Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
of fifty feet, a foot and a half through at that distance from the
ground. This is by far the finest _plank oak_ that I ever saw in
England. The road through the wood is winding and brings you out at the
corner of a field, lying sloping to the south, three sides of it
bordered by wood and the field planted as an orchard. This is precisely
what you see in so many thousands of places in America. I had passed
through Hempstead a little while before, which certainly gave its name
to the Township in which I lived in Long Island, and which I used to
write _Hampstead_, contrary to the orthography of the place, never
having heard of such a place as _Hempstead_ in England. Passing through
Hempstead I gave my mind a toss back to Long Island, and this beautiful
wood and orchard really made me almost conceit that I was there, and
gave rise to a thousand interesting and pleasant reflections. On
quitting the wood I crossed the great road from London to Wendover,
went across the park of Mr. Drake, and up a steep hill towards the great
road leading to Wycombe. Mr. Drake's is a very beautiful place, and has
a great deal of very fine timber upon it. I think I counted pretty
nearly 200 oak trees, worth, on an average, five pounds a-piece, growing
within twenty yards of the road that I was going along. Mr. Drake has
some thousands of these, I dare say, besides his beech; and, therefore,
_he_ will be able to stand a tug with the fundholders for some time.
When I got to High Wycombe, I found everything a week earlier than in
the rich part of Hertfordshire. High Wycombe, as if the name was
ironical, lies along the bottom of a narrow and deep valley, the hills
on each side being very steep indeed. The valley runs somewhere about
from east to west, and the wheat on the hills facing the south will, if
this weather continue, be fit to reap in ten days. I saw one field of
oats that a bold farmer would cut next Monday. Wycombe is a very fine
and very clean market town; the people all looking extremely well; the
girls somewhat larger featured and larger boned than those in Sussex,
and not so fresh-coloured and bright-eyed. More like the girls of
America, and that is saying quite as much as any reasonable woman can
expect or wish for. The Hills on the south side of Wycombe form a park
and estate now the property of Smith, who was a banker or stocking-maker
at Nottingham, who was made a Lord in the time of Pitt, and who
purchased this estate of the late Marquis of Landsdowne, one of whose
titles is Baron Wycombe. Wycombe is one of those famous things called
Boroughs, and 34 votes in this Borough send Sir John Dashwood and Sir
Thomas Baring to the "collective wisdom." The landlord where I put up
"_remembered_" the name of Dashwood, but had "_forgotten_" who the
"_other_" was! There would be no forgettings of this sort, if these
thirty-four, together with _their_ representatives, were called upon to
pay the share of the National Debt due from High Wycombe. Between High
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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