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JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. IV. 



SEPTEMBER, 1849. 



No. 3. 



"When a farmer, who visits the metropolis 

 once a year, stares into the shop windows 

 in Broadway, and stops now and then with 

 an indefinite curiosity at the corners of the 

 streets, the citizens smile, with the satisfac- 

 tion of superior knowledge, at the awkward 

 airs of the countryman in town. 



But how shall we describe the conduct 

 of the true cockneys in the country? How 

 shall we find words to express our horror and 

 pity at the cockneyisms with which they 

 deform the landscape ? How shall we 

 paint, without the aid of Hogarth and 

 Cruiksiianks, the ridiculous insults which 

 they often try to put upon nature and truth 

 in their cottages and country seats ? 



The countryman in town is at least 

 modest. He has, perhaps, a mysterious 

 though mistaken respect for men who live 

 in such prodigiously fine houses, who drive 

 in coaches with liveried servants, and pay 

 thousands for the transfer of little scraps of 

 paper, which they call stocks. 



But the true cit is brazen and imperti- 

 nent in the country. Conscious that his 

 clothes are designed, his hat fabricated, 

 his tilbury built, by the only artists of their 

 several professions on this side of the At- 

 lantic, he pities and despises all who do 

 not bear the outward stamp of the same 



Vol. iv. 10 



coinage. He comes in the country to rus- 

 ticate, (that is, to recruit his purse and his 

 digestion,) very much as he turns his horse 

 out to grass ; as a means of gaining 

 strength sufficient to go back again to the 

 only arena in which it is worth while to 

 exhibit his powers. He wonders how peo- 

 ple can live in the country from choice, 

 and asks a solemn question, now and then, 

 about passing the winter there, as he 

 would about a passage through Behring's 

 Straits, or a pic-nic on the borders of the 

 Dead Sea. 



But this is all very harmless. On their 

 own ground, country folks have the advan- 

 tage of the cockneys. The scale is turned 

 then ; and knowing perfectly well how to 

 mow, cradle, build stone walls and drive 

 oxen, — undeniably useful and substantial 

 kinds of knowledge, — they are scarcely less 

 amused at the fine airs and droll ignorances 

 of the cockney in the country, who does no 1 

 know a bull-rush from a butternut, thai; 

 the citizens are in town at their ignorance 

 of an air of the new opera, or the step of 

 the last redowa. 



But if the cockney visitor is harmless, 

 the cockney resident is not. When the 

 downright citizen retires to the country, — 

 not because he has any taste for it, but be- 



