Explore "Rural Life in England" by Washington Irving on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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 observations to the metropolis. He must go forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visit castles, villas, farmhouses, 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 their habits and humors.