90 



FOREIGN NOTICES. 



show occupied tour days. On Tuesday, was the 

 trial of implements j on Wednesday, was the ex- 

 hibition of implements and machinery ; on Thurs- 

 day, the. exhibition of cattle and implements; anil 

 on Friday, the public sale. Hall" a crown was 

 required for admission to the yards, from Wednes- 

 day to Thursday noon, and after that a shilling; 

 and the sum received for admission, during those 

 days, was £3,000, or $15,000. 



I am sorry to tell S that there were no 



dogs shown for exhibition or premium, though 

 many of the English are as proud of their dog as 

 of their children. They are not considered as 

 agricultural stock, though they are sometimes 

 used in carts for draught. Two things I have 

 wished very much to do since I have been in Eng- 

 land ; one was to be able to send S a little 



pony and pony carriage, of which I have seen 

 some of the prettiest establishments that can be 

 imagined, fitted to carry two people; and, indeed, 

 a great many of the nobility have them in their 

 places in the country, and are often seen driving 



them in Hyde Park ; another, is to send E an 



Alderney cow, looking like a Gazelle, giving the 

 richest cream, and making eight or ten pounds of 

 the most delicious butter a week, and just fit to 

 make a pet of round the house. I should like to 



add to this a donkey for N &, G ; for at 



Hyde Park corner, and at all the principal places 

 of rural resort in the neighborhood of London, you 

 find half a dozen, and sometimes twenty or thirty 

 of these animals, standing with side-saddles and 

 chairs on their backs, for ladies and children to 

 ride upon, — a mile for three pence, and with per- 

 fect safety. Their knitting-needle gait is always 

 amusing, and sometimes swift. * * * * 



The incomes of many noblemen and gentlemen 



here are indeed enormous. Earl is stated to 



have an annual income of upwards of £100,000 



sterling. The Duke of has actually spent 



more than £40,000 in draining and irrigating his 

 property; so you may infer from that, what pos- 

 sibly may be his possessions. That expenditure is 



not even fell by him. And Earl is estimated 



at least at £150,000 sterling per year. The ac- 

 cumulation of property here is in some cases 

 amazing, and entirely beyond my arithmetic. 



Now let me state some other facts. Earl 



has at least 80 house servants. The Duke of 



has 80 horses in his stables — say nothing 



of his farm horses, 40 of which are hunters, be- 

 sides a very large number of race horses at other 

 stables. Lord Yarborongh has an indefinite num- 

 ber of hunters, &c.; and what amused me very 

 much, was a pack of fox-hounds of forty couples. 

 Lord Worsley, his son, kindly wished me to stay 

 till Saturday, to go out on a fox-chase. Good 

 heavens, only think of that. What was to become 

 of my wive's old husband, — mounted on a fleet 

 hunter, leaping hedge and ditch, with a pack of 

 yelping hounds at his heels, — the huntsman's horn 

 making the woods ring again, after a poor trem- 

 bling fox, and bringing home the tail in his hat in 



iriimiph; that is, if his neck were not broken at 

 the first leap. The very idea electrified me, and 

 my blood still boils at the thought. It was the 

 custom at this place for his lordship (and his 

 guests were always invited to accompany him,) 

 to visit the stables where the hunting and riding 

 horses were kept, at nine in the evening, pre- 

 cisely. They were reached by a covered passage- 

 way from the house. The stables presented all 

 the neatness of a house parlor; and the grooms, 

 more than a dozen in number, were all drawn up 

 in line, to receive the company. His lordship 

 examined every stall, and looked at every horse, 

 litis regulation was certainly conducive to the 

 Faithful management of this department of the 

 household ; anil it had another indirect advantage 

 of taking tin' gentlemen away from the table, 

 where, at that hour, they had sat long enough. 



The Duke of Portland has drained, and by 

 turning the course of a river, now irrigates at his 

 pleasure between three and four hundred acres of 

 land, covered, by this means, with the richest 

 vegetation, and yielding three crops per year. 

 Lord Yarborough has more than 60,000 acres of 

 land in his plantation. He has one hundred and 

 fifty tenant farmers ; he has six hundred tenants 

 in all ; and you can ride upon his land in a direct 

 line thirty miles, — so his steward told me. What 

 an immense property! He and his father have 

 planted more than thirteen mit/ions of trees of va- 

 rious descriptions. One of his tenants told me, 

 that in one year he (the tenant.) grew eighteen 

 thousand bushels of wheat ; and I saw a great 

 many stacks of grain, which were estimated to 

 contain one hundred quarters of grain, — that is, 

 800 bushels. Colman's European Life and Man- 

 ners. 



The Swan. — The swan is, beyond all question, 

 the bird to place, as a finishing stroke of art, on 

 the smooth lake which expands before our man- 

 sions. It is perfectly needless, however delightful, 

 to quote Milton and others, lauding the arched 

 neck, the white wings, the oary feet, and so on. 

 Its superb beauty is undeniable and acknowledged; 

 and, to borrow an apt metaphor, we do not wish 

 in these essays to thresh straw that has been 

 thrice threshed before, to repeat how lovely the 

 swan is on the silver lake, floating " double swan 

 and shadow;" for we might thus run scissors in 

 hand, through the whole corpus poet arum. Our 

 object, in short, is simply to point out the best 

 mode of managing them and keeping them. 



Any one who lives on the banks of a moderately 

 sized stream, and has a swan-right on that stream, 

 will probably also have the means of keeping a 

 keeper who will save him every trouble. But 

 there are a great many people, occupiers of large 

 farm houses, villas, or country mansions, persons 

 perhaps of considerable wealth, who have noman- 

 orial rights, no ancient swan-mark belonging to 

 their estate, but who still would willingly pay for 

 the maintenance of a pair of swans and their annu» 



