luxuriant fields of corn and grass; gentlemen's country seats, with their adjoining gardens and orchards; and last, though not least, the clean and cheerful cottages of the peasantry, which rose up in hundreds at short distances from each other-were among the objects which contributed to the surpassingly beautiful scenery on which my vision feasted itself. I had read of charming landscapes in that class of romances known by the name of fairy tales, but I felt how poor were the efforts of the imagination, when compared with the reality of the scenes which lay before me. No one could have looked on the landscapes which I then beheld, under such a concurrence of favourable circumstances, without recurring in his mind to what he has read in the records of inspiration, of what must have been the pleasures of our first parents, while yet in a state of innocence, in the Paradise which their Maker assigned them. I thought how beautiful and blessed it were possible for this world to become,

were

moral and physical evil only exiled for ever

from it.

Hastings, in addition to the respectability of those who visit it in the fashionable season, and the singular beauty of the surrounding scenery, possesses this other great source of attraction— that it is, with the single exception of the Isle of Wight, the most healthy place for invalids in any part of England. The climate is peculiarly mild, and the air remarkably salubrious. Hence it is that so many patients labouring under pulmonary complaints, are sent to Hastings by their medical advisers.

The place was full when Joseph Jenkins paid his visit to it. There he met with some literary acquaintances who had resorted thither with the same view as himself-namely, to enjoy a little relaxation at the seaside.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Joseph Jenkins attends, simply from motives of curiosity, a Socialist meeting held in the metropolis-The principles promulgated-Mr. Hatchet's speech-Its effects-A ludicrous incident.

JOSEPH, having spent his fortnight at Hastings, returned to town, considerably invigorated by the healthful seabreezes of that favourite watering-place. At the seaside, notwithstanding all the attractions of the place and the season, he had felt, for the last ten or twelve days, quite out of his element, and panted for the variety and excitement of metropolitan life. A certain amount of excitement was, indeed, necessary to his enjoyment of existence; nay, without something of a stirring kind, constituted

as his mind then was, life would have been barely tolerable. This eagerness for mingling in scenes of an exciting kind often induced him to attend public meetings, where he expected to witness amusing exhibitions of character, though such attendance was not at the time necessary for professional purposes. The first meeting which his curiosity prompted him to attend, on his return to town, was a meeting of the friends and admirers of Robert Owen, then in the height of his glory as the founder of the Social system. When Mr. Owen first developed his views in the metropolis, they were cordially and promptly embraced by large masses of the working classes. The father of the Socialist philosophy not only held out to the operatives the Elysian prospect of being abundantly fed and clothed, and comfortably housed, under the "new moral state of things," whose immediate advent it was his mission to harbinger-but this, too, without the necessity of labour, or, if there should be any work, it would only be

in the way of recreation; Mr. Owen, we say, not only inculcated these gratifying doctrines, but he was most zealous in his efforts to expose and banish from the world the egregious though popular error, that man is responsible to his Maker for his belief, and to society for his conduct. Mr. Owen boldly maintained, that men's opinions and actions are wholly the effects of the bad system of education under which children are brought up. He farther contended that, were his Socialist views of education adopted, there would not, before another generation had passed away, be a vicious man in the empire, but all would be perfectly virtuous. Mr. Owen was clear that society itself was the subject of the deepest blame, because it suffered a pernicious system of education to exist. But then the Social philosopher, in the plenitude of his charity, and on maturer consideration, acquitted society also of all blame; because it had itself, when its members were boys and girls at their parents' hearths, or in the public school,