The Rural Life of England

Let every man who has a sufficiency for the enjoyment of life, thank heaven most fervently that he lives in this country and age. They may tell us of the beauty of southern skies, and the softness of southern climates; but where is the land which a man would rather choose to call himself a native of—because it combines more of the requisites for a happy and useful existence; more of the moral, social, and intellectual advantages, without which fair skies or soft climates would become dolorous, or at best, indifferent? I say, let every man gratefully rejoice, who has the means of commanding the full blessings of English life,—for alas! there are thousands and millions of our countrymen who possess but a scanty portion of these; whose lives are too long and continuous a course of toil and anxiety to permit them even to look round them and see how vast are the powers of enjoyment in this country, and how few of those sources of ease, comfort, and refined pleasure are within their reach. I trust a better day is coming to this portion of our population; that many circumstances are working together to confer on the toiling children of these kingdoms the social rewards which their unwearied industry so richly merits; but for those who already hold in their hands the golden key, where is the country like England? If we are naturally proud of making a portion of a mighty and a glorious kingdom, where is the kingdom like England? It is a land of which the most ambitious or magnanimous spirit may well say with a high emotion—“That is my country!” Over what an extent of the earth it stretches its territories; over what swarming and diversified millions it extends its sceptre! On every side of the globe, lie its outspread regions; under every aspect of heaven, walk its free or tributary people. In the West Indies; in the vaster dominions of the East; in America and Australia; through each wide continent, and many a fair island! But its political and moral power extends even far beyond these. What nation is there, however great, that does not look with breathless anxiety to the movements of England; what country is not bound up with it in the strongest interests and hopes; what country is there which does not feel the influence of its moral energy? Through all the cities and forests of Republican America, the spirit of England, as well as its language, lives and glows. France, Germany, and even Russia to the depths of its frozen heart, feel the emanations of its free and popular institutions. Every pulse of love which beats here—every principle of justice that is more clearly recognised—every sentiment of Christianity that is elevated on the broad basis of the human heart, hence spreads through the earth as from a centre of moral life, and produces in the remotest regions its portion of civilization.