1819-20
THE SKETCH BOOK
RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND
by Washington Irving新概念英语电子书
Oh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,
Domestic life in rural pleasures past!
COWPER.
THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English
character must not confine his obrvations to the metropolis. He must
go forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he
must visit castles, villas, farm-hous, cottages; he must wander
through parks and gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he must
loiter about country churches; attend wakes and fairs, and other rural
festivals; and cope with the people in all their conditions and all
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their habits and humors.
In some countries the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion
of the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and
intelligent society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by公务员考试常识题
boorish peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a
mere gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite class,
where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayety and
dissipation, and, having indulged this kind of carnival, return
again to the apparently more congenial habits of rural life. The
various orders of society are therefore diffud over the whole
surface of the kingdom, and the most retired neighborhoods afford
收到specimens of the different ranks.
The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling.
They posss a quick nsibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen
relish for the pleasures and employments of the country. This
passion ems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born
and brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with
facility into rural habits, evince a tact for rural occupation. The
merchant has his snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where
he often displays as much pride and zeal in the cultivation of his
flower-garden, and the maturing of his fruits, as he does in the
conduct of his business, and the success of a commercial enterpri.
Even tho less fortunate individuals, who are doomed to pass their
lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to have something that
shall remind them of the green aspect of nature. In the most dark
and dingy quarters of the city, the drawing-room window rembles
frequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of vegetation has its
grassplot and flower-bed; and every square its mimic park, laid out
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with picturesque taste, and gleaming with refreshing verdure.
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Tho who e the Englishman only in town are apt to form an
orbitzunfavorable opinion of his social character. He is either absorbed
in business, or distracted by the thousand engagements that
dissipate time, thought, and feeling, in this huge metropolis. He has,
therefore, too commonly a look of hurry and abstraction. Wherever he
happens to be, he is on the point of going somewhere el; at the
moment he is talking on one subject, his mind is wandering to another;
and while paying a friendly visit, he is calculating how he shall
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economize time so as to pay the other visits allotted in the
morning. An immen metropolis, like London, is calculated to make men
lfish and uninteresting. In their casual and transient meetings,
they can but deal briefly in commonplaces. They prent but the cold
superficies of character- its rich and genial qualities have no time
to be warmed into a flow.
It is in the country that the Englishman gives scope to his
natural feelings. He breaks loo gladly from the cold formalities and
negative civilities of town; throws off his habits of shy rerve, and
becomes joyous and free-hearted. He manages to collect round him all
the conveniences and elegancies of polite life, and to banish its
建造师培训restraints. His country-at abounds with every requisite, eithersuper woman
for studious retirement, tasteful gratification, or rural exerci.
Books, paintings, music, hors, dogs, and sporting implements of
