A night passed at Milton, Lord Fitzwilliam's delightful place in Northamptonshire, where the kind hospitality of three years before was renewed, was followed by a course of cathedrals and show-houses, on the northern route, from Ely to Alnwick, until the Scottish Border country was reached.
The hills which we crossed, in order to strike the Tweed at its most favorable point, were dreary and barren enough, and the ranges of huts or hovels we saw, scattered through their ridges, in which live a sort of bondmen, of a peculiar character, were anything but agreeable to look upon. I did not before suppose that anything so nearly approaching servitude was still to be found in England; but here it is, not better than was the condition of the serfs in Bohemia before Joseph Il's time, or those in Silesia before they were liberated by the present King of Prussia. I doubt whether there is anything so bad now in Europe, out of Russia.1
