LAST ESSAYS 295 



effect ; they have some colour, and by a curious felicity 

 the builders have hit upon a good proportion, so that the 

 shape is pleasant. These, too, have some use in the 

 world.'* 



In another place he points out that the country people 

 have chapels, churches. Salvation Army barracks, but no 

 cottage hospital, no provision for the aged or infirm, no 

 library or lectures, no good water : ' all this fervour and 

 building of temples and rattling of the Salvation Army 

 drum and loud demands for the New Jerusalem, and not 

 a single effort for physical well-being or mental training. 'f 

 To this dying man it was an astonishing sight. At the 

 same time, he was becoming antipathetic to the cottager 

 in other ways — in the matter of destroying life, for 

 example. He points out the cruelty and stupidity in 

 killing birds, especially the insectivorous. The sparrows 

 are his friends, and he has always let them build about 

 his house ; and even for the purpose of identification, he 

 says that he objects to trapping insects, because he dis- 

 likes ' to interfere with their harmless liberty. 'J 



In ' The Wiltshire Labourer '§ he goes on with the 

 subject. There is, he finds, ' the same insolvency, the 

 same wearisome monotony of existence in debt, the same 

 hopeless countenances and conversation,' among the 

 farmers. They cannot keep their sons on the land. The 

 state of farming drives him into a naive wonder that the 

 earth should lie idle for so many months in the year ; 

 he calls it ' a reproach to science.' |1 The labourers have 

 improved in * social stature '; they want blacking instead 

 of grease, more fashionable clothes, and therefore more 

 money. Ten years before, Jefferies had praised those 

 who built better cottages and gave large gardens and allot- 

 ments to the labourers. The population has become more 



* ' Walks in the Wheatfields,' Field and Hedgerow, 

 f ' Country Sunday,' ibid. 

 % ' Some April Insects,' ibid. 

 § Longjnan^s Magazine, 1887. 

 II 'Idle Earth,' /^z'^., 1894. 



