18 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND., 



stirring in the bread with pepper and salt, soon made a com 

 fortable hot breakfast, greatly to the admiration of our host 

 and the carrier. 



Fine English weather to-day : gleams of warm red sun 

 shine alternating with the slightest possible showers of rain. 

 The country beautiful ; the road running through a rich, well- 

 watered vale, with the same high, steep hills as yesterday, 

 but now regularly planted with wood to the summits. Before 

 Us, they fall back, one over another, till they become blue 

 under the thick mists that curl about the tops of the most 

 distant, and then, again, blush red before the sun, as the wind 

 sometimes lifts this veil. 



Seeing a singular ruin a little distance from the road, we 

 went to visit it. It had been a castle, with a church or large 

 Gothic chapel attached. Different parts of it, having received 

 more modern, yet ruinously decayed, timber and noggirf 

 additions, were occupied as sheep-stables, barn, granary, and 

 workshop. A moat remained about it, enclosing also a court 

 yard ; and on the opposite side of this from the main structure, 

 was a high, four-gabled timber-house, with a gateway through 

 it, entered across the moat by a bridge, formerly a draw 

 bridge, and with some remains of a portcullis. The wood 

 work of the gables, and much of the timber, the heavy 

 brackets and the doorways, were covered with quaint carvings. 



At noon we stopped at a superannuated old stage-coaching 

 house, going at once to the kitchen, which was a very large 

 room with heavy beams in the ceiling, from which depended 

 flitches of bacon ; a stone floor, a number of oak benches and 

 tables, rows of pewter-mugs hanging about the walls, and a 

 great wide fireplace and chimney. A stout, driving landlady 

 received our orders ; a piece of meat was set to roasting be 

 fore the fire on the old turnspit, and we were left alone to dry 

 ourselves. Soon we noticed that one end of the spit with the 



