1846.] European .Agriculture. 235 



comparatively poor country. He remarks a thoroughness of 

 workmanship which is most admirable, and which indicates a 

 boldness and bravery of enterprise, taking into its calculations not 

 merely years but centuries to come. We have in America a 

 common saying in respect to many things which we undertake, 

 that, " this will do for the present," which does not seem to me 

 to be known in England; and we have a variety of cheap, insub- 

 stantial, slight-o'-hand ways of doing many things, sometimes 

 vulgarly denominated " making shifts to do," which we ascribe 

 to what we call Yankee cleverness, of which certainly no signs 

 are to be seen here. In front of my lodgings, in London, near 

 Charing Cross, is now in the process of erection the Nelson 

 monument, a Corinthian column of stone, more than one hundred 

 and fifty feet in height, surmounted by a statue of that distin- 

 guished man, one of the idols of the British nation, whose name 

 is regarded as the brightest gem in her naval diadem. Now I 

 have been credibly informed that the staging alone, which is a 

 wooden frame, constructed indeed with admirable art, and put to- 

 gether with remarkable skill and strength, cost not less than four 

 thousand pounds sterling, or about twenty thousand dollars. I 

 mention these as examples of the manner in which things are 

 done here; and add, that agricultural operations and improve- 

 ments are in general conducted and finished in the same thorough 

 and substantial manner. 



" The w^alls enclosing many of the noblemen's parks in Eng- 

 land, which comprehend hundreds, and in some cases, thousands 

 of acres, are brick walls, of ten and twelve feet in height, running 

 for miles and miles. The walls round many of the farms in Scot- 

 land, called there " dykes," made of the stone of the country, and 

 laid in lime and capped with flat stones resting vertically upon 

 their edges, are finished pieces of masonry. The improvements 

 at the Duke of Portland's, at Welbeck, Nottinghamshire, in his 

 arrangements for draining and irrigating, at his pleasure, from 

 three to five hundred acres of land, without doubt one of the most 

 skilful and magnificent agricultural improvements ever made, are 

 executed in the most finished and permanent manner; the em- 

 bankments, the channels, the sluices, the dams, the gates, being 

 constructed, in all cases where it would be most useful and proper, 

 of stone or iron. These are only samples of the style in which 

 things are done here. The important operations of embanking and 

 of draining, especially under the new system of draining and sub- 

 soiling, are executed most thoroughly. The farm houses and 

 farm buildings are of brick or stone, and all calculated to endure. 



"I cannot recommend, without considerable qualifications, these 

 expensive ways of doing things to my own countrymen. We 

 have not the means — the capital for accomplishing them; but we 



