Rural Rides — Rural Ride from Petersfield to Kensington Part 2

_Kensington, Sunday, 20th Nov.

_ Coming to Godalming on Friday, where business kept us that night, we had to experience at the inn the want of our American fire-place.

A large and long room to sit in, with a miserable thing called a screen to keep the wind from our backs, with a smoke in the room half an hour after the fire was lighted, we, consuming a full bushel of coals in order to keep us warm, were not half so well off as we should have been in the same room, and without any screen, and with two gallons of coals, if we had our American fire-place.

I gave the landlord my advice upon the subject, and he said he would go and look at the fire-place at Mr. Knowles's. That was precisely one of those rooms which stand in absolute need of such a fire-place.

It is, I should think, five-and-thirty, or forty feet long, and pretty nearly twenty feet wide.

I could sooner dine with a labouring man upon his allowance of bread, such as I have mentioned above, than I would, in winter time, dine in that room upon turbot and sirloin of beef.

An American fire-place, with a good fire in it, would make every part of that room pleasant to dine in in the coldest day in winter.

I saw a public-house drinking-room, where the owner has tortured his invention to get a little warmth for his guests, where he fetches his coals in a waggon from a distance of twenty miles or thereabouts, and where he consumes these coals by the bushel, to effect that which he cannot effect at all, and which he might effect completely with about a fourth part of the coals.

It looked like rain on Saturday morning, we therefore sent our horses on from Godalming to Ripley, and took a post-chaise to convey us after them.

Being shut up in the post-chaise did not prevent me from taking a look at a little snug house stuck under the hill on the road side, just opposite the old chapel on St. Catherine's-hill, which house was not there when I was a boy.

I found that this house is now occupied by the family Molyneux, for ages the owners of Losely Park, on the out-skirts of which estate this house stands.

The house at Losely is of great antiquity, and had, or perhaps has, attached to it the great manors of Godalming and Chiddingfold.

I believe that Sir Thomas More lived at Losely, or, at any rate, that the Molyneuxes are, in some degree, descended from him.

The estate is, I fancy, theirs yet; but here they are, in this little house, while one Gunning (an East Indian, I believe) occupies the house of their ancestors.

At Send, or Sutton, where Mr. Webb Weston inhabited, there is a Baron somebody, with a De before his name.

The name is German or Dutch, I believe.

How the Baron came there I know not; but as I have read his name amongst the _Justices of the Peace_ for the county of Surrey, he must have been born in England, or the law has been violated in making him a Justice of the Peace, seeing that no person not born a subject of the king, and a subject in this country too, can lawfully hold a commission under the crown, either civil or military.

Nor is it lawful for any man born abroad of Scotch or Irish parents, to hold such commission under the crown, though such commissions have been held, and are held, by persons who are neither natural-born subjects of the king, nor born of English parents abroad.

It should also be known and borne in mind by the people, that it is unlawful to grant any pension from the crown to any foreigner whatever.

And no naturalization act can take away this disability.

Yet the Whigs, as they call themselves, granted such pensions during the short time that they were in power.

When we got to Ripley, we found the day very fine, and we got upon our horses and rode home to dinner, after an absence of just one month, agreeably to our original intention, having seen a great deal of the country, having had a great deal of sport, and having, I trust, laid in a stock of health for the winter, sufficient to enable us to withstand the suffocation of this smoking and stinking Wen.

But Richard and I have done something else, besides ride, and hunt, and course, and stare about us, during this month.

He was eleven years old last March, and it was now time for him to begin to know something about letters and figures.

He has learned to work in the garden, and having been a good deal in the country, knows a great deal about farming affairs.

He can ride anything of a horse, and over anything that a horse will go over.

So expert at hunting, that his first teacher, Mr. Budd, gave the hounds up to his management in the field; but now he begins to talk about nothing but _fox-hunting_!

That is a dangerous thing.

When he and I went from home, I had business at Reigate.

It was a very wet morning, and we went off long before daylight in a post-chaise, intending to have our horses brought after us.

He began to talk in anticipation of the sport he was going to have, and was very inquisitive as to the probability of our meeting with fox-hounds, which gave me occasion to address him thus: "Fox-hunting is a very fine thing, and very proper for people to be engaged in, and it is very desirable to be able to ride well and to be in at the death; but that is not ALL; that is not everything.

Any fool can ride a horse, and draw a cover; any groom or any stable-fellow, who is as ignorant as the horse, can do these things; but all gentlemen that go a fox-hunting [I hope God will forgive me for the lie] are scholars, Richard.

It is not the riding, nor the scarlet coats, that make them gentlemen; it is their scholarship."

What he thought I do not know; for he sat as mute as a fish, and I could not see his countenance.

"So," said I, "you must now begin to learn something, and you must begin with arithmetic."

He had learned from mere play, to read, being first set to work of his own accord, to find out what was said about Thurtell, when all the world was talking and reading about Thurtell.

This had induced us to give him Robinson Crusoe; and that had made him a passable reader.

Then he had scrawled down letters and words upon paper, and had written letters to me, in the strangest way imaginable.

His knowledge of figures he had acquired from the necessity of knowing the several numbers upon the barrels of seeds brought from America, and the numbers upon the doors of houses.

So that I had pretty nearly a blank sheet of paper to begin upon; and I have always held it to be stupidity to the last degree to attempt to put book-learning into children who are too young to reason with.

I began with a pretty long lecture on the utility of arithmetic; the absolute necessity of it, in order for us to make out our accounts of the trees and seeds that we should have to sell in the winter, and the utter impossibility of our getting paid for our pains unless we were able to make out our accounts, which accounts could not be made out unless we understood something about arithmetic.

Having thus made him understand the utility of the thing, and given him a very strong instance in the case of our nursery affairs, I proceeded to explain to him the meaning of the word arithmetic, the power of figures, according to the place they occupied.

I then, for it was still dark, taught him to add a few figures together, I naming the figures one after another, while he, at the mention of each new figure said the amount, and if incorrectly, he was corrected by me.

When we had got a sum of about 24, I said now there is another line of figures on the left of this, and therefore you are to put down the 4 and carry 2. "What is _carrying_?"

said he.

I then explained to him the _why_ and the _wherefore_ of this, and he perfectly understood me at once.

We then did several other little sums; and, by the time we got to Sutton, it becoming daylight, I took a pencil and set him a little sum upon paper, which, after making a mistake or two, he did very well.

By the time we got to Reigate he had done several more, and at last, a pretty long one, with very few errors.

We had business all day, and thought no more of our scholarship until we went to bed, and then we did, in our post-chaise fashion, a great many lines in arithmetic before we went to sleep.

Thus we went on mixing our riding and hunting with our arithmetic, until we quitted Godalming, when he did a sum very nicely in _multiplication of money_, falling a little short of what I had laid out, which was to make him learn the four rules in whole numbers first, and then in money, before I got home.

Friends' houses are not so good as inns for executing a project like this; because you cannot very well be by yourself; and we slept but four nights at inns during our absence.

So that we have actually stolen the time to accomplish this job, and Richard's Journal records that he was more than fifteen days out of the thirty-one coursing or hunting.

Nothing struck me more than the facility, the perfect readiness with which he at once performed addition of money.

There is a _pence table_ which boys usually learn, and during the learning of which they usually get no small number of thumps.

This table I found it wholly unnecessary to set him.

I had written it for him in one of the leaves of his journal book.

But, upon looking at it, he said, "I don't want this, because, you know, I have nothing to do but to _divide by twelve_."

That is right, said I, you are a clever fellow, Dick; and I shut up the book.

Now, when there is so much talk about education, let me ask how many pounds it generally costs parents to have a boy taught this much of arithmetic; how much time it costs also; and, which is a far more serious consideration, how much mortification, and very often how much loss of health, it costs the poor scolded broken-hearted child, who becomes dunder-headed and dull for all his life-time, merely because that has been imposed upon him as a task which he ought to regard as an object of pleasant pursuit.

I never even once desired him to stay a moment from any other thing that he had a mind to go at.

I just wrote the sums down upon paper, laid them upon the table, and left him to tackle them when he pleased.

In the case of the multiplication-table, the learning of which is something of a job, and which it is absolutely necessary to learn perfectly, I advised him to go up into his bed-room and read it twenty times over out loud every morning before he went a hunting, and ten times over every night after he came back, till it all came as pat upon his lips as the names of persons that he knew.

He did this, and at the end of about a week he was ready to set on upon multiplication.

It is the irksomeness of the thing which is the great bar to learning of every sort.

I took care not to suffer irksomeness to seize his mind for a moment, and the consequence was that which I have described.

I wish clearly to be understood as ascribing nothing to extraordinary _natural_ ability.

There are, as I have often said, as many _sorts_ of men as there are of dogs; but I do not pretend to be of any peculiarly excellent sort, and I have never discovered any indications of it.

There are, to be sure, sorts that are naturally stupid; but, the generality of men are not so; and I believe that every boy of the same age, equally healthy, and brought up in the same manner, would (unless of one of the stupid kinds) learn in just the same sort of way; but not if begun to be thumped at five or six years old, when the poor little things have no idea of the utility of anything; who are hardly sensible beings, and have but just understanding enough to know that it will hurt them if they jump down a chalk pit.

I am sure, from thousands of instances that have come under my own eyes, that to begin to teach children book-learning before they are capable of reasoning, is the sure and certain way to enfeeble their minds for life; and, if they have natural genius, to cramp, if not totally to destroy that genius.

I think I shall be tempted to mould into a little book these lessons of arithmetic given to Richard.

I think that a boy of sense, and of age equal to that of my scholar, would derive great profit from such a little book.

It would not be equal to my verbal explanations, especially accompanied with the other parts of my conduct towards my scholar; but at any rate, it would be plain; it would be what a boy could understand;

it would encourage him by giving him a glimpse at the reasons for what he was doing: it would contain principles; and the difference between principles and rules is this, that the former are persuasions and the latter are commands.

There is a great deal of difference between carrying 2 for such and such a reason, and carrying 2 because you _must_ carry 2. You see boys that can cover reams of paper with figures, and do it with perfect correctness too; and at the same time, can give you not a single reason for any part of what they have done.

Now this is really doing very little.

The rule is soon forgotten, and then all is forgotten.

It would be the same with a lawyer that understood none of the principles of law.

As far as he could find and remember cases exactly similar in all their parts to the case which he might have to manage, he would be as profound a lawyer as any in the world; but if there was the slightest difference between his case and the cases he had found upon record, there would be an end of his law.

Some people will say, here is a monstrous deal of vanity and egotism;

and if they will tell me, how such a story is to be told without exposing a man to this imputation, I will adopt their mode another time.

I get nothing by telling the story.

I should get full as much by keeping it to myself; but it may be useful to others, and therefore I tell it.

Nothing is so dangerous as supposing that you have eight wonders of the world.

I have no pretensions to any such possession.

I

look upon my boy as being like other boys in general.

Their fathers can teach arithmetic as well as I; and if they have not a mind to pursue my method, they must pursue their own.

Let them apply to the outside of the head and to the back, if they like; let them bargain for thumps and the birch rod; it is their affair and not mine.

I never yet saw in my house a child that was _afraid_; that was in any fear whatever; that was ever for a moment under any sort of apprehension, on account of the learning of anything; and I never in my life gave a command, an order, a request, or even advice, to look into any book; and I am quite satisfied that the way to make children dunces, to make them detest books, and justify that detestation, is to tease them and bother them upon the subject.

As to the _age_ at which children ought to begin to be taught, it is very curious, that, while I was at a friend's house during my ride, I looked into, by mere accident, a little child's abridgment of the History of England: a little thing about twice as big as a crown-piece.

Even into this abridgment the historian had introduced the circumstance of Alfred's father, who, "through a _mistaken notion_ of kindness to his son, had suffered him to live to the age of twelve years without any attempt being made to give him education."

How came this writer to know that it was a _mistaken notion_?

Ought he not rather, when he looked at the result, when he considered the astonishing knowledge and great deeds of Alfred--ought he not to have hesitated before he thus criticised the notions of the father?

It appears from the result that the notions of the father were perfectly correct; and I am satisfied, that if they had begun to thump the head of Alfred when he was a child, we should not at this day have heard talk of Alfred the Great.

* * * * * Great apologies are due to the OLD LADY from me, on account of my apparent inattention towards her, during her recent, or rather, I may say, her present, fit of that tormenting disorder which, as I observed before, comes upon her by _spells_.

Dr. M'CULLOCH may say what he pleases about her being "_wi' bairn_."

I say it's the wet gripes; and I saw a poor old mare down in Hampshire in just the same way; but God forbid the catastrophe should be the same, for they shot poor old Ball for the hounds.

This disorder comes by spells.

It sometimes seems as if it were altogether going off; the pulse rises, and the appetite returns.

By-and-by a fresh grumbling begins to take place in the bowels.

These are followed by acute pains; the patient becomes tremulous; the pulse begins to fall, and the most gloomy apprehensions begin again to be entertained.

At every spell the pulse does not cease falling till it becomes lower than it was brought to by the preceding spell; and thus, spell after spell, finally produces the natural result.

It is useless at present to say much about the equivocating and blundering of the newspapers, relative to the cause of the fall.

They are very shy, extremely cautious; become wonderfully _wary_, with regard to this subject.

They do not know what to make of it.

They all remember, that I told them that their prosperity was delusive; that it would soon come to an end, while they were telling me of the falsification of all my predictions.

I told them the Small-note Bill had only given a _respite_.

I told them that the foreign loans, and the shares, and all the astonishing enterprises, arose purely out of the Small-note Bill;

and that a short time would see the Small-note Bill driving the gold out of the country, and bring us back to another restriction, OR, to wheat at four shillings a bushel.

They remember that I told them all this; and now, some of them begin to _regard me as the principal cause of the present embarrassments_!

This is pretty work indeed!

What!

I!

The poor deluded creature, whose predictions were all falsified, who knew nothing at all about such matters, who was a perfect pedlar in political economy, who was "a conceited and obstinate old dotard," as that polite and enlightened paper, the _Morning Herald_, called me: is it possible that such a poor miserable creature can have had the power to produce effects so prodigious?

Yet this really appears to be the opinion of one, at least, of these Mr. Brougham's best possible public instructors.

The _Public Ledger_, of the 16th of November, has the following passage:-- "It is fully ascertained that the Country Banking Establishments in England have latterly been compelled to limit their paper circulation, for the writings of Mr. COBBETT are widely circulated in the Agricultural districts, and they have been so successful as to induce the _Boobies_ to call for gold in place of country paper, a circumstance which has _produced a greater effect on the currency than any exportation of the precious metals_ to the Continent, either of Europe or America, could have done, although it too must have contributed to render money for a season scarce."

And, so, the "_boobies_" call for gold instead of country bank-notes!

Bless the "_boobies_"!

I wish they would do it to a greater extent, which they would, if they were not so dependent as they are upon the ragmen.

But, does the _Public Ledger_ think that those unfortunate creatures who suffered the other day at Plymouth, would have been "_boobies_," if they had gone and got sovereigns before the banks broke?

This brother of the broad sheet should act justly and fairly as I do.

He should ascribe these demands for gold to Mr. Jones of Bristol and not to me.

Mr. Jones taught the "boobies" that they might have gold for asking for, or send the ragmen to jail.

It is Mr. Jones, therefore, that they should blame, and not me.

But, seriously speaking, what a mess, what a pickle, what a horrible mess, must the thing be in, if any man, or any thousand of men, or any hundred thousand of men, can change the value of money, unhinge all contracts and all engagements, and plunge the pecuniary affairs of a nation into confusion?

I have been often accused of wishing to be thought the cleverest man in the country; but surely it is no vanity (for vanity means unjust pretension) for me to think myself the cleverest man in the country, if I can of my own head, and at my own pleasure, produce effects like these.

Truth, however, and fair dealing with my readers, call upon me to disclaim so haughty a pretension.

I

have no such power as this public instructor ascribes to me.

Greater causes are at work to produce such effects; causes wholly uncontrollable by me, and, what is more, wholly uncontrollable in the long run by the Government itself, though heartily co-operating with the bank directors.

These united can do nothing to arrest the progress of events.

Peel's Bill produced the horrible distresses of 1822; the part repeal of that bill produced a respite, that respite is now about to expire; and neither Government nor bank, nor both joined together, can prevent the ultimate consequences.

They may postpone them for a little; but mark, every postponement will render the catastrophe the more dreadful.

I see everlasting attempts by the "Instructor" to cast blame upon the bank.

I can see no blame in the bank.

The bank has issued no small notes, though it has liberty to do it.

The bank pays in gold agreeably to the law.

What more does anybody want with the bank.

The bank lends money I suppose when it chooses; and is not it to be the judge when it shall lend and when it shall not?

The bank is blamed for putting out paper and causing high prices; and blamed at the same time for not putting out paper to accommodate merchants and keep them from breaking.

It cannot be to blame for both, and, indeed, it is blameable for neither.

It is the fellows that put out the paper and then break that do the mischief.

However, a breaking merchant, whom the bank will no longer prop up, will naturally blame the bank, just as every insolvent blames a solvent that will not lend him money.

When the foreign loans first began to go on, Peter M'Culloch and all the Scotch were cock o' whoop.

They said that there were prodigious advantages in lending money to South America, that the interest would come home to enrich us; that the amount of the loans would go out chiefly in English manufactures; that the commercial gains would be enormous; and that this country would thus be made rich, and powerful, and happy, by employing in this way its "surplus capital," and thereby contributing at the same time to the uprooting of despotism and superstition, and the establishing of freedom and liberality in their stead.

Unhappy and purblind, I could not for the life of me see the matter in this light.

My perverted optics could perceive no _surplus capital_ in bundles of bank-notes.

I could see no gain in sending out goods which somebody in England was to pay for, without, as it appeared to me, the smallest chance of ever being paid again.

I could see no chance of gain in the purchase of a bond, nominally bearing interest at six per cent.

, and on which, as I thought, no interest at all would ever be paid.

I despised the idea of paying bits of paper by bits of paper.

I

knew that a bond, though said to bear six per cent.

interest, was not worth a farthing, unless some interest were paid upon it.

I declared, when Spanish bonds were at seventy-five, that I would not give a crown for a hundred pounds in them, if I were compelled to keep them unsold for seven years; and I now declare, as to South American bonds, I think them of less value than the Spanish bonds now are, if the owner be compelled to keep them unsold for a year.

It is very true, that these opinions agree with my _wishes_; but they have not been created by those wishes.

They are founded on my knowledge of the state of things, and upon my firm conviction of the folly of expecting that the interest of these things will ever come from the respective countries to which they relate.

Mr. Canning's despatch, which I shall insert below, has, doubtless, had a tendency (whether expected or not) to prop up the credit of these sublime speculations.

The propping up of the credit of them can, however, do no sort of good.

The keeping up the price of them for the present may assist some of the actual speculators, but it can do nothing for the speculation in the end, and this speculation, which was wholly an effect of the Small-note Bill, will finally have a most ruinous effect.

How is it to be otherwise?

Have we ever received any evidence, or anything whereon to build a belief, that the interest on these bonds will be paid?

Never; and the man must be mad; mad with avarice or a love of gambling, that could advance his money upon any such a thing as these bonds.

The fact is, however, that it was not _money_: it was paper: it was borrowed, or created, for the purpose of being advanced.

Observe, too, that when the loans were made, money was at a lower value than it is now; therefore, those who would have to pay the interest, would have too much to pay if they were to fulfil their engagement.

Mr. Canning's State Paper clearly proves to me, that the main object of it is to make the loans to South America finally be paid, because, if they be not paid, not only is the amount of them lost to the bond-holders, but there is an end, at once, to all that brilliant _commerce_ with which that shining Minister appears to be so much enchanted.

All the silver and gold, all the Mexican and Peruvian dreams vanish in an instant, and leave behind the wretched Cotton-Lords and wretched Jews and Jobbers to go to the workhouse, or to Botany Bay.

The whole of the loans are said to amount to about twenty-one or twenty-two millions.

It is supposed, that twelve millions have actually been sent out in goods.

These goods have perhaps been paid for here, but they have been paid for out of English money or by English promises.

The money to pay with has come from those who gave money for the South American bonds, and these bond-holders are to be repaid, if repaid at all, _by the South Americans_.

If not paid at all, then England will have sent away twelve millions worth of goods for nothing; and this would be the Scotch way of obtaining enormous advantages for the country by laying out its "_surplus capital_" in foreign loans.

I shall conclude this subject by inserting a letter which I find in the _Morning Chronicle_, of the 18th instant.

I perfectly agree with the writer.

The Editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ does not, as appears by the remark which he makes at the head of it; but I shall insert the whole, his remark and all, and add a remark or two of my own.

--[See _Register_, vol. 56, p. 556. ] "This is a pretty round sum--a sum, the very naming of which would make anybody but half-mad Englishmen stare.

To make comparisons with _our own debt_ would have little effect, that being so monstrous that every other sum shrinks into nothingness at the sight of it.

But let us look at the United States, for they have _a debt_, and a debt is a debt; and this debt of the United States is often cited as an apology for ours, even the parsons having at last come to cite the United States as presenting us with a system of perfection.

What, then, is this debt of the United States?

Why, it was on the 1st of January, 1824, this 90,177,962; that is to say dollars; that is to say, at four shillings and sixpence the dollar, just _twenty millions sterling_; that is to say, 594,000 pounds _less_ than our 'surplus capital' men have lent to the South Americans!

But now let us see what is the net revenue of this same United States.

Why, 20,500,755, that is to say, in sterling money, three millions, three hundred and thirty thousand, and some odd hundreds; that is to say, almost to a mere fraction, a _sixth part_ of the whole gross amount of the debt.

Observe this well, that the whole of the debt amounts to only six times as much as one single year's net revenue.

Then, again, look at the exports of the United States.

These exports, in one single year, amount to 74,699,030 dollars, and in pounds sterling L16,599,783. Now, what can the South American State show in this way?

Have they any exports?

Or, at least, have they any that any man can speak of with certainty?

Have they any revenue wherewith to pay the interest of a debt, when they are borrowing the very means of maintaining themselves now against the bare name of their king?

We are often told that the Americans borrowed their money to carry on their Revolutionary war with.

_Money!

_ Aye; a farthing is money, and a double sovereign is no more than money.

But surely some regard is to be had to the _quantity_; some regard is to be had to the amount of the money; and is there any man in his senses that will put the half million, which the Americans borrowed of the Dutch, in competition, that will name on the same day, this half million, with the twenty-one millions and a half borrowed by the South Americans as above stated?

In short, it is almost to insult the understandings of my readers, to seem to institute any comparison between the two things; and nothing in the world, short of this gambling, this unprincipled, this maddening paper-money system, could have made men look with patience for one single moment at loans like these, tossed into the air with the hope and expectation of re-payment.

However, let the bond-owners keep their bonds.

Let them feel the sweets of the Small-note Bill, and of the consequent puffing up of the English funds.

The affair is theirs.

They have rejected my advice; they have listened to the broad sheet; and let them take all the consequences.

Let them, with all my heart, die with starvation, and as they expire, let them curse Mr. BROUGHAM'S best possible public Instructor."

_Uphusband (Hampshire), Thursday, 24th Aug.

1826. _ We left Burghclere last evening, in the rain; but as our distance was only about seven miles, the consequence was little.

The crops of corn, except oats, have been very fine hereabouts; and there are never any pease, nor any beans, grown here.

The sainfoin fields, though on these high lands, and though the dry weather has been of such long continuance, look as green as watered meadows, and a great deal more brilliant and beautiful.

I have often described this beautiful village (which lies in a deep dell) and its very variously shaped environs, in my _Register_ of November, 1822. This is one of those countries of chalk and flint and dry-top soil and hard roads and high and bare hills and deep dells, with clumps of lofty trees, here and there, which are so many rookeries: this is one of those countries, or rather, approaching towards those countries, of downs and flocks of sheep, which I like so much, which I always get to when I can, and which many people seem to flee from as naturally as men flee from pestilence.

They call such countries _naked_ and _barren_, though they are, in the summer months, actually covered with meat and with corn.

I saw, the other day, in the Morning Herald London "best public instructor," that all those had _deceived themselves_, who had expected to see the price of agricultural produce brought down by the lessening of the quantity of paper-money.

Now, in the first place, corn is, on an average, a seventh lower in price than it was last year at this time;

and what would it have been, if the crop and the stock had now been equal to what they were last year?

All in good time, therefore, good Mr. Thwaites.

Let us have a little time.

The "best public instructors" have, as yet, only fallen, in number sold, about a third, since this time last year.

Give them a little time, good Mr. Thwaites, and you will see them come down to your heart's content.

Only let us fairly see an end to small notes, and there will soon be not two daily "best public instructors" left in all the "entire" great "British Empire."

But, as man is not to live on bread alone, so corn is not the _only_ thing that the owners and occupiers of the land have to look to.

There are timber, bark, underwood, wool, hides, pigs, sheep, and cattle.

All those together make, in amount, four times the corn, at the very least.

I know that _all_ these have greatly fallen in price since last year;

but I am in a sheep and wool country, and can speak positively as to them, which are two articles of very great importance.

As to sheep; I am speaking of Southdowns, which are the great stock of these counties; as to sheep they have fallen one-third in price since last August, lambs as well as ewes.

And, as to the wool, it sold, in 1824, at 40_s.

_ a tod: it sold last year, at 35_s.

_ a tod; and it now sells at 19_s.

_ a tod!

A tod is 28lb.

avoirdupois weight; so that the price of Southdown wool now is 8_d.

_ a pound and a fraction over; and this is, I believe, cheaper than it has ever been known within the memory of the oldest man living!

The "best public instructor" may, perhaps, think, that sheep and wool are a trifling affair.

There are many thousands of farmers who keep each a flock of at least a thousand sheep.

An ewe yields about 3lb.

of wool, a wether 4lb.

, a ram 7lb.

Calculate, good Mr. Thwaites, what a difference it is when this wool becomes 8_d.

_ a pound instead of 17_d.

_, and instead of 30_d.

_ as it was not many years ago!

In short, every middling sheep farmer receives, this year, about 250_l.

_ less, as the produce of sheep and wool, than he received last year; and, on an average, 250_l.

_ is more than half his rent.

There is a great falling off in the price of horses, and of all cattle except fat cattle; and, observe, when the prospect is good, it shows a rise in the price of lean cattle; not in that of the meat which is just ready to go into the mouth.

Prices will go on gradually falling, as they did from 1819 to 1822 inclusive, unless upheld by untoward seasons, or by an issue of assignats; for, mind, it would be no joke, no sham, _this time_; it would be an issue of as real, as _bona fide_ assignats as ever came from the mint of any set of rascals that ever robbed and enslaved a people in the names of "liberty and law."

_East Everley (Wiltshire), Sunday, 27th August, Evening.

_ We set off from Uphusband on Friday, about ten o'clock, the morning having been wet.

My sons came round, in the chaise, by Andover and Weyhill, while I came right across the country towards Ludgarshall, which lies in the road from Andover to this place.

I never knew the _flies_ so troublesome, in England, as I found them in this ride.

I was obliged to carry a great bough, and to keep it in constant motion, in order to make the horse peaceable enough to enable me to keep on his back.

It is a country of fields, lanes, and high hedges; so that no _wind_ could come to relieve my horse; and, in spite of all I could do, a great part of him was covered with foam from the sweat.

In the midst of this, I got, at one time, a little out of my road, in, or near, a place called Tangley.

I rode up to the garden-wicket of a cottage, and asked the woman, who had two children, and who seemed to be about thirty years old, which was the way to Ludgarshall, which I knew could not be more than about _four miles_ off.

She did _not know_!

A very neat, smart, and pretty woman; but she did not know the way to this rotten borough, which was, I was sure, only about four miles off!

"Well, my dear good woman," said I, "but you _have been_ at LUDGARSHALL?"

--"No." --"Nor at Andover?"

(six miles another way)--"No." --"Nor at Marlborough?"

(nine miles another way)--"No." --"Pray, were you born in this house?"

--"Yes."

--"And how far have you ever been from this house?"

--"Oh!

I have been _up in the parish_ and over _to Chute_."

That is to say, the utmost extent of her voyages had been about two and a half miles!

Let no one laugh at her, and, above all others, let not me, who am convinced, that the _facilities_, which now exist, of _moving human bodies from place to place_, are amongst the _curses_ of the country, the destroyers of industry, of morals, and, of course, of happiness.

It is a great error to suppose, that people are rendered stupid by remaining always in the same place.

This was a very acute woman, and as well behaved as need to be.

There was, in July last (last month) a Preston-man, who had never been further from home than Chorley (about eight or ten miles), and who started off, _on foot_, and went, _alone_, to Rouen, in France, and back again to London, in the space of about ten days; and that, too, without being able to speak, or to understand, a word of French.

N.

B.

Those gentlemen, who, at Green-street, in Kent, were so kind to this man, _upon finding that he had voted for me_, will be pleased to accept of my best thanks.

Wilding (that is the man's name) was full of expressions of gratitude towards these gentlemen.

He spoke of others who were good to him on his way; and even at Calais he found friends on my account; but he was particularly loud in his praises of the gentlemen in Kent, who had been so good and so kind to him, that he seemed quite in an extasy when he talked of their conduct.

Before I got to the rotten-borough, I came out upon a Down, just on the border of the two counties, Hampshire and Wiltshire.

Here I came up with my sons, and we entered the rotten-borough together.

It contained some rashers of bacon and a very civil landlady; but it is one of the most mean and beggarly places that man ever set his eyes on.

The curse attending corruption seems to be upon it.

The look of the place would make one swear, that there never was a clean shirt in it, since the first stone of it was laid.

It must have been a large place once, though it now contains only 479 persons, men, women, and children.

The borough is, as to all practical purposes, as much private property as this pen is my private property.

Aye, aye!

Let the petitioners of Manchester bawl, as long as they like, against all other evils; but, until they touch this _master-evil_, they do nothing at all.

Everley is but about three miles from Ludgarshall, so that we got here in the afternoon of Friday: and, in the evening a very heavy storm came and drove away all flies, and made the air delightful.

This is a real _Down_-country.

Here you see miles and miles square without a tree, or hedge, or bush.

It is country of green-sward.

This is the most famous place in all England for _coursing_.

I was here, at this very inn, with a party eighteen years ago; and the landlord, who is still the same, recognized me as soon as he saw me.

There were forty brace of greyhounds taken out into the field on one of the days, and every brace had one course, and some of them two.

The ground is the finest in the world;

from two to three miles for the hare to run to cover, and not a stone nor a bush nor a hillock.

It was here proved to me, that the hare is, by far, the swiftest of all English animals; for I saw three hares, in one day, _run away_ from the dogs.

To give dog and hare a fair trial, there should be but _one_ dog.

Then, if that dog got so close as to compel the hare _to turn_, that would be a proof that the dog ran fastest.

When the dog, or dogs, never get near enough to the hare to induce her to _turn_, she is said, and very justly, to "_run away_" from them; and, as I saw three hares do this in one day, I conclude, that the hare is the swiftest animal of the two.

This inn is one of the nicest, and, in summer, one of the pleasantest, in England; for, I think, that my experience in this way will justify me in speaking thus positively.

The house is large, the yard and the stables good, the landlord _a farmer_ also, and, therefore, no cribbing your horses in hay or straw and yourself in eggs and cream.

The garden, which adjoins the south side of the house, is large, of good shape, has a terrace on one side, lies on the slope, consists of well-disposed clumps of shrubs and flowers, and of short-grass very neatly kept.

In the lower part of the garden there are high trees, and, amongst these, the tulip-tree and the live-oak.

Beyond the garden is a large clump of lofty sycamores, and in these a most populous rookery, in which, of all things in the world, I delight.

The village, which contains 301 souls, lies to the north of the inn, but adjoining its premises.

All the rest, in every direction, is bare down or open arable.

I am now sitting at one of the southern windows of this inn, looking across the garden towards the rookery.

It is nearly sun-setting; the rooks are skimming and curving over the tops of the trees; while, under the branches, I see a flock of several hundred sheep, coming nibbling their way in from the Down, and going to their fold.

Now, what ill-natured devil could bring Old Nic Grimshaw into my head in company with these innocent sheep?

Why, the truth is this: nothing is _so swift_ as _thought_: it runs over a life-time in a moment; and, while I was writing the last sentence of the foregoing paragraph, _thought_ took me up at the time when I used to wear a smock-frock and to carry a wooden bottle like that shepherd's boy; and, in an instant, it hurried me along through my no very short life of adventure, of toil, of peril, of pleasure, of ardent friendship and not less ardent enmity;