''LA PETITE culture:' 279 



The West Indian peasant can, if lie will, cany " la petite 

 culture" to a perfection and a wealth which it has not yet 

 attained even in China, Japan, and Hindostan, and make every 

 rood of ground not merely maintain its man, but its civilized 

 man. This, however, will require a skill and a thoughtful- 

 ness which the Negro does not as yet possess. If he ever 

 had them, he lost them under slavery, from the brutalizing 

 effects of a rough and unscientific " grande culture ; " and 

 it will need several generations of training ere he recovers 

 them. Garden-tillage and spade-farming are not learnt in 

 a day, especially when they depend as they always must in 

 temperate climates for their main profit on some article 

 which requires skilled labour to prepare it for the market 

 on flax, for instance, silk, wine, or fruits. An average 

 English labourer, I fear, if put in possession of half a 

 dozen acres of land, would fare as badly as the poor 

 Chartists who, some twenty years ago, joined in Feargus 

 O'Connor's land scheme, unless he knew half-a-dozen 

 ways of eking out a livelihood which even our squatters 

 around Windsor and the ISTew Forest are, alas ! for- 

 getting, under the money-making and man-unmaking 

 influences of the " division of labour." He is vanishing 

 fast, the old bee-keeping, apple-growing, basket-making, 

 copse-cutting, many-counselled Ulysses of our youth, as 

 handy as a sailor : and we know too well what he leaves 



