352 WINDERMERE-POETRY. autre que mon pere, l'eprouveroit, sur l'heur !" I had been told that, in the Spanish play, the old father, calling his three sons in succession,, seizes the hand of the first, and, carrying it to his mouth, bites his thumb severely! This unexpected proceeding does not fail to occasion vehement outcries and struggles on the part of the son, who is, in consequence, dismissed with contempt, A second son undergoes the same trial, with no better result. At last comes the third, the young Cid, who bears the biting without emotion, and is immediately proclaimed the avenger. Instead of biting, I now understand that the old father gives only a hard squeeze of the hand, which is certainly a less shocking violation of the French bienseances tra, giques. Mr S. has chosen a career in which he does not meet at present with any competitor. He is eminently the poet of chimeras. Milton left a great model in this kind; and he has surpassed it in monstrous creations and events, so totally out of nature, as to exclude not only sympathy, but, in a great degree, meaning itself. Je l'avouerai, j'aime toute aventure, The coarse remark of Cardinal d'Este to Ariosto is well known: "Dove diavolo, Signor Ludovico, avete pigliate tante de coglionerie;" and most of the readers of Milton and of Mr S. might be inclined to repeat it;—in fact they have few readers, although they have many admirers. The modern poet understands piety and tenderness much better than his predecessor. The love and the theology of Paradise Lost are alike harsh and austere, coarse and material, while Mr S. has tenderness and MR S.-KESWICK-MUSEUM. 353 spirituality. The latter is as picturesque as Milton, who was a great landscape-painter, and, in the age of box parterres, clipt hedges, and jets-d'eau, respected the freedom, and loved the native graces of nature. Mr S. is much esteemed by all those who are acquainted with him, and seems to have as much good sense and general knowledge as talents and genius. I was surprised to hear him censuring highly the doctrine of the Essay on Population, or rather not taking it in its true light. One of the dreams of the revolutionary philosophy was, the faculty of indefinite perfectibility in the human species; and one of its errors, or its artifices, was, to suppose that the great obstacles to this perfectibility came altogether from the social institutions. It is not to be wondered at, that the discovery of a still greater obstacle,—an insurmountable one, raised by nature itself,-which deprives that philosophy of a favourite dogma, should be very ill received by its followers, and excite their ill-humour. In consequence, the doctrine of population is one of the signals of party. It is often approved by the whigs; but I have not found any thorough reformer to whom it was not odious. These two parties having, however, many points of contact and natural sympathies, individuals slide easily and unconsciously from one to the other; and when the metamorphosis takes place, it happens frequently that the new insect, fresh out of his old skin, drags still some fragments of it after him, just enough to indicate what he was before. There is here (Keswick,) a museum, which, for a country museum, is not to be despised. We found in it an instrument, common enough probably, but new to two of us; and those who have felt the tremendous vibrations, and heard the om 554 CHINESE GONG-HELVELLYN. nipotent sound of the Chinese gong, must admire the following description of it: The Gong, that seems, with its thunders dread, The painter, we found, had not far to go for his model. On our return from Keswick to Windermere we passed between Leatheswater, a small lake, and the foot of Helvellyn, 3300 feet, the highest mountain in England, but not in Scotland. In going we had taken the other side of the lake, which is seen to more advantage near, and the Helvellyn side at a distance. A heap of stones is observable on the boundaries of Cumberland and Westmoreland, in a wild pass, where a battle was fought between two petty kings of those realms. The bare hill on the right does not see the sun the whole day. Issuing from this dreary pass, Grasmere appeared to great advantage. The jagged top of Helm Crag made a fine termination to the ridge on the right. I rode alone on horseback, and remarked that every one of the inhabitants I met addressed some words to me, indicating partly a good-natured disposition, and partly the remoteness and solitary situation of their country. It happened to rain, for the first time these many days, and I was generally accosted by Sharp shower, Sir." 66 The hero of St Jean d'Acre has spent some days here with his bride, the widow of Sir Thomas R.; his gunpowder speeches to the ladies are repeated, confirming the trite, but true apophthegm, of-no hero for his valet-de-chambre. Travellers begin to thin, and summer excursions draw to an end. One of these prospect-hunters was observed the WINDERMERE-BRITISH TRAVELLERS. 355 other day travelling post along the banks of Uls. water, fast asleep in his carriage! The rich fainéans, who formerly carried over all the roads of the Continent their listless idleness, are now circumscribed to the comparatively narrow bounds of this island, and such as want merely to move about, can certainly do it here with vastly more ease, and greater comfort, than anywhere else. Voltaire describes thus one of these British perambulators: Parfait Anglois, voyageant sans dessein, &c. &c. &c. I give this portrait for what it may be worth, but do not vouch for the likeness. As to myself, I have not met with any mortal enemy, enemy, nor any belle who did not seem douce le jour. We have just read in all the newspapers a full and disgusting account of the public and cruel punishment on the pillory of certain wretches convicted of vile indecencies. I can conceive nothing more dangerous, offensive, and unwise, than the brutality and unrestrained publicity of such infliction. The imagination itself is sullied by the exposition of enormities, that ought never to be supposed to exist; and what are we to think of a people, and women too, who can for hours indulge in the cowardly and ferocious amusement of bruis 356 PUNISHMENTS THE PILLORY. ing and maiming men tied to the stake, and perfectly defenceless! Thus taught, is it to be expected that they will always know how to distinguish between a legal atrocity, and another which is not so? and can there be a better school for hanging à la lanterne, or September massacres, whenever a fit opportunity shall occur? Tame tigers must not taste blood; and once let loose, cannot easily be muzzled again at pleasure. What a singular anomaly in a government of laws are these mob executions! It is scarcely more than half a century since the English drowned witches. In the year 1751, two old women, suspected of the black art, were taken up, and, in the course of certain experiments of the mob to try their guilt by immersion in a horse-pond, they were actually drowned, at a place called Tring, a few miles only from London. * This appears now hardly credible, yet there is no very great difference between this and the other procedure; the former evinces more ignorance, the latter more profligacy and cruelty. In consequence of prosecutions for disgusting crimes, accusers are found who speculate on the fears of the timid, and lay them under contribution. The consciousness of innocence is but an imperfect security against the testimony of abominable wretches, ready to swear any thing; and the idea of appearing in a court of justice to answer for a crime so odious, and what is perhaps more, so ridiculous, is enough to strike terror into any mind. The known cases of persons who have had. the courage to resist, and have brought the impostors to justice, afford sufficient Pennant. |