town, or coals from the pit, he is up, whether it be summer or winter, at an hour at which townspeople are often not gone to bed. In early spring and autumn he gets up to plough at five and six o'clock in a morning. It is pitch dark, and dismally cold. He strikes a light with his tinder, for lucifers he never saw, and has only heard of, as a horrible invention for setting ricks on fire. He slips on his ancle-boots without lacing them, and out he goes to fodder his horses, and rub them down. That done, he comes in again.

The "servant wench" has lit the fire and set out his breakfast for him and his fellows; huge basins of milk porridge, and loaves as big as beehives, and pretty much of the same shape, and as brown as the back of their own hands. To this fare he betakes himself with a capacity that only country air and hard labour can give. Having made havoc with as much of these as would serve a round family of citizens to breakfast, he then stretches out his hand to a capacious dish of cold fat bacon of about six inches thick; nay, I once saw bacon on such a table actually ten inches thick, and all one solid mass of fat. This is set on the top of half a peck of cold boiled beans that were left the day before, and however strange such viands might seem to a townsman at six o'clock, or earlier, in a morning, they vanish as rapidly as if they did not follow that mess of porridge, and those huge hunches of bread. Well, to a certainty he has now done. Nay, don't be in such haste-he has not done; he has his eye on the great brown loaf again. He must have a snack of bread and cheese; so he takes his knife out of his waistcoat pocket, a gigantic clasp knife, assuredly made by the knowing Sheffielder to hew down such loaves, and lie in such pockets, and fill such stomachs, and for no other earthly purpose. See! he cuts a massy fragment of the rich curly kissing-crust, that hangs like a fretted cornice from the upper half of the loaf, and places it between the little finger and the thick of his left hand; he cuts a corresponding piece of cheese, and places it between the thumb and the two fore-fingers of the same hand, and alternately cutting his bread and cheese with his clasp-knife (for he would not use another for that purpose on any account), as Betty sets a mug of ale before him, he wipes his mouth and says, as he lifts the mug, to his younger companion, who has all this time been faithfully

and valiantly imitating him,-"Well, Jack, we must be off, lad; take a draught, then get the horses out, and I'll be with thee."

This is pretty well for five or six o'clock in a morning; but it is quite as likely that it is only one or two in the morning, as it certainly is, if he be going to a distance with a load, or for a load of any thing. The breakfast is as liberally handled, and Betty mean time has put up their luncheons or "ten-o'clocks". huge masses of bread and cheese, or cold bacon, or cold meat, and a bottle of ale if they are going to plough. Having now breakfasted, he has only to lace his boots, which he generally does in the most inconvenient posture, and not before he has filled himself till it is tenfold additionally inconvenient-so with a face into which all the blood in his body seems to rush, and with many a grunt, he accomplishes his task, and away he goes;-his whip cracks, his gears jingle, his wagon rumbles, and he is gone. If, however, he be going to plough, he will duly about eleven o'clock lunch under a tree, while his horses rest and eat their hay; and then, at three or four o'clock, he will loose them from the plough, and return home to a dinner as plentiful as his breakfast; his horses are fed, and he goes to bed. If he be going out with corn, or for coals, he is off, as I have said, probably by two o'clock, and in his wagon he duly takes with him a truss of hay and a truss of The hay is for his horses to eat at some wayside publichouse, and the straw is for payment for their standing in the stable. The straw is worth a shilling, and in some places, at certain seasons, eighteen-pence. If he does not take straw, he takes a shilling in money. He carries his luncheon and eats it in the alehouse, and he has a shilling for himself and companion to drink, and treat the hostler. This is a custom as old as farms and corn-mills themselves. If it be winter weather, you shall meet him, probably, with straw-bands wrapped round his legs, or even round his hat for warmth; and in heavy rain his Macintosh is a sack-bag, which he throws over his shoulders, and goes on defying the weather for a whole day: In sudden squalls and thunder showers in summer, you may see him, and frequently a whole cluster of harvesters, take shelter under his wagon till the storm is over. By the evening fire, in some farm-houses, they mend their shoes, or shape and polish the heads of flails which they have

straw.

cut from the black-thorn bush, and have had in a loft or under their bed seasoning for the last six months, or they get into some horse-play, or they doze

Till chilblains wake them, or the snapping fire.

And on Sundays they go to church in the morning to get a quiet nod. Perhaps it is to them that the Apostle alludes when he says -“And your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." For the only chance of their worship seems to be in their dreams-the daily exposure to the air on the six days making them as drowsy as bats on the seventh. In the afternoon they lean over gates, or play at quoits:-and there is the life of a farmer man-servant, till he is metamorphosed into a labourer by marrying and setting up his cottage, finding himself, and receiving weekly instead of yearly wages. Such is the farmservant, whether you see him in his white, his blue, his tawny, or his olive-green smock-frock, in his straw-hat, or his wide-awake, according to the prevailing fashion of different parts of the country -and truly, seeing him and his fellows, we may ask with Wordsworth

What kindly warmth from touch of fostering hand,

What penetrating power of sun or breeze

Shall e'er dissolve the crust wherein his soul

Sleeps, like a caterpillar sheathed in ice?

This torpor is no pitiable work

Of modern ingenuity: no town

Or crowded city may be taxed with aught
Of sottish vice, or desperate breach of law,
To which in after years he may be roused.
This boy the fields produce :-his spade and hoe-
The carter's whip that on his shoulder rests,
In air high-towering with a boorish pomp,
The sceptre of his sway: his country's name,
Her equal rights, her churches and her schools-
What have they done for him? And, let me ask,
For tens of thousands, uninformed as he?*

Who would believe it, that such is the profound ignorance amongst the peasantry even of the Cumberland hills-amongst that peasantry where Wordsworth himself has found his Michaels, his Matthews, and many another man and woman that in his hands have become classical and enduring specimens of rustic heart and mind, that such facts as the following could occur, and yet this did occur there not

very long ago. The "statesmen," that is, small proprietors there, are a people very little susceptible of religious excitement; and, we may believe, have, in past years, been very much neglected by their natural instructors. You hear of no "revivals" amongst them, and the Methodists have little success amongst them. Some person, speaking with the wife of one of these "statesmen" on religious subjects, found that she had not even heard of such a person as Jesus Christ! Astonished at the discovery, he began to tell her of his history; of his coming to save the world, and of his being put to death. Having listened to all this very attentively, she inquired where this occured; and that being answered, she asked, "and when was it?" this being also told her, she very gravely observed—" Well, its sae far off, and sae lang since, we'll fain believe that it isna true!"

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CHAPTER IV.

THE BONDAGE SYSTEM OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND.

A person from the south or midland counties of England, journeying northward, is struck when he enters Durham, or Northumberland, with the sight of bands of women working in the fields under the surveillance of one man. One or two such bands, of from half a dozen to a dozen women, generally young, might be passed over; but when they recur again and again, and you observe them wherever you go, they become a marked feature of the agricultural system of the country, and you naturally inquire how it is that such regular bands of female labourers prevail there. The answer, in the provincial tongue, is-"O they are the Boneditchers," i. e. Bondagers. Bondagers! that is an odd sound, you think, in England. What, have we bondage, a rural serfdom, still existing in free and fair England? Even so. The thing is astounding enough, but it is a fact. As I cast my eyes for the first time on these female bands in the fields, working under their drivers, I was, before making any inquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the slave-gangs of the West Indies: turniphoeing, somehow, associated itself strangely in my brain with sugar-cane dressing; but when I heard these women called Bondagers, the association became tenfold strong.

On all the large estates in these counties, and in the south of Scotland, the bondage system prevails. No married labourer is permitted to dwell on these estates unless he enters into bond to comply with this system. These labourers are termed hinds. Small houses are built for them on the farms, and on some of the