Author's Introduction 



landscape, and it is much more agreeable, as well 

 as beneficial, to the feeling human heart when, 

 as in England, we can admire in Nature, almost 

 everywhere idealized by art, not only the palaces 

 and gardens of the great in their pride and mag- 

 nificence, but also, in harmonious whole, the modest 

 dwellings of small farmers laid out with as much 

 charm, and finished as completely. For they 

 also, like the proud castles, peep sweetly out from 

 primeval trees or repose on gay meadows, sur- 

 rounded by blossoming shrubs, and show with- 

 equal clearness, by appropriate form and sober 

 cleanliness, the delicate taste of their owners. 

 The poorest can deck his straw hat with flowers 

 and tend, after his daily work, a well-kept garden, 

 however small, where naught but velvet lawn 

 grows, ** 'midst rose and jessamine odors." 



Must we not be filled with a real sense of 

 shame when we look for a counterpart here and 

 still find the greater part of our country seats 

 whose chief view looks on the manure heap, at 

 whose gates for the greater part of the day swine 

 and geese disport themselves, and whose interiors 

 can show, as an attempt at cleanliness, only com- 

 mon boards strewn with sand? 



I have frequently seen in my Fatherland in 

 North Germany very well-to-do persons, owners 

 of hundreds of thousands of marks, living in such 

 pseudo-castles — mansions, as they called them — 

 as an English farmer no doubt would without 

 hesitation have taken for stables. 



Is such a place the seat of a gentleman? A 



