decorations; but they are all given to officials (that is, to those who serve the Government or the Crown in one capacity or the other): those men who serve their country no less in an unofficial capacity are ignored.

Finally, in this country the source of all progress must be in the efforts of the leaders of the people, and not in their Government. It is to them I make my chief appeal; 'tis they who must move, and the Government will be moved. The time is ripe; the art of the day is full of promise; young men hold the most prominent places; there are no giant names to overshadow future merit, no malign influences to impede. The Royal Academy possesses a President worthy of that illustrious body; let them take "the direct forthright" and show the way; let all petty jealousies lie prostrate. The rest of the profession must follow, and will follow to such good purpose that, centuries hence, when England's art has spread over the whole earth, the present generation shall be remembered as the foster-mother of its mature glory. COUTTS LINDSAY, in Time.

TOILERS IN FIELD AND FACTORY.

No. I. EXODUS.

It was Arctic weather in the county of Kent in the month of January in this present year. A thinly-powdered snow, like the frost on the figures of a Twelfth-night cake, lay adust on the rich brown earth of the hop-fields. The tall-hop-poles stacked about the fields suggested the notion of a vast encampment deserted by its troops. The cowls and sloping sides of the local "oasts" presented to fancy the vision of a Brobdingnagian monastic priesthood turned out of house and home, and grown stony with the cold. The fields were empty and silent, and in the distance Canterbury Cathedral lifted its towers into the blue, and offered a quiet invitation from these lonely spaces. As I moved forward to accept that silent call, I came upon an aged man, who stood at the edge of a forest of bare hoppoles, looking idly down their geometrical perspectives. The old man, though bent, was sturdy. His hands and his face were gnarled with years and weather, and his cheek was streaked with rose, like the skin of a ripe apple. There was a certain dull dignity about him-I cannot describe it better-which I have found not uncommon amongst the more elderly workers in the fields, and a certain bowed sadness with it which enlisted liking and respect.

He gave me a cheerful "Good-day" in answer to my salutation, and we fell into talk together. I offered the very obvious statement that there was not a great deal being done there. "No," he said,

sort of

very little; more the pity." I supposed the men were on strike No," he answered, "not on strike. Locked out." What was the difference between being locked out and being on strike? The aged man paused on his staff to accost me, and said he didn't rightly know. But how he looked at it was this. When the men wanted more wages, and the masters wouldn't give it, and the men stood out for it, then it was a strike. When the masters wanted to drop the men's wages, and the men wouldn't stand it, and the masters wouldn't give more, why then they were locked out. Was he locked out? Why, yes, he was, he answered, with a reservation in his air, as though he were not altogether sure, and would rather not commit himself. The amount in dispute in his case was eighteenpence a week. He believed it was less with some and more with others. Was it worth while, I asked him, to stand out for that? "Ah," he said, gravely plodding along beside me, "eighteenpence is the price of a quarter-bushel o' wheat. That's how we look at it. It ud pay a man's rent, nigh on, eighteenpence a week ud. Why, it don't cost me that for firing.' Eighteenpence a week began to take an aspect of importance. But had not the farmers lost money lately? Could they afford to pay more than they offered? He shook his head and turning on me with a slow and bovine observation, as if uncertain whether to give me his confidence or not, he said, with great seriousness, that times was changed, and folks changed with 'em. How changed? He shook his head again. They lives more expensive and extravagant. They holds their heads higher. It's been a rare time for getting on since I remember. Look at the town there. Everybody's got on besides we." Meaning the agricultural labourers. es. The labourers is where they allays was. Everybody else is got on like, and lives more expensive and extravagant; all but the labourers."

But surely, I reminded him, he must be able to remember far worse times than this-when he was a boy, for instance? Well, yes, he admitted, with a slow and thoughtful gravity, he was old enough to remember when Boneyparty died. Bread was dear and wages was low, but that was along of the war and the corn-laws, and made no sort of count with these times. He stopped to fill his pipe, and told me, whilst he fumbled over my tobacco-pouch, with his stick under one arm, that to his mind England was over-growed. and it was no sort o' good for a working-man to think of staying in it-not if he wanted to be better off than his father had been be fore him. Striving to test the old man's political economics, I asked him why a man should wish to be better off than his father had been. He smiled quietly at this, and shook his head, like the rural philosopher he was. "Don't you think, sir, as you'd better ax my master that afore you axes me?" I persisted there must always be master and servant, labourer and farmer, "Ah," he answered, "but you mustn't tell me as us can't have a shout for it,

about who's a-going to be man and whose a-going to be master.” Ay, but how about his pastors and masters, and the place to which it pleased Providence to call him? He smiled again, half in enjoyment of his pipe, I fancy, and half in enjoyment of his rejoinder. 'It's a-pleasing Providence to call one o' my sons to Noo Zealand nex' week. He'll have his opportoonity_theer as he can't get it here, never. England's over-growed. No. I don't say it's nobody's fault particular. The country's over-growed. I've been working on the land fifty year, and wheer am I now? I'm a working on the land now, or leastways I should be if I wasn't locked off of it." Was he himself, I asked, going to New Zealand? "No, sir," he answered; "I be too old. I've got one son theer, as went out a-emigrating four year ago. An' I've got another as is going along with Mr. Simmons nex' week-him and his wife. No, sir, I sha'nt attempt for to go out theer after 'em, not at my time o' life. I shall put my old bones down in my own-born parish, I shall." I am not willingly unmindful of the home-made pathos of these people, who never read one sentence of sentiment in their lives, and who are ignorant of all written poetry outside Bible and Hymnal and Church-service. Yet I ventured to follow my companion's thoughts a little further, It was hard, I said, to part with his children. He smiled again slowly-a ruminant smile, as if a bullock should un bend from his common gravity. He ain't no chicken, my son ain't. He can take care o' himself."

66

We came together to the old man's house, one of three cottages, built of mellow brick and cloaked in the upper part with wood after the quaint architectural fashion of the county. It had a little garden, then frost-bound and powdered lightly with thin snow, but looking orderly, and as if it could be prosperous in the more genial seasons of the year. In the kitchen sat an old woman, beside a small but sufficient fire, clicking a set of knitting-needles. In a recess, against the whitewashed wall, with an old copy of the SouthEastern Gazette" between it and the whitewash, hung a part of a flitch of bacon, with a bit of lath to keep the string which_supported it from slipping. The unclothed deal table with its red legs was as clean as the snow which lay upon the fields outside, and the floor and the walls and the hearthstone, and the one tin candlestick which, side by side with a great lump of rock-glass, ornamented the mantelpiece, were as clean as the table. The old woman dusted a chair for me, and would not sit down again until I was seated. The old man and I resumed our talk, and at the first mention of New Zealand his wife stopped the knitting-needles, above a pendent half-yard of gray stocking, and asked if I had been there. I answered "No," and then she questioned me as to what I knew about it. When I had sufficiently exposed my ignorance to myself, and had told her what little I could, she wiped her eyes, and said she hoped the poor creeturs 'ud do well there. But she didn't know

rightly, so she said, poor soul, about Mr. Simmons; and I believe that if anybody had assured her that the purpose of the Union Secretary was to sink the emigrating five hundred in the Bay of Biscay, she would have gone off on foot to Biddenden at once, to warn her son against him. Some folks said, so she told me, that Mr. Simmons sold the men and women he took out; but I dismissed that preposterous trouble. Like a woman-always more open to religious conifert than a man-she laid bare the simple hopes she had of seeing George again, "in Canaan," which was evidently a much more real place to her than New Zealand. There occurred to me some memorable words: "My household gods plant a terrible fixed root, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. It became, in the face of this one old woman's homely-troubled faith and tears, not altogether easy to think that a wrong-headed system, or a charlatan's meddling, or an unavoidable fate was bringing about this Exodus from Kent and Sussex, and grieving five hundred households. It seems not unlikely that it may be England's trouble yet, as well as a mere household sorrow; and it behoves all concerned to think very honestly which of those three causes has sent the Kentish agitators' boasted eight thousand from English shores. Mr. Simmons, editor of the "Kent and Sussex Times," and General Secretary of the Labourer's Union, charges the Exodus to the wrong-headedness of the farmers and landlords; the farmers and landlords for the most part charge it to the interested meddling of Mr. Simmons; and some political economists go with my old labourer in the belief that this country is over-growed.'

Before I left the old labourer, I got from him his son's name and address; and finding that “George" lived in a part of the county which I was bound to visit, I made a note of him, and in due time called upon him. On the night on which I drove over from Headcorn, the snow lay deep upon the ground and made heavy going for the horses, and the snow came down like a cloud and made it rather cold going for the outside passengers. My fellow-outsider and I met at the Railway Inn and waited for the coach together, and fell into talk about the strike. That was the title he gave it. "Call it a lock-out, if you like. I call it a strike, and I call it a criminal folly too. I know three men in the county who've gone bankrupt this year. I'm living on my own means now, and farming at a loss. I don't believe a man in Kent has made farming pay this three years. As for the men, they never were so well off in this world as they are in Kent this minute. Why, only nine or ten years ago, they used to have to put in three days' work and a half to get the cost of a bushel of wheat. They can earn a bushel of wheat in two days now." A trifle of exaggeration there, I ventured to hint. 'Well, that's putting it roughly. Say two days and a half. At that rate five days' work a week produces as much food as seven days could

have done ten years ago. Now look you, my rent hasn't been changed for eighty years-rent of my farm, I mean-good years and bad years have been all one to the landlord. With good years I launched out a bit. Now I've got to draw my horns in and retrench. The talk about agricultural distress and agricultural wages is enough to make a man sick if he knows anything about the question. Look at my carter now. I pay him seventeen shillings a-week. He lives rent free with his bit of garden, and I give him manure for his garden, and all that sort of thing." I made some timid overture towards the discovery of what "all that sort of thing" might include; but my interlocutor was in a great heat by this time, and anathematised agricultural discontent with great fluency until the coach came, when he mounted, and took refuge from the storm in 'silence and an enormous muffler.

I had a talk with the driver of the coach, to whom I appealed as an unprejudiced observer; but beyond the statement of his own grievances I secured nothing by that motion. "I be bad enough off for anything," said this unprejudiced observer; and beyond that hypothesis, and a fluent and discursive enlargement upon it, he declined to venture, until the coach stopped, when he offered what he supposed to be a hint, in the observation that "this was the sort o' night when a drop o' summat warm 'udn't hurt a man, by George!"

He

I found the intending emigrant next morning half a mile beyond the confines of the straggling village, and found him as ready to talk as any man I ever met. He knew all about New Zealand, and had recent letters from his brother there, painting all things couleur de rose. I had not talked with him long before I discovered that he was a democrat with very decided political ideas. He had had some schooling, and read the papers. I think I could even name the particular weekly print he favoured. I have seen much matter in its columns in my time of which his speech reminded me. was dead set against what he described as the Holy Garchy of the landlords. "The farmers think as they can crush the Union; but they'll find their mistake out afore long. They'll find out as the Union'll crush them." Then what would happen? Why then they'd come to their senses. But if all the farmers were crushed, who would employ the agricultural labourers? O, the land would come into the hands of the people, and men would farm for themselves. "We shall have to learn coöperation, sir. If the governing classes only acted fair, there'd be no need for anybody to emigrate. There's land enough, and more than land enough, to keep all the men in England. Look at the wastes as your lords and dukes keeps to shoots over. Why, pretty near every bird they shoot robs one man of his plot o' ground. Look at the Prince o' Wales, and what he does for a living yes, England's a very good place for a Look at the Civil List, and the people as lives on the poor. man as has got a park to live in; but it's no place for a poor man,