he might as well try to move Helvellyn or shake Skiddaw; and that, while he blushed for the weakness of his family, he thanked Heaven that he, at least, was adamant.
Jopson showed him by the list he brought with him that the whole of the villagers were going, and that Hassness would be left neighbourless for a circuit of seven miles at least; whereupon Sandboys observed with a chuckle, that the place could not be much more quiet than it was, and that with those fine fellows, Robinson and Davy Top, and Dod and Honister around him, he should never want company.
Jopson talked sagely of youths seeing the world and expanding their minds by travel; whereat the eyes of the younger Sandboys glistened; but the father rejoined, that travel was of use only for the natural beauties of the scenery it revealed, and the virtues of the people with whom it brought the traveller into association; "and where," he asked, with evident pride of county, "could more natural beauty or greater native virtue be found, than amongst the mountains and the pastoral race of Buttermere?" Seizing the latest Times that had reached him the evening before, he pointed triumphantly to some paragraph, headed "Ingenious Fraud on a Yokel!" wherein a country gentleman had been cleverly duped of some hundreds of pounds paid to him that morning at Smithfield; and he asked with sarcasm, whether those were the scenes and those the people that Jopson thought he could improve his son Jobby by introducing him to?
In vain Jopson pulled from his pocket a counter newspaper, and showed him the plan of some Monster Lodging House which was to afford accommodation for one thousand persons from the country at one and the same time, "for one-and-three per night!"—how, for this small sum, each of the thousand was to be provided "with bedstead, good wool mattress, sheets, blankets, and coverlet; with soap, towels, and every accommodation for ablution;"—how the two thousand boots of the thousand lodgers were to be cleaned at one penny per pair, and their one thousand chins to be shaven by relays of barbers continually in attendance—how a surgeon was "to attend at nine o'clock every morning," to examine the lodgers, and "instantly remove all cases of infectious disease"—how there was to be "a smoking-room, detached from the main-building, where a band of music was to play every evening, gratis"—how omnibuses to all the theatres and amusements and sights were to carry the thousand sight-seers at one penny per head—how "cold roast and boiled beef and mutton, and ditto ditto sausages and bacon, and pickles, salads, and fruit pies (when to be procured), were to be furnished, at fixed prices," to the thousand country gentlemen with the thousand country appetites—how "all the dormitories were to be well lighted with gas to secure the complete privacy of the occupants"—how "they were to be watched over by efficient wardens and police constables"—how "an office was to be opened for the security of luggage"—and how "the proprietor pledged himself that every care
