yards distance from the road. There was the
wife with the baby in her arms, the husband teaching another child to
walk, while _four_ more were at play before them. I stopped and looked
at them for some time, and then, turning my horse, rode up to the
wicket, getting into talk by asking the distance to Horsham. I found
that the man worked chiefly in the woods, and that he was doing pretty
well. The wife was then only _twenty-two_, and the man only
_twenty-five_. She was a pretty woman, even for _Sussex_, which, not
excepting Lancashire, contains the prettiest women in England. He was a
very fine and stout young man. 'Why,' said I, 'how many children do you
reckon to have at last?' 'I do not care how many,' said the man: 'God
never sends mouths without sending meat.' 'Did you ever hear,' said I,
'of one PARSON MALTHUS?' 'No, sir.' 'Why, if he were to hear of your
works, he would be outrageous; for he wants an act of parliament to
prevent poor people from marrying young, and from having such lots of
children.' 'Oh! the brute!' exclaimed the wife; while the husband
laughed, thinking that I was joking. I asked the man whether he had ever
had _relief from the parish_; and upon his answering in the negative, I
took out my purse, took from it enough to bait my horse at Horsham, and
to clear my turnpikes to WORTH, whither I was going in order to stay
awhile, and gave him all the rest. Now, is it not a shame, is it not a
sin of all sins, that people like these should, by acts of the
government, be reduced to such misery as to be induced to abandon their
homes and their country, to seek, in a foreign land, the means of
preventing themselves and their children from starving? And this has
been, and now is, actually the case with many such families in this same
county of Sussex!

100. An _ardent-minded_ young man (who, by-the-by, will, as I am afraid,
have been wearied by this rambling digression) may fear, that this great
_sobriety of conduct_ in a young woman, for which I have been so
strenuously contending, argues a want of that _warmth_, which he
naturally so much desires; and, if my observation and experience
warranted the entertaining of this fear, I should say, had I to live my
life over again, give me the _warmth_, and I will stand my chance as to
the rest. But, this observation and this experience tell me the
contrary; they tell me that _levity_ is, ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, the companion of _a want of ardent feeli