“The merry Christmas that we wish you will be over before our wishes can reach Copenhagen, and the new year will be far on its way to February,—may it, however, be a happy one in its course! None within my memory has ever opened with such threatening aspects; but this consideration, which enters night and morning into my prayers, affects me very little at other times; partly because I am too busy to entertain it, partly because my constitutional hilarity overcomes it, and still more, perhaps, because I have a strong persuasion, such as might almost be called an abiding trust, that Providence will visit this country, sinful as it is, rather in mercy than in vengeance.
“The misconduct of those people who let the cholera into Sunderland has been, if possible, exceeded by that of the Government which has let it out! instead of shutting it up and extinguishing it in the first house where it appeared. But even in the King’s speech the question of contagion is spoken of as doubtful, and the Government have dealt with this pestilence just as they did with the Catholic question,—allowed the evil to increase, till they could plead its extent as an excuse for yielding to it: they kept up the farce of a quarantine upon the ships and allowed free intercourse by land. The cholera is now as fairly denizened as the small pox.
| Ætat. 57. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 167 |
“I have always thought Copenhagen one of the safest places from this disease, because your Government there is an efficient one in such cases, and is perfectly aware of the danger, and yet has few points to guard, which being guarded it cannot be brought to you. In England it will have as free a course as sedition, treason, and blasphemy. This house is as favourably situated as any one can be that is not at a distance from an inhabited place; and with this assurance we shall commit ourselves to God’s mercy, if it should be imported into Keswick. . . . .
“You ask me about the insurrection at Bristol.
Government are well informed that it was part only of a wider scheme in which
Birmingham, Nottingham, and other places were to have taken part. The Bishop behaved manfully; the mob were masters
of the city, and one of the minor canons waited upon him before the hour of
service, and represented to him the propriety of postponing it. ‘My
young friend,’ said the Bishop with great good nature, laying his
hand upon his shoulder as he spake, ‘these are times in which it is
necessary not to shrink from danger. Our duty is to be at our
post.’ The service accordingly was performed as usual, and he himself
preached. Before evening closed, his palace was burnt to the ground, and the
loss which he sustained (besides that of his papers) is estimated at 10,000l. Except the books and papers which were consumed
there, nothing has been destroyed but what may be replaced; for though the fire
has done no good (that is, though it has burnt none of those filthy dens of
| 168 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 57. |
“This event has made the decent part of the people understand what the populace are, and has made the populace fear the soldiers. Latterly, indeed, the mob were so drunk that a handful of resolute men might have knocked them on the head, as sailors kill seals upon an unfrequented island.
“The truth is, that the West Indian planters are not
in more danger from their negroes, than we are from our servile population. The
old habit of obedience is destroyed, and what is even worse, there is no longer
the bond of mutual interest between the
| Ætat. 57. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 169 |
“How much matters of this kind have been in my thoughts during the last three-and-twenty years, you will see whenever my Essays reach you. I expect daily to see them advertised. . . . .
“I am glad to hear that you have been buying books. I have subscribed to the Bibliotheca Anglo-Saxonica; and to Jonathan Boucher’s Glossary, which is at last about to be completed and published as a Supplement to Johnson. If the continuation be as good as Boucher’s own part, it will be the best work of its kind, I believe, in any language. Cuthbert and I are reading the Merchant of Venice in the Friezeland Dialect, Halbertsma having sent me, from Deventer, a translation by Posthumous of that play and of Julius Cæsar.
“God bless you!
