acorns under those magnificent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and
of better habits than ordinary swine.

Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a description of
Blenheim; and I hate to leave it without some more adequate expression
of the noble edifice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that
beautiful sunshine; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred
years, it could not have been a finer one. But I must give up the
attempt; only further remarking that the finest trees here were cedars,
of which I saw one--and there may have been many such--immense in girth
and not less than three centuries old. I likewise saw a vast heap of
laurel, two hundred feet in circumference, all growing from one root;
and the gardener offered to show us another growth of twice that
stupendous size. If the Great Duke himself had been buried in that spot,
his heroic heart could not have been the seed of a more plentiful crop
of laurels.

We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down to a cold collation, of
which we ate abundantly, and drank (in the good old English fashion) a
due proportion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in England,
in his rambles to various quarters of the country, may learn little
in regard to wines, (for the ordinary English taste is simple, though
sound, in that particular,) but he makes acquaintance with more
varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously supposed to exist.
I remember a sort of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very
vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled cider.
Another excellent tipple for warm weather is concocted by mixing
brown-stout or bitter ale with ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs
up the heavier liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singular
vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things ever brewed from