496 
Tlic Cumberland and Westmoreland 
be bestowed ^upon these buildings. The sheds are in the 
majority of cases very low, singularly ill-ventilated, and withal 
badly drained. 
But these drawbacks to the picturesque aspect of life do not 
alter the fact that, by some means or other, the agriculturist of 
the north has managed to escape, to a great extent, the ruin 
which has fallen upon his brother farmers in the south. And 
perhaps another point of contrast which I am about to mention 
may have something to do with this immunity, though I do not 
lay much stress upon it. The custom I allude to is that which 
prevails in the greater part of Cumberland and Westmoreland, 
of boarding all the labourers regularly employed upon the farm 
in the house. This creates a degree of familiarity and equality 
(so to speak) which is entirely wanting in the relations of 
masters and men in the south ; and I believe the more intimate 
relationship into which the two parties are brought by this 
custom has had something to do with the success which has 
attended northern agriculture. At the same time it is like 
stepping back seventy or eighty years to witness this arrange- 
ment ; and it may be doubted whether the farmers of Cum- 
berland, if they once broke free from this custom, would consent 
to its re-adoption. 
But, far more than any usage of this kind, it is probably 
the intensity of industry pervading all these farms which has 
recently saved their occupants from collapse. This industry is a 
thing to be witnessed with admiration, and even sometimes with 
astonishment. In fact it is almost impossible to exaggerate the 
laborious activity of each member of a Cumberland or West- 
moreland farmer's household. The satirists who attribute the 
non-success of the modern farmer to the more expensive tastes 
in which he indulges, compared with the simplicity of his fore- 
fathers ; the noble lord who has discovered in pianos and lawn 
tennis the causes of the retrogression of British agriculture ; 
would here find no scope for their wit or their strictures. Work, 
and that of a hard and unceasing kind, is the daily occupation 
of each member of the farmer's family ; though 1 am far from 
saying that the mind is not also considered by these most 
intelligent people. On the contrary, as far as it was possible to 
judge, I should say that in intellectual culture they excel the gene- 
rality of their fellows in the south, whose reading is not usually 
of a very extensive or liberal character. I cast no slur on the 
industrious habits of many a household in the south. All I 
wish to intimate is that they are not generally of the double- 
tide character of the north. It is common enough to see young 
farmers taking their share of the regular labour of the farm in 
any part of Great Britain, but it is not so customary to find, as 
