greatly aided by the pumping steam-engine, has reclaimed a whole
county from eels and wild ducks.

Lincolnshire is not a picturesque county; both the wet half and the dry half,
both the Fen district and the Wold district, are treeless; and the Wolds are
only a line of molehills, of great utility, but no special beauty. But it is
the greatest producing county in England, and the produce, purely
agricultural, is the result of the industry and intellect of the men who till
the soil. In Devonshire and Somersetshire we are charmed by the scenery, and
amazed by the rich fertility of the soil, while we are amazed by the
stolidity of the farmers and their labourers--nay, sometimes of the
landlords--whose two ideas are comprised in doing what their forefathers did,
and in hating every innovation. There fences, guano, pair-horse ploughs,
threshing machines, and steam-engines, are almost as much disliked as cheap
bread and Manchester politics. But on the Wolds of Lincolnshire a race of
agriculturists are to be found who do not need to be coddled and coaxed into
experiments and improvements by the dinners and discourses of dilettanti
peers; but who unite the quick intelligence of the manufacturer with the
hearty hospitality for which the English used to be famous. Among the
Lincolnshire farmers rural life is to be seen in its most agreeable aspect.
The labourers are as superior to the southern peasantry as their employers to
the southern tenantry. Books, newspapers, and music may be found in the
farm-houses, as well as old ale and sound port wine. At Aylsby, six miles
from Great Grimsby, Mr. William Torr has a fine herd of short horns and a
flock of pure Leicester sheep, well worth a visit. The celebrated Wold
farmers are about ten miles distant. Any one of them is worth six Baden
barons.

After crossing from Hull, if a visit to these Wold Farms be intended, Grimsby
is the best resting-place, a miserable town of great antiquity, which, after
slumbering, or rather mouldering, for centuries on the profits of
Parliamentary privileges and a small coasting trade, has been touched by the
steam-enchanter's wand, and presented with docks, warehouses, railways, and
the tools of commerce. These, aided by its happy situation, will soon render
it a great steam-port, and obliterate, it is to be hoped, the remains of the
squalid borough, which traces back its foundation to the times of Saxon sea-
kings. We must record, for the credit o