The sceptre of his sway: his country's name, For tens of thousands, uninformed as he?* * Who would believe it, that such is the profound ignorance amongst the peasantry even of the Cumberland hills--amongst that peasantry where Wordsworth himself has found his Michaels, his Matthews, and many another man and woman that in his hands have become classical and enduring specimens of rustic heart and mind, that such facts as the following could occur, and yet this did occur there not very long ago. The "statesmen," that is, small proprietors there, are a people very little susceptible of religious excitement; and we may believe, have in past years, been very much neglected by their natural instructors. You hear of no "revivals" amongst them, and the Methodists have little success amongst them. Some person, speaking with the wife of one of these "statesmen" on religious subjects, found that she had not even heard of such a person as Jesus Christ! Astonished at the discovery, he began to tell her of his history; of his coming to save the world, and of his being put to death. Having listened to all this very attentively, she inquired where this occurred; and that being answered, she asked, "and when was it?" this being also told her, she very gravely observed—" Well, its sae far off, and sae lang since, we'll fain believe that it isna true!" 165 CHAPTER IV. THE BONDAGE SYSTEM OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND. A person from the south or midland counties of England journeying northward, is struck when he enters Durham, or Northumberland, with the sight of bands of women working in the fields under the surveillance of one man. One or two such bands, of from half a dozen to a dozen women, generally young, might be passed over; but when they recur again and again, and you observe them wherever you go, they become a marked feature of the agricultural system of the country, and you naturally inquire how it is, that such regular bands of female labourers prevail there. The answer, in the provincial tongue, is—“O they are the Bone-ditches," i. e. Bondages. Bondages! that is an odd sound, you think, in England. What have we bondage, a rural serfdom, still existing in free and fair England? Even so. The thing is astounding enough, but it is a fact. As I cast my eyes for the first time on these female bands in the fields, working under their drivers, I was, before making any inquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the slave-gangs of the West Indies: turnip-hoeing, somehow, associated itself strangely in my brain with sugar-cane dressing; but when I heard these women called Bondages, the association became tenfold strong. On all the large estates in these counties, and in the south of Scotland, the bondage system prevails. No married labourer is permitted to dwell on these estates unless he enters into bond to comply with this system. These labourers are termed hinds. Small houses are built for them on the farms, and on some of the estates -as those of the Duke of Northumberland-all these cottages are numbered, and the number is painted on the door. A hind, therefore, engaging to work on one of the farms belonging to the estate, has a house assigned him. He has 4l. a year in money; the keep of a cow; his fuel found him; a prescribed quantity of coal, wood, or peat to each cottage; he is allowed to plant a certain quantity of land with potatoes; and has thirteen boles of corn furnished him for his family consumption; one-third being oats, one-third barley, and one-third peas. In return for these advantages, he is bound to give his labour the year round, and also to furnish a woman labourer at Is. per day, during harvest, and 8d. per day for the rest of the year. Now it appears, at once, that this is no hereditary serfdom-such a thing could not exist in this country; but it is the next thing to it, and no doubt has descended from it; being serfdom in its mitigated form, in which alone modern notions and feelings would tolerate it. It may even be said that it is a voluntary system; that it is merely married hinds doing that which unmarried farm servants do everywhere else-hire themselves on certain conditions from year to year. The great question is, whether these conditions are just, and favourable to the social and moral improvement of the labouring class. Whether, indeed, it be quite of so voluntary a nature as, at first sight, appears; whether it be favourable to the onward movement of the community in knowledge, virtue, and active and enterprising habits. These are questions which concern the public; and these I shall endeavour to answer in that candid and dispassionate spirit which public good requires. In the first place, then, it is only just to say that their cottages, though they vary a good deal on different estates, are in themselves, in some cases, not bad. Indeed, some of those which we entered on the estates of the Duke of Northumberland, were much more comfortable than labourers' cottages often are. Each has its number painted on the door, within a crescent, the crest of the Northumberland family; and though this has a look rather savouring too much of a badge of servitude, yet within, many of them are very comfortable. They are all built pretty much on one principle, and that very different to the labourers' houses of the south. They are copied, in fact, from the Scotch cottages. They are of one On one side, is on one hand, and a story, and generally of one room. the fire-place, with an oven boiler on the other; on the opposite side of the cottage, is the great partition for the beds, which are two in number, with sliding doors or curtains. The ceiling is formed by poles nailed across from one side. of the roof to the other, about half a yard above where it begins to slope, and covered with matting. From the matting to the wall, the slope is covered. with a piece of chintz in the best cottages; in others, with some showy calico print, with ordinary wall paper, or even with paper daubed with various colours and patterns. This is the regular style of the hind's cottage; varying in neatness and comfort, it must be confessed, however, from one another by many degrees. Many are very naked, dirty, and squalid. Where they happen to stand separate, on open heaths, and in glens of the hills, nature throws around them so much of wild freedom and picturesqueness as makes them very agreeable. The cottages of the shepherds are often very snug and curious. We went into the cottage of the herd of Middleton, at the foot of the Cheviots, an estate formerly belonging to Greenwich Hospital. This hut was of more than ordinary size, as it was required to accommodate several shepherds. The part of the house on your left as you entered was divided into two rooms. The one was a sort of entrance lobby, where stood the cheese-press, and the pails, and where hung up various shepherds' plaids, great coats, and strong shoes. In one place hung a mass of little caps with strings to them, ready to tie upon the sheeps' heads when they became galled by the fly in summer; in another were suspended wool-shears, and crooks. The other little room was the dairy, with the oddest assemblage of wooden quaighs or little pails imaginable. Over these rooms, a step-ladder led to an open attic in the roof, which formed at once the sleeping apartment of the shepherds, and a storeroom. Here were three or four beds, some of them woollen mattresses on rude stump bedsteads; others pieces of wicker-work, like the lower half of a potcrate cut off, about half a yard high, filled with straw, and a few blankets laid upon it. There were lots of |