Few separate houses are seen, as in
America; but sometimes a village, with the square, gray, battlemented
tower of its Norman church, and rows of thatched cottages, reminding one
of the clustered mud-nests of swallows, under the eaves of a barn; here
and there a lazy little river, like the Trent; perhaps, if you look
sharply where the guide-book indicates, the turrets of an old castle in
the distance; perhaps the great steeple and spires of a cathedral;
perhaps the tall chimney of a manufactory; but, on the whole, the
traveller comes to his journey's end unburdened with a single new idea.
I observe that the harvest is not all gathered in as yet, and this
rainy weather must look very gloomy to the farmer. I saw gleaners,
yesterday, in the stubble-fields. There were two gentlemen in the same
railway-carriage with me, and we did not exchange half a dozen words the
whole day.
I am here, established at Mrs. Blodgett's boarding-house, which I find
quite full; insomuch that she had to send one of her sea-captains to
sleep in another house, in order to make room for me. It is exclusively
American society: four shipmasters, and a doctor from Pennsylvania, who
has been travelling a year on the Continent, and who seems to be a man of
very active intelligence, interested in everything, and especially in
agriculture. . . . . He asserted that we are fifty years ahead of England
in agricultural science, and that he could cultivate English soil to far
better advantage than English farmers do, and at vastly less expense.
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