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art, admiring only with the children and the Easter-Monday mechanics, but Italy can scarcely have any treasures of more worth to the common mind, than some of those landscapes of COOPER, and LEE, and CRESWICK'.

Its Moral and Social Effects.

This love of natural beauty, and the scenery which corresponds to the feeling, constitute the chief sustaining influence in the lives of many men. I know one noble-hearted worker, a man of true Cromwellian energy, and indeed with an infusion of actual Cromwellian blood in him too-who will even, I believe, do one day what Cromwell could not, namely, get the better of those sons of Zeruiah, his brethren the lawyers, and force a reform in chancery procedure, with proofs gathered from facts by the strictest method of induction—who, with a prodigious mass of work, far too much, on his shoulders, can go year after year, in his holiday, to the same place on the banks of the Thames, and with his wife and his children, and the artist friends who love him scarcely less, drink in from the riverbanks, and the trees, and the waving autumn corn-fields, and the hills receding towards evening in the lovely ever-deepening blue distance, not only immediate enjoyment, but strength, and that bracing of all the higher powers of the soul which fits men for the sternest tasks of duty. But it is not only in natures like this one, in which the elements of love and poetry are overflowing, that the passion for the country appears. It is found strong in men who care comparatively little for poets and pictures, who live almost wholly in strife, and who have it fresh, as it were, from the original fountain of nature, welling up in their own souls. There was William Cobbett, whose life was a storm and a battle, yet whose enjoyment of rural

1 As to Mr. MILLAIS, I dare not say half what I feel. The painter of "The Hugonot" is surely a great artist, if ever there was one. May he sacredly obey the monitions of his genius, and may we, in these days when temptation can so readily entwine itself with the tenderest affections, profit as we ought by that noble and soul-strengthening lesson.

scenery bursts out, soft and beautiful, in the midst of his harshest polemics, and makes the reader feel that, under that rough and cross-grained exterior, there beat a heart of the richest and most genial endowment.

Now this universal hankering after the country, which is so deep-rooted in the national mind, and is connected with such a multitude of healthy moral influences, corresponds to—and is in a great measure dependent upon-the realities of rural employment and rural scenery which exist in England. At the present time, beyond all others, whatever tends to give additional force to such influences must be of inestimable value.

But what has all this to do with political economy ? A good deal, even with the lower branch of the science, and much more with that to which what is commonly called political economy should be the handmaid. Our survey of rural attractions is, in fact, an estimate of the most important part of the fixed capital of England. By far the greater part of the beauty which the poets and the artists love, has been gradually produced by the efforts of innumerable labourers. Generation after generation they have silently passed on, leaving this monument behind. The oaks and elms rear their lofty foliage, the hedgerows bloom, the pastures in which the cattle are halfhidden spread out their rich expanse, and the fields of golden grain are waving, where swamps and barren wastes alone were seen before the hand of man began to call forth the hidden riches of the soil. This is no dream of the fancy, no mere imagination of the poets. It is the plain statement of the statistician, of one who, in spite of his reverence for Ricardo (natural enough in an affectionate disciple), has quietly got rid of many Ricardo abstractions which obstructed his view of realities. Hear Mr. M'Culloch in the "Geographical Dictionary," and compare him with Mrs. Hemans'.

"The distinguishing peculiarity in the aspect of the country

This comparison is literally offered to the eye of the reader, in an admirable selection of English poetry, by Edward Hughes, the author also of other educational works of much merit.

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is, however, the exuberance of its vegetation, and the rich luxuriant appearance of its lower and far most extensive portion. It owes this distinction partly to nature and partly to art. The humidity and mildness of the climate maintain the fields in a constant state of verdure; in winter they are seldom covered with snow or blighted by long-continued frosts, and in summer they are rarely withered and parched by droughts. In this respect England is as superior to the finest countries of continental Europe-to Italy and Sicily, for example-as she is superior to them and to every other country in the amount of labour that has been expended in beautifying, improving, and fertilizing her surface. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that thousands upon thousands of millions have been laid out in making England what she now is. In no other nation has the combination of beauty with utility been so much regarded. Another peculiar feature in the physiogony of England is the number and magnificence of the seats of the nobility and gentry. These superb mansions, many of which are venerable from their antiquity, and all of which are surrounded with fine woods and grounds, give to the country an appearance of age, security, and wealth, that we should in vain look for anywhere else. The farm-houses and cottages have mostly also a substantial, comfortable look; and evince that taste for rural beauty, neatness, and cleanliness, that eminently distinguish their occupiers."

Present State of Agriculture.

No practical statesman or moralist can doubt the national importance of preserving and, if it may be, of still further beautifying this unrivalled inheritance, upon which so much toil has been spent. More desirable, certainly, than the further extension of mines, or workshops, or factories, would be the means— if means can be found-of infusing new life into every branch of agricultural industry, of stimulating the cheerful voice of labour behind the plough, of restoring the joy of the harvest

home, and fostering the taste which twines the roses round the cottage door. In the present state of agricultural England, some such means are certainly needed. No free-trader, with any pretension to candour, can deny that the farming interest is depressed. The admission involves no blame to free trade in the food of the people, which is not the less just because it may happen to inflict hardship upon certain classes. The fault may even lie in the farmers themselves, or in the landlords, or, as I should be disposed to say, in thirty years of unwise legislation; but, however this may be, the fact stands-agriculture is depressed. Even in a party sense the admission may be made with safety: for politically these poor farmers are undoubtedly beaten. After being led for the second time into the field, they find the old banner again lowered to the adversary before the firing of a single shot. They really are not any longer formidable. The aged lion has not so much as one surviving tooth, and it is the merest dictate of humanity that those whom he might have frightened for a moment should now put aside their fears, and look with pity and generous tenderness into the wounds with which he is evidently bleeding.

The agricultural interest, then, generally speaking, is depressed, because for some time back this branch of industry has been a losing one. It can require no minute analysis of farming accounts to convince any unbiassed man of common sense that this must be the case; because if the farmers have not lost, and lost heavily, during the late low prices of grain, they must have habitually realized enormous profits when the average range of quotations was so much higher. If they have received only ten shillings a quarter less on forty millions of quarters of all kind of grain, which is no exaggerated estimate, but on the contrary below the truth, their annual loss has been twenty millions sterling. If they still flourish after such a loss, their former condition must have been one of extraordinary prosperity. Yet it is certain that farming is not that branch of industry in which great fortunes have ever been

made in England. It is true that, under the excessive stimulus of the Government demand during the late war, very large profits were in some cases temporarily realized; but they were only temporary, and soon flowed off in increased rents, which were never afterwards lowered in any degree at all proportionate to the decline which took place in farming profits. In truth, under ordinary circumstances, it is a struggling branch of industry—able to keep its ground, to hold its head clear above water, as it were, but with no superabundance of strength, which can be taken out of it and not missed. In the days of Edmund Burke it was "a poor trade," subject to great risks and losses; and that eminent observer, who upon such a point was little likely to err, rarely knew a farmer who, after years of persevering toil, was able to do more than leave his children to begin life just at the point from which he had started himself.

In one important respect the farmer differs from the shopkeeper, the merchant, or the manufacturer. There are no weekly, nor monthly, nor even quarterly returns to his capital. The slow revolving year alone replaces what he expends, even where the replacement is quickest; and during that long revolution what things may occur to make the result a disappointment! A climate too genial in January or too harsh in May, a frost when the tender blade is springing up, or rains when, in the words of Lord Brougham, the sickle should be glancing amongst the stalks,-to say nothing of occasional visitations of blight in the ripened ear, or disease amongst the cattle,-are any one of them enough to make the gain upon the sum total of the year's labours an almost inappreciable quantity. Neither is farming one of those lazy trades which go on almost of themselves. Every business, indeed, that is worth much requires the master's eye, but none more than this. With out vigilance and toil, and constant discretion in deciding between the wise and the unwise outlay, such capital as a farmer has would melt away like snow before the fire. He does not eat the bread of idleness; and when, after being on foot early and late, the struggle does go hard with him-rent, and tithe,

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