COTTAGE IDEAS. 199 
works well, and is indeed the best labourer in the world. 
But it is the national character. To understand a nation 
you must go to the cottager. 
The well-to-do are educated, they have travelled, if 
not in their ideas, they are more or less cosmopolitan. In 
the cottager the character stands out in the coarsest 
relief; in the cottager you get to ‘bed-rock,’ as the 
Americans say ; there’s the foundation. Character runs 
upwards, not downwards. It is not the nature of the 
aristocrat that permeates the cottager, but the nature of 
the cottager that permeates the aristocrat. The best of 
us are polished cottagers. Scratch deep enough, and 
you come to that; so that to know a people, go to the 
cottage, and not to the mansion. The labouring man 
cannot quickly alter his ways. Can the manufacturer? 
Allalike try to go in the same old groove, till disaster 
visits their persistence, It is English human nature. 
