OF AGRICULTURE. 91 



I once took a knapsack and went on foot out 

 of London, through Sussex. I had read Leonce 

 de Lavergne's work and expected to find a soil 

 busily cultivated ; but neither round London 

 nor still less further south did I see men in the 

 fields. In the Weald I could walk for twenty 

 miles without crossing anything but heath or 

 woodlands, rented as pheasant-shooting grounds 

 to " London gentlemen," as the labourers said. 

 " Ungrateful soil " was my first thought ; but 

 then I would occasionally come to a farm at the 

 crossing of two roads and see the same soil 

 bearing a rich crop ; and my next thought was 

 tel seigneur, telle terre, as the French peasants 

 say. Later on I saw the rich fields of the midland 

 counties ; but even there I was struck by not 

 perceiving the same busy human labour which 

 I was accustomed to admire on the Belgian 

 and French fields. But I ceased to wonder when 

 I learnt that only 1,383,000 men and women 

 in England and Wales work in the fields, while 

 more than 16,000,000 belong to the " professional, 

 domestic, indefinite, and unproductive class," 

 as these pitiless statisticians say. One million 

 human beings cannot productively cultivate 

 an area of 33,000,000 acres, unless they can 

 resort to the Bonanza farm's methods of culture. 



Again, taking Harrow as the centre of my 

 excursions, I could walk five miles towards Lon- 



