act of parliament, for the divorced parties are at liberty to marry again. Your correspondent L. M. wishes to be informed by what description of persons Gretna Green marriages are solemnized. The Mr. Lang who was lately exhibited in Westminster Hall is a very fair sample; but for more copious information I must refer him to Mr. Pennant's Tour in Scotland. To the account he will find there the most careful enquiry on the spot would add nothing. I am inclined to think that L. M.'s company, "who seemed well informed on the subject," were incorrect in asserting "that in these Scotch borders many a poor but regular clergyman was found obliged to add to his scanty pittance by feeding hogs, like parson Trulliber, or hammering on the anvil, in the humble capacity of a blacksmith and farrier;" but if there are any such, they must be on the English side, and of English ordination, for the kirk of Scotland ordains no clergyman till he is presented to a living, and there is no benefice in Scotland so poor as not to afford the means of that respectable appearance which becomes the priesthood. I have never known an instance of a Scotch minister exercising a handicraft profession: and although many, I believe all of them in the country parishes, farm a few acres in addition to their glebe, I will venture to assert, that in the whole of that respectable body, "Frae Maidenkirk to John-a-Groat's," there is not a parson Trulliber to be found. Soho. Your's, &c. TOXOPHILES. We have received another Letter on the same subject, the information in which so nearly corresponds with that of the preceding, (first received) that we deem it superfluous to insert both. The second writer still more warmly refutes the supposition of the solemnizers of Gretna Green marriages being clergymen of the church of Scotland, which, indeed, we are fully convinced to be a mistaken notion. Editor. For the Athenæum. ON THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY IN DEVONSHIRE. [From Notes of a North-of-England Farmer.} ALMOST the whole class of workmen here are merely day-labourers; though, lately considerable farmers have begun to let cottages only on what they call "covenant;" that is, binding the cottager to the service of the farmer. Where this does not take place, the relation of master and servant is very lax; there is, consequently, little interest excited in the servant, and little kindness in the master; the connection being only for the day, the labourer endeavours to get it over as easily, and the master as profitably as he can. Each is jealous of the other, and ready to take, when he can, the advantage which which is sometimes taken of him. This extends itself not only to the article of labour, but seems to generate a general spirit of unkindness and want of confidence between the different ranks; and such a disposition is exasperated by the extreme poverty of the labouring class, which, exposing them to much temptation, exposes their superiors to depredations, increasing the irritability of both. The scarcity of fuel is another subject of temptation daily occurring and daily yielded to. This want being general, so also is the practice of illicitly supplying it; and each being countenanced by all, there is a general laxity of principle with regard to what is called common honesty, which almost wholly destroys that self-respect and proper pride of character that distinguishes the peasantry of the North. But the grand cause is abject poverty, and of this, I think, one great source is the habit of beer or cyder being considered so much a necessary to a labouring man, that the winter through he consumes daily about sixpence worth of beer, which his master is obliged to furnish as part of his wages; and we know how much a subduction of sixpence a day would diminish the superior comforts of a North-country cottage. Even in summer and harvest the principal addition to the wages is made in the article of liquor, sometimes even amounting to five quarts a day. So that instead of a family having their harvest (as our work-people express it) at the same time with their masters, the year to them is without a harvest, and plenty only known to the individual who swills it all into his own maw. What adds to the evil too is, that most of the work is performed by the men, the women sitting at home as in winter, which, especially in so rainy a climate, must be a great loss to the community as well as to the labouring class. The depressed state of that class consequent to this system is most uncomfortable to witness. Their manners are servile, from a consciousness of dependence, while their dispositions are sulky, from the irritability of want. These two qualities in them have generated in their superiors a most unpleasant arrogance and harshness. A man of fortune, for instance, though perhaps warm hearted and good tempered, will seldom speak in a pleasant tone to a servant; and a gentleman will strike a peasant, and think he is only exercising proper discipline; nor does the peasant think very differently; probably all his observation would be, "Sure the 'squire is a very hot man!" If This, too, is not in consequence of any immediate connexion between the parties producing contemptuous familiarity on one part and patient forbearance on the other, but the mere relation of ranks. a country gentleman were riding on the road, and a peasant were negligent in not giving way, the horse-whip or cane would be directly applied, without any other knowledge or authority than that he who applied it had a fine coat on, and he to whom it was applied had a shabby one. In the North, the blow would be returned with interest, and the gentleman thought by his equals to have been properly served 1 served. But here the peasantry are educated to it; for the system of compulsatory apprenticing is here carried into full execution. When a child is seven years old, the parish take it from the parents, and bind it to what service the wisdom of the churchwardens may direct. One might suppose, those bound to agriculture would have the most tolerable servitude of any: if so, bad indeed is the best. The boy, knowing his master is bound to keep him, has no object but that of making his place as easy as he can, and does therefore nothing but when driven to begin, and watched through every part of the execution. The master, too, receives him perhaps with as much reluctance as the boy feels in coming to him, for it is optional in neither. The discipline, therefore, is as harsh as the disposition of the boy is perverse; both parties are previously prepared to hate and be hated. The boy has perpetually heard his parents say, "it is of no use taking pains with that lad, for he will be taken from us at seven, and made some stranger's drudge, to be knocked about for anybody's use but ours." And the masters, knowing the general dispositions with which these boys come, and the plague they are to expect from them, effectually prevent these unhappy expectations being contradicted, by am unfeelingness exactly calculated to realize them. These evils, common to all systems of compulsatory apprenticing, are here exasperated by the unequal manner in which the imposition of apprentices is proportioned to the actual value of the land; for the number imposed on any estate is regulated by an old assessment, which, though now glaringly unjust, the magistracy do not exert themselves to correct; probably they may fear a general new valuation, leading to discoveries still more unpleasant; so" rather bear the ills they have, than fly to others that they know not of." The best remedies for the degraded state of the peasantry here noticed, can only be applied by persons of local knowledge. To a stranger, the most obvious means appear to be the abolition of compulsatory apprenticing; the substitution of money for liquor in wages; the endeavouring to draw women out to agricultural employments; and the encouraging the growth of wood, or other means of supplying fuel. MR. SEYMOUR'S REPLY TO C. A. E. ON SHAKSPEARE. Sir, TO your justice as well as to your critical discernment I appeal, in answer to some observations signed G. A. E. which I have just read, in your last number, referring to my Notes upon Shakspeare. If "the spirit of conjectural and emendatory criticism should be jealously watched by the guardians of the public taste," (a position, to the truth of which I readily assent) it is no less incumbent on those guardians to discountenance, as well the wantonness of cavil as the extravagance of encomium, and to require on either side of any question question at least a candid and intelligent examination of the subject. I am at once roundly accused by this writer of "throwing the merciless tomahawk," and practising on Shakspeare such "wild work" as Bentley once committed upon Milton. Now, Sir, if C. A. E. had condescended to read the introduction, explanatory of my design, he would have found me condemning, as much as he can, this wild work, and expressly deprecating the imputation of it on myself, by stating the essential and vast difference that exists between the two Poets, and the conditions in which their pages have been delivered down to us. With an authentic uncontaminated text before him, avowed, corrected with minute accuracy, and published by the author himself, Doctor Bentley chose to indulge his boundless caprice in sacrilegiously expunging what Milton did write, and in dictating what, according to the Doctor's opinion, he ought to have written. Of Shakspeare's productions, on the other hand, it is well known that not a genuine copy of any one play is in existence, and it is equally notorious that they were all consigned by the carelessness of the Poet to the unchecked licence of the players, and to the frauds and avarice of pirating publishers; yet even under these circumstances I have never presumed to disturb the text, such as it is, but humbly in the margin submitted my conjectures and my reasons to the judgment of the reader. With respect to the general prosody, I must, notwithstanding the opposition of C. A. E. be still persuaded, that when Shakspeare chose to write in metre, he knew how to do it, not only much better, but with more facility than any of his competitors; and therefore I repeat, that as often as a line of uncouth formation appears, I am apt to think it has been corrupted or interpolated; but upon this point, which is merely opinion, I have not been fairly dealt with by C. A. E. who, to indulge his humour, has not only perverted my argument, but misquoted my expressions. I never advanced, that an English heroic line, especially a dramatic one, should be always confined to ten syllables; on the contrary, I have distinctly observed, that not only our dramatic verse is improved by a discreet use of the redundant or dissyllabic ending, but that both the dramatic and the epic verse derives abundant grace from its being not too frequently extended to eleven, twelve, and even more syllables, by the aid of accent and conspiring vowels, as Milton and Shakspeare both sufficiently exemplify. This legitimate licence, however, (confined still within the measure of five feet) is widely different from the clumsy and intolerable excesses which we often find in the compositions of most of our dramatist's contemporaries; and whatever C. A. E. may have intended to prove by what he calls "the example of Garrick, and that actor's having banished the technical sounds of measured numbers as far as it be possible," I can by no means admit that "the laws of metre are of little importance in our drama." If it be only meant that a serious drama inay be written in prose, no one who is acquainted with George Barnwell or the Gamester can contradict the assertion; but in application to a poet who writes in verse, that the laws of metre are to be disregarded, is a position that I am not prepared to acknow ledge. ledge. But G. A. E. exclaims, "cold and tasteless is the judgment which can read with Mr. Seymour," instead of "Tis commendable in thy nature Hamlet, "Tis sweet and commendable in thy nature Hamlet, and yet this cold and tasteless spirit is certainly not applicable to me as stated in the present instance, for my supposition was only that the Poet, correcting his own verse, which might originally have been "Tis commendable in your nature Hamlet, had introduced the word sweet, intending at the same time to exclude the word nature, so that the verse would have been, "Tis sweet and commendable in you Hamlet. To the fortunate selection of this line in Othello, Abus'd her delicate youth with drugs and minerals, (from which I supposed the Poet would have withdrawn the word delicate) and the expedient to compress it all into a current verse, I willingly yield to C. A. E. the utmost applause he can gain by it; though I must at the same time entirely disclaim the honour which he is pleased to assign to me, while he cries out against "a busy and wanton intermeddling with the text" in this passage of Macbeth Now o'er half the world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep, now witchcraft celebrates It had been proposed to read here, instead of sleep, sleeper, and to We'll hear ourselves again, Upon the we are told by C. A. E. that ourselves is the kingly assumption of myself. This, I confess, I was by no means apprized of, although ourself in that sense is common enough, and I must lament that one instance at least has not been produced to support the assertion. In the hope that I have not trespassed too far on your patience, I conclude, Sir, very respectfully, |