think of Shakspeare retiring to Stratford; of Bacon ordering that he should be buried in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans, "because it is the parish church of my mansion-house of Gorhambury;" of Cowper at Olney; of Scott in his ancestral border district; of James Montgomery at Sheffield; of a thousand associations scattered over England, and enriching the national life, like the many rivers which flow, not to swell the Thames, but to the four seas. Provincialism robs the provinces of their poetry, as cockneyism, if it was allowed to get the upper hand, would degrade the Abbey and vulgarise the Tower. And it tends to perpetuate itself. Many a Scotchman would be content to stay in Scotland if the ecclesiastical bigotry were diminished; if the universities were made what they ought to be; if society would shake itself clear of the petty and contracted way of looking at things, which comes of nursing insignificant distinctions, and cultivating frigidity as a condition of politeness. The late Lord Eglinton was a Scot to the backbone; but when he was Viceroy of Ireland, he used to defend that office as helping to save Dublin from the provincialism which had overtaken Edinburgh. We have already shown in what sense we use the word; and that, according to that sense, every man who lives in the provinces is not a provincial, any more than every Londoner is a cockney. By general consent, however, there is a certain type of mind and manners which the world agrees to recognize under the name, and which must be better understood before it can be altered. For the influences which are to alter it, the provinces will have to look to London itself. The provinces feed London, and London in time will make up to them for what it has taken away. The double action of the railway system has been already referred to. It draws life to a centre, but it radiates it from the centre; the metropolis attracts more and more people, but it also sends more and more visitors back. As time rolls on, English life will interpenetrate itself by the action and reaction of its different elements, to a degree of which as yet no observer can form a conception; though, it is to be hoped, without destroying the local independence which is one of the bases of our political freedom. And while the Londoner becomes more a man of the country, and the man of the country more a Londoner, cockneyism and provincialism may be expected to recede together into the past.

682

Wives and Daughters.

AN EVERY-DAY STORY.

CHAPTER XXX.

OLD WAYS AND NEW WAYS.

R. PRESTON was now installed in his new house at Hollingford; Mr. Sheepshanks having entered into dignified idleness at the house of his married daughter, who lived in the county town. His successor had plunged with energy into all manner of improvements; and among others he fell to draining a piece of outlying waste and unreclaimed land of Lord Cumnor's, which was close to Squire Hamley's property; that very piece for which he had had the Govern ment grant, but which now lay neglected, and only half-drained, with stacks of mossy tiles, and lines of up-turned furrows telling of abortive plans. It was not often that the squire rode in this direction now-adays; but the cottage of a man who had been the squire's gamekeeper in those more prosperous days when the Hamleys could afford to preserve, was close to the rush-grown ground. This old servant and tenant was ill, and had sent a message up to the Hall, asking to see the squire; not to reveal any secret, or to say anything particular, but only from the feudal loyalty, which made it seem to the dying man as if it would be a comfort to shake the hand, and look once more into the eyes of the lord and master whom he had served, and whose ancestors his own forbears had served for so many generations. And the squire was as fully alive as old Silas to the claims of the tie that existed between them. Though he hated the thought, and, still more, should hate the sight of the piece of land, on the side of which Silas's cottage stood, the squire ordered his horse, and rode off within half-anhour of receiving the message. As he drew near the spot he thought he heard the sound of tools, and the hum of many voices, just as he used to

hear them a year or two before. He listened with surprise. Yes. Instead of the still solitude he had expected, there was the clink of iron, the heavy gradual thud of the fall of barrows-full of soil-the cry and shout of labourers. But not on his land-better worth expense and trouble by far than the reedy clay common on which the men were, in fact, employed. He knew it was Lord Cumnor's property; and he knew Lord Cumnor and his family had gone up in the world ("the Whig rascals!"), both in wealth and in station, as the Hamleys had gone down. But all the same-in spite of long known facts, and in spite of reason-the squire's ready anger rose high at the sight of his neighbour doing what he had been unable to do, and he a Whig; and his family only in the county since Queen Anne's time. He went so far as to wonder whether they might not-the labourers he meant―avail themselves of his tiles, lying so conveniently close to hand. All these thoughts, regrets, and wonders were in his mind as he rode up to the cottage he was bound to, and gave his horse in charge to a little lad, who had hitherto found his morning's business and amusement in playing at "houses" with a still younger sister, with some of the squire's neglected tiles. But he was old Silas's grandson, and he might have battered the rude red earthenware to pieces-a whole stack-one by one, and the squire would have said little or nothing. was only that he would not spare one to a labourer of Lord Cumnor's. No! not one.

It

Old Silas lay in a sort of closet, opening out of the family living-room. The small window that gave it light looked right on to the "moor," as it was called; and by day the check curtain was drawn aside so that he might watch the progress of the labour. Everything about the old man was clean, of course; and, with Death, the leveller, so close at hand, it was the labourer who made the first advances, and put out his horny hand to the squire.

"I thought you'd come, squire. Your father came for to see my father as he lay a-dying."

"Come, come, my man!" said the squire, easily affected, as he always was. "Don't talk of dying, we shall soon have you out, never fear. They've sent you up some soup from the Hall, as I bade 'em, haven't they?" 'Ay, ay, I've had all as I could want for to eat and to drink. young squire and Master Roger was here yesterday."

"Yes, I know."

The

I should like you to

You'll

"But I'm a deal nearer Heaven to-day, I am. look after the covers in the West Spinney, squire; them gorse, you know, where th' old fox had her hole-her as give 'em so many a run. mind it, squire, though you was but a lad. I could laugh to think on her tricks yet." And, with a weak attempt at a laugh, he got himself into a violent fit of coughing, which alarmed the squire, who thought he would never get his breath again. His daughter-in-law came in at the sound, and told the squire that he had these coughing-bouts very frequently, and that she thought he would go off in one of them before long. This