THE WALK CONTINUED. 35 



"These parishes contain 9116 persons 

 who raise food and raiment sufficient for 

 45,580 persons, fed and lodged according to 

 my scale, and sufficient for 236,740 persons 

 according to the scale on which the unhappy 

 labourers of this fine valley are now fed and 

 lodged." 



The workers indeed have been raising 

 nearly twenty times as much food and clothes 

 as they consume. They have been doing this 

 for many, many years, covering many genera- 

 tions, and they are doing it to-day in the same 

 manner, except that the farmer of to-day is 

 aided by labour-saving machinery exceeding 

 any known in the days of Cobbett. 



I wondered whether I should catch any echo 

 in my travels of Cobbett and his age, and so 

 at Wootton Rivers I asked a villager, who 

 seemed to be a genius at his craft, if he had 

 ever heard of Cobbett. He said he remem- 

 bered his father mentioning him. This man 

 was a clockmaker who fitted his clocks with 

 musical chimes, the mechanism of which he 

 made entirely himselfV He had bought a 



^ Since writing these words I have learnt with pleasure tliat 

 my friend has presented the parish with a clock (for tlie church 

 tower), made out of bits of metal brought to him by the villagers 

 from time to time. 



