144 THE LIFE OF TEE FIELDS. 



In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs 

 drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still 

 stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are 

 yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook 

 are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the 

 new so shade and blend together that you can hardly 

 say where one begins and the other ends. That there 

 are many, very many things concerning agriculture and 

 country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I 

 have often pointed out, and having done so, I feel 

 that I can with the more strength affirm that in its 

 natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever. 



It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some 

 who depict country scenes on canvas that they omit 

 these modern aspects, doubtless under the impression 

 that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene 

 intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so 

 many illustrations seem to proceed upon the assump- 

 tion that steam-plough and reaping-machine do not 

 exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what 

 it did a hundred years ago. These sketches are often 

 beautiful, but they lack the force of truth and reality. 

 Every one who has been fifty miles into the country, 

 if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they 

 are not real. You feel that there is something want- 

 ing, you do not know what. That something is the 

 hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the 

 sky above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty 

 years from the picture ? That is what it usually 

 means — fifty years left out; and somehow we feel 

 as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not 

 of our day. The actual fields, the actual machines, 



I 



