314 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



life, such as in the Isle of Axholme. But the general 

 character of our country is bareness. Splendid crops 

 there may be in the fields, luscious pastures, luxuriant 

 hedgerows separating them, imposing mansions in the parks 

 — but the happy throng of cheerful people, with whom 

 Goethe says that even at more or less bleak Eastertide 

 Nature fills the German plain, is wanting. Accordingly, 

 wherever in Germany squire rule, or junker rule, as we in 

 rightful reprehension term it, prevails — there is no such 

 thing in France, nor yet in Switzerland, or in Italy^ — say, in 

 the eastern provinces of Prussia, or in Mecklenburg, where 

 manor farm fields spread out far as eye can see, and peasant 

 holdings there practically are none, natives call this " Eng- 

 land in Germany " {Englische Zustdnde). And German 

 authorities are careful to point out that such districts 

 are those which entered latest into the realm of civilisation. 

 You can, so they contend, tell, as by a scale, by the sub- 

 division or else the agglomeration of land, at what date 

 civilisation fastened its culture-fashioning hold upon that 

 country. 



Even where we have people, something of the foreign 

 gaiety seems wanting. " In our ' Arcady,' " so wrote 

 the late Canon Jessop, " one never hears a laugh." 

 The Swiss hauer, the French proprietaire, the German 

 kleingriindbesitzer, stands in off-time before his cottage 

 door, or sits on the bench beside it, with the satisfied air 

 of a little king. His nourishment may be plain, possibly 

 more or less meatless ; his clothing may be simple, his 

 air rough. But his looks proclaim contentment and tell 

 you that he knows that he is on his own sod, a full citizen, 

 who needs not doff his cap, otherwise than in neighbourly 

 courtesy, to any one. He may be dependent only upon 

 his little farm ; he may be engaged in some trade which 

 brings him pence ; he may be a simple agricultural day 

 labourer. However, at home he is master — maitre chez 

 soi. And if you will inquire at the Inland Revenue Office, 

 at the Registrar's, at the Recruiting Bureau, in the Statis- 

 tical Department, your informants will tell you that his 

 presence means wealth to the country, more live stock 



