THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

ARTHUR YOUNG

An apology for these Memoirs is surely not needed. Whilst Arthur Young’s famous ‘Travels in France’ have become a classic, little is known of the author’s life, a life singularly interesting and singularly sad. Whether regarded as the untiring experimentalist and dreamer of economic dreams, as the brilliant man of society and the world, or as the blind, solitary victim of religious melancholia, the figure before us remains unique and impressive. We have here, moreover, a strong character portrayed by himself, an honest piece of autobiography erring, if at all, on the side of outspokenness. In his desire to be perfectly frank, the writer has laid upon his editor the obligation of many curtailments, the Memoirs from beginning to end being already much too long. From seven packets of MS. and twelve folio volumes of correspondence I have put together all that a busy public will probably care to know of Arthur Young—his strength and weakness, his one success and innumerable failures, his fireside and his friends. One striking and instructive feature in this man’s history is his cosmopolitanism, his affectionate relations with Frenchmen, Poles, Russians, Danes, Italians, Scandinavians. Never viEnglishman was more truly English; never Englishman was less narrow in his social sympathies.

The religious melancholia of his later years is explicable on several grounds: to the influence of his friend, the great Wilberforce; to the crushing sorrow of his beloved little daughter ‘Bobbin’s’ death; lastly, perhaps, to exaggerated self-condemnation for foibles of his youth. Few lives have been more many-sided, more varied; few, indeed, have been more fortunate and unfortunate at the same time.

The Memoirs, whilst necessarily abridged and arranged, are given precisely as they were written—that is to say, although it has been necessary to omit much, not a word has been added or altered. Whenever a word or sentence needed explanation or correction, the editorial note is bracketed. The foot-notes, unless when otherwise stated, are all editorial.

For the use of Memoirs and letters, &c., I am indebted to Mrs. Arthur Young, widow of the late owner of Bradfield Hall, the last of Arthur Young’s race and name, a gentleman alike in his public and private life well worthy of his distinguished ancestry.

Mr. Arthur Young, who died last year, is buried beside the author of the ‘Travels in France,’ in the pretty little churchyard of Bradfield, near Bury St. Edmunds.

Ancestry—Anecdotes—Childhood—School life—Inoculation—The paternal character—Mrs. Kennon—Letters to a schoolboy—A mercantile apprenticeship—A youthful love affair—Family troubles—A gloomy outlook.

I was born at Whitehall, London, on September 11, 1741, many years after my brother John and my sister Elizabeth Mary. In examining the family papers from which the following detail is drawn, I should observe that difficulties often occurred by reason of the ancient hand-writing of many documents, and from several being written in the Latin language not easily deciphered; but the circumstances relative to the following dates were clearly ascertained as far as they are noted. The principal object is the possession of the Manor of Bradfield Combust, which is traced in the family of Canham till it came by marriage into 2that of Young. Bartholomew Canham the elder had two sons and two daughters. In 1672 he transferred Bradfield Hall, manor and lands to Arthur Young, married to Elizabeth, his daughter. The Young shield bears a Field Argent, three Bends sable and a Lyon rampant; that of Canham a Field Gule, Bend Argent charged with a cannon ball sable, the Bend cotised with Or. The estate had been purchased in 1620 by my ancestor of Sir Thomas, afterwards Lord Jermyn of Rushbrooke, being part of the great possessions of that family. The steward who acted for Sir Thomas was Martin Folkes, ancestor of the present Sir Martin Folkes. And here it is curious to observe the different results affecting the posterity of the private gentleman who purchases, and of the steward of the great man who sells—I am a poor little gentleman, and Sir Martin Folkes owner of an estate not far short of 10,000l. a year. My father, Dr. Arthur Young, inherited Bradfield from my grandfather, Bartholomew Young, Esq., called Captain from a command in the Militia, and it is remarkable that with only a part of the present Bradfield estate he lived genteely and drove a coach and four on a property which in these present times just maintains the establishment of a wheel-barrow.

Dr. Arthur Young, my father, was educated at Eton and admitted to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1710, afterwards settling at Thames Ditton, Surrey. He was so much liked by the inhabitants that they elected him, against a violent opposition of the inferior classes, minister of that parish. Whether the ladies of the 3place had a particular influence I know not, but he was a remarkably handsome man and six feet high. It was here he became acquainted with Miss Anne Lucretia de Cousmaker, to whom he was afterwards married. She was the daughter of John de Cousmaker, Esq., who came to England with King William III., bringing with him a fortune of 80,000l., the greater part of which he was deprived of by the imprudence of one or two of his sons. If ever there existed in human form an Israelite without guile, it was this worthy man; and it gives me great pleasure to reflect on the extreme respect and affection which were always felt for him and my dear mother. Mr. de Cousmaker, my maternal grandfather, was executor and residuary legatee to a Mrs. Keene, on which account he could have legally possessed himself of an estate left by her. With an honesty unexampled he would not take one penny of it, but exerted himself with incredible industry to discover some distant relation to whom he might transfer the property. He did find one who had no legal claim, and he gave him the estate. This Mr. Keene dying without issue, his widow told my grandfather that out of gratitude she would provide for two of his children. To a daughter she left an annuity of 300l. a year, to a son an estate which passed on to his descendants.

My mother brought a fortune to my father, the amount I know not, but it was sufficient to demand the settlement of the Bradfield estate upon her for life. She was of a very amiable, cheerful disposition, loved conversation, for which she had a talent, and read a great deal on various subjects. The residence at 4Thames Ditton resulted in a friendship with the Onslow family, which proved highly advantageous to my father. General, then Colonel Onslow, appointed him chaplain to his own regiment, and the General’s brother, Speaker of the House of Commons, also named him chaplain, a step which afterwards led to the prebendaryship of Canterbury. Mr. Speaker Onslow and the Bishop of Rochester were my godfathers. Colonel, afterwards General Onslow, was in the estimation of the world a highly respectable character, in the formation of which it may easily be supposed that religion formed no part from the following anecdote. One Sunday morning his wife obtained his permission to read a chapter of the Bible, but he first bolted the door lest the servants should witness the performance. He was afraid that the matter might reach the ears of his Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Cumberland, who to much brutality of character added the abhorrence of a soldier troubling his head about religion.

In 1734 my father published his ‘Historical Dissertations on Idolatrous Corruptions in Religion,’ a very learned work which is quoted by Voltaire. In 1742 he was in Flanders acting as chaplain to Colonel Onslow’s regiment, and I have found among his papers the journal of a tour made through Brabant, Flanders, and a part of Picardy; on the whole, it is interesting, and the cheapness of living therein described is remarkable. The following letter is from my father to his relation, his Excellency Governor Vassy, relating to the conduct of General Ingoldsby (who married my mother’s sister) at the battle of Fontenoy, and which 5throws a little additional light upon that transaction, though at the expense of the Commander-in-Chief.

Ingoldsby was cruelly used at the battle of Fontenoy by the Duke of Cumberland, who had sent him orders to put himself at the head of a detachment to attack a temporary redoubt which the French had thrown up, but gave him no directions to take cannon; and when Ingoldsby arrived at the spot he saw the necessity. He instantly dispatched his Aide-de-camp to demand cannon, but before they came the position of the troops changed, and an order came to draw off. No consequences attended this business, nor had it any effect on the loss of the battle; but an opportunity was taken to throw the whole blame on Ingoldsby, and to attach to him all the consequences of that defeat. Ingoldsby complained of this, and Ligonier himself came to him from the Duke to assure him that the D. knew his bravery, and highly valued him, but advised him by all means to be quiet, and everything would blow over, and the business be forgotten. Nothing had been said on the affair, but to save the reputation of the Duke. Mrs. Ingoldsby, losing all patience at his not being promoted according to promise, never let him rest till he published his case, which put an end to all hope of promotion in the Army, and he was obliged to retire. He was in all the Duke of Marlborough’s campaigns, and 7served with great reputation to the moment of the battle of Fontenoy.

When I was of a proper age to be placed at school, a choice had to be made between those of Bury St. Edmunds and Lavenham^[1]; no possible motive could induce any one to think of the latter, except the circumstance of my father having been there himself. The master of the former school, Mr. Kinsman, was one of the finest scholars of his age, and is mentioned with much respect by Cumberland in his memoirs.^[2] Whilst the matter was in abeyance the Rev. M. Coulter, Master of Lavenham School, came to Bradfield, and my mother, unfortunately for me, was so much pleased with the extreme good temper manifested in his countenance that she persuaded my father to entrust me to his care. I was accordingly sent to that wretched place. I was to learn Latin and Greek, with arithmetic, but whether from being a favourite or from the diversion of frequent visits home, I afterwards found myself so ill-grounded in the above languages that for some time before I left the school I found it necessary to give much attention to them in order to recover the lost time. It is easy to suppose how much I was indulged from one instance among many others. At dinner the first dish the boys were helped to was pudding, which I disliked, and was excused from eating—the case of no other pupil. As to correction, I have no recollection of receiving any thing of the 8sort.^[3] I had, however, a sufficient awe of the Master. During the last years of my stay I had a pointer and gun, and often went out with Mr. Coulter, he with a partridge net and I with my gun. I had a room to myself and a neat collection of books. I remember beginning to write a history of England, thinking that I could make a good one out of several others. How early began my literary follies! I seemed to have a natural propensity for writing books. The following bill for a year’s schooling and board must in the present period (about 1816) be considered a curiosity:—‘The Rev. Dr. Young to John Coulter, Xmas 1750, to Xmas 1751. A year’s board, &c. 15l. Sundries 2l. 4s. 4d. Total 17l. 4s. 4d.’ I find from a memorandum book of my mother’s that in 1746 beef was 3d., veal 3d., and mutton 3½d. per pound at Bury.

About the year 1753 I was inoculated. This was a scheme of my mother’s which she had more than once proposed, but my father would not consent to it. Taking, however, the opportunity of his visit to Cambridge, she ventured on the experiment. At this period inoculation was so little understood that it is utterly astonishing how anyone could escape; instead of the cool regimen afterwards prescribed by Sutton,^[4] the practice was to 9keep the patient’s chamber as close and hot as possible, the shutters were kept up, and the door never opened without being shut speedily. I suffered much, and Dr. Kerrich, the physician at Bury, for some time attended every day. It pleased the Almighty that I should recover, one of many instances in which His providence preserved a wretch who was to sin against Him by a multitude of offences. When my father returned and I ran out to meet him, my mother exclaimed in a triumphant tone, ‘There! I have had Arthur inoculated, and you enjoy the comfort of knowing that your boy has had that terrible disorder.’ My father looked at me, but neither spoke a word on the subject then nor ever after. This was his way—resolute in rejecting all proposals touching upon novelty, and cool after their accomplishment. In an inferior circumstance he showed the same temper, as I will relate. The family pew at church was a wretched hole, lined with ragged cloth and covered with dust; the pulpit also was tumbling with age and rottenness. On my father’s going to London and leaving my brother at Bradfield, he begged permission to have a new pew and pulpit. This was refused. ‘Good enough, Jack!’ said my father. But Jack attacked his mother, and set the carpenter to work, who made a spacious pew, with one for the servants, new pulpit and reading desk. The first Sunday my father went to church, on approaching the place, he stopped short, surveyed all three with great attention, said nothing, and on joining the family party home never opened his lips, nor ever after mentioned the subject. He was 10inwardly pleased, but not gracious enough to confess it. There was in Dr. Young a strong mixture of obstinacy and sang-froid, as the preceding anecdotes prove.

In 1753 I went to London, and find by an old pocket-book that I saw Mr. Garrick in ‘Archer,’^[5] heard the Oratorio, ‘The Messiah,’ spent an evening at Ranelagh, and viewed the Tower and St. Paul’s. I also remember visiting the widow of General Ingoldsby, who opened her house every evening to all comers, nor was the number of fashionable people inconsiderable. John Wilkes, afterwards so well known, I met there more than once; he was then considered a wit. Mrs. Ingoldsby made a point of going to Court at least twice a year, but I never heard her repeat any other conversation with the King than complaining to him how much she was afflicted with rheumatism.

In 1754 died Mrs. Sidney Kennon, a lady highly respected and well known as the midwife to the Princess of Wales; she also brought into the world my brother, sister and myself, and was a very old friend of my father’s, and him she left executor and residuary legatee. That her professional emoluments were of some consideration was proved by the fact of a gentleman after her decease presenting her executor with fifty guineas as her fee for having delivered his wife. By her will all her furniture and a great collection of medals, bronzes, shells, curiosities, books on natural history, &c. with money in the funds, came into his possession, to the amount of nearly five thousand pounds. By a codicil she had ordered that her 11servants should be retained and the house kept for six months after her death, in consequence of which our family moved into her residence in Clifford Street. It was, of course, to be expected that my father would sell all the curiosities, but that a clergyman, a man of learning, having a son of my brother’s attainments should dispose of such a collection, was not looked for; my maternal Uncle, de Cousmaker, dining one day at the house enquired as to my father’s intentions. On being informed that everything would go to an auction, he asked the price. My father replied that the articles had not been valued, but he supposed that they would fetch fifty or sixty pounds. Mr. de C. at once offered sixty guineas, the bargain was struck, and the books departed next day, to our great mortification; the price was preposterous, as the collection contained many curious and scarce publications, and my Uncle afterwards sold many of the duplicates for a greater amount than he had given for the whole, yet retaining a most valuable number. As a proof of the worth of what might be called Mrs. Kennon’s Museum, I insert a letter to her from Sir Martin Folkes, President of the Royal Society.

Doddington, in his diary, under the date of June 28, 1750, mentions supping at this lady’s house, in company with Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, and Lady Torrington; and in the ‘World’ (No. 114) there is a humorous paper on the distinctions between noble birth, great birth, and no birth, in which the writer says, ‘I never suspected that it could possibly mean the shrivelled tasteless fruit of an old genealogical tree. I communicated my doubts, and applied for information to my late, worthy, and curious friend, Mrs. Kennon, whose valuable collection of fossils and minerals, lately sold, sufficiently prove her skill and researches in the most recondite parts of nature. She, with that frankness and humanity which were natural to her, assured me that it was all a vulgar error, in which, however, the nobility and gentry prided themselves; but that, in truth, she had never observed the children of the quality 13to be wholesomer and stronger than others, but rather the contrary, which difference she imputed to certain causes which I shall not here specify.’ I possess several letters written to this lady by the Governor of Bermuda, Mr. Popple, in 1739 and 1740, in which he considers her of sufficient importance to request that she would speak a good word for him in behalf of his being removed to a better Government, or some other employment at home, and concludes a letter with saying, ‘I believe your present power to assist your absent friends is now as great as I have always thought your inclination was.’

When my father returned to Bradfield, after passing the winter in London, he pulled down the old part of the house, a wretched lath and plaster ill-contrived building; then, to the astonishment of every one, he employed a hedge carpenter to rebuild exactly on the old foundations. Thereby was constructed a mansion which had not a single room free from every fault that could be found, whether as to chimney, doors, windows, or connecting passages, and this at a larger expense than need have cost an excellent house. The new stables, with coach-house, brew-house and offices, were built of brick, and cost 500l. It was rather whimsical to give his horses, carriage, and brewery^[6] the warmth of solid walls, and to house himself in lath and plaster; but in fixing his new farmery,^[7] a sad error was committed. The whole interposed between the dwelling, 14and four acres of turf dotted with beautiful oaks. My poor father, however, did not live to enjoy his improvements, for he was very soon seized with a dropsy, and which—as will be seen—terminated his life. During one of his journeys to London in order to consult a doctor, occurred a circumstance so whimsical that I must mention it. Several sleepless nights made him take it into his head that anything would be better than a bed; as an experiment at one inn he ordered that a hole should be cut in a haystack, in which he passed the night. But it is time to return to myself. During all these years I was at Lavenham School reading Cæsar, Sallust, Homer and the Greek Testament, when a sudden whim seized my father, and he ordered Latin and Greek to be discarded and algebra to take their place. I thus became absorbed in Saunderson.^[8] But what commanded more of my attention at this time was a very different branch of learning, namely, the lessons of a dancing master; he came once a week from Colchester to teach the boys, also some young ladies of the neighbourhood, two of whom made terrible havoc with my heart. The first was Miss Betsy Harrington, a grocer’s daughter, admitted by all to be truly beautiful; the second of my youthful flames was Miss Molly Fiske, a clergyman’s sister. For one or two years we corresponded, but afterwards I went away, and she married the Rev. M. Chevalier, of Aspall. Long after her marriage she told me that she had accepted that gentleman on finding that I did not 15come forward with the proposal. Her fortune was 4,000l.

Whilst at school I made in the playground a famous fortification, and then besieged it with mines of gun-powder, nearly blowing up two boys and an old woman selling pies. A better example was my habit of reading, which became a sort of fashion. I was thought to be of an uncommon stamp, and when the pupils returned home their parents became desirous of seeing the lad to whom they thought themselves indebted. 22My own acquisitions received a mortal shock on the marriage of my sister with Mr. Tomlinson, of the firm of Tomlinson & Co. The opportunity of introducing me into their counting-house was thought advantageous by my father, and in consequence orders came that I should receive immediate instruction in mercantile accounts; as a further preparation the sum of 400l. was paid to Messrs. Robertson, of Lynn, Norfolk, for a three years’ apprenticeship.

In February 1758 I took my last farewell of Lavenham, and paid a visit to my married sister in London. I remember nothing more of this visit than several performances of Mr. Garrick. When I took leave of my sister, who was far advanced in her pregnancy, she wept and said she might never see me more. This proved to be the case, as she died during her lying-in. She was a remarkably clever woman, with much beauty and vivacity of conversation, combined with much solidity of judgment. My mother grieved so much for her loss that she could never be persuaded to go out of mourning, but mourned till her own death, nor did she ever recover her cheerfulness. This had one good effect, and that a very important one for me; she never afterwards looked into any book but on the subject of religion, and her only constant companion was her Bible, herein copying the example of her father.

Every circumstance attending this new situation at Lynn was most detestable to me till I effected an improvement. This was done by hiring a lodging, surrounding myself with books, and making the 23acquaintance of Miss Robertson, daughter of my employer’s partner. She was of a pleasing figure, with fine black expressive eyes, danced well, and also sang and performed well on the harpsichord; no wonder, as she received instructions from Mr. Burney.^[12] He was a person held in the highest estimation for his powers of conversation and agreeable manners, which made his company much sought after by all the principal nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. Here I must reflect, as I have done many times before, on the unfortunate idea of making me a merchant. The immediate expense absolutely thrown away differently invested would have kept me four years at the University, enabling my father to make me a clergyman and Rector of Bradfield. This living he actually gave to my Lavenham schoolmaster. The whole course of my life would in such a case have been changed. I should have known nothing of Lynn, and have taken a wife from a different quarter. I should probably have been free from all attraction to agriculture, and that circumstance alone would have changed the whole colour of my existence. I might never have been of any use to the public, but my years would have passed in a far more tranquil current, escaping so many storms and vicissitudes which blew me into a tempest of activity and involved me in great errors, great vice, and perpetual anxiety. This was not to be the case, and what I thought an evil star sent me to Lynn. In this place monthly assemblies were held, a mayor’s feast 24and ball in the evening, a dancing master’s ball and assemblies at the Mart. It was not common, I was told, for merchants’ clerks to frequent these, a suggestion I spurned, and attended them, dancing with the principal belles. I was complimented by the dancing master, who assured me that he pointed out my minuet as an example to his scholars. But pleasure alone would not satisfy me; I was by nature studious, and from my earliest years discovered a thirst for learning and books. These, the smallness of my allowance (I think not more than 30l. per annum), with my great foppery in dress for the balls, would not permit me to purchase and supply me with what I so much needed. Accordingly in 1758 I compiled a political pamphlet named ‘The Theatre of the Present War in North America,’ for which a bookseller allowed me ten pounds’ worth of books; as he urged me to another undertaking I wrote three or four more political tracts, each of which procured me an addition to my little library. My first year’s apprenticeship had not expired before the death of my sister overthrew the whole plan which had sent me to Lynn. As 400l. had been paid for the agreed period of three years, I was kept there from no other motive. Under such circumstances it may be supposed that the counting-house and the business received not an atom more of attention than could be dispensed with. I was twenty years old on leaving Lynn, which I did without education, profession or employment. In June of this year (1759) my father died, and as he left debts, my mother thought it necessary to take 25an exact account of his effects. The following is the result:—

I am sorry to add that money or money due to him made no part of the estimate. The fact was that my father died much in debt, and it was two years before my mother found herself tolerably free.

The gay world—A call on Dr. Johnson—A venture—Offer of a career—Farming decided upon—Garrick—Marriage—Mr. Harte—Lord Chesterfield on farming—Literary work—Correspondence—Birth of a daughter.

In 1761 I was at the Coronation, had a seat in the gallery of Westminster Hall, and being in the front row above the Duke’s table, I remember letting down a basket during dessert, which was filled by the present Duke of Marlborough. On this visit to London I had a mind to see everything, and ordered a full dress suit for going to Court. This was in September. In December I was again in London figuring in the gay world.^[13] In January 1762 I set on foot a periodical publication entitled ‘The Universal Museum,’ which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by 27the fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at him. I stated my plan and begged that he would favour me with a paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that he might name. ‘No, sir,’ he replied, ‘such a work would be sure to fail if the booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal of money by it.’ ‘Certainly, sir,’ I said; ‘if I am not fortunate enough to induce authors of real talent to contribute.’ ‘No, sir, you are mistaken, such authors will not support such a work, nor will you persuade them to write in it; you will purchase disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all means to give up the plan.’ Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave. Dr. Kenrick,^[14] the translator of Rousseau, was a writer of a very different stamp; he readily engaged to write for me; so did Collier^[15] and his wife, who between them translated the ‘Death of Abel.’^[16] I printed five numbers of this work, and being convinced that Dr. Johnson’s advice was wise and that I should lose money by the business, I determined to give it up. With that view I procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme upon themselves. I fairly slipped my neck out of the yoke—a most fortunate occurrence, for, though they continued it under far more favourable circumstances, I believe no success ever attended it.

28In September of the following year I broke a blood-vessel and was attended by a Lynn physician, who ordered me to Bristol Hotwells, as I was in a very consumptive state. I accordingly went, boarding and lodging in a house where I met very intelligent and agreeable society; amongst the number was one gentleman with whom I had many arguments concerning Rousseau and his writings, I, like a fool, much admiring both, my new acquaintance abusing them with equal heat. But the principal acquaintance I made at the Hotwells was Sir Charles Howard, K.B., then an old man. Being informed that I was a chess-player, he introduced himself to me in the pump-room and invited me to coffee and a game of chess. After some time and various conversations he made enquiries relating to my family and destination. I took it into my head that he seemed more affable when he was informed (for his enquiries were numerous) that Mr. Speaker Onslow and the Bishop of Rochester were my godfathers. On understanding that I was not bred to any profession and was without hope of any settlement in life, he asked me if I should like to enter the Army. I answered in the affirmative, but added that it could only be matter of theory, as I had not lived with any officers. He often recurred to the idea, and at last told me that he would give me a pair of colours in his own cavalry regiment, and bade me write to my mother for her approval.

This I did, and was not at all surprised by her reply. She begged and beseeched me not to think of any such employment, as my health and strength 29were quite inadequate to the life. I loved my dear mother too much to accept an offer against her consent. I also became acquainted with an officer in the Army, Captain Lambert, who visited the Countess of B. at B. Castle. She was esteemed a demirep, handsome and fascinating. A little before I left Bristol I was introduced to her, and had my stay been longer should have made one in the number of her many slaves. On returning from Bristol to my mother at Bradfield, I found myself in a situation as truly helpless and forlorn as could well be imagined, without profession, business, or pursuit, I may add without one well-grounded hope of any advantageous establishment in life. My whole fortune during the life of my mother was a copyhold farm of twenty acres, producing as many pounds, and what possibility there was of turning my time to any advantage did not and could not occur to me; in truth, it was a situation without resource, and nothing but the inconsiderateness of youth could have kept me from sinking into melancholy and despair. My mother, desirous of fixing me with her, proposed that I should take a farm, and especially as the home one of eighty acres was under a lease expiring at Michaelmas. I had no more idea of farming than of physic or divinity, but as it promised, at least, to find me some employment, I agreed to the proposition, and accordingly commenced my rural operations, which entirely decided the complexion of all my remaining years. My connections at Lynn carried me often to that place, and my love of reading proved my chief resource. I farmed during the years 1763-4-5-6, having taken also 30a second farm that was in the hands of a tenant. I gained knowledge, but not much, and the principal effect was to convince me that in order to understand the business in any perfection it was necessary for me to continue my exertions for many years. And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye, was the publishing the result of my experience during these four years, which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, presumption, and rascality. The only real use which resulted from those four years was to enable me to view the farms of other men with an eye of more discrimination than I could possibly have done without that practice. It was the occasion of my going on the southern tour in 1767, the northern tour in 1768, and the eastern in 1770, extending through much the greater part of the kingdom, and the exertion in these tours was admitted by all who read them (and they were very generally read) to be of most singular utility to the general agriculture of the kingdom. In these works I particularly attended to the course of the farmer’s crops, the point perhaps of all others the most important, and the more so at that period, because all preceding writers had neglected it in the most unaccountable manner. They relate good and bad rotations with the same apathy as if it was of little consequence in what order the crops of a farm were put in provided the operations of tillage and manuring were properly performed.

It has been very justly said that I first excited the agricultural spirit which has since rendered Britain so 31famous; and I should observe that this is not so great a compliment as at first sight it may seem, since it was nothing more than publishing to the world the exertions of many capital cultivators and in various parts of the kingdom, and especially the local practice of common farmers who, with all their merit, were unknown beyond the limits of their immediate district, and whose operation wanted only to be known to be admired.

In December 1762 I was again in London, and, as usual, constantly at the theatre. The parts in which Mr. Garrick acted to my great entertainment were, Macbeth, Benedict, Lear, Posthumus, Oakely,^[17] Abel Drugger,^[18] Sir J. Brute,^[19] Sir J. Dominant,^[20] Bayes,^[21] Carlos,^[22] Felix,^[23] Ranger,^[24] Scrub,^[25] Hastings.^[26] I must once for all remark that this astonishing actor so much exceeded every idea of representing character that the delusion was complete, Nature, not acting, seemed to be before the spectator, and this to a degree a thousand times beyond anything that has been seen since. The tones of his voice, the clear discrimination of feeling and passion in the vast variety of characters he represented, surpassed anything one could imagine, and raised him beyond competition. I have often reflected on the principal personages who figured in England during this age, and I am disposed to think that Garrick was by far the greatest, that is to say, he excelled 32all his contemporaries in the art he professed. Few men have been able to laugh at their own foibles with as much wit as Garrick. A striking instance was his little publication called ‘An Ode to Garrick on the Talk of the Town,’ in which we find this stanza:

In 1765 the colour of my life was decided. I married. My wife^[29] was a daughter of Alderman Allen, of Lynn, and great-granddaughter of John Allen, Esq., of Lyng House, Norfolk, who, according to the Comte de Boulainvilliers,^[30] first introduced the custom of marling in the above-named county. We boarded with my mother at Lynn.

This year (1765) I was in correspondence with the Rev. Walter Harte,^[31] Canon of Windsor, and author of 33the ‘Essays on Husbandry’ and the ‘Life of Gustavus Adolphus.’ He advised me to collect my scattered papers in the ‘Museum Rusticum,’ and, with additions, to publish them in a volume. This I did under the title of ‘A Farmer’s Letters.’ I visited Mr. Harte at Bath; his conversation was extremely interesting and instructive. I have rarely received more pleasure than in my intercourse with this amiable and deeply learned man. It is well known that he was tutor to Mr. Stanhope, natural son of Lord Chesterfield, to whom so many of that nobleman’s letters were addressed.^[32]

35The following letters Mr. Harte was so good as to address to me:—

Mr. Harte published a volume of religious poems called ‘Amaranth,’ which he sent me. He took great pains about the decoration of this book by a young artist of his own forming, but it had no success.

In 1766 my daughter Mary was born, and I remained at Bradfield, with the exception of several journeys to Lynn.

Home travels—A move—Anecdote of a cat—Disillusion—‘A Farmer’s Letters’—Another move—‘In the full blaze of her beauty’—Hetty Burney and her harpsichord—‘Scant in servants’—Maternal solicitude—Money difficulties—More tours—Lord Sheffield—Howard the philanthropist—Correspondence.

During this year I executed that journey, the register of which I published under the title of a ‘Six Weeks’ Tour,’ in which, for the first time, the facts and principles of Norfolk husbandry were laid before the public, and which have since become famous in the agricultural world. Till my work appeared nothing of that husbandry was known beyond the county. The publication excited great interest, and became unquestionably the origin of many and great improvements in various parts of the kingdom. I scarcely went into any company in which it was not mentioned. Had I better understood the art of husbandry it might, perhaps, have been well for me. Finding that a mixture of families was inconsistent with comfortable living, I determined to quit Bradfield, and advertised in the London papers for such a house and farm as would suit my views and fortune, that is to say, one thousand pounds which I received with my wife, the 45remainder being settled upon her. I fixed upon a very fine farm in Essex called Samford Hall; there I worked with incredible avidity both in the agricultural and literary department. I remember once to have written a quire of foolscap in one day! The work was entitled ‘Political Essays on the Present State of the British Empire.’

And here I may mention a singular instance of animal sagacity. The gentleman who gave up the house to me was a Mr. Farquharson. His wife had a favourite cat which, upon their removal, was put into a sack and carried away with the furniture from Essex to Yatesby Bridge in Hampshire. I was surprised in about five or six days to see poor puss again at Samford Hall; nearly at the same time a letter was received from Mrs. Farquharson lamenting her loss, but doubting the possibility of the cat having returned to its original home. The circumstance is astonishing, and shows an instinct almost incredible, for the animal must have travelled seventy miles and threaded the Metropolis.

My landlord, a Mr. Lamb, was a King’s messenger. He had formerly been, I believe, butler or valet de chambre to the Duke of Leeds, and gave me many accounts of the journeys he had made to Petersburg, Constantinople, Naples, &c., profiting by every journey very considerably, as he expended much less in travelling than was allowed by Government. I write from memory, but I think he said that a journey to Petersburg or Constantinople paid him a neat profit of a hundred guineas.

This speculation turned out a bitter disappointment. 46I trusted to the promise of a relative to lend me some money, making, with what I possessed, sufficient for the undertaking. But he was himself disappointed of the money, and I clearly foresaw that an insufficient capital would infallibly cramp me in such a manner as to render all my efforts very uncomfortable and perhaps vain. I determined to make a short cut and get rid of it immediately, which I did at the end of six months at no further loss than of 100l. This was a lesson of some use to me at subsequent periods of my life, and taught me early to distinguish between certainty and probabilities.

The gentleman who assisted me in getting rid of this nuisance was a Mr. Yeldham. I am sure the reader will peruse with gratification the following letter (given in part):—

My correspondence with Mr. Harte continued. It gave me pain to find that his health greatly declined. He was a cripple at Bath, but the disorders of his body seemed little to affect the vigour of his mind. He spoke very flatteringly of the reception of my ‘Farmer’s Letters.’ ‘I am amazed,’ he writes, ‘that you have so soon and so easily acquired the hardest point in all writing—namely, perspicuity and ease of style.’ And elsewhere, ‘Your letter addressed to my Lord Clive on an experimental farm is new, spirited and pleasing, but I fear he has not a spark of the divina aura in him. I have shown your pamphlet to the best judge in England, my Lord Chesterfield, who is now here. He likes it extremely, and vows if he was young and rich enough he would carry your scheme into execution.’

From Samford Hall I moved, in 1768, to another farm at North Mimms, in Hertfordshire. I had scarcely settled here before my bookseller united with many correspondents in urging me to take another tour. I accordingly travelled through the north of England, 50registering so many observations, and noting the experiments of such a number of gentlemen, that the record of the whole, with the necessary remarks, filled four octavo volumes, and enabled me to present the public with interesting agricultural details never before published. I may assert this without vanity, because the real merit belonged to those who furnished me with the information; and the success of the work was so great that the first edition was sold almost as soon as it appeared. In the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour’ I visited but few gentlemen, and consequently witnessed but few experiments. On the ‘Northern Journey’ the case was very different, and the number of trials reported on a variety of soils were great and interesting. I spent some time with my friend, Mr. Ellerton, of Risby, in the East Riding; he accompanied me to York races and on a visit of several days to the Marquis of Rockingham, who had previously to the journey invited me to see him, and pointed out a number of persons proper for me to visit. Amongst the company at Wentworth was Mr. Danby, of Swinton, and his daughter,^[39] then in the full blaze of her beauty. My Lord Rockingham overheard her speaking to me and using the expression ‘amazingly fine turnips.’ ‘So, so, Mr. Young,’ said his lordship, ‘you are getting farming intelligence of Miss Danby; the lady must let us hear more of those fine turnips.’^[40] His lordship ordered me into an apartment, in a closet 51of which was a considerable collection of ancient and curious books on agriculture, which he pointed out for my amusement when I had time to consult them. There was one circumstance which seemed very awkward to me at Wentworth, the necessity of every person always having his hat under his arm, a hint of which Lord R. gave me on my arrival, and I saw the want of it in one or two new comers, who, when the horses were brought to the door, had a journey to make through the house before they could find their hats. From Wentworth I went to the Duke of Portland’s and others, and afterwards examined a great part of the county of York with much attention, everywhere being received in a very flattering manner.

This year I made many visits to my friend, Dr. Burney, in Poland Street, to whom my wife’s sister was married, and whose daughter Hester (by a former marriage) entertained, or rather, fascinated me, by her performance on the harpsichord and singing of Italian airs. I was never tired of listening to the ‘Ah, quelli occhi ladroncelli,’ and ‘Alla larga,’ of Piccini,^[41] and it is marvellous to me now to recollect that I was thus riveted to her side for six hours together.

During this year my daughter Bessy was born, and the second edition of my ‘Farmer’s Letters’ published.

1769.—My son Arthur born. The whole of this year I passed at North Mimms, very well received and visited in that thronged neighbourhood. The Duke of Leeds, who lived in the parish, condescended to make 52overtures with a view to my acquaintance. Sir Charles Cocks, afterwards Lord Somers, if I do not mistake the year, did the same, and often drank tea with me; also Dr. Roper and his wife Lady Harriet. He was a man of great learning, and she a most amiable woman, free from all pride and affectation. I also often met Lady Mary Mordaunt at two or three houses, and her sister Lady Frances Bulhely, with whom she lived; with the former I had something of a flirtation and lent her many books; she was rather handsome and very agreeable. I was elected member of a dining club at Hatfield, and became acquainted with Samuel Whitbread, Esq. M.P.,^[42] and Mr. Justice Willes from East Barnet. I was very well received by Mrs. Willes, a fine lady, and rather fantastical. They were both vain people, and I remember one day at dinner Judge Willes saying to his wife, ‘My dear, I think we are rather scant in servants’—yet there was one to every chair and some to spare. She was making an ornamental path round the homestead, and asked my advice in several difficulties. During this year Prince Massalski, Bishop of Wilna, wrote me a long French letter on the agricultural prosperity of England. He afterwards passed two days with me in Hertfordshire, an agreeable, well-instructed man, who much lamented the miserable state of his own country.

1770.—What a year of incessant activity, composition, anxiety and wretchedness was this! No carthorse ever laboured as I did at this period, spending like an 53idiot, always in debt, in spite of what I earned^[43] with the sweat of my brow and almost my heart’s blood, such was my anxiety; yet all was clearly vexation of spirit. Well might my dear mother write to me as she did. I trusted in an unparalleled industry, but not in God; and see how He brought it all to nought, as if to convince me of my supreme folly and infatuation. My old Suffolk bailiff was the channel through which I ran into debt to the Bury banker by a series of drawing bills, one to pay another, till the plan became so obvious that he cut short and refused to accept any more. I had run near a thousand pounds into his debt, and it was necessary for me to go over directly to Bury to see what could be done to pacify him. He was at his country seat at Trosston. Thither I followed him, and, with great difficulty, persuaded him to have patience, under a promise that I would make arrangements to pay him very speedily. This I did with difficulty, and I scarcely recollect how. I shall, in the first place, note that the Eastern Tour was accomplished, the journal of which was afterwards published in four volumes. In the preface I returned thanks to those who contributed to my information, and in the number were many most distinguished personages amongst the nobility and gentry in the counties through which I travelled, with numerous distinguished farmers.

It is necessary here to pause a little in order to examine the object and the effect of the three tours I made and published. They have, by the very best 54judges, been esteemed highly useful to practical agriculturists, and unquestionably they are equally so for the information they afford in political economy: they have accordingly, in these views, been celebrated^[44] in almost every language of Europe. When a work appears, the object and execution of which are equally novel and unexampled, it is not surprising that a certain measure of success should attend such a work. Nothing in the least similar to it had before appeared in the English language; for though there had been a tour of Great Britain, and other tours through great part of the kingdom, yet all these works agreed in one circumstance—that of the authors confining their attention absolutely to towns and seats, without paying any more thought to agriculture than if that art had no existence between the towns they visited. Indeed my work was admitted on all hands to be perfectly original. In regard to the practical husbandry of the farmers, and the experimental observations of the gentlemen I visited, the utility of these could not be doubted. When a Lord Chancellor of England, amusing himself with husbandry, read the English works on that subject for information, and burnt them as affording him nothing but contradictions, without doubt he complained that these writers did not describe the common management of the farmers, and on that management founding their propositions of improvement. But the fact was, and it must be, in the nature of things, writers confined to their closets, or, at most, to a single farm, could not describe what it was impossible for them to know; and before the appearance 55of my tours there was scarcely a district in the kingdom described in such a manner as to convince the reader that the authors had any practical knowledge of the art; for a man to quit his farm and his fireside in order to examine the husbandry of a kingdom by travelling above four thousand miles through a country of no greater extent than England was certainly taking means sufficiently effective for laying a sure basis for the future improvement of the soil. To understand well the present state of cultivation is surely a necessary step prior to proposals of improvement. This I effected; and in the opinion of some very able agriculturists now living, the greatest of the subsequent improvements that have been made during the last forty years have, in a great measure, originated in the defects pointed out by me in the detail of these journeys.

I shall venture to insert one anecdote which occurred in the Northern Tour. At Mr. Danby’s, at Swinton in Yorkshire, I met a very uncommon instance of extraordinary industry in a collier, who improved some waste moors by the labour of his own hands beside his common hours of working in the colliery. He had so animated a spirit of improvement that I thought it a great pity that he should be left without better support; and therefore I proposed a subscription for him, which raised in all about 100l., and Mr. Danby, his landlord, releasing him from his colliery, he was enabled to extend his improvements with much more comfort to himself. After a few years he died, leaving his farm for the benefit of his family. He shortened his life, poor fellow, by his industry.

This year I was obliged to decline an invitation 56from Lord Holdernesse to accompany him to Hornby Castle. Upon informing my mother of the refusal, she, with her ever watchful kindness concerning my interests, wrote thus: ‘I am extremely sorry that you refused Lord Holdernesse’s invitation; it was an opportunity you may never have again, for when favours that great people offer are refused, they seldom, if ever, make a second; it is very extraordinary indeed if they do. He is as likely to be one in the Administration as any other, for since Lady H. is one of the Ladies of the Queen’s Bedchamber it is not likely that he [Lord H.] will be long out of post; and who knows? you might have found favour in his sight. I fear as long as my poor eyes are open I shall never want for something relating to your welfare to vex me extremely, which I must own is a great weakness. As to the regard of this world, thank God I do often reflect on the shortness of every earthly felicity, a misery compared with the duration of hereafter, and I am fully convinced that on God all events depend. I can’t help transcribing a few lines out of a book you know little of. [Here follow scriptural texts.] Thank God, I don’t owe five pounds in the world, not that I brag of being free from debt as owing to any merit to me, for I am far from thinking anything like it; no, it is to the mercy and goodness of God who has given me a comfortable provision for the situation I am in, and in a better I don’t desire to be, for a little with God’s blessing goes much farther than a great deal without it. You may call all this rubbish if you please, but a time will come when you will be convinced whose notions are rubbish, yours or mine.’ 57I here insert another letter from my mother, at the risk of being taxed with personal vanity:—

‘I had a letter yesterday from your brother, in which was a paragraph that I think will give you a little pleasure. It is as follows: "I find that Arthur has printed lately a pamphlet on the ‘Exportation of Corn.’ A gentleman who came from the Drawing Room yesterday told me that the King asked him whether he had read Mr. Young’s pamphlet on the subject, and commended it." Oh, dear! how pleasing it is to have the approbation of a King, even though we never get sixpence by it. And yet how few are desirous of the approbation of the King; yet they may be sure of it if they sincerely try, and can never fail of being well rewarded, both in this world and the next. Oh! Arthur, with what capacities are you endowed—with what advantages for being greatly good! But with the talents of an angel a man may be a fool if he judges amiss on the supreme point.’

1771.^[45]—The same unremitting industry, the same anxiety, the same vain hopes, the same perpetual disappointment. No happiness, nor anything like it.

This year I published the third edition of the ‘Farmer’s Letters,’ the second edition of the ‘Northern Tour,’ the ‘Farmer’s Calendar,’ my ‘Proposals for Numbering the People’—the occasion of which was the Earl of Chatham’s words: ‘When I compare the number of our people—estimated highly at seven^[46] 58millions—with the population of France and Spain, usually computed at twenty-five millions, I see a clear, self-evident possibility for this country to contend with the united powers of the House of Bourbon merely upon the strength of its own resources.’ I conceived that to draw such political principles for the national conduct from a mere supposition of population was a doctrine tending to very mischievous errors. I therefore was convinced that an actual enumeration of the people ought to take place. Nothing, however, was done at the time, but thirty years afterwards^[47] the Legislature was of the same opinion, and not till then were the numbers ascertained.ascertained.

This year I began my correspondence with Mr. John Baker Holroyd,^[48] afterwards so well known for his literary productions as Lord Sheffield. In his first letter, dated March 1771, he mentions his wish that I should forward some cabbage seed, and hopes that I may be the means of introducing the culture of cabbages into that neighbourhood (Sussex), but adds—what must now appear singular—that the very extraordinary scarcity of hands cramps him very much. ‘All the lively, able young men are employed in smuggling. They can have a guinea a week as riders and carriers without any risk; therefore it is not to be expected that they will labour for eight shillings a week until some more effectual means are taken to prevent smuggling.’

I had also a letter from the deservedly celebrated 59philanthropist, John Howard, with a basket of his American potatoes, afterwards known under the name of ‘the Howard and cluster potatoes.’ He added: ‘Permit me, sir, to offer my thanks for the entertainment of your very ingenious and useful labours, and the honour you did me in the mention of my name.’

1772.—Published ‘Political Essays on the British Empire,’ ‘Present State of Waste Lands.’ A third edition of the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour’ was also published.

This year I attended very much the meetings of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts,^[49] Manufactures and Commerce, as well as the Committee of Agriculture,^[50] of which I was Chairman. In a letter from Mr. Butterworth Bayley, he lamented the want of a respectable publication by the Society of Arts, and called on me to think of some means of remedying the misery (sic). When I became Chairman of the Committee of Agriculture, I was the first to propose that annual publication which afterwards took place. This proposition was at once acceded to, and Valentine Green, the engraver, had the impudence to assert that it originated with him.

This year I visited Samuel Whitbread, Esq., at Cardington, in Bedfordshire, and as Mr. Howard, who afterwards became so celebrated for his philanthropy, lived in the same parish, Mr. W. took me to call upon him one morning. He was esteemed a singular character, but was at that time quite unknown in the 60world. He was then only famous for introducing a new series of potatoes into cultivation. We found him in a parlour, without books or apparently any employment, dressed as for an evening in London—a powdered bag wig, white silk stockings, thin shoes, and every other circumstance of his habiliments excluding the possibility of a country walk. He was rather pragmatical in his speech, very polite, but expressing himself in a manner that seemed to belong to two hundred years ago. I asked Mr. Whitbread if Mr. Howard was usually thus dressed and confined to his room, for he was as intimate with Whitbread as with anybody. He had never seen him otherwise, he said, but added that he was a sensible man and a very worthy one.

At this time I published my ‘Political Essays on the Present State of Affairs in the British Empire,’ also the third edition of the ‘Six Weeks’ Tour.’ Comber’s ‘Real Improvements in Agriculture on the Principles of A. Young, Esq.,’ was likewise printed. Comber was afterwards deeply engaged in the ‘Monthly Review,’ and belaboured me with all the abuse he could accumulate. I published also a tract entitled ‘The Present State of Waste Lands in Great Britain.’

In March, Mr. Allen, my wife’s brother, an alderman of Lynn, applied to the Earl of Orford to procure for me an establishment in some public office, and his Lordship wrote to Lord North on the subject. In his reply the latter spoke of me as one ‘whose very ingenious and useful writings point out as a very 61proper object of notice and reward.’ It was an application for a King’s waiter’s^[51] place, a sinecure.

At this time I was so distressed that I had serious thoughts of quitting the kingdom^[52] and going to America. Surely the three last years ought to have convinced me, had I not been worse than an idiot, of the vanity and folly of my expenses, and how utterly all comfort and happiness must fly such pursuits. Feeling a force and vigour of mind in myself erroneously, I trusted in them. As to God, I lived without Him in the world, and had not a companion that could bring me to Him. But my mother, my ever dear mother, wrote in vain to me; her advice was not listened to. She tried to bring me to a right sense of religion, which would have conferred that peace and content which flew before my vain pursuits.

Dr. Hunter,^[53] of York, wrote to me this year on the Georgical Essays, and on carrots and their conversion into a confection for the use of seamen, of which he entertained great expectations. ‘I received much pleasure,’ he wrote, ‘from the perusal of your Eastern Tour, and could not help expressing uneasiness at the rancorous treatment of the monthly reviewers. We are all open to fair and candid criticism, but when 62there is the least spark of resentment seen it then ceases to be criticism, and deserves another name. I propose to finish the Georgical Essays, with two more volumes, in 1773. My own natural avocations will not permit me in future to be anything but an editor; I wish I had leisure to prosecute so agreeable a study. I have, however, some satisfaction in seeing the art (of agriculture) improve under your hands, and hope that nothing will prevail upon you to withdraw yourself from the public. I have, this year, a large experiment with onions and carrots. These vegetables have not hitherto been cultivated in the field in this country. Besides the application of carrots for horses and hogs, I am persuaded that they may be converted by a cheap process into a confection for the use of seamen. This, and the last year’s experiments, convince me of the practicability of the scheme, and next year I propose to ship a considerable quantity for the above purpose. The expense is small, and my expectations are great.’

1773.—Here began a new career of industry, ill-exerted, of new hopes and never-failing disappointments, labour and sorrow, folly and infatuation, which it is scarcely possible for a man, turned into the world without business or profession, to escape, and it affords a most impressive lesson to all parents to be almost as ready to hang their children as to bring them up without a regular profession. If I had been a country curate with 50l. a year, in addition to the income I possessed, and had lived in a quiet parsonage, the probability of happiness would have been far greater. The business of my farm at North Mimms was 63insufficient to keep me employed, and the intercourse I constantly had with London I considered as a means which should be turned to some account in the increase of a most insufficient income; in fact, I was in a most uncomfortable state, which induced me to listen to the proposals of a gentleman I met with—I have quite forgotten whom—who informed me that the ‘Morning Post’ proprietors were in great want of some person to report the debates in Parliament. In consequence of this information I applied at their office, and they very readily engaged me for a trial, to see if I was able to perform the business they required. This was done, and as they were well satisfied with the manner in which the work was executed, I continued it at a salary, as well as I can recollect, of five guineas a week. Every Saturday I walked seventeen miles to my farm, and back again on the Monday morning. This year I published my observations on the present state of waste lands, which contained a new idea of extreme importance in the mode of working any great and effective improvement. In most of the attempts that have been made by individuals to accomplish these meritorious works, there generally appeared a weakness of effort and insufficiency of means, which prevented anything considerable being effected, and the cause I justly explained to be, a want of proportion between the means and the end, not so much in a want of money as in a most erroneous method of applying it. To raise a set of buildings for a farm, with gradual additions to the whole, and enclosing from the waste, field after 64field for improvement, with views merely of forming a large farm, and keeping the whole in hand, demands so large a capital that the succeeding languor of the exertions has been evidently owing to want of money, the capital being insufficient for the two distinct objects of farming and improving. The novel idea struck me that the whole capital in such cases should be appropriated to improvements alone; that no other buildings should be raised than exactly sufficient for such a small farm as lets most readily in the district—and this, usually, is little more than a cottage, and ten or twenty acres of grass round it. Hence I proposed that an entire new farm should, after one course of crops, be formed, and let, sold, or mortgaged every year. In this mode of proceeding the farming would be entirely subservient to the improvement, and the capital would be constantly moving to fresh land. I showed that a small sum of money, thus employed, would gradually improve a great and increasing breadth of waste; whereas, if the same money was employed in the common manner of farming and occupying a larger farm, the space improved, after fifteen or twenty years, would be trifling, and the profit very inferior. My explanation of this system carries conviction with it; but the work appearing at a period when the rapidity of my publications satiated the world, little or no attention was paid to it.

1774.—I, this year, published on my own account my political arithmetic, one of my best works, which was immediately translated into many languages, and highly commended in many parts of Europe. Judges 65of the subject here, as well as abroad, have considered it as abounding in valuable information and the justest views; but, unfortunately, as in the case of my work on waste lands, it followed so many other of my publications that little attention was paid to it, except by the few who saw the importance of the subject, or who were able to judge of the merit of the work.

The winter was passed in London in the same employment as the preceding; but I had become known to so many men of science that several hinted to me the propriety of my being a candidate for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and my recommendation as such being garnished with some respectable names I was accordingly elected, which adds the F.R.S. to my name. Once in conversation with Dr. Burney on these elections, he said, ‘No matter, for that we have got our ends of them.’ This year I was elected an honorary member of the Palatine Society of Agriculture established at Mannheim, also of the Geographical Society of Florence.

1775.—This winter I spent in London. From 1766 to 1775 being ten years, I received 3,000l., or 300l. a year.

The journey to Ireland—Characteristics—Residence at Mitchelstown—Intrigues—A strange bargain—Departure—Letter to his wife—A terrible journey.

The events which followed the close of this year carried a better complexion than the preceding period, and therefore I shall in general remark that the last four or five years of my life had been detestable, my employments degrading, my anxiety endless, every effort unsuccessful, exertion always on the stretch, and always disappointed in the result, uneasy at home, unhappy abroad, existing with difficulty and struggling to live, never out of debt, and never enjoying one shilling that was spent. What would not a sensible, quiet, prudent wife have done for me? But had I so behaved to God as to merit such a gift?

The only pleasant moments that I passed were in visits to my friend Arbuthnot^[54] at Mitcham, whose agriculture so near the capital brought good company to his house. He was upon the whole the most agreeable, pleasant and interesting connection which I ever 67made in agricultural pursuits. He was brother of the present Rt. Honorable.

I had in 1775 determined on making the tour of Ireland, to which the Earl of Shelburne^[55] much instigated me, and I corresponded with several persons on the subject, who urged me much to that undertaking, but I was obliged to postpone it to the following year. The following is a note from Mr. Burke on the subject:—

‘Mr. Burke sends the covers with his best compliments and wishes to Mr. Young. He would be very glad to give Mr. Young recommendations to Ireland, but his acquaintance there is almost worn out, Lord Charlemont and one or two more being all that he thinks care a farthing for him. However, if letters to them would be of any service to Mr. Young, Mr. B. would with great pleasure write them.’

On June 19 of this year 1776 I embarked at Holyhead for Ireland, and in consequence of this journey through every part of the kingdom, produced in 1780 that tour which succeeded so well, and has been reckoned among my best and most useful productions; and I have reason to believe had considerable effect in enlightening the people of that country. I took with me many letters of introduction, from the Earl of Shelburne, Mr. Burke, and other persons of eminence in England; and on landing at Dublin, was immediately introduced to Colonel Burton, afterwards Lord Cunningham, aide-de-camp to the Earl of Harcourt, at that time Lord Lieutenant, and well known to the whole 68kingdom. Colonel Burton, to whom I was more indebted for letters of introduction than to any other man in England, was a most remarkable character. He had great care and elegance united with a measure of roughness, which may be attributed to a sort of personal courage which was apt to boil over. This led him into many quarrels, and not a few duels, one of which was fought across a table of no great length from end to end, and, not strange to tell of in Ireland, several of the party stood near enjoying the sport. He was a true friend to the interests of Ireland, and far more enlightened upon it than the greater part of well-informed people to be found there. He made immense exertions to improve the fisheries on his estate at Donegal, but they were unsuccessful. He was respectable^[56] for general knowledge, and possessed a great flow of animated conversation. He carried me to Lord Harcourt’s villa at St. Woolstans, with whom I spent some days; and the Colonel arranged the plan of my journey, giving me a multitude of letters to those who were best able to afford valuable information. I kept a private journal throughout the whole of this tour, in which I minuted many anecdotes and circumstances which occurred to me of a private nature, descriptive of the manners of the people, which, had it been preserved, would have assisted greatly in drawing up these papers; but, unfortunately, it was lost, with all the specimens of soils and minerals which I collected throughout the whole kingdom. On returning to England, I quitted my whisky^[57] at Bath, and got into a 69stage, and sent a new London servant, the only one I had, thither to bring the horse and chaise to London, and the trunk containing these things. The fellow was a rascal, stole the trunk, and pretended that he had lost it on the road; in addition to the loss was the torment of hunting him out (for he went away directly) through London for punishment. With great difficulty I found him, and serving a warrant upon him, carried him to Bow Street, where Fielding the magistrate at once dismissed the complaint, it being only a breach of trust, as the robbery could not be proved; and all I got for my pains was abuse from the fellow.

This was a very great loss to me, as the specimens I brought of soils would have been of great use to me in the course of experiments which I soon after began in the object of expelling gases from earths. In my journey through Ireland I was received with great hospitality, which characterises the nation, and with that particular attention which my peculiar object excited in so many persons who rendered agriculture either their profit or amusement.

I travelled four hundred miles de suite without going to an inn. Amongst those who were most desirous of my calling upon them was Sir James Caldwell, of Castle Caldwell, on Lough Erne. One anecdote will give some idea of his character.

The Marquis of Lansdowne, then Earl of Shelburne, being in Ireland, and intending to call on Sir James, he, with an hospitality truly Irish, thought of nothing night or day but how to devise some amusement to entertain his noble guest, and came home to breakfast one morning with prodigious eagerness to communicate 70a new idea to Lady Caldwell. This was to summon together the hundred labourers he employed, and choose fifty that, would best represent New Zealand savages, in order that he might form two fleets of boats on the Lough, one to represent Captain Cook and his men, the other a New Zealand chief at the head of his party in canoes, and consulted her how it would be possible to get them dressed in an appropriate manner in time for Lord Shelburne’s arrival. Lady C., who had much more prudence than Sir James, reminded him that he had 200 acres of hay down, and the preparations he mentioned would occupy so much time that the whole would now stand a chance of being spoiled. All remonstrances were in vain. Tailors were pressed into his service from the surrounding country to vamp up, as well as time would permit, the crews of men and fleets. The prediction was fulfilled: the hay was spoiled, and what hurt Sir James much more, he received a letter from Lord S. to put off his coming till his return from Kilkenny, and that uncertain. To add to the mortification, after some weeks, Sir James being on business at Dublin, Lord S. arrived without giving notice, and Lady C., not presuming to exhibit the intended battle, but wishing to amuse his Lordship as well as the place would afford, told him at breakfast that the morning should be spent in fishing. Lord S. replied, ‘My dear Lady C., you look upon a fine lake out of your windows; but I have often remarked—from the ocean to the pond—that where at the first blush you have reason to expect most fish you are sure to find least.’ This made Lady C. exert herself—boats, 71nets, and all were collected, and they caught such an immensity as really proved a most gratifying spectacle to his Lordship, who confessed that his maxim failed him for once. His stay was too short for Sir James’s return.

At Lord Longford’s I met a person of some celebrity at the time for adventures not worth reciting, Mr. Medlicott. Lord L. and he gave me an account of a gentleman of a good estate in that neighbourhood, but then dead, whose real life, manners and conversation far exceeded anything to be met with in ‘Castle Rackrent.’ His hospitality was unbounded, and it never for a moment came into his head to make any provision for feeding the people he brought into his house. While credit was to be had, his butler or housekeeper did this for him; his own attention was given solely to the cellar that wine might not be wanted. If claret was secured, with a dead ox or sheep hanging in the slaughter-house ready for steaks or cutlets, he thought all was well. He was never easy without company in the house, and with a large party in it would invite another of twice the number. One day the cook came into the breakfast parlour before all the company: ‘Sir, there’s no coals.’ ‘Then burn turf.’ ‘Sir, there’s no turf.’ ‘Then cut down a tree.’ This was a forlorn hope, for in all probability he must have gone three miles to find one, all round the house being long ago safely swept away. They dispatched a number of cars to borrow turf. Candles were equally deficient, for unfortunately he was fond of dogs all half starved, so that a gentleman walking to what was called his 72bed-chamber, after making two or three turnings, met a hungry greyhound, who, jumping up, took the candle out of the candlestick, and devoured it in a trice, and left him in the dark. To advance or return was equally a matter of chance, therefore groping his way, he soon found himself in the midst of a parcel of giggling maidservants. By what means he at last found his way to his ‘shakedown’ is unknown. A ‘shakedown’ when I was in Ireland meant some clean straw spread upon the floor, with blankets and sheets, in what was called the barrack room, one containing several beds for single men.

At Mr. Richard Aldworth’s, in the county of Cork, I met with an instance, both in that gentleman and lady, of elegant manners and cultivated minds. He had made the grand tour, and she had been educated in that style which may be imagined in a person nearly related to a Lord Chief Justice and an Archbishop. But it was evident that patriotic motives alone made them residents in Ireland. A sigh would often escape when circumstances of English manners were named, and they felt the dismal vacuity of living in a country where people of equal ideas were scarce. Mrs. Aldworth had in her possession one original manuscript letter of Dean Swift, entrusted to her under a solemn promise that she would permit no copy to be taken, nor ever read it twice to the same people. It was without exception the wittiest and severest satire upon Ireland that probably ever was written, and it was easy to perceive by the manner in which it was read that the sentiments were not a little in unison with those of the 73reader. This letter was equally hostile to the nobility, the gentry, the people, the country, nay the very rivers and mountains; for it declared the Shannon itself to be little better than a series of marshes, that carried to the ocean less water than flows through one of the arches of London Bridge.

From various other instances, as well as from this, I was inclined to think that that degree of a polished and cultivated education, which suits well enough for London or Paris, or a country residence in a good neighbourhood of England, was ill-framed for a province in Ireland. Persons of equal attainments may now and then come across them, but they are compelled to associate with so many who are the very reverse that a more certain provision of misery can scarcely be laid.

The preceding observation is in a measure applicable to Mr. and Mrs. Jefferys and Mr. and Mrs. Trant, who lived in the vicinity of Cork. The two former when I was there were actually embarking for France, after great speculations in building a town and establishing manufactures, which probably had proved too expensive. They were well informed and cultivated, and spoke most modern languages. Mr. Trant was an instance of a singularly retentive memory. It was never necessary for him to consult the same book twice. All that he ever read in a variety of languages was at his tongue’s end, and he applied these uncommon stores with great judgment and propriety. The most beautiful description of Kilkenny was written by him. It gave me pleasure to hear not long afterwards that Mr. and Mrs. Jefferys were at Paris but a 74few days, and then returned to England. The motive of the journey was reported to be to get rid of a much too numerous establishment of servants, as they started again on a much more moderate and comfortable plan.

As a feature of Irish manners, I may mention another circumstance which astonished me. When upon my tour I spent a day or two with the Right Hon. Silver Oliver, who had at that time much company in his house. The table was well appointed, and everything wore an air of splendour and affluence. Afterwards when I resided at Mitchelstown—Mr. Oliver was either dead or absent, and everything in the house was advertised to be sold by auction—I went over to that auction, which gave me an opportunity of examining the whole house. I desired to be shown into the kitchen, as I could not find it of myself. When pointed out I was in utter amazement. There never was such a hole. I insisted upon it that it could not be the kitchen, as I had myself partook of dinners which could never have been dressed in such a pig-stye; but they assured me there was no other. It was about eight feet wide and ten long. Scarcely any light, and the walls black as the inside of the chimney. The furniture was no better than the fitting up; dressers, tables, and shelves seemed to have been laid aside as superfluous luxuries. It must have been an effort of uncommon ingenuity to cook at a turf hearth, in such a cave as this, the ample dinners I had seen in this house, and Etna or Vesuvius might as soon have been found in England as such a kitchen. Its existence for a single instant in the house of a man of fortune would 75be a moral impossibility. No English farmer would submit to it for a week. This strongly shows the manners of the people.

A family with whom I resided for some time, while waiting for the Waterford packet, was that of Mr. Bolton, in a beautiful situation, commanding the finest views. Mr. Bolton, the elder, was a respectable man; but his son, the present proprietor of the estate, then in Parliament, was a man of singular and genuine patriotism, and of so mild and pleasing a temper that I much regretted I had him not for a neighbour at Bradfield. I had the pleasure of sending him from Suffolk many implements &c. for assisting him in his improved husbandry; and he has proved to the present day one of the most enlightened friends that Ireland has to boast, making an equal figure in my tour, and in the very able work of Mr. Wakefield^[58] published within an interval of thirty years.

Among the persons who received me in the most agreeable and hospitable manner I may be permitted to name the following: Earl of Harcourt (Lord Lieutenant), Earl of Charlemont, Lord Chief Baron Forster, his Grace the Lord Primate, the Archbishop of Tuam, Sir James Caldwell, &c.

1777.—This was the first favourable turn that promised anything after ten years’ anxiety and misery, yet how little did I deserve from that Providence I had so long neglected. The year was a remarkable one in the events of my life.

76Mr. Danby, of whom mention has already been inserted, was this spring in London, and as Lord Kingsborough, son of the Earl of Kingston, was intimately acquainted with Mr. D., and at that time there also, his Lordship often complained of the sad state of neglect in which his property remained in the hands of an Irish agent, who never saw an acre of the estate but merely on a rapid journey once, or at most twice, a year to receive the rents. For this purpose a clerk resided at Mitchelstown, having a summer house in the Castle garden for his office, and here the tenants came to pay their rents in a constant succession of driblets the whole year round. His Lordship observed that it would be of much importance to him to have a respectable resident agent who understood agriculture, and might greatly contribute to the improvement of the property. Mr. Danby entirely coincided in this opinion, and told his Lordship that he knew a gentleman who possessed the unquestionable knowledge and management of estates, and as he had known me for several years he had every reason to believe in my integrity. He then named me. Lord K. begged him to make the application to me immediately, which Mr. Danby did, and invited me to meet Lord and Lady K. to dinner. I had a good deal of conversation with Lord K., and the next day Mr. Danby made an agreement with his Lordship for me to become his agent at an annual salary of 500l., with an eligible house for my residence, rent free, and a retaining fee, to be paid immediately, of 500l. more.

In consequence of this arrangement, to which I 77readily agreed, I disposed of the lease of my farm in Hertfordshire, and sent my books and other effects which I might want to Cork by sea, going myself to Dublin, where I resided some time in a constant round of Dublin dinners, till I was informed by Lord Kingsborough that the house at Mitchelstown was ready in which I was to reside, whilst a new one was building on a plan and in a situation approved of myself. In September I left Dublin for Mitchelstown—130 miles off—making a detour through those counties which I had not sufficiently seen the preceding year. And here I cannot avoid inserting the following excellent advice from my ever affectionate mother: ‘My memory begins to fail me, but no wonder at 72. That is not the cause of yours doing so, but the multiplicity of business you are engaged in. I attribute it also to being overburthened with your affairs. I can get neither ploughman nor footman to go over to Ireland, so you must see what you can do when you come yourself, which, I am sorry to hear, is not till (next) September. God only knows if I shall live so long as to see you once more. However, to hear you are well and happy is a great comfort to me, and the only one I have left, for it is my lot to be deprived of all those who to me are dearest. I hate now to do anything but sit by the fire and write to you.... But the happiness of this world, Arthur, is but of a short duration; I therefore wish you would bestow some thoughts on that happiness which will have eternal duration.^[59]

781778.—The opening of this year found me at Mitchelstown, where Mrs. Young joined me. On my arrival I busied myself incessantly in examining and valuing the farms which came out of lease, and was so occupied several months. I was most anxious to persuade Lord K. into the propriety of letting his lands to the occupying cottar as tenant, and dismissing the whole race of middlemen. I adhered steadily to this, and had the satisfaction to find that Lord K. was well inclined to the plan. But a distant relation of Lady K.’s, who had one farm upon the estate as middleman, Major Thornhill, feeling the sweets of a profit rent upon that one farm, was exceedingly anxious to procure from Lord K. the profits of others upon the same terms, and in this respect I was placed in an awkward situation. It was impossible for me, consistently with the interest of Lord K., in any measure whatever to promote the success of designs which struck at the very root of all my plans, as the Major had his eye upon several of the most considerable farms. Lady K. had a high opinion of the Major, who was a lively, pleasant, handsome man, and an ignorant open-hearted duellist; she had of course favoured his plans, and I as carefully avoided ever saying anything in favour of them. Thus from the beginning it was not difficult to see an underground plot to frustrate schemes commencing very early, but things in the meantime carried a fair outward appearance. I dined very often at the Castle, and generally played at chess with Lady Kingsborough for an hour or more after dinner, and I learned by report that her Ladyship was highly pleased with me, saying that I was 79one of the most lively, agreeable fellows. Lord Kingsborough was of a character not so easily ascertained, for at many different periods of his life he seemed to possess qualities very much in contradiction to each other. His manner and carriage were remarkably easy, agreeable, and polite, having the finish of a perfect gentleman; he wanted, however, steadiness and perseverance even in his best designs, and was easily wrought upon by persons of inferior abilities. Mrs. Thornhill, the wife of the Major, was an artful designing woman, ever on the watch to injure those who stood in her husband’s way, and never forgetting her private interest for a moment. I saw a fixed plan in her mind for dispossessing me of the agency and procuring it for the Major, and I conceive it was by her misrepresentations that a decisive use was made of an opportunity which soon after offered for effecting her plan.

Lady K. had a Catholic governess, a Miss Crosby, relative to whom Mrs. T. had inspired Lady K. with sentiments of jealousy, insomuch that she was discharged, and I was employed to draw up an engagement to grant her an annuity of 50l. per annum. This transaction and others connected with it occasioned me to be much at the Castle, and in situations which were converted by Mrs. Thornhill into proofs that I was in league with Miss C. for securing the affections of Lord Kingsborough at the expense of his wife, and, at the same time, it was carefully impressed into his Lordship’s mind that I was in love with Lady K. Thus by a train of artful intrigues and deceptions the ladies brought Lord K. to the determination of parting with me, 80after which nothing remained but to settle our accounts. This was done, and a balance being due to me of about 600l. or 700l., I informed his Lordship that I waited only to be paid in order to set off for England. Here was a demur, and Major Thornhill came to inform me that his Lordship had not the money to pay me; several days passed in which I was in a very awkward state of uncertainty. It occurred to me as I saw no sign of payment to propose that he should give me an annuity for life, which he at once agreed to. What that annuity should be I was perfectly ignorant, but there was an advertisement in a London paper offering terms, which I sent to his Lordship, with a note, informing him that if he would give me an annuity on the terms there specified I would agree to it and free him for the present from all payment. This his Lordship at once acceded to, and signed a bond granting me an annuity for life of 72l.,^[60] according to the terms specified in the advertisement. This business being settled to the satisfaction of both parties, and my books packed up and sent to Cork, I stepped into my post-chaise, and, with a pair of Irish nags, set off on a journey to Waterford on a visit to my excellent friend, Cornelius Bolton, Junr. Esqr. M.P., where I waited for the packet to sail for Milford Haven long enough to have gone round by Dublin and have reached Rome or Naples. I had a miserable passage of three days and nights, a storm blowing us almost to Arklow, but through the providence of God we escaped the threatened dangers and landed safely in the desired 81haven. I travelled post to London, and thus ended one of the greatest speculations of my life, and I remember observing that in all probability the providence of God was exerted to remove me from a kingdom in which no unconnected motives could induce me to remain. The transaction was not absolutely free from circumstances in a measure favourable to my future ease and repose. I had received 500l., which took me out of some difficulties, and had the addition of 72l. per annum to my income, which was to me an object of some consideration. It also removed me entirely from the farm in Hertfordshire, a most unprofitable one, and, what was better, from a winter residence in London. It also took me back to Bradfield to my aged mother, whose health was daily declining, and whose memory, being much impaired, subjected her to imposition by tenants and servants.

‘My Dearest,—It pleases God that I am once more to embrace you and my children—a passage that is common in eight hours was from Sunday morn eight o’clock till one o’clock this morning Wednesday, thirty-six hours of which, a raging storm; we talk of them at land, but those who have not seen them at sea know not what the very elements are. Pent up in the Irish Channel, the ship ran adrift, wearing^[61] to keep free from rocks and sands—the wind did not blow, it was like volleys of artillery; part of the sails were torn into 82fritters; the waves were mountains high, while the ship was perfectly tossed on end of them; the cabin window burst open, and deluged everything afloat; the horses kicked and groaned, the dogs howled; six passengers praying, shrieking, and vomiting; every soul sick but myself; the sailors swearing and storming; and the whole—such a scene! The Captain, who has been many voyages, and the pilot thirty-six years, never saw such a storm—to last so long.

‘It has worried and starved the horses so that I know not what I am to do—shall go with them as far as I can, and if they knock up must leave them and take some fly to be by you thirty-first; of which send immediate notice to B.

‘I know not if Bath be my nearest way, so let me have a letter at Nicoll’s in case I am not in Town, to the same purport as that to Bath, to inform me what I am to do and when to go.

‘Thank God for me. Peter would not come over with me. My passage has cost me between 7l. and 8l., which is the very devil, so that I shall come home without a shilling, and the thoughts of coming full swing upon poverty again make me miserable. Two ships were lost in the storm.’

Note in memorandum-book.—‘Note of my being thirty-eight, and poetry in my head.’

Corn bounties—A grievance—Reading—Hugh Boyd—Bishop Watson—Howlett on population—Irish Linen Board Experiments—Correspondence.

1779.—Quitting Ireland and coming again to Bradfield occasioned a great pause and break in my life and pursuits, and had I made a proper use of it might have fixed a quiet destiny, so far as a heart not renewed could be happy and content; but I wanted religion, and that want includes all others. I arrived at Bradfield on the first of January, and had then full time to reflect upon what should be the future pursuit of my life, and upon what plan I could devise for that fresh establishment of myself, which should, at the same time, prevent any relapse into those odious dependencies upon uncertainties, which from 1771 to 1778 had been the perpetual torment of my life. While I was hesitating what plan to follow, an emigration to America arose in my mind and much occupied my thoughts. But the advanced period of my mother’s life and her persuasions against any scheme of that sort prevailed, and with some reluctance I relinquished it. I had also to consider, how far it would be prudent to yield to her earnest entreaties to return to farming at Bradfield and live 84with her. To stock a farm of any size would have been to me a matter of difficulty, but, at the same time, to get free from all London engagements, and to secure the tranquillity of a retired life after all the stormy perplexities through which I had passed, was an object full of attraction, and it prevailed. A small farm contiguous to the old family mansion was to be vacant at Michaelmas, and notice was accordingly given to the tenant to quit. Thus was I once more engaged in husbandry, with a prospect of gradually increasing my business according as my capital should enable me. Relative to my farm, it may here be proper once for all to observe, that as the leases of the estate fell vacant I gradually enlarged my occupation, till I had between three and four hundred acres in hand, most amply stocked, and conducted with such an expense of labour as enabled me to support the credit of my husbandry. I remained at Bradfield the whole year, and the only literary pursuit I engaged in was a correspondence with Mr. Wight upon some points in the Scotch system of farming; it was published in his ‘Present State of the Husbandry of Scotland.’^[62] I had reason to believe that his letters were written under the eye of Lord Kames,^[63] the author of the well-known work called, ‘The Gentleman Farmer,’ and much better known book, ‘Elements of Criticism.’

85About this period I was elected a member of the Imperial Œconomical Society of Petersburg.

The first event of the year 1780 was the publication of my Irish Tour in one volume quarto. It was so successful and popular in both kingdoms that it is unnecessary to expatiate upon it; thus much, however, I trust I may say without vanity, that it has stood the test of examination, and received from the best judges the highest commendation. But there is one circumstance which appears never to have been sufficiently understood, or at least the effect properly attributed to this work. Perhaps the most novel, instructing, and decisively useful part of the publication was the attack made upon the bounty paid on the land carriage of corn to Dublin.^[64] I therein proved beyond the possibility of doubt the gross absurdity of the measure. The whole kingdom, however, without exception, considered this bounty as the great palladium of their national agriculture, and in conversation upon that subject with the most able men then living there, I found them so strongly prejudiced in its favour that they were not very willing to hear anything spoken against it. But it appeared to me so manifestly absurd that I exerted my industry to examine the measure on its very foundation. When I was a complete master of the subject and stated the result in conversation to the warmest friends of the measure, I had the satisfaction 86to find that the documents thus produced were utterly unknown to all, and they were fairly beat^[65] out of their prejudices in favour of the measure; at least their argument entirely failed on the occasion. But the event proved that the conviction was real. For in the very first session after the publication of my book the bounty was reduced by half, as appears by Mr. Henry Cavendish’s publication on the revenue and national expenses of Ireland. It was afterwards gradually reduced, and at last gave up entirely. The saving to the nation occasioned palpably by this publication amounted to 40,000l. per annum immediately, and as the expense of the bounty had been constantly increasing, the saving was of course in reality much greater. Long after, in conversation with Lord Loughborough, he told me that he had read that part of my work relative to the bounty, &c., with particular attention, and that he thought the arguments most unanswerable, adding, ‘Ireland ought to have rewarded you for that.’ When the whole was given up it was a saving of 80,000l. a year to the nation. This was much for one individual to effect; and some reward for such services would not have been much for the nation to grant.

I cannot on such an occasion name Ireland without remarking that though the Irish are certainly a generous people, and liberal sometimes almost to excess, yet not a ray of that spirit was by any public body shed on my labours.

After I had left the kingdom and published the tour, I received the following letter:—

In answer to this letter, I returned sincere thanks for the honour of the vote; and assured them that I should be ready either to publish any part of the work 88separately, or to make an abridgment of the whole, reduced in such a manner as to be diffused at a small expense over all the kingdom. In a few posts I received, under the Dublin post-mark, an envelope, enclosing an anonymous essay, cut out of a newspaper, which referred to the transactions of the Society relative to me, and condemning pretty heavily my whole publication; and in this unhandsome manner the business ended.

In a Society which disposed of 10,000l. a year of public money, granted by Parliament chiefly with a view, as the Act expresses, to encourage agriculture, but which patronised manufacturers far more, there will necessarily be an agricultural party and a manufacturing one. According as one or the other happens to prevail, such contradictions will arise. All that is to be said of my case now is, that it was not so bad as that of poor Whyman Baker, who settled in Ireland as their experimenter in agriculture—lived there in poverty ten or twelve years—and broke his heart on account of the treatment which he met with. But while their Societies acted thus, the Parliament of the kingdom paid my book a much greater compliment than any Society could do; for they passed more than one Act almost directly, to alter and vary the police of corn, which I had proved was vicious, but which till then had been universally esteemed as the chief pillar of their national prosperity, and I had thus the satisfaction to see the Legislature of the kingdom improving the policy of it from the known and confessed suggestions of a work that, in other respects, had proved to the author a mere barren blank. I have, however, since 89heard from many most respectable gentlemen of that nation, as well as from the correspondence of others, that the book is even now esteemed of some value to Ireland, and that the agriculture of the kingdom has been advanced in consequence. But it is time to dismiss a subject upon which I have dilated too much, and spoken perhaps with an unguarded vanity and self-love which would ill become me.

I was the chief part of this year at Bradfield, but I had bought at London a pair of roan mares for drawing a post-chaise, and having the small farm in hand, I made myself by practice no bad ploughman, and could finish the stetches^[66] neatly, and execute everything except the rivalling the Suffolk ploughman in drawing straight furrows to a mark set for that purpose; yet I overcame this difficulty in a manner that would have been commended in any other county.

The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce voted me their Honorary Medal for some experiments I had communicated to them on the culture of potatoes.

According to custom, part of my time was occupied in reading, and among other works was highly entertained with Gray’s letters, and particularly with the following passage, which displays so much knowledge of the human mind, and, at the same time, much sterling sense: ‘To find oneself business I am persuaded is the great art of life, and I am never so angry as when I hear my acquaintance wishing they had been bred to 90some poking profession, or employed in some office of drudgery, as if it were pleasanter to be at the command of other people than at one’s own, and as if they could not go unless they were wound up. Yet I know and feel what they mean by this complaint; it proves that some spirit, something of genius (more than common) is required to teach a man how to employ himself—I say a man, for women, commonly speaking, never feel this distemper, they have always something to do. Time hangs not on their hands (unless they be fine ladies), a variety of small inventions and occupations fill up the void, and their eyes are never open in vain’ (vol. ii.)

Thank heaven, I have so much of the woman in me as to possess this faculty of employing myself. The day is never too long, for I think time spent in reading is always well employed, unless a man reads like an idiot, that is, equally removed from instruction and entertainment. Now the general occupation of my life—agriculture—has the happy circumstance of giving much employment, and with it exercise, at the same time that it naturally leads into a course of reading, to which it gives the air and turn of a study, and consequently renders it more interesting, an advantage I shall be solicitous to preserve, by persisting, at all events, to be much interested in farming, even though I should not continue an actual farmer. Gray felt the advantage of country pursuits. ‘Happy they that can create a rose tree or erect a honeysuckle, that can watch the brood of a hen, or see a fleet of their own ducklings launch into the water; it is with a sentiment of envy I 91speak it, who never shall have even a thatched roof of my own, nor gather a strawberry but in Covent Garden.’

I read also Roberts’ ‘Map of Commerce,’^[67] and find the following extract about the spot where should be the ruin of Troy: ‘Anno Domini, 1620.—I hardly saw the relics of this mighty fabric (Troy), though I traced it for many miles, and gave ear to all the ridiculous fables of those poor Grecians that inhabit thereabouts in many villages within the compass of her ancient walls, from Mount Ida to the River Scamander, now only a brook not two feet deep, so that what Ovid said of old I found by experience verified, “jam seges est ubi Troja fuit.”’ There is a melancholy which attends such reflections that with me makes a deep impression; the idea that what was once the seat of power, arts, literature and elegance is now in the most miserable situation which Turkish oppression and Mahometan superstition can inflict, that not a trace of a once mighty city is now to be found, is depressing to the human mind. In an equal series of time what will become of the cities which are now the pride of Europe? what obscure farmer of futurity shall plough the ground whereon that House of Common stands in which a Hampden, a Bolingbroke, a Pitt, and a Mansfield have delighted the most celebrated assembly now in the world?^[68]

My visit to London was, part of it, very agreeable, 92my whole intercourse with Arbuthnot entirely so. At Dr. Burney’s, while it lasted, the same; the opera, parties, the Royal Society, with some of the attendance on Parliament, add to this being in the world and on the spot for whatever happened, were all so many opportunities for pleasure and amusement, which, however, I did not make the most of. Against these I must now rank ease in my circumstances. Let it fly, and the change has been a bad one, indeed. But I think I have resolution enough to take special care of the greatest of all man’s chances. I do not remember when my acquaintance with Mr. Hugh Boyd^[69] began, but I was acquainted with him in London, met him in many companies in Dublin, and travelled with him from thence to London. It has been supposed that he was the author of ‘Junius,’ and I must give it as my opinion that there was much probability in the supposition. I have been many times at his house, at breakfasts, morning calls and dinners, and never without seeing the Public Advertiser and remarking that they were blanks, that is to say, without being stamped. All writers in newspapers are allowed a copy gratis, and these are never stamped. His company was so much sought after in Dublin that I was scarcely at a great dinner without his being present. A very striking circumstance in his character was a memory in some points beyond example; he would multiply nine figures by eight entirely in his head, and would give the result 93with the most perfect accuracy. When it is considered that such an operation demands the recollection not merely of the figures, but of their position in order for the final addition, it must be admitted to be a stupendous one. He was on all occasions and in every circumstance a most pleasing, agreeable companion. His wife was a woman of very good understanding, and appeared to be sensible of her husband’s extraordinary talents. One morning at breakfast Mr. Burke’s son came in, and as his father had made a very celebrated speech the day before in the House of Commons which he intended to publish, but had, in the conclusion, departed from his notes in a very fine strain of eloquence, knowing the great memory of Boyd, he sent his son to request some hints for that conclusion. We set to work to recollect as much as possible his own words, and furnished young Burke much to his satisfaction. Mr. Boyd’s letters, of which I have preserved several, are written in a most pleasing, lively style.

I continued farming at Bradfield, and also reading and writing with much attention, as about this time I had formed the intention of delivering lectures on agriculture, and had prepared several. The original hint came from Mr. Wedderburn,^[70] who persuaded me to persevere in this plan; but the lectures never took place. I was highly honoured by the commendation and partiality of a friend, Dr. Watson,^[71] the celebrated Professor at Cambridge, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, who wrote thus: ‘We owe to the agricultural societies, and to the patriotic exertions of one deserving citizen (Arthur Young, Esq.), the present flourishing condition of our husbandry’ (‘Chemical Mag.’ vol. 4).

I find from an application of my friend, Arbuthnot, that the Bishop of Chester was at this time collecting materials for a work on population by the Rev. Mr. Howlett,^[72] and had desired Arbuthnot to apply to me for assistance. I was myself meditating such a work, 98but complied with the request, and transmitted the collections I had made to the Bishop, who wrote me a most obliging letter.

I had also a sad letter from my friend Arbuthnot on his return from France, but it was written in so melancholy a strain on his own situation and that of his wife and family, that it has often made my heart ache to read it. By Lord Loughborough’s interest he got an appointment in Ireland under the Linen Board,^[73] which carried him to that country, where he 99lived but a few years. I lost in him by far the most agreeable friend I was ever connected with.

At this time I was much engaged in making a variety of experiments in expelling gaseous fluids from specimens of soils, the results of which were afterwards published in ‘The Annals of Agriculture.’ As I met with some difficulties I wrote to Dr. Priestley, stating them, and begging information. He very liberally and politely answered all my enquiries, encouraging me to proceed with my trials, and I received several interesting letters from him.

This year’s memoranda: ‘Wrote “Emigration,” an ode.’

In the autumn of this year I spent a month at Lowestoft, where the sea air and bathing agreed so well with me that I do not recollect in my life ever having spent a month with so continued a flow of high spirits, which received no slight addition by the society of a very handsome and most agreeable girl, whose name I have forgotten.^[74]

In a letter from Dr. Burney (of this year) he rallied 101me with much wit on my culture of the earth instead of the Muses. This friend of mine had a happy talent of rendering his letters lively and agreeable, indeed they were a picture of the man, for I never met with any person who had more decided talents for conversation, eminently seasoned with wit and humour, and these talents were so at command that he could exert them at will. He was remarkable for some sprightly story or witty bon mot just when he quitted a company, which seemed as much as to say, ‘There now, I have given you a dose which you may work upon in my absence.’ His society was greatly sought after by all classes, from the first nobility to the mere homme de lettres. He dressed expensively, always kept his carriage, and yet died worth about 15,000l., leaving a most capital library of curious books. His second wife was my wife’s sister, the handsome widow of a Mr. Allen, of Lynn, who in a short life in commerce made above 40,000l., leaving her a handsome fortune and her two daughters equally provided for.

This year I had a controversy in the ‘Bury St. Edmunds News’ with Capel Lofft, Esq.,^[75] on the proposal which originated with the Earl of Bristol,^[76] for building a 74-gun ship and presenting it to the public. I wrote 102a paper in favour of this scheme, which so pleased Lord Bristol that he complimented me on my eloquent, spirited language, and he caused a numerous edition of it to be printed and given away. Lofft attacked the scheme as unconstitutional, I retorted, and a paper war ensued which lasted for some time, and was afterwards published. The Earl of Shelburne, at that time Minister, wrote several letters to Lord Bristol in which he appeared highly gratified by this plan. Capel Lofft at the conclusion of our controversy wrote to me a very polite letter, expressing his satisfaction that our names should be united in the same publication. These papers were read with much avidity, and established the Bury paper in which they were written, to the great emolument of the proprietor.

Prince Potemkin, the Russian Prime Minister, sent this year to England three young men consigned to the care of M. Smirnove, chaplain to the Russian Embassy, who requested that I would fix them in my immediate vicinity, in order that I might pay some attention to their progress and acquisitions. This I readily did, and took every means to have them well instructed in the English mode of cultivating land.^[77]

1782.—This year Mrs. Cousmaker, sister to my mother, died in her house at Bradfield. She was a 103maiden lady who never would marry, though she had several advantageous offers. She left me her house and two farms, and a long annuity in the funds of 150l. a year, which expired about fifteen years afterwards. She had 300l. per annum of three annuities, the whole of which had once been left to me, but being much offended with my wife she gave half of it to another person. She also left me her carriage and horses. She was a very religious character; the bequest in her will by which she left the farms to me was not expressed exactly according to her mind, and she therefore altered it with her own hand after executing the will. This vitiated the legacy, on consulting Lord Loughborough, and he had doubts upon the question; but upon taking the opinion of several great lawyers, they declared the legacy null, and that the estates lapsed to the heir of law. This was John Cousmaker, Esq., of Hackney, who very generously declared that he would not take advantage of the error, and desired that Joshua Sharpe, a celebrated solicitor, might draw up a deed, by which he might make good the intention, which was accordingly done. Such an instance of uncommon liberality deserves to be recorded for the credit of mankind.

This year the Episcopal Earl of Bristol lived at Ickworth both summer and winter, and having very early called upon me after coming to the title and estate, a great intimacy took place between us; and Lord B. desired me to dine with him every Thursday, which I did through the whole year. Mr. Symonds, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, Sir John 104Cullum,^[78] author of the ‘History of Hawstead,’ a very learned antiquary, and the Rev. George Ashby, Rector of Barrow,^[79] another antiquary, and a man of universal knowledge, who for many years wrote a multitude of papers in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ being constantly of the party. It was a trait in this nobleman’s character, which deserved something more than admiration, to select men distinguished for knowledge and ability as his companions.

Lord Bristol was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with. He was a perfect original—dressed in classical adorning; he had lived much abroad, spoke all modern languages fluently, and had an uncommon vein of pleasantry and wit, which he greatly exerted, and without reserve, when in the company of a few select friends. When abroad, and for many years afterwards, he lived in a manner that was not very episcopal. He had been so long absent from Ireland that the Primate wrote him three letters of remonstrance, and the answer he sent him was to do up and send in three blue peas in a blue bladder. The old proverb symptomatic of contempt, ‘Oh! that is but three blue peas,’ &c., is well known. The Bishop removing, he could not be forced back, and remained where he was. In my life I never passed more agreeable days than these weekly dinners at Ickworth. The conversation was equally instructive and agreeable. This eccentric man built in Ireland a large and very 105expensive round house, on a plan as singular as himself; and, what was more extraordinary, a repetition of it at Ickworth. The shell of the body was finished and covered in; the wings scarcely begun, and nothing done towards completing the centre. Above 40,000l. was expended, and it would require much more than forty more to finish it on the original plan, after which it would be nearly uninhabitable. Lady Bristol used to call it a stupendous monument of folly; but the most extraordinary circumstance in relation to it was, that he began it while he disliked the spot, from the wetness of the soil, and would often tell me that he should never be such a fool as to build in so wet a situation. It was then generally imagined that as he must inherit Rushbrooke he would wait till that period, and if he built at all, would do it there. It was begun and carried on till the time of his death without his ever having seen it; and he often declared in letters that he never would set his foot in England till it was finished and furnished with all the vertu that he had collected in Italy. He never did set his foot in England again, for the shell of this fantastic building, and that of its still more extraordinary possessor, were finished at the same time, and my Lord left the whole, as if by design, a burthen to his son and successor, with whom he had been on the worst terms, and from whom he gave away by will the very furniture of the old habitable house at Ickworth. At the Thursday dinners I, of course, met all who were visitors to the family, among whom Lord B.’s uncle, General Hervey, was sometimes present. This was another uncommon character in 106some respects, but had not half the originality of his brother. He, too, was a most determined infidel, but had so far an expectation, not only of a future state, but also a kind of instinctive belief of the possibility of rewards and punishments, that acting happily for others, poor man, if not for himself, this half-faced belief made him one of the most charitable men living. His morning rides were generally amongst the poor of the neighbouring parishes, amongst whom he distributed clothing, food, and bedding, with money to take them out of difficulties, in a spirit of liberality rarely equalled, and gave away during a long course of years more in charity than thousands who had ten times his fortune. This instance may excite a reflection upon the weakness of judging a man’s religion only by his works; for surely it would be a strange absurdity to take the measure of piety in the heart by any circumstance of the conduct which would be emulated or surpassed by an infidel. But what is charity when the right motive is wanting?

In my library^[80] is a complete edition of Rousseau’s works, given me by the Earl of Bristol.

About this time my friend, the Rev. Mr. Valpy,^[81] who had for some time been Usher at the Grammar School of Bury St. Edmunds, was elected master of that at Reading, and a correspondence commenced which lasted many years. He was a most learned, ingenious and agreeable man, in so much that I greatly regretted 107his departure, feeling most sensibly the loss of his society. I have been occasionally connected with him since, and shall always hold him in great estimation for his learning, his talents, and sincerity of friendship. My son was under his tuition for some years. In the following letter my brother describes the state of this nation, which he thinks miserably bad:—

Birth of Bobbin—Ice baths—‘The Annals of Agriculture’—A group of friends—Lazowski—First glimpse of France—Death of my mother—The Bishop of Derry—Fishing parties—Rainham.

On May 5 of this year my dear Bobbin was born.^[83] I passed the year at Bradfield, and was much in the society of many neighbouring gentlemen. At this time I was a desperate bather, going into the water every morning at four o’clock each winter, and with or without the obstruction of a thick coat of ice, having often to break it before I could bathe. All my friends much condemned the practice, and assured me that I should kill myself, but it became so habitual that their prophecies were vain. As soon as I was out of bed I continued my favourite practice, walking about two hundred yards to a bath I had constructed, and plunging in, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather.

I had this year a severe fever, which occasioned several of my friends, with all the acrimony that a departure from the usual modes of life occasions, 111strongly to dissuade me from persisting in my scheme. I myself was firmly persuaded that it was not, as they declared, the cause of my illness, and therefore when I was perfectly recovered resumed the practice, which I continued for many years; and I once at Petworth, at Lord Egremont’s, went into the bath at four in the morning, when the thermometer was below zero. Upon coming out, walked into the shrubbery, and rolled myself in the snow as an experiment to see the effect on my body; it had none, except that of increasing strength and activity, and was not at all disagreeable.

In January commenced one of the greatest speculations in my life—the publication of ‘The Annals of Agriculture.’ I had long meditated such a work, and corresponded upon it with Mr. Whyman Baker, of Ireland, who had promised communications. The plan which first suggested itself was peculiar, and to the exclusion of all private profit—with a constant publication of the printing and publishing accounts—but the booksellers applied to, rejected the idea, and the work appeared monthly, with very indifferent success, for about a twelvemonth. The correspondence being highly respectable, and no papers inserted without the name and place of abode of the writer, it rose gradually to the support of itself, and after a time enabled me to insert a great number of plates. It would have proved a very profitable publication but for the many numbers which were obliged to be reprinted. Printing only 500 afterwards occasioned reprinting another 500, still a third 500. This created so large an expense that it swallowed up everything that wore the resemblance 112of profit, and many years afterwards I continued reprinting various numbers for the sole object of completing sets; this formed a back current; which carried away what would have been profit. It may be added that many of those papers written by myself, forming perhaps a third or fourth of the whole work, may be reckoned among my most valuable productions, and have received the sanction of approbation, by being translated into several foreign languages. It is an anecdote which cannot be generally known, that two very able letters, which came under the name of Robinson, the King’s shepherd at Windsor, were really the production of his Majesty’s own pen, describing what he had long been intimately acquainted with, the husbandry of Mr. Ducket. The King took in two sets of the work, one of which he regularly sent to that farmer; and in the interview which I had with his Majesty upon the terrace of Windsor, the first word the King said to me was: ‘Mr. Y., I consider myself as more obliged to you than to any other man in my dominions,’ and the Queen told me that they never travelled without my ‘Annals’ in the carriage. Lord Fife informed me that he himself always had the ‘Annals’ sent him the moment they were published, but still he always found that the King was beforehand with him, for upon the first of the month, while the number was unopened upon his table, riding out and meeting his Majesty, he at once spoke to him on a paper of his own (Lord Fife’s) in that number, showing that he had read the whole before it had met the eye of the author.

113Among the letters I received this year the following may be particularly noted:—

This year Arthur Young, an American prisoner, wrote to me asking charity; it deserves to be mentioned that in a book called ‘England’s Black Tribunal’^[86] there is a list of emigrants to America in the seventeenth century, at the head of whom stands the name of Arthur 115Young. The following letters are from James Barry,^[87] the celebrated painter. This was a very singular character. I sat to him for the portrait which he inserted in his famous painting for the decoration of the Society’s room.^[88] I met him often at Dr. Burney’s, and always found him to abound with original observations, which marked a character peculiarly his own. He always seemed to me to be proud of his poverty.

119At this period commenced a most agreeable acquaintance with a French gentleman who came to Bury, and I must dilate a little on the origin of his journey. The Duke of Liancourt^[90] was Colonel of a French regiment, the quarters of which were at Pont à Mousson, in Lorraine, to which he went every year, according to the regulations of the French army. At that place he accidentally met Monsieur de Lazowski,^[91] son of a Pole, who came to Lorraine with King Stanislas. The Duke was so struck with his manner and conversation that he resolved to cultivate his acquaintance. About that time he was in want of a tutor for his two sons—not for the common purposes of education, but to travel with them. He accordingly engaged Lazowski to make the tour of France with these lads, the Count de la Rochefoucault and the Count Alexander de la Rochefoucault. The Duke thought it an important part of education to become well acquainted with their own country. During two years they travelled over the greatest part of the 120kingdom on horseback. The Duke was so well pleased with the conduct of Lazowski on this journey that, having determined to send his sons to England in order to acquire the language of that country, and, generally, in compliance with the Anglomania which then reigned in France, he continued Lazowski in his situation and sent them all three to England. Among other objects in France, Lazowski had given some attention to agriculture, particularly in its connection with political economy. On his arrival in London he made enquiry who could most probably give him information relative to agriculture, manufactures, commerce and other national objects. Among others I was named to him by some person who was so partial in his representations that he at once determined to fix at Bury for a short time, which he understood was the nearest town to my country residence. He and the two young men went to the Angel Inn, from thence hired convenient apartments, and enquired where I resided. At that time I was absent, and Mr. Symonds, understanding that two young men of fashion from France were at Bury, introduced himself and showed them various civilities, and when I returned brought them over to Bradfield. From that time a friendship between me and Lazowski commenced, and lasted till the death of the latter. He was about forty years of age, and in every respect a most agreeable companion. He soon made rapid progress in the English language, which he spoke not only with fluency, but often with extreme wittiness. There was not in his mind any strong predominant cast; but 121the grace and facility of his manner, with suavity of temper, made him a great favourite, and being also highly elegant and refined, he often produced impressions which were not easily effaced. From his general conversation in mixed society it was not readily concluded that he could or would attend with great industry and perseverance to objects of importance. But this would have been erroneous, for he exerted the greatest industry in making himself a master of all those circumstances which mark the basis of national prosperity, and he formed in his own mind a very correct comparison of the resources both of Britain and France. He often expressed to me much surprise at what he thought on this subject in England, and declared that the ignorance of the French relative to their great rival was most profound. The Duke of Liancourt was highly gratified by his correspondence, and after he had resided some time, first at Bury and afterwards with Mr. Symonds, he was directed to take the young men a tour through England and Scotland, which he did. The Duke himself came over on a visit to Symonds while his sons and their tutor were in the house. Soon after his arrival in England, hearing that there were such carriages at Bury as were called buggies, and desiring to make use of all sorts, he ordered one to be hired to convey him and Lazowski to Bradfield. On its coming to the door, Lazowski perceiving that, though it was drawn by one horse only, it ran upon the quarter,^[92] he would have persuaded 122the Duke not to attempt driving, as it would be 20 to 1 that he would overthrow it; but the Duke, full of presumption, held such prudential advice in contempt, and, whipping away, had not gone half a mile in a cross road before he overturned the carriage, and in the fall dislocated his shoulder. The Duke was conveyed to Symonds. Lazowski instantly rode off to inform me of the accident, and the Duke expressed no more desire to drive carriages he had never seen. Lazowski’s connection with the Duke was not put an end to when the education of his sons was finished; he was so useful that he continued his salary and an apartment in the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld, Paris, and I often admired the independent spirit with which he lived in the family. A dinner did not often pass without an argument between him and the Duke, which was carried on with a great deal of heat on both sides. On such occasions Lazowski never gave up the shadow of an opinion, and being gifted with more natural fluency than the Duke, he had usually the better of the argument. This was equally to the credit of both. His employment was chiefly drawing up memorials upon political subjects for the Duke’s information, who was a vain man, and, without doubt, figured in conversation by this subsidiary assistance. His vanity appeared in one circumstance in which he attempted much more than he could perform. While he was in the bath, or dressing by his valet de chambre, he had three secretaries, to whom he pretended to dictate at the same time. One of them told Lazowski that it was scarcely credible how they were fatigued 123by his incessant blunders. Yet in France, perhaps, this very attempt gave a sort of reputation. It was suspected that he merely attempted this in imitation of Cæsar, who did the same thing, but in a very different manner, it is presumed, from the D. de Liancourt. With a view similar to that of retaining Lazowski, he gave an apartment to Jarré, an officer who had long been in the Russian service, and afterwards became famous for burning the suburbs of Courtray. He was well known in England as General Jarré, and placed at the head of the Military Asylum at Wycombe. While I was in France, M. Jarré published an octavo volume under the title of ‘Crédit National,’ a whimsical work, in which the arguments were very ill supported. Lazowski always showed me great friendliness, and I returned it with great constancy and truth. Among all the men I met with in France, attached to the higher classes or constituting them, all were infidels, and poor Lazowski of the number. He never lost himself so completely as when he entered into an argument upon the truth of Christianity with the Bishop of Llandaff, for, though civilly done, the Bishop ground him to powder. The latter, of course, thought him nothing but a frothy Frenchman, like most of his countrymen, with Voltaire in his head and the devil in his heart, all of whom would have talked the same language had they had the same opportunity. Before Lazowski and his pupils had learnt English, Symonds took them to Cambridge, and introduced them to the Bishop, who, understanding that the young men were of high rank in France, and knowing that 124he spoke French himself with difficulty, put on his canonicals to receive his foreign guests, and, entering the room with a most stately air, addressed them all in Latin, hinting to Symonds the propriety, as Latin was the language of that learned University, and, therefore, in using it he was classically right. The Frenchmen, of course, replied with plenty of bows and grimaces to every learned sentence rolled out in most majestic tone from the Bishop’s mouth, but giving no other answer. The Bishop was at last compelled to address them in his broken French: ‘Latin, gentlemen, is our language here, but perhaps you had rather I should speak in bad French than not use that language at all!’ and then relaxing his episcopal dignity, he conversed with them at ease and quieted their ruffled spirits.

1784.—This year I took a journey with my son for farming intelligence into Essex and Kent, &c., and, being at Dover, we went over to Calais just to enable us to say that we had been in France. But I had another motive, which was to see M. Mouron, and the capital improvements that gentleman had made near Calais. We lived three or four days at Dessein’s celebrated inn. M. Mouron not only showed me his great farm, but explained to me every circumstance of the improvements, which I printed in the ‘Annals.’ Some years before the Empress Catherine had sent over seven or eight young men to learn practical agriculture, two or three of whom were fixed with my friend Arbuthnot, and others in different parts of the Kingdom. They were under the superintendence of the Rev. Mr. Sambosky, 125who wrote to me at Bradfield earnestly requesting that I would go to London and examine all the young men, that he might take or send them to St. Petersburg. This I accordingly did, and examined them very closely, except one, who refused to answer any questions from a conviction of his absolute ignorance. I gave a certificate of the others’ examination, and I asked Sambosky what would become of the obstinate fool who would not answer. He replied that without doubt he would be sent to Siberia for life, but I never heard whether this happened. One of them, by much the ablest, remained in England, and became in time Chaplain to the Russian Embassy, in which situation he is at the present time, and held in general esteem. The intended establishment of an Imperial farm never took place, and after at least an expenditure of 10,000l., the men on their arrival were turned loose, some to starve, some driven into the army, and others retained by Russian noblemen. In this wretched and ridiculous manner did the whole scheme end, which, under a proper arrangement, might have been attended with very important effects. Prince Potemkin, one of the first noblemen in the Russian Empire, must have been animated with truly liberal and enlarged ideas, or he would not now have sent three young men to learn practical agriculture. It gave me the greatest pleasure to be able to promote their enquiries during a part of their residence here.

1785.—This year I wrote a note in the ‘Annals’ relative to a great work I had long been engaged in, which it may not be here amiss to insert, viz.: to collect, 126under regular heads, all the well-ascertained facts that are scattered through books of agriculture, and, inter alia, in other works, with those to be deduced from the common practice of various countries; to interweave experiments made purposely to ascertain the doubtful points; and to combine the whole into regular elements of the Science is the great desideratum at present. It is a work more proper for an Academy on a Royal foundation than for any individual. But as no such Academy is to be looked for, and as all private societies pay their attention to desultory objects, as often to those already ascertained as to points in which we want information the most, I undertook the work myself more than ten years ago.^[93]

I had this year the misfortune to lose my mother, to whom I was most tenderly attached, and with the greatest reason, as her kindness and affection for me had never failed during the course of her whole life. She had been educated in the most religious manner by her father, Mr. de Cousmaker, of whom mention has already been made as a character eminently pious, but it was not till the loss of my sister, Mrs. Tomlinson, that deep affliction recalled in her heart those sentiments of religion which had been 127so assiduously cultivated in her youth. She was always extremely fond of me, and ever eager to do what could contribute to my satisfaction, both as to worldly views, but especially as to my eternal interests.

The tranquil bosom of my good mother’s hermitage—my native Bradfield—once more opened its arms to receive us, little more than to come to close the eye and receive the last signs of that beloved parent. Blessed spirit!—may my hitherto restless days finish as thine did, who didst meet death with the tranquillity of a healthy life, and mightst have said with as much justice as an Addison, ‘See with what peace a Christian can die.’

Upon her death this patch of landed property^[94] devolved to me by a previous agreement with my elder brother, and by my mother’s will, written at his desire with his own hand. But that agreement before it terminated cost me a mortgage of 1,200l. The transaction does my brother’s memory too much honour not to mention it. He was entitled to 2,000l., but knowing the smallness of the property, and humanely considering that I had a family unprovided for, that he had an ample income and no family at all, he generously demanded and took no more than 1,200l. Whether such things happen among relations or strangers, they should be mentioned for the credit of the human heart.

My correspondence this year was, upon the whole, interesting, as a few of the letters will show. From the 128Earl of Bristol, a panegyric on agriculture; another from the same, an animated defence of the Presbyterians.

132My brother, the Rev. Dr. Young, Fellow of Eton College, in this letter informs me that the King reads my ‘Annals’ and is much pleased with them, and highly approves of my arguments to show that we are far enough from being in a ruined state.

From Dr. Valpy, who corrected a poem I sent him, and, to my surprise, approves of my poetry:—

I find by memoranda that I was busied in the imagination of new fish-ponds,^[99] taking lively interest in and examining how much of the low meadow at Bradfield could be laid under water. What led me to this folly is not easy to conceive, because I could have afforded to attempt the making of an ocean as much as of a pond; but how often is the register of a life the register of human folly?

I was (this year) elected an honorary member of the Royal Society of Agriculture of Paris.^[100] About this time I went on a farming journey to the Bakewells,^[101] in Leicestershire; it was a very instructive journey and 136in which I gained a great deal of valuable information. I also spent several days about this time with Lord Townshend^[102] at Rainham and his uncommonly agreeable young wife, equally elegant and beautiful. During my visit I had an ample opportunity of admiring the noble picture of Belisarius by Salvator Rosa, a performance which can never be too highly commended. With the agreeableness of this noble family, and especially of Lady Townshend, I rendered my visit extremely pleasing.

The noble Lord, to whose liberal attention I owe much information, came to his estate in so high a degree of cultivation, owing to the unrivalled exertions of his grandfather, that little was left for him to perform; a life of great activity and service, had the situation of his property been different, would not have allowed a minute’s attention. These notes will, however, show that Lord Townshend has not been idle at Rainham.

On my arrival there I was anxious to view that part of the estate chiefly near the house, which was improved by a man who quitted all the power and lustre of a Court for the amusements of agriculture.

Charles, Lord Viscount Townshend, who was Ambassador Extraordinary to the States General in 1709, a Lord of the Regency on the death of Queen Anne, 137Knight of the Garter, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, twice Secretary of State, and Lord President of the Council, resigned the seals in May 1730, and, as he died in 1738, it is probable that this period of eight years was that of his improvements round Rainham.

The Irish propositions^[103] which were at this time under the consideration of Government meeting with many unforeseen difficulties, I had a letter from Mr. Rose requesting information relative to the comparative circumstances of the two kingdoms, and Mr. Pitt thought the information so much to the purpose that he desired Mr. Rose to write to me requesting my attendance in town. I accordingly went, and gave Mr. Pitt the information he wished, at the same time answering an abundance of collateral enquiries, for which I received a formal letter of thanks. My correspondence with Mr. Rose recurred several times after these interviews. In his third letter he requested to be informed of the amount of a labourer’s consumption of taxed commodities, in order to ascertain what excises and other taxes such consumption supports. ‘I conceive,’ he wrote, ‘that the articles consumed by that description of people are leather, candles, soap, beer, probably some spirits, and perhaps a small quantity of starch. I wish also very much to know what their chief diet is, and the price of the articles in the different parts of the country.’^[104]

Death of my brother—Anecdotes of his character—Dr. Burney on farming—Greenwich versus Eton—Blenheim—Correspondence with Dr. Priestley—County toasts—French projects—First French journey.

This year my brother died. He was in the habit of hunting with the King, and having heard of a very fine hunter to be sold in Herefordshire, he sent his servant to purchase him. It was the end of the season, but the King appointing one day more for the sport, Dr. Young determined to try his new horse, and he went in company with another gentleman to the field. His friend observed to him that his horse tripped in an odd manner, to which Dr. Y. replied: ‘It is the last day of hunting, and I shall see how he performs.’ ‘Take care,’ said the other, ‘that it is not the last day of your life.’ He persisted in the trial, and was for a time much pleased with his horse in several leaps; in taking another it struck its own legs against an obstruction, threw his rider, whose neck was instantly broken. He was taken up dead and carried home. Thus died my nearest relative, who was a man of very peculiar talents and of most singular originality 139of character. He had a great deal of eccentric wit, and was extremely beloved by many intimate friends, amongst whom were several of the Townshends, Cornwallises, and the Duke of Grafton, with whom he was on the most intimate terms, and was a great favourite of the Duchess. Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury, valued him so much for his rectitude of conduct in this that he determined to promote him to the best preferment that should fall in his gift, and I have several letters from him repeating this intention. Thus ended a life that promised so many advantages, for he was high in favour with the King, who was pleased not only frequently to converse with him, but to ask his opinion respecting many sermons which were at that time published. Thus high in expectation of further promotion, to lose his life in so unexpected and sudden a manner was indeed singularly awful and unfortunate. It was a dreadful blow also to all my son’s hopes, for as he was educating at Eton for the Church, my brother, who had his turn as Fellow of Eton and Prebendary of Worcester in about seventy pieces of preferment, and had passed all by that came to give away, stood high in the lists purposely with a view of promoting Arthur.^[105] There was in Dr. Young a steady rectitude of principle, an absolute abhorrence of every mean and unworthy action, great natural parts, and as he had been Captain (I think), or very near it, of Eton School, he went to King’s at Cambridge a capital scholar.

The following anecdote relative to my brother I 140copy from a letter to my wife, written by my old friend Professor Symonds:—

The next anecdote was considered at the time by all who heard it to redound to the credit of my brother. In one of his visits to Euston he arrived unexpectedly and late in the afternoon, and immediately went to the room always appropriated to him to dress for dinner, and thence proceeded directly into the dining-room, when, to his astonishment, he perceived sitting at the head of the table the notorious Nancy Parsons instead of the Duchess. He instantly drew back, at the same moment extending his arms to mark his astonishment. The Duke went up to him with a conciliatory air, took his arm and said: ‘Come, come, Jack, these things are always done in a hurry without consideration. I had no time to make alterations or inform you. I will explain afterwards.’ But he only answered with a shake of his head, and, shrugging up his huge shoulders, retired, mounted his horse, and reached Bradfield the same night, a distance of nearly fifteen miles.

It should be remembered at this time the Duke was Prime Minister and the Doctor looking up to him for further preferment. By this he lost a bishopric.

142I was at Bradfield, and received an express^[106] from Dr. Roberts, Provost of Eton, to inform me of the accident, which called me thither at once. I resided there some time on account of my brother’s affairs, dining every day with the Provost and Fellows. On the same account I was obliged to go to Worcester, where he was a Prebendary and Rector of St. John’s in that city. Dr. Y. died without a will, as he had often told me he would do. When all his affairs were settled I returned to Bradfield. So sudden and dreadful an accident affected me deeply; there is something in such deaths that strikes every feeling of the soul. In the midst of the rapid movements of that animated amusement, in one moment to be hurried into another world without one thought of preparation has something tremendously formidable in it; yet every one is liable to deaths equally sudden, and the suggestion ought to be universal: ‘Prepare to meet thy God.’ The misery is that thousands sitting in their chairs and with ample time for preparation are apt to think of any subject rather than this most important of all.

Two honours were this year added to my name, by being elected into the Patriotic Society of Milan and that of the Geographical Society of Florence. I had 144also a visit from a Polish nobleman, Count Kalaskowski, who spent some time with me at Bradfield. The letters I received this year were numerous, and many of them very interesting. From the number I have selected the following:—

From Dr. Burney, on reading my ‘Annals’ and a character of Handel. This was after he had been at Bradfield.

From John Symonds, Esq., on the examination of the boys at Greenwich School for speaking Latin. 147Gold medal &c. given to master and boys. [A curious letter.]

In a Westerly Tour I made this year, amongst numerous other places I visited Blenheim, and made the following memorandum:—

It appears this year^[109] that I was engaged in a pursuit entirely new to me, that of making many new and pneumatic experiments on expelling gas from soils, manures, and various other substances, in order to 150ascertain whether there was any connection between the quantity and species of such gas (from Geist, German for ghost, spirit. Authority, B. of Llandaff, see Newman’s ‘Trans. of Boerhave’s Chemistry’) and the fertility of the soils from which my specimens were selected. It seems that I prosecuted this enquiry with diligence; and as it was my commencement in chemistry, I corresponded upon the subject with Dr. Priestley, and went to Cambridge for the conversation of Mr. Milner, then Professor of Chemistry in that University. The result of my experiments was very remarkable, for I decided, after a very careful deduction from the result of all my trials, that there existed a very intimate, and almost unbroken, connection between the fertility of land and the gas to be expelled from it. This was an entirely new discovery belonging to me only, and it has been quoted by many celebrated chemists in a manner which showed that they considered me as the origin of it. I sent a detail of my trials to the Royal Society, through the hands of Mr. Magellan,^[110] as my paper contained some eudiometrical experiments made with the eudiometer invented by that philosopher. Mentioning to a friend what I had done, ‘You have been very foolish,’ observed the friend, ‘for depend upon it your paper will never get into the “Philosophical Transactions.”’ Expressing my surprise, I demanded the reason. ‘Why, know you not,’ he replied, ‘that there is a most inveterate hostility between Sir J. Banks and Magellan, 151from a violent quarrel, and Sir J. is not a man to permit anything to be printed that comes through hands offensive to him, especially as the paper is to the credit of Magellan’s instrument?’ The event proved the truth of this prediction, but this did not prevent my labours being duly appreciated by those who were the most competent judges. In the pursuit of these trials I gradually established and furnished a laboratory, sufficient for my own enquiries, at about 150l. expense.

154At Chadacre, six miles from Bury, resided John Plampin, Esq.^[112] who had three daughters, all, at this time, unmarried and at home. I was intimately acquainted with them. Two of these ladies were much distinguished by their beauty, and reigned as toasts throughout the county: Sophia married afterwards to the Rev. Mr. Macklin, and Betsy married in 1794 to Orbell Ray Oakes, Esq. of Bury. I introduced my friend Lazowski to these ladies, and he was much at Chadacre, admiring not a little the youngest of them. They persuaded their father to give a ball, at which the Duke of Liancourt, his two sons, Lazowski and myself were present, and the evening passed with uncommon hilarity till the rising sun sent us home. Mr. Symonds afterwards gave a weekly ball when the Frenchmen were with him, and these parties were uncommonly agreeable.

Early in the spring of 1787 I received a letter from a friend at Paris, Mons. Lazowski (who had resided two years at Bury, much to my amusement and satisfaction, with the two sons of the Duke of Liancourt), to inform me that he was going with the Count de la Rochefoucault to the Pyrenees, and proposed my being of the party.^[113]

This was touching a string tremulous to vibrate. I had so long wished for an opportunity to examine France. In the survey of agriculture which I had taken in England and Ireland, of about 7,000 miles, I had calculated, from facts, the rent produce and resources of those Kingdoms, and I had often reflected on the importance of knowing the real situation of France; the effect of Government; the state of the farmers, of the poor—the state and extent of their manufactures with a hundred other enquiries certainly of political importance; yet strange as it may seem not to be found in any French book written from actual observation, all that I was before able to learn having been composed in some great city without travelling beyond the walls. I should accept a very unsatisfactory work upon sheep, written by Mons. Cartier, employed and paid by Government. I had but little time given me to consider of the proposal, but I wrote to learn if they travelled post, because I previously determined in that case not to go. And, further, I requested to know if I were to travel at any other expense than that of myself and horse. The answer was that they travelled with their own horses, 158and did not propose making more than twenty or twenty-five miles a day; that my expense would be merely what I stated, and mostly in a cheap part of the kingdom. This most agreeable plan I instantaneously acceded to, and soon set out for France on horseback. At Dover, being detained, I copy the following note on that expedition:—

‘l.—Had the packet sailed this morn as I expected I should not have scaled, as I never did before, Shakespeare’s Cliff. By the way it is by no means so formidable as I expected from it. I think the look down from its perpendicular position very striking, and when I reflected how much more it must be from the summit, the reflection, perhaps, injured the principal effect (l.). This is a proof that we ought never, when a powerful impression is wished, to advance to the principal point gradually. It should come upon us at once; nor should I have seen Mr. Harris’s drill plough,^[116] which I liked much better from seeing it than from the print. But I principally should have wanted time to run over my accounts, to review the debts and credits of several loose memoranda, and find from the result that I had not acted imprudently or unguardedly in omitting the necessary preparations to such a journey. My dear child, my lovely Bobbin, I left in perfect health, the rest of my family well and provided for in every respect as they themselves had chalked out, the ‘Annals’ lodged in the hands of a man on whose friendship and abilities I could entirely confide. Revolving these circumstances 159in my mind gave me pleasure, so that I could hardly regret in the evening the day which in the morning I had pronounced lost. At night I went into a bye boat^[117] and had a villainous passage of fourteen hours. Nine hours rolling at anchor had so fatigued my mare that I thought it necessary for her to rest one day, but next morning I left Calais.

‘l.—Wait at Desseins three days for a wind, Dover, London, Bradfield, and have more pleasure in giving my little girl a French doll than in viewing Versailles.’^[118]

The journey to France cost me 118l. 15s. 2d. Things bought, 20l. 17s.; books, 8l. 16s. 6d.

This year I had a long visit at Bradfield from M. Bukaty, nephew to the Polish Ambassador, a heavy, dull man with a Tartar countenance. His intention was to learn agriculture, but he made a poor progress. My correspondence this year contained much variety, and I have reperused many of the letters with much pleasure. In the number were the following:—

From Sir J. Sinclair^[119] on clothing for sheep, which he sent and desired me to buy. I did so, and the rest of the flock took them I suppose for beasts of prey, and fled 160in all directions, till the clothed sheep jumping hedges and ditches soon derobed themselves.

From Mr. Symonds, an account of his tour in the West &c., of the King and Queen’s visit to Whitbread’s Brew House; duties to the Crown, 52,000l. per annum for the brewery alone.

The Wool Bill—Sheridan’s speech—Count Berchtold—Experiments—Second French journey—Potato-fed sheep—Cost of housekeeping—Chicory—Burnt in effigy—Correspondence—Third French journey—With Italian agriculturists—Bishop Watson and Mr. Luther—Correspondence—Literary work—Illness—The state of France.

Early in the spring I was deputed by the wool growers of Suffolk to support a petition against the Wool Bill^[121] which at that time made much noise in the agricultural world; and in which I united with Sir Joseph Banks,^[122] who was deputed by the county of Lincoln for the same purpose. I was most strenuous in the cause. By this Bill the growers of wool were laid under most insufferable restraints by its patrons the manufacturers, under the false pretence which had upon so many occasions been listened to by the Legislature, that immense quantities of wool were smuggled to France; on the gross fallacy of which they made good use, in taking those measures which answered their only design, that of sinking the price.

164I applied to many of the leading members of both Houses of Parliament, but to very little effect. Those who deputed me were very desirous that I should see Mr. Fox on the subject; and Sir Peter Burrell, who was also greatly hostile to the Bill, and acted at that time as Lord Great Chamberlain of England at the trial of Mr. Hastings, recommended me to take an opportunity of the managers for the Commons, waiting at that trial to desire to speak with Mr. Fox in the manager’s box; and with this view gave me a pass ticket for the whole trial, by means of which I could be at the bar ready to serve such an opportunity when it offered. These tickets were sold at twenty guineas each; and this afforded me many opportunities of much entertainment. I accordingly saw Mr. Fox, and found him by no means inclined to patronise any opposition to the Bill. All that could be done was to make him a master of certain important facts of which he was ignorant, and which did seem to have some little weight with him. It may here be observed that as I was walking one day in Fleet Street with my pass ticket and a 20l. note in my pocket book, I was hustled unskilfully by a knot of rascals, who picked the book out of my pocket, but I missing it instantly, luckily observed it on the pavement near my foot, and seized on it immediately, and the rascals went off at once. By means of this ticket I was present when Mr. Sheridan made the speech that rendered his eloquence so celebrated.^[123] I was examined at the Bar of the Houses of 165Lords and Commons, and published two pamphlets on the subject of the Wool Bill.

But notwithstanding all the opposition that was made to the measure, after moderating some of the most hostile clauses the Bill passed; but the manufacturers experienced so determined and vigorous an opposition that they would hardly engage again in any similar attack upon the landed interest. In the course of this business I experienced a strange instance of roguery in an Ipswich attorney named Kirby. This man was appointed secretary and receiver of the Suffolk subscriptions for supporting the expense of opposing the Bill. He paid the reckoning twice at the ‘Crown and Anchor’ when a few persons dined there; and after that, under various pretences, when money was to be paid; and on a moderate computation put more than 100l. into his own pocket. I was unwilling to believe it, but upon his death a few years after it was found that he was one of the greatest knaves the devil ever created.

My deputation by the county of Suffolk to represent it, in opposing the Bill at the bar of the two Houses of Parliament, in the same manner as Sir Joseph Banks, a highly eminent character for influence and affluence, was deputed by the county of Lincoln, did me much honour, and shows that a prophet may sometimes be esteemed, even in his own country. The reader who is desirous of becoming acquainted with this 166portion of the history of wool in England may consult my Question of Wool—my speech that might have been spoken—my Reasons against the Bill, and various other papers by myself, inserted in the ‘Annals.’

The opposition certainly would have been successful if Mr. Pitt had not found what so many ministers have experienced before—that the trading interest at large is a hundred times more active than the landed interest; for very few counties exerted themselves on this occasion. Had half of them acted like Suffolk the Bill would have been inevitably lost, and had I not been a resident in Suffolk that county would have slept with the rest. It may not be amiss to observe that a pamphlet was published, entitled a ‘Letter to Arthur Young, Esq., on the Wool Bill, by Thomas Day,^[124] Esq.,’ from which the following is an extract:—

167‘April 22.—I was examined on the Wool Bill in the House of Commons. It was a most hard-fought battle between the manufacturers and the landed interest; the Bill laid heavy shackles on every movement of wool near the sea coast, and was opposed with great resolution, both by Sir Joseph Banks and myself.

‘We opposed it both in the Commons and the Lords, both being examined at the Bar of the two Houses; the manufacturers on this occasion were so hotly opposed that Sir Joseph thought they would be quiet in future. I was of a different opinion, being convinced that they never would omit any opportunity of imposing their shackle on that insensible, torpid, and stupid body “the landlords of Britain.”’

About this time Count Leopold Berchtold^[125] visited me at Bradfield. But part of the time which he spent in Suffolk (I being absent) was at the ‘Angel’ at Bury, where he lived an extraordinary life of retirement and economy. He daily went out, and employed the whole day in writing and reading. Such temperance has scarcely been known. He drank neither wine nor beer, and would dine upon a potato or an egg.

He told the landlord of that inn that he could not live in the manner of other travellers, but that he might charge what he pleased for his apartments. He was a most extraordinary personage. His father had a considerable estate in Bohemia, and one reason for 168the son’s travelling over a great part of the world was the extreme disgust he took at the measures of the Emperor Joseph II., which were oppressive and ruinous to the nobility &c., constantly changing his ill-formed political schemes. He had lived in the principal countries of Europe long enough to become a master of their languages, in every one of which he printed a work which he conceived might be useful to the inhabitants. When at Bradfield he was working hard to learn Arabic, as he proposed passing from England to Morocco, thence to Egypt and Arabia. This journey afterwards he executed, and returned home to Bohemia through the greatest part of the Turkish Empire; and, after escaping a thousand dangers, as he was going to Vienna was murdered by banditti.

He was very tall and graceful in his person, of a handsome, expressive countenance, and as elegant as if he had passed his whole life in a Court. Though invested with the Order of St. Stephano by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold, he never wore it in England, as his father being alive made it necessary for him to live economically. His conversation was intelligent and pleasing, his knowledge almost universal. He travelled much on foot; and once through France or Germany—I forget which—when he was beset by three or four robbers; but he assumed so much firmness in his manner, with so resolute and determined an air, and with so threatening an attitude of defence, that, after a pause, the robbers retired, thinking it best to let him alone. He had a sabre or some other weapon, and said that they might have had the worst of it if 169they had made the attack, as he had before been set on in the same way more than once.

His first business in every country was to study unremittingly till he had perfectly learnt the language, as without this he considered men and women but as cows and sheep. He then applied himself with singular assiduity to understand those branches of human industry or political economy for which the country was most celebrated, and for this purpose applied to those who were most able to satisfy his inquiries. He was introduced to me by Anthony Souga, the Imperial Consul at London, who gave him the highest possible character. When he had registered these inquiries and printed a book in the language, he left the country for some other.

The grand object of Ct. B.’s investigations and inquiries seemed to be not so much the good of the countries he visited, as to possess himself of a great mass of that sort of knowledge which might be most useful in adding to the welfare and happiness of the inhabitants of that estate to which he was born, and which was a very extensive property. He spent some time with me in Suffolk gleaning agricultural information, intending to apply it to the farmers and peasants of his paternal estate and of his own favourite Bohemia, from which he often lamented that he was driven by the folly and tyranny of Joseph II. It was with great concern that I heard of his very unfortunate and untimely death about ten years after leaving England. He was about thirty-six years of age when in Suffolk, was possessed of various and uncommon powers, built 170mentally and bodily on a great scale, talked English like a native, walked like a giant, and was of all the multitude of foreigners who frequented my house the most persevering and the most intelligent.

This year I made some experiments on the distemper in wheat called the smut, which were amongst the most satisfactory and decisive that I ever found, and in which I corrected some errors of Mr. de Tillet,^[126] and proved, too clearly to be doubted, the proximate cause and prevention of that disease.

It is almost intolerable, after experiments so decisive, that so many men, through ignorance of what I had done, should for a long time have been bewildering themselves upon the same subject, and continuing to do so to the present day, publishing, too, the greatest errors. These experiments are inserted in the ‘Annals.’

This year I set out on my second journey to France in the month of July. I made this alone, my cloak-bag behind me; and I did not travel thus an^[127] hundred miles before my mare fell blind. I have heard and read much of the pleasure of travelling; how it may be with posting—avant-couriers preparing apartments and repasts—I know not. Let those who enjoy such comfort pity me, who made 3,700 miles on a blind mare! and brought her (humanity would not allow me to sell her) safe back to Bradfield. I claim but one merit—that of practising in the midst of all this folly the severest economy in travelling.

In the winter Mr. Macro took a seat in my postchaise on a farming tour across Essex and into 171Sussex, where we spent a day or two with Lord Sheffield.

In this tour I learned that General Murray had 4,000 South Down sheep, and that he fed them with potatoes. This was sufficient. To come into the country on the search for sheep and potato intelligence, and not to see such a man, would not be to make a very wise figure when we returned home. But I had not the honour to be known to the General. No matter; 4,000 sheep fed on potatoes were an object before which form must give way. I wrote a card, stating our pursuit, and wishes to have it gratified, desiring leave to view his flock. Those who know the General’s liberality and passion for agriculture will not want to be told what the answer was. We spent five days in his house, and found it the residence of hospitality and good sense.

Mrs. Murray had resided nine years in the island of Majorca, being the daughter of the English consul. She gave me many particulars relating to that island, and, among others, that the climate was by far the finest she had ever experienced. She never was for a single hour either too hot or too cold, nor ever saw a fog; but the people were unpleasant, ignorant and bigoted.

I was always very regular in keeping accounts, but do not often mention them in this detail; I may, however, just observe that I seemed to have been no bad economist, as the total expense of house, garden, stable, servants, and keeping a postchaise with not a little company, cost in four months 97l. 2s. 3d., or at the 172rate of 291l. 6s. 9d. per annum; how it was done I forget. If such an expense be compared with the present times^[128] it will show the enormous difference, arising principally from the desperate increase of taxation, which has crippled so many classes of the kingdom; but I had a large farm in my hands. On being at London, some time after, I went to Esher and spent a day with Mr. Ducket, examining his farm with great attention; he dined with me at the ‘Tun,’ and I had a very interesting conversation with him to a late hour, upon all the points of his husbandry.

In this year I first introduced the cultivation of Cichorium Intybus^[129] at Bradfield, and registered it in the ‘Annals of Agriculture;’ it was at first upon a small scale, but sufficient to convince me of the vast importance of the plant. I brought the seed from Lyons in France, and gradually extended the culture till I had above one hundred acres of it; the utter stupidity of the farming world was never more apparent than in their neglect of this plant, so repeatedly recommended in the ‘Annals.’ The Duke of Bedford kept ten large sheep per acre on a field of it.

The following letters were among others received this year:—

From B. H. Latrobe, Esq., on my being burnt in effigy at Norwich by the manufacturers (in re Wool Bill), a very lively letter.

[The writer requests that some remarks of his own on the book named above may be inserted in the ‘Annals.’]

From Edmund Burke, Esq., on an application I made to him relative to the Wool Bill. [Unfortunately no copy can be found of this letter.]

Sir Joseph Banks gives me joy of being burned in effigy at Norwich (Bury?) on account of my opposition to the Wool Bill:—

1751789.—I had yet work to do in France; the survey of that kingdom was not completed in the journeys of the two preceding years. I did not hesitate therefore, but as soon as business at home would permit me to be absent I set out on my third expedition, June 2, and went to Paris in the diligence. As the carrying specimens of remarkable soils and of manufactures, wool, &c. was so inconvenient, I made this journey in a chaise. Through the kindness of the Duchess d’Estissac (de Rochefoucauld) I was most agreeably received at the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld, and as the States General were assembling I went thither to the Duke’s apartment, where I met many persons of note, such as the Duke of Orleans, the Abbé Sieyès, Rabaut St. Étienne,^[132] &c. and was present at an interesting debate in the National Assembly. I spent some time at Paris, which I quitted on my third journey on June 28. I felt much regret on taking leave of my excellent friend Monsieur Lazowski, whose anxiety for the fate of his country^[133] made me respect his character as much as I had reason to love it for the thousand attentions I was in the daily habit of receiving from him. My kind protectress the Duchess d’Estissac had the goodness to make me promise that I would again return to her hospitable hotel when I had finished the journey.

At Toulon I sold my horse and chaise, as I had been informed that I could not thus travel with safety in Italy. I embarked at Toulon to save one or two stages, 176which gave me an opportunity of viewing the fine harbours of that port. On leaving Nice I went by a vetturino to Turin, and was fortunate in making the acquaintance of some of the gentlemen that accompanied me. At that capital I was introduced to various lovers of the plough, and received much valuable information. From this place I went to Milan, where through the kind attentions of the Abate^[134] Amorette, a true lover of agriculture and a friend of its professors, I was introduced to a variety of persons who afforded me much intelligence and accompanied me to the seat of the Count di Castiglioni, sixteen miles north of the city, with whom I passed sufficient time to give me an opportunity of remarking the country life of an Italian nobleman of high consideration.

From Milan I went to Lodi through one of the finest scenes of irrigation in the world. At the latter place I assisted in the whole operation of making a Lodesan, called Parmesan cheese in England, and thereby learnt a few circumstances in that manufacture, which I afterwards applied with success in making cheese in Suffolk. At Lodi I attended the opera, where the Archduke and Archduchess with the most splendid company were present, and it gave me particular pleasure to find such a house so filled in a little town quite dependent on cows, butter and cheese.

At Bergamo I was electrified by the fine eyes of an Italian fair, and just as I was making a nearer approach, impeded in it by the sudden appearance of her husband.

At Verona I viewed its celebrated amphitheatre 177and gained some agricultural intelligence, then on to Vicenza and Padua, where I stayed some days, having introductions to several professors, then by the canal to Venice, where I employed several days in viewing that singular place and numberless curiosities to be found in it. It fully answered my expectations.

At Bologna I was so fortunate as to meet Mr. Taylor, of Bifrons, in Kent, with his very agreeable family. By him I was introduced to such of the nobility of the place as had a taste for farming, which, with some excursions in the vicinity, enabled me to understand the agriculture of the district.

Thence I travelled to Florence, where my time was divided between agriculture and the Tribuna, that is, between Farmers and Venuses.

I was here introduced to many celebrated characters and to others able to give me valuable agricultural information. At home we had a very pleasant party, and abroad our eyes were feasted with all that Art or Science could produce.

Quitting Turin [on the return journey] I joined company with Mr. Grundy, a considerable merchant, from Birmingham. We crossed over Mont Cenis on our route to Lyons.^[135]

During the winter of this year I met Dr. Watson several times at my friend Symonds’, and shall here copy a private note I made on that celebrated character.

I was well acquainted with him for some years before he was made a Bishop as well as long after. 178Nor is it strange that I should be assiduous in cultivating a connection with a man of such extraordinary powers, who had a most peculiar felicity in bringing all the stores of a richly furnished mind to bear as occasion required in conversation. His memory was wonderfully retentive, and he had the art of speaking upon subjects with which he was not well acquainted without betraying any ignorance. He had a clear, logical head, great promptness of application, and the utmost fluency of expression, but sometimes with an affectation of enunciation in a delicate manner which did not at all become the native sturdiness of his disposition. He had a mathematical calculating head, which enabled him readily to apply scientific researches to the ordinary purposes of life. His style was always uncommonly perspicuous. The King once said to him, ‘I know not how it is, my Lord, but when I read any of your publications I am never for one moment at a loss for your meaning, whereas in reading the works of other very able men their want of clearness often makes me doubtful.’ ‘Sir,’ replied the Bishop, ‘we are very assiduous at Cambridge to study Euclid and Locke.’ Almost from being made a Bishop he became a disgusted man, because he never could procure a translation, and it was supposed that the Queen was influenced against him by Bishop Porteus, who had not so high an opinion of him as many others. He was once speaking to Porteus in praise of Locke’s ‘Reasonableness of Christianity,’ and said in the course of conversation, ‘I presume, my Lord, you are of the same opinion.’ But Porteus, who had not been able to get 179in a word for some time, with a firmness not perhaps common with him when conversing with such a man as Watson, said, ‘Indeed, my Lord, I am quite of a different opinion’—then left the room abruptly.

Watson disapproved of his daughter learning Latin, but was very assiduous to procure her translations of the Classics. Upon coming to the University, or not long after, he found himself very deficient in Classical learning, and applied to recover lost time with indefatigable attention. He was tutor to Mr. Luther, of Essex, at Cambridge, and was useful to him in the great contested election for that county. Soon after, Luther, as was supposed from motives of economy, went to France, and, in his absence, some malignant reports were spread to his disadvantage. Watson saw the great importance of trampling upon them immediately; not trusting to any correspondence, he went to Paris, and represented to him the necessity of instantly returning and showing himself in every company that was possible. Luther felt the propriety of the advice, and directly returned with the Doctor, whose conduct upon this and many other occasions made such an impression on his mind that he left him a good estate in the very heart of the Earl of Egremont’s at Petworth, so that part of it joined not only the park, but the garden. To purchase this estate was a very great object to Lord E., and the Bishop, not liking to ask too high a price in the years’ purchase for the land, made a valuation of a great quantity of young timber on what would be the future value of the trees, and by this means contrived to have a very great price for the 180estate. It was too great an object to Lord E. to be refused; but the Bishop did not escape without censure.

Count Leopold Berchtold published this year his ‘Hints to Patriotic Travellers,’ which in a very handsome manner he dedicated to me. My correspondence was somewhat numerous. I could give a long list, but shall only mention the following:—

From Count Bukaty, Polish Ambassador, invitation from the King of Poland.^[136]

[The following extracts from Arthur Young’s letters home, and letter to his darling Bobbin, then aged five, are worth giving. With very slight excisions all letters to his daughter Mary are incorporated in the ‘French Travels.’]

From another letter to the same:—

From a third letter, dated Florence, November 18, 1789:—

[In a note A. Y. writes:]

1790.—All this summer I was employed in preparing my [French] Travels for the press. In October I had a violent fever, which brought me to the brink of the grave. I made a minute of that illness in the following words: ‘From almost the bed of death, it pleased the Divine Goodness to raise me up, and I remember it was in perfect hardness of heart and free from all true or grateful feelings. I was in a state of 188blindness and insensibility, on which I reflect with horror and amazement.’^[138]

I cannot speak of the ingratitude of my heart to God at this period but in the strongest terms, as it amounted to a degree of insensibility quite unaccountable. I fear that not one thought of God ever occurred to me at that time, and I doubt whether [it was so], while one evening I had resumed the habit of prayer, that is, of those formal prayers which an unconverted person may repeat without any real devotion; and yet during my delirium the physician afterwards told me that I one day broke forth into one of the most eloquent and sublime prayers he ever heard, to his utter astonishment.

During my recovery I wrote that melancholy review of my past life, which is printed in the ‘Annals.’

Illness—Correspondence with Washington—The King’s gift of a ram—Anecdotes—Revising MSS.—Patriotic proposals—Death of the Earl of Orford—Agricultural schemes—Correspondence.

The year opened with a continuation of that severe illness which had confined me for some months. The following notes are from a journal I kept at that time:—

This year my daughter Elizabeth married the Rev. Samuel Hoole, son of the celebrated John Hoole, translator of Tasso and Ariosto. He is a very sensible, moral man of strict integrity, and always behaved to my daughter with much tenderness.

This same year my correspondence^[139] opened with General Washington. Having been applied to to procure some implements for his husbandry, I wrote to him offering to procure any article in that line which he might have occasion for, and accordingly afterwards sent him many, amongst others the plan of a barn, which he executed, and is represented by a plate in the ‘Annals of Agriculture.’

190This year his Majesty had the goodness to make me a present of a Spanish Merino ram, a portrait of which I inserted in the ‘Annals.’

How many millions of men are there that would smile if I were to mention the Sovereign of a great Empire giving a ram to a farmer as an event that merited the attention of mankind! The world is full of those who consider military glory as the proper object of the ambition of monarchs; who measure regal merit by the millions that are slaughtered; by the public robbery and plunder that are dignified by the titles of dignity and conquest, and who look down on every exertion of peace and tranquillity as unbecoming those who aim at the epithet great, and unworthy the aim of men that are born the masters of the globe.

My ideas are cast in a very different mould, and I believe the period is advancing with accelerated pace that shall exhibit characters in a light totally new, and shall rather brand than exalt the virtues hitherto admired; that shall place in full blaze of meridian lustre actions lost on the mass of mankind; that shall pay more homage to the memory of a Prince that gave a ram to a farmer than for wielding the sceptre obeyed alike on the Ganges and on the Thames.

I shall presume to offer but one other general observation. When we see his Majesty practising husbandry with that warmth that marks a favourite pursuit, and taking such steps to diffuse a foreign breed of sheep well calculated to improve those of his kingdoms; when we see the Royal pursuits take such a direction, we may safely conclude that the public measures which, 191in certain instances, have been so hostile to the agriculture of this country, have nothing in common with the opinions of our gracious Sovereign; such measures are the work of men, who never felt for husbandry; who never practised it; who never loved it; it is not such men that give rams to farmers.

October 21.—A letter to-day from General Washington—Gracious! from the representative of the Majesty of America, all written with his own hand. Also one from the Marquis de la Fayette desiring my assistance to get him a bailiff that understands English ornamental gardening; for both he gives fifty louis^[140] a year—this is a French idea to unite what never was united, and, when gained, reward it with wages little better than a common labourer.

October 24.—Dined yesterday at Sir Thomas Gage’s to meet the Miss Fergus’s and Dr. and Mrs. Onslow. This Dr. was the youngest son of the late General Onslow, brother of my godfather, the Speaker, in whose family my dear mother was for many years upon the most intimate footing of private friendship.

When a boy I was frequently at his house, and well remember having this Arthur, a child, on my knee. Mrs. Onslow mentioned how much she had heard Mr. Boswell talk of my works. I fancy Boswell, from some things I heard of him, and it seems confirmed by various passages in his ‘Life of Johnson,’ has a sort of rage for knowing all sorts of public men, good, bad, and indifferent, all one if a man renders himself known he likes to be acquainted with him. Mrs. Onslow reported 192to me the following conversation which took place at the Prince’s table:—

The Prince of Wales, with a large company dining with him, said, ‘The three greatest coxcombs in England are in this room. Here is my friend Hanger,^[141] the Duke of Queensberry must come in for the second;’ he made a pause, enough for the company to stare for the third, and added, ‘for the third, it is certainly myself.’

When Sir W. Courtenay asked Lord Bute for a peerage, he carried his pedigree with him. Lord Bute examined and pretended to be a good judge of those things. He told Mr. Symonds that nothing could be clearer or more unquestionable than his descent lineally from Louis le Gros of France, the relationship with the House of Bourbon which occasions the mourning of a day in the Court of France for the death of a Courtenay.^[142] Lord Bute told him his demand of a barony was too modest, and that he should be a Viscount, which he was accordingly.

October 26.—In preparing my Travels [in France] for the press, I experience strongly the importance of an author’s having composed so much more than he means to print as to be able to strike out largely.

My agreement with Richardson was to have six shillings a volume for all sold of one guinea quarto volumes, but when Rackham’s compositor came to cast 193off the MS. he found enough for two large quarto volumes, since which discovery I had to strike out just half of what I had written; and the advantage will be very great to the work. I read the books as they are wanted for the press again and again, reducing the quantity every time till I get it tolerably to my mind, but yet not to the amount of half. The work is certainly improved by this means, and I am strongly of opinion if nine-tenths of other writers were to do the same thing their performances would be so much the better; for one reads very few quartos that would not be improved by reducing to octavo volumes.

November 23.—I was five days last week at the Duke of Grafton’s, Admiral, Mrs., and two Miss Pigots were there—she [Mrs. P.] is sister to the Duchess, the Admiral is a very worthy man—Mr. Stonehewer there also, and old Vary. I spent two days in taking the level of the Duke’s river for four miles, in order to see how much land he might water, and the improvement his estate is capable of is very great indeed. The character of this Duke is original; he is uncommonly sensible, there is no stuff in him; he is cold, silent, reserved, and even at times sullen, and he is removed from all that ease and suavity which render people agreeable; yet there is such a solid understanding, and so much learning and knowledge on certain topics, that one must value him in spite of our feelings.

Very little of the conversation interesting enough to be worth recording. I was also at a new club which 194Ruggles^[143] has instituted at Melford, which might have been an agreeable thing had there been half a dozen only.

The following are [among] the letters preserved this year:—

From Dr. Burney, congratulations, pleasant anecdotes, and an account of a large auction of books, &c.:—

196From another letter:—

201From Dr. John Symonds on the political state of the country—an account of a conference between Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Grafton:—

A circumstance in the exploits of my public career which made, perhaps, a more general impression than any other event of my life, was the proposal in 1792 for arming the property of the Kingdom in a sort of horse militia. My first suggestion of this idea was in May (of that year). Should any have claimed it, or should any hereafter form such a claim, it ought in truth and strict candour to be absolutely rejected. The proposal was more formally made in August of the 204same year in the ‘Annals,’ vol. xviii. p. 495, under the title of French events.^[149] In the end of 1792 and the beginning of 1793 these papers were collected and much enlarged in a pamphlet entitled, ‘The Example of France,’ &c. which ran speedily through four numerous editions, and excited a very general attention. The author was publicly thanked in resolutions of associated assemblies, and my great plea of a horse militia produced almost immediately three volunteer corps of cavalry, which multiplied rapidly through the Kingdom. It is not known that any persons or any bodies of men ever laid claim to a priority in this idea; accordingly my health was the first toast given for being the origin of those corps, which, when assembled, had this opportunity of publicly declaring their opinion. The scheme took with astonishing celerity, and became the parent of a measure of a very different complexion, which was putting arms into the hands of thousands without property, and upon whose allegiance and constitutional principle but little reliance could be placed. Government received demands for arms to the amount of above 700,000 men. The Ministers were alarmed, and saw too late the consequence of their own blindness and incapacity. They refused their consent, in many cases without properly discriminating between men with and without property, and felt themselves in so awkward a position that it is no wonder their conduct continued void of any steady adherence to the principle of the original proposition. 205Had my plan not only been adopted but carried into execution, strictly upon the principles I had explained, we might from that moment to the present have had a horse militia, absolutely under the command of Government, numbering from 100,000 to 200,000 men, which might, by progressive improvements, have been matured into a force efficient for every purpose. It is very seldom that so private an individual can by a happy thought become the origin of a system which, had my principles been steadily adhered to, would have been attended with inconceivable benefit, and none of those evils, real or imaginary, afterwards attributed to volunteers in general.

The pamphlet rendered the author exceedingly popular among all the friends of government and order, and as unpopular among the whole race of reformers and Jacobins. I was not content with the mere theoretical idea, but in my own person put it into practice, and enrolled myself in the ranks of a corps raised at my recommendation, in the vicinity of Bury [St. Edmunds], and commanded by the present Marquis of Cornwallis, then Lord Broome, having with this intention learnt the sword exercise at London of a sergeant, who was eminently skilled in it. My example was followed by gentlemen of fortune, several of whom were also in the ranks and refused to be officers. This was a part of the plan of particular importance, for had gentlemen accepted only the situation of officers, the spirit of entering the corps among yeomen, farmers &c. would have been much cooler; but when they saw their landlords, and men of 206high consideration in the neighbourhood, in the same situation, their vanity was flattered, and they enrolled themselves with great readiness, and the great object of property of such importance in case of revolutionary disturbance was thus secured.

Some years afterwards, being at the Duke of Bedford’s at Woburn, I sat at dinner by a gentleman of great property, captain of a troop of yeomanry, who told me that whenever his troop met he always drank my health after the King’s, for being the undisputed origin of all the yeomanry corps in the kingdom, possibly arising from extracts from my writings on the subject having been much circulated in the newspapers.

This year my valuable and very sincere friend, the Earl of Orford, died. The public papers that have announced the death of this noble lord have recorded the ancestry from which he was descended, the heirs of his honours, and the inheritors of his wealth, and have dwelt upon the titles that are extinct or devolved, together with all the posts and employments that are vacant. To me be the melancholy duty of noting what is of much more moment than the descent of a peerage or the transfer of an estate—the loss of an animated improver; of one who gave importance to cultivation by a thorough knowledge of political economy, and bent all his endeavours towards making mankind happy by seconding the pursuits of the farmer and the enquiries of the experimentalist. I leave the lieutenancy of a county, the rangership of a park, and the honours of the bedchamber to those in whose eyes such baubles are respectable. I would rather 207dwell on the merit of the first importer of Southdown sheep into Norfolk; on the merit of sending to the most distant regions for breeds of animals, represented as useful, not indeed always with success, but never without liberality in the motive; on the patron and friend of the common farmer, not the lord of a little circle of tenants, but the general and diffusive encourager of every species of agricultural improvement. Nor did he associate with the useful men because he was not qualified for the company of higher classes, for his mind was fraught with a great extent of knowledge; it was decorated by no trivial stores of classical learning, which exercised and set off the powers of a brilliant imagination, and thus qualified, alike for a Court or an Academy of Science, he felt no degradation in attending to THE PLOUGH. By the death of this noble personage the ‘Annals’ have lost a valuable correspondent, and their editor a warm friend. Notwithstanding the immense list of Peers, seven or eight only have become correspondents in this work. The insects of a drawing-room, the patrons of faro, the luminaries of Newmarket, are spared; while the hand of death deprives the farmer of a friend, Norfolk of a protector, and England of a real patriot.

Lord Loughborough was the Judge at the Summer Assizes this year at Bury, and I being on the Grand Jury, he sent a note to inform me that he was alone at his lodgings, and desired me to come and chat with him. This I did, of course, and in our conversation he mentioned that there was an estate of 4,400 acres of land in Yorkshire on the moors, in the vicinity of Paitley 208Bridge, to be sold for 4,000l., that it was chiefly freehold, and enclosed with a ring fence, also that there was a neat shooting-box on it built by the Duke of Devonshire, who hired the grouse. I assured his Lordship that he must be mistaken, for it was impossible that such a tract of land under several circumstances which he named could be on sale for half an hour without being purchased. He answered that nobody would buy it, as the land was all moor or peat, and covered with ling, but that some neighbouring farmers gave, he believed, 100l. per annum for the whole as a walk for mountain sheep. I told him that it seemed so extraordinary to me that I would go immediately to view it. He said the proper persons to apply to to view it were Sir Cecil Wray, Dr. Kilvington, and another gentleman. I accordingly went immediately to Yorkshire, and, taking up my quarters at Paitley Bridge, enquired till I found a person who knew the whole estate perfectly well, and engaged him early the next morning in order to make the tour of the whole property. It appeared to me to be wonderfully improvable, and that very considerable tracts to the amount of some hundred acres were palpably capable of irrigation and improvement, evidently applicable from the case of a small watercourse for conducting the water to an old smelting mill, but long neglected. This course had overflowed and converted the ling, over about fifteen acres, to grass. I asked my conductor what this grass would let for with a small cottage and stable for cows; he said, ‘Certainly fifteen shillings an acre.’ It was sufficiently evident that improvements might be 209wrought at a very small expense, and that building was remarkably cheap, from every material except timber being found on the spot, and lime at a small distance. There was a small farm in cultivation to produce oats, and the appearance not unfavourable. As I knew that a land surveyor well acquainted with all this country resided at Leeds, I determined to go thither to bring him over to view, and give his opinion as to the value of the property. This I did, brought him over in a postchaise, and rode with him over the principal part of the estate. His opinion confirmed my own, nor must I forget to mention that this estate was to be purchased without money as it was offered on its own security in mortgage.

In the enclosure of this immense waste, called forest, there were two allotments purchased by the proprietors, one of 1,638 acres, and another of 1,113, in all 2,751 acres, which were a copyhold tenure, at a small fine certain. In addition to which they hired, at the same time, on a long lease, 1,614 acres more, being an allotment to the King, at a rent of 50l. in money, and 50l. to be laid out on improvements. The whole, situated half-way between Knaresboro’ and Skipton, I found walled in; three farm-houses built, with barns and offices of various sorts, and lands annexed, and partly subdivided, to the amount of about 400 acres; the remaining 4,000 in one vast waste. These farms produced the rent of 44l. 5s. The game was let at 30l. with the use of a handsome shooting-box, sufficient for the residence of a small family. Peat dug from the bogs produced from 6l. to 8l. a year; and the great 210waste was let at 100l. a year, which, for 4,000 acres, is at the rate of sixpence per acre. The annual rental was therefore about 181l. per annum. From these circumstances it appeared clear to me that the purchase could not well be an unfavourable speculation. 2,750 acres (throwing the leasehold entirely out of the question) for 4,400l. is exactly 32l. an acre fee simple for land that paid a mere trifle in poor rates and land tax,^[150] and tithe free; it did not seem therefore to be necessary that the produce should amount to three shillings, for if the rent was reckoned only at one shilling it was but thirty-two years’ purchase. I determined, therefore, to make it, and concluded the transaction as soon as possible.

My plan was, to let my farm in Suffolk, of about 300 acres, and transfer the capital, with some additions, to the gradual improvement of this large tract; and, in doing this, I should have begun with one farm on the Southern extremity, near the turnpike road, of three or four hundred acres, let separately for 20l. a year, but all a waste, and, in addition to this, have run a watering canal from one of the streams, till from 100 to 200 acres were below the level, walling such tract in. Thus prepared, I found myself at last in a situation to realise the speculations I had so long been busy in—when a new scene of a very different kind opened upon me—but of that hereafter.

The following are the letters of this year reserved. From J. Symonds, Esq., an account of the Duke of Grafton’s illness:—

212J. W. Coke, Esq., M.P., proposing some laws for the benefit of the poor in their present distress:—

214From Dr. Burney on my ‘Travels’ and his own engagements:—

216From Miss Burney, afterwards Mdme. d’Arblay, writing on some traits of my character, &c.:—

My reply:—

The Board of Agriculture—Secretaryship—Residence in London—Twenty-five dinners a month—The King’s bull—The Marquis de Castries—‘The Example of France’—Encomiums thereof—Correspondence.

The most remarkable event of this year was the establishment of the Board of Agriculture.^[152] I found that Mr. Pitt had determined that I should be secretary, and Mr. Le Blanc, of Caversham, informed me that this new board was established with a view of rewarding me for my ‘Example of France.’ In a conversation with Lord Loughborough on the attendance required, he remarked, ‘You may do what suits yourself best, I conceive, for we all consider ourselves so much obliged to you that you cannot be rewarded in a manner too agreeably.’ If the appointment of secretary be considered, as it has been by many, a reward for what I had effected, it was not a magnificent one; the salary, 400l. per annum, would have been desirable had it left me more time in Suffolk, but when I found a very strict attendance attached to it, with no house to assemble in 220except Sir John Sinclair’s, and in a room common to the clerks and all comers, I was much disposed to throw it up and go back in disgust to my farm; but the advice of others and the apprehension of family reproaches kept me to the annoyance of a situation not ameliorated till Sir John was turned out of the Presidentship by Mr. Pitt, and the Board procured a house for itself.

My letter to Mr. Pitt, asking for the secretaryship of the new Board of Agriculture:—

My reply to George Rose, Esq., on his communicating to me Mr. Pitt’s approbation of my appointment:—

What a change in the destination of a man’s life! Instead of becoming the solitary lord of four thousand acres, in the keen atmosphere of lofty rocks, and mountain torrents, with a little creation rising gradually around me, making the black desert smile with cultivation, and grouse give way to industrious population, active and energetic, though remote and tranquil, and, every instant of my existence, making two blades of grass to grow where not one was found before—behold me at a desk in the smoke, the fog, the din of Whitehall. ‘Society has charms’—true; and so has solitude to a mind employed. But the die is cast, and my steps may still be said, metaphorically, to be in the furrow. My pleasures are of another sort; I see daily a noble activity of zeal in the service of the national husbandry in the President—of that happy effort of royal patriotism, commendable and exemplary; and I see in so many great and distinguished characters such a disinterested attention to the public good, and such liberality of spirit in promoting it, that the view is cheering, whether in a capital or a desert.

The two situations were incompatible with each 223other. I therefore advertised the estate for sale; and nothing proves to me how very ill understood waste lands are in this kingdom than the advertisement being repeated near a twelvemonth before I could sell it with much less profit than I had reason to expect. So large a contiguous tract, in many respects so eligible for improvement, I thought would have been a favourite object with numbers; as to the ignorance of those who viewed and rejected it, I can only pity them.

The attention I received from individuals was, however, very flattering, for I find, by an old memorandum book, that I dined out from twenty-five to thirty days in the month, and had, in that time, forty invitations from people of the highest rank and consequence. Here I copy a memorandum made at the time: August 21, ‘I feel an advancement of a certain kind since the publication of my Travels, well calculated to add agreeably to a new sphere in life by means of this new Board; but how it will turn out is not easy to conjecture, and my “Example of France: a Warning to Great Britain”^[153] is applauded in a manner of which I had not the slightest conception. The Ministry commend it most highly, and express themselves in [a way] truly gratifying to my feelings. The last time I was in town, the Chancellor dwelt on the idea of how much they were all obliged to me, and treated me as a man that must be gratified when I was explaining my wish to reside but little in London. And Rose’s 224report from Mr. Pitt was equal; his own expression was that I had beat all rivalship and produced the most useful work printed on the occasion, &c. Thus I come with all the advantages I could wish—and I could see in every eye and hear from every tongue of numbers to whom Sir John Banks introduced me on the Terrace at Windsor that I was considered as one to whom the nation was obliged. The King spoke to me, but not so graciously as some years before; and this brought to my mind a visit which Mr. Majendie and his brother, the Canon of Windsor, paid me at Bradfield, when the latter asked me in a very significant manner whether I had not said something against the King’s bull, as it was commonly reported that I had fallen foul of his Majesty’s dairy; so I suppose the man who showed me the cattle reported to the King every word I had said of them, and possibly with additions. Who is it that says one should be careful in a court not to offend even a dog? However, Sir J. Sinclair reported to me some days afterwards that his Majesty had expressed to him great satisfaction at my appointment to the secretaryship of the Board.’Board.’

About this time I met Sir John Macpherson, from Bengal, but now from Italy. He came by the Rhine; had a conversation with the King of Prussia on my ‘Travels,’ which his Majesty was reading, and commended greatly. He saw also the Marshal de Castries,^[154] who was likewise reading them, and praised me in the highest terms. Sir John Macpherson told him that he 225had found my accounts of Lombardy so uncommonly just and accurate that he intended seeing the author as soon as he arrived in England. ‘Tell him, then,’ said the marshal, ‘that I did not know France till I read his admirable work, which astonishes me for its truth, and extent and justness of observation;’ and the next day he wrote to him pointing out an error of mine in the passage relating to his opening the French West Indies to foreign navigation. No man can speak in higher terms of a book than Sir John does of this. He says it is the best that ever was published. It is something whimsical that the ladies should tell me it is as entertaining as a romance, and that statesmen should praise it for its information. Faith! I had need be flattered to be kept in good humour—losing my time doing nothing in London in August.

September 9.—Dined at Pinherring’s, the American ambassador; he is a gentleman-like man; but for his company, though this was a great entertainment, there was such a motley group as would be difficult to find; they were so indelicate as to call for a war with England.

I preserved the following among letters of this year:—

From Lord Bristol (Bishop of Derry), objections to my proposal for selling all lambs at Harrington Fair.

From Thomas Law, Esq., who resided long in Bengal, on the application of the Corn Laws.

From the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, highly praising the ‘Example of France’:—

From Dr. Burney, on my ‘Example of France,’ &c.:—

236From Dr. Symonds, high encomiums of my ‘Example,’ &c.

The Secretaryship and its drawbacks—Social compensations—Illness and death of Elizabeth Hoole—Letters of Jeremy Bentham and others—A visit to Burke—Home travels—Enclosures.

The Board of Agriculture, meeting in February, arranged the President’s plan for the attendance of their officers. By these laws all the officers of the Board were bound to attend, with no other exception than the months of August, September and October, with one month at Christmas and three weeks at Easter. These laws, ready cut and dried when the Board met, were adopted with no other alterations than such as the President himself had made in them, previously to their being presented at the meeting. Lord Hawke had examined the rules and orders of many societies, and found that in all letters communications were addressed to the Secretaries, and answers given by them. Sir John Sinclair struck this out, and directed all such communications to be to the President (himself), and for him also to sign all letters. This at once converted the Secretary into nothing more than a first clerk. I saw not at first the tendency of the alterations; but I soon felt their effect. All letters 242were dictated by the Secretary and written in a book; this book was altered and corrected at the will of the President, and such alterations made as in respect of agriculture were absurd enough; the whole done in such a manner as not to be very pleasing.

In addition to this, Sir John Sinclair gave the Board the use of his house, which ensured another circumstance hostile to my feelings. There was only one room for transacting the business, by the Secretary, under-Secretary, two clerks, to which Sir J. after added the constant attendance of an attorney, for assisting in the business of a general Enclosing Act, about which the President busied himself some years in vain. As I was determined to pass all the vacations at my farm in Suffolk, six journeys of myself and servants became necessary, and caused a considerable expense. I also was compelled to hire lodgings at the expense of two or two guineas and a half per week, and when I experienced the full career^[158] of all these circumstances, I deliberated repeatedly and carefully with myself, whether it would not be cheaper to me to throw up the employment. Long after, upon review of the whole, I was amazed that I had not done it, more especially as my plan for settling on the moors in Yorkshire was offered to my choice. I was infinitely disgusted with the inconsiderate manner in which Sir John Sinclair appointed the persons who drew up the original reports, men being employed who scarcely knew the right end of a plough; and the President one day desired I would accompany him with one 243of these men, a half-pay officer out of employment, to call on Lord Moira to request his assistance in the Leicestershire Report, when this person told his Lordship that he was out of employment and should like a summer’s excursion. To do him justice, he did not know anything of the matter. Still, however, he was appointed, and amused himself with his excursion to Leicester. But the most curious circumstance of effrontery was, that the greater number of the reporters were appointed, and actually travelled upon the business before the first meeting of the Board took place, under the most preposterous of all ideas—that of surveying the whole Kingdom and printing the Reports in a single year; by which manœuvre Sir John thought he should establish a great reputation for himself. Consequently by his sole authority, who could not possibly know whether the members of the Board would approve or not such a plan. I was a capital idiot not to absent myself sufficiently to bring the matter to a question, and leave them to turn me out if they pleased. Mr. Pitt would probably have interfered and effected the object I wanted, and, if not, would have provided for me in a better way. However, I made use of the opportunities that offered to frequent the company of those that were agreeable to me; for a part of the time was pretty regularly passed at the conversaziones of Mrs. Matthew Montagu and the Countess of Bristol, where I met an assemblage of persons remarkable for every characteristic of the bas-bleu mixed with great numbers of the highest rank. [I was] also at many similar parties upon a smaller scale at Mr. Charles Coles’, the 244intimate friend of Soame Jenyns, and to whom he left the property of his works. The petits soupers at Mrs. Matthew Montagu’s, and to which she asked a selection of eight or nine persons, were very pleasant, the conversations interesting, and this select number more agreeable than I ever found full rooms. On my first coming to town in the spring of 1794, I enquired of several members of the Board whether there was not a farmers’ club in London, and was surprised that there never had been any institution of the kind. I determined to endeavour at establishing one, and spoke to the Duke of Bedford and the Earls of Egremont and Winchilsea, who much approved the idea, and applying also to a few more, I directed cards to be sent them from the Thatched House Tavern,^[159] in order to establish a club. This meeting was fully attended, and a book being called for, the club was instituted, and several rules entered, and the meetings appointed once a fortnight during the sittings of Parliament. This club became very fashionable, and applications to be elected were very numerous, from the members of both Houses of Parliament; and it subsists to this day, but has for some time been very ill attended. This was occasioned by too free an election of all who offered. While the club was limited to fifty members it was well attended, but afterwards such numbers were received, and with so much facility, as greatly to injure the establishment. I have one remark to make upon clubs; the life and soul of them is limitation to a selected few, and to 245blackball the great mass of applicants, selecting merely such as will form a very valuable addition to the society, which probably may not amount to more than one in twenty. The annual subscription was two guineas: one to the house, one to form a fund at the disposition of the club. The latter gradually accumulated till it amounted to 700l. or 800l. Both Sir John Sinclair and I were strenuous that this might be applied to some useful purpose, and with difficulty we got an appropriation of fifty guineas as a reward for the best plough that could be produced; but the money assigned to advertisements being much too small, the offer was unknown, and no plough produced.

A member once proposed that the 800l. might be given to charitable institutions; but this was negatived in an instant, and the sum is still left (1812) unemployed in the funds.

While the club flourished the members who most generally attended were the Dukes of Bedford, Buccleugh, Montrose, the Earls of Egremont, Winchester and Darnley, the Lords of Wentworth, Somerville, de Dunstanville, Sheffield, &c. &c.

I often dined at Charles Coles’, where I met repeatedly Jacob Bryant,^[160] Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. York, Mrs. Garrick, Hannah More, Mrs. Orde and Soame Jenyns. The conversation at these parties on the publications of the day, anecdotes of the time, with the conduct of many of the great men of the age, was usually very interesting. Alas! alas! how few of these persons 246are now left. I was very eager in listening to every word that fell from Hannah More, though not nearly so much so as I should have been many years after.

I had an incessant round of dinners and many evening parties, and generally with people of the highest rank and consequence, but I was not pleased, being discontented with my employment, and disgusted with the frivolous business of the Board, which seemed to me engaged in nothing that could possibly produce the least credit with the public. After five months’ residence at London, I went to the Duke of Bedford’s at Woburn on my way to Bradfield, spending some days very agreeably in company that could not fail of being interesting.

This year my second daughter Elizabeth, who, as I have mentioned before, was married to the Rev. John Hoole, died of consumption. She was of a most amiable, gentle temper, and in a resigned frame of mind, which gave me much satisfaction. The last visit I paid her at Abinger, in Surrey, she was very weak, yet not suspected to be so near her end. But at the last parting with me, she did it in so feeling and affectionate a manner as seemed to imply that she thought she should see me no more. It made me, for a time, extremely melancholy, which was shaken off with great difficulty. I took a tour into Hampshire, where I passed several days with Mr. Poulett at Sombourne, taking an account of the agriculture of that district, the result of which examination was printed as an appendix to the original Hampshire Report.

On the meeting of the Board in 1793, Sir John 247Sinclair had particularly requested me to draw up a Report for the County of Suffolk, to effect which I took several journeys into different parts of the county at some expense, and formed the Report which was printed in 1794. I never executed any work more commended in Suffolk than this. I had no remuneration.

Letters received this year:—

From Jeremy Bentham, Esq., enquiries into the landed property of Great Britain and into the rental and value of houses:—

The two following letters are from Mrs. Hoole, Dr. Burney’s favourite, Miss Bessy, to her father:—

1796.—In the spring of this year I waited on Mr. Pitt, by his appointment, in order to answer some enquiries of his relative to the propriety of any regulations by Parliament of the price of labour.

I answered all his enquiries, and could not but admire the wonderful quickness of his apprehension of 256all those collateral difficulties which I started, and of which he seemed in a moment to comprehend the full extent. I found him hostile to the idea.

March.—Among various dinners [was] at Mr. Burke’s and at Mrs. Barrington’s parties. In May dinners at Duke of Bedford’s, Duke of Buccleugh’s, and Mr. Jenkinson and Lady Louisa’s; her manner is not the most agreeable, [but] she has ease and elegance. I have long known her at Ickworth.

May 1.—For some time past the following advertisement has appeared in many of the London papers: ‘Speedily will be published a letter from the Bight Hon. Edmund Burke to Arthur Young, Esq., Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, on some projects talked of in Parliament, for regulating the price of labour.’ The appearance of this advertisement induced Sir John Sinclair to write to Mr. Burke to propose to him that he should undertake to draw up for the Board the chapter of a general Report which was intended to treat on the subject of labour and provisions.

The question in the House of Commons was decided before the publication could appear, and it was supposed that Mr. Burke had, in consequence, abandoned the intention of publishing his ideas. But Sir John, not having received any answer, or, at least, any that was satisfactory to him, requested me to take his chariot and go to Gregory’s, in order that I might discover whether that celebrated character continued his intention of throwing his thoughts upon paper.

257I reached Mr. Burke’s before breakfast, and had every reason to be pleased with my reception.

‘Why, Mr. Young, it is many years since I saw you, and, to the best of my recollection, you have not suffered the smallest change; you look as young as you did sixteen years ago. You must be very strong; you have no belly; your form shows lightness; you have an elastic mind.’

I wished to myself that I could have returned anything like the compliment, but I was shocked to see him so broken, so low, and with such expressions of melancholy. I almost thought that I was come to see the greatest genius of the age in ruin.

And I had every reason to think, from all that passed on this visit, that the powers of his mind had suffered considerably.

He introduced me to his brother, Mr. W. Burke, to Mrs. B., and to the Count de la Tour du Pin, an emigrant philosopher and naturalist.

After breakfast he took me a sauntering walk for five hours over his farm, and to a cottage where a scrap of land had been stolen from the waste. I was glad to find his farm in good order, and doubly so to hear him remark that it was his only amusement, except the attention which he paid to a school in the vicinity for sixty children of noble emigrants. His conversation was remarkably desultory, a broken mixture of agricultural observations, French madness, price of provisions, the death of his son, the absurdity of regulating labour, the mischief of our Poor-laws, and the difficulty of cottagers keeping cows. An argumentative 258discussion of any opinion seemed to distress him, and I, therefore, avoided it. And his discourse was so scattered and interrupted by varying ideas, that I could bring away but few of his remarks that were clearly defined.

Speaking on public affairs he said that he never looked at a newspaper; ‘but if anything happens to occur which they think will please me, I am told of it.’ I observed there was strength of mind in this resolution. ‘Oh, no!’ he replied, ‘it is mere weakness of mind.’ It appeared evident that he would not publish upon the subject which brought me to Gregory’s; but he declared himself to be absolutely inimical to any regulation whatever by law; that all such interference was not only unnecessary but would be mischievous. He observed that the supposed scarcity was extremely ill understood, and that the consumption of the people was a clear proof of it; this, in his neighbourhood, was not lessened in the material articles of bread, meat, and beer, which he learnt by a very careful examination of many bakers, butchers, and excisemen; nor had the poor been distressed further than what resulted immediately from that improvidence which was occasioned by the Poor-laws.

Mr. Burke had not read Lord Sheffield’s Memoirs of Gibbon. On my observing that Mr. Gibbon declares himself of the same opinion with him on the French Revolution, he said that Gibbon was an old friend of his, and he knew well that before he (Mr. G.) died, that he heartily repented of the anti-religious part of his work for contributing to free mankind from 259all restraint on their vices and profligacy, and thereby aiding so much the spirit which produced the horrors that blackened the most detestable of all revolutions.

Upon my mentioning Monsieur de Mounier and Lally Tollendal, he exclaimed, ‘I wish they were both hanged!’

He seemed to bear hard upon the Duke de Liancourt, and to allude indistinctly to some report of my having opened an hospitable door to that nobleman, and having received a bad return. I defended the duke, and had not the conversation been interrupted I should have discovered what he meant by the remark. The same observation has met my ear on other occasions, but was never explained.

Mrs. Crewe arrived just before dinner, and though she exerted herself with that brilliancy of imagination which renders her conversation so interesting, it was not sufficient to raise the drooping spirits of Mr. Burke; it hurt me to see the languid manner in which he lounged rather than sat at table, his dress entirely neglected, and his manner quite dejected; yet he tried once or twice to rally, and once even to pun. Mrs. Crewe, observing that Thelwel was to stand for Norwich, said it would be horrid for Mr. Wyndham to be turned out by such a man. ‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘that would not tell well.’

She laughed at him in the style of condemning a bad pun. Somebody said it was a fair one, he said it was neither very bad nor good.

He gave more attention to her account of Charles Fox than to any other part of her conversation. She 260spoke slightingly of him, and gave us some account of his life at Mrs. Armstead’s. She says he lives very little in the world, or in any general society, for years past; that his pleasure is to be at the head of a little society of ten or twelve toad eaters, and seems to contract his mind to such a situation.

The conversation would have become more interesting had not Mrs. Crewe been so full of a plan for Ladies’ Subscriptions for the Emigrants, and consulting him so much on the means of securing the money from the fangs of the Bishop of St. Pol de Léon, whose part, however, Mr. Burke took steadily. This business was so discussed as to preclude much other conversation. Mr. Burke has been at Gregory’s twenty-nine years; and I was pleased to remark that he lived on the same moderate plan of life which I witnessed here five-and-twenty years ago.

Mem. ‘To search for that visit.’^[164]

My visit on the whole was interesting. I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant parts of any person of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often fascinated me; whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have delighted and instructed the world; and whose name will without question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a genius so depressed with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the grave under accumulated misery; to see all this in a character I venerate, and 261apparently without resource or comfort, wounded every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as low-spirited as himself.

In May the Duke of Buccleugh carried me to see Mr. Secretary Dundas’s farm at Wimbledon, where I was to give my opinion of the mode of draining it. I found his people throwing money away like fools. They know nothing of the matter. This duke is another determined farmer, and seems to like conversing on no other subject.

This year I undertook a journey through the western counties, through Devon into Cornwall, returning by Somersetshire, and published the register of it in the ‘Annals of Agriculture.’ I happened to be at Exeter at the time of the quarter sessions, and dined with thirty magistrates, Mr. Leigh, clerk of the House of Commons, being chairman. I did not know him personally, and joined more warmly in a conversation on the Enclosure Bill,^[165] than I should have done had I known that I was speaking to a person so much interested against it. Mr. Leigh was very decided in his opposition to the measure, asserting that there was no protection for property in any other mode of proceeding, which had been so long the established custom. I very eagerly refuted this observation till some 262gentleman present spoke to Mr. Leigh, alluding to his official character. This was one proof of what I had often heard, that the officers of the two Houses of Parliament were of all others the most determined opposers of that measure. The reason is obvious; they have very considerable fees on the passing of every private Act,^[166] and the clerks of the House have a further benefit which might not be compensated in any equivalent that might be given them; because they solicit many of the bills. Still, as there is so plain a precedent which has existed for many years in the case of the Speaker of the House, who has 6,000l. per annum instead of all fees, it seems no difficult matter to give an equal equivalent to the clerks for all their profits, including what they might make as solicitors.

Illness of Bobbin—Letters of Bobbin and her father’s replies—Dress minutes at the opera—Hoping against hope—Bobbin’s death—Seeking for consolation—Retrospection—Beginning of diary—Correspondence.

This year, so fatal to every worldly hope, which overturned every prospect I had in life, and changed me almost as much as a new creation, opened in the common manner by my going to London to attend the meeting of the Board [of Agriculture]. I brought my dear angelic child^[167] with me, who went to school in January, in good health but never in good spirits, for she abhorred school. Oh! what infatuation ever to send her to one. In the country she had health, spirits, and strength, as if there were not enough with what she might have learned at home, instead of going to that region of constraint and death, Camden House.

The rules for health are detestable, no air but in a measured, formal walk, and all running and quick motion prohibited. Preposterous! She slept with a girl who could hear only with one ear, and so ever laid on one side; and my dear child could do no otherwise 264afterwards without pain; because the vile beds are so small that they must both lie the same way. The school discipline of all sorts, the food, &c. &c., all contributed. She never had a bellyful at breakfast. Detestable this at the expense of 80l. a year. Oh! how I regret ever putting her there, or to any other, for they are all theatres of knavery, illiberality, and infamy.^[168] Upon her being ill in March I took her to my lodgings in Jermyn Street, where Dr. Turton attended her till April 12, when I carried her to Bradfield. He certainly mistook her case entirely, not believing in a consumption, and by physic brought her so low that she declined hourly; he stuffed her with medicine at a time when sending her at once to Bristol or even to Bradfield she went little more than skin and bone, with prescriptions for more physicking under a stupid fellow at Bury, who purged her till she was a spectre. On June 13 she went to Smiths’ (Bradfield neighbours), and there complained ‘that such a young girl as I who came for air and exercise should be thus crammed with physic.’ Poor thing! her instinct told her it was wrong, but she submitted.

The following were memoranda noted at the time:—

The 11th of June I went to the Duke of Bedford’s sheep-shearing, and got back (to London) on the 16th. The next day I had a letter that terrified me so much that on the 19th I set off for Suffolk, and went directly to Troston Hall (the seat of Capel Lofft, Esq.), where 277the dear dear child had been carried some days before for change of air. Good God! what a situation I found her in, worse than I had conceived possible in so short a time, so helpless and immovable as to be carried from a chair to her bed, evidently in one of those cruel consumptive cases which flatter by some favourable symptoms, yet with fatal ones that almost deprive hope.

Good Heaven! what have I to look forward to if I lose my child? For her own sake I know not what to hope; the world is so full of wickedness and misery, and she must be so innocent and free from crimes, that her lot hereafter, I hope and have confidence in the mercies of God, will be blessed. Ought I then, but from selfishness, to wish her here? Yet a fond father’s feelings will be predominant. Oh, save her, save her, is my prayer to God Almighty!

Dr. Wollaston, the eminent physician at Bury, has been consulted; he gives little hopes, but advises a milk and vegetable diet, and said that sea air and a humid mild climate would be good. I next wrote to Dr. Thornton, who recommended an egg and meat diet; and Mr. Martyn, in a letter, desired me to try the inhaling of ether; in fact, all has been done that the urgency of the case required, but, alas! she is past the assistance of all human power. After remaining a week at Troston I wrote into Lincolnshire for a house at Boston, with a view to be near the sea, in case she should be able to support a short voyage; and the air of that low place is reckoned preferable to the keen air of Bradfield. We travelled with slow and 278short journeys on July 5 to Bradon—still more exhausted; on the 6th to Wisbeach—no alteration yet from the change of air; on the 7th only to Long Sutton—worse, greatly fatigued, and a very bad night. Oh! the lacerated feelings of my wounded heart! To see the child of my tenderest affection in such a state! growing hourly weaker and more emaciated, during the last week being even unable to stand. It is beyond my power to describe what is struggling within me! My sorrow has softened me and wrings my very heart strings! How hard does it appear submissively to bow to that text—‘He that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.’ I have but one consolation, which prevents my utter depression and despair. I trust in the goodness of her Almighty Creator and in the merits of her blessed Redeemer, that They will, in the mercy of omnipotence, pardon what slight offences she may have been guilty of, and receive her into that heavenly mansion which I humbly hope her innocence may expect. I pray fervently for Their mercy, and only wish that I was worthy of being heard. May my future life be such as to make an hereafter the great view, aim, and end of my remaining life! The 8th we reached Spalding, too much fatigued to go on, thinking that an air so different from what she had left might have given some ease. Vain hope! No effort of the kind appears. The 11th we arrived at Boston, and she bore the journey well. Alas! it was her final stage in this world!

The next day she was still worse, but even now gave one of those traits which displayed her delicacy, 279for upon finding that her mother was detaining Dr. Wilson with questions, she reminded her of it by saying, ‘Mamma, you forget there are other ladies wanting the doctor.’ On the 13th the crisis of her sufferings was approaching; she whispered to me as I sat by her bedside, ‘I hope you pray for me.’ At about eleven o’clock she asked her sister Mary to read a prayer as usual, and attended with apparent fervour, putting her hands together in the attitude of devotion.

My poor dear child breathed her last at twelve minutes past one o’clock on Friday morning, the 14th. I was on my knees at her bedside in great agony of mind. She looked at me and said, ‘Pray for me.’ I assured her that I did. She replied, ‘Do it now, papa,’ on which I poured forth aloud ejaculations to the Almighty, that He would have compassion and heal the affliction of my child. She clasped her hands together in the attitude of praying, and when I had done said, ‘Amen’—her last words.

Thank God of His infinite mercy she expired without a groan, or her face being the least agitated; her inspirations were gradually changed from being very distressing, till they became lost in gentleness, and at the last she went off like a bird.

Thus fled one of the sweetest tempers and, for her years, one of the best understandings that I ever met with. She was a companion for mature years, for there was in her none of the childish stuff of most girls. And there fled the first hope of my life, the child on whom I wished to rest in the affliction of my age, should I reach such a period. But the Almighty’s will 280be done, and may I turn the event to the benefit of my soul, and in such a manner as to trust through the mediation of my Redeemer to become worthy to join her in a better world. Her disposition was most affectionate, gentle, and humane; to her inferiors, full of humility, and always ready to perform acts of beneficence, thus attaching the poor by her charity, whilst she was equally courted by those above her for that fascination of manners possessing the attraction of the loadstone. Her countenance in health beamed with animation, and her dimpled cheeks smiled with the beauty of a Hebe. Dear interesting creature! Endowed, too, with a sensibility that shrunk from the gaze, her appearance in society produced [here the sentence breaks off].

What a scene have I described for a fond father to witness!

On the 15th the Rev. S. Partridge and his wife came to give us what comfort they could, and took us in a most kind and friendly manner to their house. I determined that her remains should be carried to Bradfield, having a warm hope of being animated to a more fervent devotion by the idea of her ashes being deposited in our own village church. To the departed spirit it is less than nothing—to me it may do good, and I have need of working out my salvation with fear and trembling. I feel that a wretched and depressed state of mind leads me to more Christian thoughts and more favourable to religious impressions than prosperity, or ease, or happiness, as it is called, and therefore hope I am justified in doing it; and if my family think the same, they also will derive benefit.

281After a day passed in deep sorrow, Mr. Partridge read one of his sermons on the intermediate state of departed souls, and which I afterwards found was one of Jortin’s.^[172] From many passages of Scripture it was made clear that they are conscious, and if good in this life, happy.

On Monday, the 17th, I arrived at Bradfield, where every object is full of the dear deceased.

On going into the library the window looks into the little garden in which I have so many times seen her happy. O gracious and merciful God! pardon me for allowing any earthly object thus to engross my feelings and overpower my whole soul! But what were they not on seeing and weeping over the roses, variegated sage, and other plants she had set there and cultivated with her dear hands. But every room, every spot is full of her, and it sinks my very heart to see them. Tuesday evening, the 18th, her remains arrived, and at midnight her brother read the service over her in a most impressive manner. I buried her in my pew, fixing the coffin so that when I kneel it will be between her head and her dear heart. This I did as a means of preserving the grief I feel, and hope to feel while breath is in my body. It turns all my views to an hereafter, and fills my mind with earnest wishes, that when the great Author of my existence may please to take me I may join my child in a better world.

O merciful Saviour, that took on Thee our nature and feelings, grant me Thy Holy Spirit to confirm and 282strengthen these sentiments; to repent of all my sins and errors, and enable me for the rest of my days to look steadily towards that better world where, I trust, the innocence of my child, united with her piety, have given her a place. Sure, sure, I shall pray with a more fervent and sincere devotion over the remains of her whom I so much wish, when it pleases Heaven, that I may join. This was my motive.

The 19th I went into a little chamber which I had neatly fitted up about three years ago. My dear child had decorated it with some drawings and placed her books on the shelves, and left it in that order and regularity which followed all her actions. I burst into tears while viewing it, and felt such a depression at my heart that I thought I should have sunk on the floor. It shall never be altered, but everything continued as she left it.

20th.—Again looked at her garden, and a new one she had marked out and planted under a weeping willow. No day arrives but some new object is presented to move all the springs of affection and regret; and what day can pass in which these melancholy feelings will not predominate? In the meantime I read the Scriptures, and Jortin and other sermons, with an attention I never paid before; and may God of His mercy confirm this disposition, and enable me thus to turn this heavy misfortune to the benefit of my soul. Dispositions which company, travelling, and other pursuits would have tended to banish, I wish to cherish; a melancholy has produced in me a more earnest desire to be reconciled to God than any other 283event of my life, and proves that of all the medicines of the soul, sorrow is perhaps the most powerful.

Business, pleasure, and the world, tend only to stifle this seriousness of thought, and to prevent the mind from looking into itself and examining the foundation of all its future hopes. For these three days I have continued perusing no books but the New Testament and sermons, of which I have read many.

21st.—Hoed part of my dear child’s garden under the window, and carried her bonnet and cap to her chamber. They produced many tears, for I yet continue weak as a babe. Read the whole Gospel of St. John, two sermons of Tillotson on the state of the blessed, and two of Dr. Horne’s on the purification of the mind by troubles and the government of the thoughts. I had before in this week read all the Epistles, the Hebrews, and the Acts of the Apostles, and also Bryant’s ‘Authenticity of the Scriptures.’ Such studies are my only consolation. I give full attention, and hope for the blessing of God’s Holy Spirit, that I may not let it be vain, or ever suffer the world to wipe out this taste for the things that concern another world. I attempt the regulation of my thoughts, and to contemplate the goodness and mercy of the Deity; but my misery for the irreparable loss I have suffered yet weighs me down.

22nd.—Hoed the rest of her garden. Symonds and Carter spent the day at the Hall. I wish they had not come together, I wanted conversation with them separately on the question I had read a good deal of, the sleep of the soul after death till the resurrection.

284Symonds will not admit that we can draw any satisfactory conclusion for or against it, but Carter allows Dr. Jortin’s reasoning in his sermon on that subject. In the evening I read what Dr. H. More^[173] says upon the subject, who is strenuously against it. A state of insensibility is a dreadful idea, and I find consolation in the conviction that my dear girl is now happy.

23rd.—Sunday; passed it, I hope, like a Christian. At church sitting over the remains of my child! Oh! what a train of feelings absorbed my soul. In the evening read St. Luke’s Gospel and took a most heart-sinking melancholy walk. I cannot yet bring my mind to sufficient tranquillity to throw into one little memoir these and other particulars.

Examined the willows she planted on the island. Oh! that they were thriving oaks that promised a longer duration, but they may last as long as anybody that will care for the planter. Continue to read Scripture, and some of Secker’s^[174] and Ogden’s^[175] sermons, and again began ‘Bryant on Christianity.’ I pray to God with all the fervency I feel to give me the grace of His Holy Spirit, that I may turn this loss to the benefit of my soul. Dr. Jortin, in his seventeenth sermon, most truly says, ‘It is adversity which seizes upon the future as prosperity dwells upon the present.’present.’ 285On the 25th I read Littleton’s^[176] ‘Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul.’ I had brought down from London a new political pamphlet of Howlett’s on a subject that was once interesting, but I can attend to nothing except inquiries which in some degree connect with that habit of mind which flows from my recent loss.

Mrs. —— called to persuade me into company for regaining cheerfulness. Alas! it will come, I fear, much too soon, and what is it good for? Sorrow is the best physician to heal a soul that has been too careless in its duty to God.

Will the world, and pleasure, and society contribute like grief to secure me a probability of joining in another world the spirit of her I mourn?

26th.—I read part of Dr. Clarke’s^[177] ‘Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God,’ as much as I could understand without too intense an application, and then part of ‘Butler’s Analogy.’ Prayed to the Almighty in the middle of the day. The morning is the proper time, but when we are tired and sleepy, the evening I think an improper period to offer either thanksgiving or petitions to the Divine goodness.

Why, oh! why must we have misfortune and sorrow to make us sensible of our duty to our heavenly Father and our Saviour and Redeemer? How difficult to instil a right attention into young people.

286I am, however, thankful that my dear child was naturally serious and, I believe, well disposed in this respect; with what joy I now read the following passage in a letter I received from her while she was ill at Bradfield before I came down: ‘My dear papa, how can you imagine that I should ever neglect my prayers? No! believe me, I know my duty too well for that.’

What now would be the idea of any improvement or accomplishment compared with the least trait like this?

27th.—Called for a few minutes on some neighbours. They all want me to dine with them, but such society to a mind diseased yields no food for reflection, and is, therefore, not fit for me. I could associate with nobody with comfort, but those whose religious acquirements could tend to strengthen my present habits.

I continue to read Butler, also two sermons by Conybeare^[178] on angels; looked at the miniature which my wife has of the dear girl, a most striking likeness by Plymer;^[179] wept over it with feelings easier imagined than described. I will have a copy of it; ’twill serve, at least, as a melancholy remembrance, and, I hope, recall my mind should it ever wander from the lamented original.

28th.—Finished Butler’s ‘Analogy.’ It does not quite answer the idea I had formed of him, though a 287powerful work; but he demands a second perusal, but does not even then promise to be perfectly clear. Read also Mr. Locke’s ‘Reasonableness of Christianity,’ which is a luminous convincing work, and must have done great good. Watered dear Bobbin’s garden and read over her letters. She had, for her early years, a most uncommon understanding and a penetration into character wonderful for the age of fourteen. On reviewing her last illness I am filled with nothing but the most poignant regret and self-condemnation for putting so much reliance in the medical tribe, for she had the personal attendance or correspondence of five physicians and none agreed. I did for the best and spared nothing, but had she been a pauper in a village she would, I verily think, have been alive and hearty. Such are the blessings of money; it has cost me 100l. to destroy my child, for I do not think one shilling was bestowed which did not in one way or other do mischief.

Whilst I was in much anxiety about my child’s health I bought Mr. Wilberforce on Christianity.^[180] I read it coldly at first, but advanced with more attention. It brought me to a better sense of my dangerous state; but I was much involved in hesitation and doubt, and was very far from understanding the doctrinal part of the book. This was well, for it induced me to read it again and again, and it made so much impression upon me that I scarcely knew how 288to lay it aside. It excited a very insufficient degree of repentance, and a still more insufficient view of my interest in the Great Physician of souls.

It is rather singular that a trifling circumstance at this time first brought me acquainted with Mr. Wilberforce, whose book I had been again perusing for the fourth time with increased pleasure, and to whom I had more than once thought of writing for his opinion on the intermediate state and original sin. On arriving at Boston, what was my surprise on receiving a letter from him relative to Parkinson’s subscription to some book on agriculture, and apologising for the application to a stranger. I seized the pen with eagerness to reply, writing largely about his own book, praising it greatly, and telling him of my wish to apply to him. Should this (I thought) be productive of a connection that might confirm my pious resolution, I might, perhaps, be justified in attributing it to the interposition of God.

I hope that the thought is not presumptuous. Is it the spirit of my sweet girl that is thus friendly to me? How pleasing an idea!

July 29.—Having excused myself from dining out with the Balgraves, a note from her this morning. But it will not do. Company and the world will only draw off my mind from those religious contemplations and that course of reading which is favourable to prayer, repentance, and reformation. I wish not to lessen my grief or banish my feelings of that sorrow which turns my heart at present to seek God. I dread it will come 289but too soon; and were it not for this apprehension I should go on my journey to Lincolnshire for the Board directly, but I wish to confirm these feelings and earnestly pray for the Divine grace to preserve them to the extirpation from my heart of love for the world or any of its follies.

[Note added by A. Y. in 1817.]

Throughout many of the succeeding notes, several expressions occur not all consistent with true evangelical religion; but I would not afterwards alter them, because I wished to ascertain, on the re-perusal of these papers, what was at the moment of my affliction the state of my mind and of my faith; and when I consider what were the books which I read and admired, I cannot be surprised at any such remarks falling from my pen.

I have often reflected on the great mercy and goodness of God in not permitting my religious opinions to be permanently injured by some of the works which it will be found I so eagerly perused at a period when I could not have one moment’s conversation with any truly pious character. Two circumstances probably contributed to this effect: first, the incessant attention which I gave to reading the New Testament; and secondly, my ardent study of Mr. Wilberforce’s ‘Practical Christianity,’ though without thoroughly understanding it.

The solitary life I condemned myself to, or, to speak with more propriety, which alone I relished, while reading sixteen or seventeen hours a day, and in which I consequently rather devoured books than read them, 290was, I think, very advantageous, and possibly more so in the final result than if my authors had been more truly sound.

I have since perused many works which, had they fallen into my hands at that time, would probably have made me quit my retirement and rush into the society of men who would have conducted me, in my then state of mind, to the utmost lengths of enthusiasm.

The writers I consulted were well calculated to lay a certain solidity of foundation in the great leading truths of Christianity, which formed a basis whereon it was easy afterwards to raise a more evangelical edifice.

In all this business I cannot but admire the goodness of the Almighty in protecting me from many evils to which I might easily have been led by my troubled feelings.

[Diary continued.]

Read Dr. Isaac Barrow’s sermon on submission to the Divine will. He seems a powerful writer, but his language is debased by expressions void of all dignity. Read a good deal in Barrow on the pre-existence of human souls. Very singular; the texts on which he builds support him very faintly, yet there is a degree of probability in the system consonant to reason.

30th.—Prayed to God over the remains of my dear child, and the circumstance fills my mind with that melancholy that is not unsuitable to religious feelings. I do not wonder at the custom of the primitive Christians praying at the tombs of the departed, it is an obvious and natural prejudice.

Finished Barrow, and wrote to my friend Mr. Cole 291to desire he would apply to his neighbour, the learned Bryant, to know his opinion of that question. Began Dr. More on the ‘Immortality of the Soul.’ Capel Lofft spent the day with us; his conversation is ready on any subject, and mine led to serious ones, which he seems to like. We had much that was metaphysical on the soul (pre-existence), a future state, &c. He is of opinion that heaven is not so very different from our ideas of what this world might be, as are commonly entertained; and rightly observes, that if death, evil, anxiety, and disease, with corporeal passions, were banished, this earth would be a heaven; and that the knowledge of one another hereafter is not at all inconsistent with our Saviour’s expression, ‘in My Father’s house are many mansions.’

31st.—Read Littleton’s sermon on the necessity of well husbanding our time. It is excellent, he has thoughts and modes of expanding his observations that are beyond the common run. Laid aside Dr. More on the ‘Immortality of the Soul;’ he gets so high in the region of fancy, and is so full of jargon and supposition, under the formula of demonstrations, that I am disgusted with his farrago; and [there is] so much on witches, apparitions, &c., as to be mere rubbish.

Read Sherlock’s sixth sermon on the ‘Immortality of the Soul,’ which is an admirable one. I see plainly from what I feel upon occasion of the severe, dreadfully severe misfortune that I have met with, that under great afflictions there can be no real consolation but in religion. I have mused and meditated much on what 292philosophy, as it is called, could afford in such an exigency, but the amount would be no more than the employment of the mind, and preventing its dwelling without interruption on the loss sustained, the comfort to be drawn from it would be weak and vain; but the Gospel offers considerations which bear immediately on the source of the evil; affords matter of consolation in the certainty of another life, and in those promises which meet the yearnings of the distempered soul; diffuses a calm and quiet resignation to the Divine will, under the pleasing hope of seeing those again in the next world whom we have loved tenderly in this. To me it seems that when this wish is founded on a virtuous object here as that of a parent and a child, the very hope is an argument in its favour, because it is perfectly consistent with infinite benevolence to grant it—and the desire must be universal in every human mind.

August 1.—Read about half of Sherlock on ‘Immortality,’ but my patience was then quite exhausted; the verbiage is such that it sickens one, though I approve the doctrine entirely and agree with him in everything. What a loss! that excellent books for matter should be so written, or rather spun into such endless circumlocutions that time is wasted for want of compression. Read three or four sermons of Littleton—clear, lucid, and impressive.

At night a Dane came, recommended by Sir J. Sinclair. Unfortunate to all my feelings. I refuse dining with all my friends, and to be tormented with a trifler who can speak neither French nor English.

293My mind is in a state that cannot bear interruption. I love to mope alone, and reflect on my misery.

August 2.—Began Scott’s^[181] ‘Christian Life,’ but Smythies having sent me the sixth volume of Bishop Newton’s^[182] works, containing a dissertation on the ‘Intermediate State,’ I read it with equal eagerness and satisfaction. It exceeds on that subject all I have yet met with. He is of opinion, in which all agree, that good spirits will know each other; and probably, from the parable of Lazarus, have some knowledge of what passes on earth. But that is of little consequence in comparison with the most consoling and comfortable idea contained in the first opinion. And what a call is it to strive with earnestness and ardour to arrive at a situation that will recompense us in so great a degree for every evil and sorrow we can meet with in this world. Can I then hope, by dedicating the rest of my life here to God, to join my dear child hereafter, my mother, my other daughter, and my sister; and should it so please the Almighty in His mercy, my father and brother? Of the females I can have little doubt, or rather none. I know too little of the lives of the others to venture to pronounce. Read also Bishop Newton’s dissertation on the Resurrection, general judgment, and final state of man. They are all excellent, and I rather devoured than read them. These books I must buy to read again with more attention.

3rd.—The Dane is gone, and therefore I am left to 294my favourite contemplations. Newton’s dissertations are consoling, for they leave me no doubts about that hideous doctrine, the sleep of the soul, which, however it might have been suited for the dead, is dreadful to those they leave behind. For the rest of my life to know that my dear child is in a state of conscious existence, and consequently happy, is the first of comforts; but to feel the enlivening warmth and light of the sun, thinking that she felt nothing, but slept in the cold grave, would have almost sunk me into it. No! she lives, and as there is reason to believe, the departed spirits have some knowledge of what passes here. What a call is it to conduct myself so as to give no pain to her! Let me imagine myself for ever seen by the spirits of my mother and my child. Let me have a keen feeling of the pain any unworthy action or impure thought would give to them, and of the pleasure they would reap from seeing the reverse; that I was so living as gave them a hope of my joining them hereafter. Let me, if possible, entertain this persuasion till I am convinced of it. I cannot have the thought without being the better man. Oh! guard me against relapsing into evil negligence, the two certain fruits of pleasure and prosperity.

What are the friendships of the world! What consolation, what comfort!

When most wanted it is sure to fail. One has business, another pleasure; one, a family, another a husband, all have something to render them broken reeds to such as are in want; and whether the boon be comfort or money, they prove the same to the 295touchstone. Who have been my friends? Symonds and Carter are good men, but I have seen them [of late] only once. Who must I name but Ogden, Sherlock, Jortin, Bishop Newton, Butler, Locke, and Clarke? These have told me how to make a friend not like to fail in the time of need, my God and my Saviour. May I strengthen and confirm that friendship and turn it to be a habit of my life! And thou, most gentle spirit of my departed child, if it is allowed thee to look down on earth, be my guardian angel and lead me to everlasting life, to join thee to part no more!

4th.—Read three of Bishop Sherlock’s sermons and one of Dr. Clarke’s, also some passages in his ‘Demonstration of the Truth of Revealed Religion.’

5th.—Read a very good sermon of Bishop Sherlock on Redemption, the third in fourth volume. Bishop Butler on human ignorance, excellent. This subject, in the books I have yet read, has not been sufficiently treated, it might be made to refute all the infidels, and draw mankind to a more religious life.

My dear girl’s books are come, her unfinished work, her letters, &c. Melancholy employment to unpack and arrange them in her room. If any difference I think of her with more, rather than with less regret; yet I hope and trust, not without resignation to the Almighty will of the great and good Being whose providence has deprived me of her. I think I feel that this deep regret, this calm sorrow will last my life, and that no events can happen that will ever banish her from my mind. Ranby called and I conversed with him about her till tears would, had I continued it, 296stopped my speaking. I hate and pity those who avoid talking to the afflicted upon the subject which causes their affliction, it argues a little trifling mind in one party or the other.

Read Bishop Sherlock’s ‘Dissertation respecting the Sense of the Ancients on the Fall of Man,’ which seems to me (who am, however, no judge) a very clear and satisfactory work. He appears to have a singular talent in reconciling seeming difficulties in knotty texts of Scripture, and opens every subject with great clearness and an acute spirit of discrimination.

I suppose there must be some commonplace book of divinity, but I know not whose; a collection of luminous passages from such an immensity of writings as there are on this most important of all subjects would be very useful; yet every man should make his own, selecting such topics and observations as come home to his own case and bosom.

Were I not going now a most uninteresting journey, I would do this for myself. This tour hangs on my mind; nothing would suit my feelings so well as to stay here in my present melancholy gloom, reading divinity, and endeavouring so steadily to fix my mind on eternity and the hope of joining my dear child, as to work a change in my habits, my life, my conversation, and pursuits; and to do all that human frailty will permit to reconcile myself to the Almighty. These thoughts, however, I shall try to preserve in spite of a journey. I will take the New Testament and Wilberforce with me, and read a portion every day, and spend the Sundays in a manner I have never done yet in travelling.

297August 7.—To Ely. Called for a moment on Carter, who thinks so highly of Bishop Newton that he intends to buy his works.

At Ely quite alone, and no resource but in my own melancholy ideas. My first thought was to send to a Mr. Hall, who has hired Tattersall’s farm, or Mr. Metcalfe, a minor canon, who has written in the ‘Annals of Agriculture’—but I rejected the scheme and kept to solitude. As soon as I finished dinner I began Mr. Wilberforce for the fourth time, reading with renewed attention. I hear many objections to him, of his being a Presbyterian engrafted on a Methodist, but it is arrant nonsense. My mind goes with him in every word. View the Minster and Trinity chapel, and venerate the piety of former ages that raised such noble edifices in honour of God the Almighty giver and governor of all things. I once thought such buildings the efforts of superstition, perhaps folly! How different are my present sentiments! for what can be more rational than to raise temples of a character that shall impress some idea, however weak, of the sublimity of that infinite Being who made and pervades all that exists, except His own great creative self!

8th.—Rise at five, write to my friends Dr. Valpy and C. Cole. To Peterborough. Much time for reflection, and it is singular that even while I am depressed with deep melancholy at the loss I have sustained, yet unholy ideas and imaginations will intrude. Is this the devil and his powers of darkness which buffet and beset us? Is not depravity and sin so inherent in our natures that we are ever liable to these wanderings 298which so disgrace our nature at better moments? But the conclusion, whatever it be owing to, is clear, that the government of the thoughts is an essential part of our duty, as Johnson has well explained in an admirable ‘Rambler.’ Such thoughts, unresisted, seize and take possession of the mind, and they cannot do that without leading to action and all the guilt that may follow. Repel the first germinating principle of the idea, and the difficulty is not great; but indulge the pleasing dream and the heart is vitiated, for the imagination is impure.

[The remainder of the diary, in the same strain, is much too long for insertion. Here are a few closing sentences.]

September 2 [in Yorkshire].—To what is it that I shall return? My child no more! To what at London? Solitary in my lodgings, where am I to send for her whose cheerfulness gilded every scene, and little pleasing ways lent such a charm to render her presence such a comfort to me? All gone—gone for ever! Of that description of feelings what remains? A blank!—a desert!... Cried over the hair of my sweet departed Bobbin! Never more in this world to see thee again!

October 15.—I have torn my heart to pieces with looking at my dear child’s hair! Melancholy remains, but how precious when their owner is no more! I am to see her no more in this world. Gone for ever!

London, November 13.—This day se’nnight I came to town with Mrs. Y. and Mary. I knew it would be a very uncomfortable plan; but to do as I would be done by made it proper.

299November 26.—I have been a week at Petworth, an interesting, splendid, gay and cheerful week, and, as too often the case, a vain, frivolous, and impious one. Sir John Sinclair would have me on the Sunday go to Goodwood. Never a serious word, never a soul to church from that house to thank God for the numerous blessings showered down upon it, and the means of good which 60,000l. a year confers. Yet Lord Egremont does all that could be wished as far as humanity, charity, and doing moral benefits can—but no religion. In the chapel, no worship, no hats off but my own—dreadful example to a great family and to his children and to 2,500 people in the town. I talked to Arthur, and strongly recommended to him to attend constantly and to keep himself clear from such a want of piety. He disapproves of it much; and I pray to God that yet he may not be corrupted by such evil examples, but imbibe a dislike to such want of gratitude. I watched for opportunities of serious remark, but none of effect offered except one observation on Lady Webster’s infidelity in religion, when I threw in a word or two. The very virtues of such people do mischief by recommending their irreligious example.

The following letters are selected from those received this year:—

From Edmund Burke, Esq., alluding to the projects in Parliament before named for regulating the price of labour.

Mr. Burke died July 7 [note by A. Y.].

304From John Symonds, Esq., on public affairs, very gloomy, with much condemnation of Mr. Pitt.

Assessed taxes—Society—Mr. Pitt and the Board of Agriculture—A foolish joke—Dinners to poor children—Interview with the King—Royal farming—Correspondence—Bradfield—Incidents of home travel—Portrait of a great lady—Correspondence.

January 9, 1798.—At Petworth. This is the way in which I keep a journal; had I the abilities of Johnson it might be an excuse, but I am as idle as he without the talents that enabled him to think to good purpose.

London has passed away till the vacation without much to note, yet always something; for I met many at Mrs. M. Montagu’s parties twice a week, whose conversation was interesting. Very few dinners, for the town was empty. Attended divine service at Mr. Cecil’s chapel, and ought to have made memoranda.

The breakfast at Wilberforce’s with Mr. Serjeant, Hawkins, Brown, Thornton, &c., all members in committee on the assessed taxes.^[187] Miss Griffiths, the friend and mother of my ever dear Bobbin at school, coming to 313board with Mrs. Y.; these and many more articles all passed over, and, above all, the reflections which thronged in my mind on the conclusion of that year which deprived me of my child and turned my heart so imperfectly to God Almighty. Without that event how should I have been able to bear the stroke of the taxes, my share of which will I fear be 100l.

Had I been out of debt it would have been comparatively light, but I am seized about some bills which yet remain, and which, if I pay,^[188] shall not be able to pay those taxes. I have advertised my cottage and eighty acres of land to let, but no chance of getting such a rent as I know I ought to have to make letting answer.

I have been here with Lord Egremont above a fortnight. A good deal of rabble, but some better. Lord Spencer, Lord Althorp, Lord Dungarvan, Lord Milton, Lord Stair, Sir John Shelley, Mr. James Feiryman, &c. I shall stay the whole vacation.

February 14.—Another great gap, in which time I was four days with the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, with a strange party, for all in all I think the most strange I have been in for many years. Trevis, the pseudo-Venetian Jew, who came long ago to England, has ran through a great fortune, reduced from 200,000l.to 1,200l. a year, having shined with most satanic light in the annals of gallantry; Lady Stanhope, Lady Cadogan, and a hundred more. Strong 314parts, wits, originality (name evidently omitted here) and at seventy-one sings wonderfully; Lord Lauderdale, who is a very pleasant, easy, cheerful companion with knowledge, and so more capable of doing mischief; Lord Maynard, Johns the parson, Bob Lee, Bligh, &c. The duke has much good sense and clearness of head.

On my return to town, Lord Carrington applied to me to get a drainer for Mr. Pitt at Holwood. I told him none to be had but from a distance, and at a considerable expense; that perhaps it was an easy job, and if so his own people could do it if the drains were marked out for them, and I would go and look when nobody there. Next day he came again from Pitt with thanks, and desiring me to go when he was there.

I went, and examined the land. A hill wet from springs, the cure obvious. So I am to do it for him. He and Lord Auckland and Lord Carrington walked round the place with me, and then returned to a cold dinner, where we debated the Board of Agriculture, and Pitt seemed pleased with my idea of Government hiring the Bishop of Llandaff’s house for the Board, and so getting rid of the difficulty of not being able to quit Sir J. Sinclair’s without sixteen members agreeing in the affirmative, a stupid statute they made.

By the first reports of the Board, and a multitude of other expenses equally useless, Sir John ran the Board so much in debt that it became a question of great difficulty how they should be enabled to carry on any business at all. Through a spirit of liberality in many individuals, a subscription was set on foot, and ten guineas apiece by members and honorary members, 315which kept them for some time on their legs. The revenue of the Board went entirely to printers, above eighty reports in quarto, with broad margins, having been given away to any who would accept them; and they were in general so miserably executed, that they brought the institution into contempt.

While Sir John Sinclair was engaged in this pursuit he thought of nothing but the establishment of his own character, and imagined that his indefatigable exertions, misplaced as they were, gave him a claim to the attention of Government, and, it is said, induced him to ask a peerage. But Mr. Pitt not acceding to the proposition, he next desired to be a Privy Councillor. When this second gentle request failed, he set hard to work to form a party of his own in the House of Commons in opposition to Government, which by degrees completely estranged Mr. Pitt from him; and he was, by the votes of the official members, turned out of the chair. Lord Carrington taking me to Holwood, we walked about the place for some time before Mr. Pitt came down. When he arrived, ordering a luncheon, he said he had desired Lord C. to bring me, that he might understand what members of the Board of Agriculture were proper to fill the chair.

I named Lord Egremont. ‘He has been applied to,’ rejoined Mr. Pitt, ‘and declined it.’ I then mentioned Lord Winchilsea; the same answer was returnedreturned. I named one or two more, but the minister seemed not to relish their appointment. I next said Lord Somerville, who was famous for the attention he had paid to some branches of husbandry. Mr. Pitt’s 316reply was, ‘He is not quite the thing, but I doubt we must have him,’ and the conversation concluded with an apparent determination that Lord S. should be the man. He was accordingly elected; and I, the same day, received the orders of the Board instantly to look out for a house (because Sir John S. being turned out would no longer volunteer his), which I accordingly did, and fixed upon one in Sackville Street, into which the Board immediately moved their property, and appointed the secretary to reside in the house, with an allowance of one hundred guineas a year for paying the porter, keeping a maid in the house in summer, and finding coals and candles.

April 8.—A long gap, in which much has happened. The election, and Sir J. Sinclair deposed. The world gives its all to politics, but it was not caused solely by that motive; his management of the 3,000l. a year was next to throwing it away, and gradually created much disgust; had his industry been under the direction of a better judgment he would have been an admirable president. I have hired a house for him and myself in Sackville Street. Crag, the clerk, wants an apartment, and I have befriended him with Lord Somerville, the new president, much against my own convenience, for the house is not large enough; but, do as we would be done by, must be a rule far more obeyed by me in future than formerly, and it is more a convenience to him than an evil to me. It would be easy for me to prevent it, and time has been that I should have taken that part; but God send me the power to follow better dictates. I have been twice more at Holwood. I have written a 317new pamphlet, a ‘Letter to Wilberforce.’ I have worked hard at my Lincoln report, and the election, with the business public and private concerning it, has been on the whole such a worry, that I long for a week or two of privacy and quiet, to render my mind more tranquil; it seems as if my whole life is to be lost in a bustle. I am now going to Petworth, and within the week to Bradfield; there I hope to make a momentary retreat, and have time for recollection. I do not suffer anything to distract me on a Sunday, or I should be lost in this hurry, and everything serious driven from my mind. I have anxiety also about my new habitation on another account, which is the doubt whether they will furnish it for me; if they should not, it will be a most heavy burthen of at least 200l., and an unjust one, elected as I am annually.

Last Sunday se’nnight a new scene of sorrow and vexation. Arthur sent me a foolish letter of his written to Lloyd from Dover, by way of a stupid joke, describing an ideal conversation with some of O’Connor’s jurymen,^[189] to frighten Lloyd, who sent it to Lofft, and he to Walker, to Erskine, &c. It was read in court at Maidstone, and Lord Egremont told me it had an immense effect, exciting universal indignation.

The Attorney-General pledged himself to punish it. The Jacobin papers kindly assigned it to Arthur Young, so all believed it to be me. I had a letter contradicting sent to four papers, and have been in 318incessant worry ever since, writing for explanation, employing Gotobed and Garrow, and seeing Lord Egremont often on it. I sent an express to the Attorney-General, with a letter to him, and another to O’Connor’s counsel. All agree Lofft to be a base villain, pretending so much friendship for all the family, and keeping the letter ten days in spite of Lloyd demanding it, and never asking any explanation or naming it to Mrs. Y., Mary, or A. I have fretted about this affair and worried myself terribly, and with reasons, for it will be the utter ruin of my son. Possibly a fine of 500l. and two years’ imprisonment if he is not able to prove it to be a jest. To avoid being punished as a rascal, he must prove himself the greatest fool in Christendom, which he certainly is, for the letter was unquestionably a humbug.

June 23rd.—I have had a roasting three weeks languishing for the country; but, however, not discontented, and bringing my mind with some success to submit cheerfully to everything I meet with. Arthur has been in Kent and procured nine or ten affidavits of the jurymen; those who refuse he never set eyes on till he made the application, so he has cleared himself to me, but whether it will do for the Attorney-General is another question. It is a sad business, and will be very expensive, when I can ill afford it.

I have been four days at Woburn with Lord Somerville—a very great meeting. The duke desired me to preside at the lower end of the table; he told me to keep Stone from it.

I have been thrice at Holwood and conversed with 319Mr. Pitt every time, but it is only on farming. No wonder. Reading Baxter’s ‘Serious Call to a Holy Life,’ which I have done with great pleasure, and have begun it a second time. I think it an admirable performance. Charity and a universal intention to please God in everything are recommended with great ability.

I have forgotten to add a word about my new habitation. It is an admirable house, and Mrs. Young’s only apprehension was the plan of Cragg, the first clerk, having apartments in it; but when it came to be debated, Lord Carrington procured it entirely to me, with an allowance of 90l. a year for a porter, maid, coals, &c. Upon the whole it is an arrangement which is equal in all to 100l. a year to me, and in comfort, saving me the trouble of thrice a year seeking lodgings, as good as a hundred more.

I am thankful to God for it, and may He give me His grace not to apply to ill uses the favour of His providence.

July 14th!!!—This day twelvemonth it pleased God to take to Himself my ever dear and beloved child. In the evening at the Hall, my wife and self, children, and Miss Griffith joined in prayer.

[The remainder of the diary, chiefly detailing morbid religious introspection, is not of sufficient interest to include.]

Notes from Memorandum-book

March.—A dinner for fifteen poor children, 11s. 10d.^[190]

Another dinner for thirty-seven children, 16s. 6d.

320Another dinner for forty-seven children, 1l. 6s. 6d.

April.—This month seven dinners to about forty-eight children each time.

May.—Four dinners to about forty-eight children each time.

This year I sold the copyright of my ‘Travels’ for 250 guineas.

April 1799.—In London. I am alone, therefore at peace. I rise at four or five o’clock and go to bed at nine to ten P.M.

I have no pleasures, and wish for none, saving that comfort which religion gives me; and the sooner I make it my only pleasure the wiser I shall be. I go to no amusements, and read some Scripture every day; never lay aside my good books but for business. I have dined out but little, and wish for no more than I have. I get into habits of reading and writing, and don’t like to quit them; privacy, and silence, and retirement suit me, and I am content. New servants, all; and the cook, a two-handed Yahoo, and cannot boil a potato. No matter, I am passed being troubled at such things, but I like old servants, and can’t bear this change.

May 4 of this year I went to the opera with Mrs. Oakes;^[191] and that amusement which had for so many years been my delight, I met so coldly as to be almost asleep through much of the performance. What a change had taken place in my mind! This was the last public diversion at which I have been present.

I thank the Father of mercies that I have yet 321retained my attention to religion, that I have read few books but those of devotion, that I live very retired without any regret, that I rise at four or five o’clock, and never omit my private devotions, morn and eve, and but rarely family prayer. Thank the Almighty goodness I have almost weaned myself from the world.

June 4.—The King’s birthday. I have been in Kensington Gardens to see the King review 8,000 volunteers of London and Westminster. These corps owe their origin I may, without presumption, say to me, and I should in a former part of my life have been full of mortification and envy at the gay and brilliant situation of others, whilst I was a humble spectator lost in the crowd, ‘the mob’ as I should once have called them; but, thank God, I had no such ideas, and am more free from sin of such thoughts than I am from that of entering this note of it. My mind was much occupied in thinking of such multitudes of people of all ranks, all ages, from infancy to decrepitude, gay, lively, and running at the tilt of pleasure, followed by more splendid scenes of courts, balls, dinners and all, all to be in a few years in their graves, their souls in their eternal doom, thoughtless as they may now be.

I work myself as often as I can, and as much as I can, into meditations on the utter vanity of all such scenes and thence to the inanity.

July 1.—Wrote Mrs. Oakes an account of my visits to the King’s farm. I got Sir J. Banks to ask his leave to see his farm. He gave it readily, and said he would order Frost, his bailiff, to show me everything 322completely. I wrote, but my letter came, by mistake of the post, after I was there myself; and as Frost knew the King would like to see me, he went when likely to meet him on his return from a review. The Queen, Prince of Wales, the Princesses, &c., were in two sociables, and the King on horseback, with his train of lords, aides-de-camp, &c. He inquired who I was, and called me to him; rode up to the Queen, &c., and introduced me. The Queen said it was long since I was at Windsor, &c., not recollecting me at first; they passed on, and then the King rode with me over his farm for two and a half hours, talking farming, asking questions without number, and waiting for answers, and reasoning upon points he differed in. Explained his system of crops, his reasons, with many observations; enquired about the Board, the publications of it, the ‘Annals,’ and asked if I continued to work on my ‘Elements,’ which I have been many years about; recommended me to compress the sense of quotations in short paragraphs, ‘as there are many, Mr. Young, who catch the sense of a short paragraph, that lose the meaning of a long one;’ said the work would be highly useful. Those who read the two letters of R. R. in the last ‘Annals,’ written by his Majesty, will see how clearly he expresses himself. He enquired about my farm, grasses, sheep, &c.; he has himself only 160 lambs from 800 ewes. His strong land farm is in admirable order, and the crops all clean and fine. He was very desirous that I should see all, and ordered Frost to carry me to two or three other things next morning. I found fault with his hogs. He said I must not find fault with a 323present to him; the Queen was so kind as to give them from Germany, and while the intention was pleasing, we must not examine the object too critically. ‘The value of the intention, Mr. Young, is greater than a better breed.’ He told me he learned the principles of his farming from my books, and found them very just. Quoted particularly the ‘Rural Economy:’ Cattle give manure, and manure corn. ‘Well understood now, sir, but not so well before you wrote.’ When I said anything that struck him he turned about to tell it to the nobles that followed. He is the politest of men, keeps his hat off till every one is covered. An officer with a lady in a whisky drew in his horse as he saw the King crossing the road, taking his hat off. The King rode up to him, uncovered, and conversed a little, and afterwards said, ‘I think it is Captain Thorp, of such a regiment.’ What a memory!

Enquired much about the Duke of Bedford’s party at Woburn, &c. &c. I forgot three-fourths. He was in high spirits, and looks remarkably well.

My son this year married Miss Jane Berry, daughter of Edward Berry, Esq. The connection arose from her being at school with my dear Bobbin at Campden House, and afterwards visiting us at Bradfield.

Selected letters from those received this year:—

From Count Rumford on lime-kilns and cement for fire-places, &c.

1800. Bradfield.—I never come to this place without reaping all the pleasure which any place can give me now. It is beautiful and healthy, and is endeared to me by so many recollections, melancholy ones now, alas! that I feel more here than anywhere else. Here have I lived from my infancy, here my dear mother breathed her last, here was all I knew of a sister, and the church contains the remains of my father, mother, and ever beloved child! Here, under my window, her little garden—the shrubs and flowers she planted—the willow on the island, her room, her books, her papers. There have I prayed to the Almighty that I might join her in the next world. All that locality can give an interest to in this world is here—sweet Bradfield, to use an epithet of my dear mother fifty years ago at Bath!—the scene also of many and great sins; and of none perhaps greater than the black ingratitude of never thanking God with fervency for the blessing of such a spot till misery turned my heart to Him, and oh! how cold my thanksgivings compared with what I ought to feel!

To me it has, however, often been a source of foolish 330uneasiness. I have reflected on the increasing taxes and burthens on land and houses in this kingdom as the inevitable cause of ruin to all little estates; they are gone or fast going in this country, and what hope can I have that this should remain in the posterity of so poor a person as I am?

I have preserved it by a life of industry and singular success, or it had gone long ago. But such thoughts are wicked. All is in the hands of the great Preserver and Disposer of all earthly as well as all other existence.

How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to Woburn! This time twelvemonth I dined with the duke on the Sunday. The party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank; the entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day, but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church and eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of fashion.

In my way from Royston to Baldock, passing a village I saw a couple of cottages which seemed very miserable. Alighted therefore and entered one. The woman said she was very unhappy. I enquired why? Her daughter was now dead in the house. How old? Thirty-eight. Married to a glazier in London. She had been down with her mother some time for health in a decline, and died two days ago. ‘I hope she died a good Christian.’ ‘I hope so,’ replied the woman, who 331seemed to feel very little. And it is the blessing of God that they do not—they cannot afford to grieve like their betters. It was odd that I should happen to stop and enter a cottage with a corpse in it, but nothing interesting followed. God forbid it should be for want of my sifting and enquiring more—but nothing led to it. The husband was expected soon, and the woman has a son, a miller, who keeps her, a cow, and she had a good pig feeding at the door. She was, however, thankful for the trifle I gave her.

My adventures increase and have a strange similitude. Passing through Millbrook, near Lord Ossory’s, some cottages, with corn in their gardens, on the slopes of a narrow sandy vale, caught my eye, but speedily passing it was a second thought to stop the horse and walk down to them. There are thirteen of them, and all inhabited by owners. A hemp weaver, who lives in the first I entered, gave me an account of them all, and amongst the rest he named Underwood’s, who had a large family, and was sadly poor. I went to it. Poor indeed! the cottage almost tumbling down, the wind blowing through it on every side. On a bed, which was hardly good enough for a hog, was the woman very ill and moaning; she had been lately brought to bed, and her infant was dead in a cradle by the bedside. What a spectacle! She had four children living; one, a little girl, was at home, and putting together a few embers on the hearth. My heart sank within me at the sight of so much misery, and so dark, cold, tattered and wretched a room. Merciful God, to take the little child to Himself, rather than leave it existing in such a 332place. What a sight! I entered another cottage, which was lately built, neat and cheerful, the Widow Scarboro’s; she earns something by washing, but her smoky chimney most uncomfortable. No wonder, with the old broad high fire-place. In the depth of winter the door must be open. I told her how to cure it, but I wished to give her a Rumford grate and see it fixed. Impossible! and her evils are nothing to poor Underwood’s.

But how strange yesterday to find a dead woman in a house, and to-day a dead child, and in such an accidental manner, as it seems, to enter just these houses. No chance; the more I see, the more I reflect, the more I am convinced that the providence of the Almighty directs everything, but in a manner utterly incomprehensible to us; and it is the more incomprehensible from our paying so very little attention to it. If every one was to be careful to observe all such apparently accidental events, they would have reason to acknowledge the hand of Omnipotence. In three days how has what the world calls chance conducted my steps!

These poor people know not by what tenure they hold their land; they say they once belonged to the duke, but that the duke has swopped them away to my lord (Lord Ossory). How little do the great know what they swop and what they receive! What would be a blessing poured into their hands if they knew how to use it. What a field is here! How very trifling the repairs to render these poor families warm and comfortable! Above their gardens on one side there is a waste fern tract now enclosed, from which 333small additions might be given them, yet would enable them to live from their ground at least much better than at present. What have not great and rich people to answer, for not examining into the situation of their poor neighbours?

To Woburn Abbey. Here is wealth and grandeur and worldly greatness; but I am sick of it as soon as I enter these splendid walls. I had rather be amongst the cottagers at Millbrook had I but the means of aiding them. I will see Lord Ossory, and try to do something for them.

In these farming tours^[195] of mine, vain ideas will too often rise in my mind on the importance of my labour to the public good; and were the improvement of agriculture alone to be considered, I believe little doubt could be entertained. But what is the tendency of all these improvements except to add to the wealth and prosperity of a country that is already under a most heavy responsibility to the Almighty for innumerable temporal blessings; repaid with the black ingratitude of irreligion, and a general contempt of everything serious or sacred. Carriers’ waggons and stage coaches are passing here every hour in open defiance of the laws 334of God and man; and the Sabbath is the sure day of labour for all travelling gentlemen. What horses are they that rest, that can by any means be made to work? Our fields are made to smile with cultivation for the profits of men thankless to Heaven. Can such a country continue to be thus blessed? I fear and dread some terrible reverse, and have the only hope that the prayers of religious men, Methodists as they are called, may be heard, and avert the misfortunes we deserve. It damps all vanity of public good attending such attempts as mine, to think of the use that is made of great wealth. Affliction and poverty may do something in bringing nations, like individuals, to their senses; but to increase the wealth that adds to our irreligion and ingratitude, is of a very poor importance indeed, and too questionable to permit one vain thought to be fairly founded.

July 7.—Breakfasting at Huntingdon from Kimbolton, after spending just a week with the duke and duchess. It has been so pleasant and agreeable that I am unhinged on quitting them. The duchess pleases me as much or more than any woman I have met these many years. Her character in every worldly respect is most amiable. There is a native ease, simplicity, and naïveté of character in her which delights me; and when I consider the life of the Duchess of Gordon, her mother, the great patroness of every dissipation, I am amazed at this secluded young duchess, who never goes to London, loves a retired life, and is quite contented on a fortune very moderate for the rank of her husband. She gave me her whole history, from going one summer for some weeks to drink goat’s whey on the mountains 335many miles beyond Gordon Castle, and running up and down the hills bare-footed, driving down the goats and milking them; and being delighted with the place and the life, though no human being within many miles except the family and an old woman of the solitary house. This was the case of all the girls; she never went to school, and laid in a fine stock of health, and with it a sweetness of temper and simplicity of character which, joined with an excellent understanding, contributed so much to form her as she is at present, calculated to be a blessing to her husband. She loves him, and behaves with a most exemplary and unexampled patience and mildness under his connection with Mrs. ——. I like her greatly,^[196] and wish I could add that she was religious. She goes to church often, she says, and brings her four lovely children up to attend it; but I see she has no sense or feeling of real religion, which I spoke of repeatedly, and earnestly recommended. The next time they come to Culford they both promised to come and see me, and will do it I have no doubt. The spectacle in this age of seeing a very plain table, a plain unaffected way of living, and everything about them modest and moderate in scale, very little company, and never at London, yet all cheerfulness and content, even under the above circumstance, speaks a good heart and an amiable temper, as much 336as such can be good with the Almighty coming in for so poor a share of its attentions. I do and will pray to God that He will give her His grace to change in this respect, and then she will be a pattern for her sex.

July 7.—To Huntingdon, St. Ives, and Holywell, at the Reverend Mr. Hutchinson’s, who was long at Kimbolton, and had livings given to him by the late duke; [has] four stout, well-looking, unmarried daughters, that have been marriageable some years. A common spectacle, and everywhere from the same cause: the fornication of men with the abandoned of the sex robs thousands of such virtuous and good girls of husbands. The more I reflect, the more I see the reason of God’s wrath and denunciations against this vice in Scripture, however natural it is, and however powerful the temptation. The more the temptation the more the wickedness to throw so many into it, by depriving those of husbands to whom God has given the right, but of which the vice of man deprives them. Every man would have his wife, and every woman her husband, were it not for whores and whoremongers. Christianity is in everything consistent with reason, morals, and the religion of nature.

At St. Ives [met] a drunken beast, a doctor of divinity, is intoxicated every day; drunk about the streets; introduced himself to me, and breathed like a puncheon of rum in my face.

Sunday, 20th: Downham.—I have had a busy week and gained a great variety of good intelligence; but what is it all but vanity and vexation of spirit if examined with view of a superior nature! However, it is my 337undoubted duty to do my best, and I must approve upon the whole of exerting as much industry for the Board as ever I did upon my own account. My employment is not only lawful, but useful; God grant me to render it as much so to the poor as circumstances will permit. In this week I have been at Wing’s at Thorney Abbey. A party of ladies [here], Mrs. Ansel of Ormsby in Lincolnshire and two daughters. They attacked me, but with politeness, on my rabbit article in the Lincoln report. I found from their conversation on Wilberforce and H. More that they are good Christians, so they might say anything; but we parted very good friends. At March: Reverend Mr. Jobson and a vulgar steward, a prating but a useful fellow, Wandby, dined with me.

At Downham: Lemon, Dashwood, and a poor fen man Talbot. I have gone on well for the object of my journey; would that I went on as well in the great journey to the next world! At church twice; Mr. Dashwood in his sermon spoke very properly on a topic which I have often thought should be inveighed upon vigorously: the great indecency of people sitting when they should kneel, which is now everywhere so common; but in the afternoon a better congregation and no sermon! For a clergyman to have an audience collected ready to hear him and yet quit the church without preaching, how very lukewarm he must be in care of souls who can bring himself without violence to such a conduct! Is this the way with Methodists as they are called? God forbid! With a 338church thus filled as that of England is, who can wonder at Sectaries increasing? All is poor work when men are not in earnest—when they are not as animated and eager in their sacred calling as others are in their business and shops. A parson should always think: what would St. Paul do on this occasion?

Sunday, August 3.—Dined last Tuesday with the Grand Jury at Cambridge, and in the afternoon Lord Hardwicke took me with him to Wimpole. On the Thursday, a great public day, seventy-three at dinner, turtle, venison, and everything that could be. A Lord Lieutenant’s gala which has not been these four years. Lady Cotton, Sir Wm. Rowley’s sister, there all the week, and a Miss Coburn. Lady Margaret Fordyce has uncommon talents, and reading and languages, French, Italian and German, but I mistake if she is not a bit of a fury when she has a mind. I don’t like her countenance. Lady H. pleases me better. Lord H. is very clever, has very good parts and a clear head, a man of business. I was pleased to find that he went twice to church, and read a long prayer at night to all the family, taken from the Liturgy. I shall be here a week, and have idled none of it away, but beat the country well for enclosures. I have not, however, broken my resolution of passing Sunday alone without being [misled], for even in such a family I had a farming expedition to the next parish, and conversation is never religious—I hope I shall do it no more.

Night.—Lord Hardwicke had all the family together, and read a long prayer taken from the Liturgy, from almost every part of it. I am glad to find a great Lord 339who is not ashamed of praying to God. May there be many such!

4th.—I left Wimpole, and the 9th came to Bradfield after a journey of eight weeks, thanks to the Almighty, in health and safety. There passed a week, staying two Sundays. Mrs. Y. in great health, and when that is the case in too much irritation—God forgive her—life is a scene of worrying, time trifled with, a book never looked in, quarrels and irritation never subsiding. My daughter and daughter-in-law reading cart loads of novels. While at Bradfield I received from Sir J. Banks, confidentially, many enquiries about the means of encouraging the culture of hemp; they are therefore apprehensive of a war with Russia. At the time of the Russian armament I was consulted on the same subject by Lord Liverpool, but they do nothing except on the spur of the moment, and then never effectually. Heaven avert more wars, those scourges of humanity! This first week of my second journey^[197] I have laboured very hard in my enquiries, and travelled many miles on bad roads, not finishing the day till six in the evening, and then dining and having much writing. Such a life I should earnestly wish to avoid if I had a home tolerably comfortable, but mine is so far from that description in almost every respect that I submit the better to being ever in harness. It is the will of God, and my duty is to submit with cheerfulness.

October 6th: Hounslow.—Found near twenty letters at the post-office, and, among the rest, two from Parker of Ripon, attorney to Sir Cecil Wray, Kilvington, and 340Allanson, to inform he had orders to hold me to bail on my bond to them on buying Knaresboro’ Forest, as Abbey of Northampton has not paid one shilling rent or interest. This is a fine affair; it is true there is land security for the 4,000l. of double the value, but who am I to get to bail me? I fear this is the hand of God working against me, and that He means me chastisement. The Lord’s will be done! I shall pray earnestly to be spared, but if it is His will, be it done, and may He grant me resignation, patience, and submission to His correction. It comes heavy at the moment, for I was much injured at Enfield by coffee out of copper, as I suppose, with a violent purging colic and vomiting, and left by it in a state of great debility of body; this stroke of fresh anxiety cuts therefore. May God be appeased and spare me the affliction.

Last Sunday I read much in Hale’s ‘Contemplations: Moral and Divine,’ in which the Providence of God is treated more to my mind than in any other book I have read. I have derived on various occasions, as well as the present, much consolation from that most excellent work, which I now earnestly recommend to my children, and hope if they should ever read these words, they will think of their father and follow his advice to make that great lawyer’s book their constant companion.

On the close of this century it may not be improper to look back through the period of my own recollections in order to reflect on some eminent names that may be mentioned as forming the principal constellation of talents which have distinguished the period; and the 341more readily because I have had the honour of conversing with most of them, and being well known to several. In minuting such a list I may name the following, viz.: Burke, Pitt, Fox, Johnson, Reynolds, Barry, Burney, Miss Burney, H. More, Wilberforce, Soame.

The following are the selection of this year’s letters:—

Public affairs and prophecy—The divining rod—The appropriation of waste lands—The word ‘meanness’ defined—South’s sermons—Projected theological compendia—Correspondence—Journalising to ‘my friend’—Anecdote of Dean Milner and Pitt—Death of the Duke of Bedford—Napoleon and Protestantism.

March 20.—It is in vain to complain of gaps; if I had but attention enough to write only two lines every day I should have hope of going on. I have been thinking more seriously of the Journal, and of converting it to use as a memento of the progress I make in the only business worth real attention—my salvation through the merits of the Blessed Saviour. For this purpose I must fix on some hour of the day to be regular at it, and, if I hold my resolution, it shall be immediately after my prayers in the morning, being always up at 4 A.M. and sometimes at 3 A.M. I am then sure to be uninterrupted; positively I will begin to-morrow morning.

21st.—Dined yesterday with Lord Somerville. I did not like the day. Duke of Montrose, Duke of Athol, and Lord Rossmore sent excuses, but the Marquis of Abercorn, Lord Dalkeith, Lord Villiers, Lord Barrington, Mr. McDougal, Mr. Baird, and two Scotch 348members were there, the last but one a hard-headed, sensible man.

Much conversation, particularly farming. This morning Sir A. St. John Mildmay called to have my opinion of a Bill he is now bringing into Parliament to enable the clergy to give leases of their tithes beyond the term of their lives. The Archbishop has not negatived it, but such a Bill can no more pass than the abolition of tithes; it is open to such frauds that perhaps it ought not to pass.

My chief misfortune in having little society with well-disposed minds: I know few except Wilberforce and Cecil; the latter I rarely see, and W. is so full of business that I might nearly as well be unknown to him. I will urge him to form a Society to meet once a week for conversation merely on religion.

22nd, Sunday.—To be eager and alert in rising at 4 A.M. for all my secular employments and sluggish on the Lord’s Day, when, if I rise, it must be to His worship, seemed long ago a snare of Satan, which, blessed be God, I have resisted. I was yesterday at the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, the Bishop of Durham in the chair; it is an excellent institution, and may call down the blessing of God—may that Being grant them his grace to do good from right motives! With the Duke of Bedford on the Smithfield Society, and the whole day full of business, which, on the Sabbath, I banish as much as I can from my mind. In the evening my son and daughter only at home, and therefore I got an hour’s religious conversation with them on the times and the Prophecies.

349I have been too negligent of improving such opportunities, but the tremendous moment in which we live, so lately having seen the country without King, without minister, with a famine, and seven wars! If it be not a moment to call people to a serious recollection, nothing can ever do it.

So near the expiration of the 1,260 years of Daniel and St. John; the Turkish Empire on the point of destruction; a strange and unthought-of establishment in Egypt, a country that is to have much to do in the return of the Jews—ourselves in India, they may have some unknown relation to that phial to be poured out on the Euphrates to make way for the Kings of the East—altogether combine strangely to give suspicion that we are on the eve of some great events which are to usher in the final consummation of all things, and consequently the fall of the ten Kings of Europe. The times are truly awful, and demand such piety and resignation as no other period of modern history even approached to.

23rd.—At the Lock yesterday. Scott is now my favourite preacher, and I have heard him ever since I came to Town with great pleasure and attention in spite of a very bad manner. His matter is most excellent. Received the Sacrament.

24th.—Called yesterday on Mr. and Mrs. Montagu in their great house. It is said he has just lost a coal pit that was worth 6,000l. or 7,000l. a year; I had a card for her Monday parties, and not having been, I apologised. I must now and then go after Easter. But all company of the sort is flat to me. I have just made up the 350annual account for 1800, and the loss upon the year is 22l.; this meeting a tax on paper which will cost 48l. a year is alarming. I had entertained many vain hopes that the work after so many years’ continuance would have stood its ground, but I know not what to think. Now I must print only six instead of seven sheets, and try so for another year. If I lose then, I must give up the work, much as it will hurt me. The ‘Agricultural and Commercial Magazine’ and the ‘Farmers’ Magazine,’ which approach more to the nature of newspapers, and which have contained hardly one paper of real importance, have been selling well; such is the world, its judgment and discernment!

28th.—Yesterday the Board proceeded to Hyde Park in a body to see the experiments of Captain Hoar on the Virgula divina. He, many years ago, saw Lady Milbank’s surprising faculty of discovering springs, and trying, found that he had it himself. He is recommended to the Board by Mr. Lascelles, member for Yorkshire.

I found from the conductor of the waterworks at the reservoir then at work, that the twig in Mr. Hoar’s hand when he crossed them turned up in a surprising manner. He seemed, in the opinion of Sir Joseph Banks, to fail once, but in the four trials I watched, and in which I know he could not be acquainted with the direction of the pipes, he succeeded completely. Next Tuesday another trial.

To-morrow will be published in the ‘Annals’ the first parts of my essay on applying waste lands to the better support of the poor. I prepared it some time ago for the Board, as it was collected in my last summer’s 351journey; I read it to a committee—Lord Carrington, Sir C. Willoughby and Mr. Millington—who condemned it, and, after waiting a month, Lord C. told me I might do what I pleased with it for myself, but not print it as a work for the Board; so I altered the expressions which referred to the body, and sent it to the ‘Annals.’ I prayed earnestly to God on and since the journey for His blessing on my endeavours to serve the poor, and to influence the minds of people to accept it; but for the wisest reasons certainly He has thought proper not to do this, and for the same reasons probably it will be printed without effect. I think it, however, my duty to Him to do all I possibly can. Such events and circumstances I am well persuaded are entirely in His Divine management, and that we are mere instruments in His hands. Whether I print or not is a matter wholly unimportant, but the use made of it is in the hands of the Almighty alone. I am well persuaded that this is the only possible means of saving the nation from the ruin fast coming on by the misery of the poor and the alarming ruin of rates. God’s will be done!

29th.—Yesterday at the Farmers’ Club. I have little relish of these meetings, unless given to farming conversation, and this was nothing but wrangling about the disposition of money. Sunday before Easter.—Company and talk, eating and wine; sitting up late are ill preparations for the Sabbath.

31st.—The Duke of Bedford and Lord Winchilsea at the Club; filled up vacancies and settled the premiums. The Board greatly attended yesterday, and adjourned for the holidays.

352Captain Hoar is turned over to Lord Egremont, of whom the Bishop of Durham said that he possessed of all the men almost that he ever knew the clearest head and most penetrating understanding. I asked Lord Carrington to employ Arthur while I am absent; he said it was mean to make him a clerk—but everything is wrong that is proposed to this man, even the things which, let alone, he would propose himself.

Honest industry in a lawful employment cannot be mean, especially in an employment that he likes. This is one of the world’s prejudices, and rotten like all the rest.

April 4.—At Bradfield. The pleasure of coming into the country from such a place as London is great and pure. The freshness and sweetness of the air, the quiet and stillness, the sunshine unclouded by smoke, the singing of the birds, the verdure of the fields, the budding out of vegetation, altogether is charming.

I have only an old woman who keeps the house in our absence, and never was so attended before; but no matter—I am quiet, peaceful, and living economically, and shall, I hope, be very well contented. Divine service was worse done than anything; Sharpe, who is past everything, preaches and reads worse than any human being; this is lamentable. That point is the glory of London; one can find churches where our attention is commanded by instruction.

I never saw the wheat look better, thanks to God! My farm is the source of disquiet as well as pleasure—such bailiffs as I must keep execute everything badly, except just what they have always been used to; and 353with great expenses there are always many things sadly neglected. With such absences as I am forced to, this must be the case.

I have read Barrow’s sermons chiefly since I came down. That on Good Friday excellent, on Whit Sunday capital, and on the prophecies of the Messiah such as would convince an infidel, were not infidelity true hardness of heart.

5th.—At the Sacrament, none but Green and his wife, and the clerk and his wife. How much have the clergy to answer for! Reading Barrow and South’s sermons, ‘The Image of God in the Creation,’ which is full of wit. Barrow is a most powerful writer, he pours out a torrent of matter, a stream of mind, as Johnson said of Burke; an amazing flow of conception and of expression, forcible and varied; a rich command of language, and such fertility that one of his sermons would make ten modern ones.

The life I am getting into here of walking and reading is such a contrast to that at London as to be a most pleasant change and recreation to my soul and body.

From January 20th I had been so loaded with business of the requisitions from the Committees of Lords and Commons, and reading 360 essays, that I was employed every day from morn to dinner. I rose at 4 A.M. regularly, sometimes sooner, even at 3 A.M., and neglected my ‘Elements’^[200] entirely on this account. All was for the Board, and not free from anxiety. Here I shall have a fortnight’s refreshment and relaxation, 354thanks to the Almighty for it, and that He blesses me with health to enjoy it.

7th.—Yesterday at 2 o’clock I walked to Bury, for I have neither horse nor chaise to go in or on. Dined with my friend^[201] alone. I had much talk, and tried hard to impress her with good religious notions, but I fear in vain; she will not be converted but by misfortune and misery, her easy prosperous situation will prevent it. I can only pray for her.

I have made an experiment in living here not unimportant. I drink no wine or beer, only a pint or one-third of a bottle of cider at dinner. I care not what I eat, I have only one maid and no helps, and could thus live for a trifle in a cottage. In such times such trials may have their use beyond the Christian propriety of self-denial; but my collection of good books are a great comfort, which, if deprived of, I should miss terribly. I rise at 4 A.M., walk up to my neck in the garden pond, pray, and then read till breakfast; read, walk, and farm till dinner, and so on till it is dark, and no moment hangs heavily on my hands. I reproach myself with indolence for not going among the cottagers, but they come to me numerously, and having descriptive lists I know enough to do more than I am able, but I ought to go to their houses and examine their state well.

I have been reading Watson’s Collection,^[202] and am forming a table of striking passages, and think to have 355them copied for arranging with the many I have already written, and may print it some time or other under some such title as this: A course of reading on the origin, truth, and doctrines of the Christian Religion. I know of no book of evidences that includes all; by taking the most impressive passages on each subject from many books, and disposing them in a lucid form, I think I could produce a very useful work without presuming to compose any part of it myself. May the Lord afford me His Spirit should I go on with the design, but with my employment it would be a business requiring much time!

9th.—Dined with Mr. and Mrs. Balgrave. Balgrave is a good-tempered Suffolk parson, neglects the duty of his church, idle, indolent, drinks his bottle of port and reads his newspaper, but what is called a respectable character, no vices, nor any imprudent follies.

10th.—Symonds dined with me and took a bed. The Duke of Brunswick marching into Hanover will, he says, be a keen revenge.

When he married our King’s sister, Lord Bute (who told the whole to S. while travelling with him in Italy) promised him the government of Hanover as soon as it should be vacant, with the King’s knowledge. The Marquis of Granby conveyed the assurance. When the vacancy happened the Prince of Mecklenburg was talked of. Lord Granby wrote to Lord Bute to remonstrate, who went to the King and Queen, and urged the real necessity of adhering to the promise. All in vain, the Queen prevailed, and her brother, not two 356degrees better than ——, was appointed. The Duke of Brunswick never forgave it, and when invited to England rejected the idea with anger. Symonds saw him at Venice and noted the asperity of some of his expressions.

11th.—Reading Sherlock’s sermons. In those on the truth of Christianity, and a defence of the mysteries of it, I know none equal; excellent indeed and clear, persuasive, and convincing; but I have some doubts on the vitality of his faith. In the third discourse of the second volume he says: ‘Here is a plain proof of what the work of the Spirit is. It brings proofs to the reason of man, but does not bring the reason of man to the proofs.’ I conceive just the contrary, the proofs themselves are clear, full, and abounding with what ought to produce universal conviction, but men, for want of the Spirit, turn their back, neglect, or despise them.

It is the business of the Spirit to take away the heart of stone, and then the proofs are manifest: the heart and reason of man are really brought to the proofs.

12th, Sunday.—The ground white with snow, and the wind cutting. I am up every morn at 4 A.M., and walk to the garden pond; habits will do anything. I do not mind it at all, and sometimes stand in the wind till dry; it is, however, sharp work.

A nonsensical letter from Lord Carrington requiring me to go to the Treasury for the 800l. for the Essays, which is entirely the treasurer’s business. He is as unfeeling as a log; this is a return for my being at 357work from 4 A.M. in the morning for ten weeks. I should once have been full of indignation and abhorrence; thank God, I am more calm. I shall go on Friday instead of the Monday following. But I wish he had let me alone. I am vexed, but the world is full of nothing but great miseries or teasing vexations, the more the better; they wean us from it effectually.

I have been here ten days and have not visited one poor family. My heart reproaches me. I have given as much as I apprehended I could afford, but that is laziness. The cold winds and sleet have kept me too much in the house. It is easier to give than to be active in doing good. I have four days more. Oh, let me be stirring in doing good! Indolence is inexcusable. If I thought I had but a little time to live, with what energy would all this be done! And how soon may I be trembling on a death bed! Have mercy on me, O God, and give me grace to serve Thee with activity and vigour. Read the whole book of Job. I can read, think, speculate, write, and meditate, but in doing good am negligent and slothful. I have had a passing fit of melancholy from looking at my ever dear daughter’s picture, which I carry with me everywhere, and never think of her but to bless God for having in some measure (how imperfectly!) brought me to Himself. Age coming on apace; the world fading faster still; horrible threatenings in the aspect of public affairs; small hope of any comfort underived from religion. How black and dreary would all my prospects be were it not for the consolation I draw from a most lively and never varying faith in the truth of Christianity, in the 358full assurance of immortality! What would be my situation without this only balm of my existence? Domestic comfort a blank; my friends dropping into the grave, and the infirmities of age in near prospect.

Gratitude and thanksgiving to my blessed Saviour for affording me grace to believe; and with it all the comfort that remains for me in this world. My child! My child! Oh, may we meet in heaven!

13th.—The poor people of the neighbouring villages crowd here to my great distress. I give all something, and wish I could give more; but I dread falling into the dark impropriety of giving too much, of making what would seem and be a parade of charity or generosity with other people’s money, which is somewhat the case with a man who gives while he has debts unprovided for. I truly know not what rightly to do in this case. The evil just described is great, and ought to be avoided, but at the same time what ought I to think of myself who have been always ready to spend and run in debt for forty years together; and then should take up so strictly as to do nothing for miserably poor people in such times as these? Surely on such an occasion we should be exerting every power to relieve them!

20th.—Friday to London. Saturday, Farmers’ Club. An argument with Lord Egremont, &c., on land for the poor; everybody is against it. What infatuation!

21st.—Last night at Mrs. Montagu’s conversazione. I had some [talk] with the Bishop of Durham, who agrees with me on the poor; with Lady Harcourt, who 359wants restrictions on farmers; with Lord Somers, who told stories of supernatural movements of furniture in Norfolk.^[203] I left it very early though invited for all March and April. This is the first of my going.

London very disagreeable to me, and has made me compare in my mind my present situation with a large income, and that of living in a cottage in the country upon 100l. a year, without trouble or anxiety or business, except to make my peace with God. I liked my time alone with my old woman [servant] at Bradfield much better than here. I had nobody to wrangle and quarrel with me.

May 4.—Yesterday I was at church in the morning with Mrs. O. Oakes at the Lock, and heard Scott, and in the evening at the Surrey Chapel to hear Rowland Hill. Neither of them pleased, though she admits Scott’s matter was excellent. She was most struck with the extreme fervency of Mr. Wilberforce’s devotion, who, sitting in the reading desk for the convenience of hearing better, she saw him clearly. Bought Rowland Hill’s sermon on the Sunday Schools against the attack of Bishop Horsley,^[204] who is, from all I hear of him, such a bishop as Suffolk parsons are clergymen. Scott thinks that evil spirits do work on our souls, and to me it is remarkable that he says the imagination is their great field. I have reason enough to believe him in the right. These are enquiries in which we have no other clue to guide us but Scripture, and surely 360there we find proofs without end of the agency of evil spirits; for my own part I have no doubt of it.

Bradfield.—As there was no church this morning, I had eleven poor women from the village to talk to upon their neglect of church. I read many passages on public worship and prayer out of Dodd’s Commentary on the Bible, and explained, preached, and reasoned with them. One made a defence, and was inclined to prate. I took it coolly, and presently brought her to better reason. I doubt they liked a sixpence apiece better than my sermon, yet three of them cried. How much more docile and teachable are the poor than the rich! One might gradually do much with the poor, but very little indeed with their betters. God opens the hearts of the one, and hardens those of the others as a punishment for their pride and ingratitude.

The Duke of Bedford has asked Lord Carrington to the sheep shearing. Lord Egremont called, he remarks that the Chancellor, Lord Rosslyn, and Lord Grenville, &c. &c., all have in the late debates gone out of the way to abuse the Board of Agriculture, and remarks that keeping a Board only to treat it in this manner is preposterous.

7th.—My publications are very well adapted to take off the edge of all worldly infatuated admiration or dependence on the things of time in comparison of those of eternity. Washington’s Letters have been advertised to the expense of 5l. or 6l., and I do not believe that 100 are sold, and my enquiry into the cottage system for poor people will have no more effect 361on Government or the Legislature than if I had whistled ‘Alley Croker.’ So much the better perhaps for the good of my soul.

25th.—Mr. Hoole called and was let in. He has heard at a great table (he did not say where) a very so-so account of Lord Carrington—fidgeting, restless, dissatisfied, ambitious, avaricious, with a mere show of parts and knowledge. He has made immensely by the loan; and the richer he grows, so much the worse. The eldest girl said to Mr. H. when he called: ‘My papa used to have prayers in his family; but none since he has been a peer.’ What a motive for neglecting God! Also he is a dissenter and a democrat. A Unitarian he may be, but certainly no democrat. The Lord show mercy to him, and by interrupting his prosperity or lowering his health, bring him to repentance!

26th.—Yesterday I dined with the Duke of Grafton, and he asked me when the election of president and secretary of the Board was, for he heard there was an intention of turning Lord Carrington and me out. He said his answer was, as to Lord C., there were reasons which might account for that, but what can Mr. Y. have done? ‘Oh, he is careless, and does nothing,’ and so I dare say there are people to report and perhaps so think. Lord Somerville in revenge, I doubt not, hates everything belonging to the Board, and wishes to come in and sweep everyone clear away, in order to introduce creatures of his own, and this, uniting with Gifford’s scandals and slander about the Board intending to pull down the club in the ‘Porcupine’ and ‘Anti-Jacobin 362Review,’^[205] gains the attention of fools, and mingled by the depravity of the world, is circulated and believed. But of all farces, that of my doing nothing is the most precious. What I have done through the whole session of the Board surpasses credibility, almost to myself, and nothing but rising at 4 A.M. in the morning could have enabled me to go through it. The first spare half day I have I will make a list of all I have done, and see if they will not acquit me to my own heart. Oh, did I serve my God as well as I have served the Board! Could I review my services to my Redeemer as satisfactorily, happy should I be!

27th.—Symonds and Hoole dined with us, and, as the former will see the Duke of Grafton to-day, I gave him a message card, on one side of which is ‘Some use in rising at 4 A.M.,’ and on the other as follows: ‘From January 20 to May 23 are 90 days, Sundays and vacation excluded, 50 Boards and Committees; 340 essays read, and every one commented on. Report to the House of Commons on Potatoes. Report to the Lords on Grass Lands. Enquiry into cottagers’ land published, but drawn up for the Board. Memoir on Salt, from more than fifty authors. Ten new premises framed. Memoir on wastes, paring, burning, and arable land.’

If for such employment I am stigmatised for doing nothing, it shows that in order to please, it matters not what we do, caprice will be the only judgment. 363What conclusion is to be drawn from such cases? Serve God truly, and as to man trouble not thyself about him; let this be the golden rule, and it will bring peace at the last.

28th.—Lord Carrington fretting and worrying, and upon the full fidget about the newspapers’ abuse, and the criticisms in the House of Lords upon the publication of the Board; swearing that he will allow no nonsense to be published, and this will be more absurd and pragmatical than ever. Oh! Mr. Pitt, Mr. Pitt, that thou shouldest have formed such a Board as this, and then permit it to frame such a constitution as should render it absolutely dependent on the folly and caprice of a president! What might it not have done had its laws been what they ought to have been!

Dalton, of Yorkshire, gave me a long account of his taking Hyder Ali when only the colonel of 500 horse—a soldier of fortune.^[206] Lord Egremont came up from Petworth, where, he tells me, not a loaf for three days and a half, and a mutiny among the volunteers.

29th.—Dined yesterday at Lord Winchilsea’s. There were the Duke of Bedford, Lord Egremont, Lord Romney, Lord Somerville, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Northey, Mr. Conyers, and myself: much farming. Lord Romney gave Lord Egremont a guinea, to receive fifty when he produced a tench that weighed seven pounds.

Yesterday the Committee voted 50l. to my son for his labour in arranging &c., during thirteen weeks, the Reports from inclosed parishes to the House of Commons. 364I thanked them very awkwardly, and talked of gratitude, for it came on unexpectedly; that readiness which is never at a loss I have not an atom of. My heart always speaks at a sudden; whereas in many cases the head is most wanted. But the fault was on the right side, it was more than I expected.

June 6.—Charming weather for the country, now in its full beauty, and I am stoved up in this horrid place. Lord C. talked of adjourning the Board on Tuesday, which I hope much he will do. The 15th is the Sheep Show at Woburn; it will be the 20th before it is possible for me to see Bradfield, and hardly then; the longest day before a man gets into the country!!! Let them turn me out of my secretaryship and I shall not regret it, but down all discontent; it is God’s will, and my duty is to be thankful for all.

It is a comfort which exceeds all others, that as age advances the end of life is viewed as a mere change of residence, and the mental eye fixed on heaven, with full confidence in the promises of God. I would not give this conviction for the wealth of the Indies, for the empire of the world. And what does one lose by religion? I enjoy all such pleasures of life as are unattended by remorse, just as much, or more indeed, far more, than I did while I was a dissipated character. Reading, composition, serious conversation on any topic worth discussing, the rural beauties of Nature, and the pleasures of agriculture, friendship, affection, not love, as it is called, the whole of which I fear is founded in lust, and proves nineteen times in twenty the tyrant of the breast, and the fertile source of ten thousand miseries! 365Happy those in whom it terminates in a settled, quiet, tranquil friendship, sufficient to satisfy without the wanderings of the heart that lead to so much misery.

I was here (at Bradfield) three weeks at Easter after a severe confinement to incessant business; I am now again in the same deep retirement, the life of a hermit, after eight weeks of business and bustle. I feel how vast the benefit is to have these periodical retirements from the world in silence and solitude. Had I gone directly from London on my tour, plunging from one busy scene to another, my mind would have had no time to cool, none to settle into any calm and tranquil state for reflection, which is unfavourable to the growth of religion, of morals, nay, of talents to perform anything of consequence. A round of business or dissipation thus unbroken is mischievous to the heart, ties it to the world, and unfits it for every effort of regeneration and repentance, or of meditation and philosophy.

Lord Euston is going the tour of Suffolk, ordering returns to be made of all carts, waggons, horses, mills, and ovens; a step preparatory in the expectation of an invasion. But it is in everyone’s mouth that with such a price of corn half the country would join an enemy. I must freely confess I dread the result. We have no hope but in the protection of the Almighty, who has hitherto so wonderfully protected us; and what has been the gratitude shown to Him?

Most melancholy is the reflection. Our rulers are truly infatuated, to have done nothing for the assistance of the poor, but leave them to such trying times without even showing a disposition to take any steps that could 366be effective. To do nothing to give relief, when land for the poor does relieve them so beneficially wherever they have it, is a cruel infatuation. To see poor rates at their present enormous height and the poor in misery—yet where they have land, to find rates 3d. or 4d. or 9d. in the £, and the poor in a state of ease and comfort—one would think should speak feelingly and powerfully—but no such thing. Men are governed by their stupid prejudices, and have too much pride to permit their eyes to be opened. Had an Act passed last session that had the effect of thus assisting the poor, instead of the pernicious system by rates, and some progress were now making in every county to carry it into execution, we should not hear such opinions advanced, because they would be groundless; the poor labourers, seeing such steps taken for their comfort and to free them from the ineffective thraldom of parish rates, would be patient and quiet. At present they see nothing done or doing for them, and have their hearts almost broken by penury—without resource—without hope.

In such a situation who would wonder to see men join an enemy in crowds? Heaven forbid that this infatuation of Government be not providential, and the means by which the Deity may mean to punish the nation for and by its sins!

The trumpeter of the Corps of Yeomanry came to me with a written engagement to forfeit 5s. the first absence and 10s. 6d. every successive one if we do not meet the first Friday of every month. I was always exempted on account of my necessary absence; however, 367as they expect to be called into actual service, I would not now retire when an invasion is expected, so I signed; but when the alarm is quite blown over—should that please the Almighty—I shall withdraw, for I am too old and too weak, and my pursuits too far off and too numerous to permit attendance.

September 7 [on tour, at Dunstable].—Breakfasted with Mr. Parkyn, and then went to meet a person who instructs people in plaiting straw, and I bargained with him at 30s. a week for a girl to be instructed—a month will do; that is 6l., and the journey there and back, about 4l., so for 10l. I shall be able to introduce this most excellent fabric among our poor. The children begin at four years old, and by six earn 2s. or 3s. a week; by seven 1s. a day; and at eight and nine, &c., 10s. or 12s. a week. This will be of immense use to them.

Got to Woburn by 2 P.M., sat down and wrote for two hours and a half, then dressed, but did not dine till nearly 8 P.M. The Duke of Manchester there with Lord Preston, Mr. Cartwright, and Edwards, the bookseller, who is putting the library to rights and showing how to make the catalogue. I was surprised to learn from him that a man could not lay out in one year more than 5,000l. judiciously in books; that Lord Spencer has been fourteen years expending 25,000l., and has the best library in England, perhaps better than the King’s. He tells me the nation [France] bought L’Héritier’s^[207] library, and gave it to the Botanical 368Garden. Miss Knight,^[208] authoress of the continuation of ‘Rasselas,’ whom I met at Kedington’s, lent Dolmien’s^[209] ‘Life at Naples,’ through Lady Hamilton’s interest with the Queen. He wrote to her from prison.

Did not get to bed till past 11 P.M. Such hours and fasting from 9 A.M. in morn to 8 P.M. at night did not agree with me. I waked at 4 A.M., and having a lamp, rose, washed, prayed, and sat down by candlelight to my notes and finished them.

Lord Preston swears; it hurts me to hear him. I certainly ought to convert such people and reproach myself, and confess the sin every day in my catalogue to God; but I go on and do it not. If I had wit I could laugh at it, but I have no more wit than a pig.

The following are selected from this year’s correspondence:

From T. Symonds, Esq., describing Trinity College Establishment, Revenue, &c.

January 24, 1802.—A great gap; but from coming to London in November to quitting it the following month I wrote journal letters paged to my friend.^[211] Through the Christmas holidays a blank. I have subscribed to the Lock Hospital 5l. 5s., and go every Sunday. Wilberforce always there taking notes of Scott’s sermons.

In the great business of my salvation I go on slowly, struggling hard, however, to advance, by freeing my imagination from sensuality and my heart from coldness. God give me grace to persist. I lay great stress on trying by every means to impress in my mind a constant sense of God’s presence.

371March 8.—At Wilberforce’s last night till 10 o’clock, and was not in bed till quarter past 11 P.M. Though I was up before 4 A.M., and had no sleep in the day, or very little, the consequence was that in the night just past I slept very soundly indeed, and till 6 A.M. Dean Milner^[212] there, and I had much conversation with him about W. while he and Mr. W. were out of the room. He first made an impression on Wilberforce’s mind at Scarborough; he hinted on some person named being an enthusiast, but Milner (though not religious then himself) checked it with a firmness that made W. think. They afterwards travelled to Nice, and were there three months about the year 1783 or 1784. The Duke of Gloucester was then an infidel; the conversation M. had with him upon the journey had no other effect (indeed that was the capital one) but of making him serious in reading and considering the Bible, which he did with great industry and deep attention, bringing to it a heart open to conviction; his health was injured by application, but his eternal soul was saved. He afterwards broke off his intimacies with a social fashionable set, and particularly from dinners which hurt his progress in Divine impersonation. He fairly and openly told his friends the reason. Pitt never joked or laughed at him—some did, but he never; all were sorry to lose him. But he was in earnest, and carried his determination into effect to give himself wholly to the care of his soul in the first place, and next to 372perform his temporal duties by assiduity in business. The Dean remarked the great good his book is likely to do from this time to the end of the world. Many, many may be saved by it. He dictated an answer to some quotations from David which the Duke of Grafton gave me the other day in argument against original sin, the righteousness named 1,000 years before Christ. He replied as I had done on the spot to the Duke, that these men had the spirit, and then were righteous before God in Jesus Christ who saved from the creation.