84 AGRICLLTUEE OX TKE KHIXE. 



have been made, and, perhaps, contain the germ of a 

 healthy and useful development. At all events it be- 

 hoves all in this age of change and reformation not to 

 pass over the picture presented to us by the Germans, 

 of what a people can preserve through difficulties, if 

 we do not find in it how far judicious enterprise might 

 be carried. 



In the German village, to begin with the higher 

 elements, the church is neither the property of the 

 patron nor of the incumbent, nor is it vested in trustees 

 for the benefit of the inhabitants. It belongs to the 

 parish, or " Gemeinde," as the associated householders 

 are called in German. The school, in the same man- 

 ner, and all public institutions or buildings, roads, or 

 water-courses, often mills and industrial establishments, 

 that have been constructed at the expense of, or pre- 

 sented by patrons to, the village, are the property of the 

 little community. But it will be said that persons 

 must represent all corporations, to sue and to be sued. 

 The German village is represented by one or more head- 

 boroughs according to its size, who have the honourable 

 charge of protecting the public property, both against 

 official and private aggression. The consequence of this 

 retention of the management of their affairs in the 

 villagers' own hands, has been a remarkable conservation 

 of village property, and every member of a Gemeinde 

 has the satisfaction of thinking that he is not alone 

 herded with others in a county division for the purpose 

 of facilitating taxation or militia returns, but that he is 

 a member of an active association, which has life im- 

 parted to it by a sense of its holding property which 

 must be managed and turned to account. It is most 



