its lovely
hill. A more interesting site of the same extent, is not perhaps to be
found in the world. Its picturesque beauty, and its general advantages
as a place of residence, are attested by the preference given to it by
ministers and public men, who select it as a retreat from the cares of
ambition. On this ridge Pitt, Tooke, Addington, Burdett, Goldsmid, and
Dundas, were recent contemporary residents. Here, amid the orgies of
the latter, were probably concerted many of those political projects
which have unfortunately desolated the finest portions of Europe, for
the wicked, yet vain, purpose of destroying Truth by the sword! In an
adjoining domain, Tooke beguiled, in philological pastime, the evening
of a life whose meridian had been employed in disputing, inch by inch,
the overwhelming march of corrupt influence; while, as though it were
for effect of light and shade, the spacious plain of Wimbledon served
to display the ostentatious manoeuvres of those servile agents of
equivocal justice, whose permanent organization by an anti-human
policy has been engrafted on modern society, but whose aid would
seldom or never be necessary, if the purposes of their employers
accorded with the omnipotent influence of truth, reason, and justice.

I was now on the border of Barnes Common, consisting of 500 acres of
waste; and at a few paces eastward stands #Barnes poor-house#!
Yes!--in this enlightened country--in the vicinage of the residence of
many boasted statesmen--stands a #PARISH POOR-HOUSE ON A WASTE#! The
unappropriated means of plenty and independence surrounding a mansion
of hopeless poverty, maintained by collections of nearly 4000_l._ per
annum from the industrious parishioners! Lest readers in future ages
should doubt the fact, the antiquary of the year 2500 is hereby
assured,--that it stood at the angle of the Wandsworth and Fulham
roads, at the perpendicular distance of a mile from the Thames, and by
the side of the fashionable ride from London to Richmond!--Did so
monstrous an incongruity never penetrate the heads or hearts of any of
the high personages who daily pass it? Did it never occur to any of
them that it would be more rational to convert the materials of this
building into cottages, surrounded by two or three acres of the waste,
by which the happiness of the poor and the interests of the public
would be blended? Can any antiquated feudal right to this useless
tract properly supersede the paramount claim