1737-1783.] THE SQUIRES OF ENGLAND. 107 "take it from me, as a flying rumour.' 99 Yet we cannot doubt that amidst the frivolity and pretence of high society, the sterling qualities of Englishmen prevailed over the fashionable attempts to imitate French vivacity. Cowper truly says, "As the English consist of very different humours, their manner of discourse admits of great variety; but the whole French nation converse alike." Arthur Young, travelling in France in 1787, observes that at the tables d'hôte of officers you have a voluble garniture of indecency or nonsense, and at those of merchants, a mournful and stupid silence. "Take the mass of mankind, and you have more good sense in half an hour in England, than in half a year in France." It is Government-all, all, is Government,-he says. The passing observations of the poet and the traveller are confirmed by the philosopher who looks back upon the manners of that period, for a solution, in part, of the causes of the French Revolution: "The men of that time, especially those belonging to the middle and upper ranks of society, who alone were at all conspicuous, were all exactly alike . . . . . Throughout nearly the whole kingdom the independent life of the provinces had long been extinct; this had powerfully contributed to render all Frenchmen very much alike. . . . . In England, the different classes, though firmly united by common interests, still differed in their habits and feelings; for political liberty, which possesses the admirable power of placing the citizens of a state in needful intercourse and mutual dependence, does not on that account always make them alike. It is the government of one man which, in the end, has the inevitable effect of rendering all men alike, and all mutually indifferent to their common fate." § In England, "the independent life of the provinces " was as vigorous in the days of sir George Savile and the Associations, as in the days of John Hampden and Ship-money. The squires of England still exhibited the natural varieties of the rich soil upon which they flourished. From the monotonous gambling of the fashionables of St. James'-street, it is almost pleasant to turn to the rougher amusements of the Country House. There was a considerable change in provincial manners during the last half of the reign of George III. Fielding presented Allworthy, as a portrait of Allen, the friend of Warburton; benevolent, placable, not learned, but a competent judge of literature, improved by much conversation with men of eminence, Allworthy is one of the class who, with some narrowness, gave lustre to the great Country-party of the House of Commons. Squire Western, coarse, passionate, violent in his politics-a roaring, drinking foxhunter-is not to be wholly despised, for out of his rough material was to be carved the decorous and considerate landlord of another century. There were few Allworthys and many Westerns in the last years of George II. Soame Jenyns has admirably described a visit to sir John Jolly, he proposing to exchange the bustle of London for the soothing indolence of a rural retirement. It was the race week, and a great cavalcade set out from the mansion to the country town. The Ordinary at the Red Lion before the race; the Assembly, over a stable, after the race; the dancing and cards; 108 THE COUNTRY JUSTICE. [1737-1783. the cold chicken and negus; the ride home as the sun rose-this repetition of the same dreary round of pleasure, day by day, wearies the Londoner, who gets away to his quiet lodgings next door to a brazier's at Charing-cross, rather than stay upon the assurance of the lady, that though the races were over he should not want diversion, for they should not be alone one hour for several weeks.* There is a somewhat loose clerical correspondent of George Selwyn, who describes Leicester "at reace time "- the country squires, with their triple bands and triple buckles on their hats, "to keep in their no-brain;""the clod-pated yeoman's son in his Sunday clothes, his drab coat and red waistcoat, tight leather breeches, and light gray worsted stockings, with one strap of his shoe coming out from under the buckle upon his foot, his lank hair, and silk handkerchief, new for reace time, about his neck." With a touch of real wit this worldly parson finishes his picture of the yeoman's son :-" depriving of all grace and rendering odious a well-fancied oath from the mint of the metropolis, by his vile provincial pronunciation."+ The Squire sits for the portrait of the Country Justice; whose notions of law are not very different from those of the London Justice who said, " he would commit a servant to Bridewell at any time when a master or mistress desired it." The fox-hunting justice before whom Parson Adams is taken will not condemn him at once to the hangman : No, no; you will be asked what you have to say for yourself when you come on your trial; we are not trying you now; I shall only commit you to gaol." In vain the poor curate asked, "Is it no punishment, sir, for an innocent man to be several months in gaol?” His mittimus would have been signed, had not a bystander affirmed that Mr. Adams was a clergyman, and a gentleman of very good character. Then said the justice, "I know how to behave myself to gentlemen as well as another. Nobody can say I have committed a gentleman since I have been in the commission." § But squires and justices were rapidly improving. In 1761, a writer in a periodical work called "The Genius," attributes to "the intercourse between the town and the country, of late so much more frequent," an extraordinary change which he describes with a good deal of vivacity: "It is scarce half a century ago, since the inhabitants of the distant counties were regarded as a species almost as different from those of the metropolis as the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. Their manners, as well as dialect, were entirely provincial; and their dress no more resembling the habit of the town, than the Turkish or Chinese. But time, which has inclosed commons, and ploughed up heaths, has likewise cultivated the minds and improved the behaviour of the ladies and gentlemen of the country. We are no longer encountered with hearty slaps on the back, or pressed to make a breakfast on cold meat and strong beer; and in the course of a tour through Great Britain you will not meet with a high-crowned hat, or a pair of red stockings. Politeness and taste seem to have driven away the horrid spectres of rudeness and barbarity that haunted the old mansion-house and its purlieus, and to have established their seats in the country." || In 1766, the rev. W. Digby writes to Selwyn, from Coleshill, "Thank you for your offer of Swift's works. 66 + Selwyn," vol. iv. p. 311. $ "Joseph Andrews." * "World," No. 154. "Tom Jones," book vii. chap. x.. Quoted in the "Annual Register," for 1761, p. 206. 1737-1783.] THE CLERGY OF ENGLAND. 109 They are arrived at this place; for you must know we are civilized enough in this country to have instituted a club called a book-club, where I never saw pipe nor tobacco, and take in all the new things we choose. This respectable corps consists of twenty neighbouring clergy and squires, chosen by ballot."* In the immediate vicinity of the Country Squire is the Country Parson. The permanent resident in the parish is almost invariably the Curate. The incumbent is a pluralist, who passes much of his time in London, or Bath, or Tunbridge, or in the nobleman's establishment as chaplain; the arduous duties of his chaplaincy demanding a freedom from common parochial offices, and entitling him to hold several preferments and to do the duties of no cure of souls. From the Revolution to the Rebellion of 1745, the orthodox clergyman had a decided tendency to Jacobitism. After that period he gradually became less earnest in politics, and resolutely applied himself to uphold government and oppose innovation. He had his own peculiar business in life to perform, which was chiefly to make himself as comfortable as possible. The indecorum, if not the profligacy, of a large number of the English clergy, for a period of half a century, is exhibited by too many contemporary witnesses to be considered as the exaggeration of novelists, satirical poets, travellers, and dissenters. Passages of every variety of writer-private correspondence now laid open-strictures of those of their own profession-are overwhelming in their testimony to this deplorable laxity of morals. Ridicule, pity, indignation, produced little or no change for more than a generation. The curate of Fielding, engaged in a most excellent political discourse with the squire, during which they made a libation of four bottles of wine to the good of their country, is a sober picture.† The young fellow of Smollett, in the rusty gown and cassock, confederating with the exciseman to cheat two farmers at cards, swearing terrible oaths, and talking gross scandal of his rogue of a vicar, is probably a caricature. The visitation dinner of Goldsmith, in which all are gormandizing, from the bishop to Dr. Marrowfat, may be received as the fancy-piece of a great humorist.§ The Jack Quickset of Colman and Thornton is the representative of those "ordained sportsmen, whose thoughts are more taken up with the stable or the dog-kennel than the church; who are regarded by their parishioners not as parsons of the parish, but as squires in orders."|| The wits, it may be said, are thus attacking a sacred profession in the wantonness of their scurrility. What shall we say to the testimony of Dr. Knox, head-master of Tunbridge school? "The public have long remarked with indignation, that some of the most distinguished coxcombs, drunkards, debauchees, and gamesters who figure at the watering-places, and all public places of resort, are young men of the sacerdotal order." What, to the "shepherd" of Crabbe? "A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday task who comes not to the sick pauper's bed; and who, when the bier is borne to the churchyard, is too busy to perform the last office "till the day of prayer.” ** "Selwyn," vol. ii. p. 23. +"Tom Jones," book iv. c. 10. § "Citizen of the World," No. lviii. Knox's "Essays," 18. ** "The Village." 110 THE CLERGY OF ENGLAND. [1737-1783. Surely these writers are not conspiring against their own order. Hear a sober-minded traveller, if the novelists, essayists, and poets are not to be credited: "The French clergy preserved, what is not always preserved in England, an exterior decency of behaviour. One did not find among them poachers or fox-hunters, who, having spent the morning in scampering after hounds, dedicate the evening to the bottle, and reel from inebriety to the pulpit. Such advertisements were never seen in France as I have heard of in England: Wanted a curacy in a good sporting country, where the duty is light, and the neighbourhood convivial.'"* A conscientious writer has pointed "A to the reverend Dr. Warner as an object of contemplation for "those who would hastily accuse Fielding of exaggeration in his portraitures taken from the church."+ Let us regard a few traits of this popular preacher from his own letters. He desires Selwyn to send him "the magazine, with the delicate amours of the noble lord, which must be very diverting." He describes a dinner with two friends-" We have just parted in a tolerable state of insensibility to the ills of life." § "I have been preaching this morning, and am going to dine-where ?-in the afternoon. We shall bolt the door and (but hush! softly! let me whisper it, for it is a violent secret, and I shall be blown to the devil if I blab, as in this house we are Noah and his precise family)—and play at cards." || The Reverend Dr. Warner is an unimpeachable witness. The apathy of the Clergy at this period was as injurious as their indecorum. Their eloquence was of the tamest character. An accomplished foreigner thus describes their sermons: "The pulpit declamation is a most tedious monotony. The ministers have chosen it through respect for religion, which, as they affirm, proves, defends, and supports itself without having any occasion for the assistance of oratory. With regard to the truth of this assertion, I appeal to themselves, and to the progress which religion thus inculcated makes in England." Dr. Campbell goes to the Temple Church, where the brother of Thurlow preached: "The discoure was the most meagre composition, and the delivery worse. He stood like Gulliver stuck in the marrow-bone, with the sermon, newspaper-like, in his hand, and without grace or emphasis he in slow cadence measured it forth." ** Goldsmith has hit upon the true cause of the dry, methodical, and unaffecting discourses of the English preachers, delivered with the most insipid calmness: "Men of real sense and understanding prefer a prudent mediocrity to a precarious. popularity; and fearing to out-do their duty, leave it half done."†† He further says that the lower orders are neglected in exhortations from the pulpit "they who want instruction most find least in our religious assemblies." The fear of being called Methodists was one of the causes that made too many of the clergy careless in their lives and indifferent in their vocation. 1737-1783.] THE UNIVERSITIES. 111 he tracked the "deep mischief" to its source. "The sage, called Discipline," had ceased to be reverenced in "colleges and halls;" he had declined into the vale of years; had fallen sick and died. Then "study languished, emulation slept, and virtue fled." The schools became a scene of solemn farce; scrutiny went stone blind; gowns were mere masquerade.* Is this only the declamation of a poetical enthusiast, moping on the banks of the Ouse? A distinguished fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, a master-ofarts, describes the externals of that consecrated place-superb dining halls; painted chapels; a peculiar race in the streets; doctors and proctors in solemn procession, with velvet sleeves, scarlet gowns, and hoods black, red, and purple. He then tells us what all this parade ends in-the most absurd forms of examination for degrees, "in which the greatest dunce usually gets his testimonium signed with as much ease and credit as the finest genius," in one stage of the process; and in another, when "the examiners and the candidates often converse on the last drinking bout, or read the newspaper, or a novel, or divert themselves as well as they can in any manner, till the clock strikes eleven, when all parties descend, and the testimonium is signed by the masters." So much for the Bachelor's degree, which is attained after four years' term-keeping. For the degree of Master-of-Arts three more years must be employed in trumpery formalities; and then, "after again taking oaths by wholesale, and paying the fees," the academic issues into the world with an "undeniable passport to carry him through it with credit."+"Accidental visitors to Oxford," writes Knox, " are naturally led to conclude that here, at length, wisdom, science, learning, and whatever else is praiseworthy, for ever flourish and abound." The Prussian clergyman, walking into Oxford at midnight, was introduced by a courteous pedestrian, who had overtaken him on the road, to an alehouse. "How great," he says, "was my astonishment, when, on being shewn into a room, I saw several gentlemen in academic dress, sitting round a large table, each with his pot of beer before him." He thought it extraordinary that at this unseasonable hour, he should suddenly find himself in a company of Oxonian clergy. The foreigner was kindly received. He told them stories of riots in German universities. "O, we are very unruly here, too," said one of the gentlemen, as he took a huge draught of his beer, and smote the table with his fist. One" weakly and impiously attempted to be witty at the expense of scripture; and I had the good fortune to be able to convict him of his ignorance of its language and meaning." As the morning drew near, after a carousal which stupified the German, the gentleman who introduced him "suddenly exclaimed, 'I must read prayers this morning at All Souls.'" Cambridge was not behind Oxford in its capacity of qualifying its students as "gamesters, jockies, brothellers impure." Wilberforce entered St. John's, in 1776, at the age of seventeen. He tells us his experience: "I was introduced, on the very first night of my arrival, to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives. I lived amongst them for some time, though I never relished their society; often, indeed, I was horror-struck at their "The Task," b. 2. Moritz "Travels in Englard, in 1782." 66 + Knox-Essay 77. |