The most melancholy consideration, however, is, the hopelessness of substantial permanent benefit for any of us. Whence is it to arise? It has taken many years to bring us to our present state; and though we can no longer shut our eyes to the difficulties we are actually involved in, still the remedy has not yet been suggested which promises a reasonable hope of effecting a cure: so various, indeed, are the opinions as to the nature and origin of the disorder, that no rational expectation can be entertained that any remedy will be adopted. We may all have discovered that it is very easy to put any machine out of order; and that it requires patience, ingenuity, and cost generally to put it right again. The machinery of society is fairly out of order, and time will discover what portion of talents and ingenuity will be requisite to put it in order again: the cost however, we may be quite sure, will be in proportion to the mischief.

118

CHAP. XI.

DESERTION OF THE COUNTRY.

BUT let me not be accused of departing from my subject. However I may have failed in convincing my countrywomen generally of the share they have taken in subverting the orders of society, I yet recur to them as the primary instigators of all these departures from those rational and judicious domestic modes and habits which once held domestic society together.

I have yet taken but a passing view of that degree of our fellow creatures who are perhaps the greatest sufferers from these changes and their consequences. While we acknowledge that much is done in the way of charity for the labouring poor, we may at the same perceive that their condition is not materially amended: the improvement there certainly bears no proportion with the means employed to effect it.

We live in a country and at a period where charity towards the poor and the afflicted is

exercised to an extent unknown perhaps to any other nation or age. But this well-known fact might open our eyes to the necessity that still exists for the employment of private domestic charity. Without this universal every-day distribution of our various talents, we may look in vain for universal improvement.

Here then again we have failed; here our influence has been used to withdraw many from their appointed place. The country has by degrees been almost deserted deserted by those whose wealth and power were essential to the well-being of the ranks beneath them. We may find country-houses to be let in every rural spot, and we may perceive in every country town all the old substantial gentlemen's houses deserted, or dilapidated, or turned into shewy shops inconsistent alike with other modern arrange

ments.

But we must follow the fashion, in order to discover the retreats of our gentry: we must make a tour of our countless watering-places, and other fashionable spots which are interspersed amongst our lovely scenery, and we shall cease to wonder at the melancholy deserted

aspect of our country towns and villages. Here we may discover them by thousands luxuriating in all the circumstances of modern domestic felicity.

We need hardly pause to consider whose influence it is that has directed this general desertion of actual legitimate home; or to calculate how many country gentlemen and others have yielded to the powerful advantages of such migrations, so eloquently urged.

Here we may find row after row of residences, of all degrees and denominations, all inhabited; while row after row are rising, with all the urgent haste that promised success inspires. Here we may find abundant specimens of every rank, all influenced by the prevailing habits and opinions; though differing in degrees.

Here modern education can be carried on without hindrance or impediment. Here are professors of various and progressive importance and celebrity. Every thing in short that is in conformity with the present state of improvement and refinement is to be found in these favoured spots. The very aspect and nature of them are in exact conformity with the times

shewy, artificial, unsubstantial, and temporary. Here are temporary houses, servants, and equipages; temporary friends and acquaintances: sometimes only temporary gentility; and not unfrequently only temporary satisfaction and temporary health; for home, and its realities, and its inconveniences, and its duties, must be found vapid, and calculated to produce languor, after days of delightful relaxation and enjoyment. So many advantages have indeed been discovered by those who perhaps sought at first only a temporary abode there, that these places are become favorite residences with a large portion of our middle ranks of gentry; or at least share with our widely-extended metropolis all the benefits to be derived from their riches and their influence.

Fashionable charity finds out these resorts of fashion too; and public meetings, and speeches, and contributions, flourish, and satisfy the consciences of the audiences and the subscribers, and increase the self-applause of the leaders, and directors, and prominent promoters, of the numerous systems of modern philanthropists.

But the poorer ranks, who are not in the im