RURAL COUNCILLORS. 103 



and grow the smaller things in which hand 

 work or personal attention is more needed ? " 



Here, too, small holdings are out of the 

 track of trade. So cut off have labourers 

 been from the outside world, that a woman 

 lived in the parish for seventy years without 

 ever stepping beyond the confines of a small 

 common ! 



When I left my friend I lodged at a small 

 farmhouse, from the windows of which hardly 

 anything could be seen save acres and acres 

 of corn and roots. Herds of bullocks are 

 fattened in the yards in the winter, and grazed 

 on the marshes in the summer, and yet with 

 all this open, fertile farm-land around us it 

 was extremely difficult for me to get a new- 

 laid egg for my breakfast, and the only milk to 

 be obtained came from a cow with a tubercular 

 udder ! Cream was imported from N orway 

 for visitors, and the butter came from Brittany 

 or Denmark ; and rather than drink milk from 

 a diseased cow, I, in the heart of England's 

 premier agricultural county, drank the milk 

 preserved hi tins which a Swiss manufacturer 

 thoughtfully provides for pastoral English- 

 men ! 



Here were milk, and cream, and butter, and 



