IN LITERATURE 27 



tries to take to water-drinking : you have spoiled your- 

 self for the calm of bucolic enjoyment all the year round. 

 You would be perpetually sighing for the familiar 

 excitement, and ennui might haunt you the more that 

 you were relieved from the worst of your worries. 

 But to those who have been bred and born to it there 

 is assuredly nothing like a life in the country, at all 

 events when that country is in the British Isles. You 

 have but to look at your country friends and be con- 

 vinced. Their ruddy faces and elastic or comfortable 

 figures are the signs of light hearts and well-preserved 

 health ; and if there are exceptions they only prove the 

 rule. It can hardly be otherwise. Fresh air and good 

 digestion, with the habit of exercise in the open air, 

 make them strong to support or cast aside the sorrows 

 that eat away the springs of a more artificial existence. 

 The occcupations by which they get their living would 

 be the recreations of other men ; and while they harm- 

 lessly excite themselves over sports and trifles they are 

 apt to attain a serenity of temperament that almost 

 borders on stolidity. So it comes about that farmers 

 can slumber peacefully, and know no abatement of 

 their vigorous appetites, while the rain is beating down 

 on the hay or the wheat, while the drought is playing 

 the mischief with the root-crops, or the foot-and-mouth 

 disease has broken loose among the flocks of their 

 neighbours. So landed proprietors sit lightly under 

 mortgages and settlements, and easily console them- 

 selves with a growl or a grumble under unwelcome 

 shortcomings on the rent-day, or even in a bad season 

 for the birds. 



