learning all languages, and translating their stores, exploring every ocean and cave, analysing all substances, ransacking all libraries, tearing the parchments and melting the seal, pushing aside, as if but of yesterday, the most haughty ancients of the earth, yet making every discovery conducive to the health, the comfort, the freedom of man. Conservative guilds and corporations stand fearful and shuddering, praying for protection from the fearful spirit of the age; but the faithful soul beholds in it, occasionally erratic or grotesque though it be, no destructive terrorist, but the health-giving, freedom-bringing spirit of the universe and of the times, performing a strange work, but a good one, erecting its marvellous and mighty creations in mystery, yet not the less obeying the finger of the great good Father. To such the language of one who saw further down into the following centuries than most, yet who seems to have been sublimely touched by the shadows on the mist of the present, will not seem an inappropriate apostrophe : "The limits of the sphere of dream, The bounds of true and false are past, To the wide the desert waste. * Goethe's Faust, Shelley's Translation. CHAPTER IV. THE ARCADIAS OF ENGLAND. PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS. "A step of improvement in manufactures alone can give rise to an onward step in agriculture, and just because a method has been devised for the fabrication of as many yards of cloth by fewer hands, soils of poorer out-field than any that had yet been reached may now be profitably entered upon. An improvement in the form of the stocking machine may, as well as an improvement in the form of the plough, bring many an else unreclaimed acre within the reach of cultivation. The actual and historical process that has taken place, we believe to be as follows:-The labourers of our day work harder than before, but live better than before-they at once toil more strenuously and live more plentifully-putting forth more strength, but withal drawing the remuneration of a larger and more liberal sustenance." DR. CHALMERS, "When the poets of the last century were pleased to describe our village scenes as so many regions of Arcadia, and our village groups as so many models of pastoral simplicity and innocence, they could not have been insensible that they were giving a false character to the country, that they might minister to the false taste of the town. The natural had no place either in the descriptions which were thus published, or in the society to which they were addressed. It was a kind of poetry in which art and elaboration were in the place of truth and nature. It imputed to rustics the puling sentiments which had become naturalised at St. James's. It consisted for the most part, of a paltry compliment offered by the pensioned poet to the conventional follies of his courtly patrons." DR. VAUGHAN, "AGE OF GREAT CITIES." CHAPTER IV. Arcadian Fancies-Some Account of the Town and Family of Humdrum-the Earl of Fitzsham-Lord Plush-The Village of Drudgewell-Estimate of Rural Life-Facts from the "Morning Chronicle". Remedies Peasant Proprietorship--The Farmers of Switzerland-Flanders -Depreciation of the Standard of Comfort-Picture from Crabbe-from Wordsworth-The Peasant of Oxfordshire-Human Interest of every Grade of Life Bishop Earles' Portrait of a Plain Country Fellow--Peasantry of Norfolk-Relative Education of the Peasantry -Cumberland-Influence of Mountain Scenery in the Formation of Character-Northumberland-Quotations from Dr. Gilley-Average Character of the English Peasantry. Do you know the little town of HUMDRUM? Do you know the Right Honourable the Earl of Scamperdown, whose ancestral residence has been for many years at Humdrum? Well, Humdrum is not a place likely to become revolutionary, nor is his lordship likely to head a revolution. Humdrum was a place of importance in history; frequently it figures in the page of English story. In the archives of its old castles are many stories of royal personages who took shelter or received hospitality beneath its massive turrets. There is a room which is still called the Queen's Chamber, because old Queen Bess spent some few days there in one of her royal progresses. The Stuarts always had faith ful friends in Humdrum, and in the noble family of Scamperdown. And although there were found there, during one sad period, some wicked Puritans, yet, how speedily were their non-conformist noses slit, their feet placed in the stocks, and their property confiscated. I will confess, that as I have stepped through the chambers of Humdrum Castle, a feeling of awe for the antiquity of the spot has crept over me. As I have passed down its stately corridors and long galleries, and looked at the pictures of the fair and faultless ladies of the illustrious house, and the noble, stern, and richly clad men to whom they had given birth, I am not certain that it was a very democratic feeling that crept over me; and then the politeness, the courtesy of the heads of the house, these have very frequently almost converted me from my radical propensities. Very well do I remember once waiting on his lordship, with a note of introduction in reference to some matters of business. A tall handsome man stepped out from the breakfast room to meet me, and introduced me to the countess: I was invited to a vacant place and instantly made to feel myself at home. The two or three persons near me all combined to set me perfectly at ease; and as soon as I had time to think at all, I was astonished to find how much more easily I seemed to glide into the sympathies of this family, than into those of some of the wealthy manufacturers with whom I had on some occasions met.. Around me in the room were several selected portraits of some men who had |