The first part of my ride this morning was by the side of Sir John Astley's park. This man is one of the members of the county (gallon-loaf Bennet being the other). They say that he is good to the labouring people; and he ought to be good for _something_, being a member of Parliament of the Lethbridge and Dickenson stamp. However, he has got a thumping estate; though it be borne in mind, the working-people and the fund-holders and the dead-weight have each their separate mortgage upon it; of which this Baronet has, I dare say, too much justice to complain, seeing that the amount of these mortgages was absolutely necessary to carry on Pitt and Perceval and Castlereagh Wars; to support Hanoverian soldiers in England; to fight and beat the Americans on the Serpentine River; to give Wellington a kingly estate; and to defray the expenses of Manchester and other yeomanry cavalry; besides all the various charges of Power-of-Imprisonment Bills and of Six-Acts. These being the cause of the mortgages, the "worthy Baronet" has, I will engage, too much justice to complain of them. In steering across the down, I came to a large farm, which a shepherd told me was Milton Hill Farm. This was upon the high land, and before I came to the edge of this _Valley of Avon_, which was my land of promise; or, at least, of great expectation; for I could not imagine that thirty churches had been built _for nothing_ by the side of a brook (for it is no more during the greater part of the way) thirty miles long. The shepherd showed me the way towards Milton; and at the end of about a mile, from the top of a very high part of the down, with a steep slope towards the valley, I first saw this _Valley of Avon_; and a most beautiful sight it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers, steeples, fields, meadows, orchards, and very fine timber trees, scattered all over the valley. The shape of the thing is this: on each side _downs_, very lofty and steep in some places, and sloping miles back in other places; but each _outside_ of the valley are downs. From the edge of the downs begin capital _arable fields_ generally of very great dimensions, and, in some places, running a mile or two back into little _cross-valleys_, formed by hills of downs. After the corn-fields come _meadows_, on each side, down to the _brook_ or _river_. The farm-houses, mansions, villages, and hamlets, are generally situated in that part of the arable land which comes nearest the meadows.