loo WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



all day, in the evening may be found exhorting a small 

 but attentive congregation in a cottage hard by. 

 Though he can but slowly wade through the book, 

 letter by letter, word by word, he has caught the 

 manner of the ancient writer, and expresses himself 

 in an archaic style not without its effect. Narrow as 

 the view must be which is unassisted by education 

 and its broad sympathies, there is no mistaking the 

 thorough earnestness of the cottage preacher. He 

 believes what he says, and no persuasion, rhetoric, 

 or force could move him one jot. His congregation 

 approve his discourse with groans and various ejacu- 

 lations. Men of this kind won Cromwell's victories ; 

 but to-day they are mainly conspicuous for upright 

 steadiness and irreproachable moral character, mingled 

 with some surly independence. They are not " agi- 

 tators " in the current sense of the term : the local 

 agents of labour associations seem chosen from quite 

 a different class. 



Pausing once to listen to such a man, who was 

 preaching in a roadside cottage in a loud and excited 

 manner, I found he was describing, in graphic if rude 

 language, the procession of a martyr of the Inquisition 

 to the stake. His imagination naturally led him to 

 picture the circumstances as corresponding to the 

 landscape of fields with which he had been from 

 youth familiar. The executioners were dragging the 

 victim bound along a footpath across the meadows 

 to the pile which had been prepared for burning him. 

 When they arrived at the first stile they halted, and 



