So I followed “the missus” into that great kitchen, and sat down in one corner of the huge fire-place while she made the tea.  It was a capacious museum of culinary curiosities of the olden time, all arranged in picturesque groups, yet without any aim at effect.  Pots, kettles, pans, spits, covers, hooks and trammels of the Elizabethan period, apparently the heirlooms of several intersecting generations, showed in the fire-light like a work of artistry; the sharp, silvery brightness of the tin and the florid flush of burnished copper making distinct disks in the darkness.  It was with a rare sentiment of comfort that I sat by that fire of crackling faggots, looked up at the stars that dropped in their light as they passed over the top of the great chimney, and glanced around at the sides of that old English kitchen, panelled with plates and platters and dishes of all sizes and uses.  And this fire was kindled and this tea-kettle was singing for me really because I was an American!  I could not forget that—­so I deemed it my duty to keep up the character.  Therefore, I told the missus and her bright-eyed niece a great many stories about America; some of which excited their admiration and wonder.  Thus I sat at the little, round, three-legged table, inside the out-spreading chimney, for an hour or more, and made as cozy and pleasant a meal of it as ever I ate.  Besides all this, I had the best bed in the house, and several “Good nights!” on retiring to it, uttered with hearty good-will by voices softened to an accent of kindness.  Next morning I was introduced into the best parlor, and had a capital breakfast, and then resumed my walk with a pleasant memory of my entertainment in that village inn.

I passed through a fertile and interesting section to St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire.  Here I remained with some friends for a week, visiting neighboring villages by day and returning at night.  St. Ives is a pleasant, well-favored town, just large enough to constitute a coherent, neighborly, and well-regulated community.  It is the centre-piece of a rich, rural picture, which, without any strikingly salient features, pleases the eye with lineaments of quiet beauty symmetrically developed by the artistry of Nature.  The river Ouse meanders through a wide, fertile flat, or what the Scotch would call a strath, which gently rises on each side into pleasantly undulating uplands.  Parks, groves, copses, and hedge-row trees are interspersed very happily, and meadow, pasture, and grain-fields seen through them, with villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and isolated cottages, make up a landscape that grows more and more interesting as you contemplate it.  And this placid locality, with its peaceful river seemingly sleeping in the bosom of its long and level meadows, was the scene of Oliver Cromwell’s young, fiery manhood.  Here, where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises of the mind, he trained the latent energies of his will for action in the great drama that overturned a throne and transformed a nation.  Here, till very lately, stood his “barn,” and here he drilled the first squadron of his “Ironsides.”