Sir R. Phillips

“ The inefficacy of wealth to raise man above his cares and mortal feelings has, however, of late years been so honestly conceded, that the rich have begun, at least in external appearance, to assume the condition of the poor. Hence, few of those mansions are built, or even restored, on whose gloomy character I have been remarking; and our proudest nobility now condescend to inhabit the cheerful, though humble, Cottage. They find, or by their practices they seem to prove they have found, that the nearest approach to happiness, is the nearest approach to the humility of poverty! ”

“ Every man is his own microcosm, and his case, in his own view, is that of no other man! Pride will always find food in self-love, which in spite of exhortations, it will devour with ravenous appetite! If men were immortal, how intolerable would be existence from the arrogance and perpetuity of Pride! While this passion infects and misleads the governors of the world, the only consolation in looking on weak princes, wicked statesmen, unfeeling lawyers, and military butchers, is that, in the course of nature, Death will soon relieve the world from the pest of their influence! ”

“ Alas! said I, when will the generation arrive that will not merit as much pity from succeeding generations as those poor monks? Yet how wise, how infallible, and how intolerant, is every sect of religion—every school of philosophy—every party of temporary politicians—and every nation in regard to every other nation! Do not these objects, and all exertions of reasoning, prove, that the climax of human wisdom is HUMILITY? ”

“ The best hopes of society are the progressive improvement of succeeding generations, and the prospect that each will add something to the stock of knowledge to that which went before it. But gloomy is the perspective, if the science of education be rendered stationary or retrograde by the iron hand of power and bigotry, and if errors by these means are propagated from age to age with a species of accelerated force. Yet, what signs of improvement are visible in our public schools, wherein are educated those youths who are destined to direct the fortunes of Britain in each succeeding age? ”

“ It might seem too that a man possessed of sixty thousand pounds, or of as much as, at the present value of money, would purchase for ever the constant labour of from above sixty to eighty men, would have avoided the hazards of trade.—Yet in England it is not so—the avaricious spirit of commerce despises all mediocrity—care is preferred to enjoyment—and the ends of life are sacrificed to the means! It has always been the foible of man not to be contented with the good he possesses, but to look forward to happiness in the anticipation of something which he hopes to attain. ”

“ The poet, too, has the advantage of exhibiting his ideas in succession, and he avails himself of stops and pauses; but the great painter is obliged to set his entire subject before the eye at once, and all the parts of his composition, his imagination, and his execution, challenge the judgment as a whole. A great poet is nevertheless a just object of admiration among ordinary persons—but far more so a great painter, who assumes the power of creation, and of improving on the ordinary combinations of the Creator. Yet such a man was Thomas Gainsborough, before whose modest tomb I stood! ”

“ In fine, do not the varying powers calculated to produce the phenomena, consist of the varying qualities of bodies, and the varying circumstances in which they are placed in regard to each other; and may not the active power be fixed and always the same? Does not this conclusion best accord with the simplicity of nature? Is it probable that two active powers could be co-existent? May not the elasticity of a universal medium account for most of the intricate phenomena of bodies? May not motion grow out of the vacuum between the atoms of that universal medium? ”

“ I conceive, therefore, that a wise and provident government, which, above all other considerations, should endeavour to feed the people at the least cost and labour, ought to allow no lumber-trees to encumber the soil until fruit-trees were planted sufficient to supply the inhabitants with as much fruit as their wants or luxuries might require. The primary object of all public economy should be to saturate, a civilized country with food. ”

“ Those hotbeds of human genius were ultimately degraded by the triumph of prejudices over principles, by the extinction of public spirit, by the preference of despotism over liberty, and by the glare of foreign conquests. The countries, the soil, and even the cities remain; but, as their youth are no longer trained in the love of truth and liberty, they exist but as beacons to warn other people of their fall and its causes. ”

“ Yet how can the creature of mere relations, who exists by generating time, space, and other sensations, conceive of the immutable CAUSE OF CAUSES, to whom his past and future, and his above and below, are as a SINGLE TOTALITY! Wisest of men is he who knows the most of such a Being; but, chained to a point, and governed in all our reasonings by mere relative powers, we can only conceive of ubiquity by the contrast of our locality—of infinity by our dimensions—of eternity by our duration—and of omniscience by our reason! ”

“ It is, however, time that we banish such credulity from the minds even of the lowest vulgar, as disgraceful to religion, education, morals, and reason!
Humanly speaking, I exclaimed—Am I not in the House of God? Is not this puny structure a tribute of man to the Architect of the Universe? What a lesson for man’s pride!—look at this building, and behold the Universe! Man is but a point of infinite space, with intellectual powers, bound in their sphere of action to his body, and subject with it to the laws of motion and gravitation! For such a being this may properly be the house of God ”

“ What a concession of pride—what a homage rendered to nature—what a consolation to discontented poverty—what a warning to inconsiderate ambition!
Yet our taste ought to be governed by our reason and our wants. Large families require large houses; it is therefore the business of good taste to combine capacity with cheerfulness. Nothing, at the same time, within the sphere of human enjoyment, equals the delight afforded by well-planned garden-grounds; and it is consequently the duty of the artist to unite these with the cheerful family mansion. ”

“ Such, said I, is the scheme of Benevolence, which, by depriving the prospect of death of its terrors, makes room, without suffering, for a succession of new generations, to whose perceptions the world is ever young. The only wise use therefore which men can make of scenes like that before me, is to deduce from them a lesson of moderation and humility;—for, such as are these dumb, though visible cares of that generation—such will our own soon be! ”

“ Nothing can be more tasteful as a place of indulgence for the luxury of wealth; but it is exposed to the inconvenience of floods from the river, which sometimes cover the entire site to a considerable depth.
Another quarter of a mile, along a dead flat, brought me upon Kew-Green. As I approached it, the woods of Kew and Richmond Gardens presented a varied and magnificent foliage, and the pagoda of ten stories rose in splendour out of the woods. Richmond-hill bounded the horizon on the left, and the smoky atmosphere of Brentford obscured the air beyond the houses on Kew-Green. ”

“ What an effective means of increasing the sympathies of religion, and exciting them by the fire-sides, and on the very pillows of the people! Who that, as bride or bridegroom, has heard them, in conjunction with the first joys of wedded love, does not feel the pleasurable associations of their lively peal on other similar events? Who, that through a series of years has obeyed their calling chime on the Sabbath morning, as the signal of placid feelings towards his God, and his assembled neighbours, does not hear their weekly monotony with devotion? ”

“ Does it arise from fine clothing?—let it be remembered that every part has been stolen from the lowest of Nature’s works—that the finest glitter is but a modification of the very surface—and that the garments which this year deck beauty and rank, will in the next be rotting on the dunghill! Does Pride feed on the records of ancestry?—let it visit the family tomb, and examine the bones and dust of that ancestry on which it founds its self-importance! ”

“ On the left hand I beheld, in various magnificent erections, the germs of innumerable associations, gratifying to the vice of national pride; but affording little pleasure to one whose prejudices of principle, and habits of thinking, have taught him to estimate all human labours by their influence on the happiness of the sentient creatures to whom the earth is a common inheritance. There was the British Admiralty—the just pride of a people’s defence against foreign invaders—but less worthy of admiration, if ever used as an instrument of ambition, or as a means of gratifying base passions. ”

“ Why then sacrifice to the pride of custom that which in other dispositions might add so much to the sum of happiness? Let the means of promoting the felicity of others constitute part of our own; and, with the aid of the ornamental gardener, both objects might be combined. He would so dispose of his white-washed cottages, so groupe his farm-yards, and so cluster his trees, that from every window of the feudal mansion the hitherto solitary occupant might behold incessant variety, accompanied by the pleasing associations growing out of prosperous industry and smiling plenty. ”

“ LONDON TO KEW.
We roam into unhealthy climates, and encounter difficulties and dangers, in search of curiosities and knowledge, although, if our industry were equally exerted at home, we might find in the tablets of Nature and Art, within our daily reach, inexhaustible sources of inquiry and contemplation. We are on every side surrounded by interesting objects; but, in nature, as in morals, we are apt to contemn self-knowledge, to look abroad rather than at home, and to study others instead of ourselves. ”

“ How sublime—how interesting—how affecting is such a contemplation! How transitory, therefore, must be the local arrangements of man, and how puerile the study of the science miscalled Antiquities! How foolish the pride which vaunts itself on splendid buildings and costly mausoleums! How vain the ostentation of large estates, of extensive boundaries, and of great empires!—All—all—will, in due time, be swept away and effaced by the unsparing ocean; and, if recorded in the frail memorials of human science, will be spoken of like the lost Atalantis, and remembered only as a philosophical dream! ”

“ My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence; whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing agency which originates each successive germ; and the independent, but coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and, correcting aberrations, secures the continuity of every species—both acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the growth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom! ”

“ As I continued my course towards the site of the ancient residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, which lies at the western extremity of the village, I could not avoid asking myself, how, in a country abounding in such means of instruction, political fraud has continued so successful? Has education yet effected nothing for mankind, owing to its servility to power? Is the press but a more effective engine for promulgating sophistry, owing to its ready corruption? Is religion in the pulpit but a plausible means of palliating the crimes of statesmen, owing to the ambition of its professors? ”

“ I was admiring the luxuriance and grandeur of the vegetation, in trees which from the very ground expanded in immense double trunks, and in the profusion of weeds and shrubs which covered every part of the untrodden surface—when, on a sudden, I caught the distant sound of a ring of VILLAGE BELLS. Nothing could be more in accordance with the predispositions of my mind. All the melancholy which is created by the recurrence of the same succession of tones, instantly controlled and oppressed my feelings. I became the mere patient of these sounds ”

“ In one sense, we may never get beyond a Phidias or a Canova—in another, beyond a Woollet or a Bartolozzi—or, in a third, beyond a Corregio or a David;—but have we sufficiently examined and husbanded the abstractions of Thoth or Cadmus?—Ought not the signs of ideas, ere this, to have become abstract representations; as universal in their signification as ideas themselves?—Ought we to be obliged to study all languages and many characters, in order to comprehend the ideas which are common to the whole human race? Are ideas more numerous than musical sounds, and tones, and tunes? ”

“ What crime ever perpetrated by human turpitude could have warranted a more dreadful fate! What demons, contriving mischief and torments, could have invented a combination of miseries so terrible and heart-rending? The decorations of beauty—the gratification of pride—even the humble means of health and comfort, are thus rendered the unmerciful instruments of the keenest sufferings, the most frightful sudden deaths, and the most dismal domestic tragedies! Yet the entire evil arises from the principle of the ascent of all heat ”

“ In discussing and enacting its provisions, let it be borne in mind, that the surface of the earth, like the atmosphere in which we breathe, and the light in which we see, is the natural and common patrimony of man. Let it be considered, that by nature we are tillers of the soil, and that all the artifices of society, and the employments of towns, are good and desirable in the degree only in which they promote the comforts of the country. ”

“ But there is yet enough for man to learn, and to gratify the researches of his curiosity; for, bounded as are his powers, he has always found that art is too long and life too short. He may nevertheless feel that his mind, in a certain sense, is within a species of intellectual prison; but, like the terrestrial prison which confines his body to one planet, no man ever lived long enough to exhaust the variety of subjects presented to his contemplation and curiosity by the intellectual and natural world. ”

“ In short, what a perversion of reason, what a disease in the very bosom of society, what a lurking demon stationed at the threshold of every happy family, to blast and thwart the modest ambition of its amiable members! Doubtless, in and near Wandsworth, a mistaken constitution in the system of ballot renders a hundred families uncomfortable, while the thirty-two elect are not benefitted. The principle, therefore, is erroneous, and exclusion should result only from a majority of black-balls. For the honour of our nature we may presume, that a majority of men are not governed by bad passions ”

“ Thus, in the strawberry season, hundreds of women are employed to carry that delicate fruit to market on their heads; and their industry in performing this task is as wonderful, as their remuneration is unworthy of the opulent classes who derive enjoyment from their labour. They consist, for the most part, of Shropshire and Welsh girls, who walk to London at this season in droves, to perform this drudgery, just as the Irish peasantry come to assist in the hay and corn harvests. ”

“ The inhabitants of populous districts or towns in Britain might as well, in regard to their intercourse with the community, live in the wilds of America or Siberia! ’Tis true, they assemble on Sundays at church or chapel when their devotions forbid the gaiety which ought to vary the grave pursuits of life—and they meet also in the common receptacle of mortality in the parish cemetery—but they seldom or never meet to cheer life’s dull round, to soften asperities, to remove formal distances, to cultivate friendships, and to perform social and neighbourly offices of courtesy and kindness. ”