AUG. 29. -London to Nettlecombe Court, the Seat of Sir John Trevelyan, Bart. The greater part of the country, as seen from the rail-road, is rich and varied; and from Paddington to Maidenhead it is in many places delightful. At Hanwell, where the rail-road is on a high embankment, we look down upon a parsonage surrounded by grass fields, and with gardens and shrubberies, all the walks and other details of which were so distinct, with their lights and shadows, that we could not help comparing them to a map. There is a degree of satisfaction in tracing the resemblance of nature to art, as well as there is in tracing that of art to nature. The country roads seen here and in other places crossing under the embankments of the rail-road seem, in a great measure, to have lost their use and importance; and they remind us that the progress of all improvement involves the deterioration or ruin of something of the same kind that had gone before. Thus, the lower class of vegetables prepare the way for the higher; and soils are formed by the disruption and mixture of strata, and their disintegration by the weather.
