STURGES, while they were actual- | press it, is not so deep, and the sides ly, literally, fattening on the spoils of it not so steep, as in the case of the monastery of St. SWITHIN, of the Avon; but the villages are at Winchester, were publishing as frequent; there is more than abusive pamphlets against that one church in every mile, and there Catholic religion, which had given has been a due proportion of manthem their very bread.-For my sion houses demolished and depart, I could not look up at the faced. The farms are very fine up spire and the whole of the church this vale, and the meadows, parat Salisbury, without feeling that ticularly at a place called STAPLEI lived in degenerate times. Such FORD, are singularly fine. They a thing never could be made now. had just been mowed at StapleWe feel that, as we look at the ford, and the hay carried off. At ́ building. It really does appear Stapleford, there is a little cross that if our forefathers had not valley, running up between two made these buildings, we should hills of the down. There is a little have forgotten, before now, what run of water about a yard wide at the Christian religion was! this time, coming down this little vale across the road into the river. The little vale runs up three miles. It does not appear to be half a mile wide; but in those three miles there are four churches; namely, Stapleford, Uppington, Berwick St. James, and Winterborne Stoke. The present population of these four villages, is 769 souls, men, women, and children, the whole of whom could very conveniently be seated in the chancel of the church at Stapleford. Indeed, the church and parish of Uppington seem to have been united with one of the other. parishes, like the parish in Kent which was united with North Cray, and not a single house of which now remains. What were these four churches built FOR within the distance of three miles? There are three parsonage houses still remaining; but, and it is a very curious fact, neither of them good enough for the parson to live in!

At Salisbury, or very near to it, four other rivers fall into the Avon. The Wyly river, the Nadder, the Born, and another little river that comes from Norrington. These all become one, at last, just below Salisbury, and then, under the name of the Avon, wind along down and fall into the sea at Christchurch. In coming from Salisbury, I came up the road which runs pretty nearly parallel with the river WYLY, which river rises at Warminster and in the neighbourhood. This river runs down a valley twenty-two miles long. It is not so pretty as the valley of the Avon; but it is very fine in its whole length from Salisbury to this place (Heytesbury.) Here are watered meadows nearest to the river on both sides; then the gardens, the houses, and the corn-fields. After the corn-fields come the downs; but, generally speaking, the downs are not so bold here as they are on the sides-Here are seven hundred and sixty of the Avon. The downs do not come out in promontories so often as they do on the sides of the Avon. The Ah-ah !! if I may so ex

souls to be taken care of, but there is no parsonage house for a soulcurer to stay in, or at least that he will stay in; and all the three

parsonages are, in the return laid | I dare say, a thousand times talkbefore Parliament, represented to ed about this Steeple Langford, be no better than miserable la- and about the beautiful farms and bourers' cottages, though the pa-meadows along this valley. I have rish of Winterborne Stoke, has a talked of these to my children a church sufficient to contain two or great many times; and I formed three thousand people. The truth the design of letting two of them is, that the parsons have been re- see this valley this year, and to ceiving the revenues of the livings, go through Warminster to Stroud, and have been suffering the par- and so on to Gloucester and Hesonage houses to fall into decay.reford, but, when I got to EverHere were two or three mansion ley, I found that they would houses, which are also gone, never get along fast enough to get even from the sides of this little into Herefordshire in time for run of water. what they intended; so that I

patient to get to it, hoping to find a public-house, and a stable to put my horse in, to protect him, for awhile, against the flies, which tormented him to such a degree, that to ride him was work as hard as threshing. When I got to Steeple Langford, I found no publichouse, and I found it a much more miserable place than I had remembered it. The Steeple, to which it owed its distinctive appellation, was gone; and the place altogether seemed to me to be very much altered for the worse. A little further on, however, I came to a very famous inn, called DEPTFORD INN, which is in the parish of Wyly. I stayed at this inn till about four o'clock in the afternoon. I remembered Wyly very well, and thought it a gay place when I was a boy. I re

To-day has been exceedingly parted from them in the manner I hot. Hotter, I think, for a short have before described. I was retime, than I ever felt it in Eng-solved, however, to see Steeple land before. In coming through Langford myself, and I was ima village called WISHFORD, and mounting a little hill, I thought the heat upon my back was as great as I had ever felt it in my life. There were thunder storms about, and it had rained at Wishford a little before I came to it. My next village was one that I had lived in for a short time, when I was only about ten or eleven years of age. I had been sent down with a horse from Farnham, and I remember that I went by Stone-henge, and rode up and looked at the stones. From Stone-henge I went to the village of Steeple Langford, where I remained from the month of June till the fall of the year. I remembered the beautiful villages up and down this valley. I also remembered, very well, that the women at Steeple Langford used to card and spin dyed wool. Imembered a very beautiful garwas, therefore, somewhat filled with curiosity to see this Steeple Langford again; and, indeed, it was the recollection of this village that made me take a ride into Wiltshire this summer. I have,

den belonging to a rich farmer and miller. I went to see it; but, alas! though the statues in the water and on the grass-plat were still remaining, every thing seemed to be in a state of perfect care

garden shows you what revelry used to be carried on here. Peel's Bill gave this inn, and all belonging to it, a terrible souse. The unfeeling brutes, who used to brandish their swords, and swagger about, at the news of what was called "a victory," have now to lower their scale in clothing, in drink, in eating, in dress, in horse

lessness and neglect. The living of the breed left; and, if there be, of this parish of Wyly was lately I would pledge my existence, owned by DAMPIER (a brother of that they are, in some shape or the Judge), who lived at, and I other, feeding upon the public. believe had the living of MEON However, thus it must be, until STOKE, in Hampshire. This fel- that change come which will put low, I believe, never saw the pa- an end to men paying fourpence rish of Wyly but once, though it in tax upon a pot of beer. must have yielded him a pretty This DEPTFORD INN was a fagood fleece. It is a Rectory, and mous place of meeting for the the great tithes must be worth, I Yeomanry Cavalry, in glorious should think, six or seven hun- anti-jacobin times, when wheat dred pounds a year, at the least. was twenty shillings a bushel, and It is a part of our system to have when a man could be crammed certain families, who have no par- into gaol for years, for only looking ticular merit; but who are to be awry. This inn was a glorious maintained, without why or where-place in the days of PEG NICHOLfore, at the public expense, in sox and her KNIGHTS. Strangely some shape, or under some name, altered now. The shape of the or other, it matters not much what shape or what name. If you look through the old list of pensioners, sinecurists, parsons, and the like, you will find the same names everlastingly recurring. They seem to be a sort of creatures that have an inheritance in the public carcass, like the maggots that some people have in their skins. This family of DEM-flesh, and everything else. They PIER seems to be one of these. are now a lower sort of men than What, in God's name, should have they were. They look at their made one of these a Bishop and rusty sword and their old dusty the other a Judge! I never heard helmet and their once gay regiof the smallest particle of talent mental jacket. They do not hang that either of them possessed. these up now in the "parlour" for This Rector of Wyly was another every body to see them: they hang of them. There was no harm in them up in their bed-rooms, or in them that I know of, beyond that a cockloft; and when they meet of living upon the public; but, their eye, they look at them as where were their merits? They a cow does at a bastard calf, had none, to distinguish them, and or as the bridegroom does at a to entitle them to the great sums girl that the overseers are about they received; and, under any to compel him to marry. If their other system than such a system children should happen to see as this, they would, in all human these implements of war twenty probability, have been gentle- or thirty years hence, they will men's servants or little shop- certainly think that their fathers keepers. I dare say there is some were the greatest fools that ever

all the kindness in my power, and he went away, knowing that I was just then coming to England. I had hardly got home, before the Scotch newspapers contained communications from a person,

walked the face of the earth; | neighbourhood of New York, just and that will be a most filial and before I came home. He told me charitable way of thinking of them; his Canada story. I showed him for, it is not from ignorance that they have sinned, but from excessive baseness; and when any of them now complain of those acts of the Government which strip them, (as the late Order in Council does) of a fifth part of their pretending to derive his informaproperty in an hour, let them re- tion from GOURLAY, relating to collect their own base and malig-what GOURLAY had described as nant conduct towards those perse- having passed between him and cuted reformers, who, if they had me; and which description was a not been suppressed by these very tissue of most abominable falseyeomen, would, long ago, have hoods, all having a direct tendency put an end to the cause of that to do injury to me, who had never, ruin of which these yeomen now either by word or deed, done any complain. When they complain thing that could possibly have a of their ruin, let them remember tendency to do injury to this the toasts which they drank in GOURLAY. What the vile Scotch anti-jacobin times; let them re-newspapers had begun, the mamember their base and insulting lignant reptile himself continued exultations on the occasion of the after his return to England, and, 16th of August at Manchester; let in an address to LORD BATHURST, them remember their cowardly endeavoured to make his court to abuse of men, who were endea- the Government by the most foul, vouring to free their country from that horrible scourge which they themselves now feel.

false and detestable slanders upon me, from whom, observe, he had never received any injury, or atJust close by this Deptford Inn tempt at injury, in the whole is the farm-house of the farm course of his life; whom he had where that GoURLAY lived, who visited; to whose house he had gone, has long been making a noise in of his own accord, and that, too, as the Court of Chancery, and who he said, out of respect for me; is now, I believe, confined in endeavoured, I say, to make his some place or other for having as- court to the Government by the saulted MR. BROUGHAM. This most abominable slanders against fellow, who is confined, the news-me. He is now, even now, putpapers tell us, on a charge of being ting forth, under the form of letinsane, is certainly one of the most ters to me, a revival of what he malignant devils that I ever knew pretends was a conversation that any thing of in my life. He went passed between us at my house to Canada about the time that near New York. Even if what he went last to the United States. says were true, none but caitiffs as He got into a quarrel with the base as those who conduct the Government there about some- English newspapers, would give thing, I know not what. He came circulation to his letters, containto see me, at my house in the ing as they must, the substance of

a conversation purely private. and threw himself upon the parish. But, I never had any conversa- The overseers, who recollected tion with him: I never talked to what a swaggering blade it was, him at all about the things that he when it came here to teach the is now bringing forward: I heard moon-rakers "hoo to farm, mon," the fellow's stories about Canada: did not see the sense of keeping I thought he told me lies; and, him like a gentleman; so, they besides, I did not care a straw set him to crack stones upon the whether his stories were true or highway; and that set him off not; I looked upon him as a sort again, pretty quickly. The farm of gambling adventurer; but I that he rented is a very fine farm, treated him as is the fashion of the with a fine large farm-house to it. country in which I was, with great It is looked upon as one of the civility and hospitality. There are best farms in the country: the two fellows of the name of JACOB present occupier is a farmer born and JOHNSON at WINCHESTER, in the neighbourhood; a man such and two fellows at Salisbury of the as ought to occupy it; and GoURname of BRODIE and DOWDING. LAY, who came here with his These reptiles publish, each Scotch impudence to teach others couple of them, a newspaper; how to farm, is much about where and in these newspapers they and how he ought to be. JACOB seem to take particular delight in and JoHNSON, of Winchester, calumniating me. The two Win-know perfectly well that all the chester fellows insert the letters fellow says about me is lies: they of this half crazy, half cunning, know also, that their parson Scotchman, GoURLAY; the other readers know that it is a mass of fellows insert still viler slanders; lies: they further know, that the and, if I had seen one of their parsons know that they know that papers, before I left Salisbury, it is a mass of lies; but they which I have seen since, I cer- know, that their paper will sell the tainly would have given Mr. BRO- better for that; they know that to DIE Something to make him re-circulate lies about me will get member me. This fellow, who them money, and this is what was a little coal-merchant but a they do it for, and such is the chashort while ago, is now, it seems, racter of English newspapers, a paper-money maker, as well as of a great part of the readers of a newspaper maker. Stop, Mas- those newspapers. Therefore, ter BRODIE, till I go to Salisbury when I hear of people" sufferagain, and see whether I do not ing;" when I hear of people give you a check, even such as being "ruined;" when I hear you did not receive during the of "unfortunate families; " when late run!- GORLAY, amongst I hear a talk of this kind, I stop, other whims, took it into his head before I either express or feel to write against the poor laws, compassion, to ascertain who and saying that they were a bad thing. what the sufferers are; and wheHe found, however, at last, that ther they have or have not partithey were necessary to keep him cipated in, or approved of, acts from starving; for he came down like those of JACOB and JOHNSON to Wyly, three or four years ago, and BRODIE and DOWDING; for,

and