THE 



GARDENER. 



OCTOBER i88i. 



NOTES. 



HE greatest earthquake of our time is beginning to be felt 

 amongst us, and the wisest can only conjecture where 

 and how it will all end. I am writing this in a quiet 

 English village, and without a thought of Ireland (beyond 

 a love for her) or of her land agitation. In a village known 

 from my boyhood, and formerly one of peace and prosperity, there is 

 scarcely a home that has not suffered more or less from what is called 

 agricultural depression, and perhaps the landlord has suffered in mind 

 and pocket most of all. In former times it was the home of thrifty 

 cottars, every man with his few acres of land — a village commune — 

 every man a neighbour and a friend. Then came good seasons 

 when farmers prospered ; land-hunger grew — the landlord turned the 

 cottars adrift, and threw their well -cared -for little acres into big 

 farms. In this way much of our dear Old England was robbed of her 

 beauty. Farmers and landlords vied in getting rich too quickly. The 

 old shady hedges of milk-white thorn, thickly enamelled in spring with 

 crab and sloe blossom, and in autumn with wild fruits for the birds, 

 were ruthlessly swept away. What cared money-grubbers, if farmers 

 or landlords, whether a blackbird got its breakfast of haws on a bitter 

 frosty winter's morning, or whether the dappled song- thrush had 

 shelter for its nest and young ones in the spring ! Had it not been 

 for fox-hunting, every hedge would have been replaced by wire-fencing, 

 and pastoral England's beauty sacrificed to mammon like a soft-going 

 bride to a lover of old iron. Prosperity for the landlord and for the 

 large farms, however, was only for a time, and all around for miles 

 land is unlet, or is farmed by the landlord himself. Everywhere here 

 in Leicestershire one hears of farmers ruined, after having clung on to 



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