176 FRESH FIELDS 



tending with him for the fruits of the soil, learned 

 in his ways, full of resources, prolific, tenacious of 

 life, not easily checked or driven out, — in fact, 

 characterized by greater persistence and fecundity. 

 This fact is sure, sooner or later, to strike the 

 American in Britain. There seems to be an abo- 

 riginal push and heat in animate nature there, to 

 behold which is a new experience. It is the Old 

 World, and yet it really seems the New in the 

 virility and hardihood of its species. 



The New Englander who sees with evil forebod- 

 ings the rapid falling off of the birth-rate in his 

 own land, the family rills shrinking in these later 

 generations, like his native streams in summer, and 

 who consequently fears for the perpetuity of the 

 race, may see something to comfort him in the 

 British islands. Behold the fecundity of the parent 

 stock ! The drought that has fallen upon the older 

 parts of the New World does not seem to have 

 afi'ected the sources of being in these islands. They 

 are apparently as copious and exhaustless as they 

 were three centuries ago. Britain might well ap- 

 propriate to herself the last half of Emerson's qua- 

 train : — 



" No numbers have counted my tallies, 

 No tribes my house can fill ; i 



I sit by the shining Fount of Life, 

 And pour the deluge still." 



For it is literally a deluge ; the land is inundated 

 with humanity. Thirty millions of people within 

 the area of one of our larger States, and who shall 



