therefore, too commonly, a look of hurry and abstraction. Wherever he happens to be, he is on the point of going somewhere else; at the moment he is talking on one subject, his mind is wandering to another; and while paying a friendly visit, is calculating how he shall economize time so as to pay the other visits allotted to the morning. An immense metropolis like London, is calculated to make men selfish and uninteresting. In their casual and transient meetings, they can but deal briefly in commonplaces. They present but the cold superficies of character-its rich and genial qualities have no time to be warmed into a flow

But it is in the country that the Englishman gives scope to his natural feelings. He breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities and negative civilities of town; throws off his habits of shy reserve, and becomes joyous and free-hearted. He contrives to draw around him all the conveniences and elegancies of polite life, and to banish its restraints. His country seat abounds with every requisite, either for

studious retirement, tasteful gratification, or rural exercise. Books, paintings, music, horses, dogs, and sporting implements of all kinds, are at hand. He puts no constraint, either upon his guests or himself, but in the true spirit of hospitality, provides the means of enjoyment, and leaves every one to partake according to his inclination.

The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is termed landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied nature intently, and discover an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms, which, in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life.

They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.

Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up

rich piles of foliage. The solemn pomp of groves, and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the covert; or the pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing. The brook, taught to wind in the most natural meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake-the sequestered pool, reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its bosom, the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; while some rustic temple, or statue of nymph, grown green and dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.

These are a few of the features of park scenery, which, indeed, is too well known to need description. But what most delights me, is the creative talent with which the English decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pictures in his

mind the future landscape. The steril spot grows into loveliness under his hand; and yet the operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious pruning of others; the delicate distribution of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of water-all these are managed with a nice tact, a pervading, yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up a favourite picture.

The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very labourer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass plot before the door, the little flower bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice; the pot

of flowers in the window; the holly providently planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and throw in a look of green summer to cheer the fireside :-all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant.

The proneness to rural life among the higher classes of the English, has had a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in some countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, and pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the country. These hardy exercises also produce a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and simplicity of manners, which not even the follies and dissipa