The political economist generally reasons in straight lines. He will not turn aside to calculate the force of incidental circumstances; and yet, these incidental circumstances frequently alter a question entirely. For instance, a small farm may lie near a large town, and thereby furnish the tenant with a very lucrative trade in milk; and such incidental circumstances, owing to a location favourable for market, and other causes, frequently exist. Small farmers often pay attention to sources of profit nearly, if not altogether, overlooked by larger ones. Who does not know what sums are made by cottagers and small occupiers, of the produce of their gardens and orchards, by carefully looking after it, and some one of the family bringing it to market, and standing with it themselves; while the great farmer seldom looks very narrowly to the growth or preservation of either, and therefore incurs both badness of crop and waste; and if he sends it to market, he sends it to the huckster at a wholesale price, to save the annoyance of standing with it. Small concerns, having small establishments, and no dignity to support, nor other cares to divert the attention, find in these sole resources frequently an income itself nearly equal to their expenditure.

To determine questions of this kind there requires a close examination into all their bearings, and into the habits and feelings of those concerned. The truth of the matter, as regards the most profitable size of farms, and their general benefit to the public, seems to be, that there should be some of various sizes, that various degrees of capital and capacity of management may be accommodated; that there may be a chance for those beginning who have little to begin with, and

a chance of the active and enterprising rising, as activity and enterprise should. This seems the only system by which the healthful temperament of a community can be kept up; and that just equilibrium of interests, and that ascending scale of advantages maintained, by which not merely the wealth, but the real happiness of a state is promoted.

149

CHAPTER III.

FARM-SERVANTS.

The clown, the child of nature, without guile,
Blessed with an infant's ignorance of all
But his own simple pleasures; now and then

A wrestling match, a foot-race, or a fair.-Cowper.

We have in a preceding chapter, taken a view of the English farmer. We have seen him at market-in his fields, and in his house receiving his friends to a holiday feast. If we were to go to the farm-house on any other day, and at any season of the year, and survey the farmer and his men in their daily and ordinary course of life, we should always see something to interest us; and we should have to contemplate a mode of existence forming a strong contrast to that of townsmen; and, notwithstanding the innovation which the progress of modern habits has made on life in the country, still presenting a picture of simplicity, homeliness, and quiet which no other life retains. Thousands, indeed, looking into a farmhouse, surveying its furniture, the apparatus and supply of its table, the manners and the language of its inhabitants, would wonder where, after all, was the

vast change said to have taken place in the habits of the agricultural population. O! rude and antiquated enough in all conscience, are hundreds of our farmhouses and their inmates, in many an obscure district of merry England yet. The spots are not difficult to be found even now, where the old oak table, with legs as thick and black as those of an elephant, is spread in the homely house-place, for the farmer and his family-wife, children, servants, male and female; and is heaped with the rude plenty of beans and bacon, beef and cabbage, fried potatoes and bacon, huge puddings with "dip" as it is called, that is, sauce of flour, butter, and water boiled, sharpened with vinegar, or verjuice, and sweetened with brown sugar or more economical molasses-" dip," so called, no doubt, because all formerly dipped their morsel into it; a table where bread and cheese and beer, and good milk porridge and oatmeal porridge, or stirabout, still resist the introduction of tea and coffee and such trash, as the stout old husbandman terms it. Let no one say that modern language and modern habits have driven away the ancient rusticity, while such dialogues between the farmer and guest as the following may be heard-and such may yet be heard in the Peak of Derbyshire, where this really passed.

Farmer at table to his guest.-Ite mon, ite!

Guest.-Au have iten, mon. Au've iten till I'm weelly brussen.

Farmer. Then ite, and brust thee out mon: au wooden we hadden to brussen thee wee.*

This is the present genuine dialect of the Peak, and is nearly as pure Saxon. It is curious to see in the southern agricultural counties, how the old Saxon terms are worn out by a greater intercourse with London and towns-people, although the people themselves have

It is no rare sight to see the farmer himself, with his clouted shoon and his fustian coat, ribbed blue or black worsted stockings, and breeches of corduroy ; to see him arousing his household, at five o'clock of a morning, and his wife hurrying the servant-wenches, as they call them, from their beds, crying,—" Up, up, boulder-heads!" that is pebble-heads, or heavy-heads, and asking them if they mean to lie till the sun burns their eyes out; having them up to light fires, sweep the hearth, and get to milking, cheese-making, churning, and what not; while he gets his men and boys to their duties,-in winter, to fodder the horses and cows, and prepare for ploughing, or leading out manure ; to supply the "young beast,"-young cattle, in the straw-yard with food; to chop turnips, carrots, mangel-wurzel, cut hay, boil potatoes for feeding pigs or bullocks; thrash, winnow, or sack corn. In summer, to be off to the harvest-field. The wife is ready to take a turn at the churn, or to turn up her gownsleeves to the shoulders, and kneeling down on a straw cushion, to press the sweet curd to the bottom of the

a most Saxon look, with their fair complexions and light brown hair; while, as you proceed northward, the Saxon becomes more and more prevalent in the country dialects. In the midland counties bracken is the common term for fern-in the south not a peasant ever heard it. The dialects of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire, are so similar to that of the Sassenach of Scotland, the Lowland Scots, that the language of Burns was nearly as familiar to me when I first read his poems, as that of my village neighbours; and the Scotch read that clever romance of low life, "Bilberry Thurland," with a great relish, the dialogues of which are genuine Nottinghamshire, because they said, it was such good Scotch. I have noticed that the plays of the boys in Derbyshire and in the Scotch Lowlands have similar names, differing from the English names in general; as the English game of bandy, in Derbyshire is shinny, in Scotland shinty.