Hence it was that I thought our parish church the noblest structure in England, and the Squire’s Place-House, as we called it, a most magnificent palace.  I had the same opinion of the alms-house in the churchyard, and of a bridge over the brook that parts our parish from the next.  It was the common vogue of our school, that the master was the best scholar in Europe, and the usher the second.  Not happening to correct these notions, by comparing them with what I saw when I came into the world, upon returning back, I began to resume my former imaginations, and expected all things should appear in the same view as I left them when I was a boy:  but to my utter disappointment I found them wonderfully shrunk, and lessened almost out of my knowledge.  I looked with contempt on the tribes painted on the church walls, which I once so much admired, and on the carved chimneypiece in the Squire’s Hall.  I found my old master to be a poor ignorant pedant; and, in short, the whole scene to be extremely changed for the worse.  This I could not help mentioning, because though it be of no consequence in itself, yet it is certain, that most prejudices are contracted and retained by this narrow way of thinking, which, in matters of the greatest moment are hardly shook off:  and which we only think true, because we were made to believe so, before we were capable to distinguish between truth and falsehood.  But there was one prepossession which I confess to have parted with, much to my regret:  I mean the opinion of that native honesty and simplicity of manners, which I had always imagined to be inherent in country-people.  I soon observed it was with them and us, as they say of animals; That every species at land has one to resemble it at sea; for it was easy to discover the seeds and principles of every vice and folly that one meets with in the more known world, though shooting up in different forms.  I took a fancy out of the several inhabitants round, to furnish the camp, the bar, and the Exchange, and some certain chocolate and coffeehouses, with exact parallels to what, in many instances, they already produce.  There was a drunken quarrelsome smith, whom I have a hundred times fancied at the head of a troop of dragoons.  A weaver, within two doors of my kinsman, was perpetually setting neighbours together by the ears.  I lamented to see how his talents were misplaced, and imagined what a figure he might make in Westminster-Hall.  Goodman Crop of Compton Farm, wants nothing but a plum and a gold chain to qualify him for the government of the City.  My kinsman’s stable-boy was a gibing companion that would always have his jest.  He would often put cow-itch in the maids’ beds, pull stools from under folks, and lay a coal upon their shoes when they were asleep.  He was at last turned off for some notable piece of roguery, and when I came away, was loitering among the ale-houses.  Bless me, thought I, what a prodigious wit would this have been with us!  I could have matched all the sharpers between St. James’s and Covent Garden, with a notable fellow in the same neighbourhood, (since hanged for picking pockets at fairs) could he have had the advantages of their education.  So nearly are the corruptions of the country allied to those of the town, with no further difference than what is made by another turn of thought and method of living!