92 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
prayed and fought by turns with such energy. They 
still read the Bible in its most literal sense, taking 
every word as addressed.to them individually, and 
seriously trying to shape their lives in accordance 
with their convictions. 
Such a man, who has been labouring in the hay- 
field all day, in the evening may be found exhorting 
a small but attentive congregation in a cottage hard 
by. Though he can but slowly wade through the 
book, letter by letter, word by word, he has caught 
the manner of the ancient writer, and expresses him- 
self in an archaic style not without its effect. Narrow 
as the view must be which is unassisted by education 
and its broad sympathies, there is no mistaking the 
thorough earnestness of the cottage preacher. He 
believes what he says, and no persuasion, rhetoric, or 
force could move him one jot. His congregation 
approve his discourse with groans and various ejacula- 
tions. Men of this kind won Cromwell’s victories ; 
but to-day they are mainly conspicuous for upright 
steadiness and irreproachable moral character, 
mingled with some surly independence. They are 
not ‘agitators’ in the current sense of the term ; the 
local agents of labour associations seem chosen from 
quite a different class. 
Pausing once to listen to such a man, who was 
preaching in a roadside cottage in a loud and excited - 
manner, I found he was describing, in graphic if rude 
language, the procession of a martyr of the Inquisition 
