t
how, notwithstanding its Caucasian complexion, it is regarded as a
nuisance in our woods, meadows and pastures, so that any man who
owns, or can borrow an axe, may cut it down without leave or license
wherever he finds it--when I saw this disparity in its status in the
two Englands, I resolved to plead its cause in my own with new zeal
and fidelity.

CHAPTER XIII.

WALK TO OAKHAM--THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPRING--THE ENGLISH GENTRY-
-A SPECIMEN OF THE CLASS--MELTON MOWBRAY AND ITS SPECIALITIES--
BELVOIR VALE AND ITS BEAUTY--THOUGHTS ON THE BLIND PAINTER.

From Stamford to Oakham was an afternoon walk which I greatly
enjoyed. This was the first week of harvest, and the first of
August. How wonderfully the seasons are localised and subdivided.
How diversified is the economy of light and heat! That field of
wheat, thick, tall and ripe for the sickle, was green and apparently
growing through all the months of last winter. What a phenomenon it
would have been, on the first of February last, to a New England
farmer, suddenly transported from his snow-buried hills to the view
of this landscape the same day! Not a spire of grass or grain was
alive when he left his own homestead. All was cold and dead. The
very earth was frozen to the solidity and sound of granite. It was
a relief to his eye to see the snow fall upon the scene and hide it
two feet deep for months. He looks upon this, then upon the one he
left behind. This looks full of luxuriant life, as green as his in
May. It has three months' start of his dead and buried crop. He
walks across it; his shoes sink almost to the instep in the soft
soil. He sees birds hopping about in it without overcoats. Surely,
he says to himself, this is a favored land. Here it lies on the
latitudes of Labrador, and yet its midwinter fields are as green as
ours in the last month of Spring. At this rate the farmers here
must harvest their wheat before the ears of mine are formed. But he
counts without Nature. The American sun overtakes and distances the
English by a full month. Here is the compensation for six
consecutive months in which the New England farmer must house his
plough and not turn a furrow.

Doubtless, as much light and heat brighten and warm one country as
the other in the aggregate of a year. But there is a great
difference in the economy of distribution. In England, the sun
spreads its warmth more evenly over the four seasons of the year.
W