30 Sweden. 



British farmer. A young working farmer, however, coming over here 

 with a small capital, and really setting his mind to acquire a know- 

 ledge of the language and the habits of the people, which he could do 

 in a twelvemonth by living for that time on a farm where the owner 

 spoke English (and there are many such places where he could live 

 very cheaply), would soon find an opening. 



Happily, however, no men are more averse to leaving England 

 than the farmers, and no wonder at it. I spent my early days much 

 among them, and since then I have mixed much with farmers 

 of other nations ; but in no other country under the sun have I 

 found a class of men who lead such truly happy lives as the farmers 

 of England. No matter whatever new country he may seek, the 

 Britishfarmer is sure to leave behind him home comforts which he can 

 never replace abroad. Whatever faults he may find with Old England, 

 and however much he may grumble at her taxes, her institutions, 

 and the imaginary ruin which too often stares him in the face, he loves 

 her at heart perhaps better than any other of her sons. He is as it 

 were peculiarly a part and parcel of her soil, and transplanting him 

 to a foreign land is like lopping a branch off the old British oak. 

 His native village church, in which so many quiet Sabbath morn- 

 ings have been spent the innocent occupations of his early rural 

 life the neat homestead, the well-tilled fields, the cattle which it 

 was his just pride to gaze upon, the social meetings at the market 

 or the covert side will haunt his memory to the last, and every one 

 of these must be relinquished the moment he turns his back upon 

 Old England. The adventurer or man of business leaves his native 

 home with scarce a sigh of regret, and, in the thrill of adventure 

 or the all-engrossing pursuit of money-making, will soon forget the 

 land of his birth, and, like a true citizen of the world, accommodate 

 himself at once to the manners and customs of the strangers among 

 whom he is thrown ; but not so the farmer. 



Still, there must be many young farmers in our overstocked 

 country who, through necessity (not, we will trust, through choice), 

 yearly leave the British shores to seek their fortune in foreign climes, 

 and to such men I will fairly say, that of all countries in Europe, 



