Having now pursued a westerly direction until I was in the range of a continuous upland section of country, I took a northward course and walked on to Oundle, a goodly town in Northamptonshire, as unique as its name. On the way, in crossing over to another turnpike road, I passed through a large tract of land in a very deshabille condition, rough, boggy and bushy. I soon found it was a game-growing estate, and very productive of all sorts of birds and small quadrupeds. The fields I crossed showed a promising crop of hares and rabbits; and doubtless there were more partridges on that square mile than in the whole State of Connecticut. This is a characteristic of the country which will strike an American, at his first visit, with wonder. He will see hares and rabbits bobbing about on common farms, and partridges in broods, like separate flocks of hens and chickens, in fields of grain, within a stone's throw of the farmer's house. I doubt if any county in New England produces so many in a year as the holding of Mr. Samuel Jonas already described. Rabbits have been put out of the pale of protection somewhat recently, I believe, and branded with the bad name of _vermin_; so that the tenant farmer may kill them on his occupation without leave or license from the landlord. It may indicate their number to state the fact, that one hundred and twenty-five head of them were killed in one day's shooting on Mr. Jonas's estate by his sons and some of their friends. It was market day in Oundle, and I had the pleasure of sitting down to dinner with a large company of farmers and cattle and corn- dealers. They were intelligent, substantial-looking men, with no occupational peculiarity of dress or language to distinguish them from ordinary middle-class gentlemen engaged in trade or manufacture. Indeed, the old-fashioned English farmer, of the great, round, purply-red face, aldermanic stature, and costume of fifty years ago, speaking the dialect of his county with such inimitable accent, is fast going out. I have not seen one during my present sojourn in England. I fear he has disappeared altogether with the old stage-coach, and that we have not pictures enough of him left to give the rising generation any correct notion of what he was, and how he looked. It may be a proper and utilitarian change, but one can hardly notice without regret what transformations the railway regime has wrought in customs and habits which once individualised a country and people. A kind of French centralisation in the world of fashion has been established, which has over-ridden and obliterated all the dress boundaries of civilised nations. All the upper and middle classes of Christendom centre themselves to one focus of taste and merge into one plastic commonwealth, to be shaped and moulded virtually by a common tailor. Their coats, vests, pantaloons, boots and shoes are made substantially after the same pattern. For a while, hats stood out