IN LITERATURE 23 



of the squire and the farmer ; bred a Quaker as he 

 was, he has a friendly word for the worthy parson 

 whose lines have fallen in these pleasant places ; and, 

 above all, he has a kindly feeling for the peasant and 

 the working-man. It is writers like Howitt and 

 Thomas Miller who love to bring out the home-like 

 features of our rural life in their most attractive 

 aspects ; who make it a sacred sentiment to cherish 

 the little that remains to us of old English manners 

 and customs. Howitt is the more loth to see England 

 stripped of its traditional poetry and romance, that he 

 is so heartily alive to the benefits of our material 

 progress, and the vast development of our manu- 

 facturing industries. Because the sea-breeze is tainted 

 with the fumes of the chemical works, he abstracts 

 himself all the more devoutly at the shrine of the 

 Venerable Bede at Jarrow ; and his fancy is the more 

 lively among the ruins of Tynemouth, that he is 

 looking down on the smoke of grimy Shields and on 

 the shipping that crowds the river. And it is 

 wonderful how much of rude romance he contrives to 

 find among people you might set down as essentially 

 prosaic ; making no ostentatious exhibition of the 

 interest he so evidently feels, he wins the confidence 

 of the most reserved : whether he may have dropped 

 into casual conversation with some dusty wayfarer, or 

 have turned aside to ask his way of a cottager, or is 

 gossiping pleasantly with some prim old lady, the 

 chatelaine of some ancestral show-place. And as 

 Providence helps those who help themselves, he is 



