t breakfast, it was arranged that we should take a drive
out to Speke Hall, an old mansion, which is considered a fine specimen
of ancient house architecture. So the carriage was at the door. It was
a cool, breezy, April morning, but there was an abundance of wrappers
and carriage blankets provided to keep us comfortable. I must say, by
the by, that English housekeepers are bountiful in their provision for
carriage comfort. Every household has a store of warm, loose over
garments, which are offered, if needed, to the guests; and each carriage
is provided with one or two blankets, manufactured and sold expressly
for this use, to envelope one's feet and limbs; besides all which,
should the weather be cold, comes out a long stone reservoir, made flat
on both sides, and filled with hot water, for foot stools. This is an
improvement on the primitive simplicity of hot bricks, and even on the
tin foot stove, which has nourished in New England.

Being thus provided with all things necessary for comfort, we rattled
merrily away, and I, remembering that I was in England, kept my eyes
wide open to see what I could see. The hedges of the fields were just
budding, and the green showed itself on them, like a thin gauze veil.
These hedges are not all so well kept and trimmed as I expected to find
them. Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally
hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the
fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones,
and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we
have at home. But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of
the fields, and it is certainly a more picturesque mode of division than
our stone or worm fences. Outside of every hedge, towards the street,
there is generally a ditch, and at the bottom of the hedge is the
favorite nestling-place for all sorts of wild flowers. I remember
reading in stories about children trying to crawl through a gap in the
hedge to get at flowers, and tumbling into a ditch on the other side,
and I now saw exactly how they could do it.

As we drive we pass by many beautiful establishments, about of the
quality of our handsomest country houses, but whose grounds are kept
with a precision and exactness rarely to be seen among us. We cannot get
the gardeners who are qualified to do it; and if we could, the
painstaking, slow way of proceeding, and the habit of creeping
thoroughne