In the library is a great bay-window, and a spacious fire-place set in a deep recess lined with books, suggesting warmth and comfort at once, to both mind and body; and the air of the whole place, joined to the unaffected and cordial welcome from many kind voices, gave me a feeling of maladie du pays that I had not felt before in England.

There are no especial wonders of park or palace here, though there is a great deal of quiet beauty, and as I have, perhaps, given you almost a surfeit of great places lately, you will not regret it. I look out of the windows, however, and see in abundance here, as every where, those two evergreens that enrich with their broad glossy leaves, all English gardens and pleasure grounds, and which I never cease to reproach for their monarchical habits - since they so obstinately refuse to be naturalised in our republic - I mean the English and the Portugal laurels. I would give all the hot-house plants that Yankee glass covers, to have these two evergreens as much at home in our pleasure-grounds as they are everywhere in England.

There are other guests in the house - Sir Chas. M------, Lady P., some Irish ladies without titles, (but so rich in natural gifts as to make one feel the poverty of mere rank,) and a charming family of grown up daughters. It would be difficult, perhaps, to have a better opportunity to judge of the life of the educated middle class of this country, than in such homes as this. And what impressions do such examples make upon my mind, you will ask? I will tell you, (not without remembering how many fair young readers you have at home.) The young English woman is less conspicuously accomplished than our young women of the same position in America. There is, perhaps, a little less of that je ne sais quoi - that nameless grace which captivates at first sight - than with us, but a better and more solid education, more disciplined minds, and above all, more common sense. In the whole art of conversation, including all the topics of the day, with so much of politics as makes a woman really a companion for an intelligent man in his serious thoughts, in history, language, and practical knowledge of the duties of social and domestic life, the English women have, I imagine, few superiors.

But what, perhaps, would strike one of our young women most, in English society, would be the thorough cultivation and refinement that exist here, along with the absence of all false delicacy. The fondness of English women, (even in the highest rank,) for out-of-door life, horses, dogs, fine cattle, animals of all kinds. - for their grounds, and in short every thing that belongs to their homes - their real, unaffected knowledge of, and pleasure in these things, and the unreserved way in which they talk about them, would startle some of my young friends at home, who are educated in the fashionable boarding-school of Madame------, to consider all such things

"vulgar," and "unlady-like." I accompanied the younger members of the family here this morning, in an exploration of the mysteries of the place. No sooner did we make our appearance out of doors, than we were saluted by dogs of all degrees, and each had the honor of an interview and personal reception, which seemed to be productive of pleasure on both sides. Then some of the horses were brought out of the stable, and a parley took place between them and their fair mistresses; some favorite cows were to be petted and looked after, and their good points were descanted on with knowledge and discrimination; and there was the basse cour, with its various population, all discussed and shown with such lively unaffected interest, that I soon saw my fair companions were "born to love pigs and chickens." I have said nothing about the garden, because you know that it is especially the lady's province here. An English woman with no taste for gardening, would be as great a marvel as an angel without wings. And now, were these fresh looking girls, who have so thoroughly entered into these rustic enjoyments, mere country lasses and dairy maids? By no means.

They will converse with you in three or four languages; are thoroughly well-grounded in modern literature; sketch from nature with the ease of professional artists, and will sit down to the piano-forte and give you an old ballad, or the finest German or Italian music, as your taste may dictate. And yet many of my young country-women of their age, whose education - wholly intended for the drawing-room - is far below what I have described, would have half fainted with terror, and half blushed with false delicacy, twenty times in the course of the morning, with the discussions of the farm-yard, meadow and stables, which properly belong to a wholsesome country life, and are not in the slightest degree at variance with real delicacy and refinement. I very well know that there are many sensibly educated young women at home, who have the same breadth of cultivation, and the same variety of resources, that make the English women such truly agreeable companions; but alas, I also know that there are many whose beau ideal is bounded by a circle that contains the latest fashionable dance for the feet, the latest fashionable novel for the head, and the latest fashionable fancy work for the fingers.

If I have unconsciously run into something like a sermon, it is from the feeling that among my own lovely countrywomen is to be found the ground-work of the most perfectly attractive feminine character in the world. But of late, their education has been a little vitiated by the introduction of the flimsiest points of French social requirements - rather than the more solid and estimable qualities which belong to English domestic life. The best social development in America will, doubtless, finally result from an internal movement springing from the very bosom of our institutions; but before that can happen, a great many traits and refinements will necessarily be borrowed from the old world - and the larger interests, healthier home tastes, and more thorough education of English women, seem to me hardly rated so highly by us as they deserve. Go to Paris, if you will, to see the most perfect taste in dress, and the finest charm of merely external manners, but make the acquaintance of English women if you wish to get a high idea of feminine character, as it should be to command your sincerest and most lasting admiration and respect.

A. J. D.

Hertfordshire. Sept., 1, 1850.