250 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



These thoughts on character may, I fear, seem to 

 some to be praise of quality hard as our field flints, 

 self-seeking, and unkind. I might please the man of 

 sentiment better by trying to bring out the softer 

 traits of that village worthy who has struggled up- 

 wards to a little independence through the land. No 

 doubt these worthies have the kinder side of which 

 the keen driving of a bargain and the stern daily 

 endeavour and the eye on the main chance are not 

 part. Browning says that a man has two sides to his 

 soul one for the world and one for his wife, and 

 this is as true of the villager who has made his own 

 way by the soil as of any man of action who must 

 depend on his own efforts, not the aid of others. 

 But it is idle to overlook the great worth to a 

 country of the flint-hard side of character. Without 

 this quality, in a world of struggle, a good man moves 

 on a place of quicksands, and there is no safety for 

 himself or what is worse to him for those whose 

 welfare depends on his own. 



A peasantry or a class of small farmers in England 

 to-day who have not in their constitution the flint and 

 the oak-wood of character, must end in wretched ruin, 

 and they might pull down with themselves a whole 

 country-side. Any mind of sense that knows about 

 the fight of English life must hold this view, yet we 

 find people of sense favouring plans for forcing a 

 plentiful crop of small farmers under glass. True, 

 under glass such plants of State gardening might 



