"I should like to shew you too, what a pleasant sight it is when you pay a visit of enquiry on the occasion of a birth. You will find the mother laid among her well-bleached sheets, and comfortable home-made blankets, surmounted by a gaily-patched quilt; and though you may be no admirer-as gentlemen seldom are— of new-born babies, yet, when the little thing is brought out of its snug cradle for your inspection, you cannot but cast an approving glance on its nicely-plaited cap, and the warm flannels and neatly made frock (often ornamented with braiding), which bespeak it the child of competence and comfort. The Bondager too is there, rather dressed for the occasion (though said by the wives to be of little or no use to them '), it being customary for her to stay at home to look after the house and nurse the mother, till she is well enough to resume her duties. Should it be a first-born, you are invited to inspect the baby's wardrobe, and there is little appearance of wretchedness in the sufficient stock of neat little garments laid up in lavender' for the little stranger. It is expected, too, that you should drink the child's health, and a bottle of wine or spirits is produced from the cupboard, along with a noble cheese, and a loaf to match it, which it would be thought very 'mean' not to have to offer on such occasions." Mrs. Grey luxuriates in descriptions of the "white loaf which the women always have, and the dainty white cake for tea, kneaded with butter or cream, when a friend comes to visit them; of the fat things with which their cows and their pigs overflow their dairy and larder; of their general good fare; and of the many days when the Bondager is not at field-work, but stays to spin, knit, wash and iron for the household,― always milking the cow, and frequently churning and making cheese." She adds that the hinds' wives make great profit of their butter, about 57. a year; and that they have "great spinning matches, and spin all the woollen articles that they use."

Mr. Grey in "Two Letters on the State of the Agricultural Interests, and the Condition of the Labouring Poor," published by Ridgway, London, 1831, draws a similar picture, describing the hind's cottage as "( a scene of comfort and contentment."

Now these hinds must be very unreasonable fellows. Spite of all their bounteous and Arcadian lot; spite of their cottages being "scenes of comfort and contentment," they certainly were, as

described in the preceding pages, found by us, in 1836, in a most discontented state. And since then they have turned out in great numbers, calling upon their employers to abolish the system. In public meetings held at Wooller, and elsewhere, they described their situation as wretched, and their average weekly gains at about 5s. 6d. Mr. L. Hindmarsh, in a paper on the Bondage System, read at Newcastle, in August, 1838, bears testimony to the great dissatisfaction of the hinds. Mr. Grey, in his pamphlet alluded to above, states, on the other hand, that the "conditions" of the hind, as they are called, were in 1831, the year of its publication, as follows; and that however the market-price may vary the quantities are invariably the same, and always of the very best quality; varying with the price of grain from £30 to £40 a year.

This is also exclusive of what the other branches of the family earn; the females receiving 10d. or 1s. a day generally, and 2s. or 2s. 6d. in harvest.

Besides the general discontent and turn-out just noticed, which Mrs. Grey attributes to the waywardness of human nature, we must introduce these facts. The morals of these districts have been highly extolled, and both Mr. and Mrs. Grey strongly reiterate the eulogium. Mrs. Grey does not recollect two instances of intoxication amongst the hinds in her life; we saw many one day, as already stated. In the Fourth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, even while advocating "the hinding system," we find these singular paragraphs: "Whatever general merits may or

may not otherwise have distinguished Northumberland and Durham from more pauperized districts, these counties must not lay claim to superiority in reference to bastardy, for in no part of England was bastardy more prevalent than in portions of this district, and in none was the practice of relief to the mother more pertinaciously upheld. The Newcastle parishes of All Saints' and St. Andrews, together with the parishes of Sunderland and Berwick, are the only places we can call to mind where a weekly allowance for every legitimate child was not a matter of course.

"The difficulties of inducing children in competent circumstances to contribute to the support of their aged parents (whose maintenance the parish had hitherto taken off their hands), were quite as great, if not relatively greater, considering the wages of labour, in the north as in the south."

So much for morals; now for the Arcadian cottages. The Newcastle Courant of November 23d, 1838, stated that "Thomas Dodds, Esq., surgeon, read a very valuable paper on 'Improvement in Cottage Architecture, and the domestic comfort of the peasantry of North Northumberland.' Mr. Dodds' long personal observation, arising from his medical practice," it is stated, "peculiarly qualified him for the discussion of this important and interesting subject," and Mr. Dodds very summarily and pithily characterized these abodes as "a disgrace to Northumberland." He contrasted them with "the splendid edifices, commemorative columns, and magnificent streets, which the people of Northumberland are raising." He said, "The miserable tenements of numbers of this class are less carefully constructed than the stables of their horses, formed, as they are, in a majority of cases, of only one apartment, open to the roof, with earthen floor, and four-paned windows that dim the light of day, a part of which is often occupied by the cow; and where the decencies of life cannot be observed, there being no separate apartments for the females of the family, one of whom is often a stranger in the capacity of a servant to work 'the bondage."" He represented them equally detrimental to health as to comfort and morals; and gave many instances from personal observation, especially a case at that moment of a family of eight persons, near Alnwick, all lying ill of typhus fever in their one room with the corpse of one of them laid out in the midst of them. He added a

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ludicrous anecdote of a cow which, in the night, leaped, in some sudden fear, from its fastening behind the bed of a hind at Hawkhill, right through the bed, and alighted on the hearth, bringing the bed at one crash upon the people in it, and severely injuring the man's wife. Mr. Dodds called the attention of his hearers to some cottages of the Duke of Northumberland erected at Brislee, as models for cottage architecture, and strongly urged that "the hinds should be no longer compelled to seek in sleep and oblivion the only solace of his cheerless dwelling," but have "an ingle blinking bonnily," where he might "spend his hours of relaxation in innocent amusements, or in reading books suited to his way of life."

"A vote of thanks to Mr. Dodds for this address was moved by John Lambert, Esq., and carried by acclamation."

What then are we to infer from these very conflicting statements? Why, that where the people are discontented, and the appeal to their wealthy neighbours on their behalf is received with acclamation, the evil must be the actual condition, and the "cottage scenes of comfort and contentment," the exceptions. Mrs. Grey admits that she "has endeavoured to present the sunny side of the picture as the reverse of my gloomy one." I can well believe that she lives on the sunny side of humanity; and that her enlightened husband, and the most liberal portion of the agriculturists, so treat their hinds as to form the exception. It is only another proof of the wisdom of Pope's words that "whate'er is best administered is best." That, under a pure despotism, people may be perfectly happy if they happen to have a kind tyrant. That the hinds under the bondage system may be, moral, flourishing, and happy, when they have kind and sympathizing employers but that does not prove that the system itself has a tendency to such happy results, nor consequently remove our objections to it. Any condition of the people is good where Christian benevolence and enlightened regard are exercised towards them, and any system, even the bondage system, is better than that deadly neglect of the peasantry by the landowners, which too much prevails in many parts of the south.

THE citizen who lives in a compact house in the centre of a great city; whose doors and windows are secured at night by bars, bolts, shutters, locks, and hinges of the most approved and patented construction; who, if he look out of doors, looks upon splendid rows of lamps; upon human habitations all about him; whose house can only be assailed behind by climbing over the tops of other houses; or before, by eluding troops of passengers and watchmen, whom the smallest alarm would hurry to the spot: I say, if such a man could be suddenly set down in one of our many thousand country houses, what a feeling of unprotected solitude would fall upon him. To sit by the fire of many a farm-house, or cottage, and hear the unopposed wind come sighing and howling about it; to hear the trees swaying and rustling in the gale, infusing a most forlorn sense of the absence of all neighbouring