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Excursion to Windsor,

&c. &c.

LETTER I.

BATTERSEA; SITUATION; BRUNEL'S MANUFACTORY; LORD BOLINGBROKE; HIS HISTORY, CHARACTER, AND WRITINGS; ITS CHURCH, DISSENTING PLACE of worship, HORIZONTAL MILL; WANDSWORTH; POPULATION, AND MANUFACTURES; FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH; SIR JOHN BARNARD; MAYOR of garRAT; PUTNEY; ITS POPULATION ́AND HISTORY; PUTNEY COMMON WITH ITS OBELISK; WILLIAM PITT; HIS HISTORY, DEATH, CHARACTER; KOEHAMPTON; ROBERT WOOD THE CLASSICAL TRAVELLER, ESPECIALLY TO GREECE; EDWARD GIBBON; HIS HISTORY, HIS WORKS, WITH HAYLEY'S ODE AND STANZAS ; HIS DEATH, HIS CHARACTER; AN ESTIMATE OF THE NATURE AND TENDENCY OF HIS WRITINGS. ANECDOTE OF GIBRON RESPECTING THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE. CONCLUSION.

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,

Islington, July 1810.

INSTEAD of visiting the sea-side or of paying my respects to my Relatives in the Principality of Wales, I determined to pass, during this Summer Vacation, a Week with my little family at WINDSOR. Accordingly at nine o'clock in the morning we left Islington, ten of us, in two post chaises, including myself, Mrs. Evans, our four Sons, and four West Indians en

B

2 BATTERSEA.

BRUNEL'S MANUFACTORY.

trusted to my care for education. We passed over that beautiful specimen of human art Blackfriars' Bridge, towards the Obelisk in St. George's Fields, then turning to the right directed our route through Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Barnes, Mortlake, Richmond, Twickenham to HAMPTON COURt. The day was fine; nor was the road either too dusty or too crowded. We bowled along with an even and steady pace. The majestic river Thames soon presented his smooth expanse to view, while small vessels were seen here and there, bearing towards the Metropolis, the treasures of the more inland parts of the country.

On the the right we quickly perceived the little pleasant village of Battersea, situated on the margin of the Thames, as well as distinguished on every side for miles around, by the tapering spire of its church and its horizontal windmill. Manufactories and distilleries are here seen in every direction. The manufactory of the modest and persevering Mr. Brunel, is well worth attention. His machinery is the subject of general admiration. His wonderful apparatus in the dock yard at Portsmouth, I inspected some time ago with unmingled pleasure. On no other occasion have I witnessed the Six Mechanic Powers so variously combined, so ingeniously diversified. Nor has the operation of this machinery been confined to one object; here it descends even to the making of shoes. Each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, one hundred pair are produced each day, the operators

LORD BOLINGBROKE.

3

are wounded soldiers, who perform the several details with precision and accuracy.

The distillery in the possession of Mr. Hodgson, and marked by the horizontal windmill, stands on the premises of the ancient mansion belonging to the BOLINGBROKE family. Here it was, therefore, that the celebrated LORD BOLINGBROKE resided; the companion of Pope, and whose name frequently occurs in the annals of Great Britain. At Battersea he was born, 1672, and died at Battersea, 1751, in the 79th, year of his age. Educated at Eton, he from thence went o Oxford. Graceful in his person, and winning in his address, he soon distinguished himself. He became Secretary of War, during the period of the Duke of Malborough's successes. For negociating, the Treaty of Utrecht, he was threatened with an impeachment, on the accession of George I., and retired to France. Here he engaged himself in the interest of the Pretender. His new master being unsuccessful in the Rebellion of 1715, he discharged him from the post of Secretaryship which he had conferred upon him, threatening him with an impeachment. Thus, Lord Bolingbroke had the singular fortune of having been in the same office, under a real and under a mock sovereign, and having been dismissed in both instances with the same tokens of displeasure! In France he, under those novel circumstances, wrote Reflections on Exile, in which he endeavoured to suggest topics of consolation, upon the ground of unmerited suffering.

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LORD BOLINGBROKE'S WRITINGS.

In 1723, Lord Bolingbroke obtained his Majesty's full pardon, and returned to England. Having his family inheritance restored to him, which he had lost by attainder, he purchased a rural spot near Uxbridge, whence addressing himself to Dean Swift, he says"I am in my farm, and here I shoot strong and tenacious roots. I have caught hold of the earth, to use the gardener's phrase, and neither my enemies nor my friends will find it an easy matter to transplant me again." However, there was still rankling in his breast a spirit of discontentment. Not having been restored to the House of Lords, and conceiving the Minister, Walpole, the cause of it, he commenced against him a violent career of opposition. This warfare he carried on for ten years; but again withdrew to France. His father, who was created Viscount St. John, during his son's exile, dying-the son returned and settled at Battersea, where he passed the remainder of his life. He was the author of A Letter on the true Use of Retirement and Study; of Letters on the Study and Use of History; and also of Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, and the Idea of a Patriot King; as well as of other publications.

As a Political Writer, he employed his pen on topics of temporary interest, with a few exceptions; and as a Philosophical Moralist, he appears to advantage in POPE'S Essay on Man; of which celebrated Poem, the plan and design are avowedly his, and also some of the illustrations. Nor is there a finer passage in all the Poet's Works than the concluding, encomiast

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