in many of the great essentials. In carrying out the
practice in this identical case, a serious private wrong was inflicted, in
order that, in form, an abstract and perfectly useless principle might be
maintained. The inns at Southampton were filled with troops, who were
billeted on the publicans, will ye, nill ye; and not only the masters of
the different houses, but travellers were subjected to a great
inconvenience, in order that this abstraction might not be violated. There
may be some small remuneration, but no one can suppose for a moment, that
the keeper of a genteel establishment of this nature wishes to see his
carriage-houses, gateways, and halls thronged with soldiers. Society
oppresses him to maintain appearances! At the present day the presence of
soldiers might be the means of sustaining justice, while there is not the
smallest probability that they would be used for contrary purposes, except
in cases in which this usage or law--for I believe there is a statue for
it--would not be in the least respected. This is not an age, nor is
England the country, in which a judge is to be overawed by the roll of a
drum. All sacrifices of common sense, and all recourse to plausible
political combinations, whether of individuals or of men, are uniformly
made at the expense of the majority. The day is certainly arrived when
absurdities like these should be done away with.

The weather was oppressively hot, nor do I remember to have suffered more
from the sun than during this little journey. Were I to indulge in the
traveller's propensity to refer everything to his own state of feeling,
you might be told what a sultry place England is in July. But I was too
old a sailor not to understand the cause. The sea is always more temperate
than the land, being cooler in summer and warmer in winter. After being
thirty days at sea, we all feel this truth, either in one way or the
other. I was quitting the coast, too, which is uniformly cooler than the
interior.

When some twelve or thirteen miles from town, the coachman pointed to a
wood enclosed by a wall, on our left. A rill trickled from the thicket,
and ran beneath the road. I was told that Virginia Water lay there, and
that the evening before a single footpad had robbed a coach in that
precise spot, or within a few hundred yards of the very place where the
King of England at the moment was amusing himself with the fishing-rod.
Highway robberies, however are now of exceedingly