Thence they work outward slowly and transform the appearance and habits of the country.

The transformations I have noticed in England since 1846 are wonderful, utilitarian, and productive of absolute and rigid comfort to the people; still, I must confess, they inspire in me a sentiment akin to that which our village fathers experienced when the old church in which they worshipped from childhood was pulled down to make room for a better one.
To every American, sympathising with these sentiments, it must be interesting to visit such a rural little city as Ripon, and find populations that cling with reverence and affection to the old Saxon institutions of Alfred.

It will make him feel that he stands in the unbroken lineage of the centuries, to hear the wakeman's horn, and to know that it has been blown, spring, summer, autumn and winter, in all weathers, in weal and in woe, for a thousand years.

As Old England is driven farther and farther back from London, Manchester, Liverpool, and other great improving towns, she will find refuge and residence in these retired country villages.

Here she will wear longest and last the features in which she was engraven on the minds of all the millions who call her mother beyond the sea.
The next day I visited the celebrated Fountain Abbey in Studley Park,--a grand relic of antiquity, framed with silver and emerald work of lakelets, lawns, shrubberies and trees as beautifully arranged as art, taste and wealth could set them.