Therefore, any _assistance_ the sufferers should never have from me, while I could find an honest and industrious English labourer (unloaded with a family too) fed worse than a felon in the gaols; and this I can find in every part of the country. _Petersfield, Friday Evening, 11th November._ We lost another day at Easton; the whole of yesterday, it having rained the whole day; so that we could not have come an inch but in the wet. We started, therefore, this morning, coming through the Duke of Buckingham's Park, at Avington, which is close by Easton, and on the same side of the Itchen. This is a very beautiful place. The house is close down at the edge of the meadow land; there is a lawn before it, and a pond, supplied by the Itchen, at the end of the lawn, and bounded by the park on the other side. The high road, through the park, goes very near to this water; and we saw thousands of wild-ducks in the pond, or sitting round on the green edges of it, while, on one side of the pond, the hares and pheasants were moving about upon a gravel walk on the side of a very fine plantation. We looked down upon all this from a rising ground, and the water, like a looking-glass, showed us the trees, and even the animals. This is certainly one of the very prettiest spots in the world. The wild water-fowl seem to take particular delight in this place. There are a great many at Lord Caernarvon's; but there the water is much larger, and the ground and wood about it comparatively rude and coarse. Here, at Avington, everything is in such beautiful order; the lawn before the house is of the finest green, and most neatly kept; and the edge of the pond (which is of several acres) is as smooth as if it formed part of a bowling-green. To see so many _wild_-fowl in a situation where everything is in the _parterre_-order has a most pleasant effect on the mind; and Richard and I, like Pope's cock in the farmyard, could not help _thanking_ the Duke and Duchess for having generously made such ample provision for our pleasure, and that, too, merely to please us as we were passing along. Now this is the advantage of going about on _horseback_. On foot the fatigue is too great, and you go too slowly. In any sort of carriage you cannot get into the _real country places_. To travel in stage coaches is to be hurried along by force, in a box, with an air-hole in it, and constantly exposed to broken limbs, the _danger_ being much greater than that of ship-board, and the _noise_ much more disagreeable, while the _company_ is frequently not a great deal more to one's liking.