GENTRY AND PEASANTRY 245 



foreigners. The man may bear a name which has 

 been for many generations in a county, but he is 

 never racially one with the peasant; and, as John 

 Bright once said, it is the people who live in cottages 

 that make the nation. His parents and his grand- 

 parents and his ancestors for centuries have been mix- 

 ing their blood with the blood of outsiders. It is well 

 always to bear this in mind, and in the market-place 

 or the High Street of the country town to see the 

 carriage people, the gentry, and the important ones 

 generally as though one saw them not, or saw them 

 as shadows, and to fix the attention on those who in 

 face and carriage and dress proclaim themselves true 

 natives and children of the soil. 



Even so there will be variety enough a little more 

 perhaps than is wanted by the methodic mind anxious 

 to classify these "insect tribes." But after a time 

 a few months or a few years, let us say the observer 

 will perceive that the majority of the people are 

 divisible into four fairly distinct types, the minority 

 being composed of intermediate forms and of nonde- 

 scripts. There is an enormous disproportion in the 

 actual numbers of the people of these distinct types, 

 and it varies greatly in different parts of the county. 

 Of the Hampshire people it may be said generally, as 

 we say of the whole nation, that there are two types 

 the blonde and the dark ; but in this part of England 

 there are districts where a larger proportion of dark 

 blood than is common in England generally has 



