but the feelings are blind, and cannot act a whit. This mechanical character, in great measure, applies to the whole range of modern operations. Take the very extremest case by way of illustration-that of war. War is now carried on without the play of the passions; battles are fought out by the aid of rifled guns at distances where the opposing armies never see cach others' eyes; and the combatants only learn from the general orders of the next day which side won. Where are now the rage and the terror of personal conflict? What has become of the noise, of the shouting, and the thunder of the captains? They grow fainter and fainter, and the passions die away out of the mechanic struggle. For the same reasons, the immense constructive feats we now do fail greatly to enlist the feelings, and only, as it were, titillate the intellect. Consider the height of our viaducts, the span of our bridges, the size of our ships,-the world has seen nothing to compare with them; but our emotions are not exercised by them in proportion. How can they be? The works are done by "Co.s," and even in the achieving of the feats, several monster abstractions are now partners; so that it becomes uncertain for how much of what is effected man should be praised, and how much of the credit is due to steam, electricity, and chemistry. Everything is settling down into matter of intellectual inquiry merely; we puzzle our wits about modern achievements, not bow our hearts before them.

The general conclusion I arrive at is, that, owing to mechanical causes operating with cumulating force in modern society, the passions are destined to weaken and fade, and life to become more and more an intellectual process. In their nature, some of the stronger emotions indicate that they are but temporary qualities of human character, only useful as makeshifts, pending the fuller development of reason, and wise men have always aimed at their suppression. Who associates them with his ideas of a state hereafter? No doubt, even rage and hate have their uses so long as nien are without adequate knowledge of the mutuality of their interests, and have to depend upon physical force for their defence; but though they are defensive instincts, they are eradicable, as most systems of ethics have assumed more or less distinctly, and the Christian scheme completely. The important fact I have been trying to bring out is, that this is no longer solely dependent on moral persuasion. I submit that the introduction of machinery, the diminution of the sense of personal dealing out of commercial transactions, and the perfecting of our administrative system, establishing everywhere the triumph of the laws, are what may be termed mechanical influences operating with gradually increasing effect in enforcing a comparative inaction of the passions, and that in the repose of the feelings this secured religion may be expected to have freer scope than it has ever had previously-the two causes conjoined pointing to a degree of civilization far beyond the range of our present conceptions. Men will necessarily grow milder, and life will be embellished by the quieter feelings, purified and enlarged, while the rougher, turbulent emotions will die away.

The Economics of Country Life.

I. INITIAL.

Or all the changes which this century has seen perhaps the most remarkable has been the breaking down of the boundary lines which divided the town from the country. Not a hundred years ago Lancashire was almost as much a terra incognita to the Londoner as the Fiji-I beg pardon, the Viti Islands-are to Englishmen of the present day. And to the countryman London was a wonder and a mystery. Hodge, the farm labourer, inhabiting "the Sheeres," had heard speak of it as of a city full of pitfalls to the unwary, a city whose streets were paved with gold. But he no more thought of beholding it with the eyes of the flesh than he did of travelling at the rate of forty miles an hour. And Hodge's master, the squire, when he came up to town on rare occasions, was as much an alien as if he had been born in Algeria. He was a stranger among his own countrymen; a man of a different garb, and different habits. And to the thorough-bred Cockney the country was equally strange. To him every farm labourer was a swain, every milkmaid a nymph. He finds himself amongst the Derbyshire hills, and is astonished at their stupendous height, and terrified by their steepness. But a century has seen all this entirely changed. Old women from Cornwall come up to the Exhibition, jostle you in omnibuses, and know to a penny the fare from Charing Cross to the Bank. And City men are pretty well up in wheat and mangolds, think scorn of Mr. Mechi's balance-sheet, and possibly do a little bit of farming themselves before breakfast, ere they start on a forty-miles' ride to their place of business.

In fact country life with City people has become a passion, and consequently country pleasures, shooting, fishing, gardening, farining, have become a trade. A good trout stream, anywhere near a large town, is quite a little fortune to its owner, if he chooses to let the fishing. And not the least amusing reading of the Field newspaper is to be found in its advertising columns; for there lies spread open before the reader a chart of the occupations and pleasures of country life, the wants of would-be country people, and the supply which is always ready to meet that demand-for capital, like Nature, abhors a vacuum. So that when we see on one page, "Wanted a small country-house suitable for a genteel family, with a few acres of land about it, and, if possible, shooting and fishing in the neighbourhood," we are pretty certain that the next page will offer us "A small but commodious country-house, suitable for a genteel family, with," &c. The genteel family, therefore, have evidently nothing to do but to apply to A.B.C., to find every requirement fulfilled.

We will presume that they do so. Paterfamilias-of course, taking Materfamilias with him-goes off at once to inspect the house, which is small, but commodious enough; the land, some fifty acres, we will say, lies close by, in a ring fence; the stabling is good and convenient; the garden a gem; a pretty stream, well stocked with fish, runs through the grounds. And there is shooting to be rented at a reasonable rate in the neighbourhood. Paterfamilias closes with the bargain at once, and as to stocking the farm, and putting a good horse into that comfortable loose box, and getting the garden into the very best order-why there are hundreds of advertisements in every week's newspaper, which offer everything that any genteel family can need. Paterfamilias, of course, takes in the Field, and, glancing at the advertising columns, it almost seems to him that mankind in general have set themselves to the business of supplying his special wants. For him Mr. Coper has filled his stables with carriage-horses, hacks, hunters, cobs, ponies, all of unblemished reputation, and all warranted sound. For him Messrs. Butter and Co. have just imported a herd of down-calving Brittany cows, "excellent milkers, and well suited for amateur farmers." For him—but why go through the catalogue?-if Paterfamilias wishes to stock his farm and furnish his house and stables, and to be comfortable in his new abode, he has only got to put his hands into his breeches-pocket and to buy and be happy. How delightful it all looks upon paper, to be sure!

But as Paterfamilias will probably have to buy his experience pretty dear; as possibly the horse which Mr. Coper sells him may turn out lame or broken-winded, or may be a vicious brute with a propensity for kicking the carriage to pieces as soon as he gets between the shafts; as it may happen that his cow proves an inveterate old maid, and refuses to supply the family with milk,-as these or many other untoward events may happen, it may be of interest to him to study the map of the country which he is going to travel with one who knows the road well, and who, as an amateur farmer in a small way, has suffered all these mischances and many more, and yet who is satisfied that farming on a small scale pays well, and is profitable in more directions than one.

We are told that "some men are born to greatness, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." However this may be with greatness, of which I do not pretend to know anything, I am sure it holds good with farming. I was not born to it, but I had it thrust upon me, or rather I gradually became entangled in its fascinating meshes. When I came to settle in B. (we will call my little farm B., if you please), some two or three years back, I knew nothing whatever about the Economics of Country Life. I had never studied them, and I did not care about them. I hated the smell of a turnip-field, and scarcely knew barley from oats. The consequence was that the "swains" and "nymphs" of the neighbourhood pillaged me most unmercifully. I had to pay a penny a piece for eggs all the year round, and fourpence a quart for milk; in fact, London prices in a little country village a hundred miles away from

Charing Cross; and for less than this no one would sell me either milk or eggs. I might take them or leave them; but I was told that the hens of B. refused to lay eggs under a penny a piece, nor would the cows give down their milk under fourpence a quart. So I speedily held a cabinet council with mamma, and said, "This will never do, we must keep cows." To which mamma assentingly responded, adding, " And I hope, my dear, you will stock the hen-roost, for really the children," &c. &c.

But perhaps before going any further it will be well to give the reader a sketch of our surroundings, of the land, arable and pasture, of the garden, &c., on which the following experiments were tried. Of household economy I do not mean to speak; and, therefore, it will be scarcely necessary to describe my house and household arrangements further than to say that the house is a small but comfortable one, thatched and picturesque enough, suitable in all ways for a man of moderate income, with a family of young children growing up about him. The country immediately around the village of B. is somewhat bare and desolate-looking, standing high, with few trees, the land being almost all in arable, the fields very large, and well tilled. Altogether, I suppose the farming of East Anglia, in which B. is situated, will bear comparison with the farming of any county in England. In fact, we rather look down upon the "Sheeres," and consider them decidedly behindhand in the march of agricultural improvement. But bare and high as the land immediately around us is, it slopes downwards towards the village, and forms a little hollow or basin, in which the village nestles, so that we are completely sheltered from all winds, north and east. And in this hollow, thick sown as it is with thatched-roofed cottages, clustering around an old grey, flintbuilt church, the trees are plentiful; some fine old elms and beeches amongst them, where the rooks have built for centuries back. So that it is a pretty sight, on a fine summer evening, to stand upon the high ground above the village, and look down over the russet roofs, thick patched with moss, and to see the blue smoke curling up from the brick chimneys-a sign that mother is getting ready father's meal when he shall have come home from work; whilst the voices of merry children let loose from school float up to us, softened by distance; and the rooks are flapping and cawing round the elm-tree tops before settling for the night.

Our house stands in the midst of a little over fourteen acres of land, arable, pasture, and garden; and house and land are my own; so that what improvements were necessary to be made in the way of cutting down trees, levelling fences, and the like, could be done as soon as I saw they were needed. The " lay of the land," as they say here, is towards the south, on a gentle slope, but in the valley; so that we are sheltered from the cold winds of the Eastern Counties. The shape of the land is somewhat of a parallelogram. In the midst stands the house, or cottage rather; in front of it are about seven acres of pasture in one field, and at the back about six acres more of arable land, good soil rather inclining to clay. Not a stiff clay, it must be remembered, such as has been well

described as "grinning all the summer, and weeping all the winter," but a good loamy wheat soil, which will also grow barley. To the right of the house there is about an acre of garden ground; to the left a few thatched outbuildings; stable and coach-house, barn, cow-house, pigstie, &c.; so that on the whole we are very compactly placed; the house well shut in from the road, and the farm, so to speak, under one's own eye: a great advantage this to the amateur farmer, who, perhaps, does not care to get up every morning at daybreak. A belt of plantation runs round three sides of the seven-acre meadow, and there are also a few goodsized elms and ashes scattered here and there, which make a pleasant park-like prospect from the windows. There are no trees on the arable six acres, which also lie in one piece. But a small belt of plantation must be made at some future time at the north side of it, as a shelter. As soon, then, as we were fairly settled in our new home, I came to the resolution, after a consultation with mamma, that it would never do to go on paying fourpence a quart for new, and twopence a quart for skim milk. Cows, therefore, must be kept. Given, then, seven acres of meadow, the problem to be solved was to maintain two cows, a winter and a summer cow, thereon, and also to get hay enough from it for a horse or pony. The pasture land, therefore, I at once took into my own occupation. The arable land was let to a tenant at 21. per acre, free of rates and taxes.

But it soon became evident that it was bad economy to keep cows upon pasture land only. In the first place the winter cow, calving about November, required mangolds as well as hay; and these had to be bought. And the swains, not being able to sell their milk at fourpence a quart, had, of course, a "pull" upon one in the matter of mangolds. The farmer's price for mangolds was, I fancy, about 10s. or 12s. a ton. To me-"let you have 'em as a favour, sir!" they were a sovereign. Then straw had to be bought for littering the cows in the yard through the winter months, and for the stable. So I soon saw that if I was to keep cows and make them pay for their keep, it would be good economy to take into my own hands the arable as well as the pasture land. Should I not grow my own oats and beans, potatoes for household use and the pigs, mangolds for the cows, straw for litter for all the animals? "Go to!" I said one fine autumn morning to my factotum Thomas, "we will take the arable and begin to farm in earnest." Whereupon, scratching his head, a sign of deep and earnest meditation on the part of Thomas-and then balancing about a tablespoonful of "moulds," as he calls the earth, on his spade, he replied with much deliberation, "Well, I suppose we can work that, sir." For Thomas seldom commits himself to a positive statement of any kind.

But this account of my farm and stock would be quite incomplete, without at any rate an outline portrait of my faithful servant and friend.

Some eight years ago, I took Thomas from the plough to be general out-door man-servant, groom, coachman, and gardener. It was also intended that he should occasionally wait at table. But his early training was against this. Naturam expellas furca, you know, and habits acquired