40 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



to a certain extent the spread of this feeling that 

 urges heads of famihes to take up their residence 

 in town, whereby the country districts are made 

 to suffer, as year by year more money is spent in 

 London and abroad, and less amidst the agri- 

 cultural population of Great Britain, and the treasuries 

 of the various parishes suffers in consequence. 

 In fact, it is only necessary to take one street or square, 

 in a fashionable part of London, to understand how, 

 if all the residents therein lived in one of the smaller 

 English counties, they would more than equal the 

 wealth and influence to be found there. In Belgravia 

 and Mayfair rank would probably be added to wealth, 

 and probably there w^ould be a greater amount of wealth 

 and rank in a London street or square than in the 

 whole of an English county, as very frequently three 

 or four peers and half-a-dozen fairly large landowners 

 represent the entire wealth of a county. When passing 

 through square after square and street after street in 

 London, and noticing the evidences of wealth that are 

 everywhere manifested, and noticing how in every 

 direction London is extending, not only in consequence 

 of the erection of small dwellings suited to the middle 

 and poorer classes, but also by streets and squares 

 of mansions that require a large income to maintain, 

 and more than equal in size many well-known country 

 houses, one cannot but feel that the wealth of England 

 is becoming diverted from the rural districts and is 

 gradually becoming absorbed by the metropolis and its 

 immediate suburbs. There are exceptions to this rule ; 

 but they are every day becoming less frequent. 



The time when rural parishes reap most benefit by 

 the wealth of some one of their inhabitants is when 



