Notable Books of the Month. 



583 



helping the father, and the "gleaning" was very useful 

 and profitable towards making the "standard loaf" of 

 those days. Then a young pig could be bought out of 

 the squire's stubble herd in the autumn and fattened 

 up to pay the rent. He rarely left home for more than a 

 few days at a time, and then carried his farm with him, 

 as it were. Once when we got him away to Edinburgh 

 the first thing he did was to write to the baililf and 

 tell him to go to a certain part of a field and pull up a 

 dock which my father had forgotten to do. 



The antithesis of this is the story of a tyrant, 



so that we may shudder at the thought of those 



who were subject to the tender mercies of some 



of the country squires : — 



This was the act and deed of a tyrannical old squire, 

 Joseph Lord Milton (afterwards Earl of Dorchester), 

 about the year 1780. There was an old grammar school 

 in iviilton, and the boys were a continual annoyance to 

 his lordship, as they stole his fruit and his cucumbers, 

 disturbed his game, and took his game- fowl eggs to 

 rear good cockfighting champions. This was very 

 trying, so he resolved to transplant the whole town, 

 bag and baggage, with fine quarter-deck high-handed- 

 ness. This raised a loud outcry. But he had to buy up 

 all the houses before he could pull them down, and it 

 took him twenty years. A local solicitor refused to sell 

 his lease, though he was offered three times its value. 

 Lord Milton tried to turn him out by turning on to his 

 house the water from a pond ; so the lawyer brought an 

 action and won it. A few days later, when his lordship 

 was driving to London, the church bells burst out in a 

 joyous peal. They were only ringing for Guy Fawkes' 

 Day ; but the squire thought that the people were ring- 

 ing a peal to express their joy at his departure and at 

 his defeat by the lawyer. So the tyrant doomed the 

 sale of the bells, and the people wept when they were 

 carted away. He also removed all the headstones in the 

 churchyard, converting it into a lawn, and irreverently 

 treated many bones of deceased parishioners. . . 



One more anecdote from a book the latter half 



of which is well stocked with them : — 



As a remarkable instance of the awe with which 

 children regarded the squire, I may mention the story 

 of the late Squire Biddulph, of Aberavon, in South 

 Wales, uncle o^ the present Lord Biddulph of Ledbury, 

 Herefordshire. Mrs. Biddulph, a very smart lady, was 

 taking a class of boys at the Sunday School, and asked 

 them : " Well, boys, can you tell me who is the prince 

 of this world? " 



A long pause ensued, and then a dirty little hand 

 went up, and a feeble little voice answered : 



"Please, Mum, Mr. Biddulph!" 



DECLINE OF THE ARISTOCRACY. 



A SUITABLE corollary to The Old English 

 Country Squire is The Decline of Aristocracy, 

 by Arthur Ponsonby (T. Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d. 

 net). An important and suggestive volume 

 starting with the dictum that " Aristocracy in its 

 pure, theoretical sense means government bv the 

 best, the best being those who are superior both 

 morally and intellectually, and who, therefore, 

 would govern directly in the interests of the 

 governed." 



Mr. Ponsonby goes on to trace the deteriora- 

 tion in our aristocracy ; not, as has sometimes 

 been supposed, the result of the rise of demo- 

 cracy, but because our nobility are inadequately 

 performing the duties which fall to them, and are 



by no means alive to their responsibilities. Of 

 course Mr. Ponsonby, in this sweeping denuncia- 

 tion, is speaking very generally, but he certainly 

 does not mince matters when he says : — 



It is the fading away of their finest gentlemanlike 

 qualities, the increase of the desire for moneyed ease, 

 the excessive height of the standard of living, and the 

 extremely low level of mental and moral refinement that 

 makes the aristocracy of to-day, who, like their pre- 

 decessors, cling to a belief in their own superiority, a 

 fit subject for closer investigation and scrutiny. It 

 would be untrue to say that the aristocracy have fallen 

 from a position of power entirely through their own 

 shortcomings and delinquencies. They served not un- 

 worthily during the period they were called upon to 

 take control. But they have gradually had to reckon 

 with new forces, and their first instinct — as, indeed, 

 would be the case with anybody who saw their supremacy 

 threatened — was to counteract and attempt to defeat the 

 rise of the rival force, instead of preparing to accommo- 

 date themselves to its inevitable triumph. They con- 

 tinue, therefore, to dispute the claims of democracy 

 and to prophesy its failure. But their opposition is 

 rendered singularly ineffective owing to their own lack 

 of outfit, and the entire absence of agreement among 

 them on a concerted, constructive, and alternative policy. 

 Their ignorance i§_ the main cause of their prejudiced 

 and reactionary views. 



In his preface he acknowledges that a charge 

 may be made that much of his criticism is simply 

 destructive, but he considers that in order to 

 avoid a danger it is a necessary preliminary that 

 warning of it should be given, and his sugges- 

 tion is that the first thing to be done is to reform 

 our educational system, and because the building 

 up of character should be the first aim Mr. Pon- 

 sonby considers that the teaching of real religion 

 should be the principal basis and groundwork. 



THE LETTERS OF GEORGE 

 MEREDITH.* 



With shame some of us will confess that we 

 know more about George Meredith the novelist 

 than George Meredith the poet, but it only needs 

 a careful reading of this wonderful series of 

 letters compiled by his son, to realise that it was 

 his poems which loomed the largest in his soul 

 life. It is not of much use to search the letters 

 to get his opinions upon either political or social 

 subjects, for as he frequently says himself, his 

 writing time is devoted wholly to the larger 

 public, his friends have to be contented with a 

 few words written with difficulty amidst his 

 numerous occupations and his frequent illnesses. 

 This really makes the letters the more valuable, 

 for we find himself in them, not merely his 

 opinions, although occasionally he does comment 

 upon such public events as the Boer War, for 

 which, like many others, he thought his own 



* Letters of George Meredith. (2 volumes.) 

 (Constable and Co. 21s. net.) 



The Poetical Works of George Meredith. 

 With some Notes by G. M. Trevelyan. Com- 

 plete in one volume. (Constable. 7s. 6d. net.) 



