Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/70

 lit KAL COMFORT. 45

worn structures we had just quitted, and preferred to linger among the shadows of mouldering antiquity.

During our ride of ten miles from Chester to East- ham, where we took passage in a steamer for Liver pool, we had delightful views of the blossomed hedges and cottage-homes of England. And as whatever we see of surpassing excellence in a foreign country, we are naturally desirous of transplanting to our own, we could not avoid wishing that our agricultural friends at home, who are such models of industry and domestic virtue, would be more careful to surround their dwell ings with comfortable and agreeable objects. Were they to build on a smaller scale, and spare the expense of large rooms, seldom to be used, and never to be warmed, for a fruit inclosure, or a walk of shrubbery, or a garden with flowers, would it not make their young people love home the better, and be happier there ? AVhat is lovely to the eye need be no hindrance to the &quot; things that are of good report.&quot; It may be a help to them. If the farmer, instead of making war on all the forest-trees, as if they were Amorites and Jebusites, whom he had been commanded to exterminate, would save some of those majestic columns of the Maker s work manship, and even indulge himself in the pleasure of planting others, on the borders of some sunny road, or sparkling fountain, he might hear the wearied trav eller bless him. And if, instead of counting it lost time to beautify the home where he trains his little ones, he would in his leisure moments nurture a vine, or a rose- plant for them, and teach them to admire the bud open-

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