234 Kew Publications. [April, 



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 anything 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 perfec- 

 tion to which their cultivation has been carried, yet there are not 

 a few places where the indications of neglect and indolence and 

 unskillfulness 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 num- 

 bers. I shall, however, most cheerfully admit that English farm- 

 ing, taken as a whole, is characterized by a neatness, exactness, 

 thoroughness seldom seen in my own country. 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 astonish him by the sub- 

 stantial and permanent character of their structure. The rail- 

 ways, likewise, with deep excavations, their bridges of solid ma- 

 sonry, 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, exhibiting 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 several 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 com- 

 merce with their beautiful 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 bril- 

 liant, and even a gay passage under the bed of the stream, where 

 the tides of the ocean daily roll their waves, and the might}'' 

 barks of commerce and war float in all their majesty and pride 

 over his head, exhibiting the perfection of engineering, and a 

 strength of construction and finish, which leaves not a doubt of 

 its security and endurance — he perceives an expense of labor, 

 which disdains all the the limited calculations of a young and 



