Well, now it was all done.  Merodach Baladan had not a more perfect expose of the riches of Hezekiah than we had of the glories of Warwick.  One always likes to see the most perfect thing of its kind; and probably this is the most perfect specimen of the feudal ages yet remaining in England.

As I stood with Joseph Sturge under the old cedars of Lebanon, and watched the multitude of tourists, and parties of pleasure, who were thronging the walks, I said to him, “After all, this establishment amounts to a public museum and pleasure grounds for the use of the people.”  He assented.  “And,” said I, “you English people like these things; you like these old magnificent seats, kept up by old families.”  “That is what I tell them,” said Joseph Sturge.  “I tell them there is no danger in enlarging the suffrage, for the people would not break up these old establishments if they could.”  On that point, of course, I had no means of forming an opinion.

One cannot view an institution so unlike any thing we have in our own country without having many reflections excited, for one of these estates may justly be called an institution; it includes within itself all the influence on a community of a great model farm, of model housekeeping, of a general museum of historic remains, and of a gallery of fine arts.

It is a fact that all these establishments through England are, at certain fixed hours, thrown open for the inspection of whoever may choose to visit them, with no other expense than the gratuity which custom requires to be given to the servant who shows them.  I noticed, as we passed from one part of the ground to another, that our guides changed—­one part apparently being the perquisite of one servant, and one of another.  Many of the servants who showed them appeared to be superannuated men, who probably had this post as one of the dignities and perquisites of their old age.

The influence of these estates on the community cannot but be in many respects beneficial, and should go some way to qualify the prejudice with which republicans are apt to contemplate any thing aristocratic; for although the legal title to these things inheres in but one man, yet in a very important sense they belong to the whole community, indeed, to universal humanity.  It may be very undesirable and unwise to wish to imitate these institutions in America, and yet it may be illiberal to undervalue them as they stand in England.  A man would not build a house, in this nineteenth century, on the pattern of a feudal castle; and yet where the feudal castle is built, surely its antique grace might plead somewhat in its favor, and it may be better to accommodate it to modern uses, than to level it, and erect a modern mansion in its place.

Nor, since the world is wide, and now being rapidly united by steam into one country, does the objection to these things, on account of the room they take up, seem so great as formerly.  In the million of square miles of the globe there is room enough for all sorts of things.