COUNTRY LITERATURE. 219 



so very distant in these days of railways, if distance 

 be measured by miles. London and London news is 

 familiar enough they talk of London and of the 

 United States or Australia, but particularly of the 

 United States. The Continent does not exist to them ; 

 but the United States is a sort of second home, and 

 the older men who have not gone sigh and say, " If I 

 had 'a emigrated, now you see, I should 'a done well" 

 There must be an immense increase in the number of 

 papers passing through country post-offices. That the 

 United States papers do come there is no doubt, for 

 they are generally taken up by the cottage people to 

 the farmhouses to show where the young fellows are 

 who have left the place. But the remarkable fact is 

 not in the increase of the papers, but in the growth of 

 the desire to read them the demand of the country 

 for something to read. 



In cottages of the better sort years ago you used to 

 find the most formal of old prints or coloured pictures 

 on the walls, stiff as buckram, unreal, badly executed, 

 and not always decent The favourites now are 

 cuttings from the Illustrated London News or the 

 Graphic, with pictures from which many cottages in 

 the farthest away of the far country are hung round. 

 Now and then one may be entered which is perfectly 

 papered with such illustrations. These pictures in 

 themselves play no inconsiderable part in educating 

 the young, whose eyes become accustomed to correct 

 representations of scenes in distant places, and who 

 learn as much about such places and things as they 

 could do without personally going. Besides which, 

 the picture being found there is evidence that at 



