anywhere. It was you,' said the landlord, addressing the navigator (who was not a seafaring person, but one of the pioneers of the railway system), 'it was you as drove me out o' Cornwall.' 'Ah,' said the navigator, and how do you make that out, mate?' 'Well,' said the landlord, slowly answering, I ain't the only one as you drove out. You helped to make a railroad down there; didn't you?' The navvy nodded his head ponderously, as though it had been as heavy as an anvil. The railroad drove a many.' Oy,' said the large-mouthed youth, um allays do.' At this point I struck in, and questioned, How?' 'It don't be hard,' said the navvy, whose speech proclaimed him of the west, 'to tell y' 'ow. I do mind right enough, when the rail did a be comin' doon b' Exeter, leastways 'tween theer an' coast like, you ud see the cawlifloor a blowin' ahl doon line as big's beehives, an' as yaller's guineas, an' as heavy's lead. I do be jiggerednow I tell ee-if some on 'em dain't be as heavy's two stone, an' no word of a lie about it. Two stone weight they wahs, and you could buy 'em for twopence apiece. An' soon'sever the line did be finished they did begin for to rise in price like, an' folk didn't be able for to buy 'em not for a shellin'. 'Em ahl went up to Common Gyarden Market, an' th' 'igh folk-Lard bless ee, they didn't never see cawlifloor like them afore-they ud give annythin' for they great big outtheer beehives o' fruit like. An' 'twahs the same wi' butter, an' all along the coast 'twas the same o' fish. Why,' said the navvy, warming with his theme, ''taint beyond my mind to remember when you could a bought pilchard at three pound a penny, an' conger-eel at a farthing a pound. An'-Lar1 bless ee!--mack'ril! why, you could a got it for the say so! I tell 99, when I were a young un, I do ha' run beside a cyart, and just chucked up a sixpence; an' the man as did drive he ud throw out mack'ril as hard as he did know how to chuck 'em for a quarter of a mile; an' when I were tired o' follerin' of un, theer'd be mayhap a dozen as I udn't think it wuth my while to get out o' way fur. You see they was allays in a bit of a hurry like to get inland, acause as the first as did get theer he did get the trade like, so to speak. An' now, sir-you take my word for un-seven shellin' don't be what one shellin' did be doon theer, when I did be a lahd!' And did he think, I asked, that that kind of difference was generally made by the construction of a railway. He answered, "The differ for country folk do be allays reg'lar nighon a'most amizin'. Before I had well asked my question I had understood him, but for a moment I was puzzled, and, begging his pardon for not understanding him, asked him to repeat himself. This query of mine was fortunate, inasmuch as it produced the one gem of west-country dialect I have, as yet, in my collection. The boy, with the mug of beer before him, laughed until the corners of his mouth seemed to touch the lobes of his ears. He threw the thin shins and the big boots into the air in an ecstasy of humorous enjoyment; and when the passion of his joy subsided, he turned upon the navvy and said, 'Law bless ee, mate, it doan't be no sart o' use to talk to the gen'l'man that w'y. Usses country upgrans do

reddle un reg'lar.' Then in a paroxysm of comic delight he described vague circles with the thin shins and the enormous boots, and laughed until the corners of his mouth were lost at the back of his head. Usses country upgrans reddles un,' he repeated; and I pondered over him until at last light came. "Upgrans resolved itself into 'epigrams,' and 'reddles' became 'puzzles.' The old verb to riddle in the sense to puzzle retained its quaint life still, but how the large-mouthed boy got hold of 'epigrams' I am not philologist enough to say.

The house in which we sat was a beershop simply, and had no license for the sale of spirituous liquors. The navigator, however, sent out for gin, and drank that uninviting beverage hot, in extraordinary quantities, until it began to tell upon him, when he told me that it had weighed upon his mind that he was instrumental-like, as a man might say, in damaging of his fellow-creatures by making railroads. The landlord and the bargee coincided in this belief, and I left all three declaring against the railroad system as a device of the rich to rob the poor. The labouring man is not a logician, and he is frequently a very unreasonable creature; but he can feel and see. He finds cause for feud where those above him could imagine none, and sometimes real cause. The strong hand of the world seems always against him; and even Geordie Stephenson's ghost beckons him inexorably from home.

Even the labourer, however, has his final participation in the triumphs of science. There is a toiler in the fields in the immediate neighborhood of Madstone, whom I met at the time of the exodus, and who has a complete set of false teeth with gold attachments.

Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset are reckoned the poorest of English counties; but Gloucester deserves at least to rank after them. The distress of last winter was not confined to the great towns. It made itself felt in the rural districts; and the records of the local boards of guardians in the county displayed a large increase in the numbers of shifting and resident paupers. Private charity supplemented the relief given by the Board' often niggardly and insufficient. But wherever there is distress one man at least will be found ready to proclaim it a sham, and to declare that the country generally was never in a more prosperous condition. I found that impenetrable and heartless blockhead in South Wales, when but for the splendid charity of the vicar of Merthyr Tydvil hundreds must inevitably have starved to death during the great strike; and he told me then that the distress was simulated. I met him in Northern Roumelia in the year 1877, when every second village was a smoking wreck, and the long lines of houseless refugees toiled starving southward on every road in that wide province; and he told me then that the distress was really very much exaggerated. When I met him in the shadow of Gloucester's mean cathedral I was not surprised. There's no distress yer,' he said, in the dogmatic manner common to him. 'Why, look at this: Councillor Byatt, in Gloucester city yer, he goes and buys sixty pound weight of first-class scraps an' nigh onto a hundredweight of first-class

bones, an' he biles 'em down in his very own biler, an' he offers soup, grattis, to the poor. Well, what's the consequence? Thickens the soup he does with the best vegetables, and what's the consequence? Why, he offers 'em soup, reglar first-class soup, with three inches of fat on the top of it; and two women comes and gets their share, and throws it away, because it ain't good enough for 'em. And I'll tell you what, nothin' ain't good enough for 'em. They're a discontented, whining, miserable, thenkless lot." In the fulness of my heart I expressed an opinion that this gentleman ought to be a guardian of the poor. That's what I am,' he answered; and when they are in front of me they know what they have to expect.' Anxious to test the opinion of this optimist in commerce and pessimist in human nature, I sought out some of those who had received the generous councillor's gratuity. In Worcester-street I lighted on a family whose home looked almost as bleak as the wintry fields outside the city. The hearth was fireless in that terrible weather, and the house was bare. I was told that the soup was worth all the parish relief put together. Us do get it hot, sir,' said the man; 'an' there do a be a bit o' comfort in summat warm.' Were the times very hard? I asked. "They do a be deadly bad, sir, that a be.' He was a carter, and had only within the last half-year exchanged farmwork for the town. But the weather had stopped all building operations for weeks and weeks. His wife had been ill, and the household things had had to go. When I asked if he had heard of anybody throwing soup away he stared in wide-eyed amazement. 'Us doan't get it s'often as us do find anny cahl for to throw it away, sir.' In the next house I called at I witnessed the preparation of dinner. Some bread had been begged by one member of the family, and another had a fragment of newspaper with perhaps half a pound of dripping in it. The dripping was stirred in boiling water, with a little salt; the bread was then broken into that thin mess, and dinner was ready. I came away thinking that if these people had wantonly wasted the soup, they might at least have saved the guardian's boasted three inches of fat on the top of it.'

The distress of the whole county had accumulated with the growth of the year. Once upon a time a good harvest might mean immediate plenty and contentment for the rural population. That is not so now for obvious reasons; and the harvest of 1878 made no change in the condition of the people. Gloucestershire, like Kent, has its hop-fields and orchards; but neither hopping nor fruit-gathering supply the people of the former county with any festival or with any appreciable addition to their yearly earnings. When the fruit was ripening last year I met in the Gloucestershire lanes many a little troop of men and women bound on foot for Kent or Sussex. I asked the question which naturally presented itself: Why travel so far to do the very work which would want doing here by the time the journey's end was reached? I was soon enlightened. A man could scarce fill his belly in Gloster, whilst he could live well and save three or four pounds by the harvesting in the south-eastern counties. In the rich west men

starve and stay-for these wanderers were of the floating population ; from the south-eastern counties, surely little richer, flourishing workers emigrate. There is not so great a difference in the market-value of the produce of the two districts as in the wage paid to the labourer, yet the farmers of Gloucestershire complain as loudly as the farmers of Kent. Therein lies a problem of political economy as yet unriddled.

Here, as elsewhere, the feud of the farmer against the landlord perpetually smoulders. I met a tenant-farmer to whom I decline to give a local habitation and a name, who seemed to me to go to the roots of two or three growths which produce very unhappy fruit and flower. We,' he said, meaning the tenant-farmers, do compulsory injustice to the labourers, because the landlords do injustice to us. Their injustice is partly the outcome of a survival. Before the days of high farming it was necessary for the landlord to insert certain clauses in his lease for the preservation of his land. One of those clauses is to the effect that no straw shall be sold off the land, except by the will of the landlord; and another is that no roots shall be grown except for the use of the farm itself, unless by permission. Nothing drains land of its productive qualities like the growth of roots; and the other provision was intended to preserve the straw, first for farm use and then for manure. Now as a matter of fact I spend more in artificial manure than I do in rent, and the old straw manure is no longer necessary. Yet I am compelled at a great annual loss to hold it. I don't want it, because according to the rules of modern farming it isn't efficient. All my straw goes to waste, and my landlord's agent won't hear of my selling a truss of it. Now, you see, what I ask is nothing more nor less than free-trade and long lease. The landlord's contention is, that with free-trade I may exhaust his land. My contention is, that if I have a long lease I should be an idiot if I exhausted the land, because I should be picking my own pocket. But there's another reason why he won't give me a long lease, apart from that nonsensical theory. The possession of landed estate has always conferred a sort of dignity, and I suppose it always will. For years and years past the numbers of the newly rich have been increasing, and these people make haste to own land. If they can't own it, the next dignified thing is to rent it, and live on it in good style, and mix with the county people, who very often wouldn't look at 'em in London. Now these people who make money in other ways, don't want to farm at a profit. They're quite willing to farm at a loss, and as often as not they don't want to farm at all. But they will have land, and they can afford to pay for it; and so land gets to have a fictitious value. The farmer suffers by the increase of rent, and the labourer suffers with the farmer. To come back to what I wanted to say: if a landlord is asked nowadays to grant a long lease, he says to himself, "No. Land's increasing in value every year." So it is to him, but not to the farmer, nor the labourer, nor the general public. Land has only one value, and that you measure by the standard of its producing

powers.' Later on he said, 'Ideas pretty generally descend in the social scale, and very rarely rise. If you want to know what the labourers will think of the farmers in six years' time, discover what the landlords think now. In about that time the ideas of the landowners will have filtered down. Just now the farmers are talked of by the labourers as they used to be talked of by the landlords half a dozen years ago. The doctrine was with the higher class, as it is now with the lower, that we were all getting too educated and refined and æsthetic and all that. There was never yet under the sun a class without its grievances. I dare bet that popes and emperors, who are scarcely as numerous as farmers and farm-labourers, have their troubles if they only saw their way to ventilate 'em. The class that talks most is most listened to. The aristocrats have had their say, and the plebs have had theirs; but we middlemen have talked too little. If Dick Carter's boy is to learn to write, I can't see for the life of me why my lad shouldn't learn Greek. He won't be any more in front of me than Dick Carter's boy will be in front of Dick Carter. There's a great deal of talk about the farmer's growing refinements. He only keeps pace with the squire and the labourer. We're all growing refined together, and all getting larger ideas, and we're all suffering for our growth. I had growing pains when I was a lad, and I don't know that I'm any the worse for 'em now. The country at large is suffering from growing pains. Let her suffer, and let her grow-and let you and me go to my place, and have a game at chess and as good a glass of claret as you'll find in the county."

When a man sets an argument of that kind before you, it is not easy to disagree with him. Time, London.