ENGLISH CAPITAL. 15 



of lands, to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds ster 

 ling, that is, a million of dollars ; and his estate, now in cul 

 tivation, and under his own personal inspection, and, with the 

 exception of about four hundred acres lying in one body, 

 amounts to six thousand acres. Another gentleman, of high 

 rank, in respect to whom and to whose amiable family I have a 

 constant struggle to restrain the open expression of my grateful 

 sense of their kindness, and who an example here not uncom 

 mon to an extraordinary brilliancy of talent and an accom 

 plished education unites the most active spirit of agricultural 

 improvement, has, though not all in his immediate occupation, 

 yet all under his immediate supervision, a tract of more than 

 twelve thousand acres in a course of systematic cultivation or 

 gradual improvement.* 



The income of a single nobleman, from his coal mines, 

 exceeds one hundred thousand pounds sterling a year ; and I 

 believe this is not the largest of the coal possessions. With such 

 wealth as this, men may make what improvements they please, 

 and attempt what experiments they may deem worth trying ; 

 but should such imaginations ever visit a New England or a 

 United States farmer in his dreams, if JEsop s fable of the frog, 

 who attempted to swell himself to the size of the ox, did not 

 cure him, he might be deemed a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. 

 There are other circumstances in the case which are to be added, 

 and those are the cheapness of iron, the abundance of coal, and 

 the admirable facility and skill with which the former material 

 is wrought. Wood, and especially the soft woods, which are so 

 much wrought among us, are here scarce and dear, and, there 

 fore, seldom used for building purposes ; bricks, and, in many 

 parts of the country, good building stone, of the best quality, 

 are abundant. Most of the cottages which I have seen have 

 brick or stone floors, though many have only hardly-trodden 

 clay and earth ; and the entries of the best houses are generally 



* 1 mention these examples to which, from my own knowledge, I might 

 add many others in thefoj-m I do, for the purpose, by the way, of showing my 

 American friends that agriculture here takes its proper rank among the liberal 

 professions, and that not merely as a recreation, but as a business ; and in all its 

 minute and practical details, it is not deemed incompatible with the highest 

 distinctions of talent, education, and rank, but rather as a pursuit in which they 

 all may most usefully and honorably lend their combined influence. 



