University of Virginia Library

RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.

Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of
English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets
of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic
trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage. The solemn pomp
of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in
silent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the
covert; or the pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing.
The brook, taught to wind in natural meanderings, or

expand into a glassy lake—the sequestered pool, reflecting
the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its
bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid
waters: while some rustic temple or sylvan statue, grown
green and dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to
the seclusion.

These are but a few of the features of park scenery;
but what most delights me, is the creative talent with
which the English decorate the unostentatious abodes of
middle life. The rudest habitation, the most unpromising
and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman
of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating
eye, he seizes at once upon its capabilities,
and pictures in his mind the future landscape. The sterile
spot grows into loveliness under his hand; and yet the
operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be
perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the
cautious pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers
and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction
of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep
of blue distance, or silver gleam of water; all these are
managed with a delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity,
like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes
up a favourite picture.

The residence of people of fortune and refinement in
the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in
rural economy, that descends to the lowest class. The
very labourer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip
of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim
hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed
bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against
the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice, the
pot of flowers in the window, the holly providently planted
about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and
to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the
fire side: all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing
down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels
of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights
to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English
peasant.

The fondness for rural life among the higher classes of
the English has had a great and salutary effect upon the
national character. I do not know a finer race of men
than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and
effeminacy which characterize the man of rank in most

countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength,
a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which
I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the
open air, and pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations
of the country. These hardy exercises produce
also a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness
and simplicity of manners, which even the follies and
dissipations of the town cannot easily pervert, and can
never entirely destroy. In the country, too, the different
orders of society seem to approach more freely, to be
more disposed to blend and operate favourably upon each
other. The distinctions between them do not appear to
be so marked and impassable, as in the cities. The manner
in which property has been distributed into small estates
and farms, has established a regular gradation from
the nobleman, through the classes of gentry, small landed
proprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the labouring
peasantry; and while it has thus banded the extremes
of society together, has infused into each intermediate
rank a spirit of independence. This, it must be
confessed, is not so universally the case at present as it
was formerly; the larger estates having, in late years of
distress, absorbed the smaller, and, in some parts of the
country, almost annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers.
These, however, I believe, are but casual breaks in
the general system I have mentioned.

In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing.
It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur
and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own
mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of
external influences. Such a man may be simple and
rough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement,
therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with
the lower orders of moral life, as he does when he casually
mingles with the lower of cities. He lays aside his distance
and reserve, and is glad to wave the distinctions of
rank, and to enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of
common life. Indeed the very amusements of the country
bring men more and more together; and the sound of
hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe
this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry
are more popular among the inferior orders in England
than they are in any other country; and why the latter
have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities,

without repining more generally at the unequal distribution
of fortune and privilege.

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may
also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British
literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural
life; those incomparable descriptions of nature that abound
in the British Poets—that have continued down from
“the flower and the leaf” of Chaucer, and have brought
into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy
landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear
as if they had paid nature an occasional visit, and become
acquainted with her general charms: but the British poets
have lived and revelled with her,—they have wooed her
in her most secret haunts,—they have watched her minutest
caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze—
a leaf could not rustle to the ground—a diamond drop
could not patter in the stream—a fragrance could not
exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson
tints to the morning; but it has been noticed by these
impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into
some beautiful morality.