And this we may ask, not merely as it respects gas, steam, the marvellous developments of chemistry and electro-magnetism, by which the mode and embellishment of our existence have been so much changed already, and which promise yet changes too vast to be readily familiarized to the imagination,--but of a thousand other privileges and conveniences in which England is pre-eminent. It is, however, to our rural life that we are about to devote our attention; and it is in rural life that the superiority of England is, perhaps, more striking, than in any other respect. Over the whole face of our country the charm of a refined existence is diffused. There is nothing which strikes foreigners so much as the beauty of our country abodes, and the peculiarity of our country life. The elegances, the arts, and refinements of the city, are carried out and blended, from end to end of the island, so beautifully with the peaceful simplicity of the country, that nothing excites more the admiration of strangers than those rural paradises, the halls, castles, abbeys, lodges, and cottages, in which our nobility and gentry spend more or less of every year. Let Prince Pückler Muskau, Washington Irving, Willis, Count Pecchio, Rice, and others, tell you how beautiful, in their eyes, appeared the parks, lawns, fields, and the whole country of England, cultivated like a garden. It is true that our climate is not to be boasted of for its perpetual serenity. It has had no lack of abuse, both from our own countrymen and others. We are none of us without a pretty lively memory of its freaks and changes, its mists and tempests; its winters wild as some of late, and its springs that are often so tardy in their arrival, that they find summer standing in the gate to tell them they are no longer wanted. All this we know; yet which of us is not ready to forgive all this, and to say with a full heart, England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!