The grounds of the Dingle embrace three cottages; those of the two Messrs. Cropper, and that of a son, who is married to a daughter of Dr. Arnold.  I rather think this way of relatives living together is more common here in England than it is in America; and there is more idea of home permanence connected with the family dwelling-place than with us, where the country is so wide, and causes of change and removal so frequent.  A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.  We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati.  Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die.  The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder.  There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.  All which is apropos to our having finished our walk, and got back to the ivy-covered porch again.

The next day at breakfast, it was arranged that we should take a drive out to Speke Hall, an old mansion, which is considered a fine specimen of ancient house architecture.  So the carriage was at the door.  It was a cool, breezy, April morning, but there was an abundance of wrappers and carriage blankets provided to keep us comfortable.  I must say, by the by, that English housekeepers are bountiful in their provision for carriage comfort.  Every household has a store of warm, loose over garments, which are offered, if needed, to the guests; and each carriage is provided with one or two blankets, manufactured and sold expressly for this use, to envelope one’s feet and limbs; besides all which, should the weather be cold, comes out a long stone reservoir, made flat on both sides, and filled with hot water, for foot stools.  This is an improvement on the primitive simplicity of hot bricks, and even on the tin foot stove, which has nourished in New England.

Being thus provided with all things necessary for comfort, we rattled merrily away, and I, remembering that I was in England, kept my eyes wide open to see what I could see.  The hedges of the fields were just budding, and the green showed itself on them, like a thin gauze veil.  These hedges are not all so well kept and trimmed as I expected to find them.  Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones, and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we have at home.  But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of the fields, and it is certainly a more picturesque mode of division than our stone or worm fences.  Outside of every hedge, towards the street, there is generally a ditch, and at the bottom of the hedge is the favorite nestling-place for all sorts of wild flowers.  I remember reading in stories about children trying to crawl through a gap in the hedge to get at flowers, and tumbling into a ditch on the other side, and I now saw exactly how they could do it.