Bankni])tGy in Arcadia. 185 



to be a better boy. And I must tell a story of the old 

 governor, to show how I inherited my old Tory notions. 

 The evidence lies before me now in the shape of a child's 

 book called '' Scenes in England," in which book is an 

 account of the Cornish wreckers, who, as the writer says, 

 were brought to a better state of mind and humanity 

 through the exertions of an excellent body of men called 

 " The Wesleyan Methodists." But the stout old English 

 parson li^ould have history written his own w^ay, and struck 

 out " Wesleyan Methodists " with a broad pen and inserted 

 in good round text "The Clergy of the Established Church 

 of England." 



As a matter of course, railways, telegraphs, and the 

 enormous increase of the Press, have been the cause of our 

 living much more in public in the present day than formerly. 

 The spread of education and public agitation have disturbed 

 the rustic simplicity of our village homes. Mr. Arch, the 

 agricultural labourers' champion, has invaded Arcadia, and 

 made our Meliboei and Tityri strike against Pan and Ceres 

 and Flora and Pomona, and the squire and the farmers are 

 in no little trepidation about labour in the event of an 

 abundant harvest. Our Titp-us is smoking his pipe now 

 in a beershop brewing treason, and Meliboeus is " picketing 

 knobsticks " who are ready to do a fair day's work for a fair 

 day's wage. In fact, the tie between master and man is 

 loosened to everyone's loss. 



The day is gone by for restrictions as to servants' dress, 

 and you may see now in a country village church a parody 

 of the latest London fashions in the dress of the rural 

 population; the village louts wear flash, ill-cut, shoddy 

 " swell" clothes, and the time will arrive ere long when a 

 smock-frock will be kept in the British Museum as a record 

 of the costume of the English peasant in the so-called 

 comparatively " dark ages." 



