In the year 1843, on a temporary return to England after a long Indian exile, I travelled by railway for the first time in my life.  As I glided on, as smoothly as in a sledge, over the level iron road, with such magical rapidity—­from the pretty and cheerful town of Southampton to the greatest city of the civilized world—­every thing was new to me, and I gave way to child-like wonder and child-like exultation.[002] What a quick succession of lovely landscapes greeted the eye on either side?  What a garden-like air of universal cultivation!  What beautiful smooth slopes!  What green, quiet meadows!  What rich round trees, brooding over their silent shadows!  What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes!  What an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their little trim gardens!  What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy!  How the love of nature thrilled my heart with a gentle and delicious agitation, and how proud I felt of my dear native land!  It is, indeed, a fine thing to be an Englishman.  Whether at home or abroad, he is made conscious of the claims of his country to respect and admiration.  As I fed my eyes on the loveliness of Nature, or turned to the miracles of Art and Science on every hand, I had always in my mind a secret reference to the effect which a visit to England must produce upon an intelligent and observant foreigner.

    Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around
    Of hills and dales and woods and lawns and spires,
    And glittering towns and gilded streams, ’till all
    The stretching landscape into smoke decays! 
    Happy Brittannia! where the Queen of Arts,
    Inspiring vigor, Liberty, abroad
    Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots,
    And scatters plenty with unsparing hand.

Thomson.

And here let me put in a word in favor of the much-abused English climate.  I cannot echo the unpatriotic discontent of Byron when he speaks of

                    The cold and cloudy clime
    Where he was born, but where he would not die.

Rather let me say with the author of “The Seasons,” in his address to England.

    Rich is thy soil and merciful thy clime.

King Charles the Second when he heard some foreigners condemning our climate and exulting in their own, observed that in his opinion that was the best climate in which a man could be out in the open air with pleasure, or at least without trouble and inconvenience, the most days of the year and the most hours of the day; and this he held was the case with the climate of England more than that of any other country in Europe.  To say nothing of the lovely and noble specimens of human nature to which it seems so congenial, I may safely assert that it is peculiarly favorable, with, rare exceptions, to the sweet children of Flora.  There is no country in the world in which there are at this day such innumerable tribes of flowers.  There are in England two thousand varieties of the rose alone, and I venture to express a doubt whether the richest gardens of Persia or Cashmere could produce finer specimens of that universal favorite than are to be found in some of the small but highly cultivated enclosures of respectable English rustics.