Of course they run into one another. But upon the whole we think they fairly represent the broader and more generic varieties of agricultural life. We will now, however, beg our readers to bear in mind that our remaining remarks must be understood upon the whole as applicable rather to the lastmentioned variety of the species than to the two former. Not but what, of course, they will have occasional reference to the entire class; but naturally the higher you ascend in the scale, the more does the farmer come to share in the attributes of a much larger segment of the social circle, and the less to be conspicuous for special humours and peculiarities.

It is often supposed that a country life is more favourable to the humanities than a town life: that it exercises more effectively the imaginative and contemplative faculties, and supplies healthier food to the generous qualities of our nature. This proposition as a whole we are not about to call in question. We would only remark that, in order to receive the full benefit which it ascribes to the spiritual atmosphere of a country life, a man must have a mind so constituted as to be able to absorb and assimilate it. Probably few men are quite destitute of the capacity to do this. But we believe that some are; and also that some occupations more than others are calculated as it were to close up our moral pores, and so to neutralize the operation of those external influences by which our neighbours are affected. Now it is obvious that a farmer's labours having a constant tendency to fix his attention upon the productive and lucrative aspects of the land he lives in, are so far calculated to blind his eyes to any other, and so to deaden his perception of that moral music which copse and hedgerow, meadow and corn-field, the stately elms and the lazy brook, are assumed by our present hypothesis to be capable of expressing. It is a curious circumstance, but it is nevertheless quite true, that it is commoner to hear the beauties of the country spoken of in an appreciative tone by a day-labourer than by a regular farmer. The farmer, no doubt, does imbibe a certain amount of wholesome influence from the scenes in which his life is passed; but the process is continually retarded, and the effects impaired, by the nature of his daily occupations. Just as we are often told that it is a very bad plan to teach children to read out of the Bible, because, by regarding it as a taskbook, they lose not only reverence for its character, but also the power of appreciating in after life its great beauties; and just as Byron could never come to like Horace because he had been made to work at it as a text of scholarship, so the man absorbed in utilizing nature is more or less cut off from the point of view which reveals her best beauties. We must, therefore, be prepared to modify very much that estimate of agricultural character which is founded upon the softening and humanizing influences to which it is necessarily exposed.

It is likewise to be remembered that in farming there is less speculation than in other trades. By speculation we do not exactly mean gambling, but those wider possibilities both of expansion and invention, which belong to commerce, A new country opened up, a new process

or a new manufacture discovered, may make the fortunes of millions. Every man engaged in trade in ever so small a way has these possibilities before him. As every French private was said to carry a marshal's bâton in his knapsack, so, without much strain upon reality, may every little shopkeeper in England be said to carry in his pocket the chance of becoming a millionnaire. That the spirit which is thus engendered in commercial men does often lead to ill results may be true enough, but still it undoubtedly tends to enlarge the mind, and to make it capable of taking in a longer chain of cause and effect. It warms the imagination, and habituates merchants of the higher class to look forward to remote results, and to see great events in their beginnings. But the farmer, in spite of all that chemistry and machinery have done for him, is still much of the terræ filius.

Agricola incurvo terram dimovit aratro,

Hic anni labor.

He passes the year in the same round of toil. And partly, perhaps, from the regularity and rapidity with which immediate visible results follow upon all that he does, partly from the intensely real nature of his cccupations, he acquires that strong cui bono turn of mind to which we have already referred, but from which, oddly enough, he is often supposed to enjoy some special immunity. We believe there is no class of men more thoroughly utilitarian in many points of view than farmers are, and were it not that this spirit is neutralized by another one presently to be Lentioned, very curious changes might occur in the present state of rural politics. This sentiment colours all their ideas of religion and government, and often manifests itself in the most quaint and unexpected shapes. We recollect a little while ago hearing a farmer, probably above the average of his class in general intelligence, observe that in his opinion England ought to go to war at certain intervals, whether provoked to it or not. And what does the reader suppose was his reason for this way of thinking? It was not because war kept alive the martial spirit of the country, or caused us to be respected by other nations, or might make fresh conquests and colonies. Not at all; but simply because we had an army: which to pay, clothe, and feed without using seemed to him an absurdity. It was, then, in stable language, eating its head off: a process which was just as aggravating in the case of armies as of horses. Clearly it should be the wish of every true patriot that the frost of peace should break up after a time, and the soldier be saddled for the field to do something in return for his rations. Another still more striking example of the same tone of mind we remember to have witnessed during one of the two or three hard winters which followed each other in succession some few years ago. The hard frost had broken up with unusual suddenness, and a heavy flood had risen in less than four-and-twenty hours along the lowlying meadow country, where the scene of our anecdote is placed. Being out for a "constitutional" about four o'clock on a dismal January afternoon, we suddenly, on turning a corner, came upon the bulky figure of a man

clad in a large drab uppercoat, and leaning on the gate which opened into a small meadow now entirely under water. The man's countenance was indicative of great dissatisfaction: but there was something more than mere dissatisfaction visible on his broad red face. A look of vacant perplexity, a sort of struggling wish to interrogate the universe in general as to the meaning of its present phenomena, arrested our attention at once. We soon learned the cause of his bewilderment. He had, it appeared, for some months previously been putting out some sheep to graze at a village about ten miles off, not having room for them on his own farm. The day before the flood began he had brought them all the way home for the express purpose of quartering them in this particular meadow. They had hardly been turned in when it became necessary to bring them out again. This disposition of events our farmer professed himself wholly at a loss to interpret. "It seems so hod," he said more than once with the air of a deeply injured man. What was the use of this flood coming at that particular moment? It could serve no good end that he could And although he did not go so far as to assert openly that it was a special visitation on himself, his mind being incapable of coming to any such definite conclusion without much greater labour than he had yet expended on the subject; yet one could see that by reason of his inability to perceive its immediate purpose, some such half-formed thoughts were working uneasily in his brain, and that he was unconsciously asking himself whether, after all, it was possible that such things could be; and that a dead set was sometimes made against individuals by those mysterious and occult forces which were what people meant, he supposed, by nature, providence, or fate. The contemplation of this problem was evidently too much for him; his tea-time had arrived, we knew; but yet he stirred not; and we left him still gazing moodily over the dreary cold expanse of water which had marred in this inexplicable way his pastoral arrangements.

see.

We have said that the utilitarian and materialistic spirit which is characteristic of farmers is counteracted by another and still more deeply rooted sentiment, which prevents the former one from having much effect upon their conduct. We mean that strong natural conservatism which, in the absence of exceptional causes, is always to be found in farmers. The immutability of the operations of nature, the certain. recurrence of the seasons, the very permanence and stability of all the objects round about them, generate a moral habit which shrinks from any kind of change, and disposes men to rest in confidence under the shadow of immemorial traditions. With the dweller in towns, at all events in these latter days, everything, on the contrary, is undergoing perpetual transformation. The street in which he played as a boy is pulled down before he grows into a man. Old landmarks disappear in all directions. New churches, shops, and hotels rise almost "like exhalations." Everything around him breathes of progress, invention, expectation, and the greatness of what is to be. The farmer, on the other hand, still sees through every stage of life the same objects which saluted him in his

infancy. The old hills which looked down upon his birth attend him to his grave. The old foot-path over the brook, and across the pasture, and through the beans; the row of old trees with the half-dozen rooks' nests at the top; the very shape of each separate field, and the turns and twists of every hedge; remain as they have been for centuries, and are likely to be for centuries more. All breathe of repose, antiquity, immobility, and the sanctity of what is. The influence of this atmosphere (not to be confounded, be it remembered, with its aesthetic influences) shows itself upon the farmer in the growth of a lazy but still approving acquiescence in all existing institutions, and is strong enough to contend successfully with the rival element of his character which we have already described. He supposes that they're all right. Things in general, it strikes him, seem meant to last a long time: why not the Church, the Queen, and the House of Lords? Even the dissenting farmer is seldom inspired by any hostility towards the Church. Here and there, of course, he may be goaded by an injudicious parson into open war against her claims. But otherwise his dissent is only the bequest of former times, to which he adheres from habit, but without the slightest ill-feeling towards the Church, her ministers, her offices, or her rates.

Another cause of agricultural conservatism is rather negative than positive; we mean the comparative absence of those petty social jealousies which prevail so much in large towns. It never enters into the farmer's head that he ought to associate on equal terms with the squire or the clergyman. A great number of farmers still always go to the back-door, if they have occasion to call at either house. In this respect they are perfectly unassuming; but, at the same time, perfectly free from anything like servility or cringeing. In fact, it is probable that their own selfrespect is much better preserved by this course of conduct than by pushing their way into drawing-rooms, where even the best of them are not exactly ornamental. When the smart young tenant, in his turn-down collar, red scarf, and large pin, begins to talk upon professional subjects, such as stock, breeding, manure, and the like topics of elegant conversation, his remarks very often show more science than delicacy.

Farmers, however, on the whole, are, to use the slang language of the day, an eminently "good sort." Taken as a class, you find less affectation, less vulgarity-in a word, less snobbishness-among them than perhaps among any other one class of the community. In book knowledge they are certainly inferior, and their minds no doubt move more sluggishly than those of the inhabitants of cities. But, after all, if we exclude a very small circle, how much of the enjoyment of life consists either of literature or of keen intellectual contests? The farmer generally has good sense, good nature, and is always hospitable. He is not usually the kind. of man one would care to travel with to Rome or Athens. But in his own house or his own fields he is often a capital companion, and always an unexceptionable host.

173

Foreign Actors and the English Drama.

THAT our drama is extinct as literature, and our stage is in a deplorable condition of decline, no one will venture to dispute; but there are two opinions as to whether a revival is possible, or even probable, and various opinions as to the avenues through which such a revival may be approached. There are three obvious facts which may be urged against the suggestions of hope: these are, the gradual cessation of all attempts at serious dramatic literature, and their replacement by translations from the French or adaptations from novels; the slow extinction of provincial theatres, which formed a school for the rearing of actors; and, finally, the accident of genius on our stage being unhappily rarer than ever. In the face of these undeniable facts, the hopeful are entitled to advance facts of equal importance on their side. Never in the history of our stage were such magnificent rewards within the easy grasp of talent; never were there such multitudes to welcome good acting. Only let the dramatist, or the actor, appear, and not London alone but all England, not England alone but all Europe, will soon resound with his name. Dramatic literature may be extinct, but the dramatic instinct is ineradicable. The stage may be in a deplorable condition at present, but the delight in mimic representation is primal and indestructible. Thus it is that, in spite of people on all sides declaring that "they have ceased to go to the theatre," no sooner does an actor arise who is at all above the line, no sooner does a piece appear that has any special source of attraction, than the public flock to the theatre as it never flocked in what are called "the palmy days" of the drama. Fechter could play Hamlet for seventy consecutive nights: which to Garrick, Kemble, or Edmund Kean would have sounded like the wildest hyperbole; and the greatest success of Liston and Matthews seems insignificant beside the success of Lord Dundreary. There is a ready answer to such facts conveyed in the sneer at public taste, and the assertion that all intelligence has departed, leaving only a vulgar craving for "sensation pieces." It is a cheap sneer. There is a mistake respecting sensation pieces it is not because intelligence has departed, and there is no audience for better things, but simply because the numbers of pleasureseekers are so much increased; and at all times the bulk of the public has cared less for intelligence than for sensation, less for art than amusement. If intelligent people now go to witness inferior pieces, it is because better things are not produced; and sensation pieces, although appealing to the lowest faculties, do appeal to them effectively. If there are crowds to see the Colleen Bawn and the Duke's Motto, it is because these pieces are really good of their kind; the kind may be a low kind; but will any