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his sedgy banks and ditches, the greenfinch came in from the woods and hedgerows, the chaffinch left the orchard, and sometimes in very severe weather a water-hen would steal up from the pond, and all partake together of the common table there provided for them. Now the whole system is altered. The machine does in the twinkling of an eye what once occupied the whole winter, and the age of litter and waste and sluttish abundance is gone for ever.

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It seems to me, also, that in walking through the woods, or through any thickly timbered country, one misses several other live creatures which used to give life and colour. I hardly ever see a woodpecker now, one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, of all our English wild birds, in his splendid suit of crimson and green. His loud harsh cry and his peculiar wavy flight were as familiar to me formerly as the jay or the kestrel, and I can assign no reason for his comparative scarcity at present. Then, again, I doubt whether the squirrel is nearly so abundant as he was. Still, in all their usual haunts, I see more squirrels than woodpeckers. Both are great additions to the beauty of the English country, and when I see either now I always make a mental note of it, as an event to be remembered. The reclamation of much of the rough wild wasteground which even in the most highly cultivated districts was to be seen a generation back, will not account for the paucity of these two interesting denizens of the greenwood tree.' But it does account for the almost total disappearance of the genuine wild pheasant, who was born and bred in spots remote from human habitation, among the dingles and the copse-wood, and the great patches of gorse and thistles and thorn which then covered much of the ground now broken up by the plough, or else converted into pasture. Cover of this kind afforded that really good October shooting which our forefathers were privileged to enjoy, and which must have been superior to any kind of sport which the pheasant can afford now. An October walk in those days on the outskirts of some woodland tract, where the wheat stubbles were up to your knees, where every hedge was a thicket, and every angle of a field was sure to be choked up with weeds and undergrowth of some kind, must have been an occasion cretâ notandus by every lover of the gun. But October shooting as a general rule is now very poor: the birds have got too wild to be approached, the pheasants are all cooped up in the covers, and the snipe has not yet made his appearance. Snipe-shooting, however, has suffered more perhaps than any other kind from the march of agricultural improvement, which, in the particulars I am about to mention, has not been an unmixed benefit. I refer to the improved drainage of the last forty years, and the rapidity with which the water is now carried off the soil into the adjacent watercourses. In former days, after very heavy rain, the wet soaked slowly through the ground, finding its way out gradually into the brooks and ditches, and leaving little wet patches all about the meadows and in the furrows of the long pasture fields. To these rotten places, during the first day or two of

a white frost, the snipe flocked by dozens, and once there, would often stay there for a week or two. I have such a field in my eye at the present moment: a large oblong field of seventy or eighty acres in extent, sloping very gradually down to a small brook which divided it at the bottom from some meadows. The furrows ran all the way down, and were often full of short rushes. I remember the time when this was a good place for snipe, but an old keeper has told me that he could remember when it was never dry all through the winter, and when you could shoot in it all day without wanting to go elsewhere. By the time you had got to the bottom of the field snipe had got back again to the top, and so you might go on till it was dark. And this was not in any specially good snipe country, but in a cultivated inland district far removed from the coast or from the fens. Drainage has dried up the furrows, and I have no doubt has increased the value of the field. But the snipe have deserted it; and another result has followed which the drainer perhaps did not quite foresee. The water now rushes through the drains so swiftly and violently that the brook is filled to overflowing almost immediately, and the consequence is a succession of heavy floods in that part of the country before unknown.

Ruit arduus æther,

Et pluviâ ingenti sata læta, boumque labores

Diluit: implentur fossæ, et cava flumina crescunt
Cum sonitu, fervetque fretis spirantibus æquor.

Whole fields of hay are swept away by these sudden risings, and animals, and sometimes men too. If I owned much grass land in that district I should be tempted to exclaim, I think, sometimes, Give me again my ill-drained field, my snipe, and my security.

These various changes in the aspect of English rural scenery have been accompanied by others in English rural life and society, which, however beneficial they may prove in the long run to future generations, make the country less pleasant than it used to be to that large and frivolous class who, like myself, think only of enjoyment, and are neither philanthropists nor philosophers. The English peasantry have tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and will never be quite the same again. The change may be neither so deep nor so general as some persons would teach us to believe, but undoubtedly a vague idea has crept into the rustic mind that the relations which have existed so long between the gentry, the farmers and the peasantry were not advantageous to the latter, and that the labourer was bound to try to better himself. I have nothing to say here to the political side of this question. I will only say that it is pleasanter when you are out walking to meet with people who seem satisfied and cheerful than with people who do not. At the same time I am not of opinion that the labourer's discontent, as far as it extends, has been produced solely by the Agricultural Union and the emissaries of Mr. Arch. It has, I imagine, been

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smouldering for a long time; since the Peace of 1815, indeed. Then began what Lord Beaconsfield calls the condition of England question,' and all of us can either remember or have read of agricultural disorders which broke out at intervals during the Regency and the reign of George IV. Then came the new Poor Law, which the labourer never comprehended, and has always considered to be a penal substitute for the old system. A long succession of fine seasons, abundant harvests, and good wages for a time made him forget his grievances. But they were not extinguished, and when Mr. Arch appeared upon the scene were readily resuscitated. first his demands were moderate and not unreasonable, though it is certain that the English public were much misled for a time as to the average remuneration of an agricultural labourer and his family for a year's work. It was a most unfortunate circumstance, however, that the demand for increased wages came just at the very moment when the prosperous period of agriculture was on the eve of departure, and the disastrous one on the eve of approach. But for that it is probable that the Agricultural Union would by this time have ceased to exist, and that the rural districts would have returned to their normal repose all the better for the temporary protest which had brought the men higher wages without any injury to the masters. However this was not what happened, and the minds of the labourers in those parts of England to which the influence of the Union extended became partially alienated from the gentry and the farmers; the feeling, as is usually the case, outlasting the causes which produced it. Wages and perquisites at the present day are really all that the labourer can ask for. But he has been inoculated with other ideas now, and you see them plainly in the faces of the younger men in every group that you pass in particular counties of England; and even where you do not see it, the consciousness that it exists detracts something from the pleasure of a country walk, causing you to feel that you are not surrounded exclusively by friends. In the summer evenings, when work is over, the younger and the unmarried labourers love to congregate in the village street, where they always have some regular rendezvous. The blacksmith's shop is a favourite place with them; or where there are cross roads affording a commanding view of all the approaches to the village; or if there is a bridge quite close, they are very fond of lining that, and leaning over the parapet. They do not seem to talk much on these occasions, but they communicate with each other in some way, and, to judge by their looks, are not unfrequently employed in criticising with some freedom the constituted authorities of the village. Once upon a time when you passed them, most of them would have touched their hats not out of servility, as is sometimes said-that is absurd-but out of respect, just as you 'cap' a master at a public school, or a don at the University. Now very few will do this, unless you happen to be the clergyman, and for him I must say I see no diminution of respect among the English peasantry. Otherwise they look somewhat sulkily

on the ground as you pass through the ranks, or perhaps turn their faces to the water and whistle-all this time, of course, with their hands thrust deep into their pockets. That is de rigueur. There are many parts of England, of course, where their demeanour will be entirely different. But you can never be absolutely certain of not encountering these unpleasant looks, though almost everywhere the older men adhere to the old ways.

But as with the lower, so with the higher: as with the peasantry so with the farmers. They, too, have changed in many counties within our generation far more than their labourers have done; and as the labourers regard themselves, they, in turn, regard their landlords. At present, no doubt, this state of feeling is the exception, and not the rule. But it is almost a toss-up which way the balance ultimately turns, and whether the exceptions shall multiply till they become the rule or not. However that may be, the farmer in almost every case, whether discontented or satisfied, is very different man from his grandfather-smarter, better read, better travelled, and with more refined habits, with all his old hospitality, and little of his former grossness. The old-fashioned man still survives here and there, in drab breeches and gaiters, broad-skirted black coat, and lowcrowned broad-brimmed hat, just to make 'Punch's' cartoons not complete anachronisms: but he is rapidly disappearing from English country life, and, what is worse, his home-brewed mild ale, that peculiar luxury to be obtained only at a farmhouse, is disappearing with him. That is another adjunct of my old rural walks which I remember with fondness, and which must now, I fear, be classed with the scythe and the sickle and the flail among the glories of the past. As I write these lines I shut my eyes and see all the scenes I have described spread out before me-the copses and the hedgerows, the meadows and the pastures, the cornfields and the beanfields, the old sheltered footpath, the village bridge, the furzy nook, the church and the vicarage which make up so many a landscape in rural England: not striking us with ecstasy, because we see it so often, but affecting us with a quiet sense of happiness and delight more sweet and more enduring than the warmest rapture.

T. E. KEBBEL.

smouldering for a long time; since the Peace of 1815, indeed. Then began what Lord Beaconsfield calls the condition of England question,' and all of us can either remember or have read of agricultural disorders which broke out at intervals during the Regency and the reign of George IV. Then came the new Poor Law, which the labourer never comprehended, and has always considered to be a penal substitute for the old system. A long succession of fine seasons, abundant harvests, and good wages for a time made him forget his grievances. But they were not extinguished, and when Mr. Arch appeared upon the scene were readily resuscitated. At first his demands were moderate and not unreasonable, though it is certain that the English public were much misled for a time as to the average remuneration of an agricultural labourer and his family for a year's work. It was a most unfortunate circumstance, however, that the demand for increased wages came just at the very moment when the prosperous period of agriculture was on the eve of departure, and the disastrous one on the eve of approach. But for that it is probable that the Agricultural Union would by this time have ceased to exist, and that the rural districts would have returned to their normal repose all the better for the temporary protest which had brought the men higher wages without any injury to the masters. However this was not what happened, and the minds of the labourers in those parts of England to which the influence of the Union extended became partially alienated from the gentry and the farmers; the feeling, as is usually the case, outlasting the causes which produced it. Wages and perquisites at the present day are really all that the labourer can ask for. But he has been inoculated with other ideas now, and you see them plainly in the faces of the younger men in every group that you pass in particular counties of England; and even where you do not see it, the consciousness that it exists detracts something from the pleasure of a country walk, causing you to feel that you are not surrounded exclusively by friends. In the summer evenings, when work is over, the younger and the unmarried labourers love to congregate in the village street, where they always have some regular rendezvous. The blacksmith's shop is a favourite place with them; or where there are cross roads affording a commanding view of all the approaches to the village; or if there is a bridge quite close, they are very fond of lining that, and leaning over the parapet. They do not seem to talk much on these occasions, but they communicate with each other in some way, and, to judge by their looks, are not unfrequently employed in criticising with some freedom the constituted authorities of the village. Once upon a time when you passed them, most of them would have touched their hats: not out of servility, as is sometimes said-that is absurd-but out of respect, just as you 'cap' a master at a public school, or a don at the University. Now very few will do this, unless you happen to be the clergyman, and for him I must say I see no diminution of respect among the English peasantry. Otherwise they look somewhat sulkily

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