Daniel Defoe

“ I do not know any place in Europe that would make a finer landscape in a picture than Conway at a mile’s distance. It lies on the side of a hill, on the banks of an arm of the sea about the breadth of the Thames at London, and within two little miles of the sea, over which we ferry to go to the town.
The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at proper distances on the walls; and the castle with its towers, being very white, makes an august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both sides of the bay or river, covered with wood. ”

“ Near this town, a little north-west, the Duke of Bolton has another seat, which, though not large, is a very handsome beautiful palace, and the gardens not only very exact, but very finely situate, the prospect and vistas noble and great, and the whole very well kept.
From hence, at the end of seven miles over the Downs, we come to the very ancient city of Winchester; not only the great church (which is so famous all over Europe, and has been so much talked of) , but even the whole city has at a distance the face of venerable, and looks ancient afar off ”

“ There was a calculation made of what increase there would be, both of wealth and people, in twenty years in this town; what a vast consumption of provisions they would cause, more than the four thousand acres of land given them would produce, by which consumption and increase so much advantage would accrue to the public stock, and so many subjects be added to the many thousands of Great Britain, who in the next age would be all true-born Englishmen, and forget both the language and nation from whence they came. ”

“ Honiton is one of those, and may pass not only for a pleasant good town, as before, but stands in the best and pleasantest part of the whole county, and I cannot but recommend it to any gentlemen that travel this road, that if they please to observe the prospect for half a mile till their coming down the hill and to the entrance into Honiton, the view of the country is the most beautiful landscape in the world—a mere picture—and I do not remember the like in any one place in England. ”

“ But it is more remarkable still how a great part of these Downs comes, by a new method of husbandry, to be not only made arable (which they never were in former days) , but to bear excellent wheat, and great crops, too, though otherwise poor barren land, and never known to our ancestors to be capable of any such thing—nay, they would perhaps have laughed at any one that would have gone about to plough up the wild downs and hills where the sheep were wont to go. But experience has made the present age wiser and more skilful in husbandry ”

“ In a word, their reputation seems here to be better kept, guarded by better conduct, and managed with more prudence; and yet the Dorsetshire ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled about streets, or hide themselves when visited; but a general freedom of conversation—agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good—runs through the whole body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of behaviour, and yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I nowhere see better in all my observation through the whole isle of Britain. ”

“ The walks are behind the church, spacious and well shaded, planted round with shops filled with everything that contributes to pleasure, and at the end a noble room for gaming, from whence there are hanging-stairs to a pretty garden for everybody that pays for the time they stay, to walk in. ”

“ Here an exalted genius is the instructor, a glorious example the guide, and a gentle well-directed hand the governor and law-giver to the whole; and the family, like a well-governed city, appears happy, flourishing, and regular, groaning under no grievance, pleased with what they enjoy, and enjoying everything which they ought to be pleased with. ”

“ On the shore over against this island is the citadel of Plymouth, a small but regular fortification, inaccessible by sea, but not exceeding strong by land, except that they say the works are of a stone hard as marble, and would not soon yield to the batteries of an enemy—but that is a language our modern engineers now laugh at. ”

“ As their hospitality is very great, and their bounty to the poor remarkable, so their generous friendly way of living with, visiting, and associating one with another is as hard to be described as it is really to be admired; they seem to have a mutual confidence in and friendship with one another, as if they were all relations; nor did I observe the sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among the gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so much known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred ”

“ From the tops of the hills on this extremity of the land you may see out into that they call the Chops of the Channel, which, as it is the greatest inlet of commerce, and the most frequented by merchant-ships of any place in the world, so one seldom looks out to seaward but something new presents—that is to say, of ships passing or repassing, either on the great or lesser Channel. ”

“ As the present Earl of Pembroke, the lord of this fine palace, is a nobleman of great personal merit many other ways, so he is a man of learning and reading beyond most men of his lordship’s high rank in this nation, if not in the world; and as his reading has made him a master of antiquity, and judge of such pieces of antiquity as he has had opportunity to meet with in his own travels and otherwise in the world, so it has given him a love of the study, and made him a collector of valuable things, as well in painting as in sculpture, and other excellences of art, as also of nature ”

“ The king brought a great many other fine pieces to England, and with them the love of fine paintings so universally spread itself among the nobility and persons of figure all over the kingdom that it is incredible what collections have been made by English gentlemen since that time, and how all Europe has been rummaged, as we may say, for pictures to bring over hither, where for twenty years they yielded the purchasers, such as collected them for sale, immense profit. ”

“ When Hampton Court will find such another favourable juncture as in King William’s time, when the remainder of her ashes shall be swept away, and her complete fabric, as designed by King William, shall be finished, I cannot tell; but if ever that shall be, I know no palace in Europe, Versailles excepted, which can come up to her, either for beauty and magnificence, or for extent of building, and the ornaments attending it. ”

“ But Devonshire, one entire county, is so full of great towns, and those towns so full of people, and those people so universally employed in trade and manufactures, that not only it cannot be equalled in England, but perhaps not in Europe. ”

“ They live much like Gascoynes—affecting their own language, valuing themselves much on the antiquity of their families, and are proud of making entertainments.
The Duke of Powis, of the name of Herbert, hath a noble seat near this town, but I was not at it; the family followed King James’s fortunes to France, and I suppose the seat lies neglected. From Ludlow in a short day’s riding through a champaign country I arrived at the town of Shrewsbury.
Shrewsbury stands upon an eminence, encircled by the Severn like a horse-shoe; the streets are large, and the houses well built. ”

“ There are also several rocks of very good marble, only that the veins in the stone are not black and white, as the Italian, but grey, red, and other colours.
From hence to Weymouth, which is 22 miles, we rode in view of the sea; the country is open, and in some respects pleasant, but not like the northern parts of the county, which are all fine carpet-ground, soft as velvet, and the herbage sweet as garden herbs, which makes their sheep be the best in England, if not in the world, and their wool fine to an extreme. ”

“ I was told that at this town there was a meadow on the bank of the River Avon, which runs thence to Salisbury, which was let for £12 a year per acre for the grass only. This I inquired particularly after at the place, and was assured by the inhabitants, as one man, that the fact was true, and was showed the meadows. The grass which grew on them was such as grew to the length of ten or twelve feet, rising up to a good height and then taking root again, and was of so rich a nature as to answer very well such an extravagant rent. ”

“ However, the town of Plymouth is, and will always be, a very considerable town, while that excellent harbour makes it such a general port for the receiving all the fleets of merchants’ ships from the southward (as from Spain, Italy, the West Indies, &c.) , who generally make it the first port to put in at for refreshment, or safety from either weather or enemies.
The town is populous and wealthy, having, as above, several considerable merchants and abundance of wealthy shopkeepers, whose trade depends upon supplying the sea-faring people that upon so many occasions put into that port. ”

“ For as our mariners, knowing by the soundings when they are in the mouth of the Channel, do then most naturally stand to the southward, to avoid mistaking the Channel, and to shun the Severn Sea or Bristol Channel, but still more to avoid running upon Scilly and the rocks about it, as is observed before—I say, as they carefully keep to the southward till they think they are fair with the Channel, and then stand to the northward again, or north-east, to make the land, this is the reason why the Lizard is, generally speaking, the first land they make, and not the Land’s End. ”

“ Between these two towns of Saltash and Liskeard is St. Germans, now a village, decayed, and without any market, but the largest parish in the whole county—in the bounds of which is contained, as they report, seventeen villages, and the town of Saltash among them; for Saltash has no parish church, it seems, of itself, but as a chapel-of-ease to St. Germans. In the neighbourhood of these towns are many pleasant seats of the Cornish gentry, who are indeed very numerous, though their estates may not be so large as is usual in England ”

“ And yet, as if all this was not enough, Nature has provided another strong fence, and that is, that these vast rocks are, as it were, cemented together by the solid and weighty ore of tin and copper, especially the last, which is plentifully found upon the very outmost edge of the land, and with which the stones may be said to be soldered together, lest the force of the sea should separate and disjoint them, and so break in upon these fortifications of the island to destroy its chief security. ”

“ In a word, here is without doubt the best, if not the greatest, collection of rarities and paintings that are to be seen together in any one nobleman’s or gentleman’s house in England. The piece of our Saviour washing His disciples’ feet, which they show you in one of the first rooms you go into, must be spoken of by everybody that has any knowledge of painting, and is an admirable piece indeed. ”

“ As for gentlemen—I mean, those that are such by family and birth and way of living—it cannot be expected to find many such in a town merely depending on trade, shipping, and sea-faring business; yet I found here some men of value (persons of liberal education, general knowledge, and excellent behaviour) , whose society obliges me to say that a gentleman might find very agreeable company in Plymouth.
From Plymouth we pass the Tamar over a ferry to Saltash—a little, poor, shattered town, the first we set foot on in the county of Cornwall. The Tamar here is very wide, and the ferry-boats bad ”

“ It is incredible what booty the garrison of this place picked up, lying as they did just on the great Western Road, where they intercepted the carriers, plundered the waggons, and suffered nothing to pass—to the great interruption of the trade of the city of London.
Basingstoke is a large populous market-town, has a good market for corn, and lately within a very few years is fallen into a manufacture, viz., of making druggets and shalloons, and such slight goods, which, however, employs a good number of the poor people, and enables them to get their bread, which knew not how to get it before. ”

“ However, there is good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time and as well in Dorchester as in any town I know in England.
The downs round this town are exceeding pleasant, and come up on, every side, even to the very streets’ end; and here it was that they told me that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed on the downs within six miles of the town—that is, six miles every way, which is twelve miles in diameter, and thirty-six miles in circumference. ”

“ Behind the quay is a very noble square, as large as that of Soho in London, in which is kept the Custom House; and most of the eminent merchants who keep their coaches reside here. The cathedral is on the other side of the river, on the top of the hill, and is the meanest I have seen in England. But the square or green adjoining to it has several fine houses, and makes by its situation, in my opinion, much the pleasantest part of the town. There are some churches in the city finer than the cathedral, and your merchants have their little country-seats in the adjacent eminences ”

“ The castle is a heap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls only standing vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince of their own.
They speak all Welsh here, and if a stranger should lose his way in this county of Carnarvon, it is ten to one if he meets with any one that has English enough to set him right. The people are also naturally very surly, and even if they understand English, if you ask them a question their answer is, “Dame Salsenach,” or “I cannot speak Saxon or English.” Their Bibles and prayer-books are all printed in Welsh in our character ”

“ There is, as above, a noble monument for a late Duke and Duchess of Somerset in the place already, with their portraits at full-length, their heads lying upon cushions, the whole perfectly well wrought in fine polished Italian marble, and their sons kneeling by them. ”