Another thing that would be quite sure to strike my eye on this my first ride across British soil, and on all subsequent rides, was the enormous number of birds and fowls of various kinds that swarmed in the air or covered the ground.  It was truly amazing It seemed as if the feathered life of a whole continent must have been concentrated on this island.  Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully.  There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground.  They know the value of birds in Britain,—­that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer.  It must be the paradise of crows and rooks.  It did me good to see them so much at home about the fields and even in the towns.  I was glad also to see that the British crow was not a stranger to me, and that he differed from his brother on the American side of the Atlantic only in being less alert and cautious, having less use for these qualities.

Now and then the train would start up some more tempting game.  A brace or two of partridges or a covey of quails would settle down in the stubble, or a cock pheasant drop head and tail and slide into the copse.  Rabbits also would scamper back from the borders of the fields into the thickets or peep slyly out, making my sportsman’s fingers tingle.

I have no doubt I should be a notorious poacher in England.  How could an American see so much game and not wish to exterminate it entirely as he does at home?  But sporting is an expensive luxury here.  In the first place a man pays a heavy tax on his gun, nearly or quite half its value; then he has to have a license to hunt, for which he pays smartly; then permission from the owner of the land upon which he wishes to hunt; so that the game is hedged about by a triple safeguard.

An American, also, will be at once struck with the look of greater substantiality and completeness in everything he sees here.  No temporizing, no makeshifts, no evidence of hurry, or failure, or contract work; no wood and little paint, but plenty of iron and brick and stone.  This people have taken plenty of time, and have built broad and deep, and placed the cap-stone on.  All this I had been told, but it pleased me so in the seeing that I must tell it again.  It is worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see the bridges alone.  I believe I had seen little other than wooden bridges before, and in England I saw not one such, but everywhere solid arches of masonry, that were refreshing and reassuring to behold.  Even the lanes and byways about the farm, I noticed, crossed the little creeks with a span upon which an elephant would not hesitate to tread, or artillery trains to pass.  There is no form so pleasing to look upon as the arch, or that affords so much food and suggestion to the mind.  It seems to stimulate the volition, the will-power, and for my part I cannot look upon a noble span without a feeling of envy, for I know the hearts of heroes are thus keyed and fortified.  The arch is the symbol of strength and activity, and of rectitude.