_Marlborough, Tuesday noon, Nov. 6._ I left Uphusband this morning at 9, and came across to this place (20 miles) in a post-chaise. Came up the valley of Uphusband, which ends at about 6 miles from the village, and puts one out upon the Wiltshire Downs, which stretch away towards the West and South-west, towards Devizes and towards Salisbury. After about half a mile of down we came down into a level country; the flints cease, and the chalk comes nearer the top of the ground. The labourers along here seem very poor indeed. Farmhouses with twenty ricks round each, besides those standing in the fields; pieces of wheat 50, 60, or 100 acres in a piece; but a group of women labourers, who were attending the measurers to measure their reaping work, presented such an assemblage of rags as I never before saw even amongst the hoppers at Farnham, many of whom are common beggars. I never before saw _country_ people, and reapers too, observe, so miserable in appearance as these. There were some very pretty girls, but ragged as colts and as pale as ashes. The day was cold too, and frost hardly off the ground; and their blue arms and lips would have made any heart ache but that of a seat-seller or a loan-jobber. A little after passing by these poor things, whom I left, cursing, as I went, those who had brought them to this state, I came to a group of shabby houses upon a hill. While the boy was watering his horses, I asked the ostler the _name_ of the place; and, as the old women say, "you might have knocked me down with a feather," when he said, "_Great Bedwin_." The whole of the houses are not intrinsically worth a thousand pounds. There stood a thing out in the middle of the place, about 25 feet long and 15 wide, being a room stuck up on unhewed stone pillars about 10 feet high. It was the Town Hall, where the ceremony of choosing the _two Members_ is performed. "This place sends Members to Parliament, don't it?" said I to the ostler. "Yes, Sir." "Who are Members _now_?" "I _don't know_, indeed, Sir."--I have not read the _Henriade_ of Voltaire for these 30 years; but in ruminating upon the ostler's answer, and in thinking how the world, yes, _the whole world_, has been deceived as to this matter, two lines of that poem came across my memory: Representans du peuple, les Grands et le Roi: Spectacle magnifique! Source sacree des lois![1] The Frenchman, for want of understanding the THING as well as I do, left the eulogium incomplete. I therefore here add four lines, which I request those who publish future editions of the Henriade to insert in continuation of the above eulogium of Voltaire. Representans du peuple, que celui-ci ignore, Sont fait a miracle pour garder son Or! Peuple trop heureux, que le bonheur inonde! L'envie de vos voisins, admire du monde![2]