AGRICULTURE ON THE RUINE. 15 



hours of pleasure or of study. The idea of home in a 

 country where the brilliancy of the summer sky and the 

 clear frosty atmosphere of winter alike invite to the open 

 air, is less attached to the chimney corner and the pecu- 

 liar furniture of certain rooms, than to the periodical 

 assemblies of the members of a family at birthday and 

 other anniversaries, and to the sympathy that is sought 

 amongst friends on the most trifling occasion of sorrow 

 or of joy. Society is indispensable to the German. 

 Even the peasant and the labourer must have their talk, 

 if not with their equals in wealth, with those whose for- 

 tune is more or less brilliant ; and the observer will not 

 fail to remark that a far greater equality of manner pre- 

 vails in the mode of addressing people of all classes in 

 Germany than in England, where the relations of servant 

 and master pass into the very highest grades of society. 

 The simplest conditions are here attached to the indul- 

 gence of the sociable propensities. A country gentleman 

 therefore, of the standing that we have supposed, drawing 

 fully 600/. per annum from an estate of about 200 acres, 

 can assume no magisterial airs, nor is he called upon to 

 give electioneering or fox-hunting dinners. His hours 

 are early, his meals light, and he passes his life more as 

 a spectator than an actor in the busy world of industry or 

 politics. Such a man it will at least be acknowledged is 

 more likely to rejoice at and to aid in the gradual and 

 orderly growth of knowledge and of civilization, than 

 such as speculate upon unexpected changes, and great 

 and dazzling opportunities of success. We suspect, how- 

 ever, that the mode in which a gentleman farmer in Ger- 

 many contrives to draw 600/. per annum from 200 acres 

 of land, will quite as much Interest our readers as the ex- 



