liarity we would name about our English country-houses is,
that they do not insulate their residents from the society and business
of active life; which insulation is probably a cause, why so many
proprietors in other countries pass their whole time in the metropolis
or larger towns. The facility and speed of communication in England link
together all places, however remote, and all interests, political and
social, of the community. The country gentleman, sitting at his
breakfast table a hundred miles from London, receives the newspapers
printed there the night before; his books come to him still damp from
the press; and the debates in parliament travel to every country-house
in England within fifty or sixty hours of the time when they have taken
place. The like facility exists as to provincial interests of every
kind. The nobleman or country gentleman is a public functionary within
his district, and no man residing on his estates is, or need feel
himself, unimportant to the community. _Quarterly Rev._

* * * * *

FLOWERS.

When summer's delightful season arrives, rarely in this country too warm
to be enjoyed throughout the day in the open air, there is nothing more
grateful than a profusion of choice flowers around and within our
dwellings. The humblest apartments ornamented with these beautiful
productions of nature have, in my view, a more delightful effect than
the proudest saloons with gilded ceilings and hangings of Genoa velvet.
The richness of the latter, indeed, would be heightened, and their
elegance increased, by the judicious introduction of flowers and foliage
into them. The odour of flowers, the cool appearance of the dark green
leaves of some species, and the beautiful tints and varied forms of
others, are singularly grateful to the sight, and refreshing at the same
time. Vases of Etruscan mould, containing plants of the commonest kind,
offer those lines of beauty which the eye delights in following; and
variform leaves hanging festooned over them, and shading them if they be
of a light colour, with a soft grateful hue, add much to their pleasing
effect. These decorations are simple and cheap.

Lord Bacon, whose magnificence of mind exempts him from every objection
as a model for the rest of mankind, (in all but the unfortunate error to
which, perhaps, his sordid pursuit in life led him, to the degradation
of his nobler intellect), was enthusiastically attached to flo