AN AAIERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



Another very perfect sketch of an English rural landscape, the squire's house, the con 

 versation of the working class, and a bit of information for the farmer worked in, is the 

 following morning stroll, after sleeping at the village Inn: 



" I dressed, and worked my way through the dark, crooked stairs to the kitchen, where 

 on a bright steel fender, I found my shoes dry and polished. I walked through the sin- 

 gle short street of the hamlet. The houses were set closely together, with neat little gar- 

 dens about them. They were of every age; one I noticed marked with the date 1630 — 

 about the time of the first settlement in Connecticut. It was of stone, narrow, with a 

 steep roof covered with very small slates; the windows much wider than high, and filled 

 with little panes of glass set in strips of lead. Except in this, and the materials of which 

 it Avas built, it was not unlike some of the oldest houses that we yet see in our first Puri- 

 tan villages, as Hadley and "VVethersfield. 



" A blackbird hopped before me, but did not whistle, and plenty of little birds were 

 chirping on the walls and rose-bushes, but there was nothing like the singing we have at 

 home of a spring morning. At the other end of the village was another inn — " The Blue 

 Lion," I believe, and a tall hostler opening the stable doors, was dressed just as I wanted 

 to see him — jockey-cap, long striped waiscoat, breeches and boots. 



" As I returned, I saw the farmer that had been at the inn thenight before, and asked him 

 to let me see his cows. He said they were coming down the lane, and if I went with him 

 I should meet them. Passing a group of well-built, neat, low buildings, he said they were 

 the squire's kennels. They were intended for greyhounds, but he had pointers in them 

 now. 



" The squire's! But where's the squire's house?" 



" Yon's the hall," pointing to a distant group of trees, above which a light smoke was 

 rising straight up in the calm air, and a number of large black birds were rapidly rising 

 and falling. " Yon's the hall; ye see the rooks." 



" The rooks! Then those are rooks, are they?" 



"Ay, be they — rooks — do ye not know what rooks be?" 



" Yes, but we don't have them in America." 



"No! not have rooks? They be main good in a pie, sir." 



" We met the cows, of which there were about a dozen, driven by a boy towards the 

 farm-house. Any one of them would have been considered remarkably fine in America. 

 They were large and in good order; with soft, sleek skin, and like every cow I have seen 

 in England, look as if they had just been polished up for exhibition. He could tell nothing 

 of their breed, except of one, a handsome heifer, which he said came partly of Welsh 

 stock. He took me across a field or two to look at a few cows of the squire's. They were 

 finer than any of his, and seemed to be grade short-horns. 



" The cows were driven into hovels, which he called shippens, and fastened at their man- 

 gers by a chain and ring sliding on an upright post (the latest fashion with us,) eight of 

 them in an apartment, standing back to back. Three or four of his daughters came out 

 to milk — very good looking, modest young women, dressed in long, loose, grey, homespun 

 gowns. They had those high wooden tubs to milk in that we see in the old pictures of 

 sentimental milkmaids. It seems constantly like dreaming, to see so many of these things 

 that we have only known before in poetry or painting. 



" The dairy-house and all the farm buildings were of brick, interworked with beams of 

 wood, and thatched. They were very small, the form being only of fifty acres, and the 

 d grain always kept in stacks. The arrangements for saving manure were poo 

 the same as on any tolerably good farm with us — a hollowed yard, with a poo 



