their familiar customers in the farmers' wives, with whom they cracked the good old jokes and drove stiff profitable bargains across the counter. Those who grew rich enriched themselves slowly by frugal habits, and they had seldom the fear of insolvency before their eyes, for everything in the shape of speculation was considered scandalous. There would be an occasional cattleshow, a race-meeting, or a hunt-steeplechase, but otherwise there were absolutely no amusements, although pipes and tobacco were in universal demand, and the population contributed liberally to the Excise duties. From the squire and the parson downwards, most people indulged in various strong liquors, according to their cloth and their means. As to what went on in the outer political world, they knew little and they cared less. The ruthless campaigns of Christinos and Carlists were matters of as much indifference to them as the siege of Troy or the fall of Carthage. The events of the day were the arrivals of the coaches: not that the loungers were looking out for letters or papers, but because, at least, they had the satisfaction of staring at strange faces, of hearing chance of road gossip from the guards, and of seeing the coatless helpers swiftly hitching on the fresh and fiery team, while the smoking horses that had come in clattered down the coach-yard to their stables.

scraps

Yet, compared to many a country parish, the dead-alive old borough was a centre of joviality and culture. It is difficult to realise the depths of ignorance and of indifference as to national affairs among the natives of the lonely Northern Dales, or even of districts nearer the metropolis. William Howitt has painted the Dalesmen most graphically, locked up in some savage cul-de-sac between the brawling stream and the mountains, surrounded certainly by rough material comforts, but limiting their intercourse with the strangers without their gates to an occasional visit from a pedlar or the tax-gatherer. They kept so hard a grip upon their gear, that the tax-gatherer wrung the taxes from them shilling by shilling, although the money was ready in a cupboard up-stairs, and the householder knew it must be paid. With the short days and the long winters in the dark shadows of the hills, they grudged fires and lights as prodigal follies, and went to bed in December soon after the sun. Unless when they celebrated a birth, a marriage, or a death, they rarely indulged in any kind of recreation; and less eventful existences it is impossible to conceive. But those Dalesmen were, at least, in decent circumstances; and neighbours knitted together by generations of intermarriages, who would have grudged a penny in charity to the next valley, were ready enough to relieve the destitute among

I

themselves.

Poverty was almost universal in many of the lowland parishes, and light seldom broke into the miserable hovels of the labourers from one year's end to the other. In many cases there was no resident squire, as there was no resident parson. It was the day of pluralities, when even the accumulation of sundry paltry livings scarcely supplied the means of providing a jointstock curate, wretchedly as curates were paid. The rector or vicar, if he lived within reach, was content to pay an occasional Sunday visit and to scramble through a single service. If he knew his parishioners by sight, he felt that the less he conversed with them the better, otherwise his temper would have been fretted by incessant appeals, and his purse would have been perpetually drained. If he devolved his duties on a subordinate, his conscience was so far liberated. But what could a Reverend Amos Barton do for his starving flock, with his scanty stipend and his hungry family? He could offer them his ministrations, which were something, and possibly his sympathy, which might be more; but, after all, a pauperised parish looks for bread and beer, for clothes and medicines, as well as for spiritual assistance. The labourers in many of the great agricultural parishes were ground down by grasping farmers, who very likely were rackrented themselves, and who could make their own

terms with their field-hands. The average Dorsetshire wages of 5s. a-week were common enough in other counties. The poor were hustled along from the cradle to the coffin; their children seldom went to school, and it was just as well, since they had no leisure in after-life to turn even elementary education to profit; they toiled while they could for a bare subsistence; they were racked with aches and rheumatism before their time; they might think themselves lucky, when they fell sick, if they had a call from the parish doctor, who probably lived as far away as the clergyman; and when Death brought relief from prolonged privation, whether he found them at home or in a ward of the poor-house, they had a parochial funeral, grudgingly given by contract, at the cost of the struggling ratepayers. From first to last they had been fighting forward in dogged despair, without one gleam of rational hope. As for amusement, they had never heard of it, and knew nothing of the meaning of the word. It is hard to figure how brutish a naturally respectable man may become, when he feels himself to be utterly forgotten and neglected.

Yet it is fair to remember that the "Merry England" of our ancestors was never altogether a myth. Dickens, in a remarkable article in 'Household Words,' found it impossible to fix any epoch in our history to which the epithet

could have been honestly applied. And it is true that if feudal tyranny and civil troubles are things of the past, disease, poverty, and certain social grievances must be always with us; nevertheless there were many favoured parishes in England where the poor were made as happy as could be reasonably expected. There was many a jolly Bracebridge Hall, many a bluff and kindly Squire Hazeldean, and many a worthy Parson Dale. Fifty years ago many a wealthy landlord lived all the year on his hereditary acres, letting his farms on easy terms to respectable tenants, on the understanding that they should deal liberally in turn with their dependants. The good old customs were fondly perpetuated, while new and beneficent practices had been introduced. There was the annual crowning with the primrose-wreaths of the rosy-cheeked Queen of the May, and the dances round the Maypole on the village green. There was hospitality for all comers in the Hall at Christmastide, with many another excuse for merry gatherings when the christening, or the coming of age of the heir, or the marriages of his sisters, were to be celebrated. Scott sings that

"A Christmas gambol oft would cheer

The poor man's heart through half the year."

There the poet of the romantic past may possibly