CHAPTER III. 



THE GROWTH OF A NEW ENGLAND. 



In the ibregoing pages we have looked at a 

 picture of England where the land is regarded 

 by the owners as a happy hunting-ground for 

 the wealthy, where thousands of acres are 

 merely markhig time, if not actually going 

 back in cultivation, and where villages here and 

 there are settling down into senile decay. In 

 such places only the old are left. The young 

 and able-bodied have drifted to the towns. 



It is contended by some economists that 

 the migration from the country to the town 

 is the natural tendency in all Euro})ean 

 countries. "Migration is humorously de- 

 scribed," says Thomas Hardy in Tcss, "as the 

 tendency of the rural population towards large 

 towns, being really the tendency of water 

 to flow uphill when forced by machinery." 



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