London to John O 1 Groat's. 



53 



the portly building, which, in the tout ensemble, looked 

 like a New England gentleman of the olden time, in 

 his cocked hat, and hair done up in a queue. These 

 were the houses built "when George the Third was 

 Bong." In these were born the men of the American 

 Revolution. They are the oldest left in the land ; 

 and, like the Revolutionary pensioners, they are fast 

 disappearing. In a few years, it will be said the last 

 of them has been levelled to the ground, just as the 

 paragraph will circulate through the newspapers that 

 the last soldier of the War of Independence is dead. 



Thus, the young generation in America, now reciting 

 in our schools the rudimental facts of the common 

 history of the English-speaking race, will come to the 

 meridian of manhood at a time when the three first 

 generations of American houses shall have been swept 

 away. But, travelling over a space of three centuries' 

 breadth, they will see, in these old English dwellings, 

 where the New World broke off from the Old the 

 houses in which the first settlers of New England were 

 born; the churches and chapels in which they were 

 baptised, and the school-houses in which they learned 

 the alphabet of the great language that is to fill the 

 earth with the speech of man's rights and Grod's glory. 

 One hundred millions, speaking the tongue of Shakes- 

 peare and Milton on the American continent, and as 



