Walks and talks of an American farmer in England. In the years 1850–51. Part II (vol. 2 of 2)

WALKS AND TALKS OF AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. IN THE YEARS 1850–51. PART II.

PREFACE.

The kind and uncritical reception of my first volume, both at home and abroad, leaves no occasion for a formal introduction of my second. Sitting at the same broad old farm-house fireside, let me assume the same friendly companionable relation with my readers, improved by better acquaintance, and go on with my talk freely and unconstrainedly as before.

To any stranger who may like to know what it is about, I will add, that the volume is almost entirely descriptive of rustic and rural matters, as they came in the way of a party of young Americans walking through some of the western and southern parts of England, with such observations upon them as a young democratic farmer would naturally make.

I have added, in an Appendix, some information and advice to those wishing to make a pedestrian tour in Europe at small expense.

FRED. LAW OLMSTED.

Tosomoc Farm,
Southside, Staten Island, Sept. 2, 1852.

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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. — I. A “NON SEQUITUR.” — II. “AN HONEST MAN.” — III. — IV. — V. — VI.

Walks and Talks
OF AN
AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND.

AN IRISH-ENGLISHMAN.—SHREWSBURY CAKES AND BRAWN.—SHREWSBURY SHOW.—ANGLING IN CURRICLES.—SHEEP-WALKS.—EFFECT OF THOROUGH DRAINING ON DRY SOILS.—GORSE.—CHURCH STRETTON.—CHURCHYARD LITERATURE.—ENCOUNTER WITH AN ENTHUSIASTIC FREE-TRADER.

“Can you tell us where the Post Office is?”

“The Post Office? Ye be strangers like?”

“Yes.”

“Was ye never in this town before?”

“Never.”

“It’s a fine old town, Shrewsbury. I know it well, every inch the same as my hand. It’s like ye’ll be wanting to see the——”

“Can’t you tell us where the Post Office is?”

“The Post Office! Wouldn’t you now be havin’ your bit packs carried. Ye’ll be pedestarians like.”

“You are an Irishman like.”

“I believe it’s in England I am.”

“But you were born in Ireland?”

“I just disremember now.”

“Well, can you tell us which way to the Post Office?”

“It’s like I might—but, ye see, it’s mighty dryin’ work entirely to be rememberin’ every thin’ for every body so all the whole time.”

“What do you want?”

“A pint’s tupence.”

Twopence acted on his memory like the spring upon a frozen stream, and as he walked with us towards the Post Office he told us that he came to England ten years ago—had found work near Liverpool, where he remained several years—then went into Warwickshire, and had, a week ago, come hither to see his brother, who was engaged on the railway. He said that when he was in Warwickshire he had always passed himself off for a Lancashire man, and no one ever accused him of being an Irishman. He explained that the local labourers would not let the farmers employ Irishmen; if they did, they would burn their ricks. When Irishmen were employed, it was at very low wages, but he got as good as any. The most he ever earned was about three dollars a week at task-work. He had another brother who was in America, “in the State of Baltimore,” and he was minded to go after him next year.

“Fine old town” it was, Shrewsbury; delightful old town; we found our first letters from home there. It is famous, says the Guide-Book, “for its cakes and brawn.” The former we tasted at the “Baker-of-Shrewsbury-Cakes-to-Her-Majesty,” for sixpence, with a sight of the autograph of Lord ——, communicating the appointment, thrown in. Dear at that. The taste is something like, but by no means equal to, the cookies we used to eat in country towns on “trainin’ day.” That the English, in general, did not know what is good in that line, we had before ascertained, and now discovered that their Queen was equally unfortunate. Shall advise the princes to “run away.”

“Brawn, the flesh of boar or swine, collared so as to squeeze out much of the fat, boiled and pickled.”—Webster. Our host looked like a “man of brawn,” but gave us nothing like that.

Shrewsbury was formerly celebrated also for a ridiculous annual procession, mummery, masquerade, and play-spell, called “Shrewsbury Show.” The Puritans put a stop to it, but lately this ancient glory has been attempted to be restored “under the patronage of the mayor and neighbouring gentry.” The effort, we are told, was entirely successful, the “oldest inhabitant” not being able to recall any thing more completely absurd. Our young democratic towns are sometimes equally fortunate in their civic proceedings without aristocratic assistance.

We were much interested in the old houses, of the same general style as those I described at Chester, but with every conceivable variation of form, and each with something peculiar to itself, so that we could not tire of rambling through the steep narrow streets to study them. There are a great many old churches here, too; one remarkable for a very light, tall, simply-tapering spire: another, the abbey church, has a great mingling of styles, and in some parts is very rich and elegant. There are several curious things about it—an old stone pulpit, battered statues, &c. Near it I noticed that some old religious house, that had been once connected with it, had been built upon, roofed over, and converted into a brewery. The roofs are universally of flat tiles here; a few miles north they entirely give way to slates.

On one of the bridges over the Severn, which here divides into two small streams, between which most of the town is beautifully situated, we saw a number of anglers with curricles, a light portable boat made of hide stretched out like an umbrella-top by a wicker frame. It is easily carried on one arm, and it forms a usual part of the angler’s or salmonfisher’s equipment in Wales.

In the afternoon J. and I walked on to Church Stretton, thirteen miles; our road, most of the way, through a level valley, with high, naked, bleak hills on each side. A man joined us who had been most of his life a miller, and had lately rented a sheep-walk of sixty-three acres on one of these hill-tops, or, rather, mountain-tops. They are to all appearance totally barren, except of gorse, and he said he could only stock at the rate of one and a half sheep to the acre.

I have heard a strange story of the effect of draining on soils of this sort. A considerable estate, mainly on the tops of such hills, (but not in this county,) having come into possession of a gentleman, he immediately commenced under-draining it in the most thorough and expensive manner. The whole country thought him crazy: “Why! the hills were too dry already; the man was throwing away his money;” and his friends, in great grief, endeavoured by expostulation and entreaty to get him off from his ruinous hobby. But he patiently carried it on, and waited the result; which was, that the increased rental, in a very short time, more than paid for the whole outlay, and the actual value of the land was trebled. (This account I had from a friend of the gentleman, and, though he could not give me the figures, he assured me, from his personal knowledge of the circumstances, that it was to be relied upon.)

Gorse, (furze or whins,) is an evergreen shrub, growing about three feet high, rough, thorny, prickly; flourishes in the poorest, dryest land, where if it gets possession it is extremely difficult to eradicate. It is sometimes used as a hedge plant, and for that purpose is planted thickly on high ridges. In some parts of England, fuel is made of it, and when bruised by powerful machines made for the purpose, it forms palatable and nutritious food for horses and cattle. Hereabouts, however, we could not learn that it was made of any use, or regarded otherwise than as a weed.

Church Stretton is a little village mostly made up of inns on the main street. We chose the Stag’s Head, a picturesque, many-gabled cottage, part of it very old, and, as we were told, formerly a manor-house of the Earl of Derby, who spent one night (ever to be remembered!) in it. It was close by a curiously-carved church and graveyard. From among a great many “improving” epitaphs, I selected the following as worthy of more extended influence.

The following, or something like it, is to be found in almost every churchyard in England, often several times repeated.

On the other side of the churchyard were two long rows of cottages built closely together, and the street between them only nine feet wide.

After ordering supper, we were shown into a little room where there was a fire and newspapers, and two men sitting. One of them was a young, well-dressed farmer, stupid and boozy; the other, a travelling mercantile agent, very wide awake; both drinking hot slings. The latter almost immediately opened conversation, first asking us to join them at their tipple, which we declined.

“Did you notice the white nag in the stables, gents?”

“No.”

“Ah, you should have done so. It’s not every day you’ll see such a horse, let me tell you. It would be really worth your while, if I may be permitted to advise, to step out and see him. Why! if you’ll believe me, sir, we gave the stage-coach twenty minutes’ start and beat her two and a half in eight, besides stopping—how many times?—a go of gin first and—two of brandy afterwards, wasn’t it, Brom? Yes—we stopped three times and beat her two and a half in eight!—’pon my word it’s a fact, sir!”

“A remarkable performance.”

“Oh, sir, if you could but see him now—eating his oats just like a child!”

We showed no disposition to see this phenomenon, but putting our knapsacks on the table, had commenced reading the papers, when he again addressed us, suddenly exclaiming,

“Hem—wool’s heavy!”

“What, sir?”

“Eh—hops scarce?”

“What?”

“Sheffil line?”

“——!” (Stare of perplexity.)

“Tea?” glancing at our packs.

“Tea! oh no!”

“Oh, I thought it might be tea you were——Brummagem way?”

“We are—”

“Oh! Ah! Good market at Le’m’ster?”

“We are from New York—travelling merely to see the country; our packs have—”

“Tea?”

“Only our wearing apparel.”

“Oh, I really thought it must be tea.”

“No, sir.”

“From New York? why, that’s in America.”

“Yes, sir; we are Americans.”

“What! Americans, are you? Hallo! why, this is interesting. Brom! I say, Brom!—look! do you see? from America; you see? furriners! If you will permit me, sir—your very good health, gentlemen. Brom! (damn it, man,) your health—their health.... Now look here! you’ll allow me, sir—(and he caught my leg,) you brought this, I presume, from New York?”

“Yes.”

“Made there?”

“Probably.”

“And the wool?”

“Very likely from these hills.”

“Exactly, sir, exactly! You see now, Brom—what was I telling you?—that’s Free Trade, Brom. Most happy to meet you, sir; (wonderfully intelligent persons, Brom! first-class furriners;) you are welcome here, sir; and, gentlemen—(your good health, sir)—and no one to molest or make you afraid—(won’t you taste the gin? I can recommend it to you as a first-rate article)—wandering up and down, seeking what you may—eh?—see. Yes, sir, the sea is the highway of nations—else what is it mentioned in Scripture for? ‘the great sea—to bring nations together—with ships thereon, stretching from Tiberia to Siberias, and from Jericher to,’ eh?—hem—eh?—somewhere!”

“Your tea is ready, gentlemen,” said the waiter; and we hastily took leave.

CHAPTER II.

COUNTRY CARRIER’S CART.—INDEPENDENT BREAKFAST.—BEAUTY.—OLD INN.—JACK UP THE CHIMNEY.—BACON AND BREAD.—BEER AND RUM.—LUDLOW.—AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH.—THE POOR-HOUSE.—Case OF A BROKEN HEART.—REFRESHMENT.

We rose the next morning at daybreak, and walked some miles before we saw any body else awake. At the first inn that we found open, we stopped to breakfast. In front of it was a carrier’s cart—a large, heavy, hooped-canvas-topped cart, drawn by one horse. As any body who reads Dickens knows, this kind of rural package-express is a common thing on the English roads, the carrier taking orders of country people for what they need from the towns, and bringing them any parcels they send for; taking live freight also when he is not otherwise filled up: David Copperfield, for instance. The representative of “Mr. Barkis” and “honest John Peerybingle” was in the kitchen of the public house, and very glad to see us, pressing us politely to drink from his glass, and recommending the ale as the best on the road.

The house, however, was of a very humble character; the “good woman” was gone to market, and the landlord, though very amiable and desirous to please, was very stupid and ill provided. He could not even find us an egg, every thing having been swept off to market. There was some good bread, however, which the carrier had just brought, and milk. We found a saucepan, cleaned it, and scalded the milk, and, stirring in the bread with pepper and salt, soon made a comfortable hot breakfast, greatly to the admiration of our host and the carrier.

Fine English weather to-day: gleams of warm red sunshine alternating with the slightest possible showers of rain. The country beautiful; the road running through a rich, well-watered vale, with the same high, steep hills as yesterday, but now regularly planted with wood to the summits. Before us, they fall back, one over another, till they become blue under the thick mists that curl about the tops of the most distant, and then, again, blush red before the sun, as the wind sometimes lifts this veil.

Seeing a singular ruin a little distance from the road, we went to visit it. It had been a castle, with a church or large Gothic chapel attached. Different parts of it, having received more modern, yet ruinously decayed, timber and noggin’ additions, were occupied as sheep-stables, barn, granary, and workshop. A moat remained about it, enclosing also a courtyard; and on the opposite side of this from the main structure, was a high, four-gabled timber-house, with a gateway through it, entered across the moat by a bridge, formerly a draw-bridge, and with some remains of a portcullis. The woodwork of the gables, and much of the timber, the heavy brackets and the doorways, were covered with quaint carvings.

At noon we stopped at a superannuated old stage-coaching house, going at once to the kitchen, which was a very large room with heavy beams in the ceiling, from which depended flitches of bacon; a stone floor, a number of oak benches and tables, rows of pewter-mugs hanging about the walls, and a great wide fireplace and chimney. A stout, driving landlady received our orders; a piece of meat was set to roasting before the fire on the old turnspit, and we were left alone to dry ourselves. Soon we noticed that one end of the spit with the meat was being raised, and we attempted in vain to readjust it. It continued to rise, and I tried to disconnect the chain by which it was turned, and which was now drawing it up the chimney; I could not, and still it rose. I clung to it and tried to stop it, and hallooed for assistance. In rushed the landlady, three maids, and a man-servant, and I yielded the spit to them; but the power was too strong for them—their united weight could not long detain it; up it rose—rose—rose, till the prettiest maid stood first on tiptoe, and then began to scream; then the landlady, disengaging the meat from it, and dropping it hastily on a plate, fell back exhausted on one of the oak benches and laughed—oh! ha, ha! oh! ha, ha! ha, ha! ho, ho! ha, ha, ha!—how the woman did laugh! As soon as she recovered, she sent the man and maids up to the machinery, being too much out of breath to go herself; and in a few minutes the chain, which had fouled on the rusty crank at the chimney top, was unwound and the spit lowered to its place, the joint put on and set to turning again, all right.

While we were eating our dinner, five young men—labourers—came in for theirs; most of them ate nothing but bread and cheese, but some had thin slices of bacon cut from the flitch nearest the fire, which they themselves toasted with a fork and ate with the bread they had brought in their pockets, as soon as it was warmed through. All drank two pints of beer, and, after dining, smoked, except one, who took hot rum-and-water.

It appeared that while three of them preferred to spend their money for beer rather than bacon, none of them chose bacon at the expense of beer. The man who took rum drank two glasses of it, and the others two or more pints of beer; but no one who took beer took any rum at all, nor did he who took rum take any beer. A similar observation I have frequently made. The habit of beer-drinking seems to weaken the taste for more alcoholic stimulants.

We remained about the inn, looking at some pretty model cottages erected by Lord Clive, until C., who had made a quick walk of nearly thirty miles to overtake us, arrived, and then walked in to Ludlow.

Ludlow is a neat, pleasant town, beautifully planted in a bight of a broad, shallow, musical stream, amongst high, bluffy hills. It has a ruined castle, celebrated in Royal history, parts of which, half hidden by tall old trees among which it stands, and adorned with ivy, are very picturesque. There are fine avenues and public walks about it, and just over the river, which is crossed by two bridges, is a very large common, extending to the top of high and steep hills, which is used as a public pleasure-ground. In the middle of the town is a venerable old church, with richly-painted windows and many curious monuments and effigies of Crusaders and learned doctors sleeping with their wives. In it I also first saw a beadle in the flesh, and a very funny thing it was, in cocked hat, red nose, and laced coat. There are many curious old houses, particularly one of the inns, (“The Feathers;”) and over the Ludford bridge there is a pretty little rural church and a number of pretty cottages, both ancient and modern, the modern being built in the fashion of the timber houses that I described in Cheshire.

Our chess-playing friend on the ship had given us a note to a relative residing here, and having left it with our card at his house, he very soon called upon us. He proved to be a gentleman of education and refinement, and was extremely kind in his attentions and offers of service to us. C. had asked with regard to the religious services which would be holden in the town the coming day; after replying to his inquiries, he remarked that he belonged to a congregation of Christian Brethren, whose worship he would be gratified if it would be agreeable for us to attend. They had no distinct organization, but simply met as a company of believers in Christ, to worship as they were prompted in the spirit. They liked to have any one join with them, who loved Jesus Christ, whatever his theoretical opinions might be.

In this way commenced our intercourse with a body of men, who, even if I thought their opinions most damnable, I could not help remembering but with a respect approaching to reverence. During the week that followed we saw many of them in various circumstances, and of very different education and habits: some were ignorant, unrefined, coarse of speech, and plainly narrow-minded, fanatical, and bigoted; others of them were learned men, large-minded, truly humble, charitable, generous, and catholic—and gentlemen, with as much ease of manner, accomplishment, and polish as I ever met; but in our acquaintance with them there was not one that did not seem to be constantly guided by a spirit of the warmest love for all his fellow-beings, by the liveliest and ever-working desire to see them happy and growing better.

The next morning I breakfasted with this gentleman, and afterwards attended the meeting of the brotherhood with him and his family. It was held in a plain “upper room,” apparently designed for a school-room, which was well filled with people, representing every class, except the aristocratic, in the community, females being slightly preponderant. The services were extremely simple,—much like those of a Presbyterian prayer-meeting, with the addition of a rather lengthy exhortation from one who, I was told, was, like myself, a stranger to the most of those present, and concluded with the administration of the communion.

Nothing could be greater than the contrast of the place and its furniture, and the style of the exercises, with what I had seen and heard at the cathedral the previous Sunday; yet J could not but notice the marked resemblance between the simple solemnity of manner and sincere unendeavouring tone of the gentleman who conducted the ceremony of the communion, and that of his robed and titled brother who performed the same duty within those aweing walls.

In the afternoon I went with one of the Brethren to the union poor-house, which is a little out of the town. The inmates, so far as I saw them, were nearly all aged persons, cripples, or apparently half-witted, and it all appeared very much like a hospital. The chilling neatness, bareness, order, and precision, reminded me of the berth-deck of a man-of-war. Among the sick was a young woman who had now for four days refused to take food or to speak; when broth was set before her in our presence, she merely moaned and shook her head, closed her eyes, and sank back upon her bed. Her disease was a broken heart. A week ago her cottage was destroyed by fire, and her child (illegitimate) burned to death in it.

At sunset we found much such a company strolling on the common opposite the town as that we saw promenading the walls at Chester last Sunday night. The shaded walks about the castle were also thick with happy-looking, grateful-looking, orderly men and women, boys and girls, superabundantly attended by healthy, sturdily-tottering babies.

In the evening C. called on the Independent clergyman. He spoke highly of the spiritual character of the Brethren, but he evidently regarded them as rather wild and untractable abstractionists. They had drawn away several of the leading members of his flock, and, in his observations upon them, he possibly showed a little soreness on this account. He continued on terms of friendly intercourse, however, with them.

CHAPTER III.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.—A RUSTIC VILLAGE.—FARM-HOUSE KITCHEN.—AN ORCHARD.—STABLES.—LEOMINSTER.—A TROUT BROOK.—FRUIT CULTURE.

Monday, June 10th.

After breakfasting with the Independent minister, (the term clergyman is never applied in England except to those of the established church,) he walked with us for six miles out of town upon our road. Three little boys and girls, the youngest six years old, also accompanied us. They were romping and rambling about all the while, and their morning’s walk must have been as much as fifteen miles; but they thought nothing of it, and, when we parted, were apparently as fresh as when they started, and very loath to return.

After looking at several objects of interest near the road, we were taken by a narrow, crooked lane to a small hamlet of picturesque old cottages, in one of which a farmer lived who was a parishioner of our friend’s. It was a very pretty, many-gabled, thatched-roofed timber-house, almost completely covered with vines and creepers. We were sorry to find the farmer not at home; his wife, an elderly, simple-minded dame, received us joyfully, however. In entering the house, as we have noticed to be usual in old buildings, whatever their purpose, we found that the stone floor of the narrow hall was a step below the street and general surface of the ground outside. The kitchen, to which we were at once conducted, was a large square room, lighted by a single broad window, and having a brilliant display of polished metal utensils upon and about a great chimney, all as neat and nice as a parlour.

a linen cloth was spread upon it, and coarse but excellent wheat bread, butter, and cheese, brought from the pantry, and cider and perry from the cellar. The cider was “hard” enough; the perry, (fermented juice of pears,) a beautiful, bright, golden liquid, tasted much like weak vinegar and water. We had entered the district of cider and apple trees, for these liquors were home-made, and the first extensive orchard that we have seen adjoined the rear of the house: during the rest of our day’s walk the road was frequently lined with them for long distances.

The trees, in a considerable part of this orchard, were of every age, and stood very irregularly at various distances from each other. It appeared as if when an old tree was blown down, or became worthless from age and decay, and an unshaded space was thus left, or likely to be, two young trees were planted at a little distance on each side of it, and thus perhaps the orchard had been renovated and continued on the same ground for several generations. Two hundred years ago it was considered that “the best way to plant an orchard is to set some kernels of the best and soundest apples and pears, a finger deep, and at a foot distance, and to leave the likeliest plants only in the natural place, removing the others only as time and occasion shall require.” The orchards of the Rhine, at the present day, in which apple, pear, cherry, and nut-trees are intermingled, seem to have been planted with as little regard to regularity of distance. The grafts were commonly inserted at from six to eight feet from the ground, and the limbs trimmed so as to allow free passage to cattle beneath them. The land was in an old weedy sward, and was pastured by horses and cows. It had not been in any way drained, and was in some parts boggy. In these, willows, and sallows or osiers, (basket willows,) were growing. The trees all appeared to me unhealthy, mossy, and stunted. A few pear trees grew here and there, indiscriminately, among the apples. The cider-mill was just like the old-fashioned ones, with a stone wheel, common in New England.

After seeing the orchard in such condition, I was surprised to find excellent, neat, and well-ordered stables. The horse-stalls were large, with iron racks and mangers, and a grating and drain to carry off the liquid. The manure in the yard was piled up in a large, oblong heap, covered with earth, to prevent evaporation, with a space of clean pavement, wide enough for a cart to pass all around it. The liquid overflow of the yard was conducted off by a drain, so as to flow over the orchard pasture.

We reached Leominster at noon, after a few miles further of walking through a pleasant country, remarkable for its pretty old cottages. At Leominster, (pronounced Leminster,) there are also more than usually quaint old houses, grotesquely carved; and on the market-house, an odd old building, there are some singular inscriptions. I recollect only one, which runs in this way: “As columnes do pprope up” a house, so do a gentry support a state.

In the afternoon we walked for some distance on the banks of a trout brook, in which a good many ladies and gentlemen were angling, with but poor success. The trout were small, and, if I recollect rightly, rather lighter coloured than ours, and not so prettily mottled. Some of the anglers called the stream “the Arrow,” and some “the Harrow,” and I do not now remember which way it is printed on the map.

The field-bean is a common crop here; it is now in blossom, and a peculiarly sweet scent from it, every now and then, comes in a full, delicious flood over the hedges.

The country over which we walked in the afternoon, between Leominster and Hereford, was in some parts extremely beautiful: considerable hills, always, when too steep or rocky or sterile for easy cultivation, covered with plantations of trees; the lesser hills and low lands shaded by frequent orchards. These were generally of apples, sometimes with pears intermixed—somewhat rarely entirely of pears. Many of them appeared much like the one I have described, and occasionally there was a regularly planted one of fine, thrifty trees. In the poorer orchards, where the trees were of all ages, they frequently were planted not more than fifteen feet apart, and when so, as far as I observed, were invariably small in size and unhealthy. In the better ones, the trees stood oftenest thirty feet apart one way, and twenty another; rarely at much greater distance than this, but sometimes as much as forty.

CHAPTER IV.

ENGLISH ORCHARD DISTRICTS.—THE MOST FAVOURABLE SOILS AND CLIMATE.—LIME.—PRACTICAL DEDUCTION.—DISEASES.—PREVENTION AND REMEDIES.—SUGGESTIONS.

There are but few orchards in England, except in certain districts, and in these they abound, and are often very extensive. The inquiry naturally arises, What has given those districts their distinction in this respect? Have they any natural advantages which makes orcharding more profitable in them than in other parts of the country? In reply, I learn, that the orchard districts are all distinguished for a comparatively mild climate. They are nearly all in the south and south-western counties, while in the northern and eastern counties I do not know of any. Hereford is a somewhat hilly county, and, as I have remarked, where the hills are too steep for easy cultivation, it is usual to plant orchards; but the south side of such hills is preferred to the north, and, even here, a crop is sometimes entirely lost by a late and severe spring frost. A south-east slope is preferred, the south-east winds being the driest. I suspect another reason why it is found better is, that the south-west winds, coming off the ocean, are the stronger. My own observation has led me to think that the apple-tree is much affected by an exposure to severe winds. Most sorts of trees do not thrive very well upon the sea-shore, and this is usually laid to the account of salt spray or “salt in the air.” It will be found, however, that trees grown inland upon very exposed sites, have the same peculiarities with those in the vicinity of the sea; that is, they are slow of growth and scrubby.

Another important circumstance to be noticed, as distinguishing the apple districts, is in the nature of their soils. These are found, however varying otherwise, invariably to have a large proportion of lime, and generally of potash, in their chemical composition. With reference to this I quote the observations of Mr. Frederick Falkner.⁠[1]

Again, the same writer:

But it is also found by analysis that lime enters into the composition of the wood of the apple-tree in very large proportions. By the analysis of Fresenius, the ash of the wood of the apple contains 45.19 per cent. of lime and 13.67 per cent. of potash. By the analysis of Dr. Emmons, of Albany, N. Y., the ash of the sap-wood of the apple contains of lime 18.63 per cent. and 17.50 per cent. of phosphate of lime.

But it is not wherever soils of the sort I have described (calcareous sandstones and marly clays) abound in a district, that you find that the farmers have discovered that it is for their interest to have orchards; nor are they common in all the milder latitudes of England; but wherever you find a favourable climate, conjoined with a strongly calcareous and moderately aluminous soil of a sufficient depth, there you will find that for centuries the apple-tree has been extensively cultivated. Evelyn speaks, 1676, of the apples of Herefordshire and says there were then 50,000 hogsheads of cider produced in that county yearly. The ancient capital of modern Somersetshire, one of the present “Cider Counties,” was known by the Romans as Avallonia, (the town of the apple orchards.) It would not be unlikely that the universal ceremony in Devonshire, of “shooting at the apple-tree,” (hereafter described,) originated in some heathen rite of its ancient orchardists.

To obtain choice dessert fruit, the apple in England is every where trained on walls, and in the colder parts it is usual to screen a standard orchard on the north by a plantation of firs. There is no part of the United States where the natural summer is not long enough for most varieties of the apple to perfect their fruit. In Maine, and the north of New Hampshire and Vermont, the assortment of varieties is rather more limited than elsewhere, I believe; but I have eaten a better apple from an orchard at Burlington, Vermont, than was ever grown even in the south of England. We may congratulate ourselves then, that all that we need to raise the best apples in the world, any where in the northern United States, is fortunately to be procured much more cheaply than a long summer would be, if that were wanting. The other thing needful, judging from the experience of England for a length of time past record, in addition to the usual requisites for the cultivation of ordinary farm crops, is abundance of lime. This is experience; and science confirms it with two very satisfactory reasons: first, that apple-tree wood is made up in a large part of lime, which must be taken from the soil; and, second, that before the apple-tree can turn other materials which it may collect from the soil and atmosphere into fruit, it must be furnished with a considerable amount of some sort of alkali, which requisite may be supplied by lime.

There is but little else that we can learn from the English orchardists, except what to avoid of their practices. The cider orchards, in general, are in every way miserably managed, and the greater number of those that I saw in Herefordshire were, in almost every respect, worse than the worst I ever saw in New England. The apple in England is more subject to disease; and I should judge, from what was told me, that in a course of years it suffered more from the attacks of insects and worms than in America. The most deplorable disease is canker. This malady is attributed sometimes to a “cold, sour” soil, sometimes to the want of some ingredients in the soil that are necessary to enable the tree to carry on its healthy functions, sometimes to the general barrenness of the soil, and sometimes to the “wearing out of varieties.” The precaution and remedies used by gardeners (rarely by orchardists) for it, are generally those that would secure or restore a vigorous growth to a tree. The first of these is deepening and drying the soil, or deep draining and trenching. The strongest and most fruitful orchards, it is well known, are those which have been planted upon old hop-grounds, where the soil has been deeply tilled and manured for a series of years with substances that contain a considerable amount of phosphorus, such as woollen rags and bones. The roots of the hop also descend far below the deepest tillage that can be given it; (in a calcareous gravelly subsoil they have been traced ten feet from the surface;) a kind of subsoiling is thus prepared for the apple by the decay of the hop roots. In some parts it is the custom to introduce the hop culture upon the planting of a young orchard, the hops occupying the intervals until the branches of the trees interfere with them. Nothing is more likely than this to ensure a rapid and healthy growth of the trees.

I recommend to those who intend planting an orchard, to have the ground for it in a state of even, deep, fine tilth beforehand, and to plant in the intervals between apple or pear trees some crop, which, like hops, will be likely to get for itself good feeding and culture for several years. Peach-trees, and dwarf apples (on douçain stocks) and pears (on quince stocks), answer very well for this, and will make a handsome return some years before the standard apples and pears come into bearing.

With regard to the richness of the soil, however, it is said that “although high and exciting modes of cultivation may flatter for a while by specious appearances, it is a grave consideration whether they do not carry serious evils in their train.” This caution will remind the American horticulturist of Mr. Downing’s recommendation to those planting orchards on the over-deep and rich Western alluvial soils, to set the trees upon hillocks. The danger apprehended is in both cases the same, that of too succulent growth. Mr. Williams, of Pitmaston, a distinguished English horticulturist, has found deficient ripeness of the young wood to be the prime predisposing cause of the canker. He recommends every year the shortening in of each shoot of the young unripened wood, which he says will preserve trees of old “worn out” varieties, as “perfectly free from canker as those of any new variety.”

An impenetrable bottom of stone, at not more than three feet from the surface, is frequently made as a precaution against canker. I have been told that in the ancient orchards attached to monasteries, such a flagging of brick or stone is often found under the whole area of the orchard. This would seem at first sight to be directly opposed to the other precaution, of thorough-draining and deepening the surface soil; but it may be considered that the injury which stagnant water would effect is in a degree counteracted when the roots do not descend below the influence of the atmosphere and the heat of the sun. It is not unlikely that these influences would extend to a depth of three feet from the surface, in a soil that had been so thoroughly trenched and lightened up as it necessarily must be to allow of a paving to be made under it. The paving does not probably much retard the natural descent of water from the surface, nor does it interfere with its capillary ascent; the trenching makes the descent of superabundant water from the surface more rapid, while the increased porosity of the trenched soil gives it increased power of absorption, both from the subsoil and the atmosphere, as well as of retention of a healthy supply of moisture. The paving also prevents the roots from descending below where this most favourable condition of the soil has been made to exist. The effect would doubtless be greatly better if thorough-draining were given in addition; but so far as it goes, the under-paving and trenching is calculated to effect the same purpose as deep drainage: to secure a healthy supply of heat, light, and moisture to all the roots.

It is evident that the precautions and remedies which have been found of service against canker, whether operations upon the roots or the foliage, are all such as are calculated to establish or replace the tree in circumstances favourable to its general thriving, healthy condition.

This suggests the idea that canker may be the result of a general constitutional debility of the tree, not occasioned by any one cause or set of causes, but resultant from all and any circumstances unfavourable to the healthy growth of a tree; and it is a question whether the same may not be thought of the peculiar diseases of other trees, the peach, the pear, the plum, the sycamore, and perhaps even of the rot of the potato.

CHAPTER V.

DECAY OF VARIETIES.—TWO THEORIES: KNIGHT’S, DOWNING’S.—ENGLISH THEORY AND PRACTICE.—PRACTICAL DEDUCTIONS.—CAUSES OF DECAY.—REMEDIES.—HINTS TO ORCHARDISTS.—SPECIAL MANURES.—PRUNING.—THOROUGH DRAINAGE.—A SATIRICAL SKETCH.—SHOOTING THE APPLE-TREE.

It is known that many varieties of apples, which fifty years ago were held in high esteem as healthy, hardy sorts, bearing abundantly very superior fruit, have now but a very poor reputation, and varieties which a hundred years ago were highly valued and extensively cultivated, are now extinct. It is believed, too, that the most celebrated old varieties that are yet cultivated, are much more subject to canker than others; or, in other words, that trees of these varieties are more easily affected by unfavourable circumstances, or have a more delicate constitution.

To account for this, there are two theories held by different scientific horticulturists. The first—which originated with the late Mr. Knight, a distinguished vegetable physiologist of England, who devoted much attention to the subject, and made a long series of experiments upon it—may be stated as follows:

Each seedling tree has a natural limit to its life, and within that will have a period of vigour, succeeded by a natural and inevitable decline, corresponding to the gradually increasing feebleness which attends the latter part of the natural life of a man. And all trees also which have been propagated from such a seedling by means of buds or grafts, or, in other words, all trees of the same variety, are to be considered as merely extensions of that seedling, and will have a cotemporary vigour and decline and decease with it. The period of vigour or decline may be much extended by circumstances favourable to the general health of any particular tree, and by unfavourable influences it may be shortened: but however well situated, sooner or later it will manifest feebleness by the change in the quality of its fruit, the small quantity it is able to bear, by the decay of branches, and especially by its liability to be attacked by diseases, such as the canker, which rapidly destroy its remaining vitality. These diseases may be guarded against, and may often be cured; but the longer the period since the origin of the variety from a seed, the greater the liability and the more difficult the cure.⁠[2]

This theory is entirely discredited by other distinguished botanists and horticulturists, among whom are Dr. Lindley in England, Decandolle on the Continent, and Mr. Downing and H. W. Beecher in America.

These consider that there is no such similarity between the life of a tree and the life of an animal, and that a bud and a seed contain equally the germ of new life, that they are, in fact, the same thing, except that they are prepared to be developed under different circumstances. That each bud, twig, and branch, has a life of its own, and the trunk is but an association of roots, or of connections between each bud and its roots. It may be separated from this trunk as a seed is, and will continue to live if ingrafted upon another trunk, where it will connect itself again with the ground and grow, and through it other independent lives will be produced and sustained. Or it may be removed from its parent and placed upon the ground, where it will make roots and extend and reproduce again as independently, in all respects, as a seed. It is held that the death of trees does not arise from any natural period being assigned to their existence, but that the tissues of a tree, as they grow old, become dry and hard; no longer transmit sap, lose their vitality and gradually decay; yet the process of growth may continually be renewed exteriorly to this death, so that large cavities will often exist in the interior of trees. As, however, the peculiar natural food of the tree within the limits to which it can extend its roots, becomes exhausted, or, as other unhealthy circumstances affect it, its vital power and its re-vitalizing power will be diminished, and finally may become extinct.

If, however, a bud or germ of a new branch can be taken from the tree before its decay, or from any part of it that yet retains its vigour and health, and be transplanted by means of cuttings in the earth, or inoculations or grafts upon another healthy stock of the same species, it will have all the vital energy, and, in every respect, all the natural character, of a seedling.

In explanation of the general deterioration of certain favourite old varieties, according to the theory of Downing and Lindley, their state should be compared (taking care not to run the analogy too far into the ground) to what is popularly understood as a scrofulous condition of human beings, rather than to the decrepitude of old age. From various causes—want of proper food, unfavourable climate, propagation upon unhealthy stocks, high feeding, and any unnatural stimulus producing imperfect succulent growth, and from constant repropagation from trees that have in a greater or less degree so suffered—the trees of the variety have very generally lost their natural, strong, active, resisting, and recuperative vital energy, and have a general tendency to disease, which will be developed in different forms according to circumstances. A wound upon a scrofulous subject is more difficult to heal; exertion produces more fatigue, and rest brings less return of strength. Food, which in its natural state would be most nourishing and healthful, it can no longer digest, and it does it more harm than good; exposure to cold, to malaria, or contagion, is more dangerous, and if it escapes all acute disease it gradually grows more and more feeble until finally it has “died of a decline.”

Sterility attends the decrepitude of age, but not the scrofulous debility in man, neither does it the degeneracy of the old trees. But the scrofulous habit is hereditary in man; so it is believed to be in the old varieties. If, however, the scrofulous inheritance is not very virulent, by a judicious course of regimen it may be gradually overcome, and a strong vigorous constitution once more re-established. So it is argued, and facts are cited that seem to sustain the position, may the old varieties be restored to their pristine excellence, by care to select scions from the most healthy trees, and from the most vigorous parts of them, and to propagate these under the most favourable circumstance for their healthy growth.

The predisposition to disease in these ill-treated trees may result in a contagious malady, and this may spread beyond them and attack trees of ordinarily good constitution, and in the most salubrious situations, though, of course, the liability of these to take the malady, and their recuperative power under its attack, will be proportionate to their strength and soundness. The disease known as the yellows, in peach-trees, seems to be of this nature.

There are many facts unfavourable to both these theories, and many phenomena which neither of them, in my opinion, satisfactorily explain. The popular judgment in England seemed to have accepted Knight’s hypothesis. But while every body was mourning over the degeneracy of old favourites, the utter neglect or miserable mismanagement of their orchards seemed to me to bear strong testimony to the correctness of the contrary theory.

The practical deduction, it may be remarked, from either view, does not greatly differ. By judicious management, the health, vigour, and profit of a fruit-tree, which would otherwise, after a certain time, pine away and die, may be greatly extended, if not made permanent; and trees which are already failing from decrepitude or disease, may be restored. On the other hand, if trees are planted in unhealthy positions, insufficiently supplied with those materials that are necessary to the formation of strong, compact wood; if they are cruelly mutilated, crowded too close together, &c., they will not only be feeble and unproductive, but will be particularly liable to the attacks of vermin, disease, and parasites, and, in their weak condition, will soon yield their life to these enemies. Moreover, the insects which are bred in them will extend their ravages to surrounding trees, the seeds from their parasites will be scattered over the neighbourhood, and the disease which is generated in them may be indefinitely extended among their species.

The most common causes of disease, decay, and decline of a fruit-tree, which it is in the power of the orchardist, in a great degree, to control, are these: the exhaustion from the soil of those materials which are its necessary food; the attacks of vermin, and the growth of moss or parasites; the loss of large limbs or other severe wounds; too great exposure of the trunks to the sun; too rapid and succulent growth from the stimulus of heat or exciting manures; and an impervious subsoil, which will allow water frequently to stagnate about its roots, producing what is commonly called by farmers “a cold, sour soil.”

Some of my readers, who have not studied the subject, may be glad to have me concisely indicate the most approved means of avoiding or counteracting these dangers.

Manures should be applied to orchards frequently and in moderate quantities, rather than in heavy supplies at distant intervals; and, to avoid unhealthy stimulation, they should be well decomposed. The best ordinary manure in the United States has been found to be a mixture of dung with an equal quantity of peat or black swamp-earth, chip-dirt, or rotten wood or leaves; and it is better that this compost should be mixed some time (the longer the better) before it is applied.

But, in addition, I have shown from the English experience that the apple-tree requires a more than ordinary supply of lime, (say a peck of air-slaked stone or shell lime to each tree, every year.) In the same way the pear is known to require especially potash, iron, and phosphorus.

Iron is found in sufficient quantity in most clay soils; where needed it may be supplied by scattering bog-ore, (found generally underlying swamps in America,) or iron filings, or the sweepings and scoriæ from forges. One pound of crude potash dissolved in water and poured over the compost manure, or half-a-bushel of wood ashes, to a tree, will be a good yearly allowance of potash; and half-a-peck of bones to a tree will supply the phosphorus. For the plum and the quince, salt is found particularly useful, and ashes for the peach. But let it not be forgotten that the apple cannot live on lime alone, nor the peach on potash, only that it is a special supply of these that they more particularly require.⁠[3]

The Herefordshire orchards suffer much more from moss, parasites, and insects, and less pains are taken to guard against them or to destroy them than is usual in New England. There is a fine moss that will not easily be detected, that often collects upon the branches, and, diverting the juices of the tree to its own nourishment, eventually, if not removed, destroys the bark; and limbs are seen frequently thus denuded of their natural defence, and the wood consequently decaying. This is doubtless a common cause of organic disease. The ordinary preventive and remedy for every thing of this sort is to wash the trunk and principal limbs of the tree every year with a weak lye—in which it is a good plan to put a little sulphur—all insects having a particular repugnance to it.⁠[4] If there is much dead, scaly bark, it should be first rubbed or scraped off.

Trees should be allowed to branch low and naturally. The “trimming up” and unnatural exposure to the sun of the trunk of the pear-tree is known to particularly predispose it to a most fatal malady. Where trees are properly managed while young, it will never be necessary to prune their limbs in our climate; and there can scarcely ever be a case where the cutting off a limb larger than a man’s arm will not be likely to do more harm than good. Wherever it is done, or wherever a large branch has been blown off, the stump should be squared off neatly, and a salve of clay and cow-dung spread over it and secured upon it by a cap of canvas or sheet-lead. Smaller stumps should be covered with paint, or with a coating of shellac dissolved in alcohol.

Too rapid and succulent growth, making imperfectly formed wood, through which the future processes of the growth of the tree or the fruit formation will be inefficiently performed, is occasioned either by too stimulating food in the soil, or by a forcing heat in the climate which excites a growth unnatural to the original habit of the tree. There are also probably other yet unexplained causes for it. The preventive must be determined by the cause. The immediate remedy is shortening-in with a knife one-quarter or one-half of the growth of each year. This is absolutely necessary to the successful cultivation of the peach in many situations in the United States, and, as I have shown, is sometimes used as a remedy for canker in the apple-tree in England.⁠[5]

Too retentive a subsoil, or a cold, sour, malarious bed for the roots of an orchard, is only to be remedied by under-draining. Mr. Thompson, of the London Horticultural Society, gives a striking instance of the profit which may attend this operation.

Having detailed several experiments, he remarks that “want of drainage deprives the roots of proper nourishment, subjects them to a chilling temperature, and forces them to absorb a vitiated fluid.” He then describes an orchard planted, in 1828, upon a retentive marly clay. He says, “the trees grew tolerably well for some time; but after seven years they began to exhibit symptoms of ill thriving, and were every year getting worse: I saw them in 1840, and instead of increasing in size they seemed to be decreasing.” The trees grew worse, and the following year several died. It was then determined to drain the land: 3000 feet of draining-tile were laid, 3 feet deep, in parallel lines, 48 feet apart. In the spring of 1843, and in the autumn of the same year, 3000 feet of drain pipes, 1¼ inch bore, were laid at 30 inches deep, so that the drains were then only 24 feet apart; the ground at the same time was dug over eight inches deep, and the trees pruned. The following year the proprietor writes: “I never housed any thing like 50 bushels before; now there are at least 75 bushels, while my summer fruit was at least double the usual quantity.” Upon this, Mr. Thompson remarks:— “The lopping-in of the trees and digging the ground, as above described, were doubtless advantageous proceedings; but the draining of the ground was unquestionably the main cause of the extraordinary change in the condition of the trees; for stunted specimens, that previous to the draining were covered with moss, had made no shoots for years, and were in such a state of decrepitude that there was nothing to cut away but dead wood; these had produced vigorous shoots when I saw them in 1847, and have continued to do so up to the present time. Such vigour cannot be attributed to the cutting-in, for in these cases it was not practised; nor to the digging of the ground, for although this was done before draining was thought of, yet the trees went backwards, the decay of their branches increased under all circumstances till 1843, when recourse was had to draining, and since then they have continued to do well, producing vigorous shoots—shoots upwards of three feet in length; and in the present season the fruit was abundant, large, and highly coloured.”

A case was mentioned before the Staten Island Farmer’s Club, in 1850, of an under-drain having been run near two greengage plum-trees, which had previously been for many years entirely barren; the year after, without any other operation upon them, they bore bushels of fruit.

The following satirical sketch of the management of the Devonshire orchards, contains an amusing account of the ceremony of “shooting at the apple-tree,” before alluded to.⁠[6]

CHAPTER VI.

ROOFS; SHINGLES; TILE; THATCH: THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF EACH.—THE USE OF THATCH IN AMERICA.—HEREFORD.—CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY.—A MILK FARM.—THE HEREFORDS.—A DANGEROUS MAN.

Somewhere in this region, we passed two small churches or chapels with roofs of wooden shingles; in both cases the pitch of the roof was very steep, and the shingles old, warped, and mossy. These were the only shingle roofs I recollect to have seen in England; but I was told they were not very uncommon upon old farm-buildings in Devonshire. The roofs hereabouts, generally, are of flat tile. In moulding these tile, which are of equal thickness at both ends, a hole is made in the upper part, by which they are pegged to slats, which run horizontally across the rafters; (about London a protuberance is moulded upon the tile, by which it is hung.) This peg is covered, as the nails of a shingle are, by the lower part of the tile of the next tier above it. If no precaution to prevent it is taken, there will sometimes be crevices in a tile roof, through which snow will drive; in dwellings, a thin layer of straw is often laid under the tile, and sometimes they are laid in mortar. Pan-tiles (common on old houses in New York) are also made tight with mortar. Roofs of this kind will last here about twice as long as shingle roofs with us, without repairs, and are fireproof. Unless laid over straw, they give less protection than shingles against heat and cold.

The roofing material changes completely often in one day’s walk; flat tiles giving place to slates, slates to pan-tiles, &c. In Monmouthshire, the roofs are generally made of a flat, shaly stone, called tile-stone, quarried not less than an inch thick. It is laid with mortar, or straw or moss, like tile, and requires strong timber to support it. The better class of houses and modern farm-buildings, almost every where, are slated; sometimes metal-roofed; very rarely covered with compositions or felt. Cottages and old farm-houses and stables, every where, except in the vicinity of slate quarries, are thatched. Straw thatch is commonly laid about eight inches thick. Its permanence depends on the pitch of the roof. Ordinarily it may last twenty-five years; and when a new roof is required, the old thatch is not removed, but a new layer of the same thickness is laid over the old one. Frequently three and sometimes more layers of thatch may be seen on an old building, the roof thus being often two feet thick. It is a cheaper roof than any other, and is much the best protection against both cold and heat. The objection to it is that it harbours vermin, and is more liable to take fire from sparks than any other. The danger of the latter is not as great, however, as would be supposed. I saw and heard of no houses on fire while I was in England, except in London. I frequently saw cottages in which coppice-wood was being burned, the top of the chimney not a foot above the dry straw thatch, and the smoke drifting right down upon it. The danger from fire would be somewhat greater in America, where wood is more commonly used as fuel and rain is much less frequent. There are some situations in which it might be safely employed, however, (if on dwellings, the chimney should be elevated more than usual,) and where it would form the cheapest and most comfortable, and much the most picturesque and appropriate, roof.

The cost of the thatched roof of a double cottage, fifty by fifteen feet, is estimated at one hundred and forty dollars, of which about forty dollars is for straw, forty dollars for thatcher’s work, and the remainder for the frame, lath, &c.

The walls of labourers’ cottages are of stone, or brick and timber, or of clay.

In making the latter, which are very common, the clay, having been well forked over and cleaned of stones, is sprinkled with water, and has short straw mixed with it, and is then trodden with horses and worked over until it becomes a plastic mass. The more it is trodden the better. A foundation of stone is first made; one man forms the prepared clay into balls, or lumps as large as bricks, and passes these to another, who lays and packs them well and firmly together, dressing off smooth and straight with a trowel. After the height desired for the wall is attained, it is commonly plastered over inside and out with a thin coat of more carefully prepared clay, and whitewashed. This makes an excellent non-conducting wall, equal, in every respect, except in permanence, and almost in that, to stone or brick. Very respectable houses, as villas and parsonages, are sometimes built in this way. It costs about 30 cts. a square yard.

I once or twice saw the walls of cottages made of or covered with thatch, and have no doubt, as long as vermin were kept out of them, that they were, as was asserted, exceedingly comfortable. These were gentlemen’s country boxes, not labourers’ cottages!

On reaching Hereford, a city of 10,000 inhabitants, we were met by a gentleman to whom word had been sent by some of the “Brethren” at Ludlow, who begged us all to come to his house, and, upon reaching it, we found rooms prepared for us, and his family expecting us. This hospitality was entirely unexpected: the gentleman was a stranger to us; we had not even ever heard his name before; nevertheless, he contrived to make us feel perfectly at home, and free to dispose of our time to suit ourselves.

After tea he walked with us about the town, and took us a little into the country, to see a small milk-dairy and orchard-farm. The cows were of the Hereford breed, but not full-blooded, nor have we seen many that were. Most of the cattle in this vicinity have more or less of the marks of the breed, and their quality is about in proportion to their purity. The poorest cattle I have seen in England were within two miles of Hereford, but there was no mark of Hereford blood in them, and they had probably been bought out of the county, and brought there to fatten. The best milkers on this farm were not the best-bred cows. The average value of the herd was not far from $35 a-head. They were kept in a long stable; mangers and floor of wood, a slope of half an inch in a foot to the latter, with a gutter in the rear. They were entirely house-fed, on green clover. They were milked by women, and the milk all sold in the town.

Late in the evening, our host called with us on the Rev. Mr. ——, a right warm, manly, Christian gentleman, who, though in domestic affliction, on learning that we were Americans, received us most cordially. We found him singularly familiar with American matters, both political and theological; a portrait of Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, along with that of Dr. Arnold, and other worthies, was over his mantel, the last “New-Englander” on his table, and a fragrance peculiarly adapted to make an American feel at home, soon pervaded the atmosphere of his study. We had a most agreeable and valuable conversation, and it was long before we could return to the hospitable quarters which had been provided for us for the night. Mr. —— is an Independent, or, as he prefers to be called, a Congregationalist; accounted somewhat heterodox, and treated with a cold shoulder by some of the scribes and doctors, we were afterwards informed; but of this we discovered nothing, and imagine him to be merely a peculiarly candid, humane, and genial man, only less than usually disguised or constrained in expression, by habits, precedents, and dogmatic forms.

CHAPTER VII.

WARM BREAKFAST AND WARM HEARTS.—TRUE SELF-DENIAL—PRIMITIVE
CHRISTIANITY.—A LIVING FAITH.

Hereford, June 12th.

When we came into the parlour, at half-past seven, we found a breakfast-party met to greet us. Our host had been to an early daylight prayer-meeting, and some business had detained him; but his friends introduced each other to us, and we went to breakfast without waiting for him. It was a good, warm, respectable breakfast—fit for a Christian. English breakfasts in general are quite absurd; not breakfasts at all, but just aggravations of fasts, and likely to put a man in any thing but a Christian humour for his day’s work. As for the better part of the meal, see C.’s letter, (from which I here extract):

“I shall not soon forget those earnest, simple-hearted men. In many circles one would be repelled by such constant use of religious phrases, but in them it did not seem like cant at all—rather the usual expression with them of true feeling. It was a company too well worth considering. Opposite me sat a middle-aged gentleman, who had been a major-general in the East India service, and who belonged to one of the first families in the kingdom. Yet he had given up his commission and his position in society for the sake of doing good as an humble Christian. His half-pay, too, he had refused, believing it inconsistent for a religious man to receive money for services of such a nature. He had been a scholar also, and had written a dictionary of the Mahratta tongue. Besides him, there was a lieutenant in the navy, who had thrown up his commission from similar religious scruples, and a prominent surgeon of the city, devoted, like the rest, to Christian efforts almost entirely. They had been to a prayer-meeting, and the conversation, with the Bible open on the table, commenced at once on a passage in John. It was beautiful, the simple, natural way they all conversed of religious topics—no straining for sanctity, but easily and earnestly, as men usually would speak of weighty political matters.

“But, free as is the plan of these brethren, I am sorry to say that in real liberality they do not go beyond most others. The conversation during breakfast turned on the Roman Catholics. Most of them went so far as to doubt whether a Papist ever could be a Christian. The major disagreed with them, and it was noble, the enthusiasm with which he spoke of the pure and earnest Pascal. Generally, however, their feeling toward men of different doctrinal opinions was much like that of any sectarians. The Independent clergyman at Hereford says that the most he has known are men of the Church of England, and that they have just grasped a few great ideas, which the Independents have been preaching since the time of Cromwell. And certainly, as compared with ‘the Church,’ their religious character is most simple and free. It was curious to notice, as an illustration of English manners, that all these men, the most spiritual of the whole community, took their beer or wine as regularly as we would our tea.”

In addition to the evidence of the sincere character of the “Brethren” instanced above, I may mention that another of our company had been an apothecary, and given up his business from a conviction that Homeopathy was a better way than the common drugging, and that we afterwards met one, a near relative of one of the most distinguished noblemen and statesmen of Great Britain, who had retired from a highly honourable and lucrative official position, from a desire to live more in accordance with his religious aspirations than his duties in it permitted him to. I shall omit to narrate what more we saw of them, as we proceeded further on our journey; but must say, to conclude, that if, in letting no man judge them in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day—if, in teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs—if, in bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, self-sacrifice, and zealous readiness to every good work—if, especially, in real genuine hospitality to strangers, there be any thing of “primitive Christianity,” our entertainers seemed to us to have had very great success in their purpose to return to it. They certainly were not without their share of bigotry and self-confidence in such matters of creed as they happened to hold in common; but this did not seem to have the effect upon them of destroying geniality and good fellowship, nor of cramping the spirit of practical, material, and unromantic benevolence. They were quite different, too, in their way of talking upon those subjects on which they conceived their minds to be “at rest,” from the theological students at ——, whom —— describes as studying as if they had bought tickets for the night-train to heaven, and, having requested the conductor to call them when they got there, were trying to get into the most comfortable position to sleep it through.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE COUNTY JAIL.—ENGLISH PRISON DISCIPLINE.—THE PERFECTION OF THE PRESENT.—EDUCATION AND TAXATION.—WHAT NEXT?—CAPTAIN MACHONOCHIE.—THE MARK SYSTEM.—THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF PUNISHMENT.

After breakfast, we visited the county prison. It is on the plan of the celebrated Pentonville model prison, near London, which is an improvement on what is called the Philadelphia plan. Any of my readers who are much interested in the great and most puzzling problem of prison discipline will be familiar with the elements of the last experiment of the British Government upon the sad subject.

This specimen of it at Hereford was all that could be asked for in its way. Evidently, no skill in planning and no expense in execution had been wanting to make it as perfect as such a thing could be.

We were first conducted through several long, light, and airy corridors, upon which opened the well-ventilated sleeping-cells of the prisoners—each cell appearing the perfection of a cell, as if made to the order of some noble amateur rascal, in the most complete and finished style which would be appropriate to an apartment with that designation: the walls of plain hewn stone, but white as bishop’s lawn; the floor damp-proof, of asphalte; the bedstead of iron, the bed of sufficiently appropriate coarseness, snugly and neatly made up as if by the joint labour of a tasteful upholsterer and a skilful laundress; warmed on the hot-water plan; furnished with a wash-bowl, and pure water brought by pipes; lighted by a beam of filtrated sunshine by day, and a jet of gas-flame by night; provided also with a bell or signal, by which the interesting inmate may at any time, in case of bodily ailment, summon a regular bred physician to his relief, or a veritable and legitimate “descendant of the apostles,” in case he should be taken suddenly aback with repentance during the night: at every bed-head too—regularly as the crucifix in the dormitories of monks, or the squat, yellow Josh in the habitation of the Chinese—a bible. “The Bible! ah! how must his heart melt, and his dark mind be enlightened, as in his retirement from the wild temptations of the wicked world the prisoner is left to be absorbed in its glorious tidings. What a feast, what a treasure, what a ——” nay, the shining leather and sticking leaves tell us that even the Bible Societies may throw pearls before swine.

“Aye,” says the turnkey:—“He can’t read—a young chap—in for two months; petty larceny.”

We open and read.—“He that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”

It was given him to have a mind uneducated except in ignorance and criminal contrivance, and it was required of him, he might tell us, to either starve or steal; and then there is given him good, comfortable, clean, wholesome air, water, food, lodging, and exercise, (not work.) Moreover, there is added this sealed book. Must he not think it mockery?

But we are not allowed to philosophize, or moralize, or criticise. We are expected only to admire, and are passed along to the culinary department.

Perfection again—of a kitchen with an admirable, stout, dignified chef-de-cuisine, graduate of Paris doubtless, presiding. The diet-table he explains to us, is scientifically ordered; the beef and bread and vegetable are of the best, and we are shown how the quantity for each man in each particular is accurately weighed out. The patients are also weighed periodically, and the allowance of food and of exercise is studiously adjusted to the condition of each.

Next we are taken to the day cells, which are in several separate courts. Within each is an ingeniously-contrived crank attached to a common shaft revolving through all. This crank is the exerciser. The prisoner stands at a certain distance before it, takes hold of it with both hands, and, as it turns, a certain motion is given to his whole body—the most healthful sort of motion: expanding the chest, and moving every joint of his limbs. He remains in this cell ten hours each day, Sundays excepted; and the usual allowance of exercise is half an hour, with ten minutes’ rest after it, continued alternately during that time. There is a library in the prison, from which primers, picture-books, and tracts, are served out for the exercise of his mind during the ten minutes’ bodily rests.

For Sundays, there is provided another sort of cells, which are so arranged that each prisoner can look at the same central point, but cannot see any other prisoner. At the central point is placed a humble vessel, (doubtless as perfect as can be made by ordinances, and duly clad in regulation vesture,) from which a stated dose of “gospel privileges” is scientifically discharged and systematically imbibed by every patient—prisoner I mean. There are two such rations given on Sunday, with a dinner between, and opportunity for reflection in private, before and after.

It is a first principle of the plan that labour should end where it begins. The exercising shaft is sometimes applied to a pump-brake to fill the reservoir over the prison with water, but never in any other way saves labour. Pains are taken in every way, not with absolute success it is admitted, to secure utter silence, and to prevent all communication between the prisoners. Criminals are rarely sent here for more than twelve months; and it is said, that with all the science and care that can be devoted to them, their health, both bodily and mental, is endangered, if their confinement is protracted longer.

It may be, as its admirers have no shadow of doubt, the happiest idea of a prison most happily realized that the world yet knows; yet it is one of the most painful things to examine that I ever saw. It is hardly possible to speak well of it but in irony, or to describe it without sarcasm, so absurd seems all this scientific care for the well-being—physical, mental, and moral—of these miserable transgressors, contrasted with the studied neglect, justified and made praiseworthy by strictly economical and religious reasoning, of the unoffending poor. While no talent, painstaking, and complicated machinery, is too expensive and cumbrous to be devoted to the keeping of the criminal, of the unfortunate, society, through the state, still says—Am I my brother’s keeper?

Hold the hand! Dash not the book behind the grate, my conservative friend; I would hint at nothing more dangerous than education—a word one may yet speak in America without being finally condemned as an infidel and a socialist, and a man given to isms. Would you still call me to order, remind me that I am writing on the subject of prisons—English prisons—and that I may take up the subject of schools in another chapter. Yet there may be lessons learned from prisons, and English prisons teach lessons that all who do not care for the subject of education would do well to heed.

In the prisons of England, in 1841, it was found that out of every hundred criminals then supported by the state—

Only 28 in every hundred were over 30 years of age! So soon in crime come forward and pass away the children of ignorance.

The chaplain of the Brecon jail reports, that though the majority of the prisoners to whom he ministers are able to read imperfectly, yet their education has been so defective that they have no notion of the bearing and connection of one part of a sentence with another. Nine out of ten of them were ignorant of the merest rudiments of Christianity. The chaplain of the Bedford jail states that the great majority of prisoners there confined are “ignorant, stupid, and unconcerned.” Another jail chaplain observes of those “children, or men still childish,” under his care, who had been instructed in reading and writing, “they had not learned to think about or understand any thing that they had been taught; the ears had heard, the tongue had learned utterance, but the mind had received no idea, no impression.” (The reader may be reminded of what I said of sailors’ reading.⁠[8]) From the Bucks county jail it is reported that about half the prisoners have never been taught to read and write, and about one quarter are ignorant of the alphabet; and that “ignorance is uniformly accompanied with the greatest depravity.”⁠[9]

Had we not better give up our “godless schools,” and establish some godly prisons for the next generation? Surely we may learn something from the statesmanship that is wedded to a church.

I heard a crusty old bachelor say the other day, growling at the Free School Laws: “But I have no children, and I don’t want to pay for the schooling of my neighbour’s brats; if they were begging for bread, it would be another thing.” The land of free trade has something to tell us about this too. “Nine out of twelve of the inmates of the Poor-houses of Norfolk and Suffolk cannot write their names.”⁠[10]

Never forget, citizens of the United States, that the children within a republic are, and must be, “the children of the Republic.” Do your duty to them, or they will not do their duty to you.

To return to the Hereford jail: I intimated that every thing said in admiration of it seemed necessarily ironical and bitter; but I do recall one pleasant, and, I doubt not, true word, for it—“it is a palace compared with the old one.”

Good!—surely that is good: no one will ask us to go back to packing criminals, and all under surveillance of the law, promiscuously into great stone pens, giving them rotten straw to rest upon, and supplying only the cheapest grub that will offer to keep body and soul together. Few will be inclined to think that the world’s prisons—hell triumphant in Austria and Naples excepted—are not better now than in the day of Howard. Progress there has been, even here, true and substantial progress, thank God! Progress there must be, for the kingdom of God moves steadily on. This palace-prison is but a mile-stone on the road.

What next? There are some pamphlets before me in which an answer to this question is attempted to be given.⁠[11] The matter is one of so much difficulty and so great importance, so nearly connected with the progress of Christianity and civilized law, and the plan of a new prison is so often to be discussed and established among our thirty states and thousand counties, that I must beg my readers to carefully examine the new system of punishment that they propose, and I urge it the more, because, so far as I know, it has, up to this time, entirely escaped the attention of the American press.

But first let us distinctly recall to mind what is most unsatisfactory and clearly defective in our present prisons and system of criminal punishment.

There are two general principles with regard to the punishment of crime that have been theoretically received and approved of in the minds of all enlightened and Christian people, and yet to which there is much in our present system that is practically false and repugnant. We say “necessarily so,” and that this necessity is one of the awful results of crime or sin. God knows if we are right. If not, we are terribly wrong.

The principles or rules with regard to punishment, to which I refer, are these: that it should not be vindictive or revengeful, that it is not the business of human jurisprudence to satisfy the abstract claims of justice, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord;” that, on the other hand, it should be our purpose, in the treatment of criminals, so far as may be consistent with the good of society, to do them good, to make them better, stronger, and happier. This also is a corollary of the second principle to which I refer, namely, that the great end of criminal law is to prevent, discourage, and lessen crime.

I say that practically, among the mass of our community, the punishment of criminals is felt to be, and is engaged in as if it were, the satisfaction of a vindictive feeling against an enemy of society, a satisfaction that the law makes him pay (though “I will repay, saith the Lord!”) in the inconvenience and suffering of his confinement and hard labour, for the injury he has done society or some member of society. That, practically, the criminal has the counterpart of this feeling, considering that society looks upon him as its enemy, and, when it catches him, vindictively makes him suffer for his crime, as if it were a match between him and the law, in which he was the loser; and that the effect of looking upon it in this way is to aggravate and intensify the evil which we theoretically propose to cure by his imprisonment.

It is true, that in accordance with the purpose of improving the character of criminals during (I cannot say, by) their imprisonment, we employ chaplains to preach and counsel them, and give them books, that it is supposed, in the absence of any other employment of the mind, may engage their attention. And these are the only means employed at present for the purpose of training them to be active, efficient, industrious, and well-disposed members of society, upon their release! I might bring forward endless statistics in proof, but few will be inclined to deny that for this purpose these means constantly prove themselves entirely inadequate; that, in this respect, our system is a constant and complete failure. Why? Because of the “foolishness of preaching?” Because virtue is taught only theoretically; and a field of practice, of resistance of the temptation to the peculiar sins which we denominate crime, is required to give such lessons practical value? Because under a system in which a man is provided with good and sufficient food, clothing, lodging, fuel, and other necessities of health and life, to a degree of perfection that he never knew before, without the exercise of any personal care, forethought, skill, or labour, much of the real manly virtue of active life becomes a dead letter, and cannot be acquired? Because the religion that is preached does not make necessary the practice of prudence, energy, economy, industry, and honest ingenuity? Because, under such circumstances, instead of the reception of an elevating, reforming, purifying principle of life, a religion of weak, mystic frames of feeling, and sentimental professions, is more likely to be encouraged, and is hardly distinguishable or avoidable to be confused with vital piety? Or is it because nearly all the other influences about the imprisoned criminal are enervating, or opposed to reform and virtue? Horrible thought! But let us consider how he is situated; what are the influences, what the natural motives, that are likely to be operating upon him in the circumstances in which we place him.

The criminal is sentenced, we will suppose, for ten years, and finds himself locked into a narrow cell, where it is only at occasional and comparatively distant intervals that he can be communicated with, even by his keeper, chaplain, or physician, the only human beings who have access to him. It may be for a certain time each day he is set to labour; hard labour being given him, not as a privilege, not as a relief, not as a means of bettering his condition, or in any way as to be loved and valued; but as an addition to the punishment of solitary confinement. It may be practically a relief; but when we admit it to be so, under the circumstances in which it is engaged in, we must have some notion of the dreary loneliness and tedious prospect which he has in his cell, though in it comforts, which in the ordinary government of Providence he would have been taught to look upon as the natural rewards of activity, prudence, and labour, are crowded around him. He is left to his own thoughts; his recollections are vicious; are his anticipations likely to be virtuous? With ten years to be spent under these circumstances, what will his mind be most likely to be directed to? Will it not be to means of beguiling his time in sleep or self-forgetfulness, or to evade his compulsory labour? Could any way be better contrived to fix a man in a disposition to idleness and vagrancy? His life stagnates, his impulses putrify, his only activity is directed in the search for opportunities of personal gratification—which are obtained, we are told, even in ways most horrible—and for this purpose his powers of deception are sharpened, or, when unable to offend in act, he seeks in fancy a gratification by gloating over impure images.

And is this lame, inconsistent, miserable plan, all its details so working at cross purposes, the end of all the philanthropic labours, private and associated, that have been given to the subject during the last fifty years? The result, good friends, not the end. Then, in God’s name, WHAT NEXT?

An answer from Captain Machonochie will be found in the Appendix C, and I beg for it, with all earnestness, the thoughtful perusal of my countrymen. It is based on plain, distinct, uncontradictory principles, which are applicable to the punishment of all criminals, and to the construction of all criminal laws. It is the plan of no closet philosopher, but of a cool-headed, warm-hearted sailor, who was chosen by his government, for his manifest natural qualifications for undertaking the superintendence of criminals, to take charge of one of its most responsible penal establishments. It is a plan that has been well considered, and is ably defended to the minutest details, as the reader, who is willing to study it further, will find, on referring to the pamphlets I have mentioned in the note on a previous page.⁠[12]

It seems to me like a great invention, so simple, so natural, so in every way commending itself immediately to my mind, that I am amazed that the world is but just arriving at it, and I thank God that I have to live and do my work in the day it brightens. For it seems to me more than an invention—an inspiration. At least I find in it the principles of Jesus Christ, now at length consistently and satisfactorily applied to the treatment of criminals. The most prudent regard for the interests of society at large will oblige us no longer to set our teeth, and clench our hands, and steel our hearts to pity, in the jury-box, but will combine with the truest kindness, hope, and prayer in faith, for the individual good of the criminal. Under our present criminal laws, and with our present systems of punishment, the first task of the prosecuting attorney is, too often, to turn us from the estate of warm-hearted Christian love, into cold, calculating, vengeful savages. But now, that which has heretofore been the most trying, confounding, and insnaring responsibility upon the Christian citizen, may become a reasonable, happy, improving duty and privilege. Punishment shall be awarded with loving-kindness. Punishment shall be the handmaid of Love.

And now, is it more than a question of how long we halt in this wretched, self-destructive darkness? Is there not light enough for the next step? Speak out, good heart of the People! Shall we henceforth do battle with Criminals or with Crime?

CHAPTER IX.

A HIT.—THE DEBTORS’ PRISON.—UTTER CLEANLINESS.—“CITY” AND “TOWN.”—“DOWN” AND “UP.”—HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.—CHURCH AND STATE.—THE PUBLIC PROMENADE.

I must not forget two incidents of our visit to the jail. Punishment is inflicted by withholding food; also, I imagine, for slight offences, in other ways. An officer with us noticed some untidiness of dress upon one of the prisoners, and, pointing to it, said,—“You are an Englishman: I don’t want to treat you as an Irishman.” As we entered a certain apartment, our conductor said, “This is the debtors’ prison.”

One of us remarked, “We have generally abolished imprisonment for debt in the United States.”

The officer, quietly, “It’s a pity that you have.”

The quarters of the debtors were not cells, but decent rooms, and there was a large hall common to them. Every thing here, though, as every where else, was dreadfully clean, dreary, and mathematical, like a gone-mad housekeeper’s idea of heaven. I should expect that the prisoners would long, more than any thing else, to have one good roll in the gutter, and an unmeasured mouthful of some perfectly indigestible luxury. It was a relief, after being but an hour within the walls, to step out once more into the good old mud and clouds and smells of Nature again.

Among the debtors, one was pointed out to us as a well-educated lawyer, formerly having a large and respectable practice, and enjoying a considerable fortune. He had been confined for several years, but, it was thought, would soon be released. The placards of an association for taking the part of imprisoned debtors were posted in the hall.

The title city is applied, in England, only to a town which is the residence of a bishop, and is equivalent to “a cathedral town.” Hereford is a city; Chester is a city; but Liverpool, with ten times the population of both of them, is not a city. The term town, again, in England, is never applied to the subdivisions of a county, (a township,) but is used to designate a place that is closely built, and with a considerable population—what we should give the title of city to. Thus London, the largest town, is every where called “the town.” “The city” designates a small part of London, near the Cathedral of St. Paul. (All over Great Britain they speak of going “down to London,” never “up.” This use of “down” and “up,” meaninglessly, in a sentence, I had supposed was a “down-east” idiom; but it is common in old England.)

The cathedral at Hereford, built in the time of William the Conqueror, is in a more ornamental style of Gothic than any ancient religious edifice we had seen. I did not greatly admire it. Considerable additions or repairs have been lately made. On one of the new gables I was surprised to see some fifty of those grotesque heads, freshly cut. They were not very ugly, or very droll—indeed, had no marked character, or any thing that showed a genius, even for the comical, in their designer or executor. They were not necessary to the harmony of the modern work with the old; were, I think, discordant, and what they were put there for I don’t know. Extensive alterations had lately been made in the choir, and it was the most convenient hall for public exercises that I recollect to have seen in any English cathedral. The ceiling was painted (in encaustic) in the bright-coloured bizarre style that I spoke of at the castle near Shrewsbury. As I entered, it seemed to me to be in shockingly bad taste for a place of meditation and worship. We attended the daily morning service, and heard some fine gentle music—the organ sweetly played, and the singers all boys.

I was glad to notice that our dissenting friends seemed to have a pride and sense of possession in the cathedral, as if they were not in the habit of thinking of it as belonging exclusively to those who occupied it, but as if it was intrusted to them, and as well to them as to any other division, as representative of the whole Catholic Church of all English Christians. This way of looking upon “the Church” usurpations is quite commonly observable among the dissenters. It is not so honourable to them when applied to other things than mere furniture, as, for instance, the giving the exclusive teaching of religious doctrine to the children, or paupers, or soldiers, in whom they have a common interest, to the State Church, from a supposed necessity of giving it to some one in preference to all others; and if not to their particular church, then of best right to the church of the strongest. The idea that some State Church, separated from others by its doctrinal basis, is expedient, and almost necessary, to a Christian government, is quite common among dissenters. In my judgment, it cannot be expedient, because it is very evidently unjust. What is in the least degree unjust can never be expedient for a state, the very purpose of which should be to elevate and secure justice among the people who live under its laws.

Nor can I conceive of any thing so likely to strangle a church as to be hung with exclusive privileges from the State. For what are these? Bribes for the profession of doctrines and the acceptance of rules of debatable expediency; giving encouragement, so far as they have any influence, (that they would not have if the Church were independent of the power of the State,) to insincerity and the unearnest formation of opinions—to unreality, which is deadness in a church.

That the constant practice of perjury and the most miserably jesuitical notions of truth and falsehood, and that weakness and imbecility of both Church and State, is the direct and inevitable result at the present day of such a connection as is attempted to be sustained between them in England, it is as obvious and certain to me as any thing can be, that such great and good men as the divines and statesmen of England have different opinions with regard to.

There is a large green, close planted with trees, about the cathedral, and facing upon it are the official residences of the regiment of clergy, high priests and low, that under some form or other are provided with livings in connection with it. In front of one of these barracks was planted a bomb-mortar—with what signification?

There is another public promenade in Hereford, upon the site of an old castle which was demolished by Cromwell.

The ramparts are grassed over, and there are fine trees, ponds, gravel-walks, an obelisk in honour of Nelson, some graceful irregularities of surface, and a broad, purling stream of clear water flowing by it all. Here, before noon, we found a considerable company, of varied character: ladies walking briskly and talking animatedly; invalids, wrapped up and supported, loitering in the sun; cripples, moving about in wheelchairs; students or novel-readers in the deepest shades; and every where, many nursery-maids with children. Not a town have we seen in England but has had a better garden-republic than any town I know of in the United States.

CHAPTER X.

A STAGE-COACH RIDE.—CONVERSATION WITH THE COACHMAN.—A FREE-TRADER.—AMERICAN AND ENGLISH WOMEN.—FAIR PLAY.—WOMAN’S RIGHTS.—SOCIAL DIFFERENCES.—FRENCHMEN.—NATIONAL VANITIES.—DEMOCRACY.—FREE TRADE.—RETALIATION.—ARISTOCRACY.—NATURAL LAWS.—THE LAW OF LOVE.—FRATERNITY.

In the afternoon, C. went to visit some antiquities of the neighbourhood, and my brother and I were invited by our host to visit a large farm on the border of Monmouthshire. We were to go the first ten miles by stage-coach. On the coach-top there were two women, who sat with some children and the guard in the rear, upon seats over what is the boot of our coaches. Forward, there was a small, sickly-looking man, his face covered with a close-cropped, grayish beard, his right arm hanging, as it seemed, lifeless, and an old-fashioned travelling-cap upon his head. He seemed to be a foreigner, and, without speaking, but with courteous manner, made room for my friends at his side. I was seated on the box, between the coachman and another passenger. The former was a staid, sober man, neatly, but no way peculiarly, dressed; talking, as if well posted up, but without any self-conceit, on matters that he had a fancy for—to wit: horses, racing, boxing, the crops on the roadside, the weather, female beauty, and woman’s rights, but perfectly mum and uncomprehending beyond these. He drove in the most accomplished and gentlemanlike style—never with a hasty movement, or a show of exertion, or even attention—yet never losing his feel of every horse’s mouth, and having each in such perfect command, and guiding and governing them all so easily and gracefully, that it seemed as if the reins were a part of him and he moved them by instinct; just as a good helmsman will bring up his boat to “meet” a surging sea, without knowing it, and even when half asleep. He never lifted a whip from the socket, except to punish a horse for indulging in some trick, or for neglect to obey the signal of his voice, which was hardly ever more than a short chirrup—no whistling, shouting, and calling by name. The speed, with a heavy load, was excellent, averaging nearly eleven miles an hour.

The gentleman upon the box, between whom and the coachman I was allowed to wedge myself, discovering that I was an American, put me many questions, intended to be hard, with regard to our country, which I answered as well as I could. He was a tall, well-dressed, reflective Englishman, slightly inclined to be sarcastic and supercilious, but studiously courteous in his manners, and speaking from half way down his throat, with a gasping utterance, as is a fashion with some clergymen and very elegant people here. He got at length, from more general conversation, into a discussion upon the character of women, and the customs of our two countries with regard to them. He thought our way of treating women was an unreasonable petting of them, and the tendency of it must be to spoil them, make them mere children, delicacies, unfit to encounter in a manly way the inevitable trials of life, and unworthy of true respect. He thought, too, our customs, with regard to them, were absurd and unjust; and told how a friend of his had been obliged to lose his seat in a stage-coach and go outside, in a rainy day, because a girl that was picked up on the road wanted it. His friend had been rudely treated because he hesitated to comply with this absurd demand; and he concluded his account of the affair by saying, that however distinguished for gallantry my countrymen might become by such tyranny, he could only see in it, as he did in many other American transactions, a want of that stern regard for justice for which, he trusted, Englishmen would ever be known. I could hardly understand his deduction from the story; for it seemed to me quite right, if not what he called “just,” that if one of them must have been exposed to the inclemency of the weather, it should have been the man, as probably best able to bear it. But, rather doubting if I had understood him, I replied, half ironically, half sincerely, that I would confess that I questioned if the mass of my countrymen were not deficient in this respect to the educated middle class of England.

He wondered that I should confine the inherent love of justice and truth to any class of Englishmen, yet did not deny that, among the nobility, it might seem to have degenerated a great deal into a mere idolatry of the forms to which justice was reduced by law and custom. But among the lowest classes, he argued, we should find the real character of a people most naturally and unaffectedly manifested, and especially in the common forms of speech and popular proverbs and outcries. Spontaneous love of justice, and indignation at injustice was every where displayed by the lowest class in England, and nowhere else in the world would you hear the demand for fair play so continually. He had often noticed that, in any street tumult, the loudest shout was always—“HANDS OFF! FAIR PLAY!” It always pleased him and made him proud of his country when he heard it.

“Let me tell you under what circumstances I heard it, not long since—the only time I have as yet heard it in England,” I answered. “It was in the ‘Bull-ring’ at Ludlow, the other day, one woman accused another of cheating, and in return was called a liar. Just as we were passing, they came to blows, and hammered each other very severely. A crowd collected, and formed a ring about them in a moment. It was our impulse, with two or three other persons, of perhaps too weak a sense of justice, to rush in and part them; but the crowd were greatly enraged, and raised the cry, ‘Hands off! fair play!’ so that we were in danger of being rather roughly handled ourselves. They fought like tigers, till the blood ran freely. At length the hair of one of them fell over her face.”

“Tut—tut!” said the coachman.

“And as she tossed her head backwards, and tried to draw it off with one hand, she got a facer; and then, one, two, three!—down she went! ‘Fair play!’ shouted the crowd again, and caught up the victor and bore her off with a hurrah to a butcher’s shop. The fallen woman was picked up and lifted into a tinker’s cart; men and women crowded about her, and told her it was all along of her having her hair fall, and it was a foul blow, and better luck next time. One brought a comb, another a mug of water, and another a little black bottle. In a minute—”

“Time!” said the coachman, as if reminding his horses.

“In a minute she had her face washed; tobacco crowded up her nose to staunch the blood; her hair drawn tightly back, and knotted, and had taken a good pull at the bottle.”

“Up to time!” whispered coachee.

“And the last we saw of her, she was standing before the butcher’s shop, with her sleeves rolled up, sparring in a scientific style, and screaming, ‘Come on! come on! Give me fair play, and I’ll fight you. Oh! I’ll fight you! only give me fair play!’ and all the crowd were shouting, ‘Fair fight! fair fight! Come out! come out and give her fair fight!’”

“It must have been a nuisance—such a rabble; where were the police?”

“In America, all the men in sight would have been policemen, if necessary, to have parted them.”

“Don’t you like fair fighting, then,—you Americans?” asked the coachman.

“Why—we don’t like fighting at all among women. It is disgraceful! Surely the idea of women fighting so brutally is disgusting to you?”

“Disgusting? I don’t know that. There’s Joan of Arc, and Amazon, and other handsome heroines; they are not disgusting, are they? I tell you, sir, I do like a fair, stand-up fight, and, damme, sir, I don’t know, by your leave, why women have not the right to settle their quarrels that way as well as men.”

“The right—yes; and if they must fight, let it be a fair fight; but I would rather men would fight for them. Fighting!—a man could drive a coach as well, I suppose, or fell a tree as well after fighting as before; but a woman could not sooth a child, nor would she feel disposed to take tender care of one, I think, if her fighting propensities had been much cultivated—whether in fair fighting or foul.”

“Oh, you are quite right, sir, quite right,” said the gentleman on my left; “women should not be allowed to fight. But what application has it to my friend’s being turned out of his seat because a woman did not wish to get wet?”

“Why, I was thinking that if we sometimes show a less commanding instinct of justice in our customs towards women, as you have thought from that incident, we may also exhibit a more delicate sense of propriety and fitness, which, if it does not rest on an instinct of justice, certainly does on something nearly akin to it. You find no mob in America that would look on and see two women fight like that. But, indeed, you’d never see American women fighting so. If it is a disgrace to us that we have made our women unnaturally childlike, it is no honour to you that yours can be so unnaturally brutish.”

“But, my dear sir, that was a tinker’s wife!”

“So it was, and I should perhaps have confined the application to your lower classes; I certainly have never seen any want of true refinement among your well-bred ladies.”

“But they do tell strange tales of your fine ladies. I suppose you have seen the legs of pianos put in pantalettes?”

“Oh yes, frequently; and do you know—the other day, at the residence of the Honourable Mrs. ——”

“—— Hall? The family are on the Continent.”

“Yes; I did not see the ladies; but will you believe me, sir, their modesty is so great, that the arms of their chairs are all in muslin sleeves, as well as their piano—body, legs, and all—veiled like a Turk’s wife, so you would not know what it was.”

“Oh, to keep the dust off it—it must have been.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Ah! you mean that such was also the case with those you have seen in America?”

“Of course. It never occurred to me that they were covered for any other reason. I have no doubt that if your friend told you that they were, he was made the subject of a practical joke. If not, he kept worse company than I ever fell among when he was there; and it is as unfair for you to draw a general conclusion with regard to our ladies, from his experience in a vulgar family or two, as it would be for me to describe your ladies as coarse and brutal from the conduct of the tinker’s wife.”

“But tinkers’ wives would not be piano-forte performers, nor travellers in the inside of stage-coaches.”

“I don’t know that,” I replied; “a tinker’s wife in the United States is as likely to know how to play a piano-forte, as a tinker’s wife here is to know how to read her Bible, and would certainly be as likely to ride in the inside of a stage-coach as any one else; and your friend, if he had one for his vis-à-vis, might, very possibly, from her dress and general appearance, particularly from her general information and intelligence, have been led to apply the same standard in judging of her that he had been accustomed to use at home for females of his own rank in society: of course, judged in that way, it would be odd if he could not find something outré about her to make fun of.”

“How about stage-coachmen’s wives, sir?”

“I know a stage driver’s wife that has a piano, and can play it—at least her daughter can—admirably well. Her husband is colonel of a crack regiment of our yeomanry cavalry.”

The coachman turned and looked me very gravely in the face for a moment, just showing the tip of his tongue, and then raised his hand till his thumb pointed over his left shoulder.

The gentleman laughed, and said,

“He will be ‘His Excellency,’ your representative at the Court of St. James next, I suppose.”

“Perhaps so,” I answered, “for he has already represented his fellow-townsmen for two years in the Legislature of the State, and had the title of Honourable.”

“A stage-coachman, ’pon honour?”

“Yes.”

“What for a whip is he, sir?”

“I’ll tell you his story, as far as I know it,⁠[13] and what I don’t know I can guess at.

“He was an ostler once, then a lawyer’s boy, then a schoolmaster, then studied law and began to practice; then he speculated, made a fortune, and lost the greater part of it in a year; then he bought out a line of stage-coaches that were run over a mountain, and which was about to be given up because a railroad running around the mountains had been completed. He put the fares down, and works them in opposition to the railroad; and, as it is a tight match, he drives one coach himself, fifteen miles a-day, and back—six horses in hand; and I have seen them going down the mountain as hard as they could run, while he held his reins in one hand, not tauter than yours are now, and his cigar in the other, and called out to them, one after another, by name, to look out for themselves or they’ll break their necks, as if they had been a squad of school children.”

“Good God!” breathed the coachman.

“He is, withal, a church elder, and Super, Grand, Past Superior, Most Venerable Senior Patriarch of the Independent Order of X. Y. Z., and a variety of other things.”

The coachman whistled.

“But the lady, sir, of this gentleman—I should like to hear more of her,” asked my other companion.

“She is rather older than her husband—and, having had to work pretty hard all her life, has not had time to keep up with him, so she has the good sense to stay in the background a good deal; but his daughter, who is a beauty, accomplished, speaks French and German, and, as I told you, performs finely on the piano, was a regular belle in the last legislative session, and, they say, did a French Count the honour of rejecting his addresses.”

“Polkas, waltzes and sch—”

“Oh, no! I guess not—never, except with her younger sister, and in domestic circles: she is really too modest, and I suppose she would say it was against her religious principles.”

“She is religious, then?”

“Really so, I believe. I heard that the Count was likely to be greatly changed from her influence over him.”

“Have you a daughter, coachman?”

“Daughter! no! But I tell you, sir, I have the trimmest little King Charles’ slut you ever saw: black coat and tan wescoat, sir, with just a frill of white that you could cover with a sixpence. She won me five puns at the last Bristol show.”

“That’ll never connect you with a French Count.”

“Bah! I don’t want any thing to do with Frenchmen.”

“Why not?” said I. “I have seen but little of Frenchmen; what is it that you have found so bad about them?”

“I haven’t seen much of them either, and I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Oh—why, they are a scurvy lot, sir—live on frogs and pea-soup!—and—eh?—worship images, sir!—and—eh?—oh, they’ve no bottom, sir!—no strength they haven’t got, no pluck, sir. One Englishman’s worth a dozen of ’em, you know, sir.”

“You are a true Briton, coachman,” said the gentleman, laughing.

“We have some truer Britons on our side of the water; I’ll tell you what they sing.—

“‘One Yankee is good for two Englishmen, and two Englishmen can lick a dozen Frenchmen.’ ‘The British can whip all creation, and we can whip the British.’ That’s the talk of our ‘true Britons.’ Don’t you think they are full-blooded?”

“I must confess,” he answered, “that with all your suavity to women you are as stubborn and inconsistent in your prejudices as the worst of us. If the lady, whose seat my friend was obliged to pay for, had but been of a dark complexion—”

“Oh, now, do not let us discuss that subject—my friends and I only go as far as the Queen’s Head, which must be near by now; and if we begin on slavery we shall want the whole afternoon to get a good understanding of each other’s views. But what did you mean by your friend’s paying the lady’s fare? I did not understand that before.”

“What difference is it? He had paid for an inside seat, and, when he most needed it, was obliged to give it up to her.”

“Ah!—I think I understand you—that is the injustice that you feel.”

“Yes, sir, it is; it seems strange to me that you do not at once instinctively appreciate it.”

“Perhaps you are not aware that there is no difference in price on the outside and the inside of a stage-coach in America, and the only right which one can have to a seat is that of priority—a right which is made by custom with regard to men, but does not hold when a woman is in the case.”

“Indeed! is it so?”

“Yes.”

“I ask your pardon; indeed, I was not aware of it. But it is singular that it should be so; is not the privilege of protection from the weather worth paying for?”

“Sometimes it is; but in our climate it is not usually. Most men prefer, and would be willing, one time with another, to pay more for the elevated seat in the open air, than to be cramped up with eight others (for our coaches carry nine inside) in a close, crowded cabin. I myself cannot stand it for an hour, for it makes me sea-sick; and no matter what the weather, I should go outside. I would rather be frozen than suffocated. However, I suppose that our customs, as well as our legal institutions, do give the rich a little less advantage over the poor than yours.”

“And that’s just what institutions ought to do, if they do any thing,” put in the coachman; “what the devil else are they good for? It stands to reason: always dry off your weakest nag first, ’specially if he’s a little ailing. If you don’t, you’ll have trouble, you may depend, sir.”

“There is always danger in interfering with the natural laws of property,” remarked the gentleman. “It does not answer to put beggars on horseback, you know. All such things should be left to take their natural course. Property is the natural representative of intelligence and virtue, and all laws and customs that tend to the unnatural elevation or peculiar advantage of particular persons or classes, are mischievous.”

“I fully agree with you as to laws which obstruct the natural movement of property for merely individual aggrandizement. As a general rule, I believe all such attempts must fail of their real object. I don’t believe it possible, that such laws or restrictions should not be to the eventual disadvantage of both parties.”

“I declare I am glad to hear an American uttering such sentiments; but, indeed, they are irresistible—so simply and clearly right, that they seem, to one who has given any attention to the subject, altogether unworthy of discussion. But there is a still more evident justness, not to say policy, after one nation has opened her ports to free competition, that she should not be excluded or restrained from those of another. I do trust your nation begins to see how disgraceful to it is that false, absurd, unjust system of Protection, and will soon reciprocate our more generous policy, and let our commercial intercourse be governed by the natural law of trade. The simple law of nature should be the law of nations.”

“I am not so sure that Free Trade is a simple law of nature,” I answered. “If that is the natural law, which you were saying that we interfered with, in not allowing the rich man to separate himself as much as he chooses from the poor, then selfishness is the only reliable, natural guide, and the impulses of selfishness must not be thwarted by law. Might makes right—Every man for himself—that’s the law for you; quite a different thing from this you talk of—forgiving old scores and reciprocating the advantages you would give us, now that you find it much the most for your interest to do so, whether we reciprocate or not.”

“The first impulse of nature,” he replied, “is, every man for himself, perhaps; but the first true law of helping himself is to help another, to have a partner to labour with for a reciprocal advantage.”

“I always heard self-preservation was the first law of nature,” said the coachman.

“Exactly,” said I; “self-preservation—or, in fact, selfishness—that’s the first law,—not perfect reciprocity of good services, but the best payment we can get for our services. It’s the necessity of the buyer, not his generosity, that governs the payment. You have followed this natural law in your foreign policy as long as it would serve you, without regard to the injury it did us; now you find that a generous policy would be the most profitable policy, you preach reciprocity, and call that a natural law; but our people say—No! You have had the good—you must take the evil. If there’s any natural law, it is that by which we claim payment for the good we do you—atonement for the injury you have done us. At any rate, you must wait a few years till we have nursed our infant manufactures, not yet able to walk alone; when they are well established, we will, perhaps, give you the fair field and fair fight you are so fond of. For the fact is, no one expects Protection to be more than a temporary policy with us.”

“That’s fair,” said the coachman; “heavy weights and light weights can’t go into the ring together.”

“’Tisn’t heavy weights and light weights, but the champion of the world in full feather, calling out a youngster who’s never been in training. We acknowledge that you have the advantage of us, in some respects; but wait a bit, till we get in good trim, and then we will put our ingenuity and activity against your experience and muscle.”

“Meanwhile, you will take all the advantage that you can of your superior agricultural muscle, to undersell our farmers,” said the free-trader.

“No; you give it to us, because it is as much to your advantage as to ours.”

“Yes,” he answered, “we certainly do; and we advise you to do the same with regard to manufactures, honestly believing that it would be as much for your advantage as ours. It is absurd, for the sake of revenge, that you should pay your manufacturers a high price for what ours will furnish you at a lower one....”

“She’s the best in the lot,” said the coachman, interrupting us, to explain a severe cut he had given the near-wheeler; “the best in the lot, sir. Now she’s woke up, see how she throws her weight in. I’ve been working a coach, off and on, these fifteen years, and I don’t think I ever had a better bit of stuff before me; but you saw how she was lagging. She isn’t sulky—kind as a kitten—never takes offence—and she don’t mean she’s ailing; but sometimes she gets into a kind of a doze; forgets herself, and don’t hear me; dreamy like, I consider; thinking about the last stable, instead of the one she’s going to. I can’t break her of it. But she’s tough as steel—‘Lady Nimrod’ we calls her—after the old Nimrod, you know, sir, as writes for Bell’s Life. Ah, sir! but he can write, can’t he, and no chaff! You’ve read the Northern Tour; that distinguished old whip, you remember, that he tells of, he was my nuncle,—it’s in our blood,—he was a working on the Northern then.”

“I must beg leave,” said the gentleman, resuming our discussion, “to deny that we have been governed by such an exclusively selfish policy, in that matter of Free Trade and Protection, as you imputed to us. The principles of Free Trade are the natural laws of the universe, applicable at all times to all places. I fully believe that it would have been as profitable for our ancestors to have adopted them, as it is for us; and so far from ascribing their success to protection, I should say that it was in spite of Protection, and due only to indomitable energy and perseverance. And I feel no manner of doubt, that Protection, so far from encouraging your manufacturers, can only rest as an incubus upon their ingenuity and energy.”

“However your manufacturing success may have been affected by mere protection in itself, there can be no question that the great vantage ground that you have now in competing with us, is in the low cost of your manual labour. And this, if not due to technical protection, has certainly resulted, in a great degree, from that general policy in your past history, of sustaining privileged classes; from your constitution and laws and customs making, or, if you please, permitting, the accident of birth to give such advantages to some as it does. I do not consider property as the representative of industry and intelligence merely; it might be more truly defined as the representative of power, and often of the power of rascality and low cunning: the State, therefore, instead of giving artificial privileges to the rich, should, if to either class, give it to the poorer, because the weaker.”

“The State should grant no artificial distinctions; but there are certain privileges and distinctions which a man may naturally acquire, and the State should guarantee him permanent possession of these.”

“Granted, with the qualification that he must acquire them, and hold them in no way which, on the whole, shall be adverse to the greatest good of the greatest number. Now position, socially, is relative: if you elevate one man, you degrade others. Superior necessitates inferior. The aristocracy of the few makes necessary the peasantry of the many. Is that the Queen’s Head?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Our discussion must be interrupted, then.”

“Excuse me,” said our friend from behind us, reaching forward and putting his hand on my shoulder—“excuse me, but did I not hear you speaking of selfishness and revenge as first laws of nature, just now?”

“Something of the kind.”

“You will allow me to remind you that they are the natural laws of brutes, and of man in his first stages of progress from the brutal state. Was it not to a semi-barbarian people, incapable of being governed by a higher and better law, because they could not appreciate or have faith in it, that God permitted the law of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth?”

“Oh, certainly,” said I; “I would not seriously argue that we should govern ourselves by that law—I was speaking carelessly.”

“I knew you were, and that you would not wish to leave such an impression—”

“And may we not hope,” continued our friend, in his mild, serious way, “may we not hope that nations, like individuals, may take upon them a new and regenerated nature, and be governed by the higher law, ‘Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you?’ It was faith in this true law of wise and happy existence, both for God and man, which moved Jesus Christ, in the midst of disgrace, agony, and death, even in his last extremity, with fainting breath, to desire and labour for the salvation of those to whose ignorance of this law he owed all his suffering; and in this complete victory over the old law of revengeful payment, it should have passed away together with the brutal idea of God with which it had been necessarily connected; and now, to us, with a higher revelation of God as our Father, there should be a new and higher law.”

“Right,” said I, “and just what I would have been glad, if I had not got astray, to bring our argument to. It is not the law of nature, which is selfishness, but the law of God, which is love, that we should make the law of nations.”

“But, sir,” answered the free-trader, “is not the true law of nature identical with the law of God? It is in ignorance that men have hoped to benefit themselves by injuring others. Love is but a wise man’s selfishness. If I work rightly for myself, I cannot help but that you shall be benefited also.”

“The long and short of it is,” added our friend, “that while carefully remembering our individual responsibility, we should always be working together in love, as brothers, having a common inheritance; knowing that over all is a common Father, guiding and directing all, not only for the common good, but, with impartial love for each of his children, for the highest good of each individual. So must we, as nations, each people for itself, yet each for the common good of all, and knowing that only in the good of all can be the good of any. So only can any nation expect to prosper long, and so only shall the world prepare, too, for the universal kingdom of God—the coming of which may He graciously hasten!”

“Amen!” said the man who occupied the seat behind us, with my brother and our friend. From his moody expression and his position, his forehead resting on his hand, I had before thought him ill. I now turned again to look at him, and saw that either his eyes were very swollen and weak, or he had been weeping. “Excuse me for listening to you,” he said, speaking English very distinctly at first—“I have been much interest in your converse; I am a Frenchman,” and he raised his cap. At this the coachman turned short round and looked him in the face. “Will you permit me the honour of to take your hand?” Here he gave his left hand to each of us successively, and finally offered to do so with the coachman, who said:—

“I don’t say any thing behind a man’s back that I’m afraid to before his face, and I don’t like a Frenchman any way.”

“That is very good—very honest, which please me—coachman; so now I like you, you will make my friend—very good.”

“Tchiup!” answered the coachman, turning towards his horses, and the brown mare being again in a brown study, he snatched the whip and woke her up with a smart cut.

“I am made very happy,” the Frenchman continued, “very happy that you so do like the grand idea of the fraternity of nations; and for that good time, which shall surely come, I do, with you, make the prayer that it be quickly. Ah! gentlemen—with what—‘like many waters’—spake the God-voice through my people that word the other year, Fraternité! what you call the Brotherhood, and with it Liberty and Equality. Individuality, its rights; association, its love, its opportunity! Ah! gentlemen, ah! sir, I have not ever in England heard so good words as those you speaked. Ah! mine friend, I do feel you mine brother to be! Ah! mon cher ami, certainement—do you know your religion is my religion—Dieu est charité! Ah! mine friends, I very much communion have with you——And my country, in which was those good word spoken. Ah, mon Dieu! ah, mon Dieu! ma belle France! ma belle France! porquoi! porquoi!” and the poor little man broke down.

“Jerusalem! oh Jerusalem! that slayest thy prophets!” said our friend, drawing his head upon his shoulder, and then going on in a low tone expressive of sympathy and consolation, of which I could not hear the words.

“Ptshut!—Baby!” said the coachman.

“Baby?” said I. “Yes, ‘for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’”

“Just what I told you, sir.” He went on growling, not having understood me. “No bottom, sir, no bottom!... and a man can’t fight, you know, without bottom.... Pooh! regular women!... See the hair round his mouth!—snob!... How the devil does he ever get the soup into it?...——if I wouldn’t match the Queen’s Head bar-maid against the best man amongst them.... They may make a goodish brush at the start, you know, sir, but they can’t sweat it through, ... no, sir, they can not.... They are a bad lot, you may depend, sir—never can make a good fight.”

“Pshaw, man! there’s something else to be done in the world than fighting.”

“But a man isn’t worth much at any thing else if he can’t fight when he is put to it, if you please, sir.”

“Nonsense! there’s good stuff in plenty of men that never show fight—don’t you know that? But you might bet on this man’s being a fighter—look at his scars, and you see his right arm is gone—ten to one he lost it fighting.”

“Well, that does look some’at plucky—it’s a fact, sir—so-ho, lads—steady—whoo! Now then, Blazer! look alive!”

These last words were for the red-headed ostler of the Queen’s Arms. The four fresh horses with blankets over their harness stood waiting; Blazer looked most intensely alive, and in a marvellously short space of time the old team was unhitched and walking off unattended to the stable; my brother was saying a few kind parting words to the Frenchman, who answered that he trusted that they were representative of the sentiments of all the good American people; the free-trader handed me his card, saying that he observed that I had an agricultural taste—if I should be passing through and could find it convenient to call on him, though not in that line himself, he thought he could show me some things in the neighbourhood that would interest me. The coachman had forgotten us, and all about him, in a kind of doze, as he said, of the brown mare. Making an estimate, I guessed he was, with regard to the Queen’s Head bar-maid, of the exact height she was in her stockings, and the exact weight to which he could bring her if he could have the training of her for a month. His mind seemed totally abstracted as we pointed a shilling towards him; but he took it, mechanically touching his hat and saying, ‘Thankee, sir.’ The redoubtable damsel herself stood on the porch of the inn, looking poutingly at the coachman (or the Frenchman’s moustache)—not a dangerous person, to judge by her appearance, though she must have stood full six feet in her stout hob-nailed shoes, but with as good-natured and healthy a soul looking out of her great hazel eyes as the mildest pot of half-and-half she had ever honoured the Queen’s Head by drawing in its cellar.

The fresh horses were fastened to, and the guard had shouted “All right!” before we were all three fairly on the ground. Yet a moment longer Blazer held the pawing leaders, while the coachman, with a completely nonplussed expression, lighted a cigar that the Frenchman had given him; then, as we were buckling on our knapsacks, he drew taut his reins, and away they bounded, the Frenchman bending far over to kiss his hand to us, and the Englishman in a stately way lifting his hat.

“Adieu, mes amis, adieu!”

“God be with the brother, as surely he will.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

CHAPTER XI.

SHADY LANES.—RURAL SKETCHES.—HEREFORDSHIRE AND MONMOUTHSHIRE SCENERY.—POINTS OF DIFFERENCE IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LANDSCAPES.—VISIT TO A FARM-HOUSE.—THE MISTRESS.—THE FARM-HOUSE GARDEN.—A STOUT OLD ENGLISH FARMER.—THE STABLES AND STOCK.—TURNIP CULTURE.—SHEEP.—WHEAT.—HAY.—RENTS.—PRICES.—A PARTING.—CIDER.

We soon turned off the main road, and pursued our way for several miles by narrow, deep, shady lanes, our conductor giving us much information about the agriculture of the district and the habits and character of the people, ever and anon, also, finding occasion from some incident or spectacle that engaged our attention, for instructive and godly discourse, in such a way as I have endeavoured to show his habit in the last chapter; not tediously, and to the interruption of other thoughts and conversation, but naturally and cheerfully.

It was a rarely clear, bright, sunshiny afternoon, and while on the broad highway we found, for the first time in England, the temperature of the air more than comfortably warm. The more agreeable were the lanes;—narrow, deep, and shady, as I said, often not wider than the cart-track, and so deep, that the grassy banks on each side were higher than our heads; our friend could not explain how or why they were made so, but probably it was by the rain washing through them for centuries. On the banks, too, were thickly scattered the flowers of heart’s-ease, forget-me-not, and wild strawberries; above, and out of them, grew the hawthorn hedges in thick but wild and wilsome verdure, and pushing out of this, and stretching over us, often the branches mingling over our heads and shutting out the bright blue sky clear beyond the next turn, so we seemed walking in a bower, thick old apple and pear trees with pliant twigs of hazel-wood, and occasionally the strong arms of great bending elms. Now and then a break in the hedge-row, and, a little back, a low, thick-thatched cottage with many bends in the ridge-pole, and little windows, and thick walls; a cat asleep in the door, and pigs and chickens before it, and, lying on the ground, in the dust of the lane, playing with a puppy, two or three flaxen-haired, blue-eyed children; a little further, a drowsy old she-ass standing in the shade, and a mouse-coloured foal, as little as a lamb, but with a great head and large, plaintive dark eyes, and a most confiding, meek, and touching expression of infantile, embryo intellect.

Now and then, too, the hedge gives way to the wall of a paddock or stack-yard, and beyond it are a number of old and often dilapidated hovels, sheds, and stables, clustering without any appearance of arrangement about a low farm-house with big chimneys, wide windows, and a little porch half hidden under roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle.

And sometimes at these a big dog would bay at us, and, a woman coming to the door, our friend would turn up and ask, “How is the master and the little ones?” and in return be asked, “How is good mistress and young master?” And then we would be presented as strangers, that had come over the sea to view this goodly land, and would be asked, in pitying tones, about famine, and fever, and potatoes, the farm-wife, although she had an exceedingly sweet speech, apparently confusing New York with Connaught or Munster.

Again, broad fields, and stout horses, and busy labourers, and straight plough-furrows, or the bright metallic green of luxuriant young wheat and barley in broad glades of glancing light; and a stout old man, who waddles towards us with a warm greeting, also wiping the sweat from his brow, and mounting “a goodish bit of stuff, though she has seen twenty winters,” rides for a little way along with us, breathing hard and speaking huskily; grumbling, grumbling at every opening in the conversation at Free Trade and high rents, but answering all our questions about his draining, and boneing, and drilling, and dibbling, and very frankly acknowledging how much he has been able to increase his crops with new-fashioned ways and new-fangled implements.

Then leaving the lane, we take a foot-path, which, crossing the hedges by stiles, leads through old orchards, in all of which horses and cattle are pasturing; and there are beautiful swells of the ground, and sometimes deep swales of richer green, with rushes and willows growing at the bottom. Reaching a steeper hill-side, we enter a large plantation of young forest trees, and soon pass all at once into an older growth of larger and more thinly standing wood; and near the top of this, find a clearing, where men are making faggots of the brushwood, and stripping bark from the larger sticks, and some little boys and girls are picking up chips and putting them into sacks.

We reach another lane and cultivated fields again, and, being on elevated ground, at the knarly feet of a glorious, breezy, gray, old beech-tree, lay ourselves down, and, looking back upon the extensive landscape, tell our friend in what it differs from American scenery.

The great beauty and peculiarity of the English landscape is to be found in the frequent long, graceful lines of deep green hedges and hedge-row timber, crossing hill, valley, and plain, in every direction; and in the occasional large trees, dotting the broad fields, either singly or in small groups, left to their natural open growth, (for ship-timber, and, while they stand, for castle shades,) therefore branching low and spreading wide, and more beautiful, much more beautiful, than we often allow our trees to make themselves. The less frequent brilliancy of broad streams or ponds of water, also distinguishes the prospect from those we are accustomed to, though there are often small brooks or pools, and much marshy land, and England may be called a well-watered country. In the foreground you will notice the quaint buildings, generally pleasing objects in themselves, often supporting what is most agreeable of all, and that you can never fail to admire, never see any thing ugly or homely under, a curtain of ivy or other creepers; the ditches and the banks by their side, on which the hedges are planted; the clean and careful cultivation, and general tidiness of the agriculture; and the deep, narrow, crooked, gulche-like lane, or the smooth, clean, matchless, broad highway. Where trees are set in masses for ornament, the Norway spruce and the red beech generally give a dark, ponderous tone, which we seldom see in America; and in a hilly and unfertile country there are usually extensive patches of the larch, having a brown hue. The English elm is the most common tree in small parks or about country-houses. It appears, at a little distance, more like our hickory, when the latter grows upon a rich soil, and is not cramped, as sometimes in our river intervals, than any other American tree.

There seems to me to be a certain peculiarity in English foliage, which I can but little more than allude to, not having the skill to describe. You seem to see each particular leaf, (instead of a confused leafiness,) more than in our trees; or it is as if the face of each leaf was parallel, and more equally lighted than in our foliage. It is perhaps only owing to a greater density, and better filling up, and more even growth of the outer twigs of the trees, than is common in our drier climate. I think that our maple woods have more resemblance to it than others.

There is usually a much milder light over an English landscape than an American, and the distances and shady parts are more indistinct. It is rare that there is not a haziness, slightly like that of our Indian summer, in the atmosphere, and the colours of every thing, except of the foliage, are less brilliant and vivacious than we are accustomed to. The sublime or the picturesque in nature is much more rare in England, except on the sea-coast, than in America; but there is every where a great deal of quiet, peaceful, graceful beauty, which the works of man have generally added to, and which I remember but little at home that will compare with. This Herefordshire reminds me of the valley of Connecticut, between Middletown and Springfield. The valley of the Mohawk and the upper part of the Hudson, is also in some parts English-like.

Descending into a broad, low tract of dale-land, we came at length to the farm occupied by a relative of our guide, which we were going to visit. A branch of the lane in which we had been for some time walking, ran through the farm, and terminated at the farm-house. It was more picturesque and inconvenient, deeper, narrower, and muddier, than any we had before been through. It was explained to us that it was a “parish road”—although leading to but one house—and, therefore, the farmer was not responsible for its bad repair.⁠[14] Great trees grew up at its side, and these the farmer was not allowed to fell or trim—the landlord estimating the value of their increase as timber or for fuel, or their advantage as a nursery of game, higher than the injury they caused to the crops in the adjoining fields. Near the house the road or lane widened, and one side was lined by a thick symmetrical yew-hedge, separating it from a garden; on the other side, however, the trees and high bank still continued, and two stout horses were straining every muscle to draw a cart-load of crushed bones through the mire, which reached close up to the gable-end of the house. Opposite the house was a cider-mill, cart-sheds, and some stacks: behind it, a large court, surrounded by stables, sties, dairy-house, malt-house, granary, &c. Into this enclosure we passed by a great gate: a considerable part of it was occupied by a large heap of manure and a pool of green stagnant liquid. The buildings were mostly old, some of them a good deal decayed, with cracks in the brick-work, timber bending and sustained by props and other patch-work, which spake better for the tenant than his landlord.

By a wide open door, directly from this filthy yard, we passed without ceremony into the kitchen—a large, long room with stone floor, black beams across the low ceiling, from which hung sides and hams of pork, a high settle, as usual, but not the ordinary kitchen display of bright metal and crockery. Old and well worn, every thing, but neat and nice as brand-new. On a table was a huge loaf with a large piece of cold fat bacon and a slice of cheese, and directly a maid came up from the cellar and added to these viands a pint of foaming beer—dinner or supper for the carter just returning from the town, whither he had gone early in the morning with a load of wool, and had now brought back bone-manure.

We are seated in a little parlour, and the “wench” (a buxom serving-maid) goes to call the mistress. The parlour is a small room neatly furnished, but not as expensively as it would be in most substantial farmers’ houses with us; painted deal chairs, a painted-calico-covered lounge, the floor carpeted, and the walls papered; an oak writing-desk, a table, and a sewing-stand; no newspapers or books, but a family-bible on the mantel and an almanac on the desk; a door and a window open from it upon the flower-garden.

In a few minutes the mistress enters, and, after kindly receiving us, rings a bell, and, when the maid comes, gives her a key and tells her to bring cider. After short refreshment, she takes us into the garden. A pleasant garden, with some very large and fine pansies, some roses, and great promise of more. It is extremely neat, clean, and finely kept, and it is the pride of the mistress that she takes the entire care of it herself; as we walk, she has her scissors in her hand, and cuts flowers, and when we are seated in a curious little arbour of clipped yew, where she had left her “work” when she came in to see us, she arranges little nosegays and presents them to us.

The house is small in size; the walls are of plain red brick; the roof of slate, neither very steep-pitched nor flat; the chimneys and windows of the usual simple American country-house form and size. There is no porch, veranda, gable, or dormer, upon the garden side, yet the house has a very pleasing and tasteful aspect, and does not at all disfigure the lovely landscape of distant woody hills, against which we see it. Five shillings’ worth of materials from a nursery, half-a-day’s labour of a man, and some recreative work of our fair and healthy hostess’ own hands, have done it vastly better than a carpenter or mason could at a thousand times the cost. Three large evergreen trees have grown near the end of the house, so that, instead of the plain, straight, ugly red corner, you see a beautiful, irregular, natural, tufty tower of verdure; myrtle and jessamine clamber gracefully upon a slight trellis of laths over the door; roses are trained up about one of the lower windows, honeysuckle about another, while all the others, above and below, are deeply draped and festooned with the ivy, which, starting from a few slips thrust one day into the soil by the mistress, near the corner opposite the evergreens, has already covered two-thirds of the bare brick wall on this side, found its way over the top of the tall yew-hedge, round the corner, climbed the gable-end, and is now creeping along the ridge-pole and up the kitchen chimney—which, before speaking only of boiled bacon and potatoes, now suggests happy holly-hangings of the fireside and grateful harvest’s home, hides all the formal lines and angles, breaks all the stiff rules of art, dances lightly over the grave precision of human handiwork, softens, shades, and shelters all under a gorgeous vesture of Heaven’s own weaving.

Soon, while we are sitting in this leafy boudoir, comes the master, as good a specimen of the stout, hearty, old English farmer as we shall find, and we go—the lady and all—to look at the horses, cows, and pigs. The stables are mostly small, inconveniently separated, and badly fitted up, and there is but little in them to boast of in the way of cattle; but there is one new building, incongruously neat among the rest, and in this there are some roomy stalls, with iron mangers, sliding neck-chains, and asphalte floor with grates and drain. Here was the best stock of the farm: among the rest, a fine, fat Hereford cow, which had just been sold to the butcher for $60, and a handsome heifer of the same blood, heavy with calf, which had been lately bought for $15, the farmer chuckling as he passes his hand over her square rump, as if it had been a shrewd purchase. He valued his best dairy cow at $45.

We then go to the cider-mill and the sheds to look at some implements; next to the ground, at some distance, where the labourers are all at work ridging for turnips, (Swedes, or Ruta-baga.) The larger part of the field is already planted, and in some other fields the young plants are coming up. The crop of the farm this year is to be grown on one hundred acres, the whole area of the farm being less than three hundred.

The soil of this field is a fine, light, pliable loam. It has been the year previous in wheat; the stubble was turned under soon after harvest with a skim-coulter-plough, an instrument that pairs off the surface before the mould-board of the plough and throws it first to the bottom of the furrow: the operation may be described as a superficial trench-ploughing; cross-ploughed and scarified again the same season with one of the instruments described at page 182, Vol. I. In the spring, ploughed again, (eight inches deep,) harrowed fine and smooth, thrown into ridges with double mould-board plough, rolled, and finally drilled with a two-horse machine that deposits and covers manure and seed together. The manure is ground bones, costing in Hereford 60½ cents a bushel, mixed with sifted coal-ashes. The expense of this application is about $12 an acre, but it must be remembered that the ground is already in high condition. The drills are thirty inches apart. The crop is principally used to fatten sheep, of which 500 are kept on the farm; the breed, Cotswold and Leicester.

We next went to a paddock in which were six Cotswold “tups,” (bucks,) as handsome sheep (of their kind) as I ever saw. One of them I caught and measured: girth behind the shoulders, exactly five feet; length from muzzle to tail, four feet and eleven inches.

Then to the wheat, of which there was also about one hundred acres, part after turnips and part after potatoes: the former, which had been boned, looked the best. A part of the land had been prepared by a presser, (a kind of roller used to give solidity to light soils,) and this was decidedly superior to the remainder. Most of the wheat was put in with drilling machines, of which there were two used, one sowing at greater intervals than the other. Some of the wheat upon the pressed land, after turnips, was the finest we have seen. The farmer expected it to yield forty bushels of seventy pounds each, but would consider an average of thirty, from the hundred acres, a very good crop. He said the average crop of the county was thought to be but eighteen and a half bushels.

Walked through some pastures and a grass-field, and examined the hay in stacks; mostly rye-grass. The hay-fields yielded one to two and a quarter tons an acre, the average being under two tons. It took about four days to cure it after cutting, and the whole cost of hay-making was about four dollars an acre. Hay from the stack, of the best quality, would sell at this time in the city of Hereford for twelve dollars a-ton.

The rent of this farm was seven dollars and a half an acre; tithes, one dollar and a quarter an acre; road-rates, seventy cents an acre; all paid by the farmer, together with poor-rates and other burdens.

A good pair of sound, well-broken, but rather light, cart-horses, cost here $185; horse-cart, $60; harness and gear for each horse, $12. A smith will keep a horse shod for $5 a year. Insurance of horses in the Royal Farmers’ Company, 2½ per cent. of value per annum.

After taking tea at the farm-house, our kind guide, Brother ——, made ready to depart by stuffing some tracts, publications of the Brethren, mostly of a meditative character, into our packs; we might learn more of their ideas from them, he said, and if they did not interest us, or after we had read them, it might do some one else good to leave them at the inns where we stopped, or in the public conveyances. He begged us if we got into any trouble or needed any assistance for any purpose while in England, to let him know; and so we parted. We had never heard of this man, nor he of us, till twenty-four hours before. He had then merely received word that three American Christians—wayfarers—would be passing through his town that night, and so he came out into the highway seeking for us, found us, and had so entertained us as I have shown. He would now walk several miles alone and return home by the night-coach.

The farmer now had his favourite greyhound let out for us to see, and after another short stroll, finding that we were bent upon leaving him that night, insisted on our coming to the garden again and tasting some choice cider made from the Hagloe crab—the pure juice he assured us it was—a good wholesome English drink: a baby might fill its belly with it and feel none the worse. So sitting on the door-steps, the lady and the dog with us, we remained yet a long time, the farmer talking first of sporting matters, and then getting into the everlasting topics of Free Trade, and exorbitant rents, taxes, and tithes.

CHAPTER XII.

WALK WITH A RUSTIC.—FAMILY MEETING.—A RECOLLECTION OF THE RHINE.—IGNORANCE AND DEGRADED CONDITION OF THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.—HOW HE IS REGARDED BY HIS SUPERIORS.—THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.—DUTIES OF THE GOVERNING.—EDUCATION.—SLAVERY.— THE DIET OF LABOURERS.—DRINK.—BREAD.—BACON.—FRESH MEAT.

We were bound for Monmouth that night, and soon after sunset, having one of the farm labourers for a guide, we struck across the fields into another lane. About a mile from the farm-house, there was a short turn, and at the angle—the lane narrow and deep as usual—was a small, steep-roofed, stone building, with a few square and arched windows here and there in it, and a perfectly plain cube of stone for a tower, rising scarcely above the roof-tree, with an iron staff and vane on one of its corners—“Saint some one’s parish church.” There was a small graveyard, enclosed by a hedge around it; and in a corner of this, but with three doors opening in its front upon the lane, was a long, crooked, dilapidated old cottage. On one of the stone thresholds, a dirty, peevish-looking woman was lounging, and before her, lying on the ground in the middle of the lane, were several boys and girls playing or quarrelling. They stopped as we came near, and rolling out of the way, stared silently, and without the least expression of recognition, at us, while we passed among them. As we went on, the woman said something in a sharp voice, and our guide shouted in reply, without, however, turning his head, “Stop thy maw—am going to Ameriky, aw tell thee.” It was his “missis,” he said.

“Those were not your children that lay in the road?”

“Yaaz they be—foive of ’em.”

So we fell into a talk with him about his condition and prospects; but before I describe it, let me relieve my page with a glimpse of rustic character of another sort. It is one of the delightful memories of our later ramble on the Rhine that writing of this incident recalls. A very simple story, but illustrative in this connection of the difference which the traveller every where finds between the English and the German poor people.

We had been walking for some miles, late in a dusky evening, upon a hilly road in the Rhine land, with an old peasant woman, who was returning from market, carrying a heavy basket upon her head and two others in her hands. She had declined to let us assist her in carrying them, and though she had walked seven miles in the morning and now nearly that again at night, she had overtaken us, and was going on at a pace, that for any great distance we should have found severe. (Of course, ladies, she wore the Bloomer skirt.) At a turn of the road we saw the figure of a person standing still upon a little rising ground before us, indistinct in the dusk, but soon evidently a young woman. It is my child, said the woman, hastily setting down her baskets and running forward, so that they met and embraced each other half way up the hill. The young woman then came down to us, and, taking the great basket on her head, the two trudged on with rapid and animated conversation, in kind tones asking and telling of their experiences of the day, entirely absorbed with each other, and apparently forgetting that we were with them, until, a mile or two further on, we came near the village in which they lived.

Our guide was a man of about forty, having a wife and seven children; neither he nor any of his family (he thought) could read or write, and, except with regard to his occupation as agricultural labourer, I scarcely ever saw a man of so limited information. He could tell us, for instance, almost no more about the church which adjoined his residence than if he had never seen it—not half so much as we could discover for ourselves by a single glance at it. He had nothing to say about the clergyman that officiated in it, and could tell us nothing about the parish, except its name, and that it allowed him and five other labourers to occupy the “almshouse” we had seen, rent free. He couldn’t say how old he was, (he appeared about forty,) but he could say, “like a book,” that God was what made the world, and that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom he was chief”—of the truth of which latter clause I much doubted, suspecting the arch fiend would rank higher among his servants, the man whose idea of duty and impulse of love had been satisfied with cramming this poor soul with such shells of spiritual nourishment. He thought two of his children knew the catechism and the creed; did not think they could have learned it from a book; they might, but he never heard them read; when he came home and had gotten his supper, he had a smoke and then went to bed. His wages were seven shillings, sometimes had been eight, a-week. None of his children earned any thing; his wife, it might be, did somewhat in harvest-time. But take the year through, one dollar and sixty-eight cents a-week was all they earned to support themselves and their large family. How could they live? “Why, indeed, it was rather hard,” he said; “so hard, that sometimes, if we’d believe him, it had been as much as he could do to keep himself in tobacco!” It is an actual fact, that he mentioned this as if it was a vastly more memorable hardship than that ofttimes he could get nothing more than dry bread for his family to eat. It was a common thing that they had nothing to eat but dry bread. He got the flour—fine, white wheaten flour—from the master. They kept a hog, and had so much bacon as it would make to provide them with meat for the year. They also had a little potato patch, and he got cheese sometimes from the master. He had tea, too, to his supper. The parish gave him his rent and he never was called upon for tithes, taxes, or any such thing. In addition to his wages, the master gave him, as he did all the labourers, three quarts either of cider or beer a-day, sometimes one and sometimes the other. He liked cider best—thought there was “more strength to it.” Harvest-time they got six quarts, and sometimes, when the work was very hard, he had had ten quarts.

He had heard of America and Australia as countries that poor folks went to—he did not well know why, but supposed wages were higher, and they could live cheaper. His master and other gentlemen had told him about those places, and the labouring people talked about them among themselves. They had talked to him about going there. (America and Australia were all one—two names for the same place, for all that he knew.) He thought his master or the parish would provide him the means of going, if he wanted them to. We advised him to emigrate then, by all means, not so much for himself as for his children—the idea of his bringing seven, or it might yet be a dozen, more beings into the world to live such dumb-beast lives, was horrible to us. I told him that in America his children could go to school, and learn to read and write and to enjoy the revelation of God; and as they grew up they would improve their position, and might be land-owners and farmers themselves, as well off as his master; and he would have nothing to pay, or at most but a trifle that he could gratefully spare, to have them as well educated as the master’s son was being here; that where I came from the farmers would be glad to give a man like him, who could “plough and sow and reap and mow as well as any other in the parish,” eighteen shillings a-week—

“And how much beer?”

“None at all!”

“None at all? ha, ha! he’d not go then—you’d not catch him workin withouten his drink. No, no! a man ’ould die off soon that gait.”

It was in vain that we offered fresh meat as an offset to the beer. There was “strength,” he admitted, in beef, but it was wholly incredible that a man could work on it. A workingman must have zider or beer—there was no use to argue against that. That “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” and that “work without beer is death,” was the alpha and omega of his faith.

The labourers in this part of England (Hereford, Monmouth, Gloucester, and Wiltshire) were the most degraded, poor, stupid, brutal, and licentious, that we saw in the kingdom. We were told that they were of the purest Saxon blood, as was indeed indicated by the frequency of blue eyes and light hair among them. But I did not see in Ireland or in Germany or in France, nor did I ever see among our negroes or Indians, or among the Chinese or Malays, men whose tastes were such mere instincts, or whose purpose of life and whose mode of life was so low, so like that of domestic animals altogether, as these farm labourers.

I was greatly pained, mortified, ashamed of old mother England, in acknowledging this; and the more so that I found so few Englishmen that realized it, or who, realizing it, seemed to feel that any one but God, with His laws of population and trade, was at all accountable for it. Even a most intelligent and distinguished Radical, when I alluded to this element as a part of the character of the country, in replying to certain very favourable comparisons he had been making of England with other countries, said—“We are not used to regard that class in forming a judgment of national character.” And yet I suppose that class is larger in numbers than any other in the community of England. Many have even dared to think that, in the mysterious decrees of Providence, this balance of degradation and supine misery is essential to the continuance of the greatness, prosperity, and elevated character of the country—as if it were not indeed a part of the country.

A minister of the Gospel, of high repute in London, and whose sermons are reprinted and often repeated in America, from the words of Christ, “the poor ye have always among you,” argued lately that all legislation or co-operative benevolence that had the tendency and hope of bringing about such a state of things that a large part of every nation should be independent of the charity of the other part, was heretical and blasphemous. Closely allied to such ideas are the too common notions of rulers and subjects.

In America we hold that a slave, a savage, a child, a maniac, and a condemned criminal, are each and all born, equally with us, with our President, or with the Queen of England, free and self-governing; that they have the same natural rights with us; but that attached to those natural rights were certain duties, and when we find them, from whatever cause,—no matter whether the original cause be with them, or our fathers, or us,—unable to perform those duties, we dispossess them of their rights: we restrain, we confine, we master, and we govern them. But in taking upon ourselves to govern them, we take duties upon ourselves, and our first duty is that which is the first duty of every man for himself—improvement, restoration, regeneration. By every consideration of justice, by every noble instinct, we are bound to make it our highest and chiefest object to restore them, not the liberty first, but—the capacity for the liberty—for exercising the duties of the liberty—which is their natural right. And so much of the liberty as they are able to use to their own as well as our advantage, we are bound constantly to allow them,—nay, more than they show absolute evidence of their ability to use to advantage. We must not wait till a child can walk alone before we put it on its legs; we must not wait till it can swim before we let it go in the water. As faith is necessary to self-improvement, trust is necessary to education or restoration of another: as necessary with the slave, the savage, the maniac, the criminal, and the peasant—as necessary, and equally with all necessary—as with the child.

Is not this our American doctrine in its only consistent extension? We govern in trust only for another, and a part of our trust is the restoration of the right-ful owner by helping him towards that sound and well-informed mind and intelligent judgment that makes him truly free and independent.

This is the only government that we of the free United States of America, whether as fathers or children, statesmen or jurymen, representatives or rabble, either claim or acknowledge. And it is of this that all true Americans believe, “that is the best government that governs the least.” Using government in its properly restricted sense, as the authority and forcible direction of one over another, we hold this to be as self-evident as that the life of free love is better than the life of constrained legality, that the sentiment of mutual trust is nobler than that of suspicion or of fear, that the new dispensation of Christ is higher than the old one of Moses. What else there is than this care over the weak and diseased in the public administration of our affairs, is no more than associated labour—the employment of certain common servants for the care of the commonwealth.

Education, then, with certain systematic exercise or discipline of the governed, having reference to and connected with a gradual elevation to equal freedom with the governing, we hold to be a very necessary part of all rightful government. Where it is not, we say this is no true and rightful government, but a despotism and a sin.

But we shall be at once asked: Is your fugitive law designed for such purposes? Do your slaveholders govern the simple-minded Africans whom they keep in restraint on these principles?

So far as they do not, their claim is “heretical and blasphemous.”

Let us never hesitate to acknowledge it—any where and every where to acknowledge it—and before all people mourn over it. Let us, who need not to bear the heavy burden and live in the dark cloud of this responsibility, never, either in brotherly love, national vanity, or subjection to insolence, fear to declare, that, in the misdirection of power by our slaveholders, they are false to the basis of our Union and blasphemous to the Father who, equally and with equal freedom, created all men. Would that they might see, too, that while they continue to manifest before the world, in their legislation upon it, no other than mean, sordid, short-sighted, and barbarian purposes, they must complain, threaten, expostulate, and compromise in vain. If we drive back the truth of God, we must expect ever-recurring, irrestrainable, irresistible reaction. The law of God in our hearts binds us in fidelity to the principles of the Constitution. They are not to be found in “Abolitionism,” nor are they to be found—oh! remember it, brothers, and forgive these few words—in hopeless, dawnless, unredeeming slavery.

And so we hold that party in England, which regard their labouring class as a permanent providential institution, not to be improved in every way, educated, fitted to take an equal share with all Englishmen in the government of the commonwealth of England, to be blasphemers, tyrants, and insolent rebels to humanity. (Many of them as good-souled men as the world contains, nevertheless.)

I have before said, and I repeat it with confidence, that I believe this party to be the weaker one in England. I must believe that the love of justice, freedom, and consistency, is stronger with Englishmen than the bonds of custom, self-conceit, and blind idolatry of human arrangement, under however sacred names it has come to them.

But our British friends will ask: Would it be practicable to give these poor toiling semi-brutes any—the smallest—exercise of that governmental power, which, so far as they be not wholly brutes, is their right? Yes, we American farmers would judge, yes: there are offices to be performed for the commonwealth of each parish or neighbourhood, of the requirements of which they are, or soon would make themselves, fit judges. If there are not, then make such offices. Who is a kind, firm, and closely scrutinizing master; who is a judicious and successful farmer; who is an honest dealer with them; who is a skilful ploughman, a good thatcher, a good hedge-trimmer, in the mile or two about them, they always have formed a judgment.

With regard to the habits of drinking and the customary diet of those by whose labour England is mainly supplied with food, I fear my statements may be incredible to Americans; I therefore quote from authority that should be better informed.

A correspondent of the Agricultural Gazette mentions, that in Herefordshire and Worcestershire the allowance of cider given to labourers, in addition to wages, is “one to ten gallons a-day.” He observes that, of course, men cannot work without some drink, but that they often drink more than is probably of any advantage to them, and suggests that an allowance of money be given instead of cider, and the labourers be made to buy their drink. In this way, he thinks, they would not be likely to drink more than they needed, and it would be an economical operation for both parties. In Normandy, the cider district of France, three gallons a-day is the usual allowance of labourers.

It would be unjust not to add, that in a large part of England the labourers are much more comfortable than these statements might indicate. I am also convinced that the condition of the labourer generally is improving, and that he is now in a much less famishing condition than ten years ago. The main stay of the labourer’s stomach is fine, white wheaten bread, of the best possible quality, such as it would be a luxury to get any where else in the world, and such as many a New England farmer never tasted, and, even if his wife were able to make it, would think an extravagance to be ordinarily upon his table. No doubt a coarser bread would be more wholesome, but it is one of the strongest prejudices of the English peasant, that brown bread is not fit for human beings. In Scotland and Ireland, and in some hilly districts of England, only, wheat bread is displaced by more wholesome and economical preparations from oatmeal.

With regard to fresh meat, a farmer once said to me, “They will hardly taste it all their lives, except, it may be, once a-year, at a fair, when they’ll go to the cook-shops and stuff themselves with all they’ll hold of it; and if you could see them, you’d say they did not know what it was or what was to be done with it—cutting it into great mouthfuls and gobbling it down without any chewing, like as a fowl does barleycorns, till it chokes him.”

CHAPTER XIII.

TINTERN ABBEY AND THE WYE.—ENGLISH SCREW-STEAMERS.—TIDE DELUGE.—ST. VINCENT’S ROCKS.—BRISTOL-BUILT VESSELS.—THE VALE OF GLOUCESTER.—WHITFIELD “EXAMPLE FARM.”—HEDGE-ROW TIMBER.—DRAINAGE.—BUILDINGS.—STOCK.—SOILING.—MANURE.—WHEAT.—BEETS AND TURNIPS.—DISGRACEFUL AGRICULTURE.—THE LANDED GENTRY.—WAGES OF LABOURERS.

Chepstow.

We have had a fierce storm of wind and rain to-day, notwithstanding which we have done (I am sorry to use the word) Tintern Abbey and the celebrated scenery of the Wye.

The first every body has heard of, and many have dined off it; for it is the subject of a common crockery picture. It is “a grand exhibition of Gothic ruins, admittance twenty-five cents; children, half-price.” It is indeed exceedingly beautiful and interesting, and would be most delightful to visit, if one could stumble into it alone and contemplate it in silence; but to have a vulgar, sycophantic, parrot-chattering showman locking himself in with you, fastening himself to your elbow, holding an umbrella over you, and insisting upon exactly when, where, what, and how much you shall admire, there was more poetry on the dinner-plate.

The scenery of the Wye has, at some points, much grandeur. They say there is nothing else like it in England. There is a great deal, with the same character, however, in America; and as we were familiar with scenes of even much greater sublimity, we found that we had been led to expect too much, and were rather disappointed with it.

We took passage from Chepstow to Bristol in a small iron screw-steamer. She was sharp and neatly modelled, and made very good speed—about fifteen knots. The captain said he could show his stern to any side-wheel steamer of her size in England. Near the junction of the Wye and the Severn there is a good breadth of water, and we found here a heavy swell and a reefing breeze. The little boat, with a small gaff-sail forward, “just to steady her,” threw it off one side and the other, and made her way along very handsomely and comfortably. It is my impression, that the English have got a good deal ahead of us with screw-craft.

The tide-current in these rivers is a furious deluge. The rise and fall at Chepstow is FIFTY-THREE FEET! (Daniels’ Shipmaster’s Directory.) At Bristol, I think it is even greater than this. The striking effects upon the banks, and the difficulty of navigation, may be imagined. Hence it is that Bristol ships have always been noted for strength, and so arose the term “Bristol-built,” to describe any structure well put together.

St. Vincent’s rocks, of which I had often heard sailors speak—immense banks of solid rock, that, for some miles below Bristol, the narrow, canal-like river flows between—are indeed amazingly grand. It was most impressive and belittling to one’s earthy self to meet between them a merchant ship of the largest class—the tiny boy that we looked upright to see upon her royal yard not high enough by some hundred feet to look over them. And yet so perpendicular are they, and so narrow is the stream, that they are preparing to throw an arch over between them.

Passing with too little delay through the interesting towns of Clifton and Bristol, I parted with my friends, and went on the same day into the agricultural district known as the Vale of Gloucester.

The general aspect of this district is exceedingly beautiful; undulating, like Herefordshire, with more commonly extensive flat surfaces, very large hedges, and much timber; very thickly peopled, the cottages and farm buildings old and picturesque, and the fields well stocked with cattle.

The agriculture of the district is similar to that of Cheshire, except that it is in general much behind it, neither draining nor boneing having been common improvements. The people I fell in with were usually lacking equally in courtesy and intelligence, and I learned nothing of value agriculturally, until I reached, at near nightfall, a farm conducted agreeably to the wishes of one of the landlords of the Vale, especially with the intention of giving his tenants an example of a better system of farming than they were accustomed to be content with.

For this purpose, an ordinary farm of 260 acres, in the midst of the estate, was, about ten years ago, put into the hands of an excellent Scotch agriculturist, Mr. Morton. His first movement was to remove the superfluous fences and the enormous quantity of hedge-row timber that the farm, like all others in the district, was encumbered with. It gives us a great idea of the amount of this, as well of the value of timber in England, to learn that what was thus obtained merely from the fences of 260 acres was sold for over $17,000! There is now very little, if any, interior fencing upon the farm. The surface-water was drawn into one channel, and the whole farm under-drained with three-feet drains. Upon the steeper slopes the drains were laid with small stones, otherwise with tile. This was the only case in which I heard of stones being used by any good farmer of late years in England for drains. Even where stone is in the way upon the surface, it is found more economical to employ tile or pipes. After thorough drainage, every acre of the farm was subsoiled, and gradually the whole was limed, at the rate of one hundred and twenty bushels an acre, and divided into ten-acre lots, without fences.

Not the least unpractical labour or expense for show has been made. The walls, gates, farm-house, stables, and outbuildings, are all of simple, and even rude construction. As far as I could judge, every arrangement and every practice upon the farm was such as would commend itself to any farmer, and might be easily followed by any one who could command the capital which a similar extent of soil would seem to need for its profitable cultivation. Almost every inch of the surface outside the buildings and the lane is tilled, there being no pasture. In the stables we found a stock of mongrel cows, mostly of Hereford and Short-horn blood, bought to be fattened. No stock is raised. Each cow was in a separate loose box. They are fed at this season with clover and trefoil, and supplied with a great profusion of straw litter. The manure is allowed to accumulate under them until it becomes inconvenient. The cows appeared to be in healthy and thriving condition; they were generally lying down and quietly ruminating with an aspect of entire satisfaction. The horse-stalls were of the form and size most common in our cities; the horses rather lighter than the ordinary English draught-horses. A steam-engine is employed for threshing, cutting turnips, &c. All the crops but wheat, I believe, are fed upon the farm, and all the straw is used as litter; of course an immense stock of manure is manufactured, and little or none needs to be bought to sustain a high fertility and large crops of every kind.

Under this system, Mr. Morton is able to grow wheat every second year; so that one-half the farm was covered with magnificent crops of this grain, likely to yield full forty bushels an acre, which would be worth at least $6000. The wheat is all drilled, and looked to me particularly clean and even. The alternate crops are carrots, mangel-wurzel, ruta-baga, potatoes, and clover. Of the latter, forty acres; of the roots, mangel-wurzel occupied the largest space. Mr. Morton told me that he had, of late, much preferred it to turnips; thought he could get thirty tons from an acre that would only yield twenty of ruta-baga, with similar expense. A few acres were devoted to vegetables and fruit for the family, and to the raising of seeds for the root-crops. I do not recollect to have seen a weed on the farm, except among the potatoes, which were being hoed by labourers, with very large hoes made for the purpose.

Of course the expense of such improvement as I have described was very great; but the proprietor considers it to have been a good investment. It is now leased by Mr. Morton and his son.

It is called the “Example Farm;” how appropriately, may be judged by the following description of an ordinary farm of the neighbourhood, by the “Times’ Commissioner:”

I have shown how much good a wealthy landlord may find it his profit to do in the way of improving agriculture. Mr. Caird intimates that for such a state of things as is exhibited in the last picture, we are also to hold the landlord accountable. Mr. Caird likewise says, “On all hands the farmer suffers: he pays rent for space occupied by his landlord’s trees; he provides harbour for his landlord’s game, which, in return, feed upon his crops; (it is for this reason many landlords will not allow the fences to be touched;) if he attempts to plough out inferior pasture, his crop becomes an additional feeding-ground for the game; whilst the small fields and crooked fences prevent all efforts at economy of labour, and compel him either to restrict his cultivation, or execute it negligently and unprofitably.”

God keep us evermore free from a “powerful conservative landed gentry,” a curse not unmixed with good though it be.

Wages of labourers were mentioned to me at 8s. Caird says 7s. and 8s., and sometimes 6s.; but it was added, significantly, that 6s. worth of work is only given in such a case.

I spent the night with the Messrs. Morton, and returned by rail to Bristol the following morning.

CHAPTER XIV.

BATH.—WARMINSTER.—SURLY POSTMASTER.—A DOUBTFUL CHARACTER.—POLITE INNKEEPER AND PRETTY CHAMBERMAID.—THE TAP-ROOM FIRESIDE.—RUSTIC CIVILITY.—RAINY MORNING IN A COUNTRY INN.—COMING TO MARKET.—THE ROAD IN A STORM.—SCUDDING.

It was raining hard when I again reached Bristol, and I at once jumped on board a train ready to leave for Bath. Here I found that my friends had walked on, and after looking at the “pump-room” and a grimy old cathedral, and getting a dinner, I determined to follow them. There was no public conveyance that evening, and I started on foot, thinking to overtake them at Warminster.

At the top of a high hill I stopped under a tree during a temporary torrent of rain, and looked back at what I could not help thinking would be a grand view if there were but a gleam of sunshine upon it; but perhaps it was grander by help of the imagination in the obscurity of the rain and drifting scud and murky cloud of smoke that was swept fragrant towards me from the city. Bath is situated among and up the sides of extensive hills, and the country about it is much of it well wooded and studded with numerous villas. The town is remarkably well built, with numerous stately terrace-houses, of the same fine, soft-tinted sandstone (Bathstone) that I described at Liverpool. It is a famous old watering-place, you know; “a mort of merry-making” there has been in it in days past, but now, though by no means a decayed town, I believe its glory in this respect has departed. I should judge it still to be a place of great wealth and elegance, but less distinguished for gayety and folly than formerly. All I can say of the inhabitants really, from personal observation, is, that they “know enough to stay in when it rains,” for I hardly saw one in the streets, except the men who were waiting by the little covered “chairs,” such as Mrs. Skewton is represented by Cruikshanks to be wheeled about in by her miserable, lanky page. I saw hundreds of these, ranged in the streets as hackney-coaches are in our towns, but no carriage of any kind, public or private; perhaps the association of Bath coachmen had “met to a cold swarry.”

After a walk of two miles into the country, I found I had been misdirected, and had a good deal of difficulty in finding the right road. I once asked the way of two labourers, and their replies were in such language, and they were so stupid, that I could not get the least idea of what they meant. My guess was, that they either could not understand what I wanted, or that they did not know themselves whether or not it was the Warminster road that they were at work upon. It was after four o’clock when I at length got upon the straight road, with seventeen miles before me—a hilly road, with a thin, slimy chalk-mud under foot. I stopped once again during another tremendous torrent, taking the opportunity to bait at a neat little inn, and reached Warminster, after a hard pull, at nine o’clock. The first building in the town, as you come from Bath, is a fine old church, going round the yard of which you enter abruptly upon a close-built street of old thatched two-story houses—so different from the gradually thickening and improving houses, as you approach the cluster of churches and centre of a New England village.

The postmaster had no letters for me, and seemed to be very angry that I should have expected him to have. I looked from one inn to another, not finding my friends, and finally, muddy, wet, and tired enough, stopped at what seemed the last in the street, a house of humble appearance.

I desired to be showed to my room. Master, mistress, maid, and Boots, immediately surrounded and eyed me closely, and I could not but remember that I might, probably, bear a suspicious appearance to them. As I take off my cape, maid—a nice, kind-looking, black-eyed little girl—catches it up, and runs off to hang it by the kitchen fire (an absurd operation, as it is made of oiled silk)—she is back in a moment with a light, and, lifting my knapsack, shows me up to a pleasant room, with a deep, dark-curtained bed—slides out, and again is back in a moment with slippers, and asks to take my shoes to be dried, and what would I wish for supper? I decline supper, and intend to go to bed at once. Down she goes, and, after a moment more, in pops the landlord—“Was you understood aright, sir?—no supper, sir!—not coming down, sir!—going to bed, sir!—directly, sir, without supper, sir!” and while saying this, he bustles about the room, and locks the closet doors, puts the keys in his pocket, and then turns towards me with a suspicious look at my knapsack. “Yes,” I answer, quietly; and, drawing out shirt, socks, and tooth-brush, “I find myself much heated, and wet with perspiration and the rain; I took supper upon the road, and I thought I had best get my clothes off, and at once to bed.” “Ah! I see, sir; quite right, sir; ah! yes, sir; dry socks too, sir; yes, sir; indeed, sir, I was not aware; beg pardon, sir: but indeed, would you step down stairs a moment, sir—fine fire in the tap, sir—dry yourself, if you would please, for a moment, I would have the room put in better order for you, sir; indeed, the bed is hardly—if you would, sir—thank you, sir.”

In the tap-room were three fellows with smock frocks. As I approached, one called to another, who was nearer the fire, to give me his seat, and offered me, with truly rustic grace and politeness, his half-emptied pot of beer. I have a strong stomach, and dislike to repulse what is meant for kindness; so I tasted it, and tried to enter into conversation with them. I soon found it was impossible; for I could make nothing of two-thirds of their replies, and I doubted if they could understand me much better. So I contented myself with listening, while they continued to talk or mumble with each other. The subjects of their conversation were beer and “the girls:” of the latter topic they said nothing to be repeated; of the former, they wished the farmers never gave worse drink than that they were now enjoying—“it was most good for nothing, some of it, what they gave out.” And one told how he had had to drink so much of it once, it had made him clear sick; and then another told how, on the other hand, he had made himself sick one day, when somebody wouldn’t give him as much beer as he wanted, by taking a draught of cold water.

When the little maid came in to say that my bed was now “quite ready,” and I rose to withdraw from the circle, they all gave a singular jerk forward of their heads and touched their foreheads with their right hand, as a parting salutation.

“Would you let me take something else down to be dried now, sir, your coat, sir, or any thing—the socks, sir; thank you, sir. Hope you’ll sleep well, sir.”

I didn’t do any thing else till, when I stopped, I found it nine o’clock the next morning. There was a steady roar upon the tiles—the rain still continued—I drew the window-curtain, and there was Geoffrey Crayon’s picture almost to the life: a sleepy old gray mare “letting it rain;” a draggle-tailed cock on a smoking dunghill eyeing with the air of a miserable sick saint the riotous orgies of a company of mad ducks deep in their favourite liquor; half-a-dozen doves huddled moping together on the thatch of the stable—a sombre tone over every thing, and rain, rain, rain.

“Hope you rested well, sir,” said the landlord as I reached the foot of the crooked stairs; “a dirty day, sir. Have your shoes, sir? What’ll you please to have for breakfast, sir? Steak, sir! O yes, sir—or chop, sir; give you very nice chop, sir; yes, sir, thank you, sir. Walk in here, sir? Ready shortly, sir.”

To get to the breakfast I was led through the kitchen, a large room with saddles and box-coats and whips and straps hung up with the bacon on the ceiling and walls. The breakfast-room (dining-room) was also much larger than any room you would have supposed from the front of the house it was likely to contain. Its plan was octagonal, with a single great red-curtained bow-window, and stately, high-backed chairs, suggesting a corporation banquet.

It is a rainy day in a country inn, dull enough; nothing to do but write, and for writing I am not inclined. I determine to take the road again and overtake J. and C., who will perhaps be waiting for me somewhere on the way to Salisbury.

“Going on, sir—yes, sir.” All my things are brought, dry and warm, and nicely folded; and now I have curiosity to know what value is placed upon so much suavity and care for my comfort. The landlord meets my request with deprecating gesture and grimace, as if it was a pity that the custom of society made such a form necessary between a host and his guest—as if he were about to say—“I am grieved that you should mention it; really it is I that am indebted to you for this honour—but if you insist, why”—ending the aside, but still low, hurried, and indistinct—“sixpence for bed and a shilling for breakfast, and—(shall I say thre’pence?) for Boots, sir.” “Yes, and the rest of this to that excellent little chambermaid, if you please.” “Oh, my little girl, sir; oh, thank ye, sir, you are very good, sir—yes, sir, you can’t miss it, sir, straight road after you pass the gate, sir. Good-morning, sir; should be glad to see you if you are this way again, sir, or any of your friends. Good-morning, sir. Hope you’ll have a fine day yet, sir! It’s slacking up e’en now, I think. Indeed it is, sir! Ah, you’ll have a fine day for a walk, sir. Good-morning, sir.”

If it slackens at all, it is only for a moment, and then the rain is poured down again densely and with renewed vehemence; and the wind, coming from behind, fairly twists one about, and hurries one along in its strong, fitful gusts. It is market-day in Warminster, and, as I go out, every body else and every thing else seems to be coming in. Men, women, and children, in all sorts of English vehicles—spring-carts, taxed-carts, great broad-wheeled carts, or long wagons, with bodies of a curious curved form flaring out over the wheels, canvas tops, stretched over all, upon hoops; sometimes two horses abreast, drawing them in a double set of shafts; oftener two or three, and frequently four, five, or six, all in a line, (tandem,) great, intelligent beasts, keeping well to the left, where none will interfere with them, and they can legally harm no one. (“Keep the left,” is the rule of the road in England; not the right, as with us.) They are driven without reins; and more than once this morning I saw the driver, well dosed with beer, I suppose, and fatigued with night-work, fast asleep on the top of his load. Once I saw a gentleman, who had nearly run against one of these sleeping fellows, strike him smartly with his whip as he passed—“You had best wake up, sir; who’s your master?” “Mr. ——, of ——, sir,” answered the man, rubbing himself. “Very well, I shall let him know what sort of a carter he has.” A Yankee driver, so waked up, would have replied to the whip first.

Gentlemen come up at a spanking pace, with tall, lithe, worried-looking horses, in dog-carts, or in the saddle, screwing their heads as deep as they can into their drab coats, bending low, and their hats pulled down tight upon their brows, never hardly with an umbrella, but with a groom with gold hat-band by their side sometimes. They look scowlingly, as they approach, at me; with my hat-brim turned up before and down behind to shed the water from my face, my water-proof cape tightly fastened at my waist behind, and swelling and fluttering before, my arms folded under it, I return their inquiring stare complacently; and some, as they come up, draw their lips resolutely tighter, and give me about quarter of a nod, as if they understood and approved my arrangement.

Men on foot, and women, too, with clogs and pattens and old green and blue umbrellas, and bundles and bags and baskets and hampers, and cages and parcels in handkerchiefs; old and young, lasses and lads, generally three or four couples together, coming to town for a holiday, loudly laughing and coarsely joking; bound to enjoy themselves spite of the shameful indelicacy of the wind, and the chill drenching of the rain, and the most misplaced attachment to their finery of the spattering mud.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SOUTH DOWNS.—WILTSHIRE LANDSCAPE.—CHALK AND FLINT.—IRRIGATION.—THE COST AND PROFIT OF WATER-MEADOWS.—SEWERAGE WATER.—IRRIGATION IN OLD TIMES.

Soon after leaving Warminster, began a very different style of landscape from what I have before seen: long ranges and large groups of high hills with gentle and gracefully undulating slopes; broad and deep dells between and within them, through which flow in tortuous channels streamlets of exceedingly pure, sparkling water. These hills are bare of trees, except rarely a close body of them, covering a space of perhaps an acre, and evidently planted by man. Within the shelter of these you will sometimes see that there is a large farm-house with a small range of stables. The valleys are cultivated, but the hills in greater part are covered, without the slightest variety, except what arises from the changing contour of the ground, with short, wiry grass, standing thinly, but sufficiently close to give the appearance, at a little distance from the eye, of a smooth, velvetty, green surface. Among the first of the hills I observed, at a high elevation, long angular ramparts and earth-works, all greened over. Within them and at the summit of the hill were several extensive tumuli, evidently artificial, (though I find nothing about it in the books,) and on the top of one of these was a shepherd and dog and a large flock of sheep, clear and coldly distinct, and appearing of gigantic size against the leaden clouds behind. In the course of the day I met with many of these flocks, and nearly all the hill-land seemed given up to them. I was upon the border, in fact, of the great South-down district, and, during the next week, the greater part of the country through which we were travelling, was of the same general character of landscape, though frequently not as green, varied, and pleasing, as in these outskirts of it.

Geologically, it is a chalk district, the whole earth, high and low, and to any depth that I saw it exposed, being more or less of a white colour, generally gray, but sometimes white as snow. The only mineral is flint, which occurs in small boulders or pebbles, cased in a hardened crust of carbonate of lime mingled irregularly with the chalk, more thickly on the hill-tops, and often gathered in beds. The road is made of these flint pebbles, broken fine, and their chalk-crust, powdered by the attrition of wheels, is worked up into a slippery paste during such heavy rains as I was experiencing, and makes the walking peculiarly fatiguing. The soil upon the hills is very dry and thin. In the valleys it is deeper and richer, being composed, in a considerable part, of the wash of the higher country, and the wheat and forage crops were often very luxuriant. Advantage is sometimes taken of the streams to form water-meadows, and the effect of irrigation can often be seen at a considerable distance in the deeper green and greater density of the grass upon them. These meadows are of great agricultural value, and I will give an account of the method of construction and management of them.

An artificial channel is made, into which the water of a brook may be turned at will. This is carried along for as great a distance as practicable, so as to skirt the upper sides of fields of a convenient surface for irrigation. At suitable intervals there are gates and smaller channels, and eventually a great number of minor ducts, through which the water is distributed. The fields are divided by low walls, so that the water can be retained upon them as long as is desired, and then drawn off to a lower level. Commonly, a series of meadows, held by different farmers, are flooded from one source, and old custom or agreement fixes the date of commencing the irrigation and the period of time at which the water shall be moved from one to another.

The main flooding is usually given in October, after the grass has been closely eaten off by neat stock. It is then allowed to remain resting or quietly flowing over the land for two or three weeks; or for two weeks, and, after an interval of a day or two, for two weeks more. This consolidates the grassy surface, and encourages the growth and new formation of roots. The grass springs and grows luxuriantly after this, and, as soon as it is observed to flag, the water is let in again for two or three weeks; it may be twice during the winter. Whenever a scum is observed to form, indicating that decomposition is commencing below, the water is immediately drawn. In warm weather this will occur very soon, perhaps in a day or two. I believe the water is also never allowed, if possible, to freeze upon the meadows. In the spring, by the middle of March, sometimes sheep and lambs are turned on to the grass. After being fed pretty closely, they are removed, and the meadows left for a crop of hay. They are ready for mowing in less than two months, and are then, after a short interval, pastured again with horned cattle and horses. Some meadows are never pastured, and yield three heavy crops of hay. Mr. Pusey (a member of Parliament) declares, that he keeps sheep upon his water-meadows, in Berkshire, at the rate of thirty-six an acre, well fed, and intimates his belief that the produce of grass-land is doubled by irrigation. Grass and hay, however, from irrigated meadows, are of slightly less nourishing quality. It is generally said, that a single winter’s flooding will increase the growth of grass equal to a top-dressing of thirty (thirty bushel) loads of dung.

We may judge somewhat from these facts and opinions of practical men, whether, in any given circumstances, we can afford to construct the dam, channels, gates, sluices, &c., by which we may use this method of fertilizing our meadows. There are millions of acres in the United States that could be most readily made subject to the system. The outlay for permanent works might often be very inconsiderable, and the labour of making use of them, after construction, would be almost nothing. The cost of conveying manure, and its distribution by carts and manual labour, is a very important item in the expenditure of most of our eastern farms; and, though this is felt much less here, where labour is so much cheaper, we may obtain many economical hints with regard to it from British practice. Fields distant from the farmstead, and hill-lands not easily accessible, should nearly always be enriched by bone, guano, and other concentrated manures; of which a man may carry more on his back than will be of equal value with many cart-loads of dung, or by some other means which will dispense with long and heavy transportation. I have obtained increased crops, with a saving of some hundred dollars a-year of expenditure, in this way.

Different streams vary in their value for irrigation. The muddiest streams are the best, as they generally carry suspended a great deal of the fertile matter of the land through which they have flowed; often, too, road-washings, and other valuable drainings, have been taken along with them, and these are caused to be deposited upon the meadow. A perfectly transparent fluid will often, however, have most valuable salts in solution; and I noticed that most of the Wiltshire streams were peculiarly clear, reminding me of the White Mountain trout-brooks. It is said that streams abounding in fish, and which have abundance of aquatic plants and luxuriant vegetation upon their borders, are to be relied upon as the most enriching in their deposit. Streams, into which the sewerage of large towns is emptied, are often of the greatest value for agricultural purposes. A stream thus enriched is turned to the most important account near Edinburgh: certain lands, which were formerly barren wastes, being merely the clean, dry sands thrown up by the sea in former times, having been arranged so that they may be flowed by this stream. The expense of the operation was great—about one hundred dollars an acre—and the annual cost of flooding is very much greater than usual—four or five dollars an acre; but the crops of hay are so frequent and enormous, (ten cuttings being made in a season,) that some parts of the meadow rent for one hundred dollars a-year for one acre, and none for less than seventy-five dollars!

It is estimated by the distinguished agriculturist, Smith of Deanston, that the sewerage-water of a town may be contracted for, to be delivered, (sent by subterranean pipes and branches, so that it may be distributed over any required surface,) eleven miles out of town, for four cents a-ton. Mr. Hawksley, a prudent engineer, offers to convey it five miles, and raise it two hundred feet, for five cents a-ton; the expense of carting it to the same distance and elevation being estimated at about $1. Another estimate makes the expense of conveying and distributing manure, in the solid form, as compared with liquid, at fifteen dollars to seventy-five cents, for equal fertilizing values. Professor Johnston estimates the fertilizing value, per annum, of the sewerage of a town of one thousand inhabitants, as equal to a quantity of guano which, at present American prices, would be worth $13,000. Smith of Deanston estimates the cost of manuring an acre by sewerage, conveyed in aqueducts and distributed by jet-pipes, at three dollars an acre, and that of fertilizing it to an equal degree, in the usual way, by farm-yard manure, at fifteen dollars. Considering that the expense of conveyance and distribution of solid manure is much greater in America than in England, these figures will not be thought to be without personal interest to us.

The use of manure-drainings and the urine of the cattle of a farm, very much diluted with spring water, has been found to have such astonishing immediate effects, when distributed over young herbage, that several English agricultural pioneers are making extensive and costly permanent arrangements for its distribution, from their stables, over large surfaces. It is first collected in tanks, where it is retained until putrefied, and mixed with the water of irrigation. This is then driven by forcing-pumps into the pipes which convey it, so that it can be distributed (in one case, over one hundred and seventy acres.) The pipes are hard-burnt clay tubes, an inch thick, joined with cement, costing here about twelve and a-half cents a-yard. The pipe is laid under ground, and at convenient intervals there are heads coming to the surface with stop-cocks, where a hose can be attached and the water further guided in any direction. For greater distances, a cart like those used for sprinkling the dusty streets of our cities is used. It is conjectured by some that, eventually, all manure will be furnished to land in a state of solution.

I believe irrigation is only used for the benefit of grass-lands in England; but it probably might be found of great advantage to some other valuable crops. I have seen large fields of roots, apparently of the character of turnips, irrigated in China, and it is well known that rice is every where flooded in tropical countries. I suspect that irrigation, and even that expensive form of it that I have last described, might be profitably used, for certain plants, by our market-gardeners; I judge so of celery and asparagus; and it is well known that enormous strawberries, and unusually large and long-continuing crops of them, have resulted from an inefficient and unsystematic kind of irrigation. A small experiment that I made with Indian corn resulted in a great growth of stalk and in small and unhealthy malformed grain.

Irrigation is of the least advantage upon heavy clay soils, and of the greatest upon light sandy loams with gravelly subsoils. It is very desirable that the construction of the soil should be such that the water may gradually and somewhat rapidly filter through it; and it is considered of great importance, when the water is drawn off, after the flooding, (drowning is the local term,) that it should be very completely removed, leaving no small pools upon the surface. Stagnating water, either above or below the surface, is very poisonous to most plants.

I may remind those who have a prejudice against new practices in agriculture, that irrigation was practised as long ago as the days of the patriarchs. In this part of England it has been in use since about the beginning of the seventeenth century, at which time an agreeably-written book on the subject was published by one Rowland Vaughan, Esq. The account of the way that he was first led to make systematic trial of irrigation, and the manner in which he proceeded, is amusing and instructive:—

The author then makes a considerable digression, to account for a delay in his proceedings, which was occasioned by processes issued against him from the courts of Star Chamber, Chancery, and Wardes, to compel him to deliver his niece and ward into their custody.

Mr. Vaughan next gives the following directions for carrying this plan into effect:—

CHAPTER XVI.

FLOCKS, DOGS, AND SHEPHERDS OF SALISBURY PLAIN.—VILLAGE ALMSHOUSES.—OSTENTATION IN ALMS-GIVING.—A FORCED MARCH.—AT HOME IN SALISBURY.—THE STREET BROOKS.—THE CATHEDRAL.—ARCHITECTURAL REMARKS AND ADVICE.—VILLAGE CHURCHES.

The chalk-hills, or downs, (known also in local parlance as beak-land,) are unenclosed or divided, and rarely separated from the cultivated land by more than a low turf-wall, and often not at all. Once, in the course of the morning, I came near a flock of about two hundred sheep, feeding close to the road, and stopped a few moments to look at them. They were thorough-bred South-downs; the shepherd sat at a little distance, upon a knoll, and the dog was nearer the flock. Growing close up to the edge of the road, opposite the sheep, was a heavy piece of wheat; one of them strayed over to it. The dog cocked his ears and turned quickly several times towards his master, as if knowing there was business for him, and waiting for orders. But the shepherd was looking another way, and others of the flock, lifting their heads as I approached them, and seeing their comrade on the other side of the road, began to rush after him, as is the manner of sheep; and directly there were a dozen eagerly nipping the wheat, and more following: the dog, sitting up very erect, and on the qui vive, still waited for orders, till the shepherd, turning quickly, gave the signal in a monosyllable. Right over the heads of the flock, bounding from head to head, sprang the dog, yelping sharply as he reached the road; the truants returned, and the whole flock broke at once into a hard run,—dog dashing first one side, then the other—closing them rapidly up, and keeping them in a dense mass, until, at another shout from the shepherd, who had not risen, all at once halted, and, turning heads out, went to feeding, soon closing around the dog, leaving only a space of a few feet vacant about him. The dogs used by most of the shepherds seem to be mongrels, generally low in the legs, with great heads, short necks, and rather shaggy. One that was said to be very sagacious and well-trained, and for which I was asked thirty dollars, appeared as if a cross of a spaniel with a terrier. Generally, the dogs were valued at only from two to five dollars.

ALMSHOUSES.

It cleared about noon, and after the rain ceased the air was calm, hot, and steamy. I recollect but one village, two rows of ugly, glaring, red brick houses, relieved by a church rectory and two other buildings, cool and pleasing, under shade of ivy; and a large, old establishment, with cupola and clock, and a square, green, shady court in front of it—devoted, as appeared by an inscription on its front, by somebody’s bequest, two hundred years ago, to the maintenance, in comfort, of a certain number of aged widowers and bachelors of the parish. Such retreats for various denominations of the poor and unfortunate, called almshouses and hospitals, (vulgarly, “’spittals,”) are to be seen in almost every town in England. They are of all degrees of comfort—some stately and luxurious—others, and these quite common, mere cottages—hovels sometimes,—generally very old, and nearly always of ancient foundation. With more or less ostentation, the name of the founder is displayed on the front,—sometimes with his bust, statue, arms, or a ridiculous allegorical sculpture. This plan for sending a dying sinner’s name down to future generations, with the grateful embalmment of charity, seems latterly out of fashion. What improved type of character does it indicate, that the rich oftener prefer now to make their tribute to public opinion, by having their gift-money used while they yet live, and the amount of it paraded with their names in the newspapers. Their “left hands,” probably, do not read the newspapers.

I was disappointed in not finding my friends at this village, but soon after leaving it met two Germans travelling on foot, who said they had met, at three hours back, two gentlemen who wore hats and, knapsacks like mine. I feared that, not hearing from me at Salisbury, they would conclude I had gone on by Cirencester, to spend Sunday on the Isle of Wight, and would go by the five-o’clock train to overtake me. It was therefore necessary that I should hasten in to arrest them. I yet made two or three stoppages, once to converse with a shepherd, and once to sketch the outlines of a group of cottages, intending to take the coach, which I was told would be passing in a few minutes. But when coming up a hill, I rose the fine spire of the cathedral, and found that it was three miles distant, and the coach still not in sight, I strapped tight my knapsack and went the rest of the way at “double quick.” Teamsters stopped their wagons as I met them, children at the cottage-doors called their mothers to help look at me, and at the office of the “Wilts Game Law Reporter,” as I entered the town, taking the middle of the street, a fat old gentleman in top-boots eagerly took out his watch and timed me, evidently supposing it was some interesting affair on a wager. Finding the post-office, but not finding any note for me, I hastened on still to the station, which was well out of the town on the other side, and which I reached at the same moment with the delaying stage-coach. The train started a moment after. The policeman in attendance was certain that no persons such as I described had entered the station-house, and I returned to the town, and going first to the cathedral, there found J. and C. lying under the trees in delighted contemplation of its beauty.

THE TRAVELLERS’ HOME.

We spent Sunday at Salisbury. We were fortunate in finding a comfortable, quiet, old inn, in which we were the only lodgers. After once getting acquainted with the crooked, elaborate stairways and passages, and learning the relative position of our chambers and the common rooms, we were as much at home, as quiet, and as able to command whatever we had occasion for, as if we had leased the house, furnished, and manned it. The landlady was our housekeeper, the servants our domestics. We saw no one but them, (till night, when we happened to discover, in a remote subterranean corner, a warm, smoky, stone-cavern, in which a soldier, a stage-coachman, and others, were making merry with ladies, beer, and song,) and them we saw only as we chose to. We had a large, comfortable parlour, with dark-coloured furniture, of an age in which ease was not sacrificed to elegance; a dais and bow-window, old prints of Nelson’s victories and Garrick and Siddons in Shakspearian characters, a smouldering sea-coal fire, several country newspapers, and a second-hand last week’s Times. Preposterous orders were listened to without a smile, receipts for novel Yankee dishes distinctly understood in all their elaboration without impatience, and to the extent of the resources of the establishment faithfully executed. Only once was the mild business-manner of our hostess disturbed by an appearance of surprise; when we told her that we were Americans, she raised her eyes in blank incredulity, and asked, “You don’t mean you were born in America, sir?” The servants kept out of sight; our room was “put to rights,” our clothes arranged in a bureau, while we were at breakfast; and when we were seated, and had got fairly under way with an excellent home-like dinner, the girl who acted for waiter, seeming to understand our humour put a hand-bell on the table and withdrew, saying that we “would please to call her when we wanted any thing.”

Along the sides of many of the streets of Salisbury there flows, in little canals some six feet wide by two or three deep, with frequent bridges to the houses, a beautifully clear, rapid stream of water. Otherwise, the general appearance of the town is of meagre interest compared with others we have been in. But it has one crowning glory—the cathedral.

The cathedral, in many of its parts, and from certain positions, as a whole, is very beautiful; the clear, cutting, symmetrical spire, especially against an evening sky, is very fine. It is taller by several feet than any other in England, though overtopped by several of the Continental churches.

We have more pleasure in contemplating it, and enjoy more to wander around and through it, than any we have seen before. It is more satisfactory to us. This, I believe, is partly because of its greater size, partly because of its completeness, its unity: though six hundred years old, you would not readily perceive in approaching it that it was not entirely a new edifice; no repairs, no additions, especially no meddlesome restorations, which are almost always offensive to me. Its history is worthy of note with respect to this: it was only thirty-eight years in construction; except the spire, which was added rather later, and is more florid, which is to be regretted.

We admire and enjoy it, and yet not nearly so much as we should have expected to from an imagination of what such a great, expensive, and artistic pile would be. You will wonder why. I don’t know that I can tell you. It fails in massiveness and grandeur. From some quarters it appears a mere clutter of wall, windows, buttresses, and pinnacles, each of which may be fine enough in itself, but gaining nothing from their combination. There is nowhere a sufficient breadth and mass of wall, I suspect, to be grand. Once or twice only did it awaken any thing like a sense of sublimity, and then it did not appear to me to be due to any architectural intention.

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.

Once, late in the day, and alone, I was walking from the end of one transept towards the other, when an emotion came over me, partaking for a moment of awe. Afterwards in trying to analyze what had occasioned it, I found that my face was turned towards two great, dark windows, a considerable space of unbroken wall about them, and a square, massive buttress, all in the deep shade between the two transepts. From the simple, solitary grandeur and solemnity of the dark recess, there had come a sermon on humility and endurance to me, more eloquent than all else of the great cathedral.

The wall over and behind this, in an equal space, was broken up by three of the triple windows, which, look at the cathedral from any direction you will, you see every where repeated, until the form becomes tiresome and ugly. Not ugly in itself, but ugly, small, and paltry, by so much repetition in an edifice of such grandeur. If all these windows, with all their form, proportion, colour, and fashion of carving, had been the work of one man, they were evidently that man’s one idea; if of many men, then they were servile imitations. One would be, perhaps, a worthy and beautiful design—a hundred are paltry, ignominious, mechanical copies; they might be iron-castings, for all the value the chisel has given them. Why should there not be, with sufficient regard to symmetrical uniformity, evidence in the details of every part of an edifice of such magnitude?

There is nothing original in these ideas, but they came upon me freshly and forcibly in trying to see why it was I did not feel more respect for such a monument of architecture. I could not help thinking—It is very fine, but it is a failure. Yet the simple beauty of proportion and the breadth of light and shade, in that little unimportant space, I did feel truly and spontaneously.

From all the little, but not unloving, study that I was able to give the Old-World architecture, my advice to all building-committee gentlemen of no more cultivated taste than my own, (that to such these crude thoughts may give hints of value, is my apology for printing them,) would be, Stick to simplicity. The grand effect of architecture must be from form and proportion. Favour designs, therefore, which, in their grand outlines, are at once satisfactory; then beware of enfeebling their strong features by childish ornaments and baby-house appendages. Simplicity of form is especially necessary to any thing like dignity in an edifice of moderate size. There is a church in New York, a cathedral in cabinet size, that one could hardly look at without being reminded of a grand dinner confectionary. The smallest parish churches of the old Saxon architecture, with thick, rude, unchiselled walls, strong enough to have needed no buttresses, and therefore having none—a low square tower or belfry, with flat lead, roof, and a very few irregularly-placed, deep, round-arched windows and portals, I have found far more inspiring of the solemnity of humility which should accompany the formal worship of the Almighty, than most of the very large churches that have been built with the greater wealth and more finical taste of later generations.

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CHAPTER XVII.

SALISBURY PLAIN.—STRANGE DESERT CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY.—THE AGRICULTURE.—SAINFOIN AND LUCERNE.—LARGE FARMS.—EFFECT ON LABOURERS.—PARING AND BURNING.—WHEN EXPEDIENT.—EXPENSE.—SHEEP-FOLDING.—MOVEABLE RAILWAYS AND SHEDS.

June 17th.

“Standing across the downs: course E. by N., muggy weather and light airs,”—regularly at sea, without chart or compass. A strange, weary waste of elevated land, undulating like a prairie, sparsely greened over its gray surfaces with short grass, uninhabited and treeless; only, at some miles asunder, broken by charming vales of rich meadows and clusters of farm-houses and shepherds’ cottages, darkly bowered about with the concentrated foliage of the whole country.

For long intervals we were entirely out of sight of tree or house or man, or even sign of man, more than an indistinct cart-track or trail. Had you any idea there was such a desert in England?

The trails run crookedly, divide and cross frequently, and only rarely is there a rude guide-post. Twice or thrice we were as completely lost as Oregon emigrants might be in the wilderness, and walked for miles with only the dim, yellowish spot that stood for the sun in the misty firmament, to be guided by. Large flocks, with shepherds and dogs, we sometimes saw, and here and there a square clump of beech or fir trees, intended probably as an occasional retreat for the sheep. More rarely a great farm-house, with stacks and stables and great sheep-yards, always so sheltered about by steep slopes and trees, close planted upon some artificially-elevated soil, that we came by chance and unexpectedly in near proximity before we saw them. Occasionally, too, even on the downs, and entirely unenclosed, there is cultivated land and very large breadths of some single crop, much of good promise, too, but the wheat universally infested with charlock.

But the valleys are finely cultivated, and the crops, especially of sainfoin and lucerne, which is extensively grown here, very heavy.

Sainfoin and lucerne are both forage crops, somewhat of the character of clover. Sainfoin only succeeds well, I believe, on chalky soils or where there is much lime, and has not been found of value in the United States. Lucerne has been extensively cultivated in some parts, but not generally with us. I have heard of its doing well in a cold, bleak exposure upon our north-eastern coast, but it should have a warm, rich soil, deeply cultivated, and be started well clean of weeds, when it may be depended upon to yield three to five heavy cuttings of green fodder, equal in value to clover, or three to seven tons of hay, of the value of which I am not well informed.

The valley lands are sometimes miles wide, and cultivation is extended often far up the hills. The farms are all very large, often including a thousand acres of tillage land, and two, three, or four thousand of down. A farm of less than a thousand acres is spoken of as small, and it often appears that one farmer, renting all the land in the vicinity, gives employment to all the people of a village. Whether it is owing to this (to me) most repugnant state of things, or not, it is certainly just what I had expected to hear in connection with it, that labourers’ wages are lower than any where else in England—seven, and sometimes six, shillings ($1.68 and $1.44) being all that a man usually receives for a week’s work.

We saw seven ploughs at work together, and thirteen swarths of lucerne falling together before thirteen mowers, thirteen women following and shaking it out. It is not uncommon to have four or five hundred acres of wheat or two or three hundred of turnips growing on one farm. One down farmer has eight hundred in wheat annually. The prairie farmer would not despise such crops.

As there is no chalk soil in America, I will not dwell long upon its peculiarities or the system of agriculture adopted upon it. The manner in which the downs are brought into cultivation may, however, afford some hints of value for the improvement of other poor, thin soils. “The sheepfold and artificial manures are looked upon as the mainstay of the Wiltshire down farmer. When the downs are first broken up, the land is invariably pared and burnt, and then sown with wheat. Barley is usually taken after wheat, and this is followed by turnips eaten upon the ground, and succeeded by wheat. It then falls into the usual four or five-field course, a piece being laid out annually in sainfoin, to rest for several years before being broken up again. The sheepfold is shifted daily until the whole space required to be covered (i. e., manured) is gone over. Turnips and other green crops are consumed where they grow, which saves the labour of taking home the crop and fetching back the manure. The sheep are made the manure carriers for any portion of the land on which it is thought desirable to apply it. Much of the corn crop is stacked in the distant fields, as it would be almost impossible to carry it home so far, with the despatch necessary in harvest operations. In many cases it is thrashed where stacked, a travelling steam-thrashing machine being hired for the purpose. The straw is carried out and spread on the grass-lands from which clover hay had been cut the previous year. Only a small proportion of the root crop is carried home for consumption by cattle, the number of which, in these large farms, is quite inconsiderable.”⁠[15]

Sheep-folding, and paring and burning, are both processes nearly unknown in America, and which will probably be advantageously employed in some situations among us.

Paring and burning.—“All soils,” says Sir Humphrey Davy, “that contain too much dead vegetable fibre,” (such as the sour black soils of our reclaimed swamps,) “and all such as contain their earthy constituents in an impalpable state of division, such as stiff clays and marls, are improved by burning.” It is therefore a common practice in the stiff-clay districts as well as upon the downs of England. In Suffolk, for instance, it has been adapted with most successful results, the effect being to render the heavy clay soil light, friable, porous, and highly absorbent of gaseous matters. It increases the efficiency of drains, (by letting water more rapidly into them,) and, being more friable, the land works better and at less expense. It further promotes vegetation by converting into soluble matters available to plants, vegetable remains; which, in consequence of the usually wet, impervious nature of the soil, have become, as it were, indigestible, and therefore inert and useless. It is also advocated as being destructive of the roots and seeds of weeds; of insects, their larvæ and eggs; and, as is pretty clearly demonstrated, it enables land to bear the same crop in quicker succession, by its supposed effect upon the exudations left by former crops.⁠[16] In executing the process, the surface, generally to the depth of three inches, is ploughed or pared up (there are instruments made on purpose for it) and allowed to dry. It is then thoroughly harrowed and made fine; and in the downs the vegetable matter is raked out so far as practicable, and thrown into small heaps; a little earth is thrown over these and they are fired, the grass forming the fuel. The remainder of the earth which has been ploughed up is shovelled on as soon, and to as great a depth, as it can be without danger of extinguishing the fire.

In the clay districts and where there is much timber growing, brushwood is laid in rows, and the pared soil heaped over it, the sod being thrown as far as possible nearest the fuel, and the fine earth thrown over all to prevent too quick a fire.

The burnt soil is spread again over the field and ploughed in. The first crop following is usually turnips. The cost of the operation is reckoned, in Suffolk, (where it is called denturing,) to be only about four dollars an acre, of which one-third is for fuel. Supposing the expense of labour to be doubled and that of fuel halved for the United States, it may be expected to cost us six dollars an acre. The effect, probably, is never lost to the land; but in those parts of England where it is most practised, I believe it is usual to repeat the operation once in seven years, or at the beginning of every rotation. By feeding turnips upon the ground the autumn following the burning, it is sufficiently stocked with manure to require no further application during the course. Caird mentions crossing a field in which this had been repeated, burning every seven years, and no other application of manure than what arose from the consumption of its own produce on the ground being made, without any diminution of crops for fifty years.

On the downs, however, paring and burning is not usually resorted to, except at the first breaking up of the original soil, fertility being afterwards sustained by bones and guano, or by feeding off the crops of herbage at the end of every rotation by sheep; of which operation, common in all parts of Great Britain, I shall presently speak.

In land greatly infested with weeds, or grubs or wire-worm, in black, peaty soils, and in many stiff-clay soils, particularly where they are to be prepared for gardens or orchards, I have no doubt paring and burning often might be profitably performed in the United States. In thin, sandy soils it is likely to be injurious. If the soil has not a pretty thick old sward, it will be best to sow some grain crop upon it the year before burning, that the roots and stubble may afford fuel. Old pasture will be most readily burnt. In England, clay is sometimes charred in pits, and, after being mashed fine, applied broadcast or drilled with seeds, as a manure. It is sometimes found surprisingly effective, probably owing to its absorbent quality; but it is an expensive operation, and has not generally recommended itself.

Sheep-folding is the practice of enriching a portion of ground by confining sheep upon it. Thus, in Wiltshire, the flocks are pastured during the day upon the beak-land and kept at night upon the comparatively small portion of ground which it is desired to manure, and which thus receives the benefit of the fertilizing droppings which have been obtained from the pastured ground; or a portion of a field of sainfoin, or clover, or turnips, is enclosed by a moveable fence, (either iron or wooden hurdles or strong hempen nets fastened to stakes,) and the sheep confined to it until they have eaten the crop clean, (they will eat the turnip in the ground,) and left upon it a large amount of excrement; the fence is then moved on to a fresh spot, where the process is repeated, and so on day after day until the required space has been travelled over.

Sometimes naked ground or stubble-land is thus served; turnips or sainfoin being brought from where they grow and fed within the hurdles, which are daily moved on a bit. Latterly, moveable sheds with slatted floors, running upon plank railroads, which are easily taken up and relaid across the turnip fields, have been tried. The object is to avoid driving carts to take the crop off, or the treading of the sheep to feed it, on the ground, upon heavy clay soils, in which the pressure of these operations must be very objectionable. Twelve sheep are kept in each shed-car, and the turnips pulled and thrown in to them. The expense of drawing off the crop and returning the manure is avoided, and the sheep have shelter and a dry bed, while the ordinary custom subjects them to danger of foot-rot and other diseases, and also must be attended with some waste of the crop.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AN ARCADIAN HAMLET.—OUT OF THE WORLD, BUT NOT BEYOND THE REACH OF THE YANKEE PEDDLER.—THE COTTAGES OF THE DOWNS.—GROUT AND COBBLE-STONES.—CHARACTER OF THE LABOURING CLASS OF THE DOWNS.—WANT OF CURIOSITY.—OLD STOCKBRIDGE, WINCHESTER, WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.—HIS LEGACY TO WAYFARERS.—THE CATHEDRAL.—SOME REMARKS ON ARCHITECTURAL SITUATION.—SEARCH FOR LODGINGS.—MOTHERLY KINDNESS.—RAILROAD MISMANAGEMENT.—WATERLOO DAY AT PORTSMOUTH.

Wallop, where we spend the night, is a most poetical hamlet, so hidden by trees, that as we came over the downs, after we were within a few moments’ walk of it, we had to inquire where it was. It is a narrow road and string of cottages some miles long, by the bank of a cool, silvery brook, at which, when we first saw it, we rushed to drink like camels in the desert; and the water was indeed delicious. It is an exceedingly quiet, peaceful place. As we sit at our window at the “Lower George,” we can hear nothing but the rippling of the brook, which threads its way through the trees and among the cottages across the street, the rustling of the trees in the gentle air, the peeping of chickens, and the chirping of small birds. There is a blacksmith’s shop, but no smoke ascends from it, and the anvil is silent. There is a grist-mill further down; there is a little, square, heavy-roofed schoolhouse, and there is a church and graveyard. But there is no stage-coach, no public conveyance, not even a carrier’s cart by which we might send on our packs, runs through or from the hamlet. Yet this is a good inn, clean, and well provided; we have a large room, comfortably furnished, and the landlord seems to understand what a tired traveller wants; and down stairs, in the parlour, there is—would you ever guess? It tells its own story thus:—

It cost twelve shillings, and was a capital time-piece, only lately it had got a-going too fast, and the landlord wished Mr. Welton would send his man over and have it fixed according to contract. It marked the hour rather behind our watches, but as it was the liveliest thing in the village, we have set it back to the landlord’s notion, lengthened the pendulum, and oiled the “pallet,” all to save the reputation of Mr. Welton and the universal Yankee nation.

The cottages here are generally built of a chalk grout, sometimes with lines of flint stones for ornament. In others, flint pebbles are laid regularly in tiers set in grout, like the “cobble-stone houses” in western New York; in others, grout, and stones set in grout, alternately; or brick and stone in grout, in alternate tiers a foot thick. The village fences and the stock-yard walls about here are also made of white grout, very thick, and with a coping of thatch. The thatch on the cottages is very heavy, sometimes two feet deep.

The labouring class upon the downs have generally a quiet, sleepy, stupid expression, with less evident viciousness and licentious coarseness of character, and with more simplicity, frankness, and good-nature, than those we have previously been among. The utter want of curiosity and intelligent observation, among a people living so retired from the busy world, is remarkable. We have met but two to-day whose minds showed any inclination to move of their own accord: one of them was a pensioned soldier who had served at Halifax, and who made inquiries about several old comrades who had deserted and escaped to “the States,” and whom he seemed to suppose we must have seen as we were Yankees; the other, an old woman in Newtown-Tawney, at whose cottage we stopped to get water; she had at first taken us, as we came one after the other over the stile, for a “detachment of the Rifles,” and on discovering her error was quite anxious to know what we were and what we were after, what we carried in our knapsacks, &c.

June 18th.

In the morning we walked from Wallop through Stockbridge to Winchester. A down-land district still, as yesterday, but a well-travelled road, with houses, inns, and guide-boards; more frequent plantations of trees and more cultivated land, yet but little of it is fenced, and the sheep are restrained from crops by shepherds and dogs. Since we left Salisbury we have seen but three cows, each of which was tethered or tied to a woman or child. We have seen no donkeys for the last hundred miles.

Stockbridge is a small village of one wide street, with two clear streams and a canal crossing it, the surface of the ground a dead flat; all as unlike its Massachusetts namesake as it is to a Pawnee village. We saw some fine horses near here.

Winchester—a name we remember as that of the school-place of many a good man—is an interesting old town in a cleft of the downs. All who have heard Mr. Emerson’s lecture upon England will remember it also as the town of “William of Wykeham.”

We visited the cathedral, the college, and the other notable institutions and monuments, and demanded and received our share of the legacy bequeathed by William of Wykeham, five hundred years ago, to all wayfarers passing by—a generous slice of good bread, and a draught of ale, served in an ancient horn. There is certainly no humbug about it, but the good bishop’s hospitable will, in this particular, is yet as sincerely executed as if by servants under his own eye. Mr. Emerson was, nevertheless, unfortunate in his eloquent use of this circumstance to illustrate the simple honesty of English character, and the permanence and reliability of English institutions; for it now appears that, notwithstanding the substantial bread and unadulterated beer, this is but the cleanliness of the cup and platter, and that in the real and worthy legacy which the far-reaching piety of the good prelate left to the future of England, there is much rottenness. Generally, the means which the piety of Englishmen of former generations bequeathed, for the furnishing to the poor aliment of mind, have been notoriously wrenched aside to the emolument and support, in luxurious sinecures, of a few individuals, whom, but for the association of their titles with religion, loyalty, law, and order, and the poor conscience-salve that it is the system and not they that are wrong, every man would know for perjured hypocrites, liars, swindlers; far more detestable than American repudiators, French sycophants, or Irish demagogues.

The cathedral is low and heavy, covering much ground; and exhibits, curiously interworked, the styles of Saxon, Norman, and early and later English architects. I again wrote in my note-book, “unimpressive;” but now, after two years, I find that my mind was strongly, though it would seem unconsciously, impressed by it; for there returns to me, as I very vividly remember its appearance, a feeling of quiet, wholly uncritical veneration, of which I believe a part must be due to the breadth of green turf of the graveyard, and deep shade of the old trees in which it is upreared. There were scarcely any edifices that I saw in Europe that produced in me the slightest thrill of such emotion from sublimity as I have often had in contemplation of the ocean, or of mountains, that it was not plainly due less to the architectural style, than to the connection and harmony of the mass with the ground upon which it was placed. The only church that stopped me suddenly with a sensation of deep solemnity, as I came unexpectedly under it, as it were, in turning the corner of a street, was one that stood upon a bold, natural terrace, and in which the lines of the angles of a heavy tower were continuous and unbroken from base to summit.

At half-past six we took seats in the second-class cars for Portsmouth, and were favoured with a specimen of a corporation’s disregard for the convenience of the public, and the accomplishment of their own promises, that a New Jerseyman would almost have growled at. There was a full hour’s unnecessary detention at the way-stations, and after having arrived near the terminus, that much behind the time-tables, the tickets were collected and the doors locked upon us, and we were kept waiting a long time within a few rods of the station-house. Some one at length got out at the windows, but was sent back by the guard. When we requested to know what was the objection to our leaving, we were answered it was against the rules of the company for any passengers to be allowed upon the ground without the station. After waiting some time longer, we rose in numbers too strong for the guards, who, however, promised that we should be prosecuted for trespass, and made our escape. I may say, in passing, that the speed upon the English roads is, on an average, not better than on ours. It is commonly only from fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The express trains, however, upon the main lines, run usually as fast as fifty miles an hour, sometimes sixty. For the accommodation, comfort, and advantage of all but those who choose and can afford to pay extravagantly, their whole railroad system is very inferior to ours.

It was Waterloo Day, and there had been a review of the forces at Portsmouth, before the Duke of Wellington and Prince Albert; the Queen had been off the harbour in her yacht, and received a salute; there had been a balloon ascension; there had been a carousal with long and eloquently-reported speeches, and in one way and the other a great deal of powder and gas spent. There was to be an illumination yet, and the town was full—some of the streets packed with soldiers and sailors and women. We spent several hours trying to get lodgings; every hotel, inn, tavern, and lodging-house, high and low, was full. The best thing that kindness or covetousness could be induced to offer, was room to lay upon a carpet on the floor, and this nowhere that we thought it likely we should be allowed to sleep. We got supper somewhere, and the landlady informed us frankly that she charged us twice as much for it as she usually would, because it was “holiday.”

It was late at night when, by advice of policemen and favour of sentinels, we had passed out through a series of ramparts, and were going up a broad street of the adjoining town of Portsea. “Good-night, my dear,” we heard a kindly-toned voice; and a woman closed a door, and, after walking on a moment, ascended the steps to another. “Could you be good enough, madam,” one of us took the liberty of inquiring, “to tell us of any house in this vicinity where we should be likely to obtain lodging for the night?”

“No—dear me!—who are you?”

“We are strangers in the town; travellers, who reached here this evening, and we have been looking for several hours to find some place where we could sleep, but all the inns are full.”

“Come here; let me look at you. You are young men, are you not? come up to me, you need not be afraid—yes, I see; youths” (we had caps on, which is unusual in England except for school-boys). “Why, poor youths, I am sorry for you—strangers—you wait here, and I will call my servant and see if she does not think she can find where you can get a bed.”

She then went in, and in a few minutes returned with a maid whom she called Susan, to whom she repeated what we had said; and then inquired further what was our business, were we “travelling with the consent of our parents,” &c., and remarked—“Your parents are reputable people, I think:—yes—yes—dear me!—yes—poor youths. Yes, I will find beds for you. You are good youths, and Susan shall—but come in: you will sit in the parlour, and my servant, Susan, shall sit with you a few minutes, and I will see. Come in, come in, good youths.”

While we remained in the parlour it was infinitely droll to hear the kind old woman talking with another in the next room about the safety and propriety of lodging us. “I have known the world, and I cannot be deceived: these are good youths.”

It was at length concluded that if we would each of us pay a shilling, (“and then we could give whatever we liked besides to Susan,”) and if we would be willing to have our doors locked on the outside, we should be provided then and there with beds. The old woman then came in again to us, and with great severity re-examined us, and finally informed us that we were to spend the night in her house. She then became exceedingly kind again, asked much about our parents and America, and at length asked us, with a whimpering laugh, as if she feared how we would take it, but begged that it might be considered a joke—“We wouldn’t be offended if our doors should be locked on the outside?”

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DECEIT OF DESCRIPTIONS OF SCENERY.—THE SOUL OF A LANDSCAPE.—THE ISLE OF WIGHT, ITS CHARACTERISTICS.—APPROPRIATE DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.—GENIAL CLIMATE.—TROPICAL VERDURE.—THE CLIFFS OF ALBION.—OSBORNE.—THE ROYAL VILLA.—COUNTRY LIFE OF THE ROYAL FAMILY.—AGRICULTURAL INCLINATION AND RURAL TASTES.—THE ROYAL TENANTRY.—A RURAL FETE AT OSBORNE.

There is always a strong temptation upon the traveller to endeavour to so describe fine scenery, and the feelings which it has occasioned him, that they may be reproduced to the imagination of his friends. Judging from my own experience, this purpose always fails. I have never yet seen any thing celebrated in scenery, of which I had previously obtained a correct conception. Certain striking, prominent points, that the power of language has been most directed to the painting of, almost invariably disappoint, and seem little and commonplace, after the exaggerated forms which have been brought before the mind’s eye. Beauty, grandeur, impressiveness in any way, from scenery, is not often to be found in a few prominent, distinguishable features, but in the manner and the unobserved materials with which these are connected and combined. Clouds, lights, states of the atmosphere, and circumstances that we cannot always detect, affect all landscapes, and especially landscapes in which the vicinity of a body of water is an element, much more than we are often aware. So it is that the impatient first glance of the young traveller, or the impertinent critical stare of the old tourist, is almost never satisfied, if the honest truth be admitted, in what it has been led to previously imagine. I have heard “Niagara is a mill-dam,” “Rome is a humbug.”

The deep sentiments of Nature that we sometimes seem to have been made the confidant of, when among the mountains, or on the moors or the ocean,—even those of man wrought out in architecture and sculpture and painting, or of man working in unison with Nature, as sometimes in the English parks, on the Rhine, and here on the Isle of Wight,—such revealings are beyond words; they never could be transcribed into note-books and diaries, and so descriptions of them become caricatures, and when we see them, we at first say we are disappointed that we find not the monsters we were told of.

Dame Nature is a gentlewoman. No guide’s fee will obtain you her favour, no abrupt demand; hardly will she bear questioning, or direct, curious gazing at her beauty; least of all, will she reveal it truly to the hurried glance of the passing traveller, while he waits for his dinner, or fresh horses, or fuel and water; always we must quietly and unimpatiently wait upon it. Gradually and silently the charm comes over us; the beauty has entered our souls; we know not exactly when or how, but going away we remember it with a tender, subdued, filial-like joy.

Does this seem nonsense to you? Very likely, for I am talking of what I don’t understand. Nature treats me so strangely; it’s past my speaking sensibly of, and yet, as a part of my travelling experience, I would speak of it. At times I seem myself to be her favourite, and she brings me to my knees in deep feeling, such as she blesses no other with; oftener I see others in ecstasies, while I am left to sentimentalize and mourn, or to be critical, and sneering, and infidel. Nonsense still; but tell me, do you think it is only for greed of trouts that your great and sensitive man lingers long, intently stooping over dark pools in the spray of the mountain torrents, or stealing softly a way through the bending rushes, or kneeling lowly on the darkest verdure of the shaded meadow? What else? I know not what he thinks, but of this I am assured: while his mind is most intent upon his trivial sport, his heart and soul will be far more absorbent of the rugged strength, the diffuse, impetuous brilliance, the indefinite gliding grace, or the peaceful twilight loveliness, of the scenes around him, than if he went out searching, labouring directly for it as for bread and fame.

The greater part of the Isle of Wight is more dreary, desolate, bare, and monotonous, than any equal extent of land you probably ever saw in America—would be, rather, if it were not that you are rarely out of sight of the sea; and no landscape, of which that is a part, ever can be without variety and ever-changing interest. It is, in fact, down-land in the interior, exactly like that I described in Wiltshire, and sometimes breaking down into such bright dells as I there told of. But on the south shore it is rocky, craggy; and after you have walked through a rather dull country, though pleasing on the whole, for hours after landing, you come gradually to where the majesty of vastness, peculiar to the downs and the ocean, alternates or mingles with dark, picturesque, rugged ravines, chasms, and water-gaps, sublime rock-masses, and soft, warm, smiling, inviting dells and dingles; and, withal, there is a strange and fascinating enrichment of half-tropical foliage, so deep, graceful, and luxuriant, as I never saw before any where in the world. All this district is thickly inhabited, and yet so well covered with verdure, or often so tastefully appropriate—quiet, cosy, ungenteel, yet elegant—are the cottages, that they often add to, rather than insult and destroy, the natural charm of their neighbourhood. I am sorry to say, that among the later erections there are a number of very strong exceptions to this remark.

In this paradise the climate, by favour of its shelter of hills on the north, and the equalising influence of the ocean on the south, is, perhaps, the most equable and genial in the northern temperate zone. The mercury does not fall as low in winter as at Rome; deciduous trees lose their verdure but for a brief interval; greensward is evergreen; tender-roses, fuschias, and the dark, glossy shrubs of Canaan and of Florida, feel themselves at home, and flourish through the winter.

Where the chalky downs reach the shore without an intervening barrier of rock, or a gradual sloping descent, they are broken off abruptly and precipitously; and thus are formed the “white cliffs of Albion,” and a coast scenery with which, for grandeur, there is nothing on our Atlantic shore that will in the least compare: notwithstanding which, and although they really are often higher than our church-steeples and monuments—the familiar standards with which we compare their number of feet—they have not the stupendous effect upon the mind that I had always imagined that they must have.

We were rambling for the greater part of two days upon the island, spending a night near Black-gang-Chine. Returning, we passed near Osborne, a private estate purchased some years since by the Queen, upon which she has had erected a villa, said to be an adaptation of the Grecian style to modern tastes and habits, but of which nothing is to be seen from without the grounds but the top of a lofty campanile, from which is now displayed the banner with the royal arms, which always indicates the presence of the reigning sovereign of Great Britain. It is the custom of the royal family, when here, to live in as retired and unstately a way as they can ever be permitted to. The Prince himself turns farmer, and engages with much ardour in improving the agricultural capabilities of the soil, much of which was not originally of a fertile character, but by thorough drainage, and judicious tillage and manuring, is now producing greatly enlarged crops. The Prince is well known as a successful breeder and stockfarmer, having taken several prizes for fat cattle, &c., at the great annual shows. Her Majesty personally interests herself in the embellishment of the grounds and the extensive oak plantations which are being made, and is in the habit of driving herself a pair of ponies, unattended, through the estate, studying the comfort of her little cottage tenantry, and in every way she can trying to seem to herself the good-wife of a respectable country gentleman.

On the last birth-day of Prince Albert, a dinner was given to the labourers on the estate, with the seamen, boys, and marines of the Royal Yacht, and the coast-guard and soldiers stationed in the neighbourhood, (altogether about four hundred persons.) The dinner was provided in a large tent which was pitched on the lawn in front of the house, and consisted of a plentiful supply of beef, mutton, and plum-pudding, with strong ale. After grace had been said by the bailiff, (overseer,) and the company were seated, the Queen and Prince walked through the tent, and at the conclusion, after the usual loyal toasts, all adjourned to the greensward without, and in the presence of all the royal family engaged in a country dance, and afterwards in foot-races and in games of cricket and football, and other old-fashioned rural sports, the Queen remaining with them for several hours.

CHAPTER XX.

THE QUEEN’S YACHT.—YACHTS OF THE R. Y. CLUB, THEIR BUILD AND RIG.—COMPARISON WITH AMERICAN YACHTS AND PILOT-BOATS.—SEAMANSHIP.—CUT OF SAILS.—THE NAVY-YARD AT PORTSMOUTH.—GUN-BOATS.—STEAMERS.—NAVAL FORCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.—EVENING AT PORTSEA.—CURIOSITY.—ABOUT BOASTING AND SOME ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS.—CONVERSATION WITH A SHOPKEEPER ON “THE GLORY OF ENGLAND.”

In crossing the Solent, on our return to Portsmouth, we saw the Queen’s yacht, and passed through a squadron of the Royal Yacht-Club yachts. The former was a large, heavily-hampered, brig-rigged steamer, with great plate-glass ports, and a large oak-coloured house on deck, less seaman-like in appearance and more in the American style than most English steam-vessels. The yachts were as sweet craft as I can imagine, most of them over two hundred tons in burden and schooner-rigged; but, whether one or two-masted, spreading more canvas for the length of their hulls than I ever saw before. They were all painted black, and their ornaments and deck-arrangements struck me as being more simple, snug, and seaman-like than those of most of our Union Clubs’ yachts. The reverse is the case aloft. My guess was that they would be more than a match for any thing on our side in light winds, but that in bad weather, particularly if working to windward, they would do nothing against a New York pilot-boat. Like all the English small craft, when going before the wind, the cutters and schooners always hauled up the tack of the mainsail that the wind might draw under it to fill the foresail and jib. Another reason given for it is, that the wind, drawing downward from the belly of the sail, tends to make the vessel bury, and by lifting the tack she is made more buoyant. It is never done in America.

My opinion is, that the superior sailing of the “America,” in the great matches of 1851, was more owing to her peculiarities of rig, the cut and material of her sails, and to seamanship, than to the model of her hull. I have no doubt we can still build and rig a vessel that will be her superior. While the English stick to flax canvas, long gaffs, heavy topsails, and graceful curves, I do not think there is any danger that they will. When the Englishman is close-hauled with his boom as near amidships as he can get it, his long gaff will swing off so far that there must always be a considerable part of his canvas in the peak that actually retards more than it assists him. The Englishman thinks much of beauty of form in his sails, but his standard of beauty is arbitrary—a fashion. To my eye, without regard to the primary beauty of utility, the simplicity of the cut of our sails is much more agreeable.

On the deck of the flag-schooner, which we ran very near to, we saw the commodore of the Club, (an Earl,) a gray-haired old gentleman, who sat in an arm-chair, reading from a newspaper to some ladies.

On reaching Portsmouth we took a boat to visit the navy-yard, within the walls of which, being foreigners, not having a pass, we could not enter. Our boatmen told us that if we chose to enter we should not be challenged, as no one would suspect us as being other than Englishmen, and that the prohibition was a silly old form that prevented no one from seeing the yard that wished to enough to lie for it.

The number of vessels (of the navy) in port was much less than I had anticipated seeing, and most of these were hulks, or advance ships, (with guns and water-tanks on board.) Those we went on board of, (one of them ready for sea,) seemed to me, compared with ours of the same class, inferior in all respects, except it might be in some novelties in their rigging, of the efficiency of which I could not judge. The extent to which wire-rigging was employed in some of them surprised me. We saw four gun-boats, (large barges with a swivel-gun in the bow,) manned by the workmen of the yard, whose awkward evolutions were very amusing. The landsmen working in the yard are divided into two squads, one of which, alternately with the other, is drilled in the Jefferson plan of harbour defence two evenings in each week. They are dressed in a simple uniform, and armed as boarders.

There were more steamers in the harbour than in all our navy.

The present naval force of Great Britain, by official returns, consists of 671 ships of war, either in ordinary or in commission, varying from 2 to 120 guns each; of this number 187 are armed steamers. This fleet, the largest of any maritime power on the globe, employs in time of peace, 35,000 to 40,000 able-bodied seamen, 2000 strong lads, and 13,000 royal marines, consisting of 102 companies, divided into four divisions.

The American navy consists of 70 vessels, large and small, of which 8 are sea-steamers.

The army of Great Britain, exclusive of the East India Company’s troops, and several native colonial regiments, numbers 135,000 men; about 80,000 of these are considered available for home-service, the remainder being required for the defence of the colonies.

The regular army of the United States consists of 10,300 men. The militia force is returned as over 2,000,000.

In the evening we called at the old lady’s in Portsea, and received from Susan some clothes, which she had undertaken to get washed for us, and a watch which my brother had left in his bedroom. The kind old woman received us cordially, apologized again for the prudence which had led her to lock us in, and introduced us to some friends. Of their simplicity and curiosity, as shown in their questioning of us, I might, if I chose to report our conversations, give as amusing a picture as English travellers enjoy to do, of that of those they meet in American boarding-houses. Of fidgetty anxiety lest we should not discover that every body and every thing in the country is most astonishing and wonderfully superior to any body and any thing every where else in the world, which so distresses visitors to the United States, I must confess that we have seen but little in England. With the poorer class of Englishmen, patriotism seems to have been starved out. If they ever speak of their country’s greatness and prosperity, it is as a servant speaks of his master’s wealth; they would see it become a dependency of France or Russia with entire indifference, certainly with exultation if it were promised them that wages should be higher and bread cheaper for it. Again, the Radicals and men of earnest religious faith, with the strongest affection to their country, are in the habit of looking much at what is wrong and shameful in her institutions and qualities, and of comparing them with what is better in other lands. There has always been a great many—now almost enough to be looked upon as a party—that have a strong admiration for our country, and who even glory in all our glory as their own.

Cultivated and large-minded people of all classes, of course, in England as every where else, rise above prejudice and vanity, and think and speak fairly and frankly equally of their own or foreign states; of such eminently we recognise the Earl of Carlisle and Sir Charles Lyell, and of such are, I believe, a great number of the higher rank of commercial men. The traditional self-complacency of an Englishman, as an Englishman, is more often to be detected, at the present day, by some unnecessary pains he will take to point out to you deficiencies and defects of a trivial character in the article or institution or custom you are considering, he having entire confidence that in contrast with that of any other country it will but be exalted by any such faint disparagement of it as is possible. Among the lower class in towns, or in the country those who have been servants, or in some way connected with or dependent on wealthy old families, there is sometimes to be found the most ludicrously absurd old Tory ideas and prejudices, quite in character with the John Bull of the old farce; but the best specimens of it that I have seen were among the smaller sort of shopkeepers, particularly those who advertised themselves to be under the patronage of some noble lady. I remember one that we encountered, soon after we resumed our walks in England after we had been on the Continent, that amused us very much—a little, fat, florid, bald-headed John Gilpin of a man. He was wrapping the article we had purchased in a paper, and, while we waited, asked,

“Travellers, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On foot, it appears?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Travelled far, so might I ask?”

“Oh, yes—a number of hundred miles.”

“Indeed—you must have seen a good bit of old England.... Ever was on the Continent, gentlemen?”

“Yes.”

“In France, it might be?”

“Yes.”

“Any where else but France?”

“Yes—in Holland, Germany, and Belgium.”

“Ah!... Gentlemen, I should like to ask you now, if I might be so bold, I should like to ask you a question, just one question. I haven’t been myself, you see, to France nor to Holland nor to those other countries, but I have read of them, and according to the best sources of information I could reach, I have informed my mind about them and formed my own independent opinion, you see, in which I may be right, of course, and I may be wrong, but I think I’m right. And I have had a coming in here a many of travelling gentlemen like you, that had seen all those foreign countries, and had also in course seen England,—which is advantageous. Well, I always asks these gentlemen one question when they does me the honour, and they have always been so good as to answer me with the very same identical, and now I should be pleased to ask you the same question, if I may be so bold. Though, to be sure, I can imagine what you’ll answer, but then to confirm the independent, which I had arrived at from my own, you see, and for edification,—thank you. Now then, gentlemen—(John, you can discontinue a moment.)”

He laid the parcel on the counter, and, holding it firmly with his left hand, continued to tap it lightly with the fore-finger of the other, looking at us as if our lives depended upon our answering truthfully.

“So it appears, gentlemen, (if I might be so bold,) that you have wandered far and near over the face of the inhabited world, and have seen many foreign parts and lands, and cast your lot among other peoples and nations, that all thought as their inheritances was very fine, doubtless: but now, gentlemen! can you say on candid reflection—now have you ever seen any where’s else, for instance, any castle as was comparable compared to Winsor Castle?”

“No, sir.”

“Or any park like unto Winsor Park—that is, in foreign parts?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor any country of them all, what, on the whole, take her altogether, taking her castles and parks, also her towns and her rail’ays and station-houses, her forests and her manufactures, and her coal and iron; her church and her constitution, her people and her horses, and such like—did you ever, in all your wanderings—taking her altogether so—did you ever now, gentlemen—I want to know—ever see any place exactly like your own country after all?”

“No, indeed, sir.”

“‘No, indeed, sir!’ I know you didn’t—you hear that? ‘No, indeed, sir’—and so say you all, gentlemen? and so say you all. Well, then, I am satisfied, and much obliged to you, gentlemen. There isn’t none of the foreign principalities that is like this blessed land; and that’s what I am always telling them, and only goes to confirm the independent conviction which I had previously arrived to of my own preliminaries. Thank you, gentlemen;” (handing us the parcel;) “good-morning. I wish you a pleasant continuance of your promenade in our glorious old land.”

CHAPTER XXI.

RURAL POLICE.—THE “ANCHOR” INN.—THE GARDEN.—“OLD COACHING TIMES.”—HEATH LAND.—A DREARY LANDSCAPE.—MURDER AND A HIGHWAY ADVENTURE.—HUMAN VANITY.

Liphook, June 20th.

Walked hither from Portsmouth to-day. For twenty miles the road is through a hilly chalk country, much of it unenclosed downs, generally interesting, and the walk at this season agreeable.

We had, for a short distance, the company of a rural policeman. He had his quarters, with several others, in a small cottage in a village, was paid $4.70 a-week, and furnished with three suits of clothes every year—one for winter, one for summer, and one for Sundays, besides gloves, &c. The uniform is of blue cloth, of a simple, semi-military fashion. He said no one was employed in the force who was less than six feet high, and that they were exercised in the use of small-arms. Of duties he seemed to have no definite idea himself, but was ready to do any thing he could in the way of fighting roguery, when he should be called upon by the officers. The only crime which he seemed to apprehend in the neighbourhood was rick-burning—labourers who were discontented and envious, or who had for any reason become angry with the farmers who employed them, setting fire to their stacks of grain. This was common.

We spent the night at the “Anchor,” a good, large, old inn, with a finely-shaven plot of turf and well-kept gravelled walks, and a good vegetable and fruit garden, with famous gooseberry and apple bushes (apples on dwarf stocks), in the rear. The landlord, a bluff, stout, old man, a little while ago brought us in samples of five different sorts of malt liquor that he had in his cellar. They vary in strength in the proportions from 8 to 32, and somewhat more in price.

Before the railways, thirty-two four-horse coaches stopped at this house daily, besides post-coaches, which, when the fleet was about to sail from Portsmouth, passed through the village “like a procession.” He then kept 100 horses, and had usually ten postboys to breakfast, that had been left during the night. Now, there was but one coach and one van that passed through the town.

June 21st.

Near Liphook, instead of the broad, bleak chalk-downs, with their even surface of spare green grass, we find extensive tracts of a most sterile, brown, dry, sandy land, sometimes boggy, (moory,) producing even more scanty pasturage than the downs, but with scattered tufts of heath or ling. Most of this is in commons, and a few lean sheep, donkeys, and starveling ponies are earnestly occupied in seeking for something to eat upon it. Very little of it, for miles that we have passed over, is enclosed or improved, except that there are extensive plantations of trees. Timber grows slowly upon it; but the shade of the foliage and the decay of leaves so improves the soil that it is worth cultivating after its removal. It is also improved so as to bear tolerable crops, by paring and burning and sheep-folding—as described on the downs of Wiltshire.

We had walked half-a-dozen miles this morning, when I discovered I had lost my watch, and turned back. When about three miles from Liphook, I met our landlord of “The Anchor.” He had found the watch in my room, and immediately mounted a horse, and rode hard to overtake us. He refused any compensation, unless it were “a glass of grog to drink my health.” I had happened to show him one of those villainous Spanish quarters that so successfully hold their place against our legitimate currency, which I had had left in my pocket on leaving New York, and he said, if I didn’t value it, he would be glad to take it as a keepsake of us. I have no doubt he will always remember us as the three gentlemen that had the good taste not to go from Portsmouth to London by “the infernal railways.”

It was a day of thick, rapidly-passing clouds, and in a part of my walk, which was through a well-wooded, rolling country with very steep hill-sides and deep narrow valleys, I saw some most charming effects of broad shadows, chasing over waving foliage, with angel-flights of sunshine, often disclosing long, narrow vistas of distant, deep glens, or glances of still water, becalmed and warm under high, dark, quivering, leafy bluffs. But the greater part of this country (but a day’s walk from London) is the most dreary, desolate, God-forsaken-looking land that I ever saw or imagined. Hills and dales, picturesque enough in form, high, deep, and broad; all brown, gray, and black; sterile, parched, uninhabited—dead: the only sign of life or vegetation a little crisp moss, or singed, prostrate, despairing ling—seeming exactly as if an intense fire had not long since swept over it.

Such was the whole dreary landscape, far and near—only this “blasted heath.” A great black squall-cloud had for some time thrown additional gloom—a new intensity of gloom—over it; and I was walking slowly, in bereavement of all sympathizing life in this sepulchral ground of Nature, when my eye fell upon a block of stone, bearing inscription—“In detestation of the murder of a sailor on this spot by [three persons whose names are given], who were hung near here. ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ Look on the other side.”

I was still half kneeling and musing before this monument, when I heard myself gruffly addressed, “Wull tell me what’s the time o’ day?”

Without rising, I turned my head and saw over my shoulder a tall, heavily-whiskered, ruffianly-faced fellow, half sportsman, half sailor in dress, carrying a stout stick and a bundle in a handkerchief. How did he get there? I must have seen him before if he had come either way by the road; he must have approached from over the hill behind me, and that cautiously; apparently he had been concealed there. I confess that I wished for a moment that I had in “my interior reservoirs a sufficient Birmingham horse-pistol,” wherewith to make myself alike tall with him if he should give me need; but, still bending over the memorial of murder, I drew my watch and answered him civilly, whereupon, without even a “growl,” he “sidled off,” and soon passed from my sight. My friends had seen the same man, in company with another, near the same place, an hour and a-half before.

On “the other side”—oh, human vanity!—was the name of the man who had caused the stone to be placed there. Posterity is requested to remember the murderers and the murdered, and especially not to forget the detester.

CHAPTER XXII.

LONDON LADS.—RAILWAY RIDE.—OBSERVATIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY.

At half-past five, having overtaken my friends and dined at Godalming, I took seat with them in the third-class carriages of a train bound to London, intending, however, only to take a lift so that we might walk in before dark.

The carriages were nearly empty, till, stopping at a way-station, they were suddenly and with boisterous merry haste taken possession of, filled full and over-filled with a class of people differing in their countenances, manners, language, and tone of voice from any we had before seen in England. They were more like New York b’hoys, a little less rowdy and a shade more vulgar. “London lads,” one of them very civilly told me they were, employed in a factory out here in the country, and having just received their week’s wages were going in to spend them. They were pale, and many effeminate, in features, rather oily and grimy, probably from their employment; talked loudly and rapidly, using many cant words, and often addressing those at a distance by familiar, abbreviated names; lively, keen, quick-eyed, with a peculiarly fearless, straightforward, uneducated way of making original remarks, that showed considerable wit and powers of observation; rough, turbulent, and profane, yet using a good many polite forms, and courteous enough in action.

Two or three men, as soon as the train was in motion, held up each a brace or two of rabbits, at which there was cheering and laughter from the rest. All, indeed, were in the greatest possible good humour, joking and bantering and making engagements, or telling of their plans for dining together, or meeting for some degrading excitement on Sunday. Of us and others in the car, when they entered, they took little notice, though treating us with respect in not jostling or crowding us; but as soon as they were well settled in their places they began to make game of one another; to tell stories, evidently improvising comical anecdotes of their employers and other common acquaintances, both absent and present. A dignified “old chap,” who stood near upon the platform, was made very uncomfortable, and reduced considerably in height and stiffness, by urgent invitations to join them. The “guard,” too, was made an especial butt, and several illustrations were given of the ignorant character of railway-people in general. “There vas von them Mefodis wisitin-coves, you know, wot ’awks tracs and suchlike, in here a Vensdy wen we come up; and ven the guard come along he arks him did he know the Lord’s prayer? ‘Lorspraer?’ says he, ‘vot is he?’ says he; ‘is he a stoker or a driver?’ says he, ha! ha! ha! I’m blowed ’f ’e didn’t.”

“I saw one of them same fellows other night,” continued another, “wot ’ad ’old of another on ’em. He treats ’im to a go o’ gin first, you see, to make him sharp like, and then he axes him did he know any think about the eternal world. ‘’Turnulwool?’ says he—‘’Turnulwool?—no such place in the Farnham branch, sir—hadn’t you best enkvire of the station-master, sir?’ says he.”

“’Ternal world’s the place where they hadn’t got the rails down to yet—last adwices; aren’t it?—and they carries the nobs on there with lays o’ busses wot runs erry day in the year oney Sunneys and her Majestee’s birth-day.”

“No, no; I’ll tell you where ’tis—tarnal world—it’s the kentry what the coves in Astraly cuts to wen the Kangarwoos gets short and the gin-trees gives out and they’s ’ard up.”

“Kangurerhoos—what’s them?”

“Kind of fish as is covered with feathers ’stead o’ scales.”

“I know it—fact I tell you, ’pon my honour—needn’t laugh—I see a sailor as ’ad a vestcoat made on’t, short vethers like spangled welwet, black and goold, regular ’ristocratic—stunnenest thing you ever see.”

“Well, what’s a gin-tree?—that bangs me.”

“I know—there is—a big tree wot runs gin wen yer tap her—and there’s a bread-tree, too——”

“What bears fresh kortern loavs erry morning.”

“Hurray for Polytechny! Ain’t they all sliced and buttered?”

“In course they is, and ven you shakes ’em off, the skins cracks open, and they all valls buttered side up—coz vy? Vy the trees is werry ’igh and the buttered side’s the lightest to be sure.”

“Hi! that’s the place for this chile—I’m bound to—‘over the seas for to go’—only waitin’ for an act of Parliament, and wen I get there—hi! Buffalo gals!”——

“When he gets there you know what he’ll do? When he comes to the gin trees he’ll treat the company. First time in his life. Ha! ha!”

And with such constantly combining streams a flood of original information and entertainment was poured out to us until we reached the little station about nine miles out of London, to which we had taken tickets.

CHAPTER XXIII.

RURAL LABOURERS NEAR LONDON.—OUR MOTHER TONGUE.—COCKNEYS.—PROVINCIALISTS.—ON THE NATURALIZATION OF FOREIGN WORDS.—AUTHORITIES.—SUBURBAN LONDON.—LONDON.—THE THAMES.—“SAINT PAUL’S FROM BLACKFRIAR’S BRIDGE.”

Upon our asking directions, a gentleman who left the first-class carriage offered to be our guide for a little way. He led us between fields in which some men were hay-making. We spoke of the “London lads” we had been riding with, and the gentleman agreed with us that, wicked as they might appear, they were less degraded than the mass of agricultural labourers.

“We could not stop to rest here on the stile,” said he, “but that every single man in that field, in the course of five minutes, would come to us to ask something for drink; and the worst of it is, it is not an excuse to obtain money by indirect begging for the support of their families, but they would actually spend it immediately at the public-house.”

We told him we had never been in London, and after a little conversation he said that he had been trying to discover where we came from, as from our accent he should have thought us Londoners. He had thought that he could always tell from what part of England any stranger in London came, but he could not detect any of the provincial accents or idioms in our language. We told him that we had supposed the cockney dialect was quite distinct, but certainly never imagined it at all like our own. On the contrary, he said, except among the vulgar classes, the Londoner alone has no dialect, but, much more than the native of any other part of England, speaks our language from infancy in its purity, and with the accent generally approved by our most elegant orators and generally acknowledged authorities.

“But a liberal education must remove provincialisms, both of idiom and accent.”

“In a degree only. A boy will generally retain a good deal of his provincial accent through the public school and university. At least, I have paid considerable attention to the matter, and I think I am always able to detect it, and say with confidence in which quarter of the kingdom a man spent his youth. You would yourself probably have no difficulty in detecting a Scotchman.”

“I have noticed that Scotchmen who have resided long in England, and who had in a considerable degree lost their original peculiarities, usually spoke in a disagreeably high key and with great exactness and distinctness of utterance.”

“That is the result of the original effort which it was necessary for them to use to speak correctly. They speak from the book, as it were, and the same is more or less noticeable in all provincialists who do not habitually speak with the accent of their youth.”

We then informed him that we were Americans, which much surprised him. I somewhat doubt myself the correctness of his observation. I am aware of habitually using many Yankeeisms myself, and have no desire to avoid them. The New England accent of words, except such as are not very commonly used, I should think might be generally agreeable to the most approved standards in England. The educated English certainly speak with much greater distinctness and more elegance than we commonly do; perhaps they generally err in being too precise and methodical, and it may be that the Londoners converse with more rapidity and ease, or carelessness, than others. That what are shown to us as peculiarities of cockney dialect are mere vulgarisms and slang, not altogether peculiar to the metropolis, is very true.

Agreeably to Walker, the educated English often give the sound of a to e, pronouncing Derby, Darby; clerk, clark, &c. This at first seemed very odd; but when I returned home, our own way had become foreign to me. Vase is universally vawze or vaze; route, rute. With us, except in society which has a more than ordinary European element, these, and some other foreign words in common use, are Anglicized; and though when one is accustomed to the more polite sound there may seem an affectation of simplicity in this, I cannot but wish that the custom was more general. The French almost universally adapt foreign words of which they have need for common use to the requirements of their habitual tongue, changing not only the pronunciation but the spelling: they write rosbif for the old English roast beef, biftek for beef-steak. So we write and pronounce cotelette cutlet; why need we say “angtremay” for entremets? or if we choose that sound, and like it also better than “side-dishes,” why not print it “angtremay?” We write Cologne for Köln; why not Leeong for Lyons? or if Lyons, let us also speak it Lyons, and consider Leeong an affectation except when we speak it in connection with other plainly French words. The only rule with regard to such matters is, to follow custom. Singularity is impertinent where it can be gracefully avoided; but as there is more tendency to Anglicize foreign words that are in general use in America than in England, and this is a good and sensible tendency, let us not look for our rules to English custom. Let us read Venus de Medicis Venus de Medicis, rather than stammer and blush over it because we are not perfect in Italian. I once heard a clergyman call it “Venu-de-Medisy:” two-thirds of his congregation understood what he meant as well as if he had given it the true Italian pronunciation; but if he had read it with the sound they would naturally attach in English reading to that connection of letters, nearly all would have known what he meant, and no one would have had a reasonable occasion to laugh at him. But why is not our own language fit to speak of it in—the Medicean Venus? Why should the French word envelope be used by us when we have the English envelop? Why the Italian chiaro-oscuro, when there is the English clare-obscure expressing the same? I am glad to see some of our railroad companies accepting the word station, which is good old English, in place of the word depot, which, as we pronounce it, is neither French nor English. In England, the designation station is invariable. Depot is only used as a military technicality, with the French pronunciation, dapo. If we really want a foreign word or phrase to express ourselves, it shows a deficiency in our language. Supply this by making your foreigner English: we in America must not be chary of admitting strangers. Naturalize it as soon as possible.

Neither let us think it of great consequence whether we say Rush-an or Ru-shan for Russian; trawf or truf (as usual in England) for trough; def or deef for deaf; or whether we spell according to Johnson, or Walker, or Webster, (or Webster modified;) the custom varies, not only between England and America, but between elegant scholars of each country in itself. The man is impudent who condemns me, let me speak or write almost how I may, for I always have some giant to back me.

Half-a-mile’s walk brought us to a village of plain, low, detached, paltry shops, where our guide, having given us a very simple direction, took leave of us. We followed up the broad street; the shops, a large number of which were ale-houses, soon were displaced in a great measure by plain, small villas, of stone, or stuccoed brick, standing two or three rods back from the street, with dense shrubbery, enclosed by high brick walls before them. Gradually the houses ran together and became blocks; omnibuses, market-carts, heavy vans, (covered luggage-wagons,) and pleasure-carriages, constantly met and passed, and when we had walked about three miles, the village had become a compact, busy town—strangely interrupted once by a large, wild, wholly rustic common. Then the town again: the side-walk encroached upon by the grocers and hucksters; monster signs of “entire” ales and ready-made coffins, and “great sacrifices” of haberdashery and ladies’ goods; the street wide and admirably paved, and crossed at short but irregular intervals by other narrower streets, and growing more busy every moment. Still it is nothing remarkable; a wide street, plain brick houses, a smell of gas now and then, and a crowd. I would hardly have known, from any thing to be seen, that I was not entering some large town in our country, that I had never visited before. Indeed, it’s quite like coming down the Bowery.

People were looking up; following the direction of their eyes, we saw a balloon ascending. The air was calm, and it rose to a great height—greater, says the Times this morning, than any ever reached before.

A shrill cry in the distance, rising faintly above the rumble of the wheels, and hum and patter of the side-walks, grows rapidly more distinct, until we distinguish, sung in a high key, “Strawberrie—Sixpenny-pottle. Who’ll buy?” The first of “London cries.”

We have been walking steadily, in a nearly straight line, for two hours, and now the crowd thickens rapidly until it is for a moment at full tide of Broadway density. There is a long break in the brick house-fronts, and we forge aside out of the crowd and halt to take an observation. We are leaning over the parapet of Blackfriar’s Bridge. The Thames looks much as I had supposed; something wider than our travellers like to represent it, hardly an “insignificant stream” even to an eye accustomed to American rivers, but wide enough and deep enough and strong enough to make bridges of magnificence necessary to cross it, and answering all the requirements needed in a ship-canal passing through the midst of a vast town. A strong current setting upward from the sea gurgles under the arches; heavy coal-barges slowly sweep along with it; dancing, needle-like wherries shoot lightly across it, and numerous small, narrow steamboats, crowded with passengers, plough white furrows up and down its dark surface.

Upon the bank opposite—almost upon the bank, and not distant in an artist’s haze—stand blackened walls and a noble old dome, familiar to us from childhood. It is only nearer, blacker, and smaller—wofully smaller—than it has always been. We do not even think of telling each other it is Saint Paul’s.

There is a low darkness, and the houses and all are sooty in streaks, but there is a pure—so far as our lungs and noses know—pure, fresh, cool breeze sweeping up the river, and overhead a cloudless sky; and in the clear ether, clear as Cincinnati’s, there is a new satellite—beautiful, beautiful as the moon’s young daughter. It is the balloon, now so high that the car is invisible, and without any perceptible motion it blushes in golden sunlight,—while we have been some time since left to evening’s dusk.

“Move on! move on, if you please, gentlemen,” says a policeman. The crowd tramps hastily behind us. We turn and are sucked into the motley channel, which soon throws us out from the bridge upon a very broad street; up this, in a slackening tide, we are still unresistingly carried, for it is London, and that was what we were looking for; and for a while we allow ourselves to be absorbed in it without asking what is to become of us next.

APPENDIX C.

INFORMATION AND ADVICE FOR THOSE WISHING TO MAKE A PEDESTRIAN TOUR IN ENGLAND, AT THE LEAST PRACTICABLE EXPENSE.

A young man with small means, and who is willing to “rough it,” wishes to know with how low a sum of money it would be practicable for him to undertake a trip to England. I have no doubt there are many such who would visit the Old World if they were aware how cheaply and pleasantly they could do so. I have heretofore expressed my own obligation to Bayard Taylor, and it is probable that what I shall have to say will be, to some extent, a repetition of the instructions given in a chapter upon the subject in the later editions of the “Views Afoot.” It will, however, have more especial reference to travelling on foot in England.

The Passage.—There are no regular arrangements made in the packet-ships for those who wish to go to England decently and in tolerable comfort at a moderate price. It will be with more or less difficulty, according as freights are active or dull, that you may obtain a proper “second cabin passage and found.” You stand the best chance to do so in the London lines. A special arrangement with the Captain is necessary. A party of three or four may at almost any time, by application to the Captain shortly before a ship sails, engage a state-room, provide themselves with stores,⁠[17] and hire their cooking done, &c.; so that the passage shall cost them but from twenty to thirty dollars. With good messmates, good catering, a liberal gratuity to the cook, steward, or ship’s servant that waits upon you, and in a clean ship, you may make the passage so, more agreeably than in any other way; more so than in the first cabin at four times the expense. The price of the regular first-cabin passage out is $90. In the steerage, you pay $10 to $12 for a mere sleeping-place, provide yourself with stores, cook for yourself, or hire some fellow-passenger, who does not suffer equally from sea-sickness, to cook for you. You must provide yourself with bedding, cooking utensils, &c. It will cost you about $20. Secure, if possible, an upper berth, near the hatchway; be provided with an abundance of old clothes; look out for pilferers; spend an hour each morning in sweeping and keeping clean the steerage; nurse the sick; take care of the women and children; and keep the deck all the time that you otherwise can. You will probably have a very miserable time, but it will be over after a while, and you will have seen a peculiar and memorable exhibition of human nature, and will go ashore with a pleasure not to be imagined. You can go to Liverpool or Glasgow by the screw-steamers, (second cabin and found,) decently and quickly, for from $50 to $75. The same by the mail-steamers, not so comfortably, but more quickly. Most disagreeably, but soon over with, in the steerage of some of the steamers for $40.

Returning.—You have the same (and rather increased second-cabin accommodations by the London packets), at about 10 per cent. higher prices. You can live comfortably for two months, and see “the lions” in Paris or London, for the difference between the first and second-cabin fare out and home.

Our Expenses for board and bed, while in the country in England, averaged seventy-five cents a-day. Expenses of short conveyance by rail, coach, and boat; fees to showmen and guides; washing, postage, and incidentals, (properly included as travelling expenses,) added to this, made our average expenses about one dollar a-day each. How we fared, and with what degree of comfort or luxury we were content, the reader should have already been informed. I have, however, dwelt more upon the agreeable than the disagreeable side of such travelling. We often, on entering a town, looked from one inn to another, in doubt which to select, desiring to avoid unnecessary expense, while we secured quiet and cleanliness. Sometimes we would enter a house and ask to see the rooms and know the charges. No offence was ever taken at this, though once or twice, where we were going to spend a Sunday, and the rooms were not agreeable, or convenient to write in, we proceeded further. We soon, however, were able to guess very well the character of a house by its outside appearance, and could regulate our disbursements with great exactness.

Inns.—The great difference between the large “first-class” inns and the second and third class is, that in the latter the lodgers are so few that one or two servants can take the place of three or four at the former. Frequently the landlord may be porter and Boots, (and will act as commissionaire or cicerone;) the mistress, cook; and their daughter, waiter and chambermaid, &c. In such cases, generally, no servants’ fees at all are expected, and at most a third or half of what is honestly due the servants of the stylish inn will be satisfactory. The small inns are really often more comfortable to the pedestrian than the large ones; because he can be more at his ease; need not care how he appears; can wheel the sofa up to the fire or open all the windows; dine in his slippers, and smoke, if he likes, in the parlour: take command of the house, in short; see for himself that his shoes are greased and his linen washed and drying, his knapsack-straps repaired, lost buttons replaced, and all his rig a-taunto for an early start without delays in the morning.

If you call for any thing for your table that the house is not provided with, it will be at once procured from the shops; the cooking is generally good, and the bread always fine. We usually contented ourselves with one hot meal in a day. Two of us were without the habit of drinking tea or coffee, and would often make our breakfast of bread and milk; lunch on bread and cheese and beer, and take a substantial meal at the end of our day’s walk. We thought we walked better with this arrangement than any other.

For less than seventy cents a-day it is possible to travel in England without hardship or injury to health. For how much less I cannot say. I once stopped alone at a house where I dined with the family on boiled bacon and potatoes and a bag-pudding, for which I was charged sixpence; breakfasted on scalded milk and bread for twopence; and was asked sixpence in advance for lodging. I had a good, clean bed and washing conveniences in my room. Add to this twopence for tea, and the day’s living is 33 cents. This was in the north of England, and was extraordinary. The usual charge for lodging is a shilling, sometimes ninepence, and sometimes only sixpence. At the first-class inns they will make you pay well in one way or another. Where we did not dine we have been charged threepence each for the use of the public room, that is to say, for sitting in it instead of out-of-doors or in our rooms, while waiting for tea to be prepared. With regard to servants, the best way is to ask the landlord to pay them and charge it in the bill. It relieves you of a great annoyance, and in such cases we never found the charge added extravagant.

Equipment.—Shoes can be obtained much cheaper in England than America, and, indeed, first-rate shoes are hardly to be had in America; but English shoes, that you would have to buy at the shops, always have a seam across the instep that is very hard upon a foot unaccustomed to it; and for this reason, and to ensure a shape to suit you, you had best get them made at home. The leather should be well-tanned and dressed thick kip or cowhide, the best that can be procured; the soles of “English bend,” three-eighths of an inch in thickness; double this in the heel, which should come so far forward that the break will be perpendicular with the point of the ankle. Give your order, if possible, six months beforehand, (I never have known a shoemaker who would get his work done when he promised to for any consideration,) and go to the workman yourself to make sure that he understands what you want, otherwise you will probably receive, just as you are going on board ship, a parcel by express containing a pair of butterfly pumps with soles of hummingbird hide. Have a distinct agreement that they shall be returned if they do not come in time, and if they do not answer to your order. They should be high enough (6½ inches, including heel, commonly) to well cover the ankle, and lace up with but two crossings over the instep. The laces must be made of the best leather, and you should carry half-a-dozen spare ones.

If, finally, the shoes are not large enough to go easily over two woollen socks on your foot, reject them. Get Shaker woollen socks of an exact fit to your foot, or as large as they may be without danger of folding or rubbing into welts under your shoes. Wear them with the “wrong side” outward. You do not want to wear them double, but your feet will swell so in a long hot day’s walk, that you will want that there should have been room enough in your shoes for them to be double before you started. Break your shoes in on the passage.

Gaiters are worn to protect the feet from dust and gravel coming over the top of the shoe. They increase the heat of the feet to that degree that they are best dispensed with. Bathe your feet at every convenient opportunity on the road, and always as soon as you stop for the night, and change your socks and put on slippers.

I could give good reasons for all that I have recommended with regard to shoes; and you had better neglect nothing. I took all these precautions and yet suffered a thousand times more, and was delayed more, from foot-soreness than from fatigue. English pedestrians and sportsmen often wear much heavier and clumsier shoes than I have advised.

Knapsack.—We had the India-rubber army knapsack, made at Naugatuck, Connecticut. If you can get them well “seasoned,” so that they will not stick or smell, and with a good harness, they will probably be the best you can procure. Ours were so, and we found them convenient and to wear well.

Clothing you can get in England better than at home, if you wish to buy any. You must dispense with every thing not absolutely essential to your comfort; for every ounce is felt in a hot day. We carried in our knapsacks each about as follows:

Four shirts, 1 pair cloth pantaloons, 2 pair socks, slippers, handkerchiefs, mending materials, toilet articles, coarse towel, napkin, leather drinking-cup, cap, oil-silk cape, portfolio with writing and sketching materials, knife and fork, candle of tallow (that it may be used to grease shoes with upon occasion), matches, a book, map, pocket-compass, adhesive plaster, cord, shoe-lacings.

Every thing selected with great care for lightness and compactness, and the whole weighing ten pounds and a-half, including knapsack and straps. We wore upon the road light cloth coats and waistcoats, and linen dusters or blouses, and light cassimere pantaloons. We each carried a strong, hooked hickory-stick, and it will be found best to do so. We usually wore broad-brimmed, pliable felt hats of the best quality; they were excellent both in sun and rain. We also had light linen caps.

For rainy weather a cape of the best black oiled silk, 22 inches long before, and 16 inches behind, with a low collar, and buttoning in front, weighing half-a-pound, and folding so small that it could be carried in a coat pocket—a most capital and serviceable article. With a loop and a tape it may be gathered tight at the waist under the knapsack, so as not to be lifted by the wind.

A flask for drink is hardly worth its carriage in England. A man every way in health should be able to walk a dozen miles or more without wanting to drink. Where good water is constantly to be had, it is refreshing to taste it very frequently, and there are no ill effects to be apprehended from doing so. You will perspire more freely, and I think stand the heat better; but cold water will not quench thirst, except momentarily; on the contrary, I believe it increases it. Malt liquors and spirituous liquors have different effects upon different individuals. Both are disagreeable to me. Most English pedestrians drink very freely of malt liquors, and find them very wholesome. On the Continent I would carry a flask for light wine, such as every peasant has to his dinner. Its cost is trifling, and there is nothing in the world which will quench thirst like it, except, perhaps, tea. It is not very palatable at first, but exceedingly refreshing, and I believe every way healthful. It has no intoxicating, and very slight stimulating, qualities. I think it would be a great moral blessing, and have an excellent effect on the public health, if it could be produced cheaply, and used as freely as tea and coffee now are in the United States.

Here I will give you “a secret,” which may, some time, be of use to you. When you feel very much jaded with a long walk, and hardly able to go any further, if you can swallow a cup of tea and a bit of toast or biscuit, and pour a wine-glass of whiskey into your shoes, keeping yourself warm during the halt, you will find yourself good for another hour or two of hard tramping.

Routes and Distances.—Unless you are considerably familiar with the language and history of a Continental nation, I would advise you to spend most of your time in England. It is better to study thoroughly the character of one people, and remain so long, if possible, in their country, that you may feel as if you had lived in it, and made yourself a part of it, than to run superficially over a dozen. It is, however, much cheaper, and in many respects more agreeable, to walk in Germany than in England; and a true American, mingling with the peasant people, can hardly fail to do them good, and have his own heart enlightened and expanded by their spirit longing for liberty and universal affection for his country. It is of walking in England, however, that I wish now especially to speak.

Your route should be determined by your tastes and objects. If they are as general as ours, and you design to employ the same time in England that we did, I could advise but very slight variation from our route.

With a week’s more time, you should see more of North Wales, (though, in general, mountain and lake country is not England, and you can get what tourists go to those districts for better nearer home;) extend your walk into Devonshire, and keep along the south coast to Portsmouth. After visiting the Isle of Wight, the old road to London, running, I believe, through Guildford, is said to be much pleasanter than the more direct way we came. After spending some weeks in and about London, follow up the Thames by Henley, and as near the south bank as you can, to Oxford—then by Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick, and Kenilworth, to Birmingham; thence, according to your interest, through the manufacturing districts, and by Chatsworth and the Derbyshire moors to York; thence by Fountain’s Abbey, through the curious hill-country of West Yorkshire and Lancashire, into Westmoreland; thence either north to Scotland, or by Liverpool to Ireland, crossing afterwards to Scotland from Belfast. Guide-books can be obtained, I believe, of Mr. Putnam, in New York, by the aid of which and a good map, you may, before you leave home, judge how much time you will want to spend in examining various objects of interest, and ascertain distances, &c. You can thus plot off your route and calculate the time at which you will arrive at any particular point. Guide-books are very expensive and heavy, and this is their principal use; further, you are liable to pass through a town and neglect to see something for which it is peculiarly distinguished, without you have something to remind you of it.

We travelled at first at the rate of one hundred miles in six days, at last at the rate of about two hundred; sometimes going forty miles, and ordinarily thirty, in a day. We usually did thirty miles in eleven hours, one of which might be spent in nooning under a hedge or in a wayside inn, and about one mile an hour lost in loitering; looking at things on the wayside or talking to people that we met, our actual pace was just about four miles an hour.

You can start with twelve miles in a day, and calculate to average twenty-five after the first fortnight.

If you can make any thing like a harmonious noise upon any instrument, for that purpose I would advise you to strap it on. You will understand its value by reading the life of Goldsmith. It will make you welcome in many a peasant circle, where you might otherwise have been only a damper upon all naturalness and geniality.

APPENDIX D.

Principles of the Mark System, framed to mix persuasion with punishment, and make their effect improving, yet their operation severe. By Captain Machonochie, R. N., K. H., late superintendent of the British penal settlement at Norfolk Island.

I must add, that in this condensed statement of the principles of his system, Captain Machonochie has made no allusion to a very important part of it—the anti-criminal part, if I may so express it. He proposes, as a preventive measure, the establishment of Industrial Schools, to which the children of the poorer classes or vagrants should be encouraged to come and give their cheerful and active labour, by receiving marks exchangeable for a good, substantial, but coarse, meal in the middle of the day, and some other food to carry home at night. The employments to be as much as possible rural and agricultural, and in every case at least laborious, fitting those subjected to them to face hard work in after life.

THE END.