On a more accurate survey, I traced the circular foundation of the Rotunda, and at some distance discovered the broken arches of some cellars, once filled with the choicest wines, but now with dirty water! Further on were marks against a garden wall, indicating, that the water-boilers for tea and coffee had once been heated there! I traced too the scite of the orchestra, where I had often been ravished by the finest performances of vocal and instrumental music! My imagination brought the objects before me; I fancied I could still hear an air of Mara’s; I turned my eye aside, and what a contrast appeared!—No glittering lights!—No brilliant happy company!—No peals of laughter from thronged boxes!—No chorus of a hundred instruments and voices!—All was death-like stillness! Is such, I exclaimed, the end of human splendour?—Yes, truly, all is vanity—and here is a striking example!—Here are ruins and desolation, even without antiquity! I am not mourning said I, over the remains of Babylon or Carthage—ruins sanctioned by the unsparing march of time!—But here it was all glory and splendour, even yesterday! Here, but seven years have flown away, and I was myself one of three thousand of the gayest mortals ever assembled, in one of the gayest scenes which the art of man could devise—aye, on this very spot—yet the whole is now changed into the dismal scene of desolation before me!—Full of such reflections, I cast my eyes eastward, when Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Church presented themselves in a continued line—Ah! thought I, that line may at some distant epoch enable the curious antiquary to determine the scite of our British Daphne; but I could not avoid feeling, that if the pile of Ranelagh and its glories have so totally disappeared, in so short a season, no human work, even yonder colossal specimens of Gothic and Grecian art, or the great Metropolis itself, can be deemed a standard of locality for the guide of distant ages! I moved pensively from a spot which exciting such solemn and affecting emotions, had diminished the vigour of my frame by exhausting my nervous energies.
I soon turned the corner of a street which took me out of sight of the space on which once stood the gay Ranelagh; but it will be long ere I can remove from my heart the poignant sensations to which its sudden destruction had given rise.[1]
Before me appeared the shops so famed for Chelsea buns, which, for above thirty years, I have never passed without filling my pockets. In the original of these shops, for even of Chelsea buns there are counterfeits, are preserved mementos of domestic events, in the first half of the past century. The bottle-conjuror is exhibited in a toy of his own age; portraits are also displayed of Duke William and other noted personages; a model of a British soldier, in the stiff costume of the same age; and some grotto-works, serve to indicate the taste of a former owner, and were perhaps intended to rival the neighbouring exhibition at Don Saltero’s. These buns have afforded a competency, and even wealth; to four generations of the same family; and it is singular, that their delicate flavour, lightness and richness, have never been successfully imitated. The present proprietor told me, with exultation, that George the Second had often been a customer of the shop; that the present King, when Prince George, and often during his reign, had stopped and purchased his buns; and that the Queen, and all the Princes and Princesses, had been among his occasional customers.
A little further to the west, is a vulgar sign of Nell Gwyn, to whose female sensibility, and influence on royalty, are ascribed the foundation of the adjoining hospital for invalid soldiers. If the mistresses of Princes always made a similar use of their ascendency, and were to teach their royal lovers to respect the duties of humanity, and build hospitals for the victims of their idiotic ambition, the world would complain less of their extravagancies and vices. The excellent hearts of women might warrant such an expectation; but, unhappily, this depraved portion of the sex generally part with their feminine sensibilities, at the same time that they part with their character and modesty. Contemned, despised, or neglected by the world, they become haters of their species, and too commonly make use of their power, to avenge on society the personal affronts which they are compelled to endure.
The approach to the hospital was indicated by the appearance of numbers of mutilated soldiers. It afflicted me, to see young men of two or three and twenty, some of whom had lost both their arms, and others both their legs! I learnt, on enquiry, that a few living objects of this description are all that now remain of regiments of their comrades! The rest had been killed in battle, or had died of fatigue, or camp diseases! The querulous why, and for what, still crossed my imagination; but I again referred such busy doubts to ministers! I may be wrong; they cannot be wrong! No! they must be right, or such things would not be. I confess, notwithstanding, that it deeply afflicts me that such things are; yet how is the play of human passions to be avoided, and how are the mischiefs of living errors to be corrected? Words, arguments, morality, and religion, at the commencement of a quarrel, are exerted in vain—the storm of bad passions carries, for a season, all before it—and after mischiefs are irretrievably perpetrated, reason and experience produce repentance, when, alas, it is useless! Princes and statesmen are too proud and powerful to permit themselves to be instructed, or I would advise them on such occasions to doubt their imaginary infallibility. Let them solemnly doubt whenever some mischief, which they cannot repair, must be the consequence of their decision; and when that decision may, perchance, arise from some mistake! But I fear this just maxim of Philosophy will never become a practical rule of policy strong enough to counteract the benefits of extended patronage enjoyed during wars by corrupt ministers; to allay the puerile love of glory cherished by weak princes; or to subdue the demoniacal passions and irrational prejudices artfully excited by rulers, and too often cherished by infatuated nations.
I accosted a young man, who had lost both arms, and was walking pensively between the trees. After some expressions of heart-felt commisseration, I enquired by what mischance he had met with so untoward a wound? He told me that he was in the act of loading his musket, when a cannon-ball, passing before him, carried off one arm above the elbow, and so shattered the other, that it was necessary to amputate it. He then named some paltry battle where this accident befel him; the issue of which to either of the contending parties was, as I recollected, not worth the joint of a little finger, even if the entire object of the campaign, or war, was worth so much! But, said I, you are of course well provided for in the hospital—“No, (he replied,) there is not room for me at present; but, owing to the severity of my wounds, I have a double allowance as an out-pensioner—yet, (he modestly remarked,) it may easily be supposed that even a double allowance is not enough for a man who cannot help himself in any thing—I cannot dress myself, nor even eat or drink, but am obliged to be fed like a child; I have a poor old mother who does her best for me, or”——here the young man’s voice faultered, and some tears hung on his cheeks—for, alas, even these he could neither wipe away nor conceal! Parched must have been the eye that would not mingle tears with those of this poor fellow, on hearing the tale of his unchangeable fate! I found too that my own utterance sympathized with his—but, shewing him a shilling—and indicating, by signs, the difficulty I felt in putting him in possession of it—“here sir,” said he, “and God bless you;” then, stooping with his mouth, I put it between his lips!—Ah, thought I, as I turned from this wretched object, the most hard-hearted of those who were concerned in breaking public treaties, and rejecting overtures for peace, would have relented, if with my feelings they had beheld this single victim of the millions that have been imolated, to the calculations of their fallible policy.
I now enquired for veterans—for Fontenoy men—Culloden men—Minden men—Quebec men! To some of the two last I was introduced; but I found them blind, deaf, maimed, and childish! What a sickening picture of human nature, whether we consider the causes, objects, or consequences! Among these hoary and crippled heroes, I was introduced to one who is now in his hundred and first year! His name is Ardenfair, and he is a native of Dorsetshire. He entered into the Marines about the year 1744; was in Anson’s action, in 1747; and in Hawke’s, in 1759. This veteran sees, talks, hears, and remembers well; and it is remarkable, that he performs the daily drudgery of sweeping the gravel-walks, and wheeling water in a barrow! One wonders at the ability to perform such labour, in a Centenarian; that such a one should be allowed to be the sweeper of the hospital; and still more, that his age had not recommended him to the special bounty of the officers. It might be expected, that the successive fathers of these invalids would, at all times, be exempted from ordinary duties, and receive some additional means of cheering their extension of life, so long beyond the ordinary duration.
On the north-east border of this hospital, I was shewn a new erection, nearly of the same size, devoted to the education of the children of soldiers. It is, I am told, a very interesting establishment to those who view with complacency the favourite system of Germanizing the English people—but how inadequate are all such institutions, to repay the obligations of any government to its invalided soldiers, if ambition, prejudice, or a love of false glory, may, on light grounds, cover the earth with bleeding and mangled victims! As each of the veterans in such hospitals is often the solitary survivor of a thousand, of whom the complement have fallen premature victims of the cruel accidents of war, the authors ought not to conclude that they atone for their crimes by lodging, feeding, and cloathing the thousandth man, when he is no longer able to serve their purposes!
Mankind are, however, so selfish, that nothing but the experience or the imminent danger of great sufferings seems likely to correct the errors of governments and the infatuations of people on the subject of war. The best security of peace is, consequently, the danger that the chances of war may bring its scourges home to the fire-sides of either of the belligerents. The fears of nations have, therefore, taught them the duty of doing to each other as they would be done unto. It forms, however, a new epoch in the history of society, that, owing to their insular situation, the passions of one great people are unchecked by this salutary fear; and public morality, in consequence, has stood in need of some new stimulus, to relieve the world from the danger of suffering interminable slaughters. What a TEST this new situation afforded to the powers of Christianity! But for twenty years, alas, Christianity has TOTALLY FAILED, and pretended zealots of the religion of peace and charity have been even among the most furious abettors of implacable war!
Opposite the superb terrace of the Hospital gardens, stands a tea-drinking house, called the Red House; and about fifty yards on the western side of it is the place at which Cæsar crossed the Thames. The reader who has read Stukeley’s reasons for fixing on Chertsey as the place of this celebrated passage, may startle at the positive affirmation here made. Stukeley says that the name of Chertsey is all Cæsar; so also is Chelsea, by analogies equally natural. London, or Lyn-dyn, was then the chief town in South Britain, and would, as matter of course, be the place towards which the Britons would retreat and the Romans advance. Landing near Deal, they would cross the river at the ford nearest their place of landing, and would not be likely to march to Chertsey, if they could cross at Chelsea; and the marshes of the Thames, to which the Britons retreated, would correspond better with the marshes of Lambeth and Battersea than with the low lands near Chertsey, where the river is inconsiderable, and where there is no tide to confer strength and military character on the marshes. This ford, from the Red House to the Bank, near the scite of Ranelagh, still remains; and I have surveyed it more than once. At ordinary low water, a shoal of gravel, not three feet deep, and broad enough for ten men to walk abreast, extends across the river, except on the Surrey side, where it has been deepened by raising ballast. Indeed, the causeway from the south bank may yet be traced at low water; so that this was doubtless a ford to the peaceful Britons, across which the British army retreated before the Romans, and across which they were doubtless followed by Cæsar and the Roman legions. The event was pregnant with such consequences to the fortunes of these islands, that the spot deserves the record of a monument, which ought to be preserved from age to age, as long as the veneration due to antiquity is cherished among us. Who could then have contemplated that the folly of Roman ambition would be the means of introducing arts among the semi-barbarous Britons, which, in eighteen hundred and forty years, or after the lapse of nearly sixty generations, would qualify Britain to become mistress of Imperial Rome; while one country would become so exalted, and the other be so debased, that the event would excite little attention, and be deemed but of secondary importance? Possibly after another sixty generations, the posterity of the savage tribes near Sierra Leone, or New Holland, may arbitrate the fate of London, or of Britain, as an affair of equal indifference!