“I know not how it is; I cannot comprehend the feeling, with which many quit this noble country for ever for strange lands. And yet it may be said, that hundreds do it every day; and for thousands it may indeed be well. For those who have had no prospect but the daily struggle for existence; for those whose minds have not been opened and quickened into a sense of the higher and more spiritual enjoyments which this country affords; for the labouring many, the valleys of Australia or the vast forests and prairies of America may be alluring. But to me,--and therefore, it seems, equally to other men with like tastes and attachments--to quit England, noble, fearless, magnanimous, and Christian England, would be to cut asunder life, and hope, and happiness at once. No! till I voyage to ‘the better land,’ I could never quit England. What! after all the ages that have been spent in making it habitable, and home-like; after all the blood shed in its defence, and for the maintaining of its civil polity; after all the consumption of patriotic thought and enterprise, the labours of philosophers, divines, and statesmen, to civilize and Christianize it; after the time, the capital, the energies employed, from age to age, to cultivate its fields, dry up marshes, build bridges, and lay down roads, raise cities, and fill every house with the products of the arts and the wealth of literature; can there be a spot of earth that can pretend to a tithe of its advantages, or a spot that creates in the heart that higher tone necessary for their full enjoyment? Why, every spot of this island is sanctified, not only by the efforts of countless patriots, but as the birth-place and abode of men of genius. Go where you will, places present themselves to your eyes which are stamped with the memory of some one or other of those ‘burning and shining lights,’ that have illuminated the atmosphere of England with their collective splendour, and made it visible to the men of farthest climates. Even in this secluded district, which, beautiful as it is, is comparatively little known or spoken of, amongst the generality of English people, how many literary recollections surround you! To say nothing of the actors in great historical scenes; the Talbots, Shrewsburys, Dudleys, and Bagots of former ages; or the Ansons, Vernons, St. Vincents, and Pagets of the later and present ones; in this county were born those excellent bishops, Hurd and Newton, and the venerable antiquary and herald, Elias Ashmole. To say nothing of the amount of taste and knowledge that exist in the best classes of society hereabout, we have to-day passed the houses of Thomas Gisborne and Edward Cooper, clergymen who have done honour to their profession by their talents and the liberality of their sentiments. In that antiquated Fauld Hall, once lived old Squire Burton, the brother of the author of the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy;’ and there is little doubt that some part of that remarkable work was written there.