of human art.

As I looked around me from this eminence, a multitude of ideas, sympathies, and affections, vibrated within me, which it would be impossible or tedious to analyse. The organ of the Eye was here played upon like that of the Ear in a musical concert. Nor was it the sense alone which was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and tone found a separate concord or discord, in innumerable associations and reminiscences. It was, in truth, a chorus to the eye, unattended by the noise and distraction produced by the laboured compositions of Handel; while it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an effect like one of the tender symphonies of Haydn. It was a Panorama, better adapted, however, to a poet than a painter; for it had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any eminences which raise the landscape above an angle of six or eight degrees; yet, to a poet, how rich it was in associations—how endless in pictures for the imagination!

The north and north-east were still obscured by the dingy, irregular, and dense Smoke issuing from the volcano of the Metropolis; and, in looking upon it, how difficult it was to avoid tracing the now mingled masses back to their several sources, considering the happiness or misery which they reflected from their respective fire-sides, and gaging the aspirations of hope, or the sighs of wretchedness, which a fertile imagination might conceive to be combined with this social atmosphere! Convenient alike to every condition of humanity, it might be considered as flowing at once from the dungeons of despairing convicts, the cellars and garrets of squalid poverty, the busy haunts of avarice, the waste of luxury, and the wantonness of wealth.

Straight before me, the metropolis, like a devouring monster, exhibited its equivocal and meretricious beauties, its extensive manufactories, its aspiring churches and towers, and other innumerable edifices. Westminster Abbey stood prominent, at once reviving the recollection of its superstitious origin, and exciting deep veneration as the depository of the relics of so much renown. What topics for commentary, if they had not been recently exhausted in the classical stanzas of a Maurice! St. Paul’s, the monument of Wren, was but just visible through the haze, though the man at the Telegraph asserted, that he could sometimes tell the hour by its dial without the aid of a telescope! How characteristic is this structure become of the British metropolis, and how flat the mass of common spires and smoky chimneys would now seem without it! The Monument, recording the delusions of faction, and the Tower, with all its gloomy associations, were visible in the reach of the river. Of Churches there appeared a monotonous groupe; while the houses presented a dingy and misshapen mass, as uninteresting at the distance of seven miles as an ant-hill at the distance of seven feet. Indeed, any wretch capable of setting his foot upon an ant-hill, and of destroying it, because it made no palpable appeals to his sympathy, might at this distance, by parity of feeling, let fall a mill-stone on this great city, and extinguish in an instant the hopes and cares of its inhabitants. On this spot then I behold an assemblage of the greatest wonders of man’s creation, at a focal distance, which reduces them to the measure of an ANT-HILL; and still further off they would be diminished even to a POINT! Such is the estimate of the eye, nor is it heightened by that of the ear; for I was assured that during tranquil nights, particularly by listening near the ground, the confused hum of the vast British metropolis could here be compared only to the buz of a BEE-HIVE, or the sound of a CONCH! What a lesson do these considerations afford to the pride of man, whose egotism represents him to himself as the most important object of the infinite creation; for whose use, he asserts, all things were made, and to whom all things are subservient! It is, however, natural that the nearest object should fill the largest angle, whether viewed by the mind or the eye; though it is the business of wisdom and philosophy to correct such illusions of our intellectual or sensitive powers.

Of the moral condition, and feelings, concentrated within a spot thus embraced by a glance of the eye, how impossible to form an estimate! Supposing 900,000 human beings are thus huddled together, in 150,000 houses, we may conclude, that 100,000 will always be lying on the bed of sickness, and that 30,000 are constantly afflicted by mortal diseases, eighty of whom expire every day, or three in every hour! Of the 150,000 house-keepers, above 50,000 are racked by poverty, or by the dread of its approach; other 50,000 maintain a precarious independence; while the remaining 50,000 enjoy comfort and happiness, chequered, however, by care and the conflict of human passions. The greater part of the first class are either already plunged, or predisposed to plunge, into vices and crimes unknown except in such a city; those of the second class maintain a virtuous struggle, but more frequently sink into the lower, than rise into the higher class; while, among the third class, there are found all degrees of virtue and worth, although mixed with an envious spirit of rivalry, and an indulgence in expense and luxury that greatly reduce the number of truly happy families.

On the north, north-west, and east, I still beheld the signs of this overgrown metropolis in villages, which branch, like luxuriant shoots, on every side. And it was only on the south and south-west, in the swelling downs and in the charms of Box-hill, Leith-hill, and Dorking, that I could discover the unsophisticated beauties of nature, which seemed to mock the toils of man, in the contrast they afforded to the scene in the opposite direction. Yet men, who never receive instruction except through their own experience, flock in tens of thousands to share in the lottery presented to their ambition in great cities, where thousands perish while in pursuit of the prize, where other thousands obtain nothing but blanks and disappointments, and whence the tens who achieve their object, gladly escape to enjoy their wealth, free from the disturbance of city passions, amid the placid and unchangeable beauties of nature.

In looking around me from the windows of Hartley’s Fire-house, it was impossible to avoid reflecting on the wretchedness of Want existing in the sooty metropolis, and the waste of Means in the uncultivated country immediately around me. I had just been sympathizing with the forlorn inhabitants of the workhouse at Wandsworth, at the distance of only a mile; and half a dozen other such receptacles of misery invited commiseration within equal distances, in other directions; yet a radius of a few hundred yards round this spot would have included as much unappropriated and useless land as might have sufficed to confer independence and plenty on their hopeless inmates! In the north-eastern direction, within a distance of ten miles, at least twenty thousand families might be discovered pining in squalid misery; though here I found myself in an unpeopled and uncultivated tract, nearly four miles square, and containing above fifteen thousand acres of good soil, capable of affording independent subsistence to half as many families!

I could not help exclaiming against the perversity of reason—the indifference of power—the complication of folly—and the ascendancy of turpitude, which, separately or conjointly, continue to produce circumstances so cruel and preposterous! Let it be recorded, said I, to the eternal disgrace of all modern statesmen, of many hundreds of ambitious legislators, and of our scientific economists, that in this luxuriant county of Surrey, there still exist, without productive cultivation, no less than 25,000 acres of open commons; 30,000 acres of useless parks, 48,000 acres of heaths, and 30,000 acres of chalk hills, serving but to subsist a few herds of deer and cattle, and to grow some unproductive trees, though at the very instant 10,000 families in the same county are dependent on the bounty of their respective parishes! Is this, said I, the vaunted age of reason? Are these the genuine fruits of civilization? Do such circumstances indicate the ascendency of benevolence? Do they not rather demonstrate that the principle of doing to others as we would be done unto, has little influence on the practices of our Statesmen and Legislators?

I may be told, that the principle of enclosing waste lands has long been recognised in the prevailing system of economy, and that the Legislature is incessantly active in passing Bills for new enclosures. But, I ask, for whom, and for whose benefit, are these bills passed? Do they provide for the poor? Do they help those who require help? Do they, by augmenting the supply, make provisions cheaper? Do they increase the number of independent fire-sides?—Rather, do they not wantonly add to the means of monopolists? Do they not give where nothing is wanted, however much may be coveted? Do they not add to the number of vassals, and diminish the number of freemen? Do they not abridge the scanty means of the poor in the free use of their bare-cropt commons? And do they not transfer those means to others who do not want them, and who, without the aid of new laws could never have enjoyed them?