in a course as regular as that of the dinners of the cabinet-ministers, the company was standing in a circle round the fire; I stood next to Paley. He, almost pushing me out of the circle by a certain turn of his shoulder, to signify that what he was about to say would not be said out of complaisance to me as a catholic, while, at the same time he looked over his other shoulder to assure himself that I was listening, – Paley, I say, began to assert the justice, the expediency, and the utility of establishing by law in Ireland the catholic worship, defending the measure by the arguments, and almost in the words set down by me; ending, by declaring himself persuaded that the catholic clergy of Ireland would be well contented when they were well paid, and the catholic population would, in that supposed case, be as good subjects as they are every where else under the same circumstances.
The greater part of Poland is subject to a schismatic; Silesia to a Lutheran; the Low Countries, formerly Austrian, to a Calvinist: the sovereigns of those several countries have not yet taken away the ecclesiastical revenues from the catholic clergy, nor their civil rights from the catholic people.
Having made out a case, as I express myself above, I mention several topics on which, for brevity's sake, I forbear to enlarge. I beg to be understood as having a due sense of the importance of these objects, of each in its kind, and as entertaining in regard to them the opinion held by the catholic church. I say this the rather, because many protestants, after talking with me on religion, have found me, as they said, so reasonable, that they would not believe that I was really and truly a papist. The unreasonableness of the catholic faith exists only in the imagination of the protestants, who, in general, know nothing about it. One of them asked me why the prayers were translated into Latin: I answered, that the pope had ordered them to be subtracted in this manner from the curiosity of the good people of – , naming the town nearest the country residence of my interrogator. Another, a little perplexed on the subject of unity, asked, "What is the catholic church?" as an answer, I asked, "What is the church of England?" An Anglican clergyman put the question, "What is the mass?" I told him it was what he had engaged to oppose. He was a worthy, quiet man, and did not want to oppose any thing.
In short, it is only from political causes that opposition, alienation, or dispute about this matter arise. Foreigners are astonished that a nation, so wise, so just, so tolerant as the English, should disqualify one-third of its people from serving the state, and perpetuate animosities which are laid at rest in every other country in Europe. The Baron – was the only man in France who saw through the whole matter at once: "You have your interests of the Reformation, as we have ours of the revolution."
It is a matter in which I have no interest but that of truth. I have given not as a polemic, but as a humble narrator, an account of my motives and reasons for adopting as truth that which has been believed as such by the bulk and great majority of the Christian world in all nations and in all ages, from the foundation of Christianity. I have done this in the hope of removing prepossessions, and to persuade the reader that he may accompany me abroad without any apprehension that I shall enter into controversy. Some extraordinary events are related in my narrative, which a regard for truth has alone induced me to set down, at the risk of being considered as enthusiastic or superstitious. Against such an interpretation, formed on a view of part only of this work, I am not afraid to appeal to the judgment of those who will take the pains to read and consider the whole.
CHAP. I
The English are assuredly a most enterprising and restless people: they form establishments at the Antipodes, and plant colonies on the banks of the Loire, in an enemy's country, after a war of twenty years: their merchant-vessels cover the seas, and their opulent and unoccupied gentry inundate the continent of Europe: their hardy mariners search out the north-west passage, and the idle and curious among them strive, with no less difficulty, to discover lakes, mountains, and cascades, unvisited by former adventurers,
– qua nulla priorum
orbita. – —
English reading-rooms are set up at Tours and in other great towns; English seminaries of education are founded in France, Switzerland, and Italy; and English horse-races are exhibited at Naples. Fox-hunters and fox-hounds penetrate to covers where even the foxes never saw them before; where, coming from their holes, they gaze quietly upon them; where there is no sport, because no pursuit; no pursuit, because no flight; no flight, because no fear; no fear, because no experience of former enmity.
The French calculated, with some degree of satisfaction, that, during the occupation of their frontier by the army of observation, the English spent as much money at Paris as was contributed by themselves to the support of that army. At Florence, towards the end of the year 1822, I was informed by good authority, that there were twelve thousand foreigners in the city, of whom seven thousand were English.
By a migration, very much resembling the flight of birds of passage, they usually leave their country in the spring, and after a few weeks at Paris, set off to pass the summer in Switzerland, arrive in Italy in the autumn, cross the Apennines before the winter; the beginning of which season they spend at Florence: they go to Rome for the Carnival, to Naples for a month or five weeks of Lent, return to Rome for the holy week, and then, much edified and instructed, they find their way home, during the ensuing summer, through France or Germany. I asked Lady A. at Rome, when she went to Naples: "I don't know; – when the others go: " so much is this route recognised as a matter of course.
The route is in truth admirably well traced, and eighteen months might thus be passed to great advantage by a well-prepared and impartial traveller. Rarely however are these English sufficiently acquainted with the languages of the countries through which they pass, to be able to sustain a conversation: they carry with them their insular prejudices, their pride of wealth, their unpliant manners, their attachment to their own customs, amusements, and cookery: though treated with indulgence and even civil attentions by the governments of the continent, they are suffered, rather than received by the inhabitants. For their choice of the objects of curiosity they visit, and the opinion to be formed upon them, they are at the mercy of guides and ciceroni: for society, they are guided by instinct, and reduced by necessity, to herd together. An Italian lady at Florence opened her salon for the reception of a mixed company of Florentines and English: the English occupied, first one corner, and then a whole side, of the salon, their numbers increasing, but the chasm between them and the natives still remaining. The lady, fatigued with doing the honours of her house to two separate companies on the same evenings, and disgusted with these appearances of distrust and resiliency, invented some decent pretext for receiving no more.
Observing this propensity in the English to associate with each other, foreigners seem persuaded that Yorick alone did not quit England to seek Englishmen. I was asked if I had been at Tours, because there were so many of my countrymen there. "My countrymen," said I, "choose well; Touraine is said to be the garden of France." My interlocutor recurred to the idea with which he had first proposed the question. "Il y a là tant de vos compatriotes." – "Il y en a encore plus en Angleterre:"3 and Sterne's argument prevailed.
Many persons of small incomes; many who wish to retrench their expenses, but are ashamed of doing so at home; some for the purpose of having wine and fruit at a cheaper rate; and some for the sake of a better climate, – pass several years abroad, fixed at the place of their first choice, or travelling but little, and at great intervals of time. The economical residents abroad seldom proceed further from home than to the towns near the southern shore of the channel, and to those on the banks of the Loire. Some parents take their children abroad to enable them to acquire the use of those living languages, which, though very generally taught, are very rarely learned in England. Excluded from the greater part of the continent of Europe during twenty years of revolution and of war, English travellers had been obliged to waste their activity in voyages to the western isles of Scotland, or in picturesque tours to the Giant's Causeway, or
"There are so many of your countrymen there." – "There are still more of them in England."
