I received in London, a note from the Duke of Bedford, which led me, while I was in Bedfordshire, to make a visit to Woburn Abbey.

This is considered one of the most complete estates and establishments in the kingdom. It is fully equal to Chatsworth, but quite in another way. Chatsworth is semi-continental, or rather it is the concentration of everything that European art can do to embellish and render beautiful a great country residence. Woburn Abbey is thoroughly English; that is, it does not aim at beauty, so much as grandeur of extent and substantial completeness, united with the most systematic and thorough administration of the whole. Besides this, it interested me much as the home for exactly three centuries, of a family which has adorned its high station by the highest virtues, and by an especial devotion to the interests of the soil* The present Duke of Bedford is one of the largest and most scientific farmers in England, and his father, the late Duke, was not only an enthusiastic agriculturist, but the greatest arboriculturist and botanist of his day, whose works, both practical and literary, made their mark upon the age.

The Woburn estate consists of about thirty thousand acres of land. There is a fine park of three thousand acres. You enter the approach through a singularly rich avenue of evergreens, composed of a belt perhaps one hundred feet broad, sloping down like an amphitheatre of foliage, from tall Norway spruces and pines in the back ground, to rich hollies and Portugal laurels in front. This continues, perhaps half a mile, and then you leave it and wind through an open park, spacious and grand - for a couple of miles - till you reach the Abbey. This is not a building in an antique style, but a grand and massive pile in the classical manner, built about the middle of the last century on the site of the old Abbey. I have said this place seemed to me essentially English. The first sight of the house is peculiarly so. It is built of Portland stone, and has that mossy, discolored look which gathers about even modern buildings in this damp climate, and which we in America know nothing of, under our pure and bright skies - where the freshness of stone remains unsullied almost any length of time.

Woburn Abbey is a large palace, and containing as it does, the accumulated luxuries, treasures of art, refinements, and comforts of so old and weathy a family - (with an income of nearly a million of our money,) you will not be surprised when I say that we have nothing with which to compare it. Indeed, I believe Woburn is considered the most complete house in England, and that is saying a good deal, when you remember that there are 20,000 private houses in Great Britain, larger than our President's House. To get an idea of it, you must imagine a square mass, about which, externally - especially on the side fronting the park, there is little to impress you - only the appearance of large size and an air of simple dignity. Imagine this quadrangular pile three stories high on the park or entrance front, and two stories high on the garden or rear, and over two hundred feet in length, on each side. The drawing-room floor, though in the second story, is therefore exactly on a level with the gardens and pleasure grounds in the rear, and the whole of this large floor is occupied with an unbroken suite of superb apartments - drawing-rooms, picture galleries, music-rooms, library, etc. - projecting and receding, and stealing out and in among the delicious scenery of the pleasure grounds, in the most agreeable manner.

There is a noble library with 20,000 volumes; a gallery, one hundred and forty feet long, filled with fine sculpture - (among other things the original group of the three graces, by Canova,) and a sort of wide corridor running all around the quadrangule - filled with cabinets of natural history, works of art, etc, and forming the most interesting indoor walk in dull weather. Pictures by the great masters, especially portraits, these rooms are very rich in, and among other things I noticed casts in plaster, of all the celebrated animals that were reared here by the late Duke.

Now, imagine the quadrangule continued in the rear on one side next the sculpture gallery, through a colonnade like side series of buildings, including riding house, tennis' court, etc., a quarter of a mile, to the stables, which are of themselves larger than most country houses; imagine hot houses and conservatories almost without number, connected with the house by covered passages, so as to combine the utmost comfort and beauty; imagine an aviary consisting of a cottage and the grounds about it fenced in and filled with all manner of birds of brilliant and beautiful plumage; imagine a large dairy, fitted up in the Chinese style with a fountain in the middle, and the richest porcelain vessels for milk and butter; imagine a private garden of bowers and trellis work, embosomed in creepers, which belongs especially to the Duchess, and you have a kind of sketchy outline of the immediate accessories of Woburn Abbey. They occupy the space of a little village in themselves; but you would gather no idea of the luxury and comfort they afford did you for a moment forget that the whole is managed with that order and system which are no where to be found so perfect as in England. I must add, to give you another idea of the establishment, that a hundred beds are made up daily for the family and household alone, exclusive of guests.

The pleasure grounds, which surround three sides of the house, and upon which these rooms open, are so beautiful and complete that you must allow me to dwell upon them a little. They consist of a series of different gardens merging one into the other, so as to produce a delightful variety, and covering a space of many acres - about which I walked in so bewildered a state of delight that I am quite unable to say how large they are. I know, however, that they contain an avenue of Araucarias backed by another of Deodar Cedars in the most luxuriant growth - each line upwards of 1,000 feet long. A fine specimen of the latter tree, twenty-five or thirty feet high, attracted my attention, and there was another, twenty-five feet, of the beautiful Norfolk Island Pine, growing in the open ground, with the shelter of a glazed frame in winter. These pleasure grounds, however, interested me most in that portion called the American garden - several acres of sloping velvety turf, thickly dotted with groups of Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Ac., forming the richest masses of dark green foliage that it is possible to conceive. In the months of May and June, when these are in full bloom, this must be a scene of almost dazzling brilliancy.

The soil for them had all been formed artificially, and consisted of a mixture of peat and white sand, in which the Rhododendrons and Kalmias seemed to thrive admirably.

Besides this scene, there is a garden composed wholly of heaths, the beds cut in the turf, one species in each bed, and full of delicate bells; a parterre flower garden in which a striking effect was produced by contrasting vases colored quite black, with rich masses (growing in the vases) of scarlet geraniums. I also saw a garden devoted wholly to Willows, and another to Grasses - both the most complete collections of these two genera in the world - the taste of the former Duke - and with which I was familiar before-hand, through the "Solid urn Woburnense," and Mr. Sinclair's work on the "Grasses of Woburn."

The park is the richest in large evergreens of any that I have ever seen. The planting taste of the former Duke has produced at the present moment, after a growth of fifty or sixty years, the most superb results. The Cedars of Lebanon - the most sublime and venerable of all trees, and the grandest of all evergreens, bore off the palm - though all the rare pines and firs that were known to arboriculturists half a century ago are here in the greatest perfection - including hollies and Portugal laurels which one is accustomed to think of as shrubs, with great trunks like timber trees and magnificent heads of glossy foliage. A grand old Silver fir has a straight trunk eighty feet high, and a lover of trees could spend weeks here without exhausting the arboricultural interest of the park alone - which is, to be sure, some ten or twelve miles round.

A very picturesque morceau in the park, enclosed and forming a little scene by itself, is called the Thornery. It is an abrupt piece of ground covered with a wild looking copse of old thorns, hazels, dog-woods and fantastic old oaks, and threaded by walks in various directions. In the center is a most complete little cottage, with the neatest Scotch kitchen, little parlor and furniture inside, and a sort of fairy flower garden outside.

All this may be considered the ornamental portion of Woburn, and I have endeavored to raise such a picture of it in your mind as would most interest your readers. But you must remember that farming is the pride of Woburn, and that farming is here a interest and systematic attention which seems almost like managing the affaire of state. About half a mile from the house is the farmery - the most complete group of farm buildings perhaps, in the world, where the in-coming harvest makes a figure only equalled by the accommodations to receive it. Besides these there are mills and workshops of all kinds, and on the out-skirls of the park a whole settlement of farm cottages. I can only give you an idea of the attention bestowed on details, and the interest taken in the comfort of the immediate tenants by resorting to figures, and telling you that the present Duke has expended £70,000, ($350,000,) within the past five years, in the farm cottages on this estate, which are model cottages - combining the utmost convenience and comfort for dwellings of this class, with so much of architectural taste as is befitting to dwellings of this size.

Of course, a large part of this estate is let out to tenants, but still a large tract is managed by the Duke himself, who pays more than 400 laborers weekly throughout the year. The farming is very thorough, and the effects of draining in improving the land have been very striking. Above fifty miles of drain have been laid, in this estate alone, annually, for several years past.

You will gather from this, that English agriculture is not made a mere recreation, and that even with the assistance of the most competent and skillful agents, the life of a nobleman with the immense estate and the agricultural tastes of the Duke of Bedford, is one of constant occupation and active employment. Besides this estate, he has another in Cambridgeshire, called the " Bedford Level" - avast prairie of some 18,000 acres reclaimed from the sea, and kept dry by the constant action of steam engines, but which is very productive, and is perhaps, the most profitable farm land in the kingdom. Yours, A. J. D.