AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. 41 



tances of the drills from each other, will be found to correspond, 

 with remarkable precision, to the measurement designed. But 

 they appear totally destitute of invention, and have, evidently, 

 little skill or ingenuity when called upon to apply themselves to 

 a work different from that to which they have been accustomed. 

 Their gait is very slow ; and they seem, to me, to grow old 

 quite early. The former circumstance explained itself to me 

 when I examined and lifted the shoes which they are accustomed 

 to wear, and which, when, in addition to being well charged 

 with iron, they gather the usual amount of clay which adheres 

 to them in heavy soils, furnish at least some reason why, like an 

 Alexandrine verse, &quot;they drag their slow length along.&quot; There 

 are occasional instances of extraordinarily good management 

 where they are enabled to accumulate small sums; but in no 

 case, under the best exertions, can they make, from the wages 

 of labor, any thing like a provision for their old age and decay. 



They are little given to change situations, and many of them, 

 both men and women, live and die in the same service. Several 

 instances have come under my observation of thirty, thirty-five, 

 and forty years reputable service ; and many where persons, even 

 upon the most limited means, have brought up large families of 

 children without any parochial assistance. But, in this case, 

 they are all workers; the children are put to some sort of service 

 as soon as they are able to drive the rooks from the corn, and no 

 drones are suffered in the hive. I visited one laborer s cottage. 

 to which I was carried by the farmer himself, who was desirous 

 of showing me, as he said, one of the best examples, within his 

 knowledge, of that condition of life. The house, though very 

 small, Avas extremely neat and tidy ; the Bible lay upon the 

 shelf without an unbroken cobweb over its covers ; the dressers 

 were covered with an unusual quantity of crockery, sufficient to 

 furnish a table for a large party a kind of accumulation which. 

 I was told, was very common ; and their pardonable vanity runs 

 in this way, as, in higher conditions of life, we see the same 

 passion exhibiting itself in the accumulation of family plate. 

 The man and woman were laborers, greatly esteemed for their 

 good conduct, and had both of them been in the same service 

 more than forty years. I asked them if, in the course of that 

 time, they had not been able to lay by some small store of money 

 to make them comfortable in their old age. I could not have 

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