relations of the various classes of society towards each other are not quite as narrow as his father's. His newspaper may give him a little more knowledge than he had in other times; but he has not yet drunk deep enough of the Pierian spring to acquire anything like taste. Consult him on the building of a church, on the selection of a hymn, on the merits of a sermon, and with a little more pretence you will find all the old "Philistinism" crop up. Hear him upon labourers' cottages, or the education of the poor, and you will not find that pianos, and papers, and black coats, and late dinners have made him more liberal than his forefather who, had a piano been brought into his house, would have smashed it to pieces with the poker; who dined in his kitchen at one o'clock, had a sausage with his tea at five, supped on bacon at eight, and in summer went to bed by daylight. Among the chief public events which give variety to the farmer's life are the weekly market, the agricultural meeting, and the Visitation. Modern effeminacy has greatly relaxed the severity of the conditions under which markets were attended formerly. Thirty years ago the farmer had to be at market by seven o'clock in the morning, and beast and sheep were, in the winter time, inspected by candlelight. He got out his shambling old gig, or mounted his unclipped cob, by five o'clock, and jogged in steadily at the rate of six miles an hour. Now-a-days he starts from home in his smart dog-cart as late as eleven or twelve o'clock, and often picks up the parson on the road who is walking in about some justice business. At the market dinner, which is usually held at two o'clock, he sits down to a luxurious repast, furnished out with fish, game, and poultry, according to the season, and not unfrequently washed down by copious libations of champagne. Here he settles his engagements for the ensuing week; gives and receives invitations to shoot, to course, to sup: to come over and look at that cow and have a bit of dinner afterwards; to drop in and meet Groggins the "Vet," one night, and have a round at loo: and to various other natural and congenial diversions. For farmers, to do them justice, in spite of their complaints against the bad fortune which has placed them in that station of life, will allow, when pressed, that they do "enjoy themselves." Their wives are rather fond of making this admission for them behind their backs, perhaps because upon the whole more of the good things of farming life fall to the man's share than to the woman's. But really a farmer's life at the present day, regarded in the abstract, is one of the most desirable in the world. The class we are now writing about have not taste and feeling to appreciate it properly. But as far as the eating and drinking, riding and driving, hunting and shooting, are concerned, they will, we say, sometimes acknowledge that their lot in life is not contemptible. Their complaints are simply founded on that most diverting of all fallacies, the possibility of having one's cake and eating it. "If I had gone into business in London," said a young farmer to us the other day, "I should have made my fortune." "Yes," we replied, "but do not you perceive that you are now in

the enjoyment of those very things for the sake of which people want to make fortunes-a country-house, a couple of hunters, a good cellar, a nice wife, work which just sufficiently employs without fatiguing you, and a life spent in fresh country air instead of the close atmosphere of towns ?" Our friend shook his head, modestly confessing that he was not our equal in argument, but remaining unconvinced as ever. The sua si bona nôrint of Virgil seems to be an imperishable truth.

At the agricultural meeting the farmer goes to hear his county member much in the same spirit in which Hannibal listened to the Lecturer. This critical mood, however, extends only to the nature of wurzels, the quality of tiles, and the prospects of wool and corn. When politics are introduced, he listens to the orator, not, indeed, with that defferential faith or that keen party spirit which he once possessed, but with curiosity, as he might listen to a traveller who had just returned from foreign countries. In matters of pure politics the farmer of the present day is somewhat of a Gallio. His moral system has never recovered from the shock which it experienced in 1846; and even on questions that more intimately concern himself he exhibits but a languid interest. The malt-tax rouses him to only an ephemeral excitement; he has but little faith in those tha promise its repeal, and if he nourishes any strong opinions about anything, they are usually of such a nature that he thinks it better to keep them to himself. He now, accordingly, sits down at the town hall or the new exchange, or the Plantagenet Arms, or wherever the dinner may be held, prepared to hear a political speech as a matter of course, but not caring very much about it. Like the northern farmer and his clergyman, so with the farmer and his member. He supposes he says what he is obliged to say, and he listens and takes his leave.

But probably at no very distant date a different class of men may be returned by the counties from those which have been returned the last fifty years, and a different class of questions springing up may inspire the old blues and yellows with something of their former vitality. The Visitation, however, is the ceremony which after all, perhaps, is the most imposing to the rural mind. A general gathering of churchwardens to pay fees and hear advice is of course concluded with a dinner, at which, in all probability, some very remarkable and striking theories of the episcopal office are occasionally broached. A bishop is a potentate whom the farmer has not fully "reckoned up," to use his own pithy phraseology. It is always understood that he could do a great many things which he doesn't do. In the bucolic conception of him lurk a host of indefinite possibilities, which, though they may not inspire reverence, create a general feeling that he is the sort of person whom it is better to leave alone. Of course we have among the race of farmers both the "thoughtful Whig" and the profane scoffer which are peculiar to no class in society. But we are referring to the farmer in his natural state, unembittered by conflicts with ritualism, and uncorrupted by his dissenting brother-in-law the grocer in the county town. Apart

from such influences as these, the farmer is, on religious questions, like Enceladus before the Gigantomachia

As tame and mild

As ox unworried in the grazing meads;

and conceives of a bishop that he is a cross, peculiar to Christianity, between a clergyman and a nobleman, which he doesn't entirely understand, yet hardly cares to investigate. He has heard that his spiritual powers exceed those of an ordinary vicar, but how far he couldn't justly say. He supposes that they couldn't make clergymen without him some

how-not, at least, regular ones; but he doesn't know why. He thinks there must be something dignified in being a successor of the Apostles, and that one who is must be a bigger man than one who isn't. He can't get no further than that, he would perhaps add. But, on the whole, the presence of the prelate, his impressive charge, his lawn sleeves, and in the background, his mysterious attributes, have worked both on his sense and his imagination; and he would rather let the bishops "bide."

Ascending from the farmers to the "clergy and gentry," we find the country life of these last not much altered in its essence. They keep perhaps, rather later hours; more of them drink claret; and not so many clergymen hunt. But all the old institutions of country life still flourish among them, with the exception, perhaps, of the county ball, which has lost much of its pristine glory. But the country dinner party still survives in all its ancient dignity, and has certainly now become one of the most incomprehensible modes of giving and receiving pleasure which mankind have yet invented. A man comes in tired from hunting or shooting, or from working in his parish, at five o'clock; and instead of refreshing himself with all those comforts which no man can find out of his own house, he is hurried upstairs to dress, is dragged down shivering to the hall door, and bundled into a damp carriage, to be jostled some eight or ten miles across country, there to swallow salt soup, clammy cutlets, and cheap claret at a neighbour's house, in deference to conventions from which the whole spirit has departed. In former days, when the dinner was at half-past five or six, when the men did really and seriously drink port wine together for a couple of hours, and when a round game and a rubber were permitted to carry on the evening till eleven or twelve o'clock, the arrival of the carriages being preceded by "a tray "-then, indeed, there was some meaning in a country dinner party. People met together to do something which they could not do so well in any other way. The conversation might not be metaphysical, the scandal might not be metropolitan; but the port wine, the whist, and the Pope Joan were sound realities on which people looked back with satisfaction, as on so many more good things got out of life, and stored away beyond the reach of fortune. But the dinner at seven, the coffee after two glasses, tea and photographs at half-past nine, and the carriages at the door at ten-these

things are an unsubstantial pageant. At all events, there is no valid reason for going ten miles on a winter's night to do what you can do equally well without crossing your own threshold. We can do that much in Epirus. As for seeing your friends, that is all hypocrisy. Half the people who meet each other at these parties do not care the least whether they meet or not; and of the other half which does care the majority have easier and pleasanter ways of meeting than this one. No doubt dinner parties in London are often just as unsatisfactory. But then you are not put to the same inconvenience in attending them; while there is always a chance of novelty, of meeting some one whom it is really desirable to meet, or of hearing something which it is really a pleasure to hear. We don't mean to say that such treats occur very often; but they are within the region of possibilities, like a woodcock in a day's shooting. Whereas at a country entertainment you know that such an idea is ludicrous. Nocountry people ought to meet together for what seems natural in the country --real conviviality, and fun and merriment of all sorts. Then the rural dinner party, consisting of two squires, four parsons, a local barrister, and an officer from the nearest barracks, with ladies young and old to match, may make a very jolly evening. But the painful gentility of country banquets as practised at the present day is a total mistake. It is out of place, and suited to conditions of life which prevail only in cities. Probably the farmer's "dinner party" is, in spirit at least, nearer to what a country party ought to be than the respectable assemblage which looks down upon it from the neighbouring Hall.

There is a certain amount of tolerably pleasant visiting still kept up among people who do not aspire to give dinners. But this can only be developed under exceptionally favourable circumstances. In a large village of twelve or fifteen hundred people there may happen to be several houses tenanted by families who belong to the condition of gentry, but are not rich enough for county hospitalities. Or sometimes in some favoured district will have accumulated, apparently by accident, a little cluster of such establishments, a mile or two distant from each other, and admitting of easy pedestrian communication. There the ladies of the families go and lunch or drink tea with each other, and the men can make up card-parties without taking thought beforehand. But such exceptions are few and far between, and must of necessity continue so.

What market is to the farmer, the "Bench" is to the squire. There he not only transacts business, but hears the news and makes up his social engagements. But, after all, the country life of a country gentleman has changed so little during the last thirty years, that we have no power of adding much to what has been of late so copiously written on the subject. The closer intercourse between town and country, of which we have already spoken, would of course affect the upper stratum of country society first; and at the present day it is not too much to say that the distinction which once existed between town gentleman and country gentleman

has totally disappeared, as far, at least, as manners and habits are concerned. Differences of another kind, however, are still to be observed between the country gentleman who lives wholly in the country, and the country gentleman who spends the season in town. The country clergy, perhaps, retain more of their earlier peculiarities; but that is owing simply to the fact that they are a much more mixed class, consisting of men who are on a level with the highest aristocracy, down to men whose tastes and practices are akin to those of farmers and tradesmen. The clergyman's life, however, is now a much more active one than it used to be. Even the most sluggish divine is now more or less goaded on by a certain esprit de corps to do something to make the Church popular. Clerical meetings of all sorts now-a-days generally contain a sufficient proportion of energetic and cultivated men to put laziness and ignorance to shame. The clergyman's school is a necessity which he cannot evade even if he would. A very disorderly parish will give him more annoyance than the exertion required to amend it. He must pay rather more attention to his sermons: while if we quit these rudimentary and indispensable branches of labour, we find custom sanctioning a variety of extra good works, which to the clergyman of a bygone generation would have been simply unintelligible. However, we are now bordering upon ground where we feel that we have no business. And the only recent innovation in clerical country life to which we shall devote a few words is that of penny readings, which have become so fashionable that we may almost exclaim with Juvenal,

De conducendo loquitur jam rhetore Thule.

The anxiety of country people to promote this species of entertainment contrasts oddly enough with the difficulty which they experience in finding suitable materials. An audience of town working men, however superficially educated, have minds more on the alert than their agricultural brethren, and more capable of grasping any clue which is afforded them towards understanding subjects with which they were previously unacquainted. The ordinary talk of town life, even among quite the lower orders, is a species of education in itself; and their habits are so much more gregarious that the play of mind is more active, and keeps their faculties so much the further from stagnation" But with audiences of which so large a part consists of peasantry, for whose sake the penny reading is chiefly carried on the difficulty is immense. They dislike and resent anything which they consider childish; they cannot understand anything which approaches the argumentative; their imaginations are too inert to enter with much interest into the higher kinds of poetry and fiction. The English peasant is a shrewd, observant fellow, very often; and his remarks upon life in general would often shame the philosophers of cities. But the literary faculty is as yet wholly undeveloped in him. And penny readers are sometimes driven by despair to plunge into the wildest extremes in the forlorn hope of a success. We were lately staying with a clerical friend