29 



Let me allude to another difference between our Essex 

 landscape, and that which meets the eye of him, who looks 

 out upon the English counties of Surrey and of Middlesex. 

 Within that range stand the famous schools of Westminster, 

 Eton, and Harrow. We can point our visitor to no such es- 

 tablishments — hoary with age — splendid in their foundations 

 and appointments — and rich with the classic memories of five 

 hundred years. Yet we can show him academies, and high 

 schools, and normal schools of which we are not ashamed, 

 and some of which are known far beyond the limits of County 

 and State. But especially should we call his attention to our 

 small district schools : vii.es, set by our wise fore-fathers along 

 these hills and valleys, — vines which, nurtured by their grate- 

 ful children, have become plants of perennial bloom — of un- 

 fading leaf — and of never-failing fruitage. Need I add, that 

 this institution — the free-school — standing with open door in 

 each small neighborhood, and within easy reach of every boy 

 and every girl — is something unknown, as yet, to our kinsfolk 

 in England? Is it strange that ignorance and degradation 



•way, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France. The conclusions to 

 which he comes ou the whole subject of small properties in laud, — con- 

 clusions which he sustains by the clearest reasoning and the strongest evi- 

 dence, — are certainly very different from those of his countrymen in general, 

 Mr. Laixg, an Englishman, who had been much on the continent, even denies 

 the alleged superiority of British farming. I transfer the following from Mill's 

 quotation : 



" If we listen to the large farmer, the scientific agriculturist, the (' English ') 

 political economist, good farming must perish with large farms ; the very idea 

 that good farming can exist, unless on large farms cultivated with great cap- 

 ital, they hold to be absurd. Draining, manuring, economical anangement, 

 cleaning the laud, regular rotations, valuable stock and implements, all be- 

 long exclusively to large farms worked by large capital, and by hired labor. 

 This reads very well ; but if we raise our eyes from their books to their 

 fields, and coolly compare what we see in the best districts farmed in large 

 farms, with what we see in the best districts farmed in small farms, we see, 

 and there is no blinking the fact, better crops on the ground in Flanders, 

 East Friesland, Holstein, — in short, on the whole line of the arable land of 

 equal quality of the continent, from the Sound to Calais, than we see on the 

 line of British coast opposite to this line, a:ad in the same latitudes, from the 

 Frith of Forth all round to Dover," 



