being annoyed by the frequent visits of strangers to a mulberry tree before the house, first caused that to be cut down. And then, vexed by the levy of a poor rate upon the house, he angrily declared that it should never pay taxes again, and razed it to the ground!

VOL. I.-L

CHAPTER VI.

Blenheim-Oxford, its Colleges and Chapels-National Health -Ill Health of our People in America-Causes-Remedies.

BLENHEIM CASTLE AND PARK IN WOODSTOCKthe present of the nation to Marlborough after the battle of Blenheim. The structure is immense, built on three sides of a square; the principal range of building one hundred and eighty feet long, and the side ranges nearly as much. The park is not larger than some others, nor so large; but it appears more extensive, from the openings through the trees-not vistas-but openings through groves and clumps of trees, in various directions, and extending, apparently, almost as far as the eye can reach.

On the borders of an artificial lake, and upon a fine swell of land, stood the old royal residence, celebrated in Scott's novel, "Woodstock." Nothing now remains to mark the spot, but two large sycamores, planted when the castle was demol

ished, and Rosamond's well. There are some remarkable oaks with immense trunks, (one twentyseven feet in circumference,) said to be as old as Henry the Seventh, standing in a distant part of the park. By-the-by, the principal trees in all the parks of England, and all over the country, indeed, are the oak and the beech. There are some cedars of Lebanon, yews, &c.; but few elms, and none that I have seen to compare with ours on the Housatonic and Connecticut.

seen.

The chief attraction of this palace is found in its paintings. It is the first fine collection that I have There is a suite of rooms, four or five hundred feet long, filled with pictures-many of them by the first masters, Vandyck, Rubens, Carlo Dolce, Titian, Teniers, Rembrandt, Guido, &c. Nothing, I think, struck me so much as a Madonna, by Carlo Dolce. There is also a very striking full length portrait by Kneller, of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough-a very beautiful face, but looking as if it might easily furnish expression to all the fiery passions ascribed to her.

The library surpasses every room that I have seen, for magnificence; the walls, the alcoves, the doorways, all of marble-the room probably two hundred feet long, and thirty feet high-seventeen

thousand volumes. The library looks upon the private gardens.

The chapel contains a magnificent marble monument of the first duke and duchess of Marlborough.

On the road to Oxford, I saw for the first time, in travelling more than a thousand miles, wooden fences; in this country they are always stone, or turf, or hedges. Neither have I seen a shingle in the kingdom; but always slate, tiles, stone, or thatch. Multitudes of women are to be seen everywhere, gleaning the harvest fields-sometimes fifty, seventy, in a field. They pick up what remains after the reaper, straw by straw, till they get a large bundle, and then carry it home on their heads. The harvests consist of wheat, barley, and oats. No Indian corn is grown here.

Oxford, (August 14)—a city of spires, pinnacles, and Gothic towers, rising amid groves of trees. The twenty colleges, i. e. ranges and quadrangles of ancient buildings, mostly in the Gothic style, are amazingly impressive. Several of them have beautiful gardens and walks, and some of them are quite extensive.

It is in vain to begin with Oxford; a week would not suffice for a description; and no description could tell what a walk is among these

glorious old quadrangles. Yet I cannot pass, without paying a tribute to the unequalled' chapels of Oxford. In that of New College, there is an alterpiece, by Westmacott, well worth perusingrepresenting, in successive pieces, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Descent from the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The varying expression in the countenance of the Virgin, is very striking and affecting. But the chapel of Magdalen College, the interior but just finished, is, in the substantial parts, the crowning beauty of all the chapels: the entire walls of polished stone -the screen of stone, most exquisitely carved; the whole wall over the altar, with three ranges of niches and canopies, and surmounted by a noli me tangere, all carved in the same manner.

There is a noli me tangere--" touch me not”by Mengs, in the All Souls' College chapel, about which I lingered for some time. The considerate, fixed, compassionate look of Jesus-superiority painted in the face, yet shaded by a human tenderness and, in Mary's countenance, as she kneels and stretches out her hand, something of surprise, great eagerness repressed by deep awe -the delicate suffusion of the eye--a suffusion, not with tears, but as if the blood were starting through every fine and invisible pore, in and about