habits of shy reserve, and becomes joyous and free-hearted. He
manages to collect round him all the conveniences and elegancies
of polite life, and to banish its restraints. His country-seat
abounds with every requisite, either for studious retirement,
tasteful gratification, or rural exercise. Books, paintings,
music, horses, dogs, and sporting implements of all kinds, are at
hand. He puts no constraint, either upon his guests or himself,
but, in the true spirit of hospitality, provides the means of
enjoyment, and leaves every one to partake according to his
inclination.

The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what
is called landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied
Nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her
beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which,
in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here
assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have
caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like
witchery, about their rural abodes.

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