Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Company edition byDavid Price,
Travels in England
In 1782
BY
C. P. MORITZ.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS,NEW YORK &MELBOURNE.
1886.
INTRODUCTION
Charles P. Moritz’s “Travels, chiefly onfoot, through several parts of England in 1782, described inLetters to a Friend,” were translated from the German by alady, and published in 1795. John Pinkerton included themin the second volume of his Collection of Voyages andTravels.
The writer of this account of England as it was about ahundred years ago, and seven years before the French Revolution,was a young Prussian clergyman, simply religious, calmlyenthusiastic for the freer forms of citizenship, which he foundin England and contrasted with the military system ofBerlin. The touch of his times was upon him, with some ofthe feeling that caused Frenchmen, after the first outbreak ofthe Revolution, to hail Englishmen as “their forerunners inthe glorious race.” He had learnt English at home,and read Milton, whose name was inscribed then in Germanliterature on the banners of the free.
In 1782 Charles Moritz came to England with little in hispurse and “Paradise Lost” in his pocket, which hemeant to read in the Land of Milton. He came ready toadmire, and enthusiasm adds some colour to his earliestimpressions; but when they were coloured again by hardexperience, the quiet living sympathy remained. There isnothing small in the young Pastor Moritz, we feel a noble naturein his true simplicity of character.
He stayed seven weeks with us, three of them in London. He travelled on foot to Richmond, Windsor, Oxford, Birmingham,and Matlock, with some experience of a stage coach on the wayback; and when, in dread of being hurled from his perch on thetop as the coach flew down hill, he tried a safer berth among theluggage in the basket, he had further experience. It waslike that of Hood’s old lady, in the same place of invitingshelter, who, when she crept out, had only breath enough left tomurmur, “Oh, them boxes!”
Pastor Moritz’s experience of inns was such as he hardlycould pick up in these days of the free use of the feet. But in those days everybody who was anybody rode. And evennow, there might be cold welcome to a shabby-looking pedestrianwithout a knapsack. Pastor Moritz had his Milton in onepocket and his change of linen in the other. From some innshe was turned away as a tramp, and in others he found coldcomfort. Yet he could be proud of a bit of practical wisdomdrawn by himself out of the “Vicar of Wakefield,”that taught him to conciliate the innkeeper by drinking with him;and the more the innkeeper drank of the ale ordered the better,because Pastor Moritz did not like it, and it did not likehim. He also felt experienced in the ways of the worldwhen, having taken example from the manners of a bar-maid, if hedrank in a full room he did not omit to say, “Your healths,gentlemen all.