He has neither an eye for nature, nor a heart to participate in rural amusements. And a very nice place an English manor-house would be under his peculiar superintendence and the operation of the new regime! In the morning we should meet, ladies and gentlemen, in the breakfast-room, all devoutly intent upon the active demolition of the muffins. Tea and coffee there are in abundance--but not good, for the first has the flavour of the hedges, and the second reminds us villanously of Hunt's roasted corn. There are eggs, however, and on the sideboard rest a large round of beef, with a thick margin of rancid yellow fat, and a ham which is literal hog's-lard. There are no fish. The trouting stream has been turned from its natural course to move machinery, and now rolls to the shrinking sea, not in native silver, but in alternate currents of indigo, ochre, or cochineal, according to the hue most in request for the moment at the neighbouring dye-work. In vain you look about for grouse-pie, cold partridge, snipe, or pheasant. You might as well ask for a limb of the ichthyosaurus as for a wing of these perished animals. Deuce a creature is there in the room except bipeds, and they are all of the manufacturing breed. You recollect the days of old, when your entry into the breakfast-room used to be affectionately welcomed by terrier, setter, and spaniel, and you wonder what has become of these ancient inmates of the family. On inquiry you are informed, that--being non-productive animals, and mere consumers of food which ought to be reserved for the use of man alone--they have one and all of them been put to death: and your host points rather complacently to the effigy of old Ponto, who has been stuffed by way of a specimen of an extinct species, and who now glares at you with glassy eyes from beneath the shelter of the mahogany sideboard. Tired of the conversation, which is principally directed towards the working of the new tariff, the last improvement in printed calicoes, and the prices of some kind of stock which appears to fluctuate as unaccountably as the barometer, you rise from table and move towards the window in hopes of a pleasant prospect. You have it. The old park, which used to contain some of the finest trees in Britain--oaks of the Boscobel order, and elms that were the boast of the country--is now as bare as the palm of your hand, and broken up into potato allotments. The shrubbery and flower parterres, with their elegant terrace vases and light wire fences, have disappeared. There is not a bush beyond a few barberries, evidently intended for detestable jam, nor a flower, except some chamomiles, which may be infused into a medicinal beverage, and a dozen great stringy coarse-looking rhubarbs, enough to give you the dyspepsia, if you merely imagine them in a tart. At the bottom of the slope lies the stream whereof we have spoken already, not sinuous or fringed with alders as of yore; but straight as an arrow,