think the English are a people one may
perhaps esteem or admire, but they do not
draw the affections of strangers, neither in
their country nor out of it.''

The general appearance of the southern
country is thus pleasantly

O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue:

"The villages to north of Trent are but
indifferent, and the churches very thin sown;
and, indeed, for a long time one would think
the country of no religion at all, there being
hardly either Christian church or heathen
temple to be seen. The fields on both hands
were mostly grass; and the greatest variety
and plenty of fine cattle, all of various
colours. I admired the cattle much more
than the people; for they seem to have the
least of what we call smartness of any folks I
ever saw, and totally void of all sort of
curiosity—which, perhaps, some may think a
good quality. . . . As for the inclosing in
England, it is of all the different methods,
both good and bad, that can be imagined;
and that such insufficient inclosures, as some
are, keep in the cattle (which is so hard with
us in Scotland) is entirely owing to the levelness
of the grounds; so that an English cow
does not see another spot than where she
feeds, and has as little intelligence as the
people." Surely the cows are to be pitied,
born incapable of taking comprehensive views
of things in this flat and unprofitable land.
If ever there arose a chance of wider views
for the fair traveller, England rose not in her
esteem on that account. "Sometimes," she
owns, "we had an extensive prospect, but not
the least variety, so that we could say there
was too much of it. No water, no distinction
between a gentleman's seat and his tenant's
house, but that he was a little more smothered
up wilh trees." The lady, when she reached
London, found the same reason for contempt
of Hyde Park as a place of resort; it was
naught, because it was quite smothered with
trees. She also surprised the crowded
Londoners that she thought England on the
whole less populous than Scotland, and there
is a good deal of right observation in the
sketch she gives of England extra-metropolitan
a hundred years ago.

"In the first place, look from the road on
each hand, and you see very few houses;
towns there are, but at the distance of eight
or ten miles. Then, who is it that lives in
them? There are no manufactories carried
on in them; they live by the travellers and
the country about; that is, there are tradesmen
of all kinds, perhaps two or three of
each—smiths, wrights, shoemakers, &c.; and
here is a squire of a small estate in the
country near by; and here are Mrs. This, or
That, old maids, and so many widow ladies
with a parsonage house, a flourishing house.
All the houses built of brick, and very
slight, and even some of timber, and two
stories high, make them have a greater
appearance than there is reality for; for I shall
suppose you took out the squire and set him
in his country house, and the old maids and
widow ladies and place them with their
relations, if they have any, in the country, or in
a greater town, and take a stone house with
a thatch roof of one storey instead of a brick
one of two, and there are few country villages
in Scotland where I will not muster out as
many inhabitants as are in any of these post
towns. Then I observed there were few
folks to be met with on the road, and many
times we could post an hour, which is seven
miles, and not see as many houses and people
put together on the road! Then on Sunday,
we travelled from eight o'clock till we came
to Newcastle, where the church was just
going in; so that I may say we travelled
fifteen miles to Newcastle; and the few
people we met going to church upon the road
surprised me much. The same as we went
all day long; it had no appearance of the
swarms of people we always see in Scotland
going about on Sunday, even far from any
considerable town. Then," adds the Scotch
lady, "the high price of labour is an evidence
of the scarcity of people. I went into what
we call a cottage, and there was a young
woman with her child, sitting; it was very
clean, and laid with coarse flags on the
floor, but built with timber stoops, and what;
we call cat and clay walls. She took me
into what she called her parlour, for the
magnificent names they give things makes
very fine till we see them; this parlour was
just like to the other. I asked her what her
husband was. She said, a labouring man,
and got his shilling a day; that she did
nothing but took care of her children, and now
and then wrought a little plain work. So I
found that, except it was in the manufacturing
counties, the women do nothing; and if
there were as many men in the country as
one might suppose there would be, a man
could be got for less wages than a shilling
per day. Then the high wages at London
shows the country cannot provide it with
servants. It drains the country, and none
return again who ever goes as chairmen,
porters, hackney coachmen, or footmen; if
they come to old age, seldom spend it in the
country, but often in an almshouse, and often
leave no posterity. Then the export they
make of their victual is a presumption they
have not inhabitants to consume it in the
country, for, by the common calculation, there
are seven millions and one half in England,
and the ground in the kingdom is twenty-
eight millions of acres, which is four acres to
each person. Take into this the immense
quantity of horses which are kept for no real
use all over the kingdom, and it will be
found, I think, that England could maintain
many more people than are in it. Besides,
let every nation pick out its own native
subjects who are but in the first generation, the
Irish, the Scots, the French, &c., and I am