Night Thoughts, and Peregrine Pickle. On
one day he says, " In the evening I read part of
the fourth volume of the Tatler; the oftener I
read it the better I like it. I think I never
found the vice of drinking so well exploded in
my life, as in one of the numbers." The
twentieth of June being his birthday, " I
treated," he says, " my scholars with about five
quarts of strong beer, and had an issue cut in
my leg." "Sunday— I went down to Jones,
where we drank one bowl of punch and two
muggers of bamboo; and I came home again in
liquor. Oh! with what horrors does it fill my
heart, to think I should be guilty of doing so,
and on a Sunday too! Let me once more
endeavour, never, no never, to be guilty of the
same again!"  Mr. T. T. was a patriot, too. In
seventeen fifty-six, a month or two after he had
resigned his school to Francis Elless, he " heard
of the loss of Fort St. Philip and the whole
island of Minarco (Minorca). . . . Never did
the English nation suffer a greater blot. Oh,
my country, my country!— oh, Albian, Albian!
I doubt thou art tottering on the brink of ruin
and desolation this day! The nation is all in a
foment upon account of losing dear Minarco."
On the whole, however, there were more
occasions given by the war for rejoicing and
bell-ringing than for despondency. East Hothly
was in the neighbourhood of Halland-house, an
estate of the Duke of Newcastle's, where there
were great doings when the duke came down,
and where the duke's steward, Mr. Coates, set
the example of loyalty by tapping the strong
beer on all national occasions. Invited to one
such gathering, Mr. Turner, before setting out,
records in his diary that he is very miserable at
the prospect of having to make a beast of
himself before going to bed. " But what can I do?
If I goe, I must drink just as they please, or
otherwise I shall be called a poor singular
fellow. If I stay at home, I shall be stigmatised
with the name of being a poor, proud, illnatured
wretch, and perhaps disoblige Mr. Coates."
Mr. Coates representing the custom of Halland-House,
no trifling matter to the general dealer
in a village of some five hundred inhabitants,
was not to be disobliged. Mr. T. Turner went,
and drank health and success in a glass of strong
beer apiece to: 1, his Majesty; 2, the Royal
Family; 3, the King of Prussia; 4, Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick; 5, Lord Anson; 6,
his Grace the Duke of Newcastle; 7, his
Duchess; 8, Lord Abergavenny; 9, Admiral
Boscawen; 10, Mr. Pelham of Stanmore ; 11,
the Earl of Aneram; 12, Lord Gage; 13,
Marshal Keith, and several more loyal healths.
"About ten I deserted, and came safe home;
but to my shame do I mention it, very much in
liquor. Before I came away, I think I may
say there was not one sober person in
company." This was a party of twenty,
including the clergymen of that and the adjoining
parish.

At the merry meetings of the tradesmen held
among themselves, especially the rounds of
supper parties given at Christmas, the wives got
drunk with the husbands. " Their mirth being
rather obstreperious than serious and agreeable.
Oh! how silly is mankind to delight so much in
vanity and transitory joys!" Thomas Turner
was a prudent, thriving man, a churchwarden in
his time, and arbitrator of the quarrels of the
parish, who left a flourishing business to his son.
His first wife, with whom he records all his
quarrels, and of whom he records also his hearty
liking and affection, was a prudent, thrifty woman,
yet even she was sometimes brought home on a
servant's back, after he had slipped away, as far
gone as he dared to be, leaving her behind to
make his excuses. When they played cards, it
was brag or whist— usually brag— they played
at, and we have record of pleasant sittings at
cards between Mr. and Mrs. Turner and a couple
of neighbours, which were continued as innocent
entertainment all the night through. The stakes
were small. The diarist records on one occasion
special lamentation because he has lost at brag
three shillings, which " might have been" given
to the poor.

Mr. Thomas Turner, as became the tradesman
of a hundred years ago, had a due reverence for
rank. Here is one of his entries: " Sunday,
July 10. The Right Hon. Geo. Cholmondely,
Earl Cholmondely, Viscount Malpas, joint
vice-treasurer of Ireland, Lord Lieutenant, cust. rot.,
and Vice-Admiral of Cheshire, Governor of
Chester Castle, Lord Lieutenant of Anglesea,
Caernarvon, Flint, Merioneth, and Montgomery,
Steward of the Royal Manor of Sheen, in Surrey,
and Knight of the Bath, being a visiting at
Mr. Coates's, was at church this morning." So
Mr. Turner worshipped the lord on that Sunday at
any rate.

On the fifteenth of October, seventeen fifty-six,
having been just three years married, the
diarist in the back parlour behind the shop,
looks back on a series of matrimonial quarrels,
and on afflictions "which we have justly
deserved by the many anemosityes and
desentions which have been continually fermented
between us and our friends." But now, he
adds, we " begin to live happy; and I am
thoroughly persuaded, if I knew my own mind,
that if I was single again, and at liberty to make
another choice, I should do the same; I mean,
make her my wife who is so now." The chief of
the " fermenting parties" was— of course— his
wife's mother, Mrs. Slater, a very Xantippe, he
says, " having a great volubility of tongue for
invective, and especially if I am the subject;
though what the good woman wants with me I
know not."

It was the refuse slag of the extinct iron
works that hardened the narrow slip of Sussex
road that could be travelled over in the winter-time,
when, a little more advanced in the world,
Mr. Turner kept a horse, saddle, and pillion of
his own; before he could do that, he hired or
borrowed. Thus he writes one day, in the damp
autumn weather: "My wife and I having
fixed to go to Hartfield, my wife endeavoured to
borrow a horse of Jos. Fuller, Tho. Fuller,
Will. Piper, and Jos. Burgess, to no purpose,