either of us have done it.

First, if the weather be fine, the view is a glorious thing; you are
not limited, like your friends in the _coupe_, to the sight of
the conductor's gaiters, or the leather disc of the postillion's
'continuations.' No; your eye ranges away at either side over those
undulating plains which the Continent presents, unbroken by fence
or hedgerow--one stretch of vast cornfields, great waving woods,
interminable tracts of yellowish pasture-land, with here and there a
village spire, or the pointed roof of some chateau rising above the
trees. A yellow-earthy byroad traverses the plain, on which a heavy
waggon plods along, the eight huge horses, stepping as free as though no
weight restrained them; their bells are tinkling in the clear air, and
the merry chant of the waggoner chimes in pleasantly with them. It
is somewhat hard to fancy how the land is ever tilled; you meet few
villages; scarcely a house is in sight--yet there are the fragrant
fields; the yellow gold of harvest tints the earth, and the industry of
man is seen on every side. It is peaceful, it is grand, too, from
its very extent; but it is not homelike. No; our own happy land alone
possesses that attribute. _It_ is the country of the hearth and home.
The traveller in France or Germany catches no glances as he goes of
the rural life of the proprietors of the soil. A pale white chateau,
seemingly uninhabited, stands in some formal lawn, where the hot sun
darts down his rays unbroken, and the very fountain seems to hiss with
heat. No signs of life are seen about; all is still and calm, as though
the moon were shedding her yellow lustre over the scene. Oh how I long
for the merry schoolboy's laugh, the clatter of the pony's canter, the
watch-dog's bark, the squire breathing the morning air amid his woods,
that tell of England! How I fancy a peep into that large drawing-room,
whose windows open to the greensward, letting in a view of distant
mountains and far-receding foreground, through an atmosphere heavy
with the rose and the honeysuckle! Lovely as is the scene, with foliage
tinted in every hue, from the light sprayey hazel to the dull pine or
the dark copper beech--how I prefer to look within where _they_ are met
who call this 'home!' And what a paradise is such a home!----

But I must think no more of these things. I am a lone and solitary
man; my happiness is cast in a different mould, nor shall I mar it by
longings which never can be