straint, make every great city a vortex of sensual indulgence, and a terrible whirlpool of destruction.

Hence all great cities in commercial countries are essentially similar. You will be far more impressed with the likeness of Liverpool to New York, than with any unlikeness. Even in London, old town-commonwealth of the middle ages though it is, and proudly retaining institutions and usages which were brought, so many centuries ago, from the meadows of Jutland, its every-day life exhibits the immutable law of great cities. scarcely less than New York or Boston.

Not so much, therefore, in the towns and cities of England, will you expect to find the full development of the peculiar characteristics of English institutions, as in the country. The entire structure of society in the rural districts savors strongly, not only of the presence and influence of a hereditary nobility, but of the spirit of the old feudal laws. The very aspect of the country, by the exceeding richness of the soil and beauty of the landscape, will remind you that the broad acres are the envied possession of a multitude of petty kings. The haughty barons of the olden time were scarcely farther removed, in their position and sympathies, from the common people, than are the hereditary lords of modern days. Nor would it be easy to decide whether of the twain more nearly resembled the untamed savages of the forest in their contempt of all useful arts, their love of horses and dogs, and eager devotion to the pleasures of the chase. So wide is the contrast between these men and the poor peasantry who till their fields, in physical and mental characteristics, that the intervention of a very lengthened period and powerfully modifying influences must be admitted. to reduce them to a common tap-root. Neither among the classes which fill up the broad space between these two extremes do you find all that personal independence and true manliness of bearing which a republican would expect to see if the influence of feudalism had passed wholly away.

In a plain talk about the country and country-folk in England we propose mainly the development of one idea, to wit: the high position and commanding influence of the English landholder. You will not be long in discovering the importance which every Englishman attaches to the proprietorship of the

soil.

The idea is indissolubly associated with the largest respectability, and the very highest social position. To be the master of broad acres is the fondest day-dream of the wealthy merchant, the successful lawyer and physician, and even of the poet and man of genius. The proudest Manchester cotton-lord is not fully made until he becomes a land-lord. We remember an Englishman of finished scholarship and elegant accomplishments having completed his education by a protracted residence in Italy — a man of high professional reputation, and an associate of nobility and gentry, who was so much enamored of the idea of possessing a thousand acres of the rich prairie lands and fine oak openings of Wisconsin, that he was strongly tempted to sell his handsome carriages and abandon his profession for a home in the far west of the United States.

This universal passion is the result, in part, of the fact that the proudest men in England - barons, earls, and dukes — are large land-owners. To a very great extent the soil is the property of the gentle-folk and nobles. The park enclosures around innumerable mansions and palaces cover an immense aggregate breadth of territory-that of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, embracing three thousand acres, within a circumference of not less than ten miles. Moreover, the propriety of the occupants of these mansions and palaces extends, in most cases, far beyond their parks, including, not unfrequently, farm after farm of rare extent and beauty. Partly for embellishment, but a great deal more for his own profit, it is the resolute policy of the lordly English landholder to have very few small farms. Two hundred acres in the best agricultural counties is considered quite too small. Six, eight, and ten hundred are preferred, while now and then you may find a single farm half as large as the park of the Duke of Devonshire. This arrangement excludes, of course, all but men of ample means from the occupation of farming. To exclude all but rich men is the very purpose and design of the arrangement. The rich tenant is sure and punctual in the payment of his rent, and, besides, is very likely to make improvements which will be amply remunerative to himself before his long lease expires, and then will remain to add permanently both to the value and beauty of the farm. Thus the Englishman's passion for land is owing, in

part, also to the fact that it is the most valuable of all property, as well as the most beautiful to look at. It yields a large profit both to landlord and tenant. The poor peasant who performs all the labor comes less into the account than would seem to be demanded by a wise self-interest, according to the rule which requires you to feed your cattle well if you expect the largest amount of profit from their work. For the matter of continued dependence and strict subserviency, the thing may be adjusted very admirably as it is. You will by all means seem to be kind to your servant, but you do not want him to wax fat and kick. It was Alexander, not the Russian nobles, who moved for the emancipation of the serfs; and not earlier than the millennium, certainly, will every generation of masters, whether of white or black, be seen to volunteer for diminishing materially the distance which separates them from those who constitute the base of their mountain the pedestal of their power and pride.

It

There is yet another strong reason why every Englishman should covet earnestly to be a landholder. It is the kind of possession which ministers most largely to the pride of a family name a pride especially characteristic of Englishmen. constitutes the only entailed estate. The ample farms of which we have spoken, or the farmers' residences, have oftentimes their particular designations, in imitation of park and castle of the nobility; as "Herringswell Hall," "Wellick," "Mockbeggar's Hall," and "Paradise." These places, moreover, have sometimes a history of their own which helps mightily in the same direction. "Wellick," now the homestead of a very wealthy farmer at Wendour, Bucks, was once the residence of the infamous Judge Jeffries.

The statutes of the realm are singularly in keeping with the universal sentiment we are endeavoring to illustrate. If you are a foreigner in England, you may become the possessor of unbounded riches in personal estate. You may have shares without number in railroads, and mines, and gas companies, and make the government your debtor to any amount, by the purchase of stocks. But you cannot be the owner of one square yard of England's soil without a special act of parliament passed by lords and commons for your particular behoof, with all the

cumbrous complications of English legislation, making you a British citizen, and a sworn and loyal subject of the Queen, at an expense of five hundred pounds sterling. The subject of the naturalization laws was brought under parliamentary discipline about twenty years ago, and a committee of inquiry appointed, of which Lord Brougham was a very active member. The whole matter was thoroughly investigated, and a voluminous report presented, which argued with much earnestness the hardships and injustice suffered by foreign residents under the existing statute, with the citation of cases running back through a long period, and strongly urged an extensive revision for their relief. The upshot was the passing of an act permitting a foreigner to take out "letters of denization," at an expense of thirty pounds sterling, which would confer the right to vote for members of parliament, with other trifling privileges. There the matter rests, so far as we are advised, and there, in all likelihood, it will rest, for at least another hundred years. Being a foreigner, you cannot be a landholder without the costlier parchments. Though the father of your wife should bequeath real estate to you for the benefit of his own daughter and her children, it would not be yours, but, without a special parliamentary interposition, setting aside the statute in your case, it must escheat to the Queen.

In a study of the great social edifice as it exists in the rural districts of the fatherland, our attention will naturally first be directed to the proud capital - the hereditary nobility. Their easy, almost familiar, bearing towards those below them, is no more than an indication of their conscious impregnable supremacy over the broad gulf which lies between. They would be as much amazed at the very slightest manifestation of a disposition to reciprocate the familiarity as Jupiter would to see mortals leaping up to share his throne. A single word or look or gesture would instantly dash all such insolent pretensions to pitiful confusion. The expression of mute wonder and astonishment with which a peasant gazes after a lord as he rolls past in his glittering equipage is natural enough, no doubt, although it may strike you as ludicrous. All earthly dignities, hereditary or acquired, have their claims for deference, and it would be neither good philosophy nor good

manners in us, plain republicans, to be over-critical in scanning the habits of those who have grown up under the shadow of aristocratic institutions. We must, nevertheless, protest our inability to appreciate the eager obsequiousness of middle-class Englishmen toward all above them—whether the superiority be in titles, or riches, or power, or any other thing on which poor human pride can fix a little corner-stone of caste. It can hardly be set down to the score of financial policy, for, if the aristocracy are great customers, they are, by all accounts, very small paymasters. How many times have we been told by tradesmen in different commodities, that there is no class from whom they find it more difficult to collect their bills. If an edict were issued to-day, to prohibit the wearing, to-morrow, in all England, of any coat or hat that had not been paid for, many a proud lord would be seen bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves. And if the same edict forbade the lighting of fires in all houses whose masters had not settled with the coal-merchant within the last two years, a great multitude of the same class could not have even a mutton-chop cooked for their dinner. A country tailor, in the centre of a region abounding in mansions of the aristocracy, most of whose backs were covered with coats from his shop, told us that he had outstanding accounts for clothes supplied to regular customers amounting to four thousand pounds at one time. The same man stated in our hearing that he had spent an entire morning in going to ask the occupant of a lordly house for an instalment of an account which had been running more than two years, and was refused. Yet the same nobleman should alight from his carriage before the door of that tailor the very next day, and his entrance should be the signal for the profoundest bows; and a new order for clothes to the amount of fifty pounds should be received with warmest professions of gratitude. If you expressed surpriseafter his lordship had departed, the tailor would assure you that this was his only hope of ever getting his account settled at all. A coal-merchant, in the same place, expressed great satisfaction. on hearing that a newly-projected railroad was to pass over the land of a baronet in the neighborhood, as he hoped that a portion of the money received in compensation might go to the payment of a bill which for years he had been trying in vain to