This section is from "The Horticulturist, And Journal Of Rural Art And Rural Taste", by P. Barry, A. J. Downing, J. Jay Smith, Peter B. Mead, F. W. Woodward, Henry T. Williams. Also available from Amazon: Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste.
Walks and Talks or an American Farmer in England, with Illustrations: By Feed. Law Olmsted. [Putnam's Family Library, No. Ill; price 25 cents].
Here is a book of travels with a smack of novelty about it. Mr. Olmsted is one of our original young Yankee farmers, who, not being satisfied with knowing the old world, and its farming ways especially, through the books of literary men, set out to see Europe with his own eyes, and learn what he could by actual experience. Accordingly,* he eschews railroads, post-coaches, and the like modern conveniences for reducing all the civilized world to one dead level of interest, and takes to his legs, to spy out the beauty as well as the nakedness of the mother country, for himself.
A very pleasant bit of travel he has made of it, with no dust in his eyes - for Mr. Olmsted is one of the new school of American farmers, without a single old prejudice, wide awake on all questions of the times, and a believer in the largest interpretation of the future of the people. He looks around him with his democratic eyes wide open, and peers into all the musty and rotten corners of mother England, as well as many of her bright and glorious places, that she offers to the eyesight and reflection of all strangers. Travelling on foot, and thus entering into conversation, sometimes with relations of intimacy, with the heart of the people, is undoubtedly the true way of getting at the pith of weal and woe of a country. You free yourself, in this way, of the " company manners" of the nation, and see it in its homely, genuine, earnest life - the good and bad mixed, like woof and warp of individual character.
Mr. Olmsted's book is extremely fresh and honest, and you travel along with him through the great lanes, and between hedges of hawthorns, snowy with blossoms. You talk with milk-maids about making cheese; with farmers about the misery they find in free trade, and with your neat landlady, who serves you with the mug of " home-brew-ed," quite as if you too, had your "short, crooked sapling for a walking stick," and were his fellow traveller on a "long jog".
Mr. Olmstead is a bit of a poet, or rather he has other eyes for nature, besides those which he bestows on turnep fields and Short Horns. The following description of his "first glimpse of the country," after leaving Liverpool, is as genuinely, freshly natural, as the song of our Bob-o-link in rising from a clover field in a June morning.
"There we were right in the midst of it! The country - and such a country! - green, dripping, glistening, gorgeous! We stood dumb-stricken by its loveliness, as, from the bleak April and bare boughs we had left at home, broke upon us that English May - sunny, leafy, blooming May - in an English lane; with hedges, English hedges, hawthorn hedges, all in blossom; homely old farm-houses, quaint stables, and haystacks; the old church spire over the distant trees; the mild sun beaming through the watery atmosphere, and all so quiet - the only sounds the hum of bees and the crisp grass-tearing of a silken-skinned, real (unimported) Hereford cow over the hedge. No longer excited by daring to think we should see it, as we discussed the scheme round the old home-fire; no longer cheering ourselves with it in the stupid, tedious ship; no more forgetful of it in the bewilderment of the busy town - but there we were right in the midst of it; long time silent, and then speaking softly, as if it were enchantment indeed, we gazed upon it and breathed it - never to be forgotten.
"At length we walked on - rapidly - but frequently stopping, one side and the other, like children in a garden; hedges still, with delicious fragrance on each side of us, and on, as far as we can see, true farm-fencing hedges; nothing trim, stiff, nice, and amateur-like, but the verdure broken, tufty, low, and natural. They are set on a ridge of earth thrown out from a ditch beside them, which raises and strengthens them as a fence. They are nearly all hawthorn, which is now covered in patches, as if after a slight fall of snow, with clusters of white or pink blossoms over its light green foliage. Here and there a holly bush, with bunches of scarlet berries, and a few other shrubs, mingle with it. A cart meets us - a real heavy, big-wheeled English cart; and English horses - real big, shaggy-hoofed, sleek, heavy English cart-horses; and a carter - a real apple-faced, smock-frocked, red-headed, wool-hatted carter - breeches, stockings, hob-nailed shoes, and " Gee-up Dobbin" English carter. Little birds hop along in the road before us, and we guess at their names, first of all electing one to be Robin red-breast. We study the flowers under the hedge, and determine them nothing else than primroses and butter-cups. Through the gates we admire the great, fat, clean-licked, contented-faced cows, and large, white, long-wooled sheep.
What else was there? I cannot remember; but there was that altogether that made us forget our fatigue, disregard the rain, thoughtless of the way we were going, serious, happy, and grateful. And this excitement continued for many days.
"At length it becomes drenching again, we approach a stone spire. A stone house interrupts our view in front; the road winds round it, between it and another; turns again, and there on our left is the church - the old ivy-covered, brown-stone village church, with the yew tree - we knew it at once, and the heaped-up, green, old English churchyard. We turn to the right; there is the old old ale-house, long, low, thatched roof. We run in at the open door; there he sits, the same bluff and hearty old-fellow, with the long-stemmed pipe, and the foaming pewter mug on the little table before him. At the same moment with us comes in another man. He drops in a seat - raps with his whip. Enter a young woman, neat and trim, with exactly the white cap, smooth hair, shiny face, bright eyes, and red cheeks, we are looking for - " Muggoyail, lose!"
 
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