WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 143 



the Greek fret. People of the easel would not find it 

 easy to depict the half-green, half-made hay floating in 

 the air behind a haymaking machine. Sunlight falls 

 on the modern implements just the same as on the old 

 wooden plough and the oxen. To be true, pictures of 

 our fields should have them both, instead of which all 

 the present things are usually omitted, and we are pre- 

 sented with landscapes that might date from the first 

 George. Turner painted the railway train and made it 

 at once ideal, poetical, and classical. His 'Rain, Steam, 

 and Speed,' which displays a modern subject, is a most 

 wonderful picture. If a man chose his hour rightly, the 

 steam-plough under certain atmospheric conditions would 

 give him as good a subject as a Great Western train. 

 He who has got the sense of beauty in his eye can find 

 it in things as they really are, and needs no stagey time 

 of artificial pastorals to furnish him with a sham nature. 

 Idealise to the full, but idealise the real, else the picture 

 is a sham. 



All the old things remain on the farm, but the village 

 is driven out — the village that used to come as one man 

 to the reaping. Machinery has not altered the earth, 

 but it has altered the conditions of men's lives, and as 

 work decreases, so men decrease. Some go the cities, 

 some emigrate ; the young men drift away, and there is 

 none of that home life that there used to be. They are 

 going to try to re-settle our land by altering the laws. 

 Most certainly the laws ought to be altered, and must be 

 altered, still it is evident to any one of dispassionate 

 thought, while such immense quantities of gold are sent 

 away from us, profit cannot be made in farming either 

 small or great. The crop is the same in either case, and if 

 there is no sale for the produce, it matters very little 

 whether you farm four acres or four hundred. 



