132 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



establishments. He takes his ownership of 

 the land as a stewardship for which he has to 

 account, and the tillage of it is of paramount 

 importance. 



I have known two other squires who in 

 different ways remind me of the squire of 

 Verwood, though all three have different and 

 strongly-marked personalities. Each belonged 

 to the older type of territorial magnates, a 

 type now probably passing away and giving 

 place to the merchant-prince squire, or to the 

 Council of landowners. 



One of these was a poor man : at any rate 

 he felt himself passing poor on £4000 a year. 

 This sum represented the rent derived from 

 three villages that he owned and the farms sur- 

 rounding them. He had to maintain an old, 

 plain-featured, but historic mansion. He took 

 his business as landowner as seriously as the 

 owner of Verwood. He was always at war 

 with his tenant farmers, because he was ever 

 striving to claim greater independence for the 

 labourer. "1 have it on my conscience," he 

 once said to me, " that I hold the lives of all 

 these people in the palm of my hand. Is any 

 man good enough for the position ? " He 

 might indeed have quoted Horace, and said 



