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our own county, which perhaps retained more freedom and independence 

 than any other part of England, there was for centuries very little security 

 for either life or property, it being almost the constant theatre of Border 

 raids, rapine, and robbery. If we judge of the old times from the 

 manners and customs of the people, although we cannot help admiring 

 the openhanded hospitality, and the jovial hilarity which characterized 

 all their proceedings, we look in vain for any mixture of the intellectual 

 element in any of their observances. Their celebrations were all, without 

 exception, of the roistering, bacchanalian kind, and even their religious 

 festivals, were often mixed up with, or supplemented by, sports and revels. 

 If we contrast the state of things just described with that of the present, 

 when the humblest individual among us has as much liberty and freedom 

 as the noblest in the land ; when any respectable cottager has a score of 

 comforts and conveniences which, a hundred years since, the richest 

 could not buy ; when every township has its school, every household its 

 newspaper, every village its library, and every town its mechanics' insti- 

 tute, its literary society, and numerous other facilities for improvement, 

 it seems a curious misnomer to call those the good old times, in 

 disparagement of these. However, having made this comparison, do not 

 let us run away with the idea that the people of old times are deserving 

 of all the blame, and we of all the praise. We must simply go back to 

 the proposition with which we set out, viz. — the manners, customs, and 

 institutions of former times were the best and only ones possible under 

 the circumstances then existing, and we may make this addition to it : 

 that, whereas, our ancestors were rude and uncultivated, because they 

 had no means of culture or improvement ; on the contrary, if any of us 

 are contented to remain in the slough of ignorance and sensuality, we 

 have ourselves alone to blame. 



