FIRST YEARS OF SUCCESS. 115 



ideas, their views. His own interest was 

 identical with theirs. Therefore he was the 



man." 



A third paper, called " John Smith's Shanty," 

 gave a picture of the agricultural labourer's 

 life. He here began, timidly at first, to leave 

 the regions of hard actual fact, and to venture 

 upon the higher flights of poetic and ideal 

 work, but poetry based upon the actual facts. 

 Yet not to leave altogether the journalistic 

 methods. Thus, he wrote for Fraser a paper on 

 " The Works at Swindon," which was simply 

 a newspaper descriptive article, and one on 

 "Allotment Gardens "for the New Quarterly 

 Review. This was like his "Future of Farming" 

 a wholly practical paper. One of the new 

 principles, he says, that is now gradually enter- 

 ing the minds of the masses, is a belief that each 

 individual has a right to a certain share in the 

 land of his birth. That was written twelve 

 years ago. Since that time this belief has 

 extended far and wide. There are now books 

 and papers which openly advocate the doctrine 

 that the land is the property of the people. It 



