A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 7 1 



of frantic rage. Such an encounter the Rector 

 chanced on this afternoon, walking to Jolland's 

 Corner, and dissolved with sudden stick. ''They 

 are going back to the monkeys," he says ; " there 

 will never be another Tom Sayers in Sussex." 



To this debcicle of boy-nature there is a set-off in 

 the more conservative nation of girls. These seem 

 largely to escape the sort of distemper which takes 

 the boys. Though in many ways they help to make 

 the future troublesome, they are the most hopeful 

 part of the coming race. Among the various de- 

 formities of face, the too common rickety and 

 scrofulous subjects, there is a proportion of honest 

 shiny complexions, of red cheeks and eyes speaking 

 simplicity, modesty, pleasure in a friendly world, 

 sufficient to save the stock for a generation or two 

 yet. The decay in juvenile manners is by many 

 people put to the account of the School. In a neigh- 

 bouring parish to Arnington there is a village Board 

 School, whose fruit, under the hands of farmers, 

 small traders, and a local "agitator," might almost 

 put us here in conceit with ourselves. The Tyefold 

 Board is a dull, soulless machine, ill-compounded 

 with party-economies and primary prejudices ; the 

 Master, a Lancashire man, almost unintelligible to 

 his pupils, a specimen of the coarse, downright, 



