LAND: ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. LAND: ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. BY FIFTY-SEVEN WRITERS. EDITED BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I. THE "LAND ROLL" OFFICE, 3, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 1892. Copyright. Entered at Stationers Hall. LONDON : WITHERBY AND CO., PRINTERS, 326, HIGH : HOI/BORN, \V.(. INDEX OF AUTHORS. ERRATA Mr. W. E. Bear writes : " I regret to have to correct an error which crept into my Table of Imports of Corn on page 418 of ' Land.' In transcribing from a rough table, in which the quantity of wheat imported in 1870 was correctly stated, I must have copied an entirely different item, and by so doing I greatly understated the quantity. In the quantity for 1890 there is a slight alteration, more exact returns for that year being available now than there were when the chapter was written. I ask those who possess a copy of ' Land ' to correct the lines of figures opposite 'Wheat' and ' Total of Corn, Flour, and Meal ' as follows : 1870. 1890. Increase. Wheat, cwts. 28,883,778 60,000,790 31,117,012 Total Corn, Flour, and Meal .. 71,513,727 154,311,496 82,797,769 " The first sentence following the table should be altered to read as follows : ' These figures show that, since 1870, our net imports of wheat have increased more than two-fold, and those of wheat flour about three and a-half times, while the total for all kinds of corn and meal is more than doubled.' " Mr. Walker writes that at Page 523, Wheat returns should read 7 135. instead of 8 2s., and total g 135. instead of ^"10 2s. CLARKE, A. DUDLEY CURTIS, C. E. DAW SON, E. H. DAWSON, H. ... LXXIX. Local and Imperial Assessments on Landed Property. XXXIII. Improving Farms a Safe Investment. LXIII. Frontages to Oceans and Rivers. LXIV. Forestry. XXXVI. Reclamation. XXX. The Autobiography of a Company Promoter. INDEX OF AUTHORS. ALGER, T. L. ALLAN, FRANCIS J. ARMSTRONG, E. A. BEAR, WILLIAM E. BOND, Principal BRIGHTWEN, Mrs. ... BROWN, GEORGE ... CLARKE, A. DUDLEY CURTIS, C. E. DAW SON, E. H. DAWSON, H. ... CHAPTER XVI. The Attractions of a Life in the Country. IT. Comparison between Town and Country in reference to Health. XIX. The Pleasures of a Country Life. XLII. Tenant Right. XLIII. The Prospects of Fanning. XLIV. Foreign Competition and the Price of Land. XLV. Our Food Supply. L. Fruit Growing. XI. Pleasures of a Country Home. II. Comparison between Town and Country in reference to Health. LXXIX. Local and Imperial Assessments on Landed Property. XXXIII. Improving Farms a Safe Investment. LXIII. Frontages to Oceans and Rivers. LXIV. Forestry. XXXVI. Reclamation. XXX. The Autobiography of a Company Promoter. Vlll. INDEX OF AUTHORS. DoWbETT, C. F. CHAPTER I. XVII. XXVII. XXXI. XXXV. XXXVII. XXXVIII. LXII. LXXVII. DUN, FINLAY LIV. >J LVII. EMERTON, WOLSFLEY LXXI. P. EVERSHED, H. ...; XLYI. UMM XLVII. ,, LXXIV. GASKELL, T. PENN ... LVI. GlBHS, E. J. ... XXVIII. XXIX. HARRIS, W. H. XXIV. HARRIS, W. J. XXXIV. HECKETHORN, C. W. XXXII. HENSLOW, Prof. G. ... XXV. HEKHKRT, AUBERON . LXXI I. "HERMIT" XII. ,, XXL ,, XXII. ,, XXIII. HERRING, The Rev. A. XVIII. STYI.EMAN HOPE, LADY ... JONES, JOHN LAKK, The Rev. J. W. The Object of the Book. Land as a Luxury. Losses by Stock Exchange Investments. Land Buying (from the Argus). Villa Farms (Town Toilers need Quiet and Repose). The Agitation for Rating Ground Rents and Vacant Building Lands. Land and House Investments. Poultry Farming. Easy Transfer of Land. How can Farming be made Profitable ? Cattle. The History of Rights of Property in Land. The Early Maturity of Live Stock. . Improvement of Crops and Stock. Duties and Responsibilities of Landlords. The Importance of Combination amongst Farmers. Losses by Stock Exchange Investments. The Pleasures of a Country Life from a Natural History Point of View. Small Holdings as an Investment. Investments. The Value of Botany to Country Residents. Land from a Liberty Point of View. Some Pleasures of a Country Life. Fishing. Shooting. Decoys. Fresh Air for Poor London Children. X. Country Pleasures and Interests. XIII. Country Life. XV. The Advantages of a Country Life. IXDEX OF AUTHORS. IX. LOBLEV, Prof. J. LOGAN LONG, Professor MCCONNELL, Professor PRIMROSE MACMILLAN, The Rev. HUGH MAYNARD, CONSTANCE L. MERRY. LEYSON T. .'. MEYER, The Rev. F. B. XCII. MOORE, The Rev. T. LXXVIII. MOR(;AN, SAMPSON ... MovLE,TheRev.V.H. MURRAY, GILBERT ... NORTON, GEORGE ... PAXTON, E. H. PEMBER, G. H. PENDEREL - BROD- HURST, J. RAXVSON, F. L. CHAPTER LXXXII. Land and Minerals. .- . . i LXXXIII. Land and Stone. LXXXIV. Clays. LXXXV. Lime. LXXXVI. Coal. XLVIII. Dairy Farming. XXXIX. Agricultural Education. LXXXI. Agricultural Geology. VIII. The Fir Forest. IX. Some of the Poets on the Country. XXVI. The Dangers attending Limited Liability Investments. Land in the Jewish Polity. A Brief Account of the Origin and Growth of Tithes. LIT. The Profitable Utilisation of Hill Slopes and Waste Lands in England. LI. Fruit Drying and Evaporation. LIII. Herbs, etc., and Herb Culture. LX. Rabbits : their Culture and Uses. LXI. Bee Products (Honey and Wax and their Applications). XL. Thorough Cultivation of the Soil. XLI. Land Drainage. LXIX. Water Power Machinery. VII. The Pleasures arising from the Possession of Land. LXXXIX. British Prairies near to England. XCII I. The Primeval Command and the Prophetic Promise. V. The Country Mouse : an Appreciation. LXXX. Applications of Electricity to Agriculture. X. INDEX OF AUTHORS. CHAPTER READE, The Rev. COMPTON VI. ,, LXV. RICH, ROBERT LXX. RICHARDSON, Dr. B. III. W. RUSSELL, T. W. LXXXVII. SAYCE, Prof. A. H. ... XCI. SlLLEM, S. A. LXXV. ,, LXXVI. WALFORD, E. XIV. WALKER, JOHN XX. ,, LV. i> LVIII. ,, LIX. ?? LXVI. ,, ... LXVII. ,, LXVIII. WALLACE, Prof. R. ... XC. WARD, F. W. LXXXVIII. WHITE, PERCY IV. WRIGHT, JOHN XLIX. WOOD, WILLIAM LXXIII. The Pleasures of the Country. Arboriculture. Land Surveying and Levelling. Health in Relation to Land. The Irish Land System. Ancient Lands. Registration of Title to Land. The Settlement and Entail of Land. Excavations in Cranborne Chase, Wilts, and Dorset. Hunting. What an Acre of Land Can Produce. Horses. Sheep. Cereals. Legumes, Roots and Vegetables. Ensilage. Egyptian Lands. English Homes in the Far South. The Pleasures of the Country. Fruit and Its Cultivation : Fallacies and Facts. First Principles of a Landlord's Duty. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE OBJECT OF THE BOOK ..... 3 II. COMPARISON BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY IN REFERENCE TO HEALTH .... 6 III. HEALTH IN RELATION TO LAND . . . -13 IV. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY ... 29 V. THE COUNTRY MOUSE : AN APPRECIATION . . 38 VI. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY . . .47 VII. THE PLEASURES ARISING FROM THE POSSESSION OF LAND . . . . . . . -57 VIII. THE FIR FOREST . . 63 IX. SOME OF THE POETS ON THE COUNTRY . . 73 X. COUNTRY PLEASURES AND INTERESTS . . 101 XL PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY HOME . . . 105 XII. SOME PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE . . in XIII. COUNTRY LIFE 119 XIV. EXCAVATIONS IN CRANBORNE CHASE, WILTS, AND DORSET 122 Xll. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XV. THE ADVANTAGES OF A COUNTRY LIFE . .130 XVI. THE ATTRACTIONS OF A LIFE IN THE COUNTRY . 141 XVII. LAND AS A LUXURY 151 XVIII. FRESH AIR FOR POOR LONDON CHILDREN . . 159 XIX. THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE . . .163 XX. HUNTING 172 XXI. FISHING 175 XXII. SHOOTING 184 XXIII. DECOYS .... .... 201 : : XXIV. THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE FROM A NATURAL HISTORY POINT OF VIEW . 205 XXV. THE VALUE OF BOTANY TO COUNTRY RESIDENTS 218 XXVI. THE DANGERS ATTENDING LIMITED LIABILITY INVESTMENTS . . . . . . .229 XXVII. LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS, With Statistics .... .236 XXVIII. LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS, With Statistics (No. i) . . .254 XXIX, LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS, With Statistics (No. 2) 260 XXX. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A COMPANY PROMOTER . 265 XXXI. FORTUNES BY LAND BUYING 275 XXXII. INVESTMENTS ... -279 XXXIII. IMPROVING FARMS A SAFE INVESTMENT . 288 XXXIV. SMALL HOLDINGS AS AN INVESTMENT . 297 XXXV. VILLA FARMS. (Town Toilers need Quiet and Repose) 3 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER ,. A , ;E . XXXVI. RECLAMATION . . . . . .317 / XXXVII. THE AGITATION FOR RATING GROUND RENTS AND VACANT BUILDING LANDS . . -322 XXXVIII. LAND AND HOUSE INVESTMENTS .... 338 XXXIX. AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION ..... 349 XL. THOROUGH CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL. . . 364 XLI. LAND DRAINAGE . . . . . . 372 XLII. TENANT RIGHT ... . 380 XLIII. THE PROSPECTS OF FARMING . . . . 390 XLIV. FOREIGN COMPETITION AND THE PRICE OF LAND 401 XLV. OUR FOOD SUPPLY 407 XLVI. THE EARLY MATURITY OF LIVE STOCK . . 420 XLVII. IMPROVEMENT OF CROPS AND STOCK . . .427 XLVIII. DAIRY FARMING 435 XLIX. FRUIT AND ITS CULTIVATION: FALLACIES AND FACTS . . . . . . . 442 L. FRUIT GROWING . . . . . . . 474 LI. FRUIT DRYING AND EVAPORATION . . . 485 LII. THE PROFITABLE UTILIZATION OF HILL SLOPES AND WASTE LANDS IN ENGLAND . . . . 490 LIII. HERBS, ETC., AND HERB CULTURE . . . 499 LIV. How CAN FARMING BE MADE PROFITABLE . . 506 LV. WHAT AN ACRE OF LAND CAN PRODUCE . -520 L, VI. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMBINATION AMONGST FARMERS . . . . . . . .524 LVII. CATTLE. - -535 CONTENTS. CHAPTER LVIII. HORSES. . 55 1 LIX. SHEEP .... -555 LX. RABBITS : THEIR CULTURE AND USES . -559 LXI. BEE PRODUCTS (Honey and Wax and their Applications) ... . .566 LXII. POULTRY FARMING 57 l LXIII. FRONTAGES TO OCEANS AND RIVERS . . 576 LXIV. FORESTRY 5&4 LXV. ARBORICULTURE ... . 592 LXVI. CEREALS .... .601 LXVII LEGUMES, ROOTS, AND VEGETABLES . . . 605 LXVIII. ENSILAGE . . . . . . .610 LXIX. WATER-POWER MACHINERY 614 LXX. LAND SURVEYING AND LEVELLING . . .619 LXXI. THE HISTORY OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY IN LAND 631 LXXII. LAND FROM A LIBERTY POINT OF VIEW . . 654 LXXIII. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF A LANDLORD'S DUTY- . .675 LXXIV. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF .LANDLORDS . 679 LXXV. REGISTRATION OF TITLE TO LAND . . . 686 LXX VI. THE SETTLEMENT AND ENTAIL OF LAND . . 697 LXXVII. EASY TRANSFER OF LAND ..... 737 LXXVIII. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF TITHES 722 LXXIX. LOCAL AND IMPERIAL ASSESSMENTS ON LANDED PROPERTY . 734 LXXX. APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY TO AGRICULTURE . 753 CONTENTS. XV. CHAPTER PAGE LXXXI. AGRICULTURAL GEOLOGY 759 LXXXII. LAND AND MINERALS 770 LXXXIII. LAND AND STONE 777 LXXXIV. CLAYS . . 784 LXXXV. LIME . .... 791 LXXXVI. COAI .795 LXXXVII. THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM 801 LXXXVIII. ENGLISH HOMES IN THE FAR SOUTH (Australasian) 809 LXXXIX. BRITISH PRAIRIES NEAR TO ENGLAND . . .819 XC. EGYPTIAN LANDS . . . . . . .824 XCI. ANCIENT LANDS (Babylonian, etc.) . . .837 XCII. LAND IN THE JEWISH POLITY .... 850 XCIII. THE PRIMEVAL COMMAND, AND THE PROPHETIC PROMISE 857 SECTION I CHAPTER I. THE OBJECT OF THE BOOK. FOR some years past the public has been made familiar with depreciative expressions on the subject of the re- duced value of our British broad acres. The daily papers, magazines, books, reports, Parliamentary debates, etc., have continued a despondent tone, and those persons from whom words of hope and encouragement were to be expected have (with some few exceptions) joined in the general chorus w r hich has contributed towards a con- tinuance of depressing influences. The unfortunate effect of all this pessimism has been an alienation of capital from the soil, and millions sterling have been diverted into joint stock investments many of which have turned out to be unremunerative, and some total failures, whereby individuals have been wrecked and the nation injured. Rural districts have become in a measure impoverished, farmers have had to desert the old homesteads of their ancestors, labourers have been reduced to great poverty and have been compelled to immigrate to towns, trades- men have had to curtail or close their businesses, and commerce generally (as well as agriculture) has sustained widespread and deep-rooted losses. Yet in the face of all these facts little effort has been made to win back capital to the soil, and residents to our empty country mansions, houses, and cottages. 4 LAND : The Empire is wealthy, and although large sums have been lost to it in the channels recorded in the chapter on Stock Exchange losses, yet immense sums still await investment, and fresh wealth is being con- tinually created. The welfare of the country at large demands that our rural districts should not be allowed to continue to be starved of that use of capital, and deprived of residential owners, without some effort being made to influence public opinion, so that country homes and country invest- ments should be more sought after. Capitalists should be invited and encouraged to use some portion of their wealth in investments connected with the soil, so that there may be extended developments of various forms of agricultural improvements and adapta- tions of modern science contributing to assist the larger farmers, to re-create a body of yeomen, to increase the number of the peasantry, and to build up many branches of rural commerce. The subjects connected with land are so vast that it would take a whole library to exhaust them ; but what I have invited the contributors to this work to write, embraces repeated chapters on the attractions and advantages of country life, instructive chapters on the varied uses of pastural and arable lands, chapters exposing the losses sustained by those who have left investments in solid mother earth for airy or bubble ones, chapters on legal matters affecting land, and chapters on other sub- jects, some of which do not directly affect our British broad acres, but which are added as being of themselves interesting on the subject of land generally. A wider diffusion of land is greatly to be desired, not by unjust coercive or confiscatory measures, but by making transfer more easy and expeditious, and by some ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 5 alteration in the law of settlement whereby an owner may have the liberty of selling land if he desires to do so. Labourers at wages with allotments would probably be more prosperous than if they tried to obtain a living by cultivating (as peasant proprietors) a few acres of land without capital, except under some helpful circumstances as stated in Chapter xxxiv. ; but there are persons in all districts who, engaged in professions, trades, situations, etc., would be glad to possess a few acres of freehold land if it were made more easy for them to acquire it. By a large increase in small freehold landed proprietors in rural districts and around every town in the Kingdom, numbers of persons would be withdrawn from the combinations of disturbers, a feeling of greater content- ment engendered, and a strong repressing influence upon recurrent agitations created. C. F. DOWSETT. 3, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, LONDON, 1892. NOTE. This Book is divided into seven sections, which might appropriately have been headed Health, Social, Invest- ments, Technical, Legal, Scientific, Special. But as this might have subjected it to the criticism that a few chapters could as well have been classed in one section as in another, numbers instead of names have been adopted. C. F. D. LAND I CHAPTER II. COMPARISON BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY IN REFERENCE TO HEALTH. BY FRANCIS J. ALLAN, M.D., CM., Diplomate in Public Health Univ. Camb. ; Member General Council Univ. Edin.; Medical Officer of Health St. Leonard's, Shoreditch ; Hon. Sec. Public Health Med. Society ; Author of " Aids to Sanitary Science" &*c. , 6la hepatica the larvae of which are almost exclusively present in low pastures and marshy districts, and exist only, as Cobbold informs us, in the bodies of fresh water snails and small aquatic animalcules. If the saving of sheep from rot by the introduction of good roads into farms were alone considered; it were a sufficient argument itself in favour of good roads. But there are other considerations. Good roads save labour to an extent little appreciated. Sir Edwin Chadwick ascertained that whilst the wear of a road by the foot of a horse was as one, that by the wheel of a carriage was as two. He also found that on an asphalte roadway the drag required was as 69,765 to 114,628 on a good macadamised road, and to 259,800 on a newly macadamised road. This alone shows the labour that would be saved, in draught, if all our farm roads were so constructed as to be not only dry on their surface, but so constructed as to have a specially firm basis for wheel tracks. By this provision one horse could be made to do the work of the three often required on badly roaded estates. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. ENGINES. The use of the steam engine in agriculture admits of development for health on a very much larger scale than has ever yet been practised. We see the engine in use for thrashing, ploughing, and some other purposes; but it is usually a hired engine, doing work for several farms, although there might be sufficient work for it on one farm only. Every farm of one hundred acres, of mixed arable and pasture land, demands, for health's sake, its own engine. The engine can be applied to many pur- poses beyond what it is now used for, but I will allude to three purposes of a somewhat novel character. First and foremost, the engine should be employed for the proper distribution of sewage over the farm. In a recent essay on "National Main Drainage" I have sug- gested that along the sides of all our lines of railways there should be laid a series of tubes to act as conduits for conveying sewage from central communities into the country and on to the land from fixed stations connected with the lines nearest to the spot. Under this arrangement an engine would be required on every 7 farm for pumping the sewage from a branch tube into a reservoir raised suffi- ciently high to allow the land to be irrigated as required by gravitation. But there is no necessity to wait for so comprehensive a system as this. Every farm yields, as it is, a large amount of sewage or manure, now fearfully wasted by being allowed to accumulate in improper places, and extremely unhealthy both to men and animals. No one can go along our country lanes on hot and sultry days without being rendered conscious of the contamina- tion of the air from the waste heaps of manure and rubbish deposited in any hole and corner where it can be 24 LAND : retained. That odour, from matter poisonous to man, would be food to land, if properly utilized ; and here a perfect scheme for such utilization opens to view. The work of the engine comes once more into play. All manure thrown into well constructed stone or brick- lined pits, and mixed with a proper quantity of water by the work of the engine could be pumped regularly into a raised reservoir and committed to the land as fast as it was produced. In most instances the sewage of every village in the kingdom could be removed by the farms surrounding the villages and directly applied for the health and wealth of agriculture. The sewage also of our great institutions scattered about the country, such as asylums and workhouses, could be carried away and fruitfully applied. A second additional use for the engine would be to assist in water drainage and in the irrigation of the land with water, according to requirement. In a farm thoroughly drained, with good drains by the roadways, with a proper outfall, and with a reservoir for water, there need be no such thing as drought, if the owner had always at command an engine that would pump water to a sufficient height for distribution to any part of his land that might require it. In fact, the engine ought to be what might well be termed the pulsating heart of the farm ; it should receive all the waste material from the farm that was utilizable, render such material fit food for the land, and re-distribute it with the proper amount of drink water to make the soil productive in fruit, grass or grain. The last additional use for the engine, to which I would refer, relates to its applicability for the making of proper roads and for construction of embankments. Here it might most conveniently play the part of rendering ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 25 solid the tracks over which the wheels of vehicles will afterwards pass. ENCLOSURES. The perfection of land enclosures into properly divided compartments remains yet to be completed in this country. Those who remember the old open field, with its encumbrances of land-marks, rough ditches, and marsh lands, will contrast favourably with that condi- tion the great improvements which modern enclosure has introduced. The increased vegetation in the form of living fences has added not only to the beauty of the landscape, but, under proper cultivation, to the health of the land and of the flocks that feed on the land. We may, indeed, look upon land enclosure as a system of reclaiming land, and the day ought not to be far off when this system will be carried out fully in every part. That vast portions of land still lie unreclaimed is obvious to all who travel through the counties of England, so that there is sufficient work for the agriculturist, even in the way of reclamation. Before passing to the reclaiming process there is, however, much to be done in the way of improvement for health of many enclosures nearest to the homes of the cultivator. The first enclosure demand- ing attention, almost everywhere, is that enclosure called the farm-yard. At the Sanitary Congress at Hastings, in May, 1889, we had this subject brought up under the heading of farm-yard sanitation, by Dr. G. T. B. Waters. The facts that came out were most striking and important. The description of the modern farm-yard with the liquid sewage yielding ammoniacal odours ; the imperfect shelter for the animals ; the wooden boxes containing fodder, and the miserable cattle standing day after day, and week after week, up to their knees in liquid 26 LAND I ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. sewage, their sides and haunches plastered with the same in a partially dried condition, formed a picture which could not be refuted and which is lamentable as belonging to the present day. The farm-yard is a standing centre for the production of disease, and, tuberculosis in cattle extending probably to sixty per cent, of all the cattle sent to the metropolitan markets, must have a considerable origin in this central source of evil. I do not hold so strongly as some do that tuberculous disease in the lower animals passes, through the consumption of their flesh, to the members of the human family. There can, however, be no doubt that cattle suffer directly from the insanitary farm-yard, and I have seen quite enough to carry convic- tion that human beings resident near these places are injured by malarious influences. In the practical accomplishment of health through land, sanitation, like charity, should commence at home ; it should commence in the enclosure called the homestead, and should radiate from that centre, in the form of good drainage, good water, and good roads, through the whole of the estate. B. W. RICHARDSON. SECTION II. LAND : ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 29 CHAPTER IV. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY. BY PERCY WHITE, Editor of Public Opinion. ;< Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis, Ut prisca gens mortalium, ' Palerna rura bobus exercet suis." Hor. Epod. 2, i. IN every healthily constituted human being there are a number of primitive instincts that turn the desires to the country whenever the sun shines and the skies are blue. These are the undeveloped atavisms, inherited, perhaps, from ancestors who fought for acorns with fists or bludgeons, when, as Horace describes, in unconscious anticipation of Darwin, they first crept forth on the earth a dumb and dirty crowd of unkempt savages. In the recesses of every mind, worn and obliterated by years of friction against London life though it may be, there lies concealed a sentiment that can only find adequate satisfaction in the sights and the sounds of the country ; in the wide distances, the soft horizons, the scent of new-mown hay, or the melancholy odour of decaying leaves. Man, himself a part of Nature, is connected by an inexplicable kind of telepathy with the landscape surrounding him. The message of " the happy autumn fields " is born to the human soul through the medium of eyes and psychical senses for which we have no name. If, as George Eliot says, we were not well wadded with 30 -LAND : stupidity, the message might, like Pan's pipe, be blinding sweet, and bring us near that great mysterious heart of Nature into which Jefferies was ever striving, and not at all in vain, to gaze. Certain forces, some of them transitory, others more permanent, but most of them disagreeable, have com- pelled men to crowd together in towns, until a rural life for many of us is a condition of existence to be hopelessly longed for but rarely to be realised. It would almost seem that this enforced absence from the natural environ- ment of the open country has produced the love of Nature in its conscious self-analyzing modern form. We are never tired of investigating the impressions excited by scenery. The Greeks had their love for it, too, but it was a simpler sentiment than ours, nor were the Latin poets without it. If you compare Tennyson with Virgil you will at once perceive the different attitude of the modern and the ancient mind towards the phenomena of the sky, the earth, and the sea. Ever since man first began to dwell in " walled cities," it has been a matter of dispute whether life in the country or in the town were the more enjoyable. But, argue as you will, there is no logic to prove that the crowded streets, smoke, din, squalor, and microbe-laden air of a great city can confer the physical and moral comfort, health and delight that the country gives ungrudgingly. We are enabled to live with comparative impunity in London only by the aid of science. But science cannot make existence there beautiful, nor ennobling, nor picturesque. If custom did not blind us, and we were able to see things in the same light in which they would appear to some shadowy visitant from Mars, Saturn, or Jove, our minds would be almost over- whelmed by the pathos of four millions of people crowded ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 31 into a narrow area, whilst beyond the smoke-stained horizon lay the lovely rural districts of England the loveliest, perhaps, in all the world silent, dewy, and peaceful. The Jovian or Saturnian critic, if he were a philosopher, would tell the dwellers on his own planet that our social condition, which dams up the population in huge centres and empties the rural districts, could not possibly be a permanent one. But it is the contemplative and studious man, who, apart from the question of field-sports, loves the country most. We all know how Matthew Arnold was obliged every year to revivify himself by long draughts of it. Accident has made London the great intellectual centre, but the best intellects amongst us certainly find solace in the woods and fields. There are certain moods, and by no means misanthropic ones, that drive men who think into the deepest solitude they can find. Swept along by the human tide in Fleet Street, who has not longed to be in the wild bosom of Dartmoor, hearing only the wind sighing over the reeds, or the cry of the bittern from the rushy pool, with the horizon broken by the serrated edges of the ragged Druid Tors ? Nature will rebel against the straight waistcoat we impose on ourselves and proudly wear. Man is undoubtedly a gregarious animal, but not to the extent of desiring to be a unit amongst four millions of his fellows. The amount of happiness derived from country surroundings, to one of the right temperament, is out of all proportion to the feverish diversions of life in a great town. What an ideal picture at once comes before the mind of that existence which a healthy man of competent means may make for himself in rural England ! How steeped he is in unconscious poetry ! The poetry is obvious and a constant quantity. If you cannot from sheer familiarity 32 LAND: find it yourself, turn to the works of Washington Irving or to Nathaniel Hawthorne's " Our Old Home." There is the village street, the laburnum trees, perhaps, falling in showers of gold amongst the green leaves ; above them, the mossy mellow tiled roof and the red gables, then the Norman church tower, where the jackdaws are clamouring and the swallows circling. Beyond are the green fields green as only English fields know how to be dotted with cattle browsing in luxurious languor of placid content. In the air is the scent of roses, of moist meadows. Beneath these are dimmer odours that have their existence in the past the fragrance of dead summers, of forgotten flowers, when the fulness and beauty of English life first dawned on us, and one found oneself a child in an ancient English orchard, perhaps for the first time, and the voice of the cuckoo was borne on the soft breeze from the top of the distant elms. I know not how it is, but the exquisite haunting beauty of some days amidst the simple, homelike beauty of our scenery is almost akin to pain. When the whole country-side is steeped in sunshine, and gentle airs rustle the trees, a spirit of peace seems to descend on the lovely English landscape that I have felt in no other land. We know not what it is we dread. Perhaps it is that a rougher breeze should blow and alter the picture, moving the distant shadow of cloud, now remote in the south- western skies, towards our zenith, hiding the genial face of the sun, marring the fragile loveliness of the day. For there exists a beauty in our climate, perceptible only in those districts where the view is extended, found under no other sky. The fickleness of our skies lends them a peculiar charm, and when Nature smiles here her face is very sweet. Hours we have of such exquisite loveliness which a chillier breeze or a sullen bank of cloud may turn ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICH1>. 33 into other hours, beautiful still, but peevish. These days may come at any season, and the hours pass in an ab- sorbing procession of changing delight, for the fields and trees and softly rolling hills smile beneath the tender blue of the soft skies, and shiver faintly under the clouds that move on us from the Gulf Stream into the Channel, from the Channel over the chalk-seamed summits of the Downs, and on into the glad heart of rural England. It is not everyone who feels this spiritual side of our rural life, but all alike come more or less under the subtle influence of natural phenomena in the country, whilst in the towns the vision is limited to the " long, unlovely street," and we see pass us, under the dazzling sunshine, dimmed somewhat by smoke, the procession of omnibuses instead of the procession of the hours. And where is the laburnum, where the smell of the roses, where the garnered fragrance of the mind odorous by association ? The roar of the traffic, the rush of the human tide, has broken the message the friendly English land bears to all who love her. Pygmalion fell in love with a statue. But, alas ! too long a sojourn amid the artificialities of London life hides the nameless goddess who presides over rural England whom some of us learnt to love when we were young. If we had the mythologizing spirit of the Greeks, by how lovely an Artemis would the rolling, odorous wooded, dew-sprinkled, flowery land we see in our fits of rural nostalgia be represented ! The country must always be the great delight of England. The chief expression of our national life in the past, in architecture and literature, must be sought there. We are justly proud of our beautiful land, but we have little reason to boast of the grandeur of our towns. The expression that the natural life has taken there is entirely utilitarian and materialistic. In the vast 34 LAND : accumulation of brick houses, most of them mean and depressing to the senses, the deeply spiritual tendencies of the national character are hardly suspected. The imagination seems to have had no part in their con- struction ; aesthetically they are as meaningless as the burrows of the rabbits. But in our association with the country we have displayed, perhaps unwittingly, a taste that is the unconscious proof of our sympathy with the tender beauties of our landscapes. The old homes of the land, the low-roofed thatched cottage, the stately Elizabethan mansion, the gabled rectory of nameless architecture and doubtful age, seem almost as much a part of the landscape , as the trees that cluster round them. Hence is the delighted harmony we see in all our remoter rural districts. No other race in the world has shown this peculiar faculty of unconscious aesthetic sympathy with its environment to so marked a degree as our own. But it must not be forgotten the very aspect of the country is the result of our forefathers' work. The varied beauty in detail, the position of trees, the miles of magni- ficent hedgerows, the whole friendly aspect of our land is due to the harmonious blending of humanity and nature. Man " tills the soil and lies beneath," but every generation leaves its monument behind it, and behind us are two thousand years of unwritten history. We can read it notwithstanding. It is tenderly written in the soft turf of our gardens, in the waving branches of our oaks and beech-groves, in the fairy-like loveliness of our deep lanes, where the glimmering pathway sinks deeper century after century under the shadow of vegetation as luxuriant as in a tropical forest. Children that grow up in towns, and are accustomed to see more hansom cabs pass than swallows on the wing, miss an influence of unknown moulding force to the ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 35 character. To test its power we need only turn to our literature. Shakespeare would not have written " A Midsummer Night's Dream," with all the riot of fairies, flowers, and rural imaginings, unless his youthful fancy had been fed on the familiar and lovely scenes surround- ing every farmstead and lowly cottage near Stratford-on- Avon. Milton's familiarity with English country life saturates his poems. Lycictas, L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, reflect the stored up rural sights, sounds, and odours accumulated in his meditative walks about his father's house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Where- ever they lived, and whatever the environment of their boyhood, Shakespeare and Milton would no doubt have been inspired poets, only they would have worn their laurels "with a difference." The " violets sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath" might not have blossomed eternally in the verse of the one, nor the song of the lark, the smell of the eglantine, the swish of the scythe, haunted the lighter poems of the other. Since then, to be a " poet of Nature " has become a profession ; but the strange haunting faculty dwelling in so many of the references to the simplest incidents of rural life exists only when the association of the idea with its maturer expression has affected the poet at first hand and in early boyhood. The dullest of us can recall the face of rural England in Shakespeare's day. Many of the fields and lanes remain unchanged about his birth- place. But even Mr. Besant hardly enables us to imagine Fleet Street when Elizabeth was Queen. So it is that nearly all our love for the past is borne along by means of the magic chain of rural things by which we are connected with it. This influence has grown into our national life with far greater distinctness than we find in the case of the French, the Italians, or 36 LAND I the Germans. For until the exigencies of trade and manufacture drove, in an evil hour, our population into the towns, we were a country-bred people. The change has made us wealthy, has multiplied our numbers by ten, but has it made us better, wiser, kindlier, or happier ? Certainly it has not made us merrier. " Merry " is the last epithet our foreign critics apply to us. But when we all lived in the country, and could boast of a magni- ficent peasantry whose descendants now are ruling India, peopling North America, trying to become millionaires on the Stock Exchange or in company promoting, we "did not take our pleasures sadly." The only reason the epithet can now be applied to us is because of the smiling and pastoral beauty of the country which welcomes the stranger by all manner of home-like allure- ments. All the happiest homes should, indeed, be in the country. There alone the child can blossom un- trammelled, and absorb the influences enabling him to apprehend the meaning of the phrase "I am an English- man." Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his very fine poem, " The Flag of England," speaks of a section of us as " a street-bred people." The reproach is deserved, if not exactly in the application he intended. We have acquired a " street-bred " manner of looking at things. Our newspaper criticism is most of it "street-bred," and so is more than half our politics. When the close of the turmoil and confusion the French revolution had brought on Europe gave us an opportunity of becoming the great manufactory and workshop of the world in a still greater degree than we had been before, we began to be ashamed of our country breeding. The restless activity then first set in violent commotion altered the social per- spective. Country life was dethroned from the place it had always occupied in the public mind and those forced ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 37 to dwell there looked towards the great towns, particularly London, with longing eyes. At the beginning of the century country breeding was a favourite butt for the clumsy banter of the time. But steam, that has conquered distance so far as our island is concerned, has brought town and country into the closest possible relation, and it has become necessary for a nervous and much worried generation to revert intermittently and with hesitation to the manners of their grandfathers. The " change of air" we are all so fond of talking about, usually means getting out of London or its provincial equivalent. I don't think the Elizabethans wanted much "change of air," or that the medical experts of the day thought of ordering it to patients suffering from dyspepsia or nervous debility. But a town-bred people crave it, and children need it as much as they need good food. The lad entirely brought up in London grows up with half his natural faculties undeveloped. He cannot distinguish between an elm tree and a beech, or recognise the difference between a linnet and a sparrow. It is not for him to hear the nightingale sing when his fancy is freshest, or thrill with inexplicable excitement at the first glimpse of a speckled-backed trout. He will know the country only by hearsay or through the medium of books. Our Peter Bells should surely all be "street-bred." But under all conditions Nature will assert herself and we are reverting to our old methods. Those who can live in the country, and those who cannot, turn to it with a longing all the smoke of London cannot stifle. Falstaff is not the only man who " babbles of green fields," only the wiser man babbles of them before it is too late. PERCY WHITE. 38 LAND CHAPTER V. THE COUNTRY MOUSE : AN APPRECIATION. BY, JAMES PENDEREL-BRODHURST, Author of " The Enfranchisement of Leaseholds" (Estates Gazette Office); Part Author of " The Royal River" and " Abbeys and Churches of England and Wales." WE need not go back so far as Virgil, nor even Sir Roger de Coverley, to find abundance of literature in praise of rural life, its delight and its gentle charm. English literature indeed, and especially that which accumulated before the present century, is very largely what it is now the fashion to call the " appreciation " of the life which most poets, from Virgil to Crabbe, have sought to praise. But when the age of great towns set in, a change, at first gradual, but at last rapid, began to operate, and there was developed a school of poets and prosateurs who took as keen a delight in singing the praises of the pavement as their forerunners (and usually their betters) had felt in extolling the country life. There is a touch of clever, if flippant, cynicism in these eulogies of the flagstones which gives us pause sometimes, and bids us enquire if all this chanting of the supreme delights of Piccadilly is quite sincere and quite convinced. But, indeed, this battle of the town-mouse and the country-mouse of literature is, in a way> as old as the Restoration. The little poets sang then, as the little poets sing to-day of the variety of the street, of the glare of the play-house, the swirl and scramble of the life ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 39 which makes itself obvious and felt. But a good many of us, who have, perhaps, too much of the town and its emotions, may well ask ourselves sometimes if the town- mouse be not hopelessly in the wrong. We may "live the life " of which the earnest young man and the still more earnest damsel for ever prate, without being quite so morbidly conscious of it. It is of the essence of happiness that we do not know we are enjoying it, and it is, perhaps, in some measure due to forgetfulness of this truism that a notion has arisen among people who are more or less compelled by stress of circumstance to spend their lives in towns, that beyond the clatter which re- minded Lowell, in a phrase which will live as long as language, of "the roaring loom of time," there is no enjoyment and no salvation. Town life has become so full of interests, so crowded with excitements, and with temptations of the nerves that the notion, mistaken and mischievous though it be, has perhaps some reason even if it have no justification. Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in one of his fierce and stormy, if unbalanced, ballads " what the little street-bred people " know of England ; and I may use his phrase to ask what all the hereditary, and most of the accidental " street-bred people " know of that rurality which is the one enormous and subtle charm of England ? This modern revolt against the country, did we not know the reason for it, would be the more surprising and disquieting, in that there has never been a land in which rural life has been more passionately beloved or more widely enjoyed. The rich Roman endured his villa, but he loved his Rome. To him a spell of country life was but an interlude, dictated at least as much by fashion as by desire, and to this day Latin peoples, in the bulk, have not acquired that instinctive calenture for the romantic 4O LAND : side of country life which so long abided with most Eng- lishmen, and is very far indeed from being extinct even now. I have always admired intensely a squire of the old school, who was once of my acquaintance. He lived in a midland county which can only be historically called remote. He reached a green and flourishing old age, and was buried in the vaults of his ancestors, without having set foot in London, and without having once, in his more than seventy years of life, slept from under his own roof. You may call that old squire narrow and ignorant, if you will ; you may say, if you please, that he formed a link in one of those lines of " partridge-breeders of a thousand years " whom Tennyson dismissed with superior contempt. But at least his life sufficed for him. It sufficed, too, for those who loved him, for the heredi- tary tenantry, for the estate upon which son succeeded father in the farmhouse, as son succeeded father at the Hall. And his life was full of interests and of rustic contents. But his school has vanished into the twilight, and you shall match him no more. Still, without being so convinced or so consistent as he, we may still delight ourselves with the crisp and eager air, unthickened by the smoke of chimneys ; with the richness and variety of the sounds of the country, its simple and manly pleasures. The type of country life which the old squire knew and enjoyed has largely faded away, and there are no present signs that it will return. The worst of it is that a complex and artificial town life tends inevitably to produce an equally luxurious standard of living in the country. But despite that tendency, there is always room to hope for a fresh era of the simple country life. And as time goes on, and existence becomes more crowded and more fretful, the chances are that a great ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHIE. 41 many people will turn with delight to rural joys as the sole way of escape from the overtaxed existence of the town. In doing that they will be choosing the better part. That "God made the country," but "man made the town," is truer now than it has ever been, but not so true as it will be ; and if many of us now sigh for rural peace, what will not be the longing for the silence of the open air a generation hence ? The difference between the two lives is already sufficiently strongly emphasized. The real delight of Nature, the true exhilaration of life, we can find only in the lanes and hedgerows, amid the reposeful silences of mead and park. The happy wight, who has the fortune, the courage, or the right temper of mind- put it as you will to ignore the town at his pleasure, opens his eyes of a morning upon a different and an en- chanted world. Instead of being choked and poisoned with smoke-laden fog, which makes the eyes to smart and the head to throb, before he is out of his bath, he breathes the ether that Nature has distilled ; where the townsman inhales lassitude and depression, he breathes in health, vigour, and exhilaration. Rising betimes, which in town is the most disagreeable and irksome of all tasks, becomes in the perfumed rural atmosphere a pure pleasure, and indeed a duty which man owes to himself. That which in other circumstances is the supreme effort of virtue becomes to our country mouse the easiest and most natural thing in the world. Nor is it needful, as it is for the street-dweller, to steal an hour from sleep, since, to the man of simple tastes, there is no temptation to indulge the vice of lengthening the night at the expense of the day. " Early to bed and early to rise " is the way to healthy enjoyment in the country, and the practioneer of that elementary rural virtue is well repaid. In this, at least, "virtue is its own reward." I have often regretted 42 LAND : that Richard Jefferies never lived to write an essay upon the sounds of the country. They are so ringing -and sonorous, and carry so far, that distance seems halved. A sound, be it the baying of a dog, the sharpening of a scythe or a sickle in districts where scythes and sickles still survive, which at noonday would be scarcely perceptible even amid the meadows, is at early morning sharp and even musical. This early morning in the country is certainly not the least of Nature's delights, which, although many and exquisite, have in them none of that violence which, as the father of the Church in "Romeo and Juliet" sagely pointed out, makes them kill-joys in the end. The swirling stream, and the foaming cascade, the breeze- swayed bough, the fleck of sunlight through the branches, are pure delights in their way, but even the rural life has nothing better to give us than those best and first morning hours. A vast deal of nonsense has been talked about the dulness, and even the " misery " of life in the country in the winter; but that kind of language can surely never have been held by any convinced lover of rural life. A winter in the country, "with old wood to burn, old books to read, old wine to drink, old friends to meet," is about as near an approach to the earthly paradise as mortal man is ever likely to attain. A walk through the winter woods is in itself a revelation. The woods are always full of delight ; but whether they are more lovely in autumn or in winter is largely a matter of taste and sentiment. Neither in spring nor in summer are they at their best, save to those whose passion is foliage. Painters seem to prefer them in early autumn, when the leaves are more splendidly variegated, more delicately veined, more richly tinted than at any other season. The charm ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 43 of the woods in autumn is pensive, almost melancholy indeed, for the touch of sadness which seems inseparable from a great collection of trees is then most powerfully felt, and is acknowledged even by those who are little given to sentiment. In mid-winter the delights of the woods are almost purely pictorial. Whatever the atmosphere or the tem- perature, there is always something to beguile the eye. Even when it is seen through a deluge of rain there are points of picturesqueness about a wood ; but on days of frost, when the air is resonant, and the voice echoes through the glades, the lover of trees will find his great contentment. But the woods are never so completely lovely, so full of pictures utterly beyond the cunning of the pencil, as when the trees are heavily laden with snow, frozen hard, and spangled with crystals. The atmos- phere, so sharp, clear, and full of echoes, is intensely exhilarating ; and mayhap the imaginative and brooding eye may on such a day perceive sweet sights that to the wayfarer, anxious to be at his walk's end and at the fire- side, are invisible. What may be called the individuality of woodland is seen to best advantage in winter. The foliage has gone, and corners that in summer are thickly screened by leaves, and full of birds, now let in glimpses of the January sun, cold and copper-red, yet cheerful from its very ruddiness. A tree that was familiar at midsummer looks often gaunt and strange when it is for the first time seen in winter. The knots and gnarls in the trunk above the lowest branches, the tapering of the pole, the thrust of the arms, their forkings and interlacements, are curiously new and unexpected. When the day is bright there is gaiety in the woods, however hard the frost may be ; the birds twitter blithely 44 LAND : and cock their heads enquiringly as you swing past. Perhaps the gaiety is only apparent ; for on such a day there is many a long flight for food, many a search, much weariness, and little variety of diet. The birds suffer more, perhaps, than is supposed ; and the seemingly joyous twitter may be a cry of distress. In the woods, as in the gardens, they are much tamer than in summer ; and although your footsteps echo upon the frozen snow, hard as a macadamized road, they will do little more than hop from a low branch to a higher one. On such a day as this the noises of the country, that in summer hardly penetrate the heart of the woods, are plainly heard. The hollow roar of a train as it crosses the long viaduct a mile off, the barking of the dogs at a distant farmhouse, the unmusical clang of the clock-bell at the Hall away beyond many fields, are all heard with a distinctness which in summer is noticeable in the earliest hours of the morning, but at no other time. When there is frost, but no snow, the woods are less picturesque, but not a whit less enticing. It, is, perhaps when the short winter afternoon begins to close in, and when the clouds change very gradu- ally from a thickish grey to a hue more nearly resembling the tree-trunks themselves, that a woodland path is, scenically, most effective. The sunset is a solemn opaque red, glorified sometimes with a tinge of that tawny yellow which reaches its highest beauty when it is deadened somewhat by the brumous smoke that rises from a great city. When the last tinge of crimson has faded from the horizon the shadows gather rapidly, and in a few minutes all is gloom a hundred yards ahead. The thin country mist rises all at once as if to help the darkness. It rolls in little wreaths around the branches, and wraps the upper portions of the trunks in suggestions of mystery. Where a tree-bordered alley crosses the path the double ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 45 line of trunks fades away in the semi-diaphanous mist in rather an awesome fashion. The wood seems full of mystery. The swaying of the limbs overhead, and the little sigh of the wind as it plays about the bare " high- tops," sound mournful and eerie. The darkness is now com- plete, and as you cross the stile and leave behind these glades and coppices, so still and dark, yet soon to be full of the life of night, the familiar high road, though it be dark and silent too, seems friendly and companionable. Even in weather too bad to permit of walking, the country is (to the proper temper of mind) infinitely more endurable than the town. You may sit to read or write without the infinite disturbance of the streets without the brown and darksome fog which is now becoming common, not in London alone, but in all great towns. It is only in the country that the fogs are still white and harmless. Moated granges and Edwardian manor- houses are not for all of us, of course ; and, mayhap, those who could most keenly enjoy such delights come in for them never. Nor is the country life entirely suit- able for all of those to whom it is possible. But a life made up of half country and half town should be delicious to all save the desperately wicked, or those persons, so numerous now, and so sadly to be pitied, to whom existence without daily change and excite- ment, is unendurable. It is not always easy to under- stand why people who may live where they list deliberately choose the town in preference to the country. They fancy, no doubt, that they could not be happy away from the streets ; but the fault is in them, not in the way of life which they despise. And, looked at even from the money point of view, there is commonly a balance of economy on the side of the rural life. Land is now so cheap in most English counties, that a sum which would 46 LAND : not buy very much in the shape of a London leasehold will command a sufficient freehold in the country. During the last ten or a dozen years the rents of fine old country houses of small or moderate size, no more expensive to keep up than a rectory or a vicarage, have been largely reduced first, because of the poverty of the land, and second, for that most melancholy of reasons, that the gentleman of moderate means has, like the labourer, taken to deserting the country. But such depression cannot last for ever ; and meanwhile all the delights of country life are " going " at something like half-price. J. PENDEREL-BRODHURST. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 47 CHAPTER VI. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY. Bv COMPTON READE, Aiithor of " Take care whom you Trust" etc. Ax universal fallacy accredits the English mind with being nothing better than pragmatical. That for the most part we are men of action is our proudest boast, and Dr. Pusey rightly complimented the elder university on producing not books but men, being fully alive to the all-importance of what old William of Wykeham styled " man-makyng." But we are not all muscles and motion. There remains, even in an age of railroads and liners, that splendid force, the English brain. True, neither to-day nor to-morrow can reproduce a Shakespeare. Intellect, as the mediaeval people put it, resembles Deltas diffusa, whereas in the greatest of poets it might have been termed Deltas concentrata ; nevertheless, if weakened by diffusion, the divine quality which crys- tallised itself in a Shakespeare, remains a common heritage of the race, and for all our ceaseless locomo- tion we do think. The Victorian era almost rivals that of Elizabeth in mental brilliance, and there are still myriads among us who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of business so superstitiously as to have lost all sense of the worship of the beautiful. At the same time the general gravitation towards urban life, and particularly towards the Metropolis, tends 48 LAND I to dwarf the range of English sympathy. We shall get to be a very one-sided people if altogether we lose touch with Nature ; for by one of those paradoxes which meet us at every turn the ideal is evolved less from the quick intelligence of the city than from the supreme silence of the country. Titania and Puck emanated from the lawns and glades of Charlcote. The stage borrowed the. fairy and the imp. It could not create them, still less invest such fancies with the credulous belief even now accorded them by the peasantry of the Welsh border. And not only shall we miss the charm of pure ideality, but our very realism also will inevitably become stereotyped and conventional. Kensington Gardens and the Bois de Boulogne stand in the same relation to Nature that a Japanese tea-tray does to art. Depend upon it, the eye needs the education of associa- tion as truly as the ear, and if the eye and ear be indeed the avenues of the soul, upon their culture must largely depend the texture of man's higher self. To argue thus is perhaps but to take up the well-worn parable of Mr. Ruskin ; nevertheless, where can be found a more capable or honest guide ? No one in his senses desires to foster a morbid aestheticism, the cant of art, or rather the art of cant ; but to be in tune with such environment as this planet affords cannot be otherwise than healthy, and the sepulture of existence within the narrow area of the very largest and most overgrown of cities amounts to a heresy against human liberty. To one class the word country means nothing more than the hunting and shooting season ; to another agri- culture only, or the business of food production. Both these notions are essentially vulgar, because limited and inadequate, yet they have prevailed all through. Nimrod loved field and forest, like many another of our gentle ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 49 barbarians, simply as media for big game. Horace him- self Horace, the polished cynic, the Anacreon and the Rochester of the Augustan age, appears to have prized his Sabine valley solely because of its superlative vines. Not as a sculptor, not as a painter, did this poet of the golden lyre regard his rural retreat, but rather in the spirit of a Herefordshire rustic, whose orchard teems with the old fox-whelp apple, that yields a cyder in value equal to the vintages of Epernay. To keep the elements of butchery and business in the background is essential, if the great face of Nature is to be admired for its own sake ; and with the spread of education, with a class rapidly forming in our midst of minds trained to con- templation, with the revival of the old Elizabethan accom- plishments, it must surely be possible to view our native land apart from the delectation of destruction or the allurements of agriculture. The typical Englishman of the twentieth century will neither be Tony Lumpkin nor Farmer George ; the typical English woman something more spimtuelle than Di Vernon or Mrs. Poyser. We have developed a fresh type, we of this later age, a type, moreover, capable of a yet further evolution. Unlike their grandparents, fine gentlemen have ceased to be fine, and a cottage, if only it be true to art, satisfies our nature far more thoroughly than a shoddy palace. The grandiose has got to be our pet abomination. We ask for quality, and reject quantity if devoid of positive^ ex- cellence. Nevertheless, while thus exhibiting the grace of humility, our standard diverges widely from that of simple Wordsworth, and even more so from his prede- cessors of the quasi-pastoral sort, such as Thomson and Collins. Experience teaches the real worth of that in- valuable aphorism : Soyez de votre Siecle. This is -not the epoch of what Sydney Smith termed a vegetable 50 LAND : existence, nor of the Lake school of pensive verse, but rather of Algernon Swinburne, and the new democracy, and the iconoclasm of ancient ideals, and the upheaval of volcanic forces that have slept for long centuries. Our gratification in rural scenes proceeds from quite another source to that which endeared them to Chaucer, or Gray, or Wordsworth. In a word, we love the country because it furnishes a mine of artistic wealth, whereas the majority of cities if we except Rome, Florence, Oxford, Munich and a few others jar against our sensibilities at every turn. To conceive a city of sublime beauty may be just possible, yet one would seem, in any such flight of imagination, to be trenching on the province of the Apocalypse. Practically, of the two chief cities of Europe, London is a perpetual fog ; Paris a perpetual fair. The hollow roar of the one sounds almost as sad as the hollow mirth of the other. Each, bien entendii, has its advantages for man as a gregarious animal. Both, in an equal ratio, dwindle the imagination and level down almost as fatally as a series of competitive examinations. Now, from our standpoint, imagination is the one banquet which never palls, and imagination without art may run riot, yet only in the direction of imbecility. A very cursory analysis of the language, the ideas, the mise en scene of Shakespeare's plays proves conclusively the influence of a rural home, with the sublime education of the forest and the river, the smiling meadow and the eternal hill. The man's mighty soul was saturated with old England, the England that in part survives, in spite of high farming and hideous mansions, and the wanton destruction of ancestral timber. To understand our greatest genius it is absolutely necessary to live in his land not by any means in Stratford, a poor little town- ship guiltless of inspiration. Rather to roam where he ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 51 did. Through the Cotswolds to Oxford albeit, alas, beautiful Wychwood thanks to bureaucratic parsimony is no more. From thence, over the incomparable Chilterns to Henley, and so to London. Or, striking in another direction, across the Malvern Hills, through the orchards of Offa's Land to the Golden Valley, and the -cradle of English romance, far-famed Caerleon on Usk. In remote and unfrequented hamlets, whereunto that upas of art, the modern builder, has never penetrated, you will find ancient and humble homes of timber strongly morticed and defying the ravages of old time, or yet more glorious " courts," once the residence of Elizabethan or Tudor chivalry, with their overhanging gables, their grand mullions, or a solitary oriel now, alas, relegated to the estimable but stolid bucolic, who blasphemes them as nasty old places, and sighs for a stucco suburban villa. Here, or amid the oaks of Dinmore, the glades of the New Forest or the beechwoods of South Oxon, you may see with the eyes of Shakespeare, but you must linger long to hear with his ears. To him the music of song birds, each year becoming for us rarer and yet rarer, was as a sweet symphony, and he has left us not a few of its fancies. Only in his own land will you come to assimi- late with an environment of nature that conduced to so supreme a result. The city supplied no more than the supers of his dramas. Ophelia hailed from the Avon, not from the Fleet Ditch. It may be urged that all this savours of sentiment. Let us therefore descend to a more prosaic view of the country. Assuming that, apart from minor considera- tions, such as health, economy, society, you should be tempted to essay the vie de campagne, it certainly can pro- mise satisfaction of a substantial kind to all endowed with a genuine love of the beautiful. A very talented 52 LAND I amateur artist, who had travelled much, remarked appositely that the atmospheric conditions of the English climate augment indefinitely the grace of our landscapes. He might have added, that different districts supply varying atmospheric effects. Thus, travelling westward from London you pass through the clear strong lights of the chalk range, then to the dull Gloucestershire grey, and this again shades into the most marvellous of all colouring, the Herefordshire blue a deep indigo, that falling on the ruddy hillsides empurples them ; or travel- ling north, you emerge from the yellow smoke of Middlesex into the pellucid air of Herts, and this again clouds a little until you reach the fens of Peterborough, with their weird mist. A burst of brightness as you whirl through the Ridings, and then dark Durham suggests the regions of Erebus and Nox. It was the atmosphere, so mysterious, if so familiar, of the gloomy Thames, that gave an allegorical touch to Turner's chef-d'oeuvre -, " The last day of the fighting Temeraire," and in short, the very air of our native land alike composes and tones a picture. Now, one need not be a painter to comprehend and appreciate this, but without the soul of an artist such scenery as would inspire a Vicat Cole or a Cuyp is utterly lost. The majority of the people whose occupations root them to the soil seem destitute of eyes to grasp the beauties among which they vegetate like bats. But these dullards are at present endowed with the very slenderest smattering of an imperfect education, and, paradox though it may sound, it is the more enlightened denizen of the towns who discovers, among that which to the native mind is pure dross, a wealth of glorious gold. The coming generation seems destined to revel in all the luxury of the land. In the trees and shrubs, the ferns and flowers, the polychrome of hill and vale, ever ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 53 changing with the fleeting shadows. In the lowly cottage, the venerable homestead, or the once delicate mansion desecrated by the sordid associations of farming; not to mention our churches aptly styled the history of England writ in stone. There are corners of old England more rich in ideality than others, and also wide tracts blackened by manufactures or mining. Nearly all the shires, however, preserve some oases of greenery, some survival of primeval grace, some faint traces of Oberon's land. Within a strong man's march from London itself you shall revert farther back than to Shakespeare or even to Chaucer and Spencer. There are houses in Kent more ancient than English literature itself, and one in Herefordshire alas that it should be written "of course" turned into a homestead as old as Crecy, albeit under its eaves William Wordsworth dreamed and sang. So far, as regards the vestiges of art they, are but few, and nature itself but sparse. For all that the underwoods that line the "Pilgrim's Way," dotted with such ancestral yews as once supplied the archers of the Black Prince with death-warrants for the foe, recall the magic of the merry greenwood, and on their outskirts, if you have eyes to see, there may be discovered such treasures as the fly and bee orchis ; while if you ride across Holmes- dale, past embowered Westerham, your eyes will be dazzled by the flush of heather, and perchance you may pause to remember that in this Garden of Eden amorous King Hal fell captive to the dark iris of Mistress Anne Boleyn's eyes. A little farther from Pall Mall, on the summit of the Chilterns, lies another romancy spot, a sanctuary amid a forest of beeches. Here brave Brigadier Mackintosh, with some seven companions in arms, all of whom had broken from the Tower to escape the fate of Lord 54 LAND : Derwentwater, encamped for three weeks on his brother- in-law's demesne, and the spot still bears in its name of Scots' Common the record of the hero of Preston ; or, if you will roam westward almost as far as the historic Boscobel oak, you will discover the cloistered retreat of a modern devotee of the beautiful, the late Sir F. A. G. Ousely. An artist to the core, that great musician buried himself in an exquisite solitude, in order with a few like-minded to revel unmolested in tone-poetry. They tried their best to attract him to London, to Oxford. They would have bribed him with a bishopric, but he would have none of it. His own "old wood" by the rushing Teme sufficed. There, apart from the busy haunts of men, he could think and feel, and though according to the popular theory he was utterly out of tune with the country, never having handled a gun or crossed the back of a horse, as a man of opulence he was able to indulge his predilections up to the hilt. Yet in many respects he proved an exemplar to humbler folk. Art for its own sake was his motto. Of his own freewill he chose isolation, peace, beauty ; like Lord Tennyson, like John Ruskin, like many other of the demi-gods of humanity ; and to write the words reverently, he had his reward. "If," quoth the author of " The Cloister and the Hearth," as the ten bells of his College Tower broke forth suddenly into a clashing peal" If I had a well- balanced mind, I should enjoy that shindy." Query ? The speaker, it is true, was a clubbable and a gregarious man, and in his modesty blamed a refined ear for disliking noise. Yet, mntato nomine, what is the differ- ence between the roar of a belfry and that of eternal wheels over eternal granite ? Surely, pretty much that between the voice of a lion and a tiger. Neither, how- ever grand and terrible, can do otherwise than abrade the ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 55 nerves of the ear, whereas the melodies of the field and fallow, the wood and wold, those melodies of morn the poet deemed to be untold, surpass them in tender sweet- ness. It is an education in mental-balance to listen for the trill of the skylark, perhaps the most sublime music in nature, or for the notes, now akin to the weird themes of Chopin, now to the ravishing melodies of Schubert, that issue in spring from thrush, blackbird, linnet; or the home-going diapason of the dove, or in their merrier moods, to the chirp of chaffinch or robin. And these lovely songsters, if only there be no devilish saltpetre, no mischievous brat, no other demon of destruction nigh your dwelling, will soon forget that you are fashioned in the form of a brute, and join their treble to the chords of your piano, come to your call, and share your afternoon tea as though you were another St. Francis. Experto crede. But you must be far enough away from London smoke, and the model farmer, who poisons God's creatures lest he should lose a dozen grains of worthless wheat, and the stupid gamekeeper, and all the crew of butchers. There are such riches to be found in nature by diligent searching, and therein, at all events, inheres an ideal perhaps not the highest, yet one liberated from that quality of brutality, i.e., crass selfishness, which has rendered the name of Briton a bye- word. Of course if you wish to make money this is the wrong road, for it does not lead to Capel Court or Wall Street ; or, if you wish to spend money, this again is the wrong road, for its sign- post never points to Hyde Park Corner or Monte Carlo. But if you have an idea of living for the life that is in you, the life of colour and sound, of fancy and sympathy, then the solitudes of old England will afford, not indeed a paradise, but an endless variety of object lessons. The land from Cornwall and Kent to Cumberland teems with 56 LAND : undiscovered treasures. H ere you shall encounter labourers' cottages, built long ago on the lines of truth, and free from the least taint of vulgarity nests that a cultured taste might easily convert into things of beauty as exquisite as, though less artificial than, the Little Trianon itself ; here desecrated courts, needing but the magic touch of intelligence to revive the splendour of Eliza- bethan and Tudor magnificence. England to put it tersely needs exploring and preserving. We want some evangelist to preach the sacredness of the beautiful ; to cry aloud and shout against the reckless axe, and the defacement and destruction of the relics of a better past ; to preach the salvation of the goldfinch and the green woodpecker, not to mention other and rarer species. Perhaps, when the age of thought succeeds that of incessant locomotion, when the world will have sickened of the game of Sisyphus, and people abandon the dream of being millionaires, then to live with nature and with art will become the new summum bonum. No doubt money means much, but it is a means to an end not the nd itself ; and after all the richest are those whose days afford them the maximum of wholesome gratification, whose sun sets in radiance, leaving the reflection of love, joy, peace. COMPTON READE. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 57 CHAPTER VII. THE PLEASURES ARISING FROM THE POSSESSION OF LAND. UY GEORGE NORTON, M.A. AMONG the common desires of mankind there are perhaps none that more plainly indicate the possession o bodily activity and healthy mental tastes than the love of field sports, and the desire for dominion over some part, how- ever small, of the earth's surface, for the advantages and pleasures arising from its occupancy and cultivation. By means principally of the chase the subsistence of the human race in its earliest ages was obtained. But at the present day the uses of field sports are recreation and the means of maintaining vigour and hardihood of body. With regard, however, to the cultivation of the soil, that is an occupation of ever increasing importance, and an art that may be carried to far greater and higher perfection than it has, at any time or place, yet reached. It is not intended here to enlarge upon the pleasures and advantages enjoyed by the owners of large estates and wide domains, by reason of the importance and influence attached to such possessions, which can be enjoyed only by a few ; nor is it intended to dilate upon the economical or technical aspects of the farmer's or gardener's art ; but simply to advert to a few of the advantages and pleasures attendant on the possession of 58 LAND I farms and gardens, even on a small scale advantages and pleasures which are within the reach of great numbers. Among the higher pleasures of farming may be reckoned the sight and observation of nature in her lovely and ever-changing moods ; for there is no business that brings a man into such close touch with the opera- tions of nature as farming. It is well said in Emerson's pleasant essay on farming, " The farmer stands close to nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat; the food which was not he causestobe." And, "the profession has in all eyes its ancient charm, as standing nearest to God, the great first cause." Then there is the satisfaction in many cases of bringing, by judicious drainage, or other appropriate means, a piece of wet, heavy, or barren ground into wholesome fertility and productiveness. The man who has effected this, or any like improvement, not only is sure of pleasure from what he has done, but may also, in a humble way, be considered a benefactor of his country ; which indeed has been said of every one who makes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before. To watch the progress of one's crops gives an interest and pleasure continually increasing as experience and knowledge increase. And to walk round a farm for that purpose is generally enlivened by observing the habits of the wild animals that share with us the occu- pancy of the land ; now a hen partridge pretending to be hurt in order to draw us away from her tiny brood running at our feet ; now a hawk swooping down upon his quarry ; now a stoat or weasel ; and occasionally some rare bird visitant of our island. Natural history, busied with technical classification, and derived only from books, is often a dry and tedious study ; but when to some degree of scientific knowledge is added the obser- vation of real animal life in the fields and woods, it ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 59 becomes a charming pursuit, and may be a cause of the production of books of such delightful character as I zaac Walton's ''Angler," or Gilbert White's "Selborne." Judicious planting on land, suitable for the purpose, gives to the planter, in the care and observation of his rising woods, continual pleasure ; which may be increased by the anticipation of certain, if distant, profit, to be enjoyed probably by a descendant or relative. And the lover of field sports, possessing only a small farm, is seldom without some means of gratifying his tastes. Although his fields may have bred only two or three coveys of birds, there are generally some rabbits, and may be fishing. On a farm of about 100 acres, at one time possessed by the writer, the rabbits were so abundant that they could be kept under only by continual shooting and ferreting. And a small brook (in size little more than a ditch, but always running) was found to contain small trout up to half-a-pound in weight, of which a dish could generally be obtained with the line. The advantages and pleasures of a garden are so great and manifold as to be generally acknowledged by nil classes, from the philosopher and statesman to the mechanic and labourer. The great Bacon, the founder of modern science, had evidently given much attention and thought to gardening, and in his well-known essay "Of Gardens" calls it "the purest of human pleasures, and the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." And Sir William Temple, the wise and sagacious states- man and skilful gardener, to whom we owe some of our best peaches, figs and grapes, says, " The most exquisite delights of sense are pursued in the contrivance and plantation of gardens, which, with the fruits, flowers, shades and fountains, and music of birds which frequent such happy places, seem to furnish all the pleasures of 60 LAND : the several senses, and with the greatest, or at least the most natural, perfection." Since his time the art of gardening has been vastly expanded, both by the greater number and higher quality of fruits and vegetables, and . by the immensely increased variety and beauty of the flowers and shrubs brought in late years from many parts of the earth, and now cultivated in England. These useful and beautiful plants are a source of pleasure, not only in cultivating and watching their progress to maturity, but in the enjoyment of their usual superior quality; and thus they give to the grower satisfactions which cannot be obtained from such as are merely purchased. A well-kept lawn, too, is a most pleasurable adjunct to a home, affording, as it does, a place for exercise and the enjoyment of various games. It is always an attractive place to the many singing and other birds with which England is so richly provided. Even near a large town a garden often gives us a glimpse of wild nature ; and during the past summer the writer's garden (which is but a short distance from busy streets) was visited by squirrels, hedgehogs, moles, and a sparrow- hawk preying on young thrushes bred there. Bees, which may be considered semi-domesticated, also give great interest and amusement to those who observe them closely ; and a hive or two should always be kept in a garden, for, if the honey be not wanted, they do much good in fertilising the fruit blossoms, and the expense of keeping them is next to nothing. In fact our space will not admit of mentioning all the many and varied advantages and pleasures afforded by a garden for well-nigh the whole year round ; and it may safely be affirmed that nothing else will give an equal amount of interest and pleasure for the same moderate or small outlay. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 6 1 But far more important than all the pleasures above mentioned is to be reckoned the great advantage of health improved by life in the country. There cannot be a question as to the immense benefit to health from continually breathing pure air, instead of air largely contaminated by smoke, noxious vapours, and dirt of many sorts. If to pure air be added country walks and drives, and space and opportunity for a variety of outdoor exercises, it is apparent that to live in the country is one of the best means of strengthening and maintaining the health of a family, especially of one including young people. At the present time the over tendency to crowd for residence into the metropolis as a place of permanent abode, seems, for various reasons, a thing to be regretted. By means of the rapid and cheap travelling communica- tions of to-day, great facilities are given (even to those who live in what were once remote parts of the country) to enjoy, at small expense of time and money, such town- pleasures as scientific meetings, concerts, picture galleries, etc., without sacrificing the great and permanent advan- tages of life in the country. Continental nations, as a rule, have little taste for rural pleasures and a country life; but these have always been distinguishing charac- teristics of English life, and doubtless were not without their effect in the long and successful struggle at the beginning of the present century against the military despot, who at one time had almost succeeded in enslaving the greater part of Europe. The eminent position and great possessions of England in all quarters of the globe, which are a source of envy to other nations, have not been earned without the expenditure by Englishmen of severe labour, and extraordinary enterprise, vigour, energy, and tenacity of mind ; and by such qualities only can they be retained by our successors. But a firm and 62 LAND I healthy mind usually requires for its support a healthy and robust body ; and surely it cannot be expected that the high qualities above mentioned, which have descended to us from our ancestors, invigorated by country life and field sports, will be transmitted to our descendants, if, first their constitutions, and afterwards their minds and energies, should become enervated by too great fond- ness for town life, with its numerous and debilitating allurements. GEO : NORTON. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 63 CHAPTER VIII. THE FIR FORESTT. BY REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Aiithor of " Holdings in High Lands" "-First Forms of Vegetation" " Roman Mosaics" " The Riviera" etc., etc. THE Scotch fir has more character than any other tree. Though belonging to the most formal and symmetrical of all the orders of plant life, it refuses to conform, except in its early stages, to the straight-laced rules of construction of the order. It follows its own wayward mode of growth, and displays a most striking amount of individu- ality. A plantation of young Scotch firs is indeed as formal as that of any species of the pine tribe, and presents an exceedingly tame and monotonous appear- ance. But as the tree grows older it throws off the uninteresting swaddling bands of its youth, and develops an amount of freedom and eccentricity of shape which no one would have expected of its staid and proper infancy. Its trunk loses its smoothness and roundness, and bursts out into rugged flakes of bark like the scales on the talons of a bird of prey, or the plates of mail on an armed knight. Its boughs cease to grow in symmetrical straight and horizontal lines, but fling themselves out in all directions, gnarled and contorted as if wrestling with some inward agony or outward obstacle like a vegetable Laocoon. Its colour also changes ; the trunk becomes of the rich tawny red which the level afternoon sun brings 64 LAND : out with glowing vividness, and the blue-green masses of irregular foliage contrast wonderfully with this rusty hue, and attest the strength and freshness of its life. The fir is the tree par excellence of the mountains, having its root on the granite rock that is the foundation stone of the world, or among the gravel and boulders of the old glacier moraines that have been left behind by the great ice-sheets that moulded the mountains into their present shape. The very name of Pinus sylvestris which it bears is but a form of the old Celtic word for mountain, as preserved in the words Ben Lomond, Ben Nevis, Apennines. It is the companion of the storm that has twisted its boughs into such picturesque irregu- larities, and whose mutterings are ever heard among its sybilline leaves. It is seen to best advantage when struggling out of the writhing mists that have entangled themselves among its branches. And no grander back- ground for a sylvan scene, no more picturesque crown for a rocky height, no finer subject for an artist's pencil exists in nature. While the rain brings out the fragrance of the weeping birches, these " slumbering and liquid trees," as Walt Whitman calls them, that are the em- bodiments of the female principle of the woods, it needs the strongest and hottest sunshine to extort the pungent aromatic scents of the sturdy firs, which form the mascu- line element of the forest. The fir is an old-world tree. Its sigh on the stillest summer day speaks of an immemorial antiquity. Its form is constructed on a primitive pattern. It is a relic of the far-off geological ages when pines like it formed the sole vegetation of the earth. It is the production of the world's heroic age, when Nature seemed to delight in the fantastic exercise of power, and to exhibit her strength in the growth of giants and monsters. It has ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 65 existed through all time, and has maintained its charac- teristic properties throughout all the changes of the earth's surface. It forms the evergreen link between the ages and the zones, growing now as it grew in the remote past, and preserving the same appearance in bulk and figure. In the north of Scotland the fir is the only tree that grows over an area of many miles in extent. Nowhere are there more magnificent fir forests than those of Rothiemurchus, on the way to Inverness. They cover the banks of the Spey, and all the wide plains to the foot of the Cairngorm mountains, with their dark billowy masses. The lower heights, crimsoned with heather, and the higher ranges, storm-scalped and hoary with the elemental war, and flecked in their crevices with never- melting snow, emerge out of this vast sea of firs with most wonderful contrasts of colour. These forests are the relics of the aboriginal Caledonian forest, which covered all this region in one unbroken umbrageous mass ; and there are here and there many of the old giants, which the hand of man had never planted, still growing in the loneliest recesses, and giving an idea of what the whole great forest must have been in its prime, ere the woodman invaded its solitudes and ruthlessly cut down its finest trees to be converted into timber. Most of the trees that now cover the area are little more than forty or fifty years old, and though well-grown do not display the rugged picturesqueness for which the fir in its old age is so remarkable. It is a novel experience to wander on an autumn afternoon through these unbroken forests. The Scotch fir usually looks its best at this time, for the older leaves, that have a brown, withered hue, have been cast, and the new ones developed during the summer shine with a beautiful freshness and greenness peculiar to this season. 66 LAND : The ground in the open spaces is covered with a dense undergrowth of heather, into which the foot sinks up to the knee. Under the shelter of the trees, this heather develops a variety in the colour of the flowers, from a pale pink to a deep purple or even scarlet hue, rarely to be seen on the open moorlands. When the trees crowd together more closely the heather disappears, and in its place the ground is carpeted with thick luxuriant bushes of the bilberry and the mock cranberry, whose vivid greenness is very refreshing to the eye. In the darkest parts of the forest there are only here and there patches of green moss, shining in the occasional glints of sunlight that struggle through the dense foliage above ; and in the gloomiest retreats of all, where hardly a ray of light can penetrate, and a perpetual twilight reigns around, the floor is littered only with yellow needles and empty cones that have fallen from the branches overhead, and form a dry and unchanging covering on which no brightening tint of herbage ever appears. The aromatic smell that pervades all the air is most refreshing. It stimulates the whole system as you fill your lungs with its invigorating breath. The sanative influence of fir- forests is most remarkable. Where they prevail there is no epidemic visitation ; the plague and the pestilence disappear, the polluted air is deodorized, and with an effect as magical as that of the tree which sweetened the bitter Marah of the wilderness, the presence of this tree purifies the most deadly atmosphere. For the contemplative and poetic mind there is no more impressive scene than a fir-forest. It is full of suggestion. It quickens the mind, while it lays its solemn spell upon the spirit like the aisles of* a cathedral. Here time has no existence. It is not marked as elsewhere by the varying lights and shades, by the opening and ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 67 closing of the flowers, by the changes of the seasons, and the appearance and disappearance of various objects that make up the landscape. The fir-forest is independent of all these influences. Its aspect is perennially the same, unchangeable amid all the changes that are going on out- side. Its stillness is awe-inspiring. It is unlike that of any other scene in nature. It is not solitude, but the presence of some mystery, some supernatural power. The silence is expectant, seems to breathe, to become audible, and to press upon the soul like a weight. Some- times it is broken by the coo of the dove, which only emphasizes it, and makes the place where it is heard the innermost shrine, the very soul of the loneliness. Occasionally you hear the grand sound of the wind among the fir-tops, which every poet from the most ancient down to our own days has noticed with pleasure, and which is like the distant roar of the ocean breaking upon a lee-shore. Sometimes a gentle sigh is heard far off, how originating you cannot tell, for there is not a breath of wind, and not a leaf is stirring. It comes nearer and waxes louder, and then it becomes an all-pervading murmur. It is like the voice of a god, and you can easily understand how the fir- forest was peopled with the dim mysterious presences of the northern mythology. In its gloomy perspectives, leading to deeper solitudes, there seem to lurk some weird mysteries and speechless terrors that keep eye and ear intent, as if waiting for someone. The trunks of the trees, with their knotted bark covered with hoary lichens, look like a solemn senate of Druids. How vividly in the ballad of the Erl King does Goethe describe this peculiar human or supernatural feeling of the fir-forest ! In the shade of the fir-forest grow many interesting plants which are not found elsewhere. In the forest of 68 LAND : Rothiemurchus, the ground, wherever a breach among the trees occurs, is covered with a most luxuriant growth of juniper bushes, some of which are of great age and attain a large size. The grey-green hue of the foliage contrasts beautifully with the dark blue-green of the firs ; and the aromatic fragrance which the leaves exhale blends harmoniously with the resinous odour of the patriarchal trees overhead, and fills all the air with a pleasant incense. The berries grow in numerous clusters over the bushes, and pass as they ripen from a pale green to a deep blue-black. NOW T and then in the open glades the different species of Pyrola, or winter green, closely allied to the lily-of-the-valley, send up from their round, hard leaves spikes with waxen bells of delicate whiteness and tender perfume. And it may chance that in some secret spot the charming little Linnsea, named after the father of botanical science, may lurk, reminding one of the immense profusion with which it adorns the Norwegian forests in July. A great many plants now found only in Scandinavia used to grow r under the shadow of the Caledonian forest ; but these have disappeared with the cutting down of the old trees, and the consequent change in the conditions of growth. Only a few survivors, such as the Linnsea, the one- flowered Pyrola, and the Menziesia heath, are now found struggling for existence in a few places in the wildest parts of Scotland. One of the most distinctive plants of the fir-forest is the Goodyera repens, with its spike of white flowers. It is an orchid with a peculiarly pale, etiolated and dried-up look, suggesting a semi-parasitic mode of growth. But the plant that perhaps more than all others haunts the shade of the firs is the Melampyrutn, or cow- wheat, which has long, narrow grass-like foliage, and a little labiate pale- ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 69 yellow flower. 1 1 seems to find more food suited to its wants in such a situation than anywhere else ; for it is a semi- parasite, and attaches itself to the roots of the rigid bilberry and cranberry bushes, on which it is partially dependent for its nourishment, although it provides also for its own wants. Its colour is not the fresh, healthy green of a self-sustained plant, but the dull green of a dependent existence, changing when pressed and dried in the herbarium into a black colour. Its myriads of pale-yellow flowers, gleaming among the bilberry and cranberry bushes, is a pretty sight, and helps to soften and give a touch of beauty to the rigid asperities of the uncompromisingly stiff-necked and ever-green vegetation. Tufts of white coral-like reindeer moss and lovely ostrich-plume feather moss carpet the ground, over which run long partially concealed wreaths of the prickly-leaved Lycopodium, and the more common stag's-horn moss, with their pale spikes of fructification rising up at intervals into the air and betraying their presence. Fungi of all colours, shapes, and sizes crowd the pillared aisles, and give a weird, grotesque appearance to the scenery ; and nothing can be more striking than clusters of the poisonous fly-agaric pitching their passing tents here and there among the moss, with the sunshine streaming through the dusky branches and illuminating their gorgeous scarlet caps with the most intense brilliancy, like flames in the heart of a furnace. Many rare insects, common to Norway and Sweden, still linger in the Scottish fir-woods, survivors of the old population of the Caledonian forests, and the ground is everywhere marked with the huge conical nests of the black ant, composed of withered pine-needles; while on the forest-paths, when the sun is shining, may be seen myriads of the industrious inhabitants passing to and fro JO LAND : on their various avocations. The labour involved in the construction of these nests must be enormous. Many of them are old and abandoned ; and over these the bilberry and cranberry bushes which are ever pushing forward their roots on new soil spread themselves, so that they are half or wholly covered with a luxuriant ever-green vegetation, indicating their origin only by the undulations they make in the ground. A great deal of the variety of landscape that breaks up the monotony of the fir-forest is thus owing to the labours of the ant. There is no wood more durable than the timber of an old Scotch fir. It is proof, owing to its aromatic odour, against insect ravages ; and its texture is so hard and compact that it resists the decay of the weather. I have seen pieces of window-framing made of the fir of the Black Wood of Rannock, taken out of a ruined castle more than four hundred years old, as firm and solid as it was when first put in. It would be difficult to press the point of a knife into its unyielding tissue. So charged with turpentine are the firs of this celebrated primeval forest, that splinters of the wood used to be employed as candles to light up the dark nights when the people gathered together in some neighbour's cottage to ply their spinning-wheels and retail their gossip and old stories. These wood-torches, when set in sconces, would burn down to the socket with an unwavering- and brilliant o flame, and would thus give forth a sufficient amount of light and heat at the same time. During last summer at Aviemore, the dark, cold, cheerless days were brightened for us by splendid fires made of old roots left in the ground when the patriachal trees had been cut down, and which contained a vast quantity of resin. I know no fires so delightful, not even those of the pine-branches and cones of the Valombrosa forest in Italy, blazing up ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 7 1 at once, and continuing to the end clear and bright, while emitting a most pleasant fragrance filling all the room, and creating a most healthy atmosphere, which counteracts the noxious influence of the continual rain and damp. Owing to the northern aspect of the Rothie- murchus forest, and the coldness of the climate caused by the huge masses of lofty mountains, covered in some parts with perpetual snow, the firs are unusually full of turpentine, and are of very superior quality. And as this forest, unlike almost any other, has the power of perpetuating itself without being planted, a constant succession of trees springs up when the old are cut down. The trees do not grow very rapidly, but they are good in proportion to the slowness of their growth ; the part of the wood which is exposed to the sunshine being little more than sap-wood of small value, while that part which is turned to the north and grows in cold situations and takes long to mature, is hard and solid and very valuable. It is of a fine red colour, and when cut directly to the centre or right across the grain is very beautiful ; the little stripes formed by the annual layers being small and delicate and in perfectly even lines. The best part is nearest the root. It is admirably adapted for ornamental furniture, and for the breasts of violins and the sounding-boards of other musical instruments. For the sake of these utilitarian advantages, as well as for the sake of its own picturesqueness, the Scotch fir ought to be cultivated more extensively than it is in this country, its own original home. There are many- extensive upland and heathy tracts, which can scarcely be turned to any other purpose, which might be redeemed and vastly improved in every way by being planted with this tree ; and there are knolls and rocky heights, at 72 LAND I present tame and uninteresting-looking, that would add most romantic features to the landscape were a clump of firs to crown them with its rugged grandeur. In this way shelter would be provided to patches of land that are capable of being cultivated ; the leaves, too, as they fell off, would destroy the heath and other hard plants, and pave the way for mosses and grasses, which in turn could be ploughed into the soil, and make it susceptible of bearing crops of grain or of green vegetables. The thinnings of the trees would be well adapted for fuel, for palings, and many other domestic purposes ; while the timber at last, after paying all its expenses, by the re- peated thinnings, would furnish a better rent than could be obtained by any other means. HUGH MACMILLAN. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 73 CHAPTER IX. SOME OF THE POETS ON THE COUNTRY. BY CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD, Moral Sciences Tripos, Girton College, Cambridge : Mistress of Westjuld College, Hampstead. THERE are among men two kinds of character. The one, bent on progress and invention, seeks the society of his fellow men in towns, and there works amid the encour- agements or the hindrances of a crowd ; while the other, bent on the expansion, the smoothness, and the inde- pendence of life that can only come from comparative solitude, seeks the country. Those who have apparently most directly influenced mankind, the statesman, the politician, the journalist, the man who seeks in any direction after fame or wealth, have belonged to the first class. Impatient of a life limited in circle of action, however wide in scope of thought, they have by irre- sistible attraction been drawn toward the centres of busy human work, where man reacts on man in quick succession, and where the co-operation of many minds holds out a vague though brilliant promise of future possibilities. " Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn ; 74 LAND : And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ; Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new ; That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do. Not in vain the distance beacons ! Forward, forward, let us range; Let the great world spin for ever, down the ringing grooves of change."* Far different from this is the mind of the poet and the artist, the mind of the meditative and the devout. These seek to shut the door on stir and noise and crowd, on the flutter and change of opinion, on the inconsequent and superficial remarks of folly and igno- rance, and on the opposition of envy or prejudice ; escaping from all these they lead a life of simpler material, and of freer and more uncriticised range. Such are the finer and nobler spirits of the world, and in the long run their influence balances, if it dees not exceed, their more energetic and restless compeers. Poets there always have been, as far back as the eye can see into the mists of ancient days, and poets there are in civilised, and in semi-civilised, and even in barbarous races all the world over. In early days and in savage tribes their chief office was to sing heroic achievements, but when this primitive stage is past, and life becomes more complex, they almost one and all stand on the side of the country rather than the town. Dramatically they may throw themselves into the race of life, and sing of toil and endeavour, and hurrying crowds, but personally we can scarcely find one who does not love to withdraw and to watch the scenes from alar in some quiet region where observation is the keener, and positive action is not needed. The opinion of a class of men whose self-interest is low, * Tennyson, " Locksley Hall," Part I. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 75 and whose perceptive and reflective powers are high, is certainly worth having ; let us endeavour to collect a verdict. To begin with early legend. Demeter, or Mother Earth, was the daughter of Chronos (Time) and the sister of Zeus, the father of the gods. She wore a garland of ears of corn, she bore a mystic basket of ripe fruit, and as the source of all prosperity was worshipped with great splendour at Athens : " Demeter, the giver of harvests, the mother of plenty of peace, Who quickens the life in the seed-corn to ripeness and joyful increase." * She was the mother of two children, Plutus (Wealth), who was born in a thrice-ploughed field at harvest time, and Persephone, the gladsome spring : " Persephone, bringer of blossoms, Persephone, lady of light, Whose beautiful feet on the meadows the flowers from their slumber awoke, Till narcissus, and crocus, and iris, like flames 'mid the grasses outbroke ! " * Here we have a root idea, simple and comprehensive; that all Use and all Beauty spring from old Mother Earth, and are to be found with her, rather than among our fellow men. But let us analyse the Power of Nature in the light of modern thought and feeling, and we shall see first of all, that it tends to have an ennobling effect on man himself. The deterioration of the race in large towns is easily seen, and there is a quiet dignity in agricultural labour, a good and independence in rural and village life, a sturdy patriotism about the small landowner, that has caught the observant eye of the poet in all ages. * Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Trans. Lady Charlotte Elliot. 76 LAND : Hear old Horace rejoicing in his snug little farm among the lovely Sabine hills overlooking the wide campagna, and gloating in the possession of it : " Often did I pray that I had a piece of land, not so very large, with a garden, and near the house a perennial spring of water, and a little wood besides. Heaven has done more and better for me than my wishes. It is well ; son of Maia, I ask nothing further, save that thou wilt continue to me these blessings. I trust that I have not increased my property by any evil arts, and that I am not going to diminish it by vice, or negligence." * Hear him again as, enamoured of every detail, he minutely describes it to a friend in most musical verse : "To prevent your asking, my good Quinctius, about my farm, whether with arable land it supports its master, or enriches him with the berries of the olive, or with orchards, or meadow lands or the elm clad with vines, I will describe to you its form and situation in easy, chatty style. Imagine a line of hills, unbroken save by one shady valley, whose right side the morning sun illumines ; while, departing with its swift car, it warms the left. You may well praise the tempera- ture. Why, as the thorns bear so liberally the cornels and sloes, as the oak and ilex gladden the herds with plenty of acorns, and their master with thick shade, you would say Tarentum was transported there, with all its leafy woods, "f Turn aside for a moment to a modern parallel, equally minute and loving, that describes how the charm of saying, " It is mine ! " sheds a halo on even the most trifling incidents : " A little croft we owned, a plot of corn, A garden stored with peas and mint and thyme, And flowers for posies, oft on Sunday morn Plucked while the church-bells rang their earliest chime. Can I forget our freaks at shearing-time ? My hen's rich nest through long grass scarce espied ; The cowslip-gathering in June's dewy prime ; The swans that with white chests upreared in pride Rushing and racing came to meet me at the water-side ! * Horace, Satires, Book II. 6. f Horace, Epistles, Book I. 16. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 77 The staff I well remember which upbore The bending body of my active sire ; His seat beneath the honied sycamore Where the bees hummed, and chair by winter fire ; When market-morning came, the neat attire With which, though bent on haste, myself I decked ; Our watchful house-dog, that would tease and tire The stranger, till its barking fit I checked ; The redbreast, known for years, which at my casement pecked."* But to return to Horace and his farm. He is not selfish in his pleasure, for he can enter into the joys of possession as felt by another, as well as gladly confide in his own fate, which has allotted him so goodly a heritage. " Around you a hundred flocks bleat, and cows of Sicily low ; for you the mare trained for the chariot raises its neighing, you fleeces clothe, twice dipped in the purple dye of Africa : to me the Fate who cannot be false has granted a small domain, and the delicate spirit of the Grecian Muse, and power to scorn the envious crowd." f And yet once more, even when he wishes to point a moral, and a very good moral it is, too, and drawn from Nature, he must put in a word about the solid satisfac- tion he feels in the personal possession of land and homestead : " Bailiff of my woods and of my farm, which makes me my own master again, but which you despise, though five households live on it, let us have a friendly contest whether you will root the thorns more vigorously from my land, or I from my soul, and whether Horace himself or his farm shall be in a better state." J To come to our own country, we find Chaucer, the father of English poetry, giving advice such as has been given hundreds of times since his day on the insecurity of * Wordsworth, " Guilt and Sorrow." f Horace, "Odes," Book II. 16. Horace, " Epistles," Book I. 14. 78 LAND : competition, and the peace and solidity of a country life :- " Fie fro the pres, and dwelle with sothfastnesse, Suffice thee thy good, though hit be smal, For hord hath hate, and clymbing tickelnesse (insecurity), Pres hath envye, and wele blent over al " (wealth everywhere blinds people). * The simple dignity of rural labour early attracted the notice of English thinkers, and many are the disparage- ments of more showy and less useful work. Gascoigne, in his comment on Piers Plowman, is very plain-spoken on the subject : " Behold him, priests ! Such climb to heaven before the shaven crowns : But how ? Forsooth, with true humility ; . . They feed with fruits of their great pains Both king and knight and priest in cloister pent. Therefore I say that sooner some of them Shall scale the walls that lead us up to God, Than corn-fed beasts, whose belly is their god, Although they preach of more perfection." f Shakespeare dwells rather on the fickleness and ingratitude and base subservience engendered by life in courts and camps, and descants again and again on the noble simplicity of life unhampered by these con- siderations : " Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court ? Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, The season's difference : as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say This is no flattery : these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am. Sweet are the uses of adversity ; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, \Vears yet a precious jewel in his head ; * Chaucer, born 1340. t Gascoigne, born 1536. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 79 And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it." * And hear him again : " Did you but know the city's usuries And felt them knowingly : the art o' the court, As hard to leave as keep ; whose top to climb Is certain falling, or so slippery that The fear 's as bad as falling : the toil o' the war, A pain that only seems to seek out danger I' the name of fame and honour : which dies i' the search, And hath as oft a slanderous epitaph As record of fair act ; nay, many times Doth ill deserve by doing well ; what's worse, Must court'sy at the censure." f Fixing our attention on the life of the city, we cannot fail to notice that in practical matters, such as the forma- tion of juries or committees, we assume that a number of men acting together will secure the combined wisdom of all those separate minds, but this supposition, faulty even where they act in unison, becomes an error where the combination is of individuals, each acting on independent self-interest. Then the lower parts of human nature rise and begin to absorb the higher, and the whole mass tends to lie at a low average level, pulling down each eminence of truth or beauty that rises above it, as a quicksand might absorb the adjacent rocks and banks of earth. Tennyson touches on this with a light hand : " . . . . The busy town, He loved to rail against it still, For, ' Ground in yonder social mill, We rub each other's angles down, And merge,' he said, ' in form and gloss, The picturesque in man and man.' " J * "As you Like It," Act II., Scene i. f " Cymbeline," Act III., Scene 3. ^ Tennyson, " In Memoriam." 1889. 8o LAND : But it is Cowper that feels the full significance of the fact, and enlarges on it again and again, in clear and trenchant words, that once heard cannot readily be for- gotten. Even physically this inevitable deterioration is to be seen and felt : " God made the country, and man made the town ; What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts That can alone make sweet the bitter draught That life holds out to all, should most abound And least be threatened in the fields and groves ? " * And even more plainly is it felt morally and spiritually : " Hence burghers, men immaculate perhaps In all their private functions, once combined Become a loathsome body, only fit For dissolution, hurtful to the main. Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin Against the charities of domestic life, Incorporated, seem at once to lose Their nature, and disclaiming all regard For mercy and the common rights of man, . Build factories with blood, conducting trade At the sword's point, and dyeing the white robe Of innocent commercial justice red." f And the conclusion he draws is wise, and closely to the " Oh blest seclusion from a jarring world, Which he, thus occupied, enjoys ! Retreat Cannot indeed to guilty man restore Lost innocence, or cancel follies past ; But it has peace, and much secures the mind From all assaults of evil ; proving still A faithful barrier not o'erleaped with ease By vicious custom, raging uncontrolled Abroad, and desolating public life." J * Cowper, " The Task,'' Book I. t Cowper, " The Task," Book IV. J Cowper, " The Task," Book III. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 8 1 The poetry of Wordsworth is so impregnated with this thought, that it is almost difficult to quote from it, but here are a few lines pourtraying the sturdy innocence of the men who live under the power of Nature : " As man in his primeval dower arrayed, The image of his glorious Sire displayed, Even so, by faithful Nature guarded, here The traces of primeval man appear ; The simple dignity no forms debase, The eye sublime, and surly lion-grace ; The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord, The book he prizes, nor neglects the sword, Well taught by that to feel his rights, prepared With this the blessings he enjoys to guard." * And further yet ; this apparent separation of interests by the isolation of a country life leads to that noblest of all unions patriotism. The sense of individual independence being strongly fostered in one direction, the sense of community of interest comes out the more vividly in another, and the bond is drawn close not the bond of party-feeling, but of the whole nation. Long, long ago, as long ago as B.C. 137, a patriot, Tiberius Gracchus, saw and lamented the congregation of men on land that was not their own as being a sure cause of future weakness. He was on his march 10 Spain, and in passing through Etruria he observed, with grief and indignation, the deserted state of that fertile country ; thousands of foreign slaves in chains were cultivating the land, and tending the flocks upon the vast estates of the wealthy, while the peasant classes of Roman citizens, thus thrown out of employment, had scarcely their daily bread or a clod of earth to call their own, and gradually- sunk into mischievous idleness. Roused by this sight, * Wordsworth, " Tour among the Alps." 82 LAND : he made it one of his first objects to endeavour to remedy this evil, and ever since his day true patriots have laboured in the same direction. In the English language ie The Deserted Village" is our most pathetic lament. Like the tolling of a bell, it reiterates in sad monotone the decay of the nation equally through the wealth of the wealthy and through the poverty of the poor. Hear it thus : " 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay : Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied." * And hear it again : " A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rod of ground maintain'd its man ; For him light labour spread her wholesome store, Just gave what life required, but gave no more : His best companions, innocence and health, And his best riches, ignorance of wealth." * And then see how it is no idle dream of sorrow that fills the poet's soul, but with what stirring words he rouses those who have the control of the state to put forth their hands and stop, if yet it may be done, this downward lapse : " Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land. Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, And shouting folly hails them from the shore ; Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound, And rich men flock from all the world around. * Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village." ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 83 Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name, That leaves our useful products still the same. Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, Has robb'd the neighbouring fields of half their growth ; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies. While thus the land, adorn' d for pleasure all, In barren splendour feebly waits the fall." : Seeing such misuse of our natural provision, no wonder that another weary man exclaims : " Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit Of unsuccessful or successful war Might never reach me more ! My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled." f Not only stillness does he gain by this choice, but, as the solitary peak is a watch-tower over all the plain, so does the retreat of the thoughtful man give a wider scope of observation, a more impartial and accurate judgment. Self-interest is silent, and reason speaks. " Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat To peep at such a world ; to see the stir Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd ; To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear. Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease Goldsmith, " The Deserted Village/' t Cowper, " The Task," Book II. 84 LAND I The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced To some secure and more than mortal height That liberates and exempts me from them all. It turns submitted to my view ; turns round With all its generations ; I behold its tumult And am still." * But whence comes this elevating power of Nature ? Clearly enough we see the ennobling result, but what is it in itself what is the force at work to produce this result ? If we analyse it, we find the components are simple, yet put together with beautiful skill to attain the desired end ; we have delight in beauty, yet not such as leads to self-indulgence ; we have simplicity and con- tentment conjoined with endless variety; we have the deepest calm of peace along with the necessity for active exertion ; we have the unselfishness of joys that can be shared by all alike ; the silence and retirement suitable to devotion ; and the general sympathy expressed toward us in the varying moods of Nature. Never was feast more bountifully spread, yet always with a graceful moderation and restraint, a guiding hand over all, a sense of modesty and purity that holds back any tendency to luxury and excess. How the nobler souls in the ancient Pagan days rejoiced in this rich and yet chastened happi- ness, though they knew not its source ! Listen to Virgil of old ; how he runs through the sources of country joy and its effect on man in a mingled and pleasant tale : " Blest is he who knows the rural gods, Pan and Silvanus old, and sister nymphs ! Not him the fasces of the Roman people, nor the monarch's purple can sway, and the discord that drives brethren to mutual treachery. Those fruits that the boughs afford, the fruits that of itself, of its own free will, the country bears, he gathers ; and has * Cowper, "The Task," Book IV. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 85 never seen laws carved on steel, and the maddening forum, or the archives of the Roman people. Other men vex with oars the perilous seas, and rush to take the sword ; they press their way into courts and through kingly portals ; one assails with ruin a city, and its hapless household gods, that he may drink from a jewelled cup, and sleep on Tyrian purple. Another hoards up wealth, and broods over the gold he has buried in the earth ; one is amazed and dazzled at the eloquence of the Rostra ; one the applause of commons and patricians, redoubled as it is along the rows of the theatre, sets agape with the shock of joy. The husbandman, with his crooked plough, furrows the soil ; from this comes the work for the year ; by this he maintains his country and little grandsons, by this his herds of oxen, and his bullocks that have served him well. And there is never a time of rest; for either in fruits the season richly abounds, or in the offspring of cattle, or in the sheaf of Ceres' stalk, and loads the furrows with increase, and overflows the barns. Then winter comes ; in the olive-mill is bruised the berry of Sicyon, the swine come home, well satisfied with mast, the forest gives- the fruit of the arbutus, and autumn drops his various produce, and on the sunny cliffs the mellowing vintage basks. Meanwhile his dear children hang about his lips, his stainless house preserves its purity. " This life of yore the antique Sabines lived, and Remus too, and his brother. So, I ween, brave Etruria grew, and Rome became the beauty of the world ; and, one within herself, encompassed with her bulwarks seven heights." * Listen also to our old friend Horace glorying in the frugality of his lodging and his fare, which makes his honour and his wit but shine the brighter : " Within my dwelling ivory does not gleam, nor roof of fretted gold ; beams from Hymettus rest not upon columns hewn in the utter- most parts of Africa. Nor have I, a stranger heir, taken possession of the palace of an Attalus ; nor do client maids of gentle birth spin for me textures of Laconian purple, but honour is mine, and a generous vein of wit : and poor though I be, the rich man courts me ; for nought beyond do I solicit Heaven, or crave a powerful friend for ampler gifts, blessed enough in my one Sabine farm." f * Virgil, Georgics II., 485. t Horace, Odes, Book. I., 18. 86 LAND : The same spirit of contentment, when animated by Christian faith, shines even more beautifully : " Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content The quiet mind is richer than a crown The homely house that harbours quiet rest, The cottage that affords no pride nor care, The mean that 'grees with country music best, The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare. Obscured life sets down a type of bliss ; A mind content both crown and kingdom is." * But the best singer of ' k plain living and high thinking" is Robert Herrick, that prince among lyrists and pastoral poets, and this is his poem called " A Thanksgiving." A THANKSGIVING. " Lord, Thou hast given me a cell, Wherein to dwell ; A little house, whose humble roof Is weather-proof; Under the spars of which I lie Both soft and dry ; Where Thou, my chamber for to ward, Hast set a guard Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep Me, while I sleep. Low is my porch, as is my fate ; Both void of state ; And yet the threshold of my door Is worn by th' poor, Who thither come, and freely get Good words, or meat. Like as my parlour, so my hall And kitchen's small ; A little buttery, and therein A little bin, Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipt, unflead ; Robert Greene, born 1560. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 87 Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar Make me a fire, Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it." * The Elizabethan poets dwell much on this simplicity and content, and they celebrate the return of spring in such rapturous strains, that to quote one seems like neglecting the others. But here is one as a specimen : " Now the glories of the year May be viewed at the best, And the earth doth now appear In her fairest garments dress'd : Sweetly smelling plants and flowers Do perfume the garden bowers ; Hill and valley, wood and field, Mixed with pleasure profits yield. Much is found where nothing was, Herds on every mountain go, In the meadows flowery grass Makes both milk and honey flow ; Now each orchard banquets giveth, Every hedge with fruit relieveth ; And on every shrub and tree Useful fruits or berries be. Other blessings, many more, At this time enjoyed may be, And in this my song therefore Praise I give, O Lord ! to Thee : Grant that this my free oblation May have gracious acceptation, And that I may well employ Everything which I enjoy." f And listen now to the delighted music of Drummond of Hawthornden, living in retirement in his beautiful * Robert Herrick, born 1594. t George Wither, born 1588. 88 LAND ! home on the Esk, perhaps our first specimen of a manjof letters pure and simple : " Phoebus, arise ! and paint the sable skies With azure, white and red, Rouse Memnon's Mother from her Tithon's bed That she thy career may with roses spread ; The nightingales thy coming each-where sing Make an eternal spring, Give life to this dark world which lieth dead ; Spread forth thy golden hair . In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And, emperor-like, decore With diadem of pearl thy temples fair." * In those fresh old days every song they sang was of sunrise and spring and roses, and all that is freshest and fairest ; but life in the country has another side well represented, a side of bare branches and nipping frosts and roaring winds, and we of later days have learned to love these too. The Elizabethan poets summarily dis- missed the late autumn and the winter as "frowning" and " gloomy," and waited for jocund spring to return; they loved Nature as they thought she ought to be, not as she actually is from day to day, and it was William Cowper all honour to his gentle name! who taught us to love her the whole year round, and under every guise. The whole of his two " Winter Walks " is instinct with love in every line, a love that embraces Nature exactly as she is ; and we should read the whole to understand him aright. Then, the eyes of men once opened to the delights of winter, the theme was eagerly taken up, and perhaps the finest of all poems on the subject is that of Wordsworth, when, as a lad, he skated on the frozen lake, the solemn mountains standing around : * Drummond of Hawthornden, born 1585. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 89 " Happy time It was indeed for all of us ; for me It was a time of rapture ! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six. I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home. All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle ; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron ; while far distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away." * Less genial subjects too, mist and storm and barren moorland and wide sandy wastes, shall not want their singers, and even that one of the few genuinely uncom- fortable things that Nature provides for us the bitter north-east wind shall have his ode " ODE TO THE NORTH-EAST WIND. " Welcome, wild north-easter ! Shame it is to see Odes to every zephyr ; Ne'er a verse to thee. Welcome, black north-easter ! O'er the German foam, O'er the Danish moorlands, From thy frozen home. Sweep the golden reed beds, Crisp the lazy dike, Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. * Wordsworth, "Influence of Natural Objects." go LAND : Fill the lake with wild-fowl, Fill the marsh with snipe, While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Let the luscious south wind Breathe in lovers' sighs, While the lazy gallants Bask in ladies' eyes. What does he but softer- Heart alike and pen ? 'Tis the hard grey weather Breeds hard English men. What's the soft south-wester ? 'Tis the ladies' breeze, Bringing home their true loves Out of all the seas. But the black north-easter, Through the snowstorm hurled, Drive our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world. Come, as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come, and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood ; Bracing brain and sinew ; Blow, thou wind of God ! " * Such a tonic, from being a necessary medicine, becomes an enjoyment to him who has the stout heart to take it gladly, and every change provided can be called good, all good : * Charles Kingsley, "Ode to the North-East Wind." ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 9! " So manifold, all pleasing in their kind, All healthful, are the employs of rural life, Reiterated as the wheel of time Runs round, still ending and beginning still." * But perhaps the main instrument that Nature wields for the good of man is the force of beauty, pure, ever-fresh, heart-rejoicing beauty, whether displayed in deepest, softest calm, or in radiant, sparkling force. Read these three short verses, mirrors of profoundest peace. First the fervid summer noontide : " In this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking through the heat." f Next the still evening : " An English home grey twilight poured On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep ; all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace." And lastly, the chill freshness of very early morning: " Methought that I had wandered far . In an old wood ; fresh washed in coolest dew, The maiden splendours of the morning star, Shook in the stedfast blue/' Images such as these, once received consciously, remain in the mind with steadying, soothing power. And see this more detailed picture ; what a wilderness of dreamy thought and longing, and wandering through the * Cowper, " The Task," Book I. f Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 89. J Tennyson, " The Palace of Art." Tennyson, " Dream of Fair Women/' 92 LAND I vastness of creation, is expressed in its lines ; it is the dividing line between the forest and the prairie, seen by moonlight : " Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest, Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of the moonlight. Nearer and round about her the manifold flowers of the garden Poured out their souls in odours. Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and night- dews Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical moonlight Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings As through the garden gate beneath the brown shade of the oak trees Passed she along the path, to the edge of the measureless prairie. Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers. Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens, Shone on the eyes of man, who has ceased to wonder and worship, Save when a blazing comet is seen on the walls of the temple, As if a hand had appeared, and written upon them ' Upharsin.' And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire-flies, Wandered alone." * And in the following quotation, see the exquisite refinement of perception which observes the tinkle of the little flake of ice dislodged by the gently flitting robin : " No noise is here, or none that hinders thought, The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half suppressed. Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendant drops of ice That tinkle in the withered leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence." f * Longfellow, " Evangeline." t Cowper, " The Task," Book VI. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 93 And then in contrast to these, if we want something radiant, rejoicing, overpoweringly brilliant and strong, read the following lines on a sunrise : " Day ! Faster and more fast O'er night's brim, day boils at last ; Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim Where spurting and suppressed it lay For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid gray Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ; But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose, reddened, and its seething breast Flickered in bounds, grew old, then overflowed the world."* Nature is, when all is said, our chief storehouse of beauty and of delight. Even when the poet would fain describe the girl he loves, he goes not to satin and gold and pearls, but to the simplest and freshest and sweetest things Nature freely provides. Here is a lovely sample : " Have you seen but a bright lily grow Before rude hands have touched it ? Have you marked but the fall o' the snow Before the soil hath smutched it ? Have you felt the wool of beaver ? Or swan's down ever ? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar ? Or the nard in the fire ? Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? O, so white, O, so soft, O, so sweet is she!"f Of many good things it is sadly true that the more one man has, the less is left for his neighbour, but there is no stinting here. All is infinite, and all may share without measure and without waste. Indeed, he who * Browning, ^ ( Pippa Passes." f " Rare Ben Jonson," born 1573. 94 LAND : has the clearer eyes to see, and the wider heart to grasp his share, increases the general stock rather than diminishes it, for his appreciation will be caught by those around him, and more happiness given. The unselfish- ness of the pleasure makes it attractive to the noblest. " My charmer is not mine alone ; my sweets And she that sweetens ail my bitters too, Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form And lineaments divine I trace a hand That errs not, and find raptures still renew'd, Is free to all men universal prize. Strange that so fair a creature yet should want Admirers, and be destined to divide With meaner objects even the few she finds !" * Listen to this other poem, which takes the same truth from the other end, and that is that everyone may take the laws and the beauties and the glories of Nature, and say, " This is for me, all for me ! " The piece is called " Honours " and the writer, a man lately successful at the University, is writing to his friend who has failed. After pointing out to him that book-learning is not the whole, nor even perhaps the best part of human knowledge, he bids him in the following beautiful stanzas, appropriate and enjoy his share of Nature, to delight in which the education of his young days had peculiarly fitted him. " Go, when the shadow of your house is long Upon the garden, when some new-waked bird, Pecking and fluttering, chirps a sudden song, And not a leaf is stirred. Go there, I say ; stand at the water's brink, And shoals of spotted grayling you shall see Basking between the shadows look, and think This beauty is for me ! * Cowper, "The Ta^k," Book III. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 95 For me this freshness in the morning hours, For me the water's clear tranquility, For me the soft descent of chesnut flowers : The cushat's cry for me. The lovely laughter of the wind-swayed wheat ; The easy slope of yonder pastoral hill ; The sedgy brook whereby the red kine meet And wade and drink their fill. Then saunter down that terrace whence the sea, All fair with wing-like sails, you may discern ; Be glad, and say * This beauty is for me, A thing to love and learn. For me the bounding in of tides ; for me The laying bare of sands when they retreat ; The purple flush of calms, the sparkling glee When waves and sunshine meet.' Honours ! O friend, I pray you bear with me : The grass hath time to grow in meadow lands, And leisurely the opal murmuring sea Breaks on her yellow sands. And leisurely the ring-dove, on her nest, Broods till her tender chick will peck the shell ; And leisurely down fall from ferny crest The dew-drops on the well. And leisurely your life and spirit grew, With yet the time to grow and ripen free : No judgment past withdraws that boon from you, Nor granteth it to me. Still must I plod, and still in cities moil, From precious leisure, learned leisure far, Dull my best self with handling common soil ; Yet mine those Honours are !" * The unconscious sympathy of Nature with the sorrows and with the joys of mankind, may be a delusion, but it * Jean Ingelow, "Honours." 96 LAND : is a very old and a very widespread delusion. Old, as when Isaiah, projecting the joy and triumph of his soul on to his surroundings, sang in inspired strains : "Sing, O ye heavens, for the Lord hath done it ! Shout, ye lower parts of the earth ! Break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein ; for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel." * Widespread too, being found in the writings of poets of every kind. Listen to these two aspects of sorrow, each sympathetically reflected by Nature. First, the calm of silently borne loss : " Calm is the morn, without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only through the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground. Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the fure, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold." f And then the blinding storm of a bitter, irrevocable grief that has altered all the aspects of life, and left us P " Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, And howlest, issuing out of night With blasts that blow the poplar white, And lash with storm the streaming pane ? Day when my crowned estate begun To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sickened every living bloom, And blurred the splendour of the sun. Who usherest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears, that make the rose Pull sideways, and the daisy close Her crimson fringes to the shower." J * Isaiah xliv., 23. t Tennyson, "In Memoriarn," II. Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 72. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 97 Further even than this ; though Nature has no first- hand revelation of God to give to man, she is full of hints and foreshadowing and half-told guesses. The following description of a breathlessly still night in full summer, ending in a fresh, bright dawn, gives just such a hint of the deep mystery of death and of life : " And now the doubtful dusk revealed The knolls once more, where couched at ease The white kine glimmered, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. And sucked from out the distant gloom, A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume. And gathering freshlier overhead, Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said 1 The dawn, the dawn ! ' and died away. And East and West without a breath Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day." * And if Nature has a message to the perplexed, she has a more certain voice for those whom the truth has set free, and who are glad in the light of heaven. Hear a repetition of the shout of Isaiah : " Joy . . . possesses and o'erwhelms the soul Of him whom hope has with a touch made whole ; 'Tis heaven, all heaven, descending on the wings Of the glad legions of the King of kings ; 'Tis more 'tis God diffused through every part, 'Tis God Himself triumphant in the heart ! Oh, welcome now, the sun's once hated light, His noonday beams were never half so bright, Unconscious Nature, all that he surveys, Rocks, groves, and streams must join him in his praise ! " f * Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 94. t^Cowper, "Hope." 98 LAND : There are many motives that draw men away from the crowd and into the simple and retired country, and, except misanthropy (which is, after all, rare), not one of these motives is ignoble. In the complex nature of man conscience stands highest ; desire is like water and falls; the desires of man perpetually listened to and gratified, sink him lower and lower, till he ends in a slough of mud from which there is no retrieving. But conscience is like a flame and rises ; the conscience, faithfully listened to and obeyed, leads a man higher and higher till he lives where God would have him live with Himself. See how some of the most elementary and primary warnings of conscience lead in the direction of solitude and retire- ment : " Thus conscience pleads her cause within the breast, Though long rebelled against, yet not suppress'd, And calls a creature formed for God alone, For heaven's high purposes and not his own, Calls him away from selfish ends and aims, From what debilitates and what inflames, From cities humming with a restless crowd, Sordid as active, ignorant as loud, Whose highest praise is that they live in vain, The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain, Where works of man are clustered close around, And works of God are hardly to be found, To regions where, in spite of sin and woe, Traces of Eden still are seen below, Where mountain, forest, river, field and grove, Remind him of his Maker's power and love." * Or as another poet says : " Were there below a spot of holy ground, Where from distress a refuge might be found, And solitude prepare the soul for heaven : Sure Nature's God that spot to man had given, * Cowper, " Retirement." ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 99 Where falls the purple morning far and wide In flakes of light upon the mountain side Where with loud voice the power of water shakes The leafy woods, or sleeps in quiet lakes."* The earth is still large enough to afford her children room for these high delights, even in her plainer grounds, for the main elements she affords earth and trees, water and sky and wind, and the beautiful course of the seasons are the same everywhere. Alone with these, the soul has leisure, and grows. The spiritual life is an exotic in this world, and needs all the help we can give it, even though in itself absolutely independent of circumstances. It has been wisely said : " Truth is not local, God alike pervades And fills the world of traffic and the shades ; He may be feared amid the busiest scenes, Or scorned where business never intervenes. But 'tis not easy with a mind like ours, Conscious of weakness in its noblest powers, And in a world where (other ills apart) The roving eye misleads the careless heart, To limit thought, by nature prone to stray Wherever freakish fancy points the way, To bid the pleadings of self-love be still, Resign our own and seek our Maker's will ; To spread the page of Scripture and compare Our conduct with the laws engraven there, To measure all that passes in the breast Faithfully, fairly, by that sacred test ; But leisure, silence, and a mind released From anxious thoughts how wealth may be increased, How to secure in some propitious hour The point of interest, or the post of power ; A soul serene, and equally retired From objects too much dreaded or desired, Safe from the clamours of perverse dispute, At least are friendly to the great pursuit." f * Wordsworth, " Tour in the Alps." f Cowper, " Retirement." TOO LAND I Followed out, the result of these directions is noble : " He is the happy man whose life even now Shows somewhat of that happier life to come. The world o'erlooks him in her busy search Of objects more illustrious in her view ; And occupied as earnestly as she, Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world. She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not ; He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain." * And now we must draw to an end. Such is the verdict of most of the poets, the men of thought and culture, the men of sensitiveness and reflection ; and does not that verdict almost justify the old Greek legend that the Earth- Mother is the source of all Use and all Beauty ? From the honest endeavour to win a living from the soil, up to that which concerns eternal life, she leads us in the right direction. Love without excitement, Beauty without a snare, Patriotism without rancour, Simplicity without monotony, a Feast without indulgence; these are some of the treasures in her keeping. The young lad needs sharp discipline, and the instinct so strong within him, " yearning for the large excitement," is a true one, and should be wisely gratified ; the philanthropist in his busiest years goes .where men are thickest and most suffering ; but for the ordinary family life, for the child as well as for the mature mind, and for quiet old age, there is no guardian or companion so skilful, so kind, and so peaceful as our Mother-Earth. CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD. * Cowper, "The -ask," Book vi. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICIII-S. ioi : CHAPTER X. COUNTRY PLEASURES AND INTERESTS. BY LADY HOPE, the daughter of General Sir Arthur Cotton, K. C.S.I., and widow of Admiral Sir James Hope, G.C.B. Has written "Our Coffee Room," " Wild Hyacinths" "Sunrise and Sunset ," " A- Red Brick Cottage" and many other books, chiefly bearing on the social, domestic and spiritual welfare of the working classes ; also many tracts for circulation amongst themselves ; as well as articles and stories in periodicals. COUNTRY life possesses its own charms for the pleasure- seeker as well as for the agriculturist. The lady, with her horticultural as well as artistic pursuits, her botany and her love of bird and animal life, finds ample employ- ment for her finest tastes in the country, whether the Weald of Sussex, the undulating and park-like demesnes of Surrey, the broad flats of Norfolk, or the wolds of Yorkshire. Each county has its own charms ; and mournfully veiled must be the eye that fails to find these delectable enjoyments, these interests that abound for every earnest mind. They are scattered at our feet, above, around us, on every side. In spring we see the early tints clothing the near and distant woods ; we hear the first songs of the wild birds, as they fill the land with their orchestra of harmonies, so varied, so sweet, and always the most cheering of country sounds. The farmers are busy at their work, each field in preparation for summer supplies ; the garden beds are blooming with hyacinths and tulips ; the river is gay with a myriad boats. IO2 LAND I When summer approaches we have our foliage in rich masses, sunshine streaming through our wooded dells, and over the long sweeps of hill and down. We ride and drive, and walk, exploring each pretty nook, flower studded, and each mossy bank, until we are obliged to exclaim, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places ! I have a goodly heritage." We see the tiny cottages, with their gabled roofs tiled and thatched, and old-fashioned gardens brimful of the sweetest things thyme and honeysuckle, sweet-briar and mignonette, roses and wallflower. I know some lovely villages where each cottage stands in its own gay surroundings, a very picture of country brightness ; the bees from the hives beside the porch revel in the wealth of honey-yielding flowers, and the children play in never-ending delight close to the open window, or shady tree, beside which M mother" sits. How different from the close, hot streets where the crowds of London children spend their strangely unnatural lives ! Nothing is their own. Jostled here and there, crippled for want of space, compelled to use the gutter as their playground, and to forego the health- giving ozone of country air, who can wonder that they suffer for the want of a happy, childlike life ? " I was born in the country," poor women in London have said to me ; and they have wept as they said it. Some poor people from the slums of Westminster were enjoying a ramble upon the slopes of Box Hill one delicious afternoon in June, when a young woman was overheard to say to another : " I wonder whether this is what they call scenery? I have read about it in books, but I never saw it before. It is wonderful ! It is just Paradise!" She refused to believe that there could be more beautiful scenery in other parts of the world ; whilst another added- ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 03 " Well ! I am glad I have seen a mountain at last ! " The seaside has its charms of rock and coast, the stretch of shingle on the shore, the high, uprising cliff, where we may wander with unlimited space of ocean before us, reaching to its own distant horizon, decked with tiny sails, and little puffs of smoke like clouds, just here and there. Autumn, with its glowing tints on every woodland scene, and the golden richness of its corn-fields, tells a tale of passing beauty which to many minds brings a peculiar sadness, but to me a singular joy. For it seems to tell of a love and thoughtful care which can gild for us so strangely the blessings that are here, before we part with them, in preparation for still better things above. The winter, too, has its own delights, though here a minor chord sounds in our ears. To the rich there are pleasures without end : hunting, riding, skating, walking, and now the famous tobaganning an unknown delight in England until of late, but now a very popular amuse- ment with old and young. There is the cosy fireside, the blazing log, and bright coal flame all inviting us to the pleasures of our home. But the poor suffer proportionately. They have not our remedies against cold, and they shiver in the bitter wind. Might not some of our leisure hours be spent in making garments for them, or in using our talents for deft handiwork by earning some comforts for our neighbours in the great cities who are poor? My father, Sir Arthur Cotton, has given much atten- tion to the subject of Land Cultivation,* and has proved, by his annual and most practical experiments, that we have as yet scarcely touched the wealth of England ; * "Thorough Cultivation," by Sir Arthur Cotton, K.C.S.I. Publisher: Clark, Dorking. IO4 LAND I that by digging deeper, more thoroughly aerating the soil, and in some cases enriching it by adding some deficient material, as chalk for instance, we should reap SEVEN TIMES the crops we reap at present. His pamphlets on this subject are well worth con- sidering, and only an enterprising cultivator is needed, with a small amount of capital and land, who will carry out in practical experiment, and on an efficient scale, these definite suggestions, with the aid of calculations given. Surely it would be worth the time and thought of some young man of education and energy to work out these theories which have already been very fairly tested, though not so fully as might be possible on a small farm, and by a man who possesses, and is willing to expend, both time and acreage to a small extent on the experiments. If we study rightly the use of our Creator's best gifts, we shall value indeed the delights of country life ! ELIZABETH REID HOPE. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 05 CHAPTER XI. PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY HOME, BY MRS. BRIGHTWEN, Vice- President of the Selborne Society. Author of " Wild Nature won by Kindness," "More about Wild Nature," "Home Work? " Practical Thoughts on Bible Study? etc. THOSE who already possess a home out of town, and who have possibly lived all their lives in the midst of the beauties of Nature, will know from their own experience the endless sources of pleasure which such a life affords. I would therefore presuppose that my readers will be those who but rarely have the opportunity of seeing trees and fields and enjoying the restfulness of a country life. It will be a pleasant task to try to show them a few of the advantages which may be derived from contact with the things pure, bright and beautiful which cluster round one's country dwelling. Parents who live in towns little know how much their children lose by being deprived of the teaching of the oldest Testament of all i.e., the book of Nature. Deep down in the heart of every child there is, I believe, an innate love of animals, birds and flowers. Witness the joy of town children when they are first permitted the opportunity of gathering flowers for them- selves ; how eagerly a frog is secured as a wondrous prize ; how wide open are the young eyes to the new page of life which has been suddenly opened to them. io6 LAND : It is for parents to guide the minds of their children into life-long friendship with God's works, and to lead them in their early days to cultivate the habit of observa- tion. To be assured that father and mother will meet the little students with ready sympathy and interest as they relate the discoveries they have made, of where a wild bee makes its nest, or a dormouse its tiny home, will do much to lay the foundation of such habits as may be of essential use in after-life. In an admirable chapter on education, in the " Life of Mrs. Sewell," occurs the following passage : " It was through the beauty of Nature that God first spoke to my own heart when I was a child of not more than four years old, and I believe if parents can reverently and lovingly turn over the pages of God's book before the charmed eyes of their little ones, they will find a natural and happy response When children have once got hold of Nature, and their mother will animate and help them, they want no toys. It is such a delightful task that I really almost envy a mother who has it for her work and duty." It may be urged that it is not all parents who are themselves well enough acquainted with natural history to be able to guide and instruct their children, but even if that be the case, there are so many helpful books published, giving ample information on every branch of science, that for those living in the country there can be no difficulty in learning the life-histories of the creatures that are met with in our daily walks. I suppose no one would question the superior health- fulness of country life. We have only to contrast the pale face and puny limbs of a little town-bred child, taken from some ill-favoured London slum, with a rosy-cheeked little rustic from a cottage door, to see at once the effect ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. of town and country air in its most marked aspect. Of course in higher life there are mitigations, and the effect would not be quite so apparent, for the children of well- to-do parents are taken from town to the seaside or else- where several times in the year, and thus the lack of pure air and light is in a measure supplied ; but still there remains the artificial routine of daily life, walking in crowded streets instead of joyous rambles in country lanes, growing up in the midst of society pleasures which may eventually lead to dissipated habits, instead of drinking in the pure delights which the Creator has designed to be our recreation. It is a touching thing that poor town children, as a rule, scarcely know how to play. This speaks volumes about the dreariness of their young lives. There are, doubtless, thousands of people who would live in the country but are tied in town by their daily avocations, and there are thousands more who might live out of the noise and smoke of cities, but who simply know nothing of the exquisite delights of rural life. Walk through a leafy wood towards the end of May or early in June ; listen to the happy chorus of birds up in the branches ; see on all sides the marvellous variety of tints, the glow of sunlight resting on beds of anemones and blue- bells, and feel the fresh, pure breezes which seem to bring health and vigour, in this way through all the senses we are drinking in the purest enjoyment ; can a walk in a dusty street compare with such a ramble ? Autumn, with its rich corn-fields and mellow beauty of colouring ; winter, with its fairy frost work and sparkling ice ; each and all the seasons bring their pleasures to those hearts that are attuned to the sweet harmonies of Nature. It is of great advantage to children to be taught the habit of close, careful observation, for it leads to accu- JO8 LAND racy of statement and clear description of anything seen, and surely those qualities are frequently lacking even in grown-up people and need to be enforced in early life. When children are staying with me I am often charmed to see their eager delight in listening to stories of birds and insects, and amused, too, to watch their instant car- rying out of suggestions for study ; and various are the things brought for my inspection dead birds or moles, fungi, worms, frogs, etc. I had explained to one clever little naturalist that all raptorial birds threw up pellets of the fur and bones of the creatures they fed upon, as they were indigestible, and showed him the tree where an owl roosted, and beneath which he might possibly find the little dry pellets of mouse's fur. Next morning he ran into my room with sparkling eyes, saying, "The old owl was sick last night, and here are the pellets ! " One could excuse the graphic way of stating the case, as it showed the zeal of the young collector. I have heard parents, whose sons had a taste for collecting birds, insects or fossils, rejoice greatly that such tastes were of real value when the lads were pursuing their life-work abroad, for leisure time, instead of being spent in dissi- pation, was devoted to the special fad which had been taken up, and surely that was no small gain as a result of living in the country in childhood. Intelligent young people will never rest content with merely obtaining specimens in any branch of natural history, they will crave for books which will teach them more about the things they have collected, and in the wide field of Nature they will find life-long interest, for in every place they may happen to visit, something fresh may be discovered. The wise words of Sir James Paget, in an address given at the Egyptian Hall in 1888, may well be borne ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 09 in mind. He says : 44 Long ago, when I studied botany, there was a piece of ground scarcely bigger than this hall near my father's house in Yarmouth, and there I found more than fifty species of plants. The origin of such plants, whether from seeds in the ground or from those in the air, how far one can exclude another, the influence of London atmosphere, their attraction of in- sects, and many other things would be worth observing. At least, in these and the like things, you may learn to observe, and then you will love to observe, and then some good will come of it." One might say much about the facilities the country affords for animal and bird study, and the happiness our children may derive from keeping their various pets, the ponies, dogs, rabbits, etc., which are sure to find favour with young people, and which give excellent oppor- tunities for developing habits of patient care-taking and thoughtfulness. I would suggest that there should be some supervision of the said pets from time to time, for children, however well-intentioned, are often unable to keep animals and birds in health and happiness from lack of knowledge of their requirements, and thus real cruelty is the result, which might easily be avoided by a few wise hints about suitable food and management. Children living in a country home are almost sure to develop an interest in the natural objects around them, and thus they are provided with sources of life-long pleasure. Their experience will be akin to that of the Reverend Charles Kingsley, when he wrote : " I have so long enjoyed the wonders of Nature; never I can honestly say alone, because when man was not with me I had companions in every bee and flower and pebble ; and never idle, because I could not pass a I IO LAND I swamp or a tuft of heather without finding in it a fail tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line or two, and yet found them more interesting than all the books, save one, which were ever written upon earth." ELIZA BRIGHTWEN. [NOTE. I would recommend all young people who indulge in Pets to read Mrs. Brightwen's two books, "Wild Nature won by Kindness," and "More about Wild Nature," published by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin.] C. F. D. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. I I I CHAPTER XII. SOME PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE. BY "HERMIT," Contributor to The Field, etc. THE difference between the town and the country has been said to be that man makes the town, God made the country. If this be a somewhat arbitrary distinction, yet at least it may be granted that in the town we see man's artifices in perfection, whereas in the country we see " Nature unadorned." And so it might be argued, and with something of logical truth, that life in the town is, to a great extent, artificial, whilst life in the country is, or ought to be, natural. It is to be feared, however, that the artificiality of town life is too often transferred to the country, and this much to the detraction of country life. For what can be more absurd than to see your out-and- out town dweller producing himself, with the aid of several attendants, in all the precision and beauty and polish of his town "get up," to dawdle away the weary hours of a visit to the country, abusing the weather, the mud, the awkward stiles and ditches, and the all-round discomfort he naturally feels in so unnatural a position. For to enjoy the country and its life it should be an axiom that man must put off artifice and study Nature. It is very well for the superior metropolitan to speak disparagingly of his country cousins as country clowns, but when these clowns get him down into the country he probably soon finds out what a fool they can make of ii2 LAND: him. Let the axiom above alluded to be accepted, and much of the nonsense and artifice of modern luxury, which is being too frequently transferred from town to country, will be renounced, and visitors to or dwellers in the country will determine to be in the country what countrymen ought to be natural. Nay, probably many visitors would become dwellers were they once to throw off the slavery under which they serve in town life. Not the least of this tyranny arises from the multipli- cation of servants. It is true that in the town servants are required for a host of purposes, and that their masters and mistresses cannot well be expected to super- vise, or take any great interest in, most of their work. In the country it is different. And here perhaps would come the first revolt against the artificial life of the town for anyone going to live really live in the country. There must be servants in the country too, but many of their duties are such that their masters or mistresses can take, and would be the better for taking, an interest in them. There is the farmyard, the poultry yard, the garden, the stables, the kennels, the apiary, the farm all full of interest, and most of them requiring the utmost intelligence to work well and satisfactorily. Breeding, feeding and fatting are matters quite worthy the attention of the most superior dweller in Belgravia, whose risi- bility, so far as that vulgar affection is allowed to assert itself, would become almost uncontrollable were he to see his country cousin, bespattered with mud, prodding and poking his well-favoured beasts. Hatching, feeding and rearing geese, fowls, ducks, pigeons, turkeys is a scientific matter, and one in which we are behind-hand in this country probably from leaving these things en- tirely to those who have not the intelligence to rightly perform them. ''The garden for the gardener " is a ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 113 theory that many a younger member, at least, of the country-dwelling families has resented, and it is one indeed that brings an unbearable tyranny. But how comes it to exist ? Because the gardener, too often, is the only person who knows what should be known about a garden, its fruits and vegetables and seeds, its flowers and frames, hot and cold, its forcing houses with their delicate crops of melons, pines, peaches and so forth. There is indeed some pity for the gardener whose efforts are only appreciated in the results he produces, in the fine flowers and the well-flavoured fruits he can bring to table, and yet whose efforts are sometimes frustrated by "young Miss," whose nimble fingers act the part of procurer to her longing eyes. But if young and old i alike had some intelligent interest in the raising of flowers or fruit from seed, the pruning of fruit trees, the management of plants, and all the thousand other matters that make a garden interesting, there would be less \ tension between gardeners and their employers, and there would be a source of pleasure perennially open to dwellers in the country. The stable there is less need to speak of, for most of the interest of country houses may- be said to centre around the horses. But the dogs, though often spoilt and petted,- are not so generally understood and made to supply that interest without which country life must be dull. There are, indeed, dogs and dogs some for show, some for fancy, some for tricks, and some for use. The latter, including setters, pointers, spaniels and retrievers, supply much pleasure to their owners, if they will study them and break them to work themselves. Few things are more beautiful than to see a well-broken field-dog working. And to know that you hold control over him, and that much that he does is your own teaching, is greatly to enhance the H4 LAND: pleasure of having and using these intelligent creatures. The study of bees is becoming more general every year. Sir John Lubbock has drawn attention to these busy and interesting insects. Their use in the garden is now becoming so generally understood that few fruit growers are without them. And not only are their ways full of interest to the observer, but their work is very profitable also, and bee farms are likely to be heard of more extensively than heretofore. When we leave the immediate neighbourhood of the country house, with its garden and farmyard, and go out into the woods, or over the land, or upon the water, we find our microcosm teeming with life and with many things beside which are worthy our attention. The work of the agricultural labourer is not without interest, and it would probably improve in many respects if more notice were taken of it by those who employ this labour. Thatching forms a very important part of such labour, and the way in which it is done is of considerable value, or loss, to the farmer be he amateur or otherwise. Where thatched cottages survive the march of improve- ment there is further need for the perfecting of the thatcher's art. And probably nothing improves his work more than the appreciative interest shown in it by those whose opinion he values. Then there is the hedging and ditching which are so necessary, but often so badly done. Much skill may be shown in laying a good hedge, but too often Hodge cares not for the look nor for the well-being of the hedgerow, but hacks away, cutting out what ought to be turned down, and filling up gaps with useless branches. It would hardly be so if more notice weif|taken of his work, and a word of praise, or for that matte^L small reward, were bestowed on him for excel- lency in Ixj^rt. The old days are gone when " Squire " ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 115 used to work the hedgerows in autumn and winter with his spaniels on the look-out for pheasant or rabbit or hare. Then the fencing was seen and it was worth doing well. Now no one takes much note of it and so too often it is done anyhow. But let us get away from men and their doings and occupations, from the farm and the labourers. Country life is not made up of these interests wholly. There is the realm of Nature around us, and we may go and hold sweet though silent intercourse with it, learning some of its secrets and making friends with its countless in- habitants. Someone has said, someone who evidently had seen too much of the arts and artifices of town life, that you find no adulteration, nor any flimsily-made things in Nature. No shoddy-dressed birds can be discovered. No painted flower discloses its sham on nearest approach. Everything is perfect and beautiful. Take a ramble in the wood in spring-time. Watch the rabbits at their play, running round and round, and crossing and re-crossing, and skipping, as though they were dancing a quadrille to the songs of the birds above. And look at those nimble little squirrels as they run round and up the trunk of that tree, dodging each other, as it seems, at a game of touch- who-touch-can. There! they see you, and are off along the boughs and spring- ing from tip to tip of the branches as though the trees were their highway, as indeed they are. And look at those beautiful but mischievous jays, as they gleam in the sunlight, their shaded backs and blue-touched wings glistening like gems. What a hoarse and unpleasant cry from such well-favoured birds. Ah, that cry means something in the way of news or delight. See ! they have found a wood pigeon's nest and are helping them- selves to the two white eggs. No doubt they are I I 6 LAND : preserving the balance of Nature, though their ways seem out of harmony with the song and murmur of life around us. There is Philomel trilling a tiny lay in the sunlight. We shall not hear more than a few notes of her rippling song at this hour ; but you may encourage a repetition by imitating that first plaintive note. 'Tis as though she were practising some difficult passages for performance to-night, when all other voices are silent. Just above our heads bursts out a flood of song little short of the nightingale's in beauty. It is the blackcap, and as we stand to listen, we are suddenly aware that within three yards of our feet two soft dark eyes are peering at us with wistful glance, as who should say, " Please go away." It is a pheasant upon her nest, and we would not disturb or frighten her on any account. What is that tap, tap, tap, like someone hammering nails into wood? There it is, somewhere in yonder oak tree. It is a little bird with an elongated bill and the shape of a kingfisher a nuthatch, busily at work culling out the insects that lie hidden in the crevices of the bark. And here is the nest of the blue tit so exquisitely fashioned in the midst of a thorn bush. Beneath our feet is a carpet of bright and varied hue, the delicate primrose and wild hyacinth set-off by the background of varied green. Let us step down to the banks of the river or burn, and spend a time watching its inhabitants and attendants. The water as it flows along, now calm and peaceful, now tumbling over rock and rapid, now tossed down the fall and throwing its bright spray like diamonds over the mossy fern-covered banks of the pool below, is full of movement and life. The ousel, the kingfisher, the dipper make sport amongst the boulders, or under the waterfall,. or in the crevices of the banks. The cautious heron rises from his patient fishing at man's approach, ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. I I/ and slowly cleaves the air as he soars on high to seek a safer spot. The water rat, more bold, runs along the bank and lets you watch his movements without concern. Here is an overhanging tree whose branches spread out above the stream. Let us take a quiet seat amongst the leaves and watch the fish beneath. Quick of sight beyond measure the trout will see the smallest move, but up here amongst the branches, motionless, we may observe him. No sign of him at first, for he is disturbed by our movement. Presently a fine fellow comes into sight, swimming very leisurely up the stream, with nose near the surface. He is on the feed and watches every tiny speck that the stream carries down. If he likes the look of it he will rise, open his mouth and suck it in. If it turn out a delusion, such as the empty case of some fly or moth, he will disp;orore at once. All this is done in a o o listless, lazy way, with scarce a movement of the fins or tail. But here comes floating down a may fly, not long set free from its case, with wings erect, gauze-like, and shimmering in the sun. He sees it. The listlessness is gone, and with a dart and a plunge he secures the delicate morsel. Presently a damaged bee floats by. He hurries up to it, looks it over, swims round it, looks at it again, seems irresolute for a moment, then springs out of the water and strikes the insect with his tail as he descends, thus making sure of his death by drowning before he will mouth him. Thus does our trout feed by the hour at certain times in the day, always working up a short piece of water and turning at a certain point and coming down to his starting place again ; and should a smaller fish venture upon this hunting ground he is quickly driven off and put to flight. Perhaps few things strike the town-dweller when first going into the country so much as the absolute stillness n8 LAND: and hush of country life. In these days of steam tram- ways, underground railways, express trains, and noisy pavements, added to the ordinary turmoil of a town, the urban inhabitant lives in the midst of a din to which he becomes indeed accustomed, but which, it may well be surmised, works a heavy wear and tear on his nerves. Nor is it until he goes into the country that he perceives what it is he lives in the turmoil, the din, the continual roar of city life. He exclaims " How peaceful, how rest- ful is the country !" And when in the warm summer months this peacefulness may be enjoyed in quiet ease amongst the green fields and ripening corn, the flowery hedgerows and beautiful gardens, the leafy woods and shaded water- courses, who would then exchange the country for the town? Many a man who has fancied himself entirely devoted to town life, but has been forced into the country, has found out what a mistake he had been making, and how infinitely preferable the country is to the town to live in ; how full of interests it is, and how those interests in- crease and grow, making what, after all, is the great desideratum of humanity a little world of our own, from which we may go forth at will, and mix with others and sharpen mind with mind, and to which we may return, bringing our experiences and our knowledge, be they for better or for worse a microcosm into which we may retire and be at rest when weary of the turmoil and strife of the world around us a circle of interests which are not dependent upon excitement, nor upon the goodwill of others, nor upon fashion, but which spring from Nature, and may be enjoyed naturally. HERMIT. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 IQ CHAPTER XIII. COUNTRY LIFE. Bv JOHN JONES, F.R.G.S., Author of various articles on " India " ; Vice- President of the Horological Society of Great Britain : Past Master of the Turners' Company ; Member of the Society of Arts ; formerly Member of the Honourable East India Company ; and a well-known speaker at the Bank of England and other City Meetings. THE pleasure of a country home is that of a home with Nature, her seasons in their varied moods of kindness and unkindness come before you with full simplicity and grandeur. The great concave of the hemispherical sky, bounded by the horizon, whether of the water of the sea t or the hills of the land, is a home that belongs to a king, and daily presents phenomena that expand and exalt the thoughts. Why is the visible sky thus arched ? is it not the result of our own ocular configuration, the photo- graphic plate of our own retina ? yet how needful it is to form the modes of measurement, which determine time and place. The aspect of the clouds is a continual charm, now in dark battalions sailing along one knows not where, now resting idly suspended in light fleecy vapours beneath the all-spreading blue. The earth responds to every changing influence of the sky ; clay fields become solid as concrete beneath the sun, but broken into multiform segments. Sandy land loses its cohesion, and would almost attempt the enterprise of migration. i2o LAND: What exhibition can compare for beauty with the rainbow arch spreading in complete proportions from one side of the landscape to the other ? What magazine of jewels can but faintly suggest the glory of a full starry night in the dry frosty air ? A needful part of the full engagement of the country is to be an intelligent spectator of the great laboratory pro- cess whereby the earth provides her vegetarian annual banquet for the maintenance of organic life. The peeping of the leaflet through the sod, or the breaking of the bud on the bush are the preparatory steps to the copious prodigality of the summer. The wild grasses in the ditches by the road side, and the solid compact of tubular fibres which build up the timber trunks, yield surprises to the observer ; the one from the fairy-like beauty of the plumage, the other from the massive grandeur of the boughs and foliage ; fruits and flowers give perfume, colour, and flavour in profu- sion, and grain and legumina invoke the prudence which safeguards the security of life when the harvest is cleared from the earth. But -what are the drawbacks to the panorama of beauty and grace ? its temporary duration. Art in stone, metal, and painting endeavours, with more or less of success, to perpetuate the choicest of the views which Nature lavishes around us, but little opportunities for art belong to the retired ruralist. The successive unfolding of the hidden principles of Nature, forms at the hands of her noble students one of the pleasurable occupations of the town. The resident in the country must be content to receive his knowledge thereof through the agency of the Press. In the frequent communication with his fellow men the Londoner finds the time pass with unconscious swift- ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 121 ness, imposing no exercise however languid his attention. All is busy around him, and the mind yields to the exciting influence without the need of self-exertion. The engagement of the country is, that every object and every day appeals to one's latent intelligence, and that in such abundance that life is passed before a fragment is fully known. The chief delight of the country is, that the weary struggle for position, which money is the easiest method of possessing, and which the influence of example imposes on the resident in town, is relaxed, and the sense of living with thankfulness for its privileges is a grateful substitute for the race of expectancy which suits the energy of youth but galls the feebleness of age. JOHN JONES. 122 LAND: CHAPTER XIV. EXCAVATIONS IN CRANBORNE CHASE, WILTS AND DORSET.* Bv E. WALFORD, M.A., ETC., Formerly Scholar oj Ball hi College, Oxford ; Editor of " The County Families^ " The Windsor Peerage" etc. As it may be reasonably presumed that nothing which relates to the surface of any district of these Islands can be void of interest in the eyes of our readers, it is probable that they will be glad to be introduced to the two magnificent quarto volumes in which General Pitt- Rivers has placed on permanent record we wish that we could write the word "published "the results of a variety of surface excavations which he has conducted in his own neighbourhood during the past ten years. The General, in whom many readers of these pages will identify the Colonel Lane-Fox who has so long been known as an anthropologist, and of late years as the chief Government Inspector of ancient monuments in this country, was forced to assume his new name in 1880, on inheriting the estates of Rushmore, on the borders of Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, upon the death of the last Lord Rivers. He had not long entered into possession of his new property before he found out, in the course of his first * This article is based on two (4to) privately printed volumes by Lieut. -Gen. Pitt-Rivers, D.C.L., F.R.S., etc. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 123 surveys, that he was the owner of a property which might be developed with sundry results of a scientific rather than of a mere pecuniary nature, and illustrative of a period in the history of Great Britain about which but little is known. No one can travel through South Wiltshire, or even cross Salisbury Plain, especially in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, without seeing that its broad expanse of turf is dotted over with grave mounds more or less distinct, and this to an extent quite unknown in other parts of England. Accordingly General Pitt- Rivers, who in early life had been devoted to military surveying, resolved to employ his leisure time in endeavouring to throw additional light on the work of excavating some of those mounds and barrows which lay round about him, and even in his own park, in such plentiful abundance. He soon found out that there were tumuli of Romano- British date and character, most of which were untouched, having been fortunately preserved through the accident of the surface not having been broken apparently for very many centuries, in conse- quence of the poorness of the soil for agricultural purposes. And this w r as true not only of his own estate of Rushmore, but of a large district closely adjoining it and "marching with" it, namely, that long known as Cranborne Chase. Of this district he tells us that it included between 700,000 and 800,000 acres, and pastured about 12,000 head of fallow deer, which were protected by a variety of rights by ancient customs which had the force of law. In spite of, or possibly in conse- quence of, this very fact, it was a very lawless district ; poaching was a trade and almost a profession, and the enforcement of the game-laws led to such frequent collisions between the keepers and the poaching fraternity that the second Lord Rivers thought fit to abandon his rights 124 LAND: and to head a local movement for the abolition of the Chase, which was therefore broken up and " disfranchised " just sixty years ago. " Since then," writes General Pitt- Rivers, " many of the parts marked on the old Ordnance Survey as ' forest ' have been converted into pasture, and in more prosperous times for agriculture into arable, to be laid down again into grass in consequence of the depression ot the agricultural interest at the present time." Much of the land around his own mansion, however, retained its forest scenery, so that the mounds which dotted its surface were uninjured, though here and there the roots of the monarchs of" the forest primeval " had found their way among them, damaging not only the sides of the graves, but even the fragile urns and the skulls contained in them. He was, therefore, not long in commencing action, and found himself for once, as few men in this world do find themselves, "the right man in the right place." At once he began to organize a staff of assistants who had a taste for such work, and whom he trained to the task of a scientific investigation of the entire surface lands with that thoroughness which is necessary in all archaeological investigations. That this was necessary and not superfluous is proved by the fact that only a few years previously a village in his own immediate neighbourhood had been visited, inspected, and reported on by the members of the Royal Archaeological Institute, in one of its summer congresses, when they found not a single pit or skeleton, whilst he himself had, or rather has, dis- covered no less than 95 pits and 15 skeletons, in a more or less perfect state. He adds : " One circumstance which makes the relics found in these villages so valuable for reference is the fact of their being entirely of one continuous period. The ground having never been ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 125 cultivated since the time of the Roman occupation of this island, and the spot having always been, as it is at present, remote from crowded human habitations, there is but little probability of their having become mixed up with the relics of a later date." What then was the date of these interments ? And who were the people here interred ? It would seem that they were heathens ; at all events in all his excavations the General appears to have found no distinctively Christian symbol whatever, not even a cross, though he mentions knives, axes, arrowheads, bowls, coins, pottery, and even pins and bracelets in abundance, most of which are figured in his illustrations. It is clear from the coins found amongst them that the graves are of the date of the Roman occupation of Britain ; and the small size of the bones of the males and of the females alike negatives the idea of their having been Saxons. Such being the case, the General suggests that in all likelihood the skeletons are those of some early weak tribe, which was forced to retreat westward under pressure from the Celts, or else that they belong to a race of Britons deteriorated in their physique by slavery, and by all their largest men being drafted into the legions of Imperial Rome ; and he evidently leans to the latter of these two hypotheses. Whoever and whatever they may have been, a care- ful observation of their graves and former habitations has brought to light one or two curious facts. It so happens that their abodes exhibit one singular feature, namely, that whatever defensive boundaries can be traced in their cincture are stronger on the eastern and northern sides than on the west and south ; and from this the General infers, most reasonably as it would seem, that they occupied a border district, having their chief foes on the east and north rather than on their other sides. 126 LAND : Here too etymology comes in to his help, for it appears that many of the place-names round about end in " mere," which denotes a border-ground. Rushmore itself in old maps and plans is spelt Rushmere, and Larmer is clearly Lavermere, and the chief neighbouring town is Mere ; Bridmore, or Bridmer, or Bridmere, he can scarcely be wrong in supposing to be in its root Brit-mere, or the boundary of the Britons. And this harmonizes with another fact observed by himself and by other ethnolo- gists and anthropologists, namely that the district even to the present day is " the frontier of a changed ethnological area," and that on travelling further westward we meet the first traces of a different race, and see a people re- markable, in comparison with those of Salisbury Plain and its vicinity, for their shortness of stature, their dark hair and dark complexions. It must be owned that the com- bined force of these three points of observation goes a long way towards confirming the truth of the theory which he so modestly advances. The accounts given by General Pitt- Rivers of his excavations, both in Rushmore Park and on the adjacent downs, are given with a minuteness of detail which will astonish even the most scientifically-minded readers. The slightest undulations seen on the surface-soil by his keen and practised eye were at once selected as the spots which were to be subjected to experiment, and in scarcely any instance was his judgment found to be at fault. The mounds and depressions were found to be not accidental, but designed structurally, and the dis- covery of tools, coins, and articles of personal ornament in various spots, all in close relation to each other, proved that these little men and women lived a social existence, in some sort of village communities, whilst the pits of oyster-shells outside their little camps as clearly ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 127 pointed to the presence of Roman epicures. Nay, further, it will almost raise a smile on the lips of our readers to learn, from this slight outline of the contents of these volumes, that even in such primitive communities there would seem to have been, generally, a fashionable and an unfashionable district, marked off from each other by the nature of the "finds " brought to the light of day: the- coarser tools being generally discovered at one end, and the personal ornaments and articles de luxe at the other. And this being so, it is a further matter of interest to know that the tools were mostly found in the eastern and the ornaments in the western portion, each village apparently having the same arrangement as is still so noticeable in London, in Brighton, and in other modern cities, where the fashionable quarter is almost always found to be the nearest to the setting sun. Our lady readers may feel an additional interest, when we quote the following from General Pitt- Rivers' collection of ornamental articles : fibulae, or brooches, of bronze and mosaic, hair-pins, tweezers, ear-picks, finger and other rings of bronze, silver, and glass, studs some with enamel still on their faces cups, saucers, mugs, vases, plates, and other pottery for table use, too numerous to mention. All the tumuli and villages, after having been excavated and subjected to a close examination of their contents, have been restored to their former condition and turfed over, a small medal, or as the General styles it, a "medalet," being left in each excavation, in order to place the work thus far achieved on permanent record against future ages. As for the contents of the mounds, very many of them have been placed in a museum which the General has built, a mile or two from his own house, near the village of Farnham, just across the Dorsetshire 128 LAND: border, where they have been classified and duly labelled, while accurate models of the villages themselves have been drawn and constructed to scale, so as to form an educational comment on the work of excavation. The museum includes also other objects of husbandry and of peasant handicraft ; and that it attracts and interests the rustics of the neighbourhood may be inferred from the fact that on Sunday afternoons and other holidays it is often visited by over 200 villagers. The museum stands about a mile and a half from a certain old wych elm, which has served as a boundary for some five or six centuries at the least, and which was traditionally a "meet" for the royal hunters as far back as the reign of King John. Here, it is pleasant to learn that the Squire of Rushmore has established a pleasure ground and built a temple in the woods, with a private band of music, and that the village population, with their wives and families, often flock to it, many hundreds at a time, to listen to good music between the hours of divine service on Sun- days. The educational value of such institutions, especially in rural districts, can hardly be estimated too highly. The second volume, which is more recent in date than the first, gives an account of a second series of similar investigations, carried out with the same minute care and on the same plan at Rotherley, Windlebury, and at Woodcuts, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Rushmore, the chief addition being careful measurements of all the bones of domesticated animals that were found, and comparisons of them with those of animals recently killed. General Pitt-Rivers, however, in his preface to this volume, observes most justly that it will not be one of the least useful results of his labours if they should be the means of inducing other country squires to direct ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 29 their attention to a new field of activity, for which "the owners of land are beyond all others favourably situated." He adds, "It is hardly necessary to insist on the large amount of evidence of early times that lies buried in the soil on nearly every large property which is constantly being destroyed through the operations of agriculture, and which scientific anthropologists have seldom the opportunity or the means of examining." It is not our fault if this admirable word of caution is not widely circulated by being quoted in these pages, E. WALFORD. LAND: CHAPTER XV. THE ADVANTAGES OF A COUNTRY LIFE. BY REV. J. W. LAKE, L. S.A., sometime Editor of the Land Union Journal. THE tremendous overgrowth of our town population, and the serious diminution of the population of our rural districts, are facts that are just now forcing upon the minds of statesmen of all political parties the pressing necessity which exists for providing some legislative remedy which may tend to equalize the distorted balance. In our large towns unskilled labour, owing to this influx from rural districts, has considerable difficulty in finding remunerative employ, and as a consequence a large amount of distress prevails. For many of these men employment could be found in our country districts, if only a system of allotments and " small holdings" should prevail. The former, already in partial though increasing operation, would supplement the labourer's wage, and would furnish employment when the farmer's work was slack ; the latter, a holding of say four to ten acres, would, if cultivated wholly or in part as a market garden, raise the labourer a step higher in the social scale, and would give him a sense of independence that would sweeten his employ by the knowledge that he was working, not for others, but for himself, and that he now possessed a stake in the country. In his recent speech at Birmingham, Lord Salisbury, after alluding to the injury which the commerce of this ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 131 country sustains from the protective tariffs of other countries, said, " We have our own troubles in our own rural districts, and from the same causes. Throughout large territories in this country there is now no longer the same employment for labour that there was, and the result is the constant diminution of employment in the country districts, and a constant drain of labourers to the towns, through grass and pasture being substituted for arable lands, and this change means that in every small farm where such an operation takes place, three or four families are let loose upon the world without employment, and have to seek such a desperate remedy as may be found by crowding still further the already overcrowded towns." A great deal of truth attaches to the well-known saying of Cowper, "God made the country, but man made the town " ; for we find that while it is mainly necessity that drives the multitudes who forsake the peaceful quietude of our rural districts to dwell amid the stir and bustle and turmoil of our large towns, it is pleasure and choice that attracts successful and well-to-do families, the moment they are able to do so, to exchange town life for a dwelling amid rural scenes. The suburbs o of our great cities, with their rows of palatial residences and spacious grounds, the tens of thousands of the middle and comfortable classes who tenant the rows of modest villas with greenhouse and garden, show how many seek to combine the advantages which either has to offer to dwell amid scenes of rural quietude and beauty, and yet within easy distance of the attractions and advantages of town life. Wealth is most readily made and accumulated in our populous cities ; and those who have to live by labour to earn their daily bread, and who struggle by economy 132 LAND : and self-denial to make provision for their old age these cannot choose their dwelling-place, these must flock where employment is plentiful, must live in towns amid a dense population, and often in narrow and unwholesome streets. And here, where great wealth is made, poverty of the direst description often abounds. It is possible, however, that by a process of home colonization remunera- tive employment may in our own country be provided for all. If cities are overcrowded, the fields are ready to give rich response to the labourers' toil. It was well said by Charles Kingsley, speaking of those who had been successful in their business pursuits, "that whatever wealth they drew from the city, they took care not to live in it. As soon as a man gets wealthy now-a-days, his first act is to take to himself a villa in the country. Do I blame him? Certainly not ! It is an act of common sense. He finds that the harder he works the more he needs of fresh air, free country life, innocent recreation ; and he takes it and does his city business all the better for it, lives all the longer for it, is the cheerfuller, more genial man for it." But what of the necessitous poor of the thousands who vainly beg for leave to toil ? or those hundreds of thousands whose weary tasks and scanty wages bind them in iron chains to the workshop and the slum ? Well, the large and philanthropic heart of Kingsley had a thought for these. He tells us that when he sees employers enjoying these advantages, leaving the crowded city for the quietude and enjoyment of rural scenes, the feeling arises within him, " Oh ! that the good man could have taken his workmen with him." " Taken his workmen with him ?" I assure you that after years of thought I see no other remedy for the worst evils of city life. "If," says the old proverb, "the mountain will not come to ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 133 Mohamed, then Mohamed must go to the mountain"; and if you cannot bring the country into the city, the city must go into the country. The rural labourers who migrated from our villages did so attracted by the higher wages and the exciting pleasures to be obtained in towns. They found, however, an overstocked labour market, and employment conse- quently scarce. And then commenced the difficulties and miseries of town life. The narrow and dingy courts leading out of some equally wretched street in the slum quarter, where the heavens are shut out from sight, and where the bright sunshine seldom penetrates ; the single room whose rent more than doubles the rent of a country cottage ; the coarse and brutal language and the sickening sights and sounds of intemperance, immorality and crime from which it is scarcely possible to escape, constitute surroundings amid which it is almost a hopeless task to preserve honesty of life, nobility of character, or the charm of domestic purity and joy. In these large towns we have plain and palpable evidence of a huge surplus population for whom no seat is found, not merely at Nature's feast, but even at Nature's simplest repast, who are destitute alike of food or home, because no employment can be found whereby a living could be earned. The first and natural provision which Providence has made for those whose lot it is to live by labour is the tillage of the soil, causing the earth to give its increase and to enrich the world by giving forth its abundant fruits. As it is, however, in rural districts the eye wanders over a vast expanse of country, where often scarce a human being can be seen, and, save here and there a village home, no sign of human habitation can be found. Here the thought at once strikes us of the full 1 34 LAND : meaning of those memorable words, " The harvest is plenteous, but the labourers are few." Where then lies the remedy that will effectually relieve the congested condition of our overcrowded and pauper-laden cities ? Sir J. Gorst, M.P., addressing a political meeting at Manchester on this subject, observed that people who once went from the country into the large towns seldom returned again; and he asked, *' Could not the obstacles to that re-migration be removed ? Why could not certain inducements be held out to a man to return to the place of his birth, such as the acquisition of a piece of land if he wished to acquire it ? What was now wanted was the development of the Allotments Acts, and that class of recent legislation, so that those who wished to put their labour into the land should have land into which to put it." Public opinion at the present time is running very strongly in this direction, and there is every reason to believe that the life of the rural labourer will soon be brightened by the realization of his dearest wish, viz., the possession of a piece of land which is virtually his own to till, the tenancy of which is legally secured to his possession so long as he fulfils its conditions. And here the labourers will be enabled by their industry and thrift to win for themselves, not riches, perhaps, but the modest competence that will not only supply the bare , necessaries of existence, but that will gladden their lives and brighten their homes with not a few of the comforts and luxuries that our modern civiliza- tion so richly supplies. Our statesmen are now bending their energies to devise a plan of home colonization ; to provide land for the labourer's tillage, and to assist him with funds, so that, by a system of gradual purchase, his farm may ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 135 eventually become his own. The Government, however, that accomplishes this happy transformation will ask from the labourers it seeks to uplift evidence and guarantees of industry, thrift and character. If town life has its undoubted attractions, it also has a darker side of misery and privation, and the evils too often outweigh the good. But country life has its varied advantages, not less real because they are often over- looked. It is said sometimes that the country is dull. tl Dulness, however, is the disease of the unoccupied. We hear a good deal just now of the dulness of village life. That is a sheer invention of politicians who want a humanitarian cry, and of town folk with nothing to do. Honest villagers are much too busy sowing, reaping, thatching, hedging and ditching, carting manure and driving cows a-field, to be dull. Dishonest and lazy villagers would be dull anywhere." Standard, Dec. 10. First and foremost of the advantages of country life, we may place that inestimable blessing, good health, and, as a natural consequence of good health, a longer life. At a very low estimate, life in the country is lengthened by ten years above the average of life in towns. Some few years since the writer, visiting a village in Wiltshire (where the smallness of wage gave the peasantry good cause for discontent) for the purpose of dividing a field of forty acres into allotments, found that the vicar had given offence by saying that "the labourers ought not to grumble at their lot, seeing that they were living in a village so healthy and salubrious in its character that it was a difficult thing for anyone to die in it." Without doubt the salubrity of country air, the beauty of country surroundings, and the quiet serenity that marks country life are blessings which should be gratefully appreciated 136 LAND: by those whose lot is cast among them. But as riches, which enable us to participate in all the luxuries and delights of life, lose nearly all their value to the sufferer from a painful and incurable malady, so in like manner the privilege of long life would be very lightly esteemed by labourers doomed to a ceaseless round of weary toil upon wages that scarcely kept starvation from their door. Happily the days of agricultural depression are, let us hope, drawing rapidly to their close. The need of to-day is to re-populate the villages ; to enliven the rural land- scape with the picturesque tenements of a contented peasantry, dwellings suggestive of comfort, convenience, ease and plenty for those who dwell in them. These men will be the small farmers of the future, and the spread of education will henceforth dispel much, if not all, of the ignorance that marked the past. To the enlightened tillage of industry and intelligence the earth will soon double her usual increase, and in such circum- stances happiness will cease to be a rare attainment, and contentment will become an easy virtue. But life in the country has still other and deeper advantages ; it tends to quicken and elevate the moral character by the insight which it gives into the marvellous order and beauty and purpose of surrounding Nature. The heavens, which are all but hidden in our towns, are here unveiled before us in rich and gorgeous magnificence, and thus it is not only possible but easy for those who dwell amid the quietude of rural scenes, who are privileged to gaze on the glory of the setting or the rising sun, or to look on the vault of night made resplendent with myriads of brilliant stars, to adore as well as to wonder, and so to rise through the contemplation of Nature to the thought of the wondrous wisdom and power by which ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 137 this Nature has been fashioned and is still sustained. Men see here the mechanism of the Universe, and the thoughtful and reflective mind will feel all the nearer, for ' the vision it beholds, to the God who rules it. And thus an American poet, William Cullen Bryant, writes : " The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And heartfelt supplication." Again, to dwellers in the country what thoughts are suggested by the changing seasons of the year. Who can close his mind as he witnesses the ever-operating miracle, by which the sterility of winter gives place to the bright promise of the fertile spring, and this to the beauteous flowers of summer, and to the golden fruits of autumn ; who does not feel as the bounteous produce of the earth comes to him, as it were, direct from the open hand of God, that he could find it in his heart to say with the Psalmist : " O come, let us worship and bow down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. " For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand." And who also does not feel, in greater or in lesser degree, an impulse that would bid us " To the beautiful order of His works Learn to conform the order of our lives." "The serenity," says a beautiful writer, Leo Grindon, "which we find in the fields and the woods, and by clear 138 LAND: streams, we imbibe into our own hearts, and thus derive from Nature itself the very condition of spirit which is needful for the enjoyment of it. In towns we may find diversion, but we cannot find repose. Calmness, in which ' alone the soul can put forth its leaves and blossoms, is for rural solitudes alone to give. Cheerfulness, which arises only from the peaceful enlightenment of the spirit, finds in the same quietude its sincerest and warmest friend." " I wondered," said Rousseau, describing his first experience of the power of country scenes to quell a perturbed spirit, " I wondered to find that inanimate beings should have power to overrule our most violent passions, and I despised the impotence of Philosophy for having less power over the soul than a succession of lifeless objects." If anyone would like to prove this power on his own person, let him go where he can hear the sound of the rustling leaves, and the singing of the birds ; where he can view without effort the smooth green grass, stretch- ing far away, interrupted only by masses of foliage, water in the distance, its ripples lighted by the sun ; let him go alone amid these things and live with them for half an hour, and then say seriously, if he can, that he has not felt his spirit breathed upon by an unseen power and ascend under that breath into a serener and holier life. " When the vexations of the world have broken in upon me," says Waterton, "I go away for an hour or two amid the birds of the valley, and I seldom fail to return with better feelings than when I set out.' The spiritual is ever near us, but it is in the solitudes of Nature, where we are face to face with the unmarred works of God, that our hearts are most accessible to His inspirations. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 139 Although the country may lack some of the question- able excitements that are so plentiful in our large towns, and not a few of which are of a palpably demoralizing character, yet it has simpler and safer pleasures of its own hunting, shooting, fishing, often boating, and to these we may add the delight of country walks, the bracing influences of country games ; the studies of the botanist and the entomologist, the delights of gardening where flowers put on their freshest beauty and where fruits acquire their most luscious flavour. These things will assure us that country life, in this age in which telegraphs and railways, daily papers and serial literature keep us, mentally as well as physically, in touch with all that the towns can furnish ; the life which puts the bloom of health upon our cheeks, which brightens our spirits, strengthens our muscles, and which adds years to the span of our existence, is a desirable life for all classes and will prove a veritable paradise to the starving and pauper population of our towns, and that in home colonization, under wise and careful administration, the social salvation of these classes will be most surely found. "Dirt," said Lord Palmerston, "is but matter in the wrong place." So in like manner our congested towns and cities are but masses of men in the wrong place, are men wrongly situated, crowding our dockyard gates clamouring for employment whereby to live, but too often clamouring in vain. Numbers of these men are country born, and have left their village homes because their toil was long and their wages were small. Let us hope that the day is drawing near that will see many of these men attracted back to the land that needs their tillage ; for when that day comes, and its advent is very near, the scanty wages will be replaced by a virtual ownership in the soil they till ; and the men themselves, no longer I4O LAND I crushed by poverty, will feel the thrill of a noble manhood when they take their places in the rank of citizens, and help, as a yeoman band, to swell the strength of that loyalty to law and order on which the peace and prosperity of the nation find their surest foundation. J. W. LAKE. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 14! CHAPTER XVI. THE ATTRACTIONS OF A LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. BY T. L. ALGER, LL.D., F.R. Hist. Soc. FEW fully know, or if they know do not rightly consider, the necessity that presses upon all of us to find out, each for himself or herself, the fundamental functions of the health-giving and health-preserving localities which lie in many instances either close to our view or within a short distance of our places of business ; if we did, we should not be so fond of fixing ourselves where little else than bricks and mortar are to be seen. In a word, the attractions of country life are so irre- vocably mixed up with our very existence, that not to seek them, be led by them, or have them daily at our own doors, is to draw a large draft upon the main sources of health, and foster the seeds of unhappiness, sickness and disease. If we ask how this is possible, how it can be brought about, to see, feel, and perchance to taste the country pleasures that are constantly at our command, do we only know where to find them I answer that in these days of cheap locomotion the thing is not only quite practicable, but comparatively easy, and that thousands already avail themselves of these advantages, and go daily from their places of business to rural homes at distances varying from five to thirty miles from the metropolis. 142 LAND : It is, however, not to these relatively few that these lines are directed, but to a part of the majority who still hover in and about the large towns, and who seldom leave them, except for a day or so, and then hurry back as if their lives depended upon the exertion. The other part of the majority are the rich, able to keep both town and country houses, and whose ample means enable them to follow their own inclinations. In the country near to London, in the counties of Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Hertford, Bedford and Buck- ingham, or to go farther afield, Hampshire, Sussex, Suffolk, or as far north as Lincoln, there are hundreds and hundreds of houses suited not only to wealthy families, but to those of modest annual income. In looking closely at the pleasures to be derived from living in the country, three standpoints appear promi- nently to our view economy, wealth, health all how- ever, gradually merging into the one which is the basis of all human happiness health. On the score of economy there is a vast fund of information to be drawn from the book of Nature, in addition to the advantages of fresh fruit and vegetables, the farming of land, the rearing of flowers, the keeping of mammals, birds, and insects either for use or con- sumption. There is no doubt, however, that country life is more fully appreciated by those who, having a taste for scientific or natural pursuits, find the material ready at hand wherewith to carry forward their experiments and researches. And is this not to be found in the country ? Is there not material for the biologist, the geologist, the chemist and the artist ? Look at our lovely hedgerows ! where does the botanist find such charming collections of natural beauty ? Among the wild flowers he can ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 143 examine the nature of the bracken, the black spleenwort, the larger veronicas, the anagallis arvensis commonly called the weather glass, the cardamine pralensis, or the cuckoo flower, the more scarce grasses, and our ever familiar holly, the latter nowhere so plentiful as in our home county of Surrey. Indeed, the biologist generally has thousands of instances immediately to his view for observing the ways and studying the functions of living organisms, and the geologist in the majestic rocky cliffs, and the more approachable subsoil, can find evidences of worlds that existed in cycles of years gone by. The ozone-laden fragrance of early morning can furnish the chemist with abundance of material for further investigating what was until comparatively lately, an unknown form of the most known of all elements oxygen. The artist can revel in the majestic glory of foliage and the beautiful forms and soft pearly greys of the clouds, and can at all seasons of the year pitch upon some scenes suitable for reproduction as a picture or a model for his composition, and if he be also of a poetic turn of mind as every true artist is he can find joys everywhere. The poet also sees soul in almost every blade of grass, and is urged onward by the fire of his nature to pourtray in verse what the artist can put upon his canvas. Hence we see why so many of scientific and artistic bent have been led countryward. Among indoor attractions in this connection also, we must not forget our domestic pets. To study the ways and endeavour to understand the language of those animals that generally form part of the house, not to speak of the acute gifts they possess in being able to acknowledge most pointedly any little kindness or atten- tion shown to them when suffering, is in itself sufficient happiness to many minds. The writer of these lines had 144 LAND : an opportunity not long ago of verifying this beautiful sentiment in a favourite female kitten just emerging into cathood. The poor animal evidently had the tooth-ache, or neuralgia, and to see how the little intelligent creature would come and ask to have the warm air fomentations re-applied to its face, after having had them once and received relief, would have been quite sufficient to silence for ever those who say, "What is the use of knowing all about these miserable animals ? What bearing has it on human life?" And in the country there are not only cats and dogs, but to ascend the scale, cows and horses, or to descend again, hares, rabbits, moles, butterflies, beetles, and the like, in each of which the biologist can find plenty of scope for his most engrossing pastime or study. Indeed there is no limit to his store for acquiring knowledge. Who has not entered into the apparent mysteries of our migratory birds those charming little visitors, who seem to come and twit "good morning," and then, as it were, suddenly disappear? To note thoroughly when they arrive and depart, and chronicle their doings in this respect takes years of study. The cuckoo, the martin, the nightingale, the swallow, not to forget the typical woodcock, have drawn volumes of well- written prose, and space will not permit me to enlarge upon any of them. I will, however, just mention one feature in this bird- economy that appears to be the most striking it is that the birds arrive just at the time that their insect-food first appears; this, to say the least of it, shows not only one of " Nature's charms," but her wonderful economy. And is it not true that she teaches more science than all the universities put together ? Now that there is such a thirst for scientific know- ledge and justly so, when such teachers as Tyndall, ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 145 Huxley, Darwin, and others of like calibre, have proved that some of our greatest brain-power was fostered from the book of Nature is it not well that we Englishmen should look at our own broad acres, our stores of Nature's goods, live amongst them, and utilize them for our own and our country's immediate and future welfare ? On the score of wealth, when broad-acres were first given to man had he any accessories whatever ? Had he not to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow, to work early and late, to hunt and fish for his food before he could eat it, and then when overcome by Nature requiring "Nature's balmy sleep" repose under her canopy, to open his eyes as the surely recurring periods went by, to still greater and greater exertion, all tending to the one end, the furtherance of his sole existence ? This was man's pleasure, this was his life until his help- mate altered all. Thence, onward, through cycles of years has he gone on working and toiling, anon being assisted by the springs of civilization, until now in this the decade of the nineteenth century we find him being fed by others, his own bodily powers having been carried by the forces of his life-long history to other kinds of motion, all, however, making up that mysterious phase that we call life. This, we say, is the result of our civilization, our intercourse with other countries, our interchange of ideas. Well, be it so ! But does it follow that we are bound to let others feed us with the produce of their lands, while our own broad acres are lying wasted and wasting ? Speaking plainly, the English cultivator of his own grounds has from many causes (which are not my province to enlarge upon) deteriorated in power and energy, and this lovely and fertile island of ours become 146 LAND : a large and increasing- conglomeration of bricks and mortar, the business home principally of the ready- money reckoner, and the princely millionaire. Let us, as it were, go back say forty years, and what do we find in and near this great metropolis ? Moderate- sized farms and homesteads, with or without farm lands, beautifying the landscape, the members of these happy homes, each having his or her work to do, and doing it cheerfully and well ; the sons not being ashamed to hold the plough or grind the corn ; the daughters, equally fit to milk a cow or play the harpsichord, going regularly to the nearest market and disposing of the produce of the farm, and bringing back for the family's use articles of dress and the last bit of innocent gossip. These, alas, it is to be feared, are times entirely gone by. Nobody in those days heard of such ideas as free love coy maidens found their mates, and lived with them till death did them part divorce courts scarcely heard of, or actions for separating what was then deemed the most sacred and binding of all ties matrimony. If this was the home-life when the Englishman owned English soil, and worked it and lived upon it, is it too much to expect that history would repeat itself if we could revert to these times, that is, if we could, as it were for a few years retrograde ? As in a time not far back it was thought necessary to alter the calendar, should it not now be considered expedient to stop going ahead in the manner we are doing, and take up the thread of existence of several years' retrospect. Should we become less self-dependent ? Should we eventually lose ? Assuredly not. Everything requires rest ; both the animate and inanimate world are all the better able to overcome the forces that are constantly working against them by taking Nature's rest. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 147 Not long since it was generally known that Her Most Gracious Majesty, our beloved Queen, issued her Royal command, and those who are nearest and dearest to her readily obeyed, and were followed by many of the noble and leading families of our land that they would use no wool or garment of wool that was not manu- factured at home. This was glorious news. Would it be possible for a similar edict to go forth with reference to our food the grain supply especially ? Were that to be the case, the still slumbering embers of capitalized labour which struggle hard for existence and are eagerly caught up by any wind of faction or fancied advancement, to fan them into a blaze, would in reality burn, and we should see similar homesteads to those of the beginning of the eighteenth century rearing their picturesque chim- neys and battlements all over the country, and the plea- sures of country life thereby enhanced a hundred-fold. But my particular province was to deal with the pleasures to be found now in this highly-favoured land. I say highly-favoured. Let us look a little into this. As a matter of security from the encroachments of the denizens of the forest, the pests of insects, continuous natural irrigation, pestilential atmospheres what are our advantages ? We have no wild beasts, we have com- paratively few insects that cause such ravages to our crops as the phyxollera did in France a few years ago, and if we look well to carry out fully the urban system of drainage, we shall have little or no cause for complaint in that respect. The latter will have to be done sys- tematically in the country as well as in town, when the rule to live in the country shall be made absolute by all the laws of our being. Looking at the pleasures to be derived from living in the country from the health standpoint, we at once see 148 LAND I the broad river of life into which all others fall, and to which they all irrevocably lead. Let us take what is often before us at this season of the year the fogs. The cause of fog in London is its too proximate situation to the east and south coasts. It lies, we might say, midway, and the sea-fog rises, and is driven by the wind over the city, thus preventing the proper diffusion of the smoke. What is called London fog is literally sea-mist mixed with smoke, the former prevailing. This is why it is so pernicious, especially in cases of tubercular disease. Also in towns, notably in London, there are constantly, during the prevalence of strong east winds, and especially in the early months of spring, desiccated particles of horse-excretion and other noxious matter blown about, which gets not only into our houses but into our very noses as we walk along even the fashion- able thoroughfares. Who that has passed down Bond Street or Regent Street during the prevalence of a strong east wind has not experienced this, especially when crossing the thoroughfares of such open parts as Brook Street or Conduit Street ? Small wonder then that not only the younger and more delicate of the members of our families, but, indeed, those who are physically strong and free from pulmonary complaints should even suffer. All this is entirely avoided by taking up our abode in the country, where the tonic ozone can almost be brought to our tangible sense, and where we have the double advantage of living free from the effects of noxious vapours and pulverized fcetid matter. Again, with regard to the presence of micro-organisms in the air, * Dr. Percy Frankland says that " the greater the distance from human habitation the purer," as regards * " Nineteenth Century," August, 1887. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 149 these, ''is the atmosphere," and it is abundantly proved that the presence of these microbes suspended in the air is the fruitful source of many diseases. The same author says again, when speaking of the presence of microbes in the comparatively healthy parts of London those close to the parks in the wide streets in the Exhibition Road "on a dry and dusty day," that the result of his investi- gations showed 554 of these ultra-minute organisms in two gallons of air; while, on another occasion, on the chalk clowns in Surrey, he found only two. Then, again, what pleasures there are to be found in solitude and retirement. Away from c 'the busy haunts of men," if grief should overtake us, what solace can be found in observing silent Nature ! A blade of grass, an ear of corn, a feather dropped during flight from some small bird even, has power, if we will, to draw us to think that what we are suffering is only a fragment of what the whole world suffers at that particular time, and leads us to exercise our self-abnegation and so obtain relief. This is impossible in the towns the wayfarer is simply the ghost of a unit in the mighty seething masses, and has no thought or even look for them, or they for him. With regard to physical development, so well matured in the games of cricket, football and tennis, now so popular, it is not necessary perhaps that we should all seek to be a certain number of inches across the chest, or become above six feet in height, as most of our fore- fathers who fought at Cressy and Agincourt in all probability were, or that we should have the strength of the bowmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; but nevertheless, if we look back we must come to the conclusion that the fine expansiveness of chest and those stalwart frames, to say nothing of height, were not fostered by living in towns ? certainly not in the large ones, but 150 LAND: in the broad expanse of Nature, free to roam, using their limbs, not shutting themselves up in railway carriages and cars, but using the best and most healthy means of locomotion walking-. o Sir James Paget says that "good food, clothing and fresh air and exercise are necessary to the healthy development of the human frame." Mens sana in corporc sano is a motto all must observe. How important, also, that we should be jealous of the encroachments of desire to draw upon our stock of reserve energy ! The latter is better kept up by breath- ing " ozonated " air than by resorting to the artificial recuperations of alcohol or chloral, which excite for a time and then in the reaction leave the subject in a worse state than before. We can get this stock of reserve energy preserved or added to fully, only by opening our country casements in the early morning after a good night's repose " Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet With charms of earliest birds." On the score of recreations also, the same author, when referring to the fundamental factor in the economy of health " recreation " says that it includes one or more of these "three things, namely, uncertainties, wonders, and opportunities for the exercise of skill in something different from the regular work," and though they usually take the form of pleasure, and we have our food prepared for us and brought ready to our tables to be taken into our bodies, there to be used to repair our wasted tissues, yet we have other work to do, and Nature is constantly reminding us, perhaps sternly, but with evenhanded justice, Ye shall obey my laws, or ye shall not live. T. L. ALGER. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 151 CHAPTER XVII. LAND AS A LUXURY. BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I. Author of various Articles on Land and House Properties ; "Striking Events in Irish History" ; &c. ONE of the definitions of Luxury given by Webster, is "' anything delightful to the senses" and whether it be a delight in tasting, touching, smelling, hearing or seeing, it is a luxury. A purchaser of land has an object in his purchase- it may be income, or occupation, or speculation, or luxury. If he buys for income, he must not be too particular to insist on beauty ; if he buys for occupation he must make the basis of value a correspondence between the advantages the property possesses, and his requirements. If he buys for speculation he must consider the prospec- tive results by development whether it be in minerals, or ground rents, or anything else ; but if he buys for luxury he must regard it then from an aesthetic standpoint and by aesthetic, I mean " The theory or philosophy of taste ; the science of the beautiful in nature and art." In a small country especially like the British Islands, the principle of aesthetics should obtain as much in nature as in art. If an owner of a beautiful art landscape is content to pay hundreds of pounds sterling per foot of canvas, why should he object to pay tens of pounds 152 LAND: sterling per acre for the more magnificent (because real) landscape in Nature which lies before him ? He sits in his chair, and on one side he sees the beautiful painted landscape hanging on his wall, and on the other side he sees through his window the beautiful natural landscape of his broad acres. Some may say that the picture requires no " keeping up," but I reply that even if the land is not profitable, the ce keeping up " of the worst has some compensation of value, equivalent at least to the "keeping up." Is there any comparison from an aesthetic point of view between a low lying, heavy clay flat in Essex and a high lying, light soil, well timbered undulation of the Surrey Hills ? The first may yield more gold, but the second will yield more beauty, and a purchaser must determine in choosing land what his object is in its possession. When at the Syston Library sale (in December, 1884,) ,3000 was paid for a Mazarin Bible, not so useful as one which could have been bought for three shillings, and enormous prices were paid for other books, the pur- chasers gratified their desire for luxury. When Meissonier's picture (twelve inches by nine) of " Napoleon the First in the Campaign of Paris," was sold (in June, 1882,) at Christie's rooms for 5800 guineas (.6080), i. e. 56 per square inch, the purchaser gratified his desire for luxury. When in 1890 Meissonier's picture " 1814," sold for ,34,000 sterling, the purchaser gratified his desire for luxury. When a purchaser paid ,22,120 for the picture Millett's "Angelus"; when ,23,440 was paid for Murillo's " Conception of the Virgin " ; when ,7350 was paid for Turner's " Grand Canal"; when 10,605 ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 153 was paid for Gainsborough's " Duchess of Devonshire " ; when 7200 was paid for Ruben's " Venus and Adonis " ; when ^9975 was paid for Gainsborough's "The Sisters"; when ,10,395 was paid for Boucher's " Madame de Pompadour " (and such instances could be extended in- definitely), these purchasers all gratified their desire for luxury. When in 1890 one of the Rothschilds purchased an historic clock in Paris for 840,000 francs (about ,33,600 sterling), he gratified his desire for luxury. When some time ago a client of mine sold a park hack for noo guineas because of its perfect symmetry, the price was paid to gratify a desire for luxury. When in December, 1891, at the sale of Admiral Spratt's old coins by Messrs, Sotheby and Co., a Richard II. farthing was sold for 4 guineas; an Edward V. groat sold for $ 75. 6d. ; a Richard III. half -groat sold for j 173. 6d., etc.; the purchasers all gratified their desire for luxuries. So we might extend the list in examples of old china, and various articles of vertu ; but the facts mentioned will suffice to enable me to enforce my point that articles of luxury must be paid for at their proper value ; whether it be choice food, or choice drink, or choice pictures, or choice land, the value of luxury must be considered, and assessed, and paid for. The broad acres of the British Islands are not so broad as to be indefinite ; the limit to them is very real a few hundred miles in any direction determines their boundary ; and when we consider that the richest people of the earth are located upon them, and the richest metropolis the world has ever seen is its centre of life, we recognise at once the reason why in the past such high prices have been paid for its choicest parts, and 154 LAND: regarding the last ten years of depressed values as a parenthesis of exception which only the more fully proves the rule of permanent value, I submit that as regards the future in proportion to the commercial prosperity of our country, and in proportion to the rich colonial, continental, and other persons who come to it to settle, so will aesthetic acres be valued at aesthetic prices. To give an illustration of aesthetic acres from my personal experience I will refer to an estate in * ' Wild Wales," which I now have for sale, and ask who, with any taste for the majestically picturesque, would not in estimating its value take into account its beauty as well as its usefulness ? The estate comprises the magnificent Moel (mountain) Hebog, a portion of the very summit of which forms a part of it. This majestic mass of country rises up by the side of Beddgelert. Near by is the celebrated Pass of Aber- glaslyn, one of the most romantic bits of scenery in the British Islands. At one part the stream runs through two precipices which rise to some 700 feet. The entire district is an unbroken succession of mountains and valleys, of magnificent contour and dependencies. I regret my inability to give that graphic touch of repre- sentation which would make a reflective mind picture faithfully its claims to that profound admiration which none who can really value natural beauty and who visited the original, could fail to yield. Lakes, tarns, pools, rivers, rivulets, streams, rills, cataracts, waterfalls, cascades, mountains, hills, peaks, passes, plains, precipices, tors, slopes, declivities, crests, coombes, dingles, exposed bluffs, secluded dells, ridges, knolls, gullets, islets, nooks, caves, craggy pastures, plantations, wild tracts, cultivated enclosures, fertile valleys, and almost every form of change into which the earth's surface is phenomenally or ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 155 commonly disposed are perceptible in the views obtained in this exceptionally favoured part of the remnant of ancient Britain. Every portion commands views of great variety according to the aspect of vision chosen. The views range from the sublimity and severity of grandeur, embracing a continuity of mountains, down to the picturesque simplicity of the details of some pretty waterfall and its surroundings. I will describe one view as it presented itself to me piece by piece in my ascent of another part of the estate adjoining Snowdon, and this will represent something of an average of the whole, although the view from the Moel Hebog is in some respects even grander, as it rises to an altitude of 2566 feet, whereas this portion only rises to 2032 feet. From the very base it is exquisite. It embraces ponderous masses of indistinct interminable mountain in all directions, but discloses the details of the near bases, and the beauties of the valley, which from the summits are not apparent. The lovely Gwynant Lake is sufficient of itself to give a charm to any domain ; it is well known, and as well appreciated for its great boating and fishing attractions. The valley has some rich pastures, offering a marked contrast in their emerald green to the darker colours of the uplands. Opposite is a bold, distinct hill, covered with pine trees (referred to below as a ' black lump.') Along the valley courses the well-known salmon and trout river Glaslyn, which forms a boundary. Along the base of the Pine Hill and its adjuncts are residences and grounds, well-kept cottages, and the village school. The lower portion contains some extensive plantations, amidst which are beautifully blended some very bold rocks, extending over a wide area, and jumping through them are mountain streams, the silver heads of which are now and again demonstrated. 156 LAND: The ascent of the mountain is somewhat tiring, but the views which it reveals of itself, as well as of the whole circumference of vision, well repay the effort of the climb. The land is well watered by mountain streams, taking their rise in some mysterious hidden fissure, whence they trickle out, and growing in volume they develop into cascades, waterfalls, cataracts, and rivers. The little rill flows out, meandering on, reaching a rock, over which it falls, dashing itself to drops in silver spray. Again it gathers together and is lost to sight, whence, emerging, it finds a cleft, through which it tumbles in cascade, and pursues its downward course, reaching a level plateau, where it describes a tortuous form, and by its pent-up strength forces a passage up hill, returning in gentler force, until by a headlong dash it acquires a momentum which produces a grand display of power over a broad expanse of rocks, tearing on, ever and anon exposing a silver crest as it comes into contact with some obstruction, against which it shatters itself into foam and hastes away. Reaching some narrow defile it drops as a cataract into the pool below, and thence emerges wide and broken, repeating all the forms of water eccentricity, with its perpetual chants on its course down a steep mountain side, until it is lost in the Glaslyn River. From all parts of the ascent the view is remarkable. Standing out against a clear sky, the mountains beyond the valley stretching away as far as human vision can depict, are objects of exceptional beauty. Hills rise out of hills, hills around hills, hills upon hills, hills of every form and size, making in the aggregate a mass of mountains, not having a tame, gradual slope, but the whole interpenetrated by such irregu- larities of hill, ravine, precipice, and declivity, as with the varied clothing of fir or larch, heather or grass, inter- ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 157 mingled with rocks, varied with different hues, arid acted upon by the diversities of shade and brightness by the passing clouds, presents a picture the effect of which can never be accurately painted in words, but which when once fully gazed upon may ever after be under- stood. A ray of sunshine will illumine one peak with a golden coronet, while all around is dark. The play of light and shade upon the physical features of such a country affords a combination and alternation of the rarest beauty. The views from some part of this estate would possibly rank amongst the grandest in the British Islands. But views must be. viewed. I can easily imagine a pretending purchaser driving up to the land and looking up the mountain side, and return denouncing my description as invention ; but if he will don some hob-nail boots and walk over it for several hours, as I did, he will admit its accuracy. The mountains seem to interlace one another, one peeping behind another, then again a higher peering over its head, and so on and on to the right hand and the left, stretching away into the vague distance. The summit is reached at last, it rises to a sharp rock, beyond which is seen the gigantic monarch Snowdon, with its breast appropriately draped in streaks of ermine (snow). Between the breast of Snowdon and our peak other summits form a kind of semicircle, revealing one ex- tended precipice, at the foot of which the land shelves down to a lake in the depression. The view reaches on the south-west side to the mighty Atlantic, where vision is lost, except when arrested by shipping bound to the distant regions of the earth. The shore is marked by the town of Portmadoc. Then inland, stretching away along the eastern horizon, is the great gathering of mountains, not in a chain of continuity, but in all the grand diversity 158 LAND: of an aggregation of independent sovereigns. Nearer to us, at the base, shines out the Gwynant Lake, like a well-set jewel, and above on the right what appears to be a "black lump," which with a dazzling sun is inde- finable. On the north-east beyond Llanberis Pass, arise the Glyders. Snowdon keeps the north, while towards the west Moel Hebog stands. Then, completing the compass, the eye looks down upon another part where the house is, though two miles off or more, as the bird flies, and in the line of sight is the pretty village of Beddgelert. Who can say that this estate with its 3738 acres, its snug residence, its world-famed fishing rivers and lakes, its mountains and its hundred natural charms is not worth the five-and-twenty thousand golden sovereigns at which I am prepared to sell it ? and worth it too, although the farms and sheep walks (apart from the embedded minerals) would only pay about two per cent. ! Who would not estimate these magnificent acres of land and water as a something worth securing by those who can appreciate the grandeur of the Great Artificer of Nature ? Luxury applies to land-owning as much as to any other owning. The beauties of Nature should be esti- mated at their fair and reasonable value, and the growing appreciation of the sesthetical will influence the prices to be paid for the beautiful in nature as well as for the beautiful in art. C. F. DOWSETT. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 159 CHAPTER XVIII. FRESH AIR FOR POOR LONDON CHILDREN. BY THE REV. A. STYLEMAN HERRING, Vicar of St. PauFs, Clerkenwell. THIS is quite a recent institution. It sprung up a few years ago by reason of the poor pale-faced and pent-up London children appearing so jaded and spiritless at Sunday-school. Like all successful efforts it began very slowly, but steadily advanced, and now forms a part and parcel of parish work. The testimony of a medical man himself a sanitary officer affirms that " children after they have had two or three weeks by the seaside, or in the delicious country, are much better able to resist the winter or an illness, and even if they do get ill they recover much sooner than those who remain perpetually in London." Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales was one of the first to patronise our Society, and now gives her patronage to the grand central society, "The Children's Holiday Fund." There are various modes adopted to assist the children to accept the invitation to be boarded out. It would indeed be most amusing to relate the really fearful mistakes of the town- bred children about rustic affairs. Their knowledge seldom reaches much beyond the street, place or alley they have herded during their existences. A young lady from the country was staying with her clerical brother in town, and went to teach in his Sunday- 160 LAND : school. She asked her class what bird went out of Noah's Ark. The answer was lC Please, miss, it must have been a sparrow." They could not comprehend that any other bird but the smutty sparrow could be found. In many ways our London children are the sharpest of all classes of children. The friction that they have with other children, and contact with the immense masses exercises their mind and faculties very much above the ordinary, especially the rustic ideas. It has been truly said that "' None are so sharp as a London girl or boy, and none so dull as an elderly London man or woman." We established most successfully lk A Fresh Air Club." It commences each February. All pay an admis- sion fee of 3d., and weekly they have the opportunity of paying in something. When half the required amount (25. 6d.) is paid up, then they can go into the country. There is also a free list for children of widows, orphans, and such like. The children's holiday fund allot to districts certain numbers to go away. Care is taken to have superintendents in the country, and wherever children are sent. It requires some little capital to " rigg out" the pale- facers. A mother kindly said "It is all very well to charge only five shillings for two or three weeks, and does the children a might of good, but they must have extra things which cost me twenty shillings for my three children." I have assisted out 3200 in seven seasons, and it surprises me to see the very few extras they do seem to carry a small brown paper parcel, etc. but on examining some I found extra gowns, trousers, etc., were put on the children so that they might not lose them on the journey. The general cost for those under ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. l6l fourteen is five shillings a week, and with three or four in a cottage or small farm house, they say it answers their purpose. The season of 1891 began in May, and ended in the middle of September. Since our London children are accustomed to the great glare of gas, etc., they get a little frightened at the dark lanes of the country, and the long evenings. It is considered that two weeks by the seaside are equal to three in the country. I give all their choice and it's curious how fastidious and particular these youngsters are. One is much struck with the universality of this most excellent movement. All patronise it, and many a subscription comes from those who are travelling on the Continent, or enjoying them- selves by the seaside, and they desire to express their sympathy with their poorer brethren. This year our little friends have been peculiarly unlucky : the earlier part of their season was cold, wet and stormy sometimes out of fourteen days, twelve were wet yet they most completely enjoyed their outing, and on arrival home seemed thoroughly joyous and happy. Our country friends take a real delight in these London children. The gentry generally invite each fresh party to a most bountiful and acceptable feast, and on their return farmers and others load them with fruit, flowers, rhubarb, etc. I lately met a return party at Paddington, and could not make out why a boy should have a string of starlings slung round him. I found out that the farmer where he boarded had killed one, which the lad plucked and ate, saying " how good it was." The good-natured farmer directly killed a dozen and gave them to the stunted London boy. The movement is rolling on steadily, and soon each school or gathering of children will have its " fresh air M I 62 LAND : club." It is a most-needed institution for London; and though last year many thousands were sent away, still, there is every reason to believe that it will soon number its tens of thousands, who will be all greatly benefited by these summer outings. I am pleased to say that what has proved so beneficial to the rosy-faced children has extended to their parents, elder brothers and sisters. A camp by the seaside was established for lads over sixteen ; and last season 2000 were accommodated who vastly enjoyed their semi-military outing, and "A Lads' Brigade" is being formed this winter to carry on the good work done during the summer among these lads. All have the greatest sympathy for girls at business ; long hours, close atmosphere, and sometimes unnecessary fault-finding by forewomen, make a fortnight of complete rest and quiet enjoyment at Southend or Eastbourne a most delicious relish. The fee for all over fifteen is generally i os. 6d. a week, except at the camp, which was only 2s. 6d. Thus on every side we see the extreme benefit derived from " Fresh Air," and we having so often witnessed its good effects can but most conscientiously urge the extension of this new and most beneficial movement. A. STYLEMAN HERRING. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 163 CHAPTER XIX. THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE. BY E. A. ARMSTRONG, M.A., Cantab., Barrister-at-Law. SINCE the days when Horace put an exquisite ode in praise of country life into the mouth of a Roman Usurer, hundreds of generations of money getters have toiled in cities vaster than Rome, and infinitely noisier, dirtier, and more unhealthy, to find, like the worthy Alphius, that having reaped their harvest of wealth they have robbed themselves to a large extent of the power, though not of the desire, to enjoy it amidst more tranquil surroundings. They can appreciate the country after a fashion ; they pine for it when fogs are thick, or when the sun is hot, and they think of green fields and trees and rivers ; but the ability to fully taste all its delights has gone from them ; their training has been in another direction, and they find that as the twig was bent so has the tree inclined. They are however of the old school, and they can and do recognize the fact that the force of circum- stances which kept them morning, noon, and night breathing the same air among the same sounds and associations has weakened and passed away, while the younger generation benefits by the change. There are to-day hundreds and thousands of young men working for their daily bread, or its more savoury equivalents, in London and other big cities, who are as keen sportsmen and ardent lovers of country life as any who know no 164 LAND: other existence. Railway enterprise has widened the bounds of our suburbs, and those who work by day can rest by night and rise invigorated by country air, while the same air refreshes them when a holiday gives them opportunity for exercise, and the exercise they take is genuine country exercise, which will keep them in athletic trim, and enable them to enjoy a longer holiday to the full when they have time to take it, with- out fear of the ill-effects of a sudden course of violent exertion. There may be some who, when they have time to leave their work behind them, rush abroad to seek in foreign cities the relaxation which they think they cannot find nearer home. Among those, however, who yearly travel to crowded foreign hotels and un- savoury continental watering places, the idea is gaining ground, and will continue to do so, that if health and pleasure are really their objects, they can find them more surely near home than by wandering in climates to which they are unaccustomed, where the most fashion- able spots are thronged with faces they daily see, and perhaps avoid, at home, while those further afield are beyond the reach of the most elementary principles of sanitation. Under such circumstances it not unnaturally strikes a man that after all his own country is the best, and if at the same time he has come to the conclusion that to live in other people's houses during his holiday is to forego the pleasures of a home at the very time when he has leisure to enjoy home life, he begins to consider the matter from a practical point of view. Having duly done so, the chances are that he visits one or two or more properties that are in the market, and ends by buying one. He may be influenced by the fact that nowadays he is buying cheaply a commodity which is steadily rising in value from the low point to ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 165 which it has fallen. And no doubt he will buy according to his means ; but once the price is paid and the con- veyance executed, the pleasures of country life are his during the time he can partake of them, as fully as if he spent the whole of his time among them. He is in the same position during his holiday at least as those whose good fortune he envies, in that they pass their lives far from the metropolis to which he has to return like a boy to school. To him as to them there now belongs a "home." Number 1000, Cromwell Road, or Number 22, Blank Street, May Fair, is all very well in its way comfortable, well-appointed, and convenient, but it is his " house, "not his home. It may be his as far as purchase-money can make it, or the terms of a long lease will permit, but his " place in the country " stands upon quite a different footing, whether its extent is limited to the now historic three acres of pasture, and the stock upon it the proverbial cow, or whether it constitutes him 88&88&Si888 I 8 i- Q j O3O C rfO MOOO CO "-I "^ CNV w vo 8 <3r$ o c O 8 8 S a 1 S "f o .s tin 6? s >- "sa wp ^^ .r ----- .,. . o i! - - ^ . _r w - S d a C -n ^ 6*^^ _ ~ >, w ^ Du ju *^ fci . C 0*0^0"^ Ji ^ -S JoJSJ ^ Q | ^ a Q si i Here there are facts enough to show that in a few brewery companies more than three millions sterling have been lost to the shareholders. 240 Take next some commercial companies- i-i f^.00 "-i t^O '-''-'rof r > cT O~ C?\ to o" *O -i r>. MforoM n t C/3 xr> s? S? s? J OOOOOOOO *o O O O O O O ' Lf ^ tx. O O O O O O O OOO^OOOO ^^ ^" OOc^OOc^OOO *O Q O O O O O *O cT f^i'O **o O\ ON O C^ r-o T^VO O O "*d"OO O O t> Q ^"*O Q OO sP ^ ^ -00 00 ^ JD ^ "OO _ Spc M ~ H g g M ^i ^ 2 -n^^ rt O, rtSw 5^^c ^3^ S I * IS C/i 8 ::::::.::: :2 ::::: I : :|| : : J :| : :||: : I :| s g S J _ ._ 2 r\ *-* *- ? M ' O ^ fa tf W *S W "^ r- g ' tJ ^ ^O iiiity <|eqpqpqpqu The above figures show a loss to the shareholders of nearly seven millions sterling. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 24! Take another set of commercial companies a 3 :_ 5 O fiyS QOOOOOQQOOQOQ O ro ^"CO O ^ O O O ^O O Q ^^ O Q ^" O ON i N M H-< -- O cvO r- n ro O co N < Q O M ro ^f "I O LOO "> fOiO 00 00 N -t- N O * O^N N sj " c\ o o coccc o^o c> ' t * O\ oo oocoooooo\ O oo oo oo ro oo oo o -'-aooooo ONMI-I oo co oo ^w"-oo oo oo wj -s - O t>. rot^ M - I s Si gs S 1|vsl5 -? ? -?2 c * 2$$3 5 5 5^ Here again is a loss to the shareholders of some two and a half millions sterling. 242 LAND : Take a set of financial companies- u < j 1* s? .52 i?i. 52 ier-:--:tiHWioD "73 r 1 WOC\M C^O>-'<)-Hi-iiLO^>-ii-i >-i "^ ^ O ^'O O * OO ^*"^ *"* ^^^ i W ^^ ON OOOO *-o O O t^>* ON O O O o xn cs o >-i VO O Tt- o coc vOO-3- fl IH i-i - s - - B - . - - - . c * I8 2 3 *> W * ^; I Here again is a loss to the shareholders of over two and three-quarter millions sterling. ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. Take next a set of trust companies 24, fti o o o o & O O r-^t^ M vnu-iTj-ro '-- O O o"fO io"">OO v oroNioOOOOOO x oOQoiOi-iO l o>oiOTt-OO ta O >o "'- r<"J ^- ro r^O ro t^ ro rfOO t^ ^J-OO O t^ ^ CvOC O G 1 * o t^ fl r^ *3- 00 ,- OO ^'7. -jr. 7. , s. -7. 7. 7. 7. s? si o x x v: x x x x x x x w ^x x v5 x x x x goo 10 N N )OO . 00 00 lllMIl o 5 o . i -.ft H t rll ifiiff f i Nl < ^2 s 8 - : : fa : ^ '4,15 HI i^~-c 3 | ^ ~ - _ ~ '- - V - x ^ r - so 1 Q '2 g 2 i \-s ^ -r S ^ - - j- Slilils " : P - !>, r O "^ "^ - W r*-r g T="^^ s ^ ^ r- P-i LJ "5 -^ 'S CJ 2 ,2 55 3 S c ^^ ,n^-c HH rt^x6-:6 s:; Q- S S S d*^ O = : S*2 g^-aojo.3 |-ii 1 |Q J ~^S^''H"o o c" 5Soo s , < ^ pq pq U u ^ ^- "J 'C 'J O 14 M- 1I |lll 1-s : : : : ^J1? - ^ > ~ ~ o g^Q-S ^ : ^^S c rt > afi w S !(S ;l So JIL ^j!i^ III Here we find a loss to the shareholders of some four and a quarter millions sterling. 244 LAND I We will consider now the case of five sets of companies which have failed, and which are in liquida- tion or are being wound up altogether WOUND UP IN 1888. Company. Formation. Capital issued. Australian Company ... 29 April, 1 88 1 ,50,800 City of Dublin Brewery 1865 95,060 Dear and Company 21 July, 1886 16,250 Dewars and Bournes ... 29 April, 1886 176,250 Edwin Fox and Company 7 October, 1882 30,800 Highland Fisheries Company 1884 2O,OOO Metropolitan Music Hall Company... 9 July, 1887 57,000 Patent Ventilating Granary Company Scottish Metal- Edged Box Company 1863 1887 75,000 27,182 Sugar Refiners' Appliances Company 4 October, 1862 5i,i35 United Kingdom Metal-Edged Box Co. 17 December, 1886 66,667 National Building and Land Invest- ment Company of Ireland 1865 32,020 National Standard Land Mortgage and Investment Company 14 July, 1881 32,120 Tyne Forge Company 1881 3i,75o West Cumberland Iron and Steel Co. 1872 216,000 written off. ^978,034 WOUND UP IN 1889. Appleby Brothers, Engineers, &c 20 February, 1886 3I.5< Argentine Sugar Estate Factories ... 1883 130.000 Armstrong and Company, Merchants 16 October, 1885 7',55Q Australian Ice Company 2 July, 1878 18,370 Australian Trans-Continental Rail- way Syndicate 12 May, 1 88 1 16,040 Billiter Street Offices Company 14 November, 1882 59,325 Brown, Davis and Company ... 16 January, 1879 45,000 Colorado Ranch 1879 20,000 Defries Safety Lamp ... 15 April, 1886 60,069 Electric Automatic Delivery Box ... 26 January, 1888 4^434 George Neal and Company ... 9 January, 1887 ' 38,376 Glasgow Coal Exchange 1874 108,000 Jutnapore Indigo Planting John's Bottling and Stopping 23 June, 1888 1 6 January, 1888 3,218 34,364 Lancashire Supply Association 26 June, 1880 9,552 Levy's Jute Spinning and Sack Works Liverpool Household Stores Assoctn. 10 May, 1875 i September, 1887 87,790 i6,959 Liverpool Spice Company 12 May, 1885 6,080 London Consumers' Pure Sanitary Milk Company 2 December, 1886 17,500 London Founders' Association 19 April, 1883 6,512 Martinstown (Dorchester) Brewery .. 16 June, 1888 15,000 Metropolitan Coal Consumers' Assocn. 31 January, 1889 55,878 Moldacot Royalties Trust 27 August, 1886 60,000 Mozambique Produce Company 8 June, 1887 30,000 /88i,qi7 ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. WOUND UP IN 1889. 2 45 Company. Formation. Capital issued, National Agricultural Hall 1 6 May, 1884 100,000 National Pure Water Engineering Co 17 November, 1886 89,657 Paper Bottle Company II June, 1887 29,095 People's Bread Company 19 March, 1888 56,568 Porous Carbon Company 30 December, 1886 38,500 Ridcdale's Railway Lamp and Light ing Company Scarborough Promenade Pier Co. Scotch Whisky Distillers 10 December, 1886 I December, 1865 21 April, 1887 20,98l 13,350 64,825 Scottish Carolina Timber and Land C'nmnanv 23 February, 1884 06 QQO Stein's Bakery and Patent Oven Co. 25 March, 1886 y\j,yyv^ 22,500 Tunnel Driving Company 27 March, 1886 33, 2I Universal Simplex Type Writer 4 February, 1887 50,000 Wiltshire Brewery Company... North Australian Territory Company 19 July, 1888 1 8 May, 1887 13,960 110,000 United Land Company , 1867 39,945 City of Dunedin Suburban Gas 29 October, 1887 94,550 Nottingham & Derby Water Gas Co. 27 April, 1889 57,720 Sovereign Life Assurance Company Lochore & Capeldrae Cannel Coal Co. , 1845 94,500 , 1872 130,000 Rajawelle Coffee Estate Company ... 21 April, 1864 45oo German Union Telegraph and Trust 1 9 July, 1872 205,000* 1,212,103 IN LIQUIDATION OR WINDING UP ORDER MADE 1890. Ab-Jutra Boot Making Process 9 July, 1887 48,000 Anglo-Belgian Safety Horse-Shoe Co. 15 February, 1888 49,428 Astrop Patent ... 29 January, 1 886 27,008 Cox's Horse Repository 2 December, 1889 30,000 East Riding Club and Race Course... 28 November, 1883 49,208 Eureka Refrigerating ... 2 July, 1887 84,109 Henry K. Terry & Co. 23 October, 1888 57,435 H. Pound, Son, and Hutchins 12 August, 1886 70,000 J. Rolls and Son 3 May, 1886 77,38o Johnson and Company ii February, 1878 50,000 Lyons Brothers 9 January, 1886 60,000 New Brunswick Trading of London... 12 August, 1885 76,100 Oil-Seed Crushing 1863 67.820 Public W r orks and Contract ... 13 June, 1883 38,965 Pure Spirit Company ... 9 July, 1888 70,536 Shoreham Portland Cement ... 6 December, 1883 38,787 United Bacon Curing ... 14 November, 1889 Weston's Music Hall ... 26 November, 1886 70,000 Canadian (Direct) Meat Company ... 21 November, 1889 121,008 Landed Estates Agency 29 December, 1885 52,260 Mortgage and Agency of Australasia j March, 7881 68,787 Universal Automatic Machine 17 September, 1887 90,000 New Zealand Agricultural 12 January, 1879 311,020 W T anser... 25 July, 1888 73,350 Hop Bitters 24 August, 1889 57,091 Bread Union ... 8 August, 1889 195,181 1,750,816 Wound up. g IDS. returned per .10 Share. Loss, ,10,250. 246 LAND I IN LIQUIDATION OR WINDING UP ORDER MADE 1890. Company. Formation. Capital issued. British and New Zealand Mortgage and Agency ... Manchester and County Property ... Mortgage and Agency of Australasia Property Investment of Scotland Uruguay Pastoral Staffordshire Gas and Coke ... 4 November, 1881 1874 i March, 1881 1875 1 8 January, 1864 29 May, 1889 342,S22 59,659 68,787 60,000 64,000 49,170 644,438 Thus the last-named sets of companies, commencing at page 244, which are in liquidation, or have been wound up, show a total amount of capital issued of no less than about five and a half millions sterling. In 1882 as many as thirty-three companies connected with electric lighting were offered to the public some few had appeared previously in 1878, 1880, and 1881 representing a nominal capital of .14,168,000; the amount to be taken in cash or shares by vendors amounted to ,2,980,100. In 1883 the amount of capital issued was over three millions and a half, which would be that subscribed by the public. Thirteen companies were in liquidation by 1884, an d twenty-three by 1887. The above ^3,500,000 represents an early stage of the movement, and later calls must have considerably enlarged this sum, the greater part of which was entirely lost to the public, for one company had to write off ,5 per share, representing a loss to the public of 400,000. The Morgan Geld Mining Company was constructed in 1888, with a capital of ,210,000 ,140,000 was taken by the public; later, a further issue of 90,000 ,1 shares was made ; 45,000 were taken by the shareholders at 6s. 8d. per share, ,15,000. The company was recently reconstructed, and 140,000 shares were allotted ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 247 to shareholders at 55. each, with is. credited as paid. The loss to the public in this company nearly reaches ,150,000. The Prairie Cattle Company, Limited, was formed in 1880, and in June, 1890, just ten years after, from a capital of ,441,082, had to write off as lost ,274,649. The Hansard Publishing Union was formed in 1889, the capital to be 375,000. In August, to purchase new business, the capital was increased to ,500,000, and in August, 1890, capital was increased to .1,000,000. How much was taken by the public was never stated, but no doubt considerably more than half. A receiver was appointed in February, 1891, and a winding-up order has since been made. The businesses which were con- solidated have been sold or are being sold in most cases at a price much lower than that paid by the Union, and it seems that small will be the amount (if any) per share that is likely to be returned to the shareholders. The City of Glasgow Bank stopped October 2nd, 1878, the excess of liabilities, according to the Investigator's Report, was ^5,190, 98 3. The capital of the bank was ; i, 000,000, which was entirely lost, and a call of ,500 per 100 share was made representing another ,5,000,000. In consequence of the Caledonian Bank- ing Company holding 430 stock of the City of Glasgow Bank, it also stopped payment on the 4th December. In the same year, on December 9th, the West of England and South Wales District Bank stopped payment owing to extensive losses on advances in South Wales. The paid-up capital was 750,000, the reserve was 157,000, the calls on 50,000 shares amounted to 14 per share, a further loss on the paid-up capital of 700,000. 248 LAND I The Oriental Bank Corporation stopped payment in 1884, and went into liquidation. Its capital was ^1,500,000 in ,25 shares, and the liability of the shareholders was ,25 per share beyond. The Bank of New Zealand, in October, 1888, had to reduce its capital, and wrote off i 155. per share on 100,000 shares, and 2 los. per share on 50,000 shares, a total reduction of ,300,000. The English Bank of River Plate stopped payment in July, 1891. The called-up capital is ,750,000, and liability ,10 per share, equal to another ,750,000. The foregoing tables representing the depreciation in value of many marketable securities quoted in the London Official List could have been extended indefinitely had only slight variations been taken. As regards the brewery section, it is noticeable that the whole depreciation has taken place in five years. Allsopps was so great a favourite that prospectuses could hardly be obtained, and the shares went quickly to a premium; now, in February, 1892, only half the pre- ference dividend can be paid. The American breweries were offered to the public during 1889 and 1890, and their future prospects highly extolled in the prospectuses some of them have already ceased to be dividend-paying properties. The Press warned the public of these concerns, but the specious promises made were believed in, and shares bought. The same may be said of the financial true companies. The list of companies wound up could have been very largely increased, but for the fact that so many of them die shortly after being floated, so that little information is obtainable. In order to convey some clearer idea to the minds of my readers of the misery which results to the public ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 249 through these Stock Exchange properties. I will recall some utterances of the Press in reference to the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank, which I collected and used at the time of its collapse. To show the sudden and tremendous depreciation of value, it is sufficient to remark that a few weeks before its doors were closed, the shareholders believed that the then market value of their ^100 shares was ^240 each, but when the crisis came, they knew that they had not only lost the ^240, but were liable for about ^500 per share besides. The Times of October 2ist, 1878, said : " This is not a mere case of directors lending money on insufficient security and then throwing away more and more in the false hope of getting back what was irrecoverably lost. Those who were responsible for the periodical balance sheet of the City of Glasgow Bank went far beyond the common temptation of reckoning as good what ought to have been abandoned as hopelessly bad debts; they seem to have invented securities which never had an existence, and to have suppressed liabilities that were only too real. They even went the length of making a false return of the coin and bullion kept on hand against the notes they issued. The accountants report that since the commencement of this year it has been the habit to add to the weekly return of bullion made to Government an imaginary sum, less or more, according to the emergencies of the period fluctuating weekly until it reached ^300,000. The additions thus made are openly and regularly entered in the circulation ledger in smaller figures over the amount of gold really in hand in Glasgow. The reckless audacity of this conduct marks the crown of a long period of deception. . . ." " Putting the loss at six millions, the belief is, that not one-fourth of the shareholders will be able to meet the first call made upon them, and the amount of misery that will result cannot be estimated. . . ." " In this case the first call made is likely to be at least ^500 per share, and it looks extremely improbable that s w iU be enough. For the majority of the shareholders that means absolute ruin. A great number will fail to pay the call in full. Some cannot pay it at all, and the consequence will be heavy drafts upon the residue v:ho are rich. These drafts will paralyze business, weaken credit, and prove a source of misery to Scotland for years to come." 250 LAND : The Daily News of October loth has the following: " Some sadly interesting facts and figures are obtained by analysing the list of partners of the unfortunate establishments. In Glasgow and the immediate suburbs there are, out of a total of 1272 registered partners, 292 shareholders, who are possessed of, including \$ 3, 5 36 in the bank's own name, 439, 240 stock. Unfortunate trustees and executors are many, numbering no fewer than 184, and the amount of stock for which they are responsible is ^132, 822, while there are 31 holding over ^1000. There are 25 widows, having .8376 stock, which with the exception of one lot of/'2ioo is mostly in fioo holdings. Clergymen are represented to the extent of 33 proprietors and their proportion reaches ^19,970 stock, the highest being 4000. Altogether there are 360 women registered in the last list, and the total amount of stock opposite their names is ^103,560; there are only 95 shareholders having under /"ioo stock; over that amount and not exceeding/ 1000, 240." And in the same paper of October I2th : " Heartrending incidents are told of the poorer partners in the lapsed bank. Widows have had iheir all lost in the sunken ship, and small shopkeepers who had invested in the stock for iheir old age are almost paupers. Doctors had almost retired from practice because they thought they had a competency in the interest of their stock, but have now in their advanced years to resume active practice. Ruin, if not absolute beggary, is the only prospect of many, and it is for them that substantial assistance must be given" Again in the same paper of October 1 5th : "It appears that this bank had in connection with their Glasgow cross branch a savings bank with no fewer than 699 depositors, con- sisting principally of working-class people residing in the east-end of the city." And in the same paper of October i6th : " All who have held shares within a year before the commencement of the winding-up are liable to be called upon to contribute to deficiencies existing at the time their names were taken off the books." The Times of October iQth : " The sum of the whole matter is that the bank has lost on a moderate, and probably favourable estimate, 6,200,000, i.e., the whole ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 251 of the paid-up capital and reserve funds, together with fully ^"5,000,000 besides. " That is a most disastrous statement for the unhappy shareholders, and we need hardly say that a loss of such magnitude could never have fallen on them but for reckless mismanagement to begin with, and deliberate and long continued fraud practised to hide that mismanage- ment. The story set forth in the report now published is one of the most disgraceful in the history of banking. Accounts have been deliberately falsified, securities entered at fictitious values, bad debts taken as good assets, and the very gold, which ought to have been held under the Act of 1845 against the note issue, deliberately squandered to the extent of over ^300,000.' The Government has been deceived by false returns, the shareholder by * cooked ' balance- sheets, and everything done, in short, that a perverse ingenuity could think of to conceal the bankrupt condition of the bank until it became a national calamity." The Times of October 23rd has a report of the meeting of shareholders, held in the City Hall, Glasgow, on the 22nd. In Mr. Robert Young's speech, I notice the following : " Why, sir ! it is hardly possible to speak quietly with reference to such tremendous defalcations. That sum of $, 000,000 we, the shareholders, are now called upon to make good. What the ultimate result may be I cannot tell. The deficiency is overwhelming, and the prospect appalling. It means to many very many of the shareholders ruin and misery, and to all poverty, privation and suffering; our money, perhaps our all, we must lose." * * * * * " We have believed in reports and balance-sheets which have been false, fictitious, and misleading ; but we hope, although we have lost money, we have not yet lost our personal honour." As regards the West of England and South Wales Bank, which failed soon after the City of Glasgow Bank, the Daily Telegraph said : " Such a calamity happening to a bank having its branches in nearly every district, agricultural and commercial, throughout the West of England and South Wales, must entail much suffering and, in some cases, utter ruin to hundreds of families, and by no one will the disaster 252 LAND : be more acutely felt than by the class of shareholders coming under the head of widows and spinsters, of whom there are between 700 and 800 on the share list, which also includes 403 tradesmen, 143 professional men, 449 gentlemen, 144 farmers and yeomen, 32 clerks, 41 merchants, 30 bankers, 27 clergymen, 19 schoolmasters, 27 butlers and valets, and five labourers." The Caledonian Bank was brought to ruin by the fall of the City of Glasgow Bank it had four shares in the City of Glasgow Bank registered in its own name, and as the shares were unlimited the liability crushed it. About this period a report was issued of the evidence taken before a Royal Commission on the Stock Exchange in which it was shown that the total of loans to foreign States taken in London amounted to ^614,228,300. Of these loans all obligations were fulfilled only on ^81,828,500 ; on ^175,160,100 there was a partial default and on ^157,239,700 there was a total default or about 54- 1 1 per cent, of the whole amount. A total loss on foreign loans of 1 5 7 J millions sterling / ! ! Sudden ruin, homes wrecked, helpless women and orphans driven to face the world with empty pockets; aged gentlemen and gentlewomen having to abandon their comfortable homes and end their days as paupers in workhouses, are facts which should make men reflect. A Scotch newspaper published a poem on the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank, in which was the following verse : " Pity us, God ! Must our little things go ? All even our mother's things cherished with care ? Must we leave the old home the one home that we know ? But not for the Poorhouse O surely not there ? Could they not wait a while ? We will not keep them long We could live on so little, too, cheerful and brave, But to leave the old house, where old memories throng, For the Poorhouse ! O rather the peace of the grave ! Pity us, pity, O God ! " ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 253 The mass of facts this chapter records should cause capitalists to pause before they put all their money into Stock Exchange securities. They should remember that for .-t least a portion of their wealth, investments in broad acres should be made, because if giving a little more trouble they are tangible and in the long run safe, con- sidering the increasing commerce, wealth and population of the limited area forming Great Britain. C. F. DOWSETT. 254 LAND : CHAPTER XXVIII. LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS. (No. i.) BY E. J. GIBBS, M.A. THE course of events during the past year should provide once more a serious warning to investors who are inclined to neglect real property, and to devote themselves entirely to purchases on the Stock Exchange. I propose to show in this paper how heavy and disastrous has been the recent fall in many of the securities usually quoted, including stocks and the shares in limited companies. For this purpose I compare the prices of 3Oth June, 1890 and 3oth June, 1891 the last complete half-year before the writing of this paper and I afterwards add some notice of the great losses in Foreign Stocks during the last quarter of a century. Let us take first Foreign Stocks for the year ending 30th June, 1891. Name of the Country and Stock. Nominal Rate of Interest. Price 3