adequate idea of the benefit we have derived from the agricultural enthusiasm
of the noblemen and gentlemen who first made the science of cultivating
breeding fashionable, we must be excused the word, among a class which had
previously been exclusively devoted to field sports or to town life. They
founded that finest of all modern characters--the English country gentleman,
educated, yet hearty, a scholar and a sportsman, a good farmer, and an
intelligent, considerate landlord; happy to teach, and ready to learn,
anything connected with a pursuit which he follows with the enthusiasm of a
student and the skill of a practical man.

The other stations have nothing about them to induce a curious traveller to
pause. Not so can we say of BEDFORD.

Bedford has been pauperised by the number and wealth of its charities. A
mechanic, or small tradesman, can send his child if it be sick to a free
hospital; when older to a free school, where even books are provided; when
the boy is apprenticed a fee may be obtained from a charity; at half the time
of apprenticeship, a second fee; on the expiration of the term, a third; on
going to service, a fourth; if he marries he expects to obtain from a charity
fund "a portion" with his wife, also educated at a charity; and if he has not
sufficient industry or prudence to lay by for old age, and those are virtues
which he is not likely to practise, he looks forward with confidence to being
boarded and lodged at one of Bedford's fifty-nine almshouses.

The chief source of the charities of Bedford is derived from an estate of
thirteen acres of land in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, London,
bequeathed by Sir William Harpur, an alderman of that city, in the reign of
Edward VI., for founding a free school for instructing the children of the
town in grammar, and good manners. This land, now covered with valuable
houses, produces some 16,000 pounds per annum.