Robert Southey

“ They dread also the disrespectful and careless funeral which public charity, or rather law, bestows; and many a wretch denies himself the few sordid comforts within his reach, that he may hoard up enough to purchase a more decent burial, a better shroud, or a firmer coffin, than the parish will afford.
The wealth of this nation is their own boast, and the envy of all the rest of Europe; yet in no other country is there so much poverty—nor is poverty any where else attended with such actual suffering. ”

“ There is no country in the world where money is so willingly given for public purposes of acknowledged utility. Subscriptions were raised in all parts, and associations formed, to supply the distressed with food, either gratuitously, or at a cheaper rate than the market price. But though the danger was felt and confessed, and though the military force of London was called out to quell an incipient insurrection, no measures have been taken to prevent a return of the evil. With all its boasted wealth and prosperity, England is at the mercy of the seasons. ”

“ We dined at Bodmin, an old town which was once the chief seat of religion in the district, but has materially suffered since the schism; ill-built, yet not worse built than situated, being shadowed by a hill to the south; and to complete the list of ill contrivances, their water is brought through the common burial-place. They burn earth-coal every where; it is a black shining stone, very brittle, which kindles slowly, making much smoke, and much ashes: but as all the houses are built with chimneys, it is neither unwholesome nor disagreeable. An Englishman’s delight is to stir the fire ”

“ The marriage of the clergy has the effect of introducing poverty among them, and rendering it, instead of a voluntary virtue, the punishment of an heretical custom. Most of the inferior clergy are miserably poor: nothing, indeed, can be conceived more deplorable than the situation of those among them who have large families. They are debarred by their profession from adding to their scanty stipends by any kind of labour; and the people, knowing nothing of religious poverty, regard poverty at all times more as a crime than a misfortune, and would despise an apostle if he came to them in rags. ”

“ Now the Nereids have as many votaries as the Naiads, and the tribes of wealth and fashion swarm down 347to the sea coast as punctually as the land crabs in the West Indies march the same way. These people, who have unquestionably the best houses of any people in Europe, and more conveniences about them to render home comfortable, crowd themselves into the narrow apartments and dark streets of a little country town, just at that time of the year when instinct seems to make us, like the lark, desirous of as much sky-room as possible. ”

“ The great alteration in society which has taken place during the present reign, tends to make men more like one another. The agriculturist has caught the spirit of commerce; the merchant is educated like the nobleman; the sea-officer has the polish of high life; and London is now so often visited, that the manners of the metropolis are to be found in every country gentleman’s house. ”

“ There is not a people upon the earth who have a truer love for their Royal Family than the English, yet they caricature them in the most open and insolent manner. They boast of the freedom of the press, yet as surely and systematically punish the author who publishes any thing obnoxious, and the bookseller who sells it, as we in our country should prevent the publication. They cry out against intolerance, and burn down the houses of those whom they regard as heretics. They love liberty ”

“ There is, too, this remarkable difference between the costume of England and of Spain, that here the national dress is altogether devoid of grace, and it is only modern fashions which have improved it: in Spain, on the contrary, nothing can be more graceful than the dresses both of the clergy and peasantry, which have from time immemorial remained unchanged; while our better ranks clothe themselves in a worse taste, because they imitate the apery of other nations. What I say of their costume applies wholly to that of the men; the dress of English women is perfect, as far as it goes ”

“ An Englishman has as little to do with religion in his death as in his life. No tapers are lighted, no altar prepared, no sacrifice performed, no confession made, no absolution given, no unction administered; the priest rarely attends; it is sufficient to have the doctor and the nurse by the sick bed; so the body be attended, the soul may shift for itself. Every thing ends with the funeral ”

“ Projecting beams hung with cobwebs and black with dust, the depth below, the extent of the gloomy dome within which we were enclosed, and the light which just served to show all this, sometimes dawning before us, sometimes fading away behind, now slanting from one side, and now leaving us almost in utter darkness: of such materials you may conceive how terrifying a scene may be formed, and you know how delightful it is to contemplate images of terror with a sense of security. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I were to pass the remainder of my life in London, I think the shops would always continue to amuse me. Something extraordinary or beautiful is for ever to be seen in them. I saw, the other day, a sturgeon, above two varas in length, hanging at a fishmonger’s. In one window you see the most exquisite lamps of alabaster, to shed a pearly light in the bedchamber ”

“ I was looking down upon the habitations of a million of human beings; upon the single spot whereon were crowded together more wealth, more splendour, more ingenuity, more worldly wisdom, and, alas! more worldly blindness, poverty, depravity, dishonesty, and wretchedness, than upon any other spot in the whole habitable earth. ”

“ If, however, the ceremony of the morning disappointed me, I was amply rewarded by the illuminations at night. This token of national joy is not, as with us, regulated by law; the people, or the mob, as they are called, take the law into their own hands on these occasions, and when they choose to have an illumination, the citizens must illuminate to please them, or be content to have their windows broken; a violence which is winked at by the police, as it falls only upon persons whose politics are obnoxious. ”

“ V PREFACE. A volume of Travels rarely or never, in our days, appears in Spain: in England, on the contrary, scarcely any works are so numerous. If an Englishman spends the summer in any of the mountainous provinces, or runs over to Paris for six weeks, he publishes the history of his travels; and if a work of this kind be announced in France, so great a competition is excited among the London booksellers, that they import it sheet by sheet as it comes from the press, and translate and print it piece-meal. ”

“ One part of them has insensibly lapsed into Socinianism, a heresy, till of late years, almost unknown in England; and into this party all the indifferentists from other sects, who do not choose, for political motives, to join the establishment, naturally fall. The establishment itself furnishes a supply by the falling off of those of its members, who, in the progress of enquiry, discover that the church of England is neither one thing nor another; that in matters of religion all must rest upon faith, or upon reason; and have unhappily preferred the sandy foundation of human wit. ”

“ But though hunting has ceased to be the exclusive business of any person’s life, except a huntsman’s, it is still pursued with an ardour and desperate perseverance beyond even that of savages: the prey is their object, for which they set their snares or lie patiently in wait:—here the pleasure is in the pursuit. It is no uncommon thing to read in the newspapers of a chase of ten or twelve leagues,—remember, all this at full speed, and without intermission,—dogs, men, 290and horses equally eager and equally delighted, though not equally fatigued. ”

“ What a picture does one of their houses present in the depth of winter! the old cowering over a few embers—the children shivering in rags, pale and livid—all the activity and joyousness natural to their time of life chilled within them.—The numbers who perish from diseases produced by exposure to cold and rain, by unwholesome food, and by the want of enough even of that, would startle as well as shock you. Of the children of the poor, hardly one-third are reared. ”

“ And thus is there a perpetual exhibition of whatever is curious in nature or art, exquisite in workmanship, or singular in costume; and the display is perpetually varying as the ingenuity of trade, and the absurdity of fashion, are ever producing something new. ”

“ The frequent executions for forgery in England are justly considered by the humane and thinking part of the people as repugnant to justice, shocking to humanity, and disgraceful to the nation. Death has been the uniform punishment in every case, though it is scarcely possible to conceive a crime capable of so many modifications of guilt in the criminal. ”

“ I would have climbed St Paul’s, if it had been only to see London thus mapped below me, and though there had been nothing beautiful or sublime in the view: few objects, however, are so sublime, if by sublimity we understand that which completely fills the imagination to the utmost measure of its powers, as the view of a huge city thus seen at once:—house-roofs, the chimneys of which formed so many turrets; towers and steeples ”

“ The whole system of England, from highest to lowest, is, and has been, one series of antagonisms; struggle—struggle—in every thing. Check and countercheck is the principle of their constitution, which is the result of centuries of contention between the Crown and the People. The struggle between the Clergy and the Lawyers unfettered their lands from feudal tenures. Their church is a half-and-half mixture of Catholicism and Puritanism. ”

“ Their table is spread under the May-pole; their playmates beg with a plate, as our children for the little altar which they have drest for their saint upon his festival, and all dance round the pole hand in hand.
Without doubt, these sports were once connected with religion. It is the peculiar character of the true religion to sanctify what is innocent, and make even merriment meritorious; and it is as peculiarly the character of Calvinism to divest piety of all cheerfulness, and cheerfulness of all piety, as if they could not co-exist ”

“ As for Shakespeare, these people know nothing of him but his name; he is famous in the strictest sense of the word, and his fame will last as long as the English language; which by God’s blessing will be as long as the habitable world itself.” “He is your saint!” said I, smiling at the warmth with which he spake.
At length we crossed the river Exe by a respectable bridge, and immediately entered the city of Exeter, and drove up a long street to an inn as large as a large convent. Is it possible, I asked, that this immense house can ever be filled by travellers? ”