LETTER VII.

LYNN, August, 1798.

As, upon all occasions, I feel a pleasure in praising, and a sincere reluctance to withhold praise, it is some mortification that I cannot agree with the Tourist who has called this a beautiful town, though I am ready to allow the application of his other epithets, namely, that it is rich and populous; nor will I deny, that its situation, near the fall of the Ouse into the sea, is highly favourable to the extension of its trade, which is thus conducted into no less than eight different counties, opening thereby as many channels for the produce of our own, and other shores.

By whatever road you enter this sea-port, my dear Baron, you will be impressively struck with its general resemblance to some of your own German, and many French, fortified

towns. Its neat quicksets on each side the road as you enter by the South gate, the gate itself, the deep rampart-looking elevation, the entrenched ditch by which it is encompassed on the land side, the platform of cannonry, the formal military-looking walks, terrace fashion, and the fragment of ancient wall, with the various old buildings, in keeping with this picture of a foreign fortress, will all bring home to your recollection. Indeed, it is almost impossible to offer an Englishman a juster idea of the usual style of a continental town, or a foreigner any one more resembling what he has been accustomed to see, than by referring him to a view of Lynn. I wish I could extend the resemblance between this and many of the French or German public roads, but there it falls off importantly on the part of the two former; the turnpike road to Lynn in almost every

Even when there was not a single turnpike in the ountry, the Norfolk roads were naturally so good, that when our King Charles was its visitor in 1671, he said the county should be cut into strips to make roads for the rest.

direction, but especially near the little village I have lately drawn for you, being so beautiful, that I am not sure whether the most national traveller would not overlook the similitude of the town to any one in his own land, in his admiration of the paths that lead to it. And the cultivated scenery which variegates the prospect as he passes along, though somewhat contrasting the war-breathing spirit of bastions and battlements, by displaying a specimen of the smiling progress of modern agriculture, gives that assemblage of the rich and the agreeable which are seldom completely associated but in the landscapes of England.

As you advance towards Lynn, however, this scenery gives way to various circumstances which more assimilate to Holland; the meadows are on each side separated rather by the ditch, and the drain, than by hedge-rows; the soil flattens upon the eye; the marshy earth appears to sink under the feet of the herds that browze it, but the verdure is lovely, and the pasture abundant.

You will very soon perceive, in this, as in

every other part of England, vestiges of the religion which for so many ages and in so many regions of the earth prevailed, and which, indeed, still maintains its ground, though, it seems at present, to be trembling ground, in various parts of Europe. Catholicism, how ever, in this island, is now rather permitted than encouraged; she is confined to the contracted chapel, or even to temporary edifices yet more limited, where she is privileged by the courtesies of the country, to rear her altar, strew her incense, wreathe her garlands, and chaunt her oraison. But her magnificent pile, that expanded widely its commanding powers, her consecrated ground, that appropriated and encircled half a district within its walls, and took whole villages in its gripe- till Ceres and Pomona were compelled to become tributary, not only by surrender of their first fruits, but their last-her" cloud-capt towers, and solemn temples," are to be seen amongst us no more. Of her former grandeur, and of her once almost immeasurable power, we trace no longer the trophies but the tombs; her disjointed monas.

tery, her ivy-girded ruin, her proud abbey converted into huts for the herdsman, or stalls for the ox, and her most secret places where the penitent breathed her confession, embraced her punishment, or received her pardon amidst hymns that seemed to penetrate her soul, now all changed to the asylum of the bat, and to receive only the vespers of the night-bird.

We retain, however, the names of numberless Saints even in our churches, and the Cross is frequently seen displayed at the top of our Protestant Temples: thus, the principal church. in Lynn, which is said to have been built about the year 1100, by HERBERT DE LOZINGA, Bishop of Norwich, * is dedicated to St. Mar

*The etymology of this Prelate's name, does not come out much to the justice of his character. Camden says, that the word leasing in Saxon, signifies a lye or trick, for which reason, Bishop Herbert had the surname of Lozinga, and it seems to be admitted by all writers, that the character of his youth and old age contrasted each other. When young, say his biographers, he was loose, wild, and usurious; in three years, he grew so rich as to purchase the abbey of Winchester and the Bishoprick of Thetford, for which he was stigmatized by William of Malmsbury as the Vir Pecuniosus. When old, nothing of Herbert was in Herbert,