Whether or not we admit this religious inspiration, mixed with some earthly alloy, we cannot fail to look upon these old structures with reverence.

Less ancient than these, yet dating back several centuries, are the old country-houses, scattered through every part of the kingdom. William Howitt speaks of them in this affectionate

way:

"How delightful it is to go through those hereditary abodes of ancient and distinguished families, and to see, in the very construction of them, images of the past times, and their modes of existence! Here, you pass through ample courts, amid rambling and extensive offices that once were necessary to the jolly establishment of the age,-for hounds, horses, hawks, and all their attendants and dependencies. Here you come into vast kitchens, with fire-places at which three or four oxen might be roasted at once, with mantelpieces wide as the arch of a bridge, and chimneys as large as the steeple of a country church. Then you advance into great halls, where scores of rude revelers have feasted in returning from battle or the chase, in the days of feudal running and riding, of foraging and pilgrimages, of hard knocks and hard lying; ere tea and coffee had supplanted beef and ale at breakfast; ere books had charmed away spears and targets. Then, again, you advance into tapestried chambers, on whose walls mythological or scriptural histories, wrought by the fingers of high-born dames, at once impress you with a sense of very still, and leisurely, and woodland times, when Crocksford's and Almack's were not; nor the active spirit of civilization had raised up weavers and spinners by thousands on thousands. And now you come to the very closets and bowers of the ladies themselves,--scenes of worn and faded splendor, but showing enough of their original state to mark their wide difference from the silken boudoirs and luxurious dormitories of the fair dames of this age. Then there is the antique chapel, and the library; the one having in most cases been deserted by its ancient faith, the other still bearing testimony to the range of reading of our old squires and nobles, since reading became a part of their education, in a few grim folios,--a Bible, a Gwillim's Heraldry, one or two

of our Chroniclers, and a few Latin classics or Fathers, for the enjoyment of the chaplain."*

He goes on to speak of the hall containing the armor, with its swords, helmets, coats of mail, ponderous boots, buff coats, huge spurs, crosses, and amulets. One suit of armor figured, he surmises, in the battles of Cressy and Poictiers; another in the wars of the Roses, and in the tourney of the Field of Cloth of Gold; and still another was scarred and broken on the ramparts of Ascalon and Jerusalem. And if these relics do not sufficiently bring up the past, we can step into the picture gallery beyond, and gaze upon the men who wore these habiliments, and on the fair dames who inspired half their courage.

Some of these old houses remain essentially as they were built the antique furniture, the smoke-begrimed paintings, the family escutcheons, the rude utensils, the faded tapestry within; and without, the millennial oaks, and the geometrical gardens with their yews, topiary trees, and sun-dials. Many others have been thoroughly modernized, making them, indeed, more elegant and comfortable as family residences, but destroying their historic charm. Others, again, have been repaired and altered in part; the additions successively made being built and furnished in the style of their own age; and so the whole has become a rich mosaic for antiquarian study.

The country life of England has many poetical associations. Here, as often elsewhere, history and poetry so mingle as hardly to be distinguished. Poetry loves cloud-land, and the early history of Britain lies largely in that realm. And when it is spread out in the open light of fact and certainty, English bards have delighted to invest it with a poetical interest. The mere names of British mountains, lakes, and rivers, call up deeds of bravery and romance. Her castles and halls are poems. Every aspect of nature has been sung in strains with which all who speak the English tongue are familiar. Irving's testimony here is most true:

I, 394.

"The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms, but the British poets have lived and reveled with her; they have wooed her in her most secret haunts; they have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground, a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality."

Cowley's Address to the Swallow, Parnell's Hermit, Thompson's Seasons, Goldsmith's Deserted Village, Cowper's Task ;the pages of Burns, Bloomfield, Wordsworth, Scott, and Coleridge, give us abundant pictures of rural scenes or allusions to the country in some of its numberless aspects. The very oaks of Britain, her hollies, yews, hawthorns, heaths, primroses, daisies, and harebells, grow and blossom in an atmosphere of poetry. The nightingale, cuckoo, lark, robin, linnet, sparrow, and thrush, warble in all the groves, and by all the streams of English literature. Nor, let it be forgotten, that the scene of that famous epic, Cock Robin, was laid in the country, and that here transpired the tragical history of Little Red Riding Hood. Whether Old Mother Hubbard lived in the country is not so clear, only it would seem that the poverty of her cupboard can be best explained by her supposed distance from a town market!

In enumerating the aspects of life in the country, mention must be made of the climate. So much abuse has been heaped upon the English climate, by travelers from other countries, that it would seem as though no good thing could be affirmed of it.

"The night and day are too nearly of a color," says one. "You need a fire on the hearth every day of the year," adds another. "No fruit ripens there but a baked apple," chimes in a third. And all cry out against the sombre, sunless skies, the fog, the everlasting drizzle.

Yet something may be put down in its favor. It is milder by several degrees than would be inferred from its latitude. Compared with that of our own Northern States, or of Northern Europe, it is soft and equable.-a circumstance not so remarkable, perhaps, when we consider its insular position, and

the influence of the Gulf Stream flowing along its western shores.

The climate is quite humid, and it is to this and the absence of extreme cold that England owes that rich and almost perennial greenness of her vegetation which attracts the admiration of all foreigners. Hawthorne, in his "Old Home," makes frequent mention of this. He finds in the hedges a denser foliage and a richer greenness than in ours. The stonewalls by the roadside, which with us are bare and unsympa thetic, are there covered with vines, mosses, and lichens. He is greatly charmed with the trunks of the old trees. He says:

"The parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage; a verdant mossiness coats it all over, so that it looks almost as green as the leaves; and often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistletoe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting themselves by the old tree's abundant strength. No bitter wind nips these tender little sympathies; no hot sun burns the life out of them; and therefore they outlast the longevity of the oak; and, if the woodman permitted, would bury it in a green grave when all is over."*

Of his visit to a country church-yard, near Leamington, he writes:

"The English climate is very unfavorable to the endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmosphere, so soon do the drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the surface of marble or free stone. Sculptured edges lose their sharpness in a year or two; yellow lichens overspread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is fresh upon some survivor's heart. * And yet, this same ungenial climate, hostile as it generally is to the long remembrance of departed people, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of the letters, and has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower sprinkles the flat stone again, and replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky; and by and by, in a year, or two years, or many years, behold the complete inscriptionHere Fyeth the Body-and all the rest of the tender falsehood-beautifully embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on the

*

marble slab! It becomes more legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. It outlives the grief of friends. * * Perhaps the proverbial phrase, 'keep his memory green,' may have had its origin in the natural phenomenon here described."*

Other travelers tell us that the prevailing humidity of the atmosphere softens the English landscape, toning down what would be light and brilliant with us; and giving the whole a hazy, dreamy indistinctness, much like that of our Indian

summer.

Charles the First, who was quite fond of rural avocations, claimed for England that its climate "invited men abroad more days in the year, and more hours in the day, than that of any other country." In Southern Europe, the heat of summer is too intense for comfort, and in winter the weather is too changeable. In England, while there is less clearness and brilliancy in the sky, and less buoyancy in the atmosphere, the climate is comparatively temperate and uniform. At least, it does not enervate by its heat, nor depopulate by its malaria, nor prevent out-door labors and enjoyments by its excessive and long continued cold. Wheat is sown from October to April; the farmer's plow and the gardener's spade can be plied nearly every month of the year, and the pleasure seeker can be always abroad. The winter, less severe than ours, is also shorter. Its rigor is hardly felt until the middle of December, and in February the signs of spring appear.

Such a climate has no unimportant connection with the national health and happiness. It contributes to the vigor and robustness of the inhabitants, and not a little to their personal beauty. It is mild enough to attract men abroad, yet severe enough to brace their nerves, and render them active and strong. Horsemanship, whether as a genteel accomplishment, or for racing, hunting, traveling, Englishmen particularly like. When one gets worn down by dyspepsia, or hard study, or care, he takes to the saddle rather than to the doctor. Happily does Emerson declare of the English, that, “like the Arabs, they think the days spent in the chase are not counted * p. 65.