MEMOIR. . Xlv 



gaged in a series of visits^ to. the most ' extensive and 

 remarkable of English country sestts, • Vhere he Was an 

 hpnored guest. > The delight of the position was -beyond 

 words to' a man of his peculiar character and habits. 

 He saw on "every hand 'the perfection of elegant rural life, 

 whiph was his ideal of life. He saw the boundless parks, 

 the cultivated .landscape, tlie tropics imprisoned in glass ; 

 he saw spacious Itahan villas, more Italiafi' than in Italy ; 

 every various triumph of park, garden, and country- 

 house. But with these, also, he met in the pleasantest 

 way much fine English society, which was his' ideal of 

 society. There was nothing wanting to gratify his fine 

 ahd fastidious tasjte ; biit the passage already qubted from 

 his letter at Warwick Castle shows how firmly his faith 

 was set upon his native land, while his private letters are 

 full of affectionate longing to return. It is easy to .figure 

 him moving with courtly grace -through the robms of 

 palaces, gentle, respectful, low in tbne, never exaggerating, 

 welcome to lord and lady for his good sense, his practical 

 knowledge, his exact detail ; pleading the English man and 

 woman by his Enghsh sympathies, and interesting them by 

 his manly and genuine, not boasting", assertions of Ameri- 

 can genius and success. . Lc/oking at the picture, one re^ 

 members again tha,t earlier ' one of the boy coining home 

 from Montgomery Academy, in Orange County, and intro- 

 duced at the wealthy neighbor's to the Enghsh gentlemain. 

 The. instinct that remembered so slight an event sec"ured 

 his appreciation of aH that England offered. No Ameri- 

 can ever "visited England witii a mind more in tune with 

 all 'that is nobly characteristic of her. ; He remarked, upon 

 his, return, that he'had been much impressed by the quiet, 

 religious life and habits . which he found in many great 

 ■Rno-liiali bonsp.s It 18 not a Tioint of EnaQish life -often 



