is country to respect and admiration. As I fed my eyes on
the loveliness of Nature, or turned to the miracles of Art and Science
on every hand, I had always in my mind a secret reference to the effect
which a visit to England must produce upon an intelligent and observant
foreigner.

Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around
Of hills and dales and woods and lawns and spires,
And glittering towns and gilded streams, 'till all
The stretching landscape into smoke decays!
Happy Brittannia! where the Queen of Arts,
Inspiring vigor, Liberty, abroad
Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots,
And scatters plenty with unsparing hand.

_Thomson_.

And here let me put in a word in favor of the much-abused English
climate. I cannot echo the unpatriotic discontent of Byron when he
speaks of

The cold and cloudy clime
Where he was born, but where he would not die.

Rather let me say with the author of "_The Seasons_," in his address to
England.

Rich is thy soil and merciful thy clime.

King Charles the Second when he heard some foreigners condemning our
climate and exulting in their own, observed that in his opinion that was
the best climate in which a man could be out in the open air with
pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days
of the year and the most hours of the day; and this he held was the case
with the climate of England more than that of any other country in
Europe. To say nothing of the lovely and noble specimens of human nature
to which it seems so congenial, I may safely assert that it is
peculiarly favorable, with, rare exceptions, to the sweet children of
Flora. There is no country in the world in which there are at this day
such innumerable tribes of flowers. There are in England two thousand
varieties of the rose alone, and I venture to express a doubt whether
the richest gardens of Persia or Cashmere could produce finer specimens
of that universal favorite than are to be found in some of the small but
highly cultivated enclosures of respectable English rustics.

The actual beauty of some of the commonest flowers in our gardens can be
in no degree exaggerated--even in the daydreams of the most inspired
poet. And when the author of Lalla Rookh talks so musically and
pleasantly of the fragrant bowers of Amberabad, the country of Delight,
a Province in Jinnistan or Fairy Land, he is only thinking of the
shrubber