"
"Stay!" said the little artist. "We are quite conceited enough
already, without your eloquent adulation, sir! But there is a truth
in your words. There is a better spirit roused among us, and that
not merely of two years ago. I knew this part of the country well in
1846-7-8, and since then, I can bear witness, a spirit of self-reform
has been awakened round here, in many a heart which I thought once
utterly frivolous. I find, in every circle of every class, men and
women asking to be taught their duty, that they may go and do it;
I find everywhere schools, libraries, and mechanics' institutes
springing up: and rich and poor meeting together more and more in the
faith that God has made them all. As for the outward and material
improvements--you know as well as I, that since free trade and
emigration, the labourers confess themselves better off than they
have been for fifty years; and though you will not see in the chalk
counties that rapid and enormous agricultural improvement which you
will in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, or the Lothians, yet you shall see
enough to-day to settle for you the question whether we old-country
folk are in a state of decadence and decay. _Par exemple_--"
And Claude pointed to the clean large fields, with their neat
close-clipt hedge-rows, among which here and there stood cottages,
more than three-fourths of them new.
"Those well-drained fallow fields, ten years ago, were poor clay
pastures, fetlock deep in mire six months in the year, and accursed in
the eyes of my poor dear old friend, Squire Lavington; because they
were so full of old moles'-nests, that they threw all horses down.
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