Dorchester.—Gilbert Wakefield.—Inside of an English Church.—Attempt to rear Silkworms.—Down-country.—Blandford.—Salisbury.—Execrable Alteration of the Cathedral.—Instance of public Impiety. Sunday, April 25.
We started early, and hurried over four leagues of the same open and uninteresting country, which brought us to Dorchester, the capital of the province, or county town, as it is called, because the provincial prison is here, and here the judges come twice a-year to decide all causes civil and criminal. The prison is a modern building: the height and strength of its walls, its iron-grated windows, and 38its strong gateway, with fetters hanging over the entrance, sufficiently characterise it as a place of punishment, and render it a good representation of a giant’s castle in romance.
When J— passed through this town on his way to Spain, he visited Gilbert Wakefield, a celebrated scholar, who was confined here as a favourer of the French Revolution. One of the bishops had written a book upon the state of public affairs, just at the time when the minister proposed to take from every man the tithe of his income: this the bishop did not think sufficient; so he suggested instead, that a tenth should be levied of all the capital in the kingdom; arguing, that as every person would be affected in the same proportion, all would remain relatively as before, and in fact no person be affected at all. This curious argument he enforced by as curious an illustration; he said, “That if the foundation of a great building were to sink equally in every part at the same time, 39the whole pile, instead of suffering any injury, would become the firmer.”—“True,” said Wakefield in his reply, “and you, my lord bishop, who dwell in the upper apartments, might still enjoy the prospect from your window;—but what would become of me and the good people who live upon the ground floor?”
Wakefield was particularly obnoxious to the government, because his character stood very high among the Dissenters for learning and integrity, and his opinions were proportionately of weight. They brought him to trial for having in his answer to the bishop’s pamphlet applied the fable of the Ass and his Panniers to existing circumstances. Had it indeed been circulated among the poor, its tendency would certainly have been mischievous; but in the form in which it appeared it was evidently designed as a warning to the rulers, not as an address to the mob. He was, however, condemned to two years confinement in this prison, 40this place being chosen as out of reach of his friends, to make imprisonment more painful. The public feeling upon this rigorous treatment of so eminent a man was strongly expressed, and a subscription was publicly raised for him which amounted to above fifteen hundred pieces-of-eight, and which enabled his family to remove to Dorchester and settle there. But the magistrates, whose business it was to oversee the prison, would neither permit them to lodge with him in his confinement, nor even to visit him daily. He was thus prevented from proceeding with the education of his children, an occupation which he had ever regarded as a duty, and which had been one of his highest enjoyments. But, in the midst of vexations and insults, he steadily continued to pursue both his literary and christian labours; affording to his fellow prisoners what assistance was in his power, endeavouring to reclaim the vicious, and preparing the condemned for death. His imprisonment eventually proved 41fatal. He had been warned on its expiration to accustom himself slowly to his former habits of exercise, or a fever would inevitably be the consequence; a fact known by experience. In spite of all his precautions it took place; and while his friends were rejoicing at his deliverance he was cut off. As a polemical and political writer he indulged an asperity of language which he had learnt from his favourite philologists, but in private life no man was more generally or more deservedly beloved, and he had a fearless and inflexible honesty which made him utterly regardless of all danger, and would have enabled him to exult in martyrdom. When J— had related this history to me, I could not but observe how far more humane it was to prevent the publication of obnoxious books than to permit them to be printed and then punish the persons concerned. “This,” he said, “would be too open a violation of the liberty of the press.”
42By the time we had breakfasted the bells for divine service were ringing, and I took the opportunity to step into one of their churches. The office is performed in a desk immediately under the pulpit, not at the altar: there were no lights burning, nor any church vessels, nor ornaments to be seen. Monuments are fixed against the walls and pillars, and I thought there was a damp and unwholesome smell, perhaps because I involuntarily expected the frankincense. They have an abominable custom of partitioning their churches into divisions which they call pews, and which are private property; so that the wealthy sit at their ease, or kneel upon cushions, while the poor stand during the whole service in the aisle.
An attempt was made something more than a century ago to rear silkworms in this neighbourhood by a Mr Newberry; a man of many whimsies he was called, and whimsical indeed he must have been; for the different buildings for his silkworms 43and his laboratories were so numerous that his house looked like a village, and all his laundry and dairy work was done by men, because he would suffer no women servants about him.
The road still lay over the downs; this is a great sheep country, above 150,000 are annually sold from Dorsetshire to other parts of England; they are larger than ours, and I think less beautiful, the wool being more curled and less soft in its appearance. It was once supposed that the thyme in these pastures was so nourishing as to make the ewes produce twins, a story which may be classed with the tale of the Lusitanian foals of the wind; it is however true that the ewes are purchased by the farmers near the metropolis, for the sake of fattening their lambs for the London market, because they yean earlier than any others. The day was very fine, and the sight of this open and naked country, where nothing was to be seen but an extent of short green turf under a sky 44of cloudless blue, was singular and beautiful. There are upon the downs many sepulchral hillocks, here called barrows, of antiquity beyond the reach of history. We past by a village church as the people were assembling for service, men and women all in their clean Sunday clothes; the men standing in groups by the church-yard stile, or before the porch, or sitting upon the tombstones, a hale and ruddy race. The dresses seem every where the same, without the slightest provincial difference: all the men wear hats, the least graceful and least convenient covering for the head that ever was devised. I have not yet seen a cocked hat except upon the officers. They bury the dead both in town and country round the churches, and the church-yards are full of upright stones, on which the name and age of the deceased is inscribed, usually with some account of his good qualities, and not unfrequently some rude religious rhyme. I observe that the oldest churches are always the 45most beautiful, here as well as every where else; for as we think more of ourselves and less of religion, more of this world and less of the next, we build better houses and worse churches. There are no storks here: the jackdaw, a social and noisy bird, commonly builds in the steeples. Little reverence is shown either to the church or the cemetery; the boys play with a ball against the tower, and the priest’s horse is permitted to graze upon the graves.
At Blandford we changed chaises; a wealthy and cheerful town. The English cities have no open centre like our plazas; but, in amends for this, the streets are far wider and more airy: indeed they have never sun enough to make them desirous of shade. The prosperity of the kingdom has been fatal to the antiquities, and consequently to the picturesque beauty of the towns. Walls, gates, and castles have been demolished to make room for the growth of streets. You are delighted 46with the appearance of opulence in the houses, and the perfect cleanliness every where when you are within the town; but without, there is nothing which the painter would choose for his subject, nothing to call up the recollections of old times, and those feelings with which we always remember the age of the shield and the lance.
This town and Dorchester, but this in particular, has suffered much from fire; a tremendous calamity which is every day occurring in England, and against which daily and dreadful experience has not yet taught them to adopt any general means of prevention. There are large plantations about Blandford:—I do not like the English method of planting in what they call belts about their estates; nothing can be more formal or less beautiful, especially as the fir is the favourite tree, which precludes all variety of shape and colour. By some absurdity which I cannot explain, they set the young trees so thick 47that unless three-fourths be weeded out, the remainder cannot grow at all; and when they are weeded, those which are left, if they do not wither and perish in consequence of the exposure, rarely attain to any size or strength.
Our next stage was to the episcopal city of Salisbury; here we left the down-country, and once more entered upon cultivated fields and inclosures. The trees in these hedge-rows, if they are at all lofty, have all their boughs clipt to the very top; nothing can look more naked and deplorable. When they grow by the way-side, this is enjoined by law, because their droppings after rain injure the road, and their shade prevents it from drying. The climate has so much rain and so little sun, that over-hanging boughs have been found in like manner injurious to pasture or arable lands, and the trees, therefore, are every where thus deformed. The approach to Salisbury is very delightful;—little rivers or rivulets 48are seen in every direction; houses extending into the country, garden-trees within the city, and the spire of the cathedral over-topping all; the highest and the most beautiful in the whole kingdom.
We visited this magnificent building while our dinner was getting ready: like all such buildings, it has its traditional tales of absurdity and exaggeration—that it has as many private chapels as months in a year, as many doors as weeks, as many pillars as days, as many windows as hours, and as many partitions in the windows as minutes: they say also, that it is founded upon wool-packs, because nothing else could resist the humidity of the soil. It has lately undergone, or, I should rather say, suffered a thorough repair in the true spirit of reformation. Every thing has been cleared away to give it the appearance of one huge room. The little chapels, which its pious founders and benefactors had erected in the hope of exciting piety 49in others, and profiting by their prayers, are all swept away! but you may easily conceive what wild work a protestant architect must make with a cathedral, when he fits it to his own notions of architecture, without the slightest feeling or knowledge of the design with which such buildings were originally erected. The naked monuments are now ranged in rows between the pillars, one opposite another, like couples for a dance, so as never monuments were placed before, and, it is to be hoped, never will be placed hereafter. Here is the tomb of a nobleman, who, in the reign of our Philip and Mary, was executed for murder, like a common malefactor, with this difference only, that he had the privilege of being hanged in a silken halter; a singularity which, instead of rendering his death less ignominious, has made the ignominy more notorious. The cloisters and the chapter-house have escaped alteration. I have seen more beautiful cloisters in our own country, but never a finer chapterhouse; 50it is supported, as usual, by one central pillar, whose top arches off on all sides, like the head of a spreading palm. The bishop’s palace was bought during the reign of the presbyterians by a rich tailor, who demolished it and sold the materials.
The cemetery has suffered even more than the church, if more be possible, from the abominable sacrilege, and abominable taste of the late bishop and his chapter. They have destroyed all memorials of the dead, for the sake of laying it down as a smooth well-shorn grass plat, garnished with bright yellow gravel walks! This suits no feeling of the mind connected with religious reverence, with death, or with the hope of immortality; indeed it suits with nothing except a new painted window at the altar, of truly English design, (for England is not the country of the arts,) and an organ, bedecked with crocketed pinnacles, more than ever was Gothic tower, and of stone colour, to imitate masonry! This, however, it should be added, 51was given in a handsome manner by the King. A subscription was raised through the diocese to repair the cathedral, the King having enquired of the bishop how it succeeded, proceeded to ask why he himself had not been applied to for a contribution. The prelate, with courtly submission, disclaimed such presumption as highly improper. I live at Windsor, said the King, in your diocese, and, though I am not rich, can afford to give you an organ, which I know you want; so order one in my name, and let it be suitable to so fine a cathedral.
The soil here abounds so much with water, that there are no vaults in the churches, nor cellars in the city; a spring will sometimes gush up when they are digging a grave. Little streams flow through several of the streets, so that the city has been called the English Venice; but whoever gave it this appellation, either had never seen Venice, or grossly flattered Salisbury. Indeed, till the resemblance 52was invented, these streamlets were rather thought inconvenient than beautiful; and travellers complained that they made the streets not so clean and not so easy of passage, as they would have been otherwise. The place is famous for the manufactory of knives and scissars, which are here brought to the greatest possible perfection. I am sorry it happened to be Sunday; for the shops, which form so lively a feature in English towns, are all fastened up with shutters, which give the city a melancholy and mourning appearance. I saw, however, a priest walking in his cassock from the church,—the only time when the priests are distinguished in their dress from the laity.
A remarkable instance of insolent impiety occurred lately in a village near this place. A man, in derision of religion, directed in his will, that his horse should be caparisoned and led to his grave, and there shot, and buried with him, that he might be ready to mount at the resurrection, 53and start to advantage. To the disgrace of the country this was actually performed; the executors and the legatees probably thought themselves bound to obey the will; but it is unaccountable why the clergyman did not interfere, and apply to the bishop.