【英文读物】Letters from England.docx

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1、【英文读物】Letters from England The remarks of Foreign Travellers upon our own country have always been so well received by the Public, that no apology can be necessary for offering to it the present Translation, The Author of this work seems to have enjoyed more advantages than most of his predecessors,

2、 and to have availed himself of them with remarkable diligence. He boasts also of his impartiality: to this praise, in general, he is entitled; but there are some things which he has seen with a jaundiced eye. It is manifest that he is bigotted to the deplorable superstitions of his country; and IVw

3、e may well suppose that those parts of the work in which this bigotry is most apparent, have not been improved by the aid for which he thanks his Father Confessor. The Translator has seldom thought it necessary to offer any comments upon the palpable errors and mis-statements which this spirit has s

4、ometimes occasioned: the few notes which he has annexed are distinguished by the letters Tr.PREFACE. A volume of Travels rarely or never, in our days, appears in Spain: in England, on the contrary, scarcely any works are so numerous. If an Englishman spends the summer in any of the mountainous provi

5、nces, or runs over to Paris for six weeks, he publishes the history of his travels; and if a work of this kind be announced in France, so great a competition is excited among the London booksellers, that they import it sheet by sheet as it comes from the press, and translate and print it piece-meal.

6、 The greater number of such books must necessarily be of little value: all, however, find readers, and the worst of them adds something to the stock of general information.We seldom travel; and they among us VIwho do, never give their journals to the public. Is it because literature can hardly be sa

7、id to have become a trade among us, or because vanity is no part of our national character? The present work, therefore, is safe from comparison, and will have the advantage of novelty. If it subject me to the charge of vanity myself, I shall be sorry for the imputation, but not conscious of deservi

8、ng it. I went to England under circumstances unusually favourable, and remained there eighteen months, during the greater part of which I was domesticated in an English family. They knew that it was my intention to publish an account of what I saw, and aided me in my enquiries with a kindness which

9、I must ever remember. My remarks were communicated, as they occurred, in letters to my own family, and to my Father Confessor; and they from time to time suggested to me such objects of observation as might otherwise perhaps have been overlooked. I have thought it VIIbetter to revise these letters,

10、inserting such matter as further research and more knowledge enabled me to add, rather than to methodize the whole; having observed in England, that works of this kind wherein the subjects are presented in the order wherein they occurred, are always better received than those of a more systematical

11、arrangement: indeed, they are less likely to be erroneous, and their errors are more excusable, in those letters which relate to the state of religion, I have availed myself of the remarks with which my Father Confessor instructed me in his correspondence. He has forbidden me to mention his name; bu

12、t it is my duty to state, that the most valuable observations upon this important subject, and, in particular, those passages in which the Fathers are so successfully quoted, would not have enriched these volumes, but for his assistance.In thus delineating to my countrymen the domestic character and

13、 habits of the VIIIEnglish, and the real state of England, I have endeavoured to be strictly impartial; and, if self-judgment may in such a case be trusted, it is my belief that I have succeeded. Certainly, I am not conscious of having either exaggerated or extenuated any thing in any the slightest

14、degreeof heightening the bright or the dark parts of the picture for the sake of effectof inventing what is false, nor of concealing what is true, so as to lie by implication. Mistakes and misrepresentations there may, and, perhaps, must be: I hope they will neither be found numerous nor important,

15、as I know they are not wilful; and I trust that whatever may be the faults and errors of the work, nothing will appear in it inconsistent with that love of my country, which I feel in common with every Spaniard; and that submission, which, in common with every Catholic, I owe to the Holy Church.LETT

16、ER I. Arrival at Falmouth.Custom House.Food of the English.Noise and Bustle at the Inn.Wednesday, April 21, 1802.I write to you from English ground. On the twelfth morning after our departure from Lisbon we came in sight of the Lizard, two light-houses on the rocks near the Lands End, which mark a d

17、angerous shore. The day was clear, and showed us the whole coast to advantage; but if these be the white cliffs of England, they have been strangely magnified by report: their forms are uninteresting, and their heights 2diminutive; if a score such were piled under Cape Finisterre, they would look li

18、ke a flight of stairs to the Spanish mountains. I made this observation to J, who could not help acknowledging the truth, but he bade me look at the green fields. The verdure was certainly very delightful, and that not merely because our eyes were wearied with the gray sea: the appearance was like g

19、reen corn, though approaching nearer I perceived that the colour never changed; for the herb, being kept short by cattle, does not move with the wind.We passed in sight of St Maurs, a little fishing-town on the east of the bay, and anchored about noon at Falmouth. There is a man always on the look-o

20、ut for the packets; he makes a signal as soon as one is seen, and every woman who has a husband on board gives him a shilling for the intelligence. I went through some troublesome forms upon landing, in consequence of the inhospitable laws enacted at the beginning of the war. There were then the 3ve

21、xatious ceremonies of the custom-house to be performed, where double fees were exacted for passing our baggage at extraordinary hours. J bade me not judge of his countrymen by their sea-ports: it is a proverb, said he, “that the people at these places are all either birds of passage, or birds of pre

22、y”; it is their business to fleece us, and ours to be silent.Patience where there is no remedy!our own aphorism, I find, is as needful abroad as at home. But if ever some new Cervantes should arise to write a mock heroic, let him make his hero pass through a custom-house on his descent to the infern

23、al regions.The inn appeared magnificent to me; my friend complained that it was dirty and uncomfortable. I cannot relish their food: they eat their meat half raw; the vegetables are never boiled enough to be soft; and every thing is insipid except the bread, which is salt, bitter, and disagreeable.

24、Their beer is far better in 4Spain, the voyage and the climate ripen it. The cheese and butter were more to my taste; manteca indeed is not butter, and the Englishman1 who wanted to call it so at Cadiz was as inaccurate in his palate as in his ideas. Generous wines are inordinately dear, and no othe

25、rs are to be procured; about a dollar a bottle is the price. What you find at the inns is in general miserably bad; they know this, and yet drink that the host may be satisfied with their expences: our custom of paying for the house-room is more economical, and better.1. This blunder has been applie

26、d to the French word eau. Which ever may be original, it certainly ought not to be palmed upon an Englishman.Tr.Falmouth stands on the western side of the bay, and consists of one long narrow street which exhibits no favourable specimen either of the boasted cleanliness or wealth of the English town

27、s. The wealthier merchants dwell a little out of 5the town upon the shore, or on the opposite side of the bay at a little place called Flushing. The harbour, which is very fine, is commanded by the castle of Pendennis; near its mouth there is a single rock, on which a pole is erected because it is c

28、overed at high tide. A madman not many years ago carried his wife here at low water, landed her on the rock, and rowed away in sport; nor did he return till her danger as well as fear had become extreme.Some time since the priest of this place was applied to to bury a certain person from the adjoini

29、ng country. “Why, John,” said he to the sexton, “we buried this man a dozen years ago:” and in fact it appeared on referring to the books of the church that his funeral had been registered ten years back. He had been bed-ridden and in a state of dotage during all that time; and his heirs had made a

30、mock burial, to avoid certain legal forms and expenses which would else have been necessary 6to enable them to receive and dispose of his rents. I was also told another anecdote of an inhabitant of this town, not unworthy of a stoic:His house was on fire; it contained his whole property; and when he

31、 found it was in vain to attempt saving any thing, he went upon the nearest hill and made a drawing of the conflagration:an admirable instance of English phlegm!The perpetual stir and bustle in this inn is as surprising as it is wearisome. Doors opening and shutting, bells ringing, voices calling to

32、 the waiter from every quarter, while he cries “Coming,” to one room, and hurries away to another. Every body is in a hurry here; either they are going off in the packets, and are hastening their preparations to embark; or they have just arrived, and are impatient to be on the road homeward. Every n

33、ow-and-then a carriage rattles up to the door with a rapidity which makes the very house shake. The man who cleans the boots is running 7in one direction, the barber with his powder-bag in another; here goes the barbers boy with his hot water and razors; there comes the clean linen from the washer-w

34、oman; and the hall is full of porters and sailors bringing in luggage, or bearing it away;now you hear a horn blow because the post is coming in, and in the middle of the night you are awakened by another because it is going out. Nothing is done in England without a noise, and yet noise is the only

35、thing they forget in the bill!8LETTER II. Mode of Travelling.Penryn.Truro.Dreariness of the Country.Bodmin.Earth-Coal the common Fuel.Launceston.Excellence of the Inns and Roads.Okehampton.Exeter.Thursday, April 22.Early in the morning our chaise was at the door, a four-wheeled carriage which conven

36、iently carries three persons. It has glass in front and at the sides, instead of being closed with curtains, so that you at once see the country and are sheltered from the weather. Two horses drew us at the rate of a league and a half in the hour;such is the rapidity with which the English travel. H

37、alf a league from Falmouth is the little town of Penryn, whose ill-built 9and narrow streets seem to have been contrived to make as many acute angles in the road, and take the traveller up and down as many steep declivities as possible in a given distance. In two hours we reached Truro, where we bre

38、akfasted: this meal is completely spoilt by the abominable bitterness of the bread, to which I shall not soon be able to reconcile myself. The town is clean and opulent; its main street broad, with superb shops, and a little gutter stream running through it. All the shops have windows to them; the c

39、limate is so inclement that it would be impossible to live without them. J showed me where some traveller had left the expression of his impatience written upon the wainscot with a pencil“Thanks to the Gods another stage is past”for all travellers are in haste here, either on their way home, or to b

40、e in time for the packet. When we proceeded the day had become dark and overclouded;quite English weather:I could scarcely keep myself 10warm in my cloak: the trees have hardly a tinge of green, though it is now so late in April. Every thing has a coarse and cold appearance: the heath looks nipt in

41、its growth, and the hedge-plants are all mean and insignificant: nettles, and thistles, and thorns, instead of the aloe, and the acanthus, and the arbutus, and the vine. We soon entered upon a track as dreary as any in Estremadura; mile after mile the road lay straight before us; up and down long hi

42、lls, whose heights only served to show how extensive was the waste.Mitchel-Dean, the next place to which we came, is as miserable as any of our most decayed towns; it is what they call a rotten borough: that is, it has the privilege of returning two members to parliament, who purchase the votes of t

43、heir constituents, and the place has no other trade:it has indeed a very rotten appearance. Even the poorest houses in this country are glazed: this, however, proves rather the inclemency of the climate than 11the wealth of the people. Our second stage was to a single house called the Indian Queens,

44、 which is rather a post-house than an inn. These places are not distinguished by a bush, though that was once the custom here also, but by a large painting swung from a sort of gallows before the door, or nailed above it, and the house takes its name from the sign. Lambs, horses, bulls, and stags, a

45、re common; sometimes they have red lions, green dragons, or blue boars, or the head of the king or queen, or the arms of the nearest nobleman. One inconvenience attends their mode of travelling, which is, that at every stage the chaise is changed, and of course there is the trouble of removing all t

46、he baggage.The same dreary country still lay before us; on the right there was a wild rock rising at once from the plain, with a ruin upon its summit. Nothing can be more desolate than the appearance of this province, where most part of the inhabitants live in the mines. “I never see the greater 12p

47、art of my parishioners,” said a clergyman here, “till they come up to be buried.” We dined at Bodmin, an old town which was once the chief seat of religion in the district, but has materially suffered since the schism; ill-built, yet not worse built than situated, being shadowed by a hill to the sou

48、th; and to complete the list of ill contrivances, their water is brought through the common burial-place. They burn earth-coal every where; it is a black shining stone, very brittle, which kindles slowly, making much smoke, and much ashes: but as all the houses are built with chimneys, it is neither

49、 unwholesome nor disagreeable. An Englishmans delight is to stir the fire; and I believe I shall soon acquire this part of their manners, as a means of self-defence against their raw and chilly atmosphere. The hearth is furnished with a round bar to move the coals, a sort of forceps to arrange them, and a small shovel for the cinders; all of iron, and so shaped and polished as to be 13ornamental. Besides these, there is what they call the fender, which is a little moveable barrier, either of brass or polishe