. . . . One sees a
variety of climate, temperature, and season in a ride of two hundred
miles, north and south, through England. Near London, for instance, the
grain was reaped, and stood in sheaves in the stubble-fields, over which
girls and children might be seen gleaning; farther north, the golden, or
greenish-golden, crops were waving in the wind. In one part of our way
the atmosphere was hot and dry; at another point it had been cooled and
refreshed by a heavy thunder-shower, the pools of which still lay
along our track. It seems to me that local varieties of weather are
more common in this island, and within narrower precincts, than in
America. . . . . I never saw England of such a dusky and dusty green
before,--almost sunbrowned, indeed. Sometimes the green hedges formed a
marked framework to a broad sheet of golden grain-field. As we drew near
Oxford, just before reaching the station I had a good view of its domes,
towers, and spires,--better, I think, than when J----- and I rambled
through the town a month or two ago.
Mr. Frank Scott Haydon, of the Record Office, London, writes me that he
has found a "Henry Atte Hawthorne" on a roll which he is transcribing, of
the first Edward III.
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