utter discomfiture of plain Mr. Smith, the puritan, a man of the highest intelligence, and a champion in their own ranks. He is entitled to add those high-sounding initials M. P. to the end of his name. He is numbered among his country's grave legislators, and finds himself therein only a single grade below those whom Heaven made great at their very birth.

There is yet another rank of kings below the gentry, and that, in some sense, the most important of all. These are the farmers. Their wealth and position, their character and influence, enter largely into any complete survey of country life in England. In the best agricultural sections of the land they take very decided precedence of the merchantmen of the cities. The seller of purple and fine linen looks with envy on the farmer, as occupying a higher and more independent position among his countrymen. We have seen a handsome young fellow of this description, well educated, of good character, good property, and good social position, going with his fine phaeton and pair to make suit to a neighboring farmer's daughter, but my proud lady said him nay, preferring to wait for the plainer, but more substantial young farmer, who, she hoped, would come on a subsequent day. The father of the damsel was a gray-headed man of very plain appearance and dress, simple and unassuming in his manners, living in a quiet village in a section of the country from which many of the pilgrim fathers came, and which gave its name to one of the most charming townships of Massachusetts. She was very beautiful and highly accomplished, and would bring, in due time, to the young farmer of whom she dreamed, although she had never yet seen him, a dower of twenty thousand pounds, provided the paternal estate was shared equally by herself, her only sister, and their three brothers.

We mention this, not as a case to be found occasionally in the father-land, but as a fair sample of what may be met with every day in most parts of England. It may be taken as an illustration of the wealth and social position of the English farmer. This man was probably richer than most of his neighbors. Yet we suppose it would have been easy to find many richer than he. In another county, and not far from the house in which the great John Hampden once lived, there were farmers

at that time of whom common report said that they would leave to their daughters a hundred thousand pounds apiece.

It must be long before the farmers in the United States can hope to equal the English farmers in wealth; but there appears no good reason why they should not even surpass them in all which constitutes the chief value of agricultural pursuits, as they do, unquestionably, excel them already in intelligence, and public spirit, and true enlargement of heart.

Of the picturesque beauty of English farms it is hardly possible to speak in terms too glowing. At a distance they present the appearance of innumerable parks. As you roam over a particular farm you are struck with the number, size, and variety of the trees. The elm, some specimens of which we nurse and guard with so much care on our Common, grows in its native soil to a surprising magnitude, and is covered with a foliage of exceeding luxuriance. The walnut, whose fruit we import, is also a tree of immense size. We remember one in a brickyard at Bury St. Edmunds, amid the foliage of which a large house might be entirely hid in leafy June. This partic ular tree is said to be one of the largest trees in Europe. The magnificent horse-chestnut is found everywhere, of wide-spread and towering dimensions. When you first see it in full foliage, laden to the uppermost twig with its rich conical clusters of blossom, you are filled with astonishment and admiration. There is also a species of poplar which we do not remember to have met with elsewhere, equalling the chestnut in size and beauty of form, with stately trunk, numerous slender and graceful branches, and such a superabundance of brilliant foliage that you might imagine it had borrowed of its neighbors. for a special occasion. A single tree of this description is not unfrequently the principal feature in a landscape-picture, worthy of the pencil of old Crome himself. Of the English oak — princeps inter nobiles- we shall say nothing, because everybody is familiar with it, except that in size, beauty, and venerable appearance, it is all that you ever imagined it to be.

The trees on an English farm are of so much value for timber that a lease is never executed without the insertion of a very particular clause in relation to them. But they are cultivated almost as much for ornament and shade, and those most

valuable for timber are seldom cut down in such a way as to impair perceptibly the pictorial character of a farm.

Doubtless a country whose entire surface exhibits only one acre in eight of waste land, and where the mildness and moisture of the climate secure a perennial greenness of the richest shade, and the almost universal absence of stones compels the use of the beautiful hawthorne hedge for a fence, must be admitted to possess peculiar natural advantages for agricultural pursuits. It is equally true that the exceeding beauty of an English farm is owing quite as much to what is entirely within the reach of the farmers of New England, to wit, scientific and high cultivation. One of the finest wheat-fields we ever saw in England had been reclaimed only a short time before from an unsightly and worthless bog, at an expense of ten pounds per acre, by carting chalk from another part of the farm; and the farmer who had made this outlay, though only a tenant, assured us that he should get back the entire amount, with ample interest, before the termination of his lease.

The division of labor whether in town or country, in the shop or on the farm is carried to an extent which we do not easily conceive of. One man does one thing, and he never thinks of doing any other thing, almost as within the bounds of possibility, or, at least, of propriety. It would be an infringement of the honor of his craft to ask him. Even a chimneysweep would think it an insult to his professional dignity to be asked to rake hay. And any other than a trained agricultural laborer would be regarded and treated as an intruder by the laborers themselves. His awkwardness in handling the rake or the hoe would speedily betray him, and so far from receiving any assistance in the way of instruction, he would be so unmercifully set upon and ridiculed by men, women, and boys, that he would be glad to make his escape, and would not be in a hurry to try his hand again at any work out of his own particular line of things. We have spoken of women among farm laborers; they are employed in the lighter agricultural processes in many parts of England. We have seen them wheeling stones in a barrow, but such a case is of very rare occurrence. Hoeing up weeds among the wheat is a common employment for them in some localities. Our readers are probably familiar

The ground is

with the English method of sowing wheat. thrown up into round, broad ridges, straight, even, and smooth, as the flower-beds in a garden. On these the wheat is sowed in drills, as straight as a line, and between the drills, when the wheat is two or three inches high, all the weeds are carefully cut up with a long narrow hoe. It is no unpleasant spectacle to see ten or fifteen women and boys stretched out in a line, side by side, and moving over a magnificent wheat-field in this comparatively light work on a balmy spring day, when the larks are singing most deliciously over their heads, and the thrush and blackbird are pouring out their varied and rich notes all around.

The principle of which we have spoken the division of labor is applied to the different processes of agriculture. That man whom you see sauntering listlessly about, or sitting under a hedge knitting coarse gray stockings, not far from a large flock of sheep, is the shepherd, whose sole business it is to look after the sheep. On the broad open pasture lands of Salisbury Plain we have frequently noticed flocks which could not have contained less than a thousand animals, so large and plump as to remind one of the fine, juicy legs of mutton so common on every English dinner-table. We regret to say, that while shepherds on Salisbury Plain are as numerous as ever, a "Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," is still not oftener found than in the days of Hannah More. The man who takes care of the horses, which take the place of oxen in English farming, is quite as much confined to that one thing; and the time and pains bestowed every day on their horses, in stabling, grooming, and feeding, would hardly be believed among ourselves, where horses of every description are shamefully neglected, greatly to the loss of their owners, beyond a question.

You will soon perceive that English farming exhibits precisely the results which might be expected from the combined influence of the division of labor and the absence of haste one man doing one thing, and having ample time to do that one thing well. The whole appearance of an English farm is exceedingly beautiful; a thousand acres frequently without one square yard of barrenness. No rough borders, overgrown with weeds; no unsightly corners, abandoned to scraggy bushes,

and stones, and snakes. All is even, smooth, and productive, like the lawn and flower-beds of a gentleman's garden.

The dwelling-house of the English farmer is in good keeping with the picture we have drawn. Not unfrequently it stands embowered among thick shading trees at a short distance from the road, like a little palace, with sweet flower-garden, and verdant lawn, and hawthorne enclosure. It is handsomely and luxuriously furnished, with elegant editions of the choicest English literature on the centre-table of the drawing-room. The farmer's wife is a lady, of genuine refinement and intelligence, and has always a sufficient number of servants to save her from all danger, whether to her health or personal charms, from household cares and toils. At the same time, she is thoroughly domestic in her habits, understands perfectly whatever belongs to good management in a farm-house, keeping all things trim and thrifty about her, and shows, oftentimes, an interest in matters out of doors, and an acquaintance with them, which would fill most American ladies with unfeigned astonishment. The sons continue in their father's line of things, or go to college, and enter the various professions. The daughters are well educated and accomplished, full of health and broad common sense, and form, as we have seen, good matrimonial alliances.

The English farmers are luxurious livers where the prevailing style of living is much more simple than with us; and they exercise a noble hospitality. As their dwellings are amid the verdant scenery and singing-birds of the country, usually standing alone on their pleasant farms, it is a rich treat to get away from the noise and dust of a crowded English town to the delightful freshness and repose of an English farm-house. One such we especially remember, where the farmer was a portly, handsome man of sixty, his wife was an elegant woman, fresh and fair and plump at fifty, as English women are apt to be, and needed not the presence of her beautiful daughters to convince you that she must have been exceedingly attractive at an earlier period. The children - partly hers and partly those of a former wife-were more than a dozen. Most of them were married and away. A reunion of that household was a beautiful picture. The long table, so amply furnished, with sire and mistress presiding at either end, and the extended sides filled