ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 11 



as I have had opportunity of observing it, must be pronounced 

 highly improved. Many parts of the country present an order, 

 exactness, and neatness of cultivation greatly to be admired ; but 

 a sky is seldom without clouds, and there are parts of England 

 where the appearance is any thing but laudable, and where there 

 are few and very equivocal evidences of skill, industry, or thrift. 

 We are often told in America, that England is only a large gar 

 den, in which art, and skill, and labor, have smoothed all the 

 rough places, filled up the hollow places, and brought every thing 

 into a beautiful and systematic harmony, and into the highest 

 degree of productiveness. This is not wholly true ; indeed, 

 though there are many farms to be altogether admired for the 

 degree of perfection to which their cultivation has been carried, 

 yet there are not a few places where the indications of neglect, 

 and indolence, and unskilfulness are but too apparent ; and where, 

 in an obvious contest for victory between the cultivated plant 

 and the weeds, the latter triumph from their superiority both in 

 force and numbers. I shall, however, most cheerfully admit 

 that English farming, taken as a whole, is characterized by a 

 neatness, exactness, thoroughness seldom seen in my own coun 

 try. An American, landing in Liverpool, is at once struck with 

 the amount of labor every where expended ; the docks, and the 

 public buildings, and the lofty and magnificent warehouses aston 

 ish him by the substantial and permanent character of their 

 structure. The railways, likewise, with their deep excavations, 

 their bridges of solid masonry, their splendid viaducts, their 

 immense tunnels, extending in some cases more than two miles 

 in length, and their depots and station-houses, covering acres of 

 ground, with their iron pillars and their roofs, also of iron, exhib 

 iting a sort of tracery or net-work of the strongest as well as 

 most beautiful description, indicate a most profuse expenditure 

 of labor, and are evidently made to endure. He is still more 

 overpowered with amazement when, coming to London, he 

 passes up or down the River Thames, and contemplates the sev 

 eral great bridges, among the most splendid objects which are to 

 be seen in England, two of which are of iron and three of stone, 

 spanning this great thoroughfare of commerce with their beauti 

 ful arches, and made as if, as far as human presumption can go. 

 they would bid defiance to the decay and ravages of time. If 

 to this, he adds (as, indeed, how can he help doing it ?) a visit 

 to the Thames Tunnel, a secure, a dry, a brilliant, and even a 



