itality. Dr. Lee is a staunch friend of Temperance, as well as of
the cause of universal freedom. Every year he treats his tenantry to a
dinner, and I need not add that these are always conducted on the
principle of total abstinence.

During the second day we visited several of the cottages of the work
people, and in these I took no little interest. The people of the United
States know nothing of the real condition of the labouring classes of
England. The peasants of Great Britain are always spoken of as belonging
to the soil. I was taught in America that the English labourer was no
better off than the slave upon a Carolina rice-field. I had seen the
slaves in Missouri huddled together, three, four, and even five families
in a single room not more than 15 by 25 feet square, and I expected to
see the same in England. But in this I was disappointed. After visiting
a new house that the Doctor was building, he took us into one of the
cottages that stood near the road, and gave us an opportunity, of
seeing, for the first time, an English peasant's cot. We entered a low
whitewashed room, with a stone floor that showed an admirable degree of
cleanness. Before us was a row of shelves filled with earthen dishes and
pewter spoons, glittering as if they had just come from under the hand
of a woman of taste. A Cobden loaf of bread, that had just been left by
the baker's boy, lay upon an oaken table which had been much worn away
with the scrubbing brush; while just above lay the old family bible that
had been handed down from father to son, until its possession was
considered of almost as great value as its contents. A half-open door,
leading into another room, showed us a clean bed; the whole presenting
as fine a picture of neatness, order, and comfort, as the most
fastidious taste could wish to see. No occupant was present, and
therefore I inspected everything with a greater degree of freedom. In
front of the cottage was a small grass plot, with here and there a bed
of flowers, cheated out of its share of sunshine by the tall holly that
had been planted near it. As I looked upon the home of the labourer, my
thoughts were with my enslaved countrymen. What a difference, thought I,
there is between the tillers of the soil in England and America. There
could not be a more complete refutation of the assertion that the
English labourer is no better off than the American slave, than the
scenes that were then before me. I called the attent