THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English
character, must not confine his observations to the metropolis.
He must go forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages
and hamlets; he must visit castles, villas, farm-houses,
cottages; he must wander through parks and gardens; along hedges
and green lanes; he must loiter about country churches; attend
wakes and fairs, and other rural festivals; and cope with the
people in all their conditions, and all their habits and humors.

In some countries, the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion
of the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and
intelligent society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely
by boorish peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis
is a mere gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite
classes, where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry
of gayety and dissipation, and, having indulged this kind of
carnival, return again to the apparently more congenial habits of
rural life. The various orders of society are therefore diffused
over the whole surface of the kingdom, and the more retired
neighborhoods afford specimens of the different ranks.

The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling.
They possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a
keen relish for the pleasures and employments of the country.
This passion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of
cities, born and brought up among brick walls and bustling
streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince a tact
for rural occupation. The merchant has his snug retreat in the
vicinity of the metropolis, where he often displays as much pride
and zeal in the cultivation of his flower-garden, and the