character. Therefore, I told the _missus_ and her bright-eyed niece
a great many stories about America; some of which excited their
admiration and wonder. Thus I sat at the little, round, three-
legged table, inside the out-spreading chimney, for an hour or more,
and made as cozy and pleasant a meal of it as ever I ate. Besides
all this, I had the best bed in the house, and several "Good
nights!" on retiring to it, uttered with hearty good-will by voices
softened to an accent of kindness. Next morning I was introduced
into the best parlor, and had a capital breakfast, and then resumed
my walk with a pleasant memory of my entertainment in that village
inn.

I passed through a fertile and interesting section to St. Ives, in
Huntingdonshire. Here I remained with some friends for a week,
visiting neighboring villages by day and returning at night. St.
Ives is a pleasant, well-favored town, just large enough to
constitute a coherent, neighborly, and well-regulated community. It
is the centre-piece of a rich, rural picture, which, without any
strikingly salient features, pleases the eye with lineaments of
quiet beauty symmetrically developed by the artistry of Nature. The
river Ouse meanders through a wide, fertile flat, or what the Scotch
would call a strath, which gently rises on each side into pleasantly
undulating uplands. Parks, groves, copses, and hedge-row trees are
interspersed very happily, and meadow, pasture, and grain-fields
seen through them, with villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and isolated
cottages, make up a landscape that grows more and more interesting
as you contemplate it. And this placid locality, with its peaceful
river seemingly sleeping in the bosom of its long and level meadows,
was the scene of Oliver Cromwell's young, fiery manhood. Here,
where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises of