182

NORFOLK-ABBEY OF CASTLE ACRE.

for 28 lb. No Merinos here. Rabbits sell at 6d. the carcass, and Is. to 2s. 6d. the skin. Black-cattle here have no horns; of an accident they have made a species; I do not know whether there is any utility in it, but there certainly is no beauty.

About fifty miles from London, on a rising ground, we observed two barrows about 20 feet high, and near them a deep trench across the plain; these mounds are probably of Danish origin, covering heaps of bones of the slain in battle.

June 15.-The Abbey of Castle Acre is the first Gothic ruin we have seen in a country which possesses so many. This is a fine Anglo-Norman edifice; the western front in good preservation, light, and the ornaments admirably finished. I took a sketch of it. The ruins cover a great space; some people were employed in removing part of them;-I hope this profanation will not be carried too far. A few miles farther, we were shewn the remains of a fort, either Roman or Danish, nowise remarkable but by the materials of its walls, formed of a confused mass of flints, in a common bed of mortar or cement, as hard as the flints themselves; the whole is like a perfect rock. The soil seems extremely barren, and hardly fit for cultivation, yet the finest farms are seen everywhere, and the inhabitants look quite affluent. Land rents from 15s. to 40s. an acre, and sells at thirty years purchase; in some cases land has sold at forty, fifty, or even eighty years purchase; but the latter price was in consequence of game, or some other peculiar advantage. An intelligent capitalist of London, Mr A. has purchased a great tract of land hereabouts at a very low price, in pursuit of some great scheme of improvement. The stocks give uneasiness; foreign commerce is still more

BURY ST EDMONDS.

189

precarious at present; these circumstances throw a larger capital into agriculture than its share in ordinary times. The consequence is, a greater abundance of natural products, and prices rather lower than they would otherwise be ;-that is to say, that the rapid rise of prices is a little retarded, and that the salary of labour has a little more time given it to overtake the general advance, which is all the great mass of the people need care about.

A gentleman in this neighbourhood has a cabinet of porcelain, made in Italy in Raphael's time, and painted from his designs. The lustre of this name is the greatest merit both of the drawings and of the ware. The same gentleman has some good pictures of Vandyke, Leonardo de Vinci, and Rembrandt, my favourite painters; and we admired his fine lawns and majestic shades.

June 18.-Bury St Edmonds. We left our friends this morning, grateful for the warm reception we have met with, and melancholy at the idea that, at their age, we are not likely to see them again. This venerable couple is attended by an only daughter;* and filial duties never were more charmingly discharged, with that cheerful constancy which knows no impatience, no disgust, no weariness,-that total forgetfulness of self, compared to which the virtues of heroes sink to nothing. The country we have passed is much the same as described before, chalk and flints, with a thin layer of vegetable soil,-immense fields, without inclosures of any sort,-no buildings in sight. Some parts of these plains give the

*This amiable woman died unexpectedly three months after we left the place. Both parents followed her to the grave a few weeks after.

184 BURY ST EDMONDS-PRICES OF MEAT, &c.

The

idea of the sea. Farming is conducted in the same extensive style. We observed ten ploughs at work together in the same field, with each a pair of very fine horses ;-no oxen used in agriculture. Few villages, and those by no means pretty; but no appearance of poverty. houses, indeed, poor enough on the outside,—but the casements in good repair,-the floors clean,— and the people with decent working-clothes on, and healthy looks. No beggars at all to be seen, The roads, made of pounded flint, are hard and smooth; the horses fly along. It is certainly a pleasurable sensation to be thus transported with ease and swiftness, and without fatigue or exertions, a lazy sort of selfish pleasure, however, which one feels almost ashamed of enjoying.

The prices are here, for bread, 14 d. the quartern loaf of five lb. ; beef, 9d. to 10d. ; mutton, 9d. veal, 8d. (this is the cheap time of veal ;) pork, 10s. for 14 lb.; all these are nearly London prices:-Labour by the week in summer, 14s.; in winter, 12s. Workmen find themselves even in small beer. Women 8d. a-day. Wheat is 61s. for a comb, or 17 stone, being 238lb. (equal to 15s, sterling, or three dollars for an American bushel of 60 lbs. which costs there about two dollars;) coals, 45s. a chaldron of 36 bushels; flour, 85s, per sack of 20 stone, or 280 lbs.

A private gentleman of this country, a great agriculturist, and particularly a great sheep-breeder, has a territorial income of L. 60,000 a-year. He wanted Mr Pitt to make him Lord Leicester, but, not succeeding, he turned, and has been ever since a great Foxite! He influences the election for most of the members for Norfolk,—defeated Mr Windham once,-and another time was the means of

NORFOLK STATE OF SOCIETY.

185

securing his return,-though Mr Windham lost his seat ultimately, on account of certain practices deem. ed corrupt proved against him. Probably Mr Windham would not condescend to do secretly what he held right in itself, and the legitimate and salutary influence of property. Another private gentleman of this county, residing very near Newmarket, the late Mr Th. returned his income for the income-tax at L. 110,000 a-year. You hear everywhere in England of these princely fortunes.

After spending three days agreeably at Bury St. Edmonds, we continued our journey towards London, by Cambridge. I am inclined to think English society pleasantest out of London. There is more leisure, as much information, and manners equally good; for nobody is provincial in this country. You meet nowhere with those persons who never were out of their native place, and whose habits are wholly local,-nobody above poverty who has not visited London once in his life; and most of those who can, visit it once a-year. To go up to town from 100 or 200 miles distance, is a thing done on a sudden, and without any previous deliberation. In France, the people of the provinces used to make their will before they undertook such an expedition. Cultivation of mind, and elegance of manners, are more conspicuous comparatively among women than among men. There is more difference between the women of this country and those I have seen elsewhere, than between the men of the same countries respectively. The men appear to me less universal than they were in France, formerly at least; but they know better what they do know. They are less apt to say every thing which comes into their heads, -they think before they speak,-they have less

186

NORFOLK-STATE OF SOCIETY.

vanity, and more pride. This is wise and respectable, but does not form, perhaps, a state of society very amusing. The women are no less remarkable for their discretion and reserve; but it is the reserve of modesty instead of that of pride,-not voluntary nor insurmountable. Commercial communications and exchanges are not better established here, or upon an easier and more convenient footing, than mental ones. Science, anecdotes, politics, fashions, even the most frivolous,everything that can interest the mind of all descriptions of persons who have any mind at all, circulates through its appropriate channel, day by day, week by week, or quarter by quarter, to the remotest corner of the country as regularly and abundantly as in London. Every body finds on his table, at stated days and hours, the newspaper, the journal, or the review, to which he subscribes ; and if he cannot afford to subscribe, he will at least find all these things at the circulating library, the reading-room, or the book-club of the next little town or village. He will know exactly, let his life be otherwise ever so obscure and solitary, what is going on at court, in parliament, at the opera; what routs, births, deaths, marriages, and elopements have taken place among people of consequence. Deeper works will give him the spirit and criticism of most literary novelties, on abstruse, edifying, or amusing subjects. Novels, in shoals, will finally serve to fill up any portion of his time, his whole life if he pleases, with every variety of sentimental distresses and pleasures the human faculties are capable of feeling. Poetry is so happily cultivated in England,—the present generation particularly has produced so many admirable specimens of it, that the feelings it imparts are become