Rural Rides — From Gloucester to Kensington

JOURNAL: FROM GLOUCESTER, TO BOLLITREE IN HEREFORDSHIRE, ROSS, HEREFORD, ABINGDON, OXFORD, CHELTENHAM, BERGHCLERE, WHITCHURCH, UPHURSTBOURN, AND THENCE TO KENSINGTON.

_Bollitree Castle, Herefordshire, Friday, 9 Nov.

1821. _ I got to this beautiful place (Mr. WILLIAM PALMER'S) yesterday, from Gloucester.

This is in the parish of _Weston_, two miles on the Gloucester side of Ross, and, if not the first, nearly the first, parish in Herefordshire upon leaving Gloucester to go on through Ross to Hereford.

--On quitting Gloucester I crossed the Severne, which had overflowed its banks and covered the meadows with water.

--The soil good but stiff.

The coppices and woods very much like those upon the clays in the South of Hampshire and in Sussex; but the land better for corn and grass.

The goodness of the land is shown by the apple-trees, and by the sort of sheep and cattle fed here.

The sheep are a cross between the Ryland and Leicester, and the cattle of the Herefordshire kind.

These would starve in the pastures of any part of Hampshire or Sussex that I have ever seen.

--At about seven miles from Gloucester I came to hills, and the land changed from the whitish soil, which I had hitherto seen, to a red brown, with layers of flat stone of a reddish cast under it.

Thus it continued to Bollitree.

The trees of all kinds are very fine on the hills as well as in the bottoms.

--The spot where I now am is peculiarly well situated in all respects.

The land very rich, the pastures the finest I ever saw, the trees of all kinds surpassing upon an average any that I have before seen in England.

From the house, you see, in front and winding round to the left, a lofty hill, called _Penyard Hill_, at about a mile and a half distance, covered with oaks of the finest growth: along at the foot of this wood are fields and orchards continuing the slope of the hill down for a considerable distance, and, as the ground lies in a sort of _ridges_ from the wood to the foot of the slope, the hill-and-dell is very beautiful.

One of these dells with the two adjoining sides of hills is an orchard belonging to Mr. PALMER, and the trees, the ground, and everything belonging to it, put me in mind of the most beautiful of the spots in the North of Long Island.

Sheltered by a lofty wood; the grass fine beneath the fruit trees; the soil dry under foot though the rain had scarcely ceased to fall; no moss on the trees; the leaves of many of them yet green;

everything brought my mind to the beautiful orchards near Bayside, Little Neck, Mosquito Cove, and Oyster Bay, in Long Island.

No wonder that this is a country of _cider_ and _perry_; but what a shame it is that here, at any rate, the owners and cultivators of the soil, not content with these, should, for mere fashion's sake, waste their substance on _wine_ and _spirits_!

They really deserve the contempt of mankind and the curses of their children.

--The woody hill mentioned before, winds away to the left, and carries the eye on to the _Forest of Dean_, from which it is divided by a narrow and very deep valley.

Away to the right of Penyard Hill lies, in the bottom, at two miles distance, and on the bank of the river Wye, the town of Ross, over which we look down the vale to Monmouth and see the Welsh hills beyond it.

Beneath Penyard Hill, and on one of the _ridges_ before mentioned, is the parish church of Weston, with some pretty white cottages near it, peeping through the orchard and other trees; and coming to the paddock before the house are some of the largest and loftiest trees in the country, standing singly here and there, amongst which is the very largest and loftiest walnut-tree that I believe I ever saw, either in America or in England.

In short, there wants nothing but the autumnal _colours_ of the American trees to make this the most beautiful spot I ever beheld.

--I

was much amused for an hour after daylight this morning in looking at the _clouds_, rising at intervals from the dells on the side of Penyard Hill, and flying to the top, and then over the Hill.

Some of the clouds went up in a roundish and compact form.

Others rose in a sort of string or stream, the tops of them going over the hill before the bottoms were clear of the place whence they had arisen.

Sometimes the clouds gathered themselves together along the top of the hill, and seemed to connect the topmost trees with the sky.

----I have been to-day to look at Mr. PALMER'S fine crops of _Swedish Turnips_, which are, in general, called "_Swedes_."

These crops having been raised according to _my plan_, I feel, of course, great interest in the matter.

The Swedes occupy two fields: one of thirteen, and one of seventeen acres.

The main part of the seventeen-acre field was _drilled_, on ridges, four feet apart, a single row on a ridge, at different times, between 16th April and 29th May.

An acre and a half of this piece was _transplanted_ on four-feet ridges 30th July.

About half an acre across the middle of the field was sown _broad-cast_ 14th April.

--In the thirteen-acre field there is about half an acre sown _broad-cast_ on the 1st of June; the rest of the field was _transplanted_; part in the first week of June, part in the last week of June, part from the 12th to 18th July, and the rest (about three acres) from 21st to 23rd July.

The drilled Swedes in the seventeen-acre field, contain full 23 tons to the acre; the transplanted ones in _that_ field, 15 tons, and the broad-cast not exceeding 10 tons.

Those in the thirteen-acre field which were transplanted before the 21st July, contain 27 if not 30 tons; and the rest of _that_ field about 17 tons to the acre.

The broad-cast piece here (half an acre) may contain 7 tons.

The shortness of my time will prevent us from ascertaining the weight by actual weighings; but such is the crop, according to the best of my judgment, after a very minute survey of it in every part of each field.

--NOW, here is a little short of 800 tons of food, about a fifth part of which consists of _tops_; and, of course, there is about 640 tons of _bulb_.

As to the _value_ and _uses_ of this prodigious crop I need say nothing; and as to the time and manner of sowing and raising the plants for transplanting, the act of transplanting, and the after cultivation, Mr. PALMER has followed the directions contained in my "_Year's Residence in America_;" and, indeed, he is forward to acknowledge that he had never thought of this mode of culture, which he has followed now for three years, and which he has found so advantageous, until he read that work, a work which the _Farmer's Journal_ thought proper to treat as a _romance_.

--Mr. PALMER has had some _cabbages_ of the large, drum-head kind.

He had about three acres, in rows at four feet apart, and at little less than three feet apart in the rows, making _ten thousand_ cabbages on the three acres.

He kept ninety-five wethers and ninety-six ewes (large fatting sheep) upon them for _five weeks_ all but two days, ending in the first week of November.

The sheep, which are now feeding off yellow turnips in an adjoining part of the same field, come back over the cabbage-ground and _scoop out the stumps_ almost to the ground in many cases.

This ground is going to be ploughed for wheat immediately.

Cabbages are a very fine _autumn crop_;

but it is the _Swedes_ on which you must rely for the spring, and on _housed_ or _stacked_ Swedes too; for they will _rot_ in many of our winters, if left in the ground.

I have had them rot myself, and I saw, in March 1820, hundreds of acres rotten in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

Mr. PALMER greatly prefers the _transplanting_ to the drilling.

It has numerous advantages over the drilling; greater regularity of crop, greater certainty, the only _sure_ way of avoiding the _fly_, greater crop, admitting of two months later preparation of land, can come _after vetches_ cut up for horses (as, indeed, a part of Mr. PALMER'S transplanted Swedes did), and requiring less labour and expense.

I asserted this in my "_Year's Residence_;" and Mr. PALMER, who has been very particular in ascertaining the fact, states positively that the expense of transplanting is not so great as the hoeing and setting out of the drilled crops, and not so great as the common hoeings of broad-cast.

This, I think, settles the question.

But the advantages of the wide-row culture by no means confine themselves to the green and root crop; for Mr. PALMER drills his wheat upon the same ridges, without ploughing, after he has taken off the Swedes.

He drills it at _eight inches_, and puts in from eight to ten gallons to the acre.

His crop of 1820, drilled in this way, averaged 40 bushels to the acre; part drilled in November, and part so late as February.

It was the common Lammas wheat.

His last crop of wheat is not yet ascertained; but it was better after the Swedes than in any other of his land.

His manner of taking off the crop is excellent.

He first cuts off and carries away the _tops_.

Then he has an implement, drawn by two oxen, walking on each side of the ridge, with which he cuts off the _tap root_ of the Swedes without disturbing the land of the ridge.

Any child can then pull up the bulb.

Thus the ground, clean as a garden, and in that compact state which the wheat is well known to like, is ready, at once, for drilling with wheat.

As to the _uses_ to which he applies the crop, tops as well as bulbs, I must speak of these hereafter, and in a work of a description different from this.

I have been thus particular here, because the _Farmer's Journal_ treated my book as a pack of lies.

I know that my (for it is _mine_) system of cattle-food husbandry will finally be that of _all England_, as it already is that of America; but what I am doing here is merely in self-defence against the slanders, the malignant slanders, of the _Farmer's Journal_.

Where is a _Whig lord_, who, some years ago, wrote to a gentleman that "_he_ would have _nothing to do_ with any _reform_ that _Cobbett_ was engaged in"?

But in spite of the brutal _Journal_, farmers are not such fools as this lord was: they will not reject a good crop because they can have it only by acting upon my plan;

and this lord will, I imagine, yet see the day when he will be less averse from having to do with a reform in which "Cobbett" shall be engaged.

_Old Hall, Saturday night, Nov.

10. _ Went to Hereford this morning.

It was market-day.

My arrival became known, and, I am sure, I cannot tell how.

A sort of _buz_ got about.

I

could perceive here, as I always have elsewhere, very ardent friends and very bitter enemies; but all full of curiosity.

One thing could not fail to please me exceedingly: my friends were _gay_ and my enemies _gloomy_: the former smiled, and the latter, in endeavouring to screw their features into a sneer, could get them no further than the half sour and half sad: the former seemed in their looks to say, "Here he is," and the latter to respond, "Yes, G---- d---- him!"

--I went into the market-place, amongst the farmers, with whom, in general, I was very much pleased.

If I were to live in the county two months, I should be acquainted with every man of them.

The country is very fine all the way from Ross to Hereford.

The soil is always a red loam upon a bed of stone.

The trees are very fine, and certainly winter comes later here than in Middlesex.

Some of the oak trees are still perfectly green, and many of the ashes as green as in September.

--In coming from Hereford to this place, which is the residence of Mrs. PALMER and that of her two younger sons, Messrs. PHILIP and WALTER PALMER, who, with their brother, had accompanied me to Hereford; in coming to this place, which lies at about two miles distance from the great road, and at about an equal distance from HEREFORD and from Ross, we met with something, the sight of which pleased me exceedingly: it was that of a very pretty pleasant-looking lady (and _young_ too) with two beautiful children, riding in a little sort of chaise-cart, drawn by _an ass_, which she was driving in reins.

She appeared to be well known to my friends, who drew up and spoke to her, calling her Mrs. _Lock_, or _Locky_ (I hope it was not _Lockart_), or some such name.

Her husband, who is, I suppose, some young farmer of the neighbourhood, may well call himself Mr. _Lucky_;

for to have such a wife, and for such a wife to have the good sense to put up with an ass-cart, in order to avoid, as much as possible, feeding those cormorants who gorge on the taxes, is a blessing that falls, I am afraid, to the lot of very few rich farmers.

Mrs. _Lock_ (if that be her name) is a real _practical radical_.

Others of us resort to radical coffee and radical tea; and she has a radical carriage.

This is a very effectual way of assailing the THING, and peculiarly well suited for the practice of the female sex.

But the self-denial ought not to be imposed on the wife only: the husband ought to set the example: and let me hope that _Mr.

Lock_ does not indulge in the use of wine and spirits while Mrs. Lock and her children ride in a jackass gig; for if he do, he wastes, in this way, the means of keeping her a chariot and pair.

If there be to be any expense not absolutely necessary; if there be to be anything bordering on extravagance, surely it ought to be for the pleasure of that part of the family who have the least number of objects of enjoyment; and for a husband to indulge himself in the guzzling of expensive, unnecessary, and really injurious drink, to the tune, perhaps, of 50 or 100 pounds a year, while he preaches economy to his wife, and, with a face as long as my arm, talks of the low price of corn, and wheedles her out of a curricle into a jack-ass cart, is not only unjust but _unmanly_.

_Old Hall, Sunday night, 11 Nov.

_ We have ridden to-day, though in the rain for a great part of the time, over the fine farm of Mr. PHILIP PALMER, at this place, and that of Mr. WALTER PALMER, in the adjoining parish of PENCOYD.

Everything here is good, arable land, pastures, orchards, coppices, and timber trees, especially the elms, many scores of which approach nearly to a hundred feet in height.

Mr. PHILIP PALMER has four acres of Swedes on four-feet ridges, drilled on the 11th and 14th of May.

The plants were very much injured by the _fly_; so much, that it was a question whether the whole piece ought not to be ploughed up.

However, the gaps in the rows were filled up by transplanting; and the ground was twice ploughed between the ridges.

The crop here is very fine; and I should think that its weight could not be less than 17 tons to the acre.

--Of Mr. WALTER

PALMER'S Swedes, five acres were drilled, on ridges nearly four feet apart, on the 3rd of June; four acres on the 15th of June; and an acre and a half transplanted (after vetches) on the 15th of August.

The weight of the first is about twenty tons to the acre; that of the second not much less; and that of the last even, five or six tons.

The first two pieces were mauled to pieces by the _fly_; but the gaps were filled up by transplanting, the ground being digged on the tops of the ridges to receive the plants.

So that, perhaps, a third part or more of the crop is due to the _transplanting_.

As to the last piece, that transplanted on the 15th of August, after vetches, it is clear that there could have been no crop without transplanting; and, after all, the crop is by no means a bad one.

--It is clear enough to me that this system will finally prevail all over England.

The "loyal," indeed, may be afraid to adopt it, lest it should contain something of "radicalism."

Sap-headed fools!

They will find something to do, I believe, soon, besides railing against _radicals_.

We will din "_radical_" and "_national faith_" in their ears, till they shall dread the din as much as a dog does the sound of the bell that is tied to the whip.

_Bollitree, Monday, 12 Nov.

_ Returned this morning and rode about the farm, and also about that of Mr. WINNAL, where I saw, for the first time, a plough going _without being held_.

The man drove the three horses that drew the plough, and carried the plough round at the ends; but left it to itself the rest of the time.

There was a skim coulter that turned the sward in under the furrow; and the work was done very neatly.

This gentleman has six acres of _cabbages_, on ridges four feet apart, with a distance of thirty inches between the plants on the ridge.

He has weighed one of what he deemed an average weight, and found it to weigh fifteen pounds without the stump.

Now, as there are 4,320 upon an acre, the weight of the acres is _thirty tons_ all but 400 pounds!

This is a prodigious crop, and it is peculiarly well suited for food for sheep at this season of the year.

Indeed it is good for any farm-stock, oxen, cows, pigs: all like these loaved cabbages.

For hogs in yard, after the stubbles are gone; and before the tops of the Swedes come in.

What masses of manure may be created by this means!

But, above all things, for _sheep_ to feed off upon the ground.

Common turnips have not half the substance in them weight for weight.

Then they are in the ground; they are _dirty_, and in wet weather the sheep must starve, or eat a great deal of dirt.

This very day, for instance, what a sorry sight is a flock of fatting sheep upon turnips; what a mess of dirt and stubble!

The cabbage stands boldly up above the ground, and the sheep eats it all up without treading a morsel in the dirt.

Mr. WINNAL has a large flock of sheep feeding on his cabbages, which they will have finished, perhaps, by January.

This gentleman also has some "_radical Swedes_," as they call them in Norfolk.

A part of his crop is on ridges _five_ feet apart with _two rows_ on the ridge, a part on _four_ feet ridges with _one_ row on the ridge.

I cannot see that anything is gained in weight by the double rows.

I think that there may be nearly twenty tons to the acre.

Another piece Mr. WINNAL transplanted after vetches.

They are very fine; and, altogether, he has a crop that any one but a "_loyal_" farmer might envy him.

--This is really the _radical_ system of husbandry.

_Radical_ means, _belonging to the root; going to the root_.

And the main principle of this system (first taught by _Tull_) is that the _root_ of the plant is to be fed by _deep tillage_ while it is growing; and to do this we must have our _wide distances_.

Our system of husbandry is happily illustrative of our system of politics.

Our lines of movement are fair and straightforward.

We destroy all weeds, which, like tax-eaters, do nothing but devour the sustenance that ought to feed the valuable plants.

Our plants are all _well fed_; and our nations of Swedes and of cabbages present a happy uniformity of enjoyments and of bulk, and not, as in the broad-cast system of Corruption, here and there one of enormous size, surrounded by thousands of poor little starveling things, scarcely distinguishable by the keenest eye, or, if seen, seen only to inspire a contempt of the husbandman.

The Norfolk boys are, therefore, right in calling their Swedes _Radical Swedes_.

_Bollitree, Tuesday, 13 Nov.

_ Rode to-day to see a _grove_ belonging to Mrs. WESTPHALIN, which contains the very finest trees, _oaks_, _chestnuts_, and _ashes_, that I ever saw in England.

This grove is worth going from London to Weston to see.

The Lady, who is very much beloved in her neighbourhood, is, apparently, of the _old school_; and her house and gardens, situated in a beautiful dell, form, I think, the most comfortable looking thing of the kind that I ever saw.

If she had known that I was in her grove, I dare say she would have expected it to blaze up in flames; or, at least, that I was come to view the premises previous to confiscation!

I can forgive persons like her; but I cannot forgive the Parsons and others who have misled them!

Mrs. WESTPHALIN, if she live many years, will find that the best friends of the owners of the land are those who have endeavoured to produce such _a reform of the Parliament_ as would have prevented the ruin of tenants.

--This parish of WESTON is remarkable for having a Rector _who has constantly resided for twenty years_!

I do not believe that there is an instance to match this in the whole kingdom.

However, the "_reverend_" gentleman may be assured that, before many years have passed over their heads, they will be very glad to reside in their parsonage houses.

_Bollitree, Wednesday, 14 Nov.

_ Rode to the forest of Dean, up a very steep hill.

The lanes here are between high banks, and on the sides of the hills the road is a rock, the water having long ago washed all the earth away.

Pretty works are, I find, carried on here, as is the case in all the other _public forests_!

Are these things _always_ to be carried on in this way?

Here is a domain of thirty thousand acres of the finest timber-land in the world, and with coal-mines endless!

Is this _worth nothing_?

Cannot each acre yield ten trees a year?

Are not these trees worth a pound apiece?

Is not the estate worth three or four hundred thousand pounds a year?

And does it yield _anything to the public_, to whom it belongs?

But it is useless to waste one's breath in this way.

We must have a _reform of the Parliament_: without it the whole thing will fall to pieces.

--The only good purpose that these forests answer is that of furnishing a place of being to labourers' families on their skirts; and here their cottages are very neat, and the people look hearty and well, just as they do round the forests in Hampshire.

Every cottage has a pig or two.

These graze in the forest, and, in the fall, eat acorns and beech-nuts and the seed of the ash; for these last, as well as the others, are very full of oil, and a pig that is put to his shifts will pick the seed very nicely out from the husks.

Some of these foresters keep cows, and all of them have bits of ground, cribbed, of course, at different times, from the forest: and to what better use can the ground be put?

I saw several wheat stubbles from 40 rods to 10 rods.

I asked one man how much wheat he had from about 10 rods.

He said more than two bushels.

Here is bread for three weeks, or more perhaps; and a winter's straw for the pig besides.

Are these things nothing?

The dead limbs and old roots of the forest give _fuel_; and how happy are these people, compared with the poor creatures about Great Bedwin and Cricklade, where they have neither land nor shelter, and where I saw the girls carrying home bean and wheat stubble for fuel!

Those countries, always but badly furnished with fuel, the desolating and damnable system of paper-money, by sweeping away small homesteads, and laying ten farms into one, has literally _stripped_ of all shelter for the labourer.

A farmer, in such cases, has a whole domain in his hands, and this not only to the manifest injury of the public at large, but in _open violation of positive law_.

The poor forger is hanged; but where is the prosecutor of the monopolizing farmer, though the _law_ is as clear in the one case as in the other?

But it required this infernal system to render every wholesome regulation nugatory; and to reduce to such abject misery a people famed in all ages for the goodness of their food and their dress.

There is one farmer, in the North of Hampshire, who has nearly eight thousand acres of land in his hands; who grows fourteen hundred acres of wheat and two thousand acres of barley!

He occupies what was formerly 40 farms!

Is it any wonder that _paupers increase_?

And is there not here cause enough for the increase of _poor_, without resorting to the doctrine of the barbarous and impious MALTHUS and his assistants, the _feelosofers_ of the Edinburgh Review, those eulogists and understrappers of the Whig-Oligarchy?

"This farmer has done nothing _unlawful_," some one will say.

I say he has; for there is a law to forbid him thus to monopolize land.

But no matter; the laws, the management of the affairs of a nation, _ought to be such as to prevent the existence of the temptation to such monopoly_.

And, even now, the evil ought to be remedied, and could be remedied, in the space of half a dozen years.

The disappearance of the paper-money would do the thing in time; but this might be assisted by legislative measures.

--In returning from the forest we were overtaken by my son, whom I had begged to come from London to see this beautiful country.

On the road-side we saw two lazy-looking fellows, in long great-coats and bundles in their hands, going into a cottage.

"What do you deal in?"

said I, to one of them, who had not yet entered the house.

"In the _medical way_," said he.

And I find that vagabonds of this description are seen all over the country with _tea-licences_ in their pockets.

They vend _tea_, _drugs_, and _religious tracts_.

The first to bring the body into a debilitated state; the second to finish the corporeal part of the business; and the third to prepare the spirit for its separation from the clay!

Never was a system so well calculated as the present to degrade, debase, and enslave a people!

Law, and as if that were not sufficient, enormous subscriptions are made; everything that can be done is done to favour these perambulatory impostors in their depredations on the ignorant, while everything that can be done is done to prevent them from reading, or from hearing of, anything that has a tendency to give them rational notions, or to better their lot.

However, all is not buried in ignorance.

Down the deep and beautiful valley between Penyard Hill and the Hills on the side of the Forest of Dean, there runs a stream of water.

On that stream of water there is a _paper-mill_.

In that paper-mill there is a set of workmen.

That set of workmen do, I am told, _take the Register_, and have taken it for years!

It was to these good and sensible men, it is supposed, that the _ringing of the bells_ of Weston church, upon my arrival, was to be ascribed; for nobody that I visited had any knowledge of the cause.

What a subject for lamentation with corrupt hypocrites!

That even on this secluded spot there should be a leaven of common-sense!

No: _all_ is not enveloped in brute ignorance yet, in spite of every artifice that hellish Corruption has been able to employ; in spite of all her menaces and all her brutalities and cruelties.

_Old Hall, Thursday, 15 Nov.

_ We came this morning from Bollitree to _Ross-Market_, and, thence, to this place.

Ross is an old-fashioned town; but it is very beautifully situated, and if there is little of _finery_ in the appearance of the inhabitants, there is also little of _misery_.

It is a good, plain country town, or settlement of tradesmen, whose business is that of supplying the wants of the cultivators of the soil.

It presents to us nothing of rascality and roguishness of look which you see on almost every visage in the _borough-towns_, not excepting the visages of the women.

I can tell a borough-town from another upon my entrance into it by the nasty, cunning, leering, designing look of the people; a look between that of a bad (for _some_ are good) Methodist Parson and that of a pickpocket.

I remember, and I never shall forget, the horrid looks of the villains in Devonshire and Cornwall.

Some people say, "O, _poor fellows_!

It is not _their_ fault."

No?

Whose fault is it, then?

The miscreants who bribe them?

True, that these deserve the halter (and some of them may have it yet); but are not the takers of the bribes _equally_ guilty?

If we be so very lenient here, pray let us ascribe to the _Devil_ all the acts of thieves and robbers: so we do; but we _hang_ the thieves and robbers, nevertheless.

It is no very unprovoking reflection, that from these sinks of atrocious villany come a very considerable part of the men to fill places of emolument and trust.

What a clog upon a Minister to have people, bred in such scenes, forced upon him!

And why does this curse continue?

However, its natural consequences are before us; and are coming on pretty fast upon each other's heels.

There are the landlords and farmers in a state of absolute ruin: there is the Debt, pulling the nation down like as a stone pulls a dog under water.

The system seems to have fairly wound itself up; to have tied itself hand and foot with cords of its own spinning!

--This is the town to which POPE has given an interest in our minds by his eulogium on the "_Man of Ross_," a portrait of whom is hanging up in a house in which I now am.

--The market at Ross was very _dull_.

No wheat in demand.

No buyers.

It must _come down_.

Lord Liverpool's _remedy_, a bad harvest, has assuredly failed.

Fowls 2_s.

_ a couple; a goose from 2_s.

_ 6_d.

_ to 3_s.

_; a turkey from 3_s.

_ to 3_s.

_ 6_d.

_ Let a turkey come down to _a shilling_, as in France, and then we shall soon be to rights.

_Friday, 16 Nov.

_ A whole day most delightfully passed a hare-hunting, with a pretty pack of hounds kept here by Messrs. Palmer.

They put me upon a horse that seemed to have been made on purpose for me, strong, tall, gentle and bold; and that carried me either over or through everything.

I, who am just the weight of a four-bushel sack of good wheat, actually sat on his back from daylight in the morning to dusk (about nine hours) without once setting my foot on the ground.

Our ground was at Orcop, a place about four miles' distance from this place.

We found a hare in a few minutes after throwing off; and in the course of the day we had to find four, and were never more than ten minutes in finding.

A steep and naked ridge, lying between two flat valleys, having a mixture of pretty large fields and small woods, formed our ground.

The hares crossed the ridge forward and backward, and gave us numerous views and very fine sport.

--I

never rode on such steep ground before; and really, in going up and down some of the craggy places, where the rains had washed the earth from the rocks, I did think, once or twice, of my neck, and how Sidmouth would like to see me.

--As to the _cruelty_, as some pretend, of this sport, that point I have, I think, settled in one of the Chapters of my "_Year's Residence in America_."

As to the expense, a pack, even a full pack of harriers, like this, costs less than two bottles of wine a day with their inseparable concomitants.

And as to the _time_ thus spent, hunting is inseparable from _early rising_: and with habits of early rising, who ever wanted time for any business?

_Oxford, Saturday, 17 Nov.

_ We left OLD HALL (where we always breakfasted by candle-light) this morning after breakfast; returned to Bollitree; took the Hereford coach as it passed about noon; and came in it through Gloucester, Cheltenham, Northleach, Burford, Whitney, and on to this city, where we arrived about ten o'clock.

I could not leave _Herefordshire_ without bringing with me the most pleasing impressions.

It is not for one to descend to particulars in characterising one's personal friends; and, therefore, I will content myself with saying, that the treatment I met with in this beautiful county, where I saw not one single face that I had, to my knowledge, ever seen before, was much more than sufficient to compensate to me, personally, for all the atrocious calumnies, which, for twenty years, I have had to endure; but where is my country, a great part of the present hideous sufferings of which will, by every reflecting mind, be easily traced to these calumnies, which have been made the ground, or pretext, for rejecting that counsel by listening to which those sufferings would have been prevented; where is my country to find a compensation?

----At _Gloucester_ (as there were no meals on the road) we furnished ourselves with nuts and apples, which, first a handful of nuts and then an apple, are, I can assure the reader, excellent and most wholesome fare.

They say that nuts of all sorts are unwholesome; if they had been, I should never have written Registers, and if they were now, I should have ceased to write ere this; for, upon an average, I have eaten a pint a day since I left home.

In short, I could be very well content to live on nuts, milk, and home-baked bread.

----From _Gloucester_ to _Cheltenham_ the country is level, and the land rich and good.

The fields along here are ploughed in ridges about 20 feet wide, and the angle of this species of _roof_ is pretty nearly as sharp as that of some slated roofs of houses.

There is no wet under; it is the top wet only that they aim at keeping from doing mischief.

--_Cheltenham_ is a nasty, ill-looking place, half clown and half cockney.

The town is one street about a mile long; but, then, at some distance from this street, there are rows of white tenements, with green balconies, like those inhabited by the tax-eaters round London.

Indeed, this place appears to be the residence of an assemblage of tax-eaters.

These vermin shift about between London, Cheltenham, Bath, Bognor, Brighton, Tunbridge, Ramsgate, Margate, Worthing, and other spots in England, while some of them get over to France and Italy: just like those body-vermin of different sorts that are found in different parts of the tormented carcass at different hours of the day and night, and in different degrees of heat and cold.

Cheltenham is at the foot of a part of that chain of hills which form the sides of that _dish_ which I described as resembling the vale of Gloucester.

Soon after quitting this resort of the lame and the lazy, the gormandizing and guzzling, the bilious and the nervous, we proceeded on, between stone walls, over a country little better than that from Cirencester to Burlip-hill.

----A very poor, dull, and uninteresting country all the way to Oxford.

_Burghclere (Hants), Sunday, 18 Nov.

_ We left Oxford early, and went on, through _Abingdon_ (Berks) to _Market-Ilsley_.

It is a saying, hereabouts, that at Oxford they make the living pay for the dead, which is precisely according to the Pitt-System.

Having smarted on this account, we were afraid to eat again at an Inn; so we pushed on through Ilsley towards Newbury, breakfasting upon the residue of the nuts, aided by a new supply of apples bought from a poor man, who exhibited them in his window.

Inspired, like Don Quixote, by the _sight of the nuts_, and recollecting the last night's bill, I exclaimed: "Happy!

thrice happy and blessed, that golden age, when men lived on the simple fruits of the earth and slaked their thirst at the pure and limpid brook!

when the trees shed their leaves to form a couch for their repose, and cast their bark to furnish them with a canopy!

Happy age; when no Oxford landlord charged two men, who had dropped into a common coach-passenger room, and who had swallowed three pennyworths of food, 'four shillings for _teas_,' and 'eighteen pence for _cold meat_,' 'two shillings for _moulds and fire_' in this common coach-room, and 'five shillings for _beds_!'

" This was a sort of grace before meat to the nuts and apples; and it had much more merit than the harangue of Don Quixote; for he, before he began upon the nuts, had stuffed himself well with goat's flesh and wine, whereas we had absolutely _fled_ from the breakfast-table and blazing fire at Oxford.

--Upon beholding the masses of buildings at Oxford devoted to what they call "_learning_," I could not help reflecting on the drones that they contain and the wasps they send forth!

However, malignant as some are, the great and prevalent characteristic is _folly_: emptiness of head; want of talent; and one half of the fellows who are what they call _educated_ here, are unfit to be clerks in a grocer's or mercer's shop.

--As I looked up at what they call _University Hall_, I could not help reflecting that what I had written, even since I left Kensington on the 29th of October, would produce more effect, and do more good in the world, than all that had for a hundred years been written by all the members of this University, who devour, perhaps, not less than _a million pounds a year_, arising from property, completely at the disposal of the "Great Council of the Nation;" and I could not help exclaiming to myself: "Stand forth, ye big-wigged, ye gloriously feeding Doctors!

Stand forth, ye _rich_ of that church whose _poor_ have had given them _a hundred thousand pounds a year_, not out of your riches, but out of the _taxes_, raised, in part, from the _salt_ of the labouring man!

Stand forth and face me, who have, from the pen of my leisure hours, sent, amongst your flocks, a hundred thousand sermons in ten months!

More than you have all done for the last half century!"

--I

exclaimed in vain.

I dare say (for it was at peep of day) that not a man of them had yet endeavoured to unclose his eyes.

--In coming thro' Abingdon (Berks) I could not help thinking of that great financier, Mr. John Maberly, by whom this place has, I believe, the honour to be represented in the Collective Wisdom of the Nation.

--In the way to Ilsley we came across a part of that fine tract of land, called the _Vale of Berkshire_, where they grow _wheat_ and _beans_, one after another, for many years together.

About three miles before we reached Ilsley we came to _downs_, with, as is always the case, chalk under.

Between Ilsley and Newbury the country is enclosed; the land middling, a stony loam; the woods and coppices frequent, and neither very good, till we came within a short distance of Newbury.

In going along we saw a piece of wheat with cabbage-leaves laid all over it at the distance, perhaps, of eight or ten feet from each other.

It was to catch the _slugs_.

The slugs, which commit their depredations in the _night_, creep under the leaves in the morning, and by turning up the leaves you come at the slugs, and crush them, or carry them away.

But besides the immense daily labour attending this, the slug, in a field sowed with wheat, has a _clod_ to creep under at every foot, and will not go five feet to get under a cabbage-leaf.

Then again, if the day be _wet_, the slug works by day as well as by night.