Such are the principal country excitements; and to these may be added those of another class, which have sprung up of late years, and have done much good--the floral and horticultural shews. These have been warmly patronized by the aristocracy; and it forms a striking feature in modern country life, to see carriages and pedestrians hastening, on certain days to certain places, where different flowers and fruits, in their respective seasons, are displayed with great taste, and with brilliant effect. The place of meeting is sometimes at a country inn, where, on the bowling-green, tents are pitched, in which the flowers or fruits are exhibited, and the whole scene is extremely gay. Such a one I saw at Kingston Hill, near Richmond Park--a Dahlia shew: on the end of the house an invitation to all England being gorgeously emblazoned in dahlia-flowers, surmounted by the crown royal, and the good English initials Q. V.; looking as though the worthy horticulturists meant to set the rational example of using the English language to the English people. PART II. LIFE OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISH FARMER. There are few things which give one such a feeling of the prosperity of the country, as seeing the country people pour into a large town on market-day. There they come, streaming along all the roads that lead to it from the wide country round. The footpaths are filled with a hardy and homely succession of pedestrians, men and women, with their baskets on their arms, containing their butter, eggs, apples, mushrooms, walnuts, nuts, elderberries, blackberries, bundles of herbs, young pigeons, fowls, or whatever happens to be in season. There are boys and girls too, similarly loaded, and also with baskets of birds’ nests in spring, cages of young birds, and old birds, baskets of tame rabbits, and bunches of cowslips, primroses, and all kinds of flowers and country productions imaginable. The carriage-road is equally alive, with people riding and driving along; farmers and country gentlemen, country clergymen, parish overseers, and various other personages, drawn to the market-town by some real or imagined business, are rattling forward on horseback, or in carriages of various kinds, gigs, and spring-carts, and carts without springs. There are carriers’ wagons, and covered carts without end, many of them shewing from their open fronts, whole troops of women snugly seated; while their dogs chained beneath, go struggling and barking along, pushing their heads forward in their collars every minute as if they would hang themselves. This is in the morning; and in the afternoon you see them pouring out again, and directing their course to many a far-off hamlet and old-fashioned abode. But there is a wide difference between coming in and going out. The wagons and carts go heavily and soberly, for they are laden with good solid commodities, groceries and draperies, mops, brushes, hardware and crockery,