[30] In the opening chapter of that popular work, Eugene Aram, are the following words:--"It has been observed, and there is a world of homely, ay, and of legislative knowledge in the observation, that wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a bird-cage at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better and wiser than their neighbours." The truth of this observation is indisputable. But for such "humble tokens of attention to something beyond the _sterile labour_ of life" you look in vain during a progress through this country. In New England alone, neatness and a certain endeavour at rustic elegance and adornment, in the cottages and country residences, recall those of their fatherland; and the pleasure of the traveller is immeasurably heightened by this circumstance. If the wild beauties of uncultivated nature lead our contemplations to our great Maker, these lowly witnesses of the industry and natural refinement of the laborious cultivator of the soil warm our heart with sympathy for our kind, and the cheering conviction that, however improved by cultivation, the sense of beauty, and the love of what is lovely, have been alike bestowed upon all our race; 'tis a wholesome conviction, which the artificial divisions of society too often cause us to lose sight of. The labourer, who, after "sweating in the eye of Phoebus" all the day, at evening trains the fragrant jasmine round his lowly door, is the very same man who, in other circumstances, would have been the refined and liberal patron of those arts which reflect the beauty of nature. [31] In all my progress I looked in vain for the refreshing sight of a hedge--no such thing was to be seen; and their extreme rarity throughout the country renders the more cultivated parts of it arid looking and comparatively dreary. These crooked fences in the south, and stone walls to the north, form the divisions of the fields, instead of those delicious "hedge-rows green," where the old elms delight to grow, where the early violets and primroses first peep sheltered forth, where the hawthorn blossoms sweeten the summer, the honeysuckle hangs its yellow garlands in the autumn, and the red "hips and haws" shine like bushes of earthly coral in the winter.