One cannot view an institution so unlike any thing we have in our own country without having many reflections excited, for one of these estates may justly be called an institution; it includes within itself all the influence on a community of a great model farm, of model housekeeping, of a general museum of historic remains, and of a gallery of fine arts. It is a fact that all these establishments through England are, at certain fixed hours, thrown open for the inspection of whoever may choose to visit them, with no other expense than the gratuity which custom requires to be given to the servant who shows them. I noticed, as we passed from one part of the ground to another, that our guides changed--one part apparently being the perquisite of one servant, and one of another. Many of the servants who showed them appeared to be superannuated men, who probably had this post as one of the dignities and perquisites of their old age. The influence of these estates on the community cannot but be in many respects beneficial, and should go some way to qualify the prejudice with which republicans are apt to contemplate any thing aristocratic; for although the legal title to these things inheres in but one man, yet in a very important sense they belong to the whole community, indeed, to universal humanity. It may be very undesirable and unwise to wish to imitate these institutions in America, and yet it may be illiberal to undervalue them as they stand in England. A man would not build a house, in this nineteenth century, on the pattern of a feudal castle; and yet where the feudal castle is built, surely its antique grace might plead somewhat in its favor, and it may be better to accommodate it to modern uses, than to level it, and erect a modern mansion in its place. Nor, since the world is wide, and now being rapidly united by steam into one country, does the objection to these things, on account of the room they take up, seem so great as formerly. In the million of square miles of the globe there is room enough for all sorts of things. With such reflections the lover of the picturesque may comfort himself, hoping that he is not sinning against the useful in his admiration of the beautiful. One great achievement of the millennium, I trust, will be in uniting these two elements, which have ever been contending. There was great significance in the old Greek fable which represented Venus as the divinely-appointed helpmeet of Vulcan, and yet always quarrelling with him. We can scarce look at the struggling, earth-bound condition of useful labor through the world without joining in the beautiful aspiration of our American poet,-- "Surely, the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light. In that new childhood of the world Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood through Time's shrunk veins be hurled, And labor meet delight half way."[M]