and somewhat bleak spot in Berkshire, on the borders of Wiltshire, and within a very short distance of a part of Hampshire. The ground is a loam, mixed with flints, and has the chalk at no great distance beneath it. It is, therefore, free from _wet_; needs no water furrows; and is pretty good in its nature. The house, which has been improved by Mr. Blandy, the present proprietor, is still but a plain farmhouse. Mr. Blandy has lived here thirty years, and has brought up ten children to man's and woman's estate. Mr. Blandy was from home, but Mrs. Blandy received and entertained us in a very hospitable manner.--We returned, not along the low land, but along the top of the downs, and through Lord Caernarvon's park, and got home after a very pleasant day. _Burghclere, Wednesday, 21 Nov._ We intended to have a hunt; but the foxhounds came across and rendered it impracticable. As an instance of the change which rural customs have undergone since the hellish paper-system has been so furiously at work, I need only mention the fact, that, forty years ago, there were _five_ packs of _foxhounds_ and _ten_ packs of _harriers_ kept within _ten miles_ of Newbury; and that now there is _one_ of the former (kept, too, by _subscription_) and _none_ of the latter, except the few couple of dogs kept by Mr. Budd! "So much the better," says the shallow fool, who cannot duly estimate the difference between a resident _native_ gentry, attached to the soil, known to every farmer and labourer from their childhood, frequently mixing with them in those pursuits where all artificial distinctions are lost, practicing hospitality without ceremony, from habit and not on calculation; and a gentry, only now-and-then residing at all, having no relish for country-delights, foreign in their manners, distant and haughty in their behaviour, looking to the soil only for its rents, viewing it as a mere object of speculation, unacquainted with its cultivators, despising them and their pursuits, and relying for influence, not upon the good will of the vicinage, but upon the dread of their power. The war and paper-system has brought in nabobs, negro-drivers, generals, admirals, governors, commissaries, contractors, pensioners, sinecurists, commissioners, loan-jobbers, lottery-dealers, bankers, stock-jobbers; not to mention the long and _black list_ in gowns and three-tailed wigs. You can see but few good houses not in possession of one or the other of these. These, with the Parsons, are now the magistrates. Some of the _consequences_ are before us; but they have not all yet arrived. A taxation that sucks up fifty millions a year _must_ produce a new set of proprietors every twenty years or less; and the proprietors, while they last, can be little better than tax-collectors to the government, and scourgers of the people.--I must not quit _Burghclere_ without noticing Mr. Budd's _radical_ Swedes and other things. His is but miniature farming; but it is very good, and very interesting.