In quitting Frant I descended into a country more woody than that behind me. I asked a man whose fine woods those were that I pointed to, and I fairly gave _a start_ when he said the Marquis Camden's. Milton talks of the _Leviathan_ in a way to make one draw in one's shoulders with fear; and I appeal to any one, who has been at sea when a whale has come near the ship, whether he has not, at the first sight of the monster, made a sort of involuntary movement, as if to _get out of the way_. Such was the movement that I now made. However, soon coming to myself, on I walked my horse by the side of my pedestrian informant. It is Bayham Abbey that this great and awful sinecure placeman owns in this part of the county. Another great estate he owns near Sevenoaks. But here alone he spreads his length and breadth over more, they say, than ten or twelve thousand acres of land, great part of which consists of oak-woods. But, indeed, what estates might he not purchase? Not much less than thirty years he held a place, a sinecure place, that yielded him about thirty thousand pounds a-year! At any rate, he, according to Parliamentary accounts, has received, of public money, little short of a million of guineas. These, at 30 guineas an acre, would buy thirty thousand acres of land. And what did he have all this money _for_? Answer me that question, Wilberforce, you who called him a "bright star," when he gave up _a part_ of his enormous sinecure. He gave up all but the _trifling_ sum of nearly three thousand pounds a-year! What a bright star! And _when_ did he give it up? When the _Radical_ had made the country ring with it. When his name was, by their means, getting into every mouth in the kingdom; when every Radical speech and petition contained the name of Camden. Then it was, and not till then, that this "bright star" let fall part of its "brilliancy." So that Wilberforce ought to have thanked the _Radicals_, and not Camden. When he let go his grasp, he talked of the merits of his father. His father was a lawyer, who was exceedingly well paid for what he did without a million of money being given to his son. But there is something rather out of common-place to be observed about this father. This father was the contemporary of Yorke, who became Lord Hardwicke. Pratt and Yorke, and the merit of Pratt was that he was constantly opposed to the principles of Yorke. Yorke was called a _Tory_ and Pratt a _Whig_; but the devil of it was, both got to be Lords; and, in one shape or another, the families of both have, from that day to this, been receiving great parcels of the public money! Beautiful system! The Tories were for _rewarding Yorke_; the Whigs were for _rewarding Pratt_. The Ministers (all in good time!) humoured both parties; and the stupid people, divided into _tools of two factions_, actually applauded, now one part of them, and now the other part of them, the squandering away of their substance. They were like