advance into the coal country, the a'r | Man himself, mind and body, seem 's darkened with smoke; the chimneys, created to make the most of these ad high as obelisks, are in hundreds, and vantages. His muscles are firm, and cover the plain as far as we can see; his mind can support tedium. He is many and various rows of lofty build- less subject to weariness and disgust ings, in red monotonous brick, pass be- than other men. He works as well in fore our eyes, like files of economical | the tenth hour as in the first. No on and busy beehives. The blast-fur- handles machines better; he has thei naces flame through the smoke; I regularity and precision. Two work counted sixteen in one group. The men in a cotton-mill do the work ɖ refuse of minerals in heaped up like three, or even four, French workmen mountains; the engines run like black Let us look now in the statistics hov ants, with monotonous and violent mo- many leagues of stuffs they manufac tion, and suddenly we find ourselves ture every year, how many millions of swallowed up in a monstrous town. tons they export and inport, how many This manufactory has five thousand tens of millions they produce and con hands, one mill 300,000 spindles. The sume; let us add the industrial or Manchester warehouses are Babyloni- commercial states they have founded, an edifices of six stories high, and wide or are founding, in America, China, Inin proportion. In Liverpool there are dia, Australia; and then perhaps, 5000 ships along the Mersey, which reckoning men and money-value,-conchoke one another up; more wait to sidering that their capital is seven or enter. The docks are six miles long, eight times greater than that of France, and the cotton warehouses on the side that their population has doubled in extend their vast red rampart out of fifty years, that their colonies, whersight. All things here seem built in ever the climate is healthy, are becomunmeasured proportions, and as though ing new Englands,—we will obtain by colossal arms. We enter a mill; some notion, very slight, very impernothing but iron pillars, as thick as fect, of a work whose magnitude the tree-trunks, cylinders as big as a eyes alone can measure. man; locomotive shafts like vast There remains yet one of its parts to oaks, notching machines which send explore, the cultivation of the land. up iron chips, rollers which bend sheet- From the railway carriage we see quite iron like paste, fly-wheels which be- enough to understand it: a field with come invisible by the swiftness of their a hedge, then another field with anrevolution. Eight workmen, com- other hedge, and so on: at times vast manded by a kind of peaceful colossus, squares of turnips; all this well laid pushed into and pulled frora the fire a out, clean, glossy; no forests, here and tree of red-hot iron as big as my body. there only a cluster of trees. The Coal has produced all this. England country is a great kitchen-garden—a produces twice as much coal as the manufactory of grass and meat. Nothrest of the world. It has also brick, oning is left to nature and chance; all is account of the great schists, which are close to the surface; i: has also estuaries filled by the sea, so as to make natural ports. Liverpool and Manchester, and about ten towns of 40,000 to 1000,000 souls, are springing up in the basin of Lancashire. If we glance over a geological map we see whole parts shaded with black; they represent the Scotch, the North of England, the Midland, the Welsh, the Irish coal districts. The old antediluvian forests, accumulating here their fuel, have stored up the power which moves matter, and the sea furnishes the true road by which matter can be transported.

calculated, regulated, arranged to produce and to bring in profits. If we look at the peasants, we find no gen. uine peasants; nothing like French peasants,-a sort of fellahs, akin to the soil, mistrustful and uncultivated, separated by a gulf from the townsmen. The countryman here is like an arti. san; and, in fact, a field is a manufactory, with a farmer for the foreman Proprietors and farmers lavish their capital like great contractors. They drain the land, and have a rotation of crops; they have produced cattle, the richest in returns of any in the world they have introduced steam-engine

they demand more in this respect. An Englishman said to me, not very long ago: Our eat vice is the strong desire we feel for all good and con fortable things. We have too many wants, we spend too much. As soor as our peasants have a little m.ney they buy the best sherry and the best clothes they can get, instead of buying a bit of land."*

into cultivation, and into the rearing of | visit his land: what he aspires to is cattle; they perfect already perfect possession: what Englishmen love is stables. The greatest of the aristoc- comfort. There is no land in which racy take a pride in it; many country gentlemen have no other occupation. Prince Albert, near Windsor, had a model farm, and this farm brought in money. A few years ago the papers announced that the Queen had discovered a cure for the turkey-disease. Under this universal effort, the products of agriculture have doubled in fifty years. In England, two and a half acres (hectare) receive eight or ten As we rise to the upper classes, this times more manure than the same num- taste becomes stronger. In the middle ber of French acres ; though of inferior ranks a man burdens himself with toil, quality, the produce is double that of to give his wife gaudy dresses, and to the French. Thirty persons are enough fill his house with the hundred thou for this work, when in France forty sand baubles of quasi-luxury. Higher would be required for half thereof. still, the inventions of comfort are so We come upon a farm, even a small multiplied that people are bored by one, say of a hundred acres; we find them; there are too many newspapers respectable, dignified, well-clad men, and reviews on the table; too many who express themselves clearly and kinds of carpets, washstands, matches sensibly; a large, wholesome, comfort- towels in the dressing-room; their able dwelling-often a little porch, refinement is endless; in thrusting cu with creepers-a well-kept garden, or- feet into slippers, we might imagine namental trees, the inner walls white- that twenty generations of inventors washed yearly, the floors washed week- were required to bring sole and lining ly, -an almost Dutch cleanliness; to this degree of perfection. We car therewith plenty of books-travels, not conceive clubs better furnished treatises on agriculture, a few volumes with necessaries and superfluities, of religion or history; and above all, houses so well arranged and managed, the great family Bible. Even in the pleasure and abundance so cleverly poorest cottages we find a few objects understood, servants so reliable, reof comfort and recreation; a large spectful, handy. Servants in the last cast-iron stove, a carpet, nearly always census were "the most numerous class paper on the walls, one or two moral of Her Majesty's subjects; in Eng tales, and always the Bible. The cot- land there are five where in France tage is clean; the habits are orderly; they have two. When I saw in Hyde the plates, with their blue pattern, reg- Park the rich young ladies, the gentlelarly arranged, look well above the men riding or driving, when I thought chining dresser; the red floor-tiles of their country houses, their dress, have been swept; there are no broken their parks and stables, I said to my. or dirty panes; no doors off hinges, self that verily this people is consti shutters unhung, stagnant pools, strag-tuted after the heart of economists: 1 gling dunghills, as amongst the French lagers; the little garden is kept free from weeds; frequently roses and oneysuckle round the door; and on Sunday we can see the father and mother, seated by a well-scrubbed table, with tea, bread and butter, enoying their home, and the order they have established there. In France the peasant on Sunday leaves his hut to

* Léonce de Lavergne Economie rurale en Angleterre, passim.

mean, that it is the greatest producer and the greatest consumer in the world; that none is more apt at squeezing out and absorbing the quintessence of

*De Foe was of the same opinion, and pretended that economy was not an English virtue, and that an Englishman can hardly live with twenty shillings a week, while a Dutchman with the same money becomes wealthy, and leaves his children very well off. An Eng lish labourer lives poor and wretchedly with nine shillings a week, whilst a Dutchman lives very comfortably with the same wages.

III.

things, that it has developed its wants | the affairs of the neighborhood, experi at the same time as its resources; and in directing these affairs which his we involuntarily think of those insects family have managed for three gener which, after their metamorphosis, are ations, most fitted by education to give suddenly provided with teeth, feelers, good advice, and by his influence to unwearying claws, admirable and ter- lead the common enterprise to a good rible instruments, fitted to dig, saw, result. Indeed, it is thus that things build, do every thing, but furnished fall out; rich men leave London by also with incessant hunger and four hundreds every day to spend a day in stomachs. the country; there is a meeting on the affairs of the country or of the church; they are magistrates, overseers, pres idents of all kinds of societies, and this How is this ant-hill governed? As gratuitously. One has built a bridge the train moves on, we perceive, amidst at his own expense, another a chapel farms and tilled lands, the long wall of or a school; many establish public li a park, the frontage of a castle, more braries, where books are lent out, with generally of some vast ornate mansion, warmed and lighted rooms, in which a sort of country town-house, of infe- the villagers in the evening can read rior architecture, Gothic or Italian pre- the papers, play draughts, chess, and tensions, but surrounded by beautiful have tea at low charges,-in a word, lawns, large trees scrupulously pre- simple amusements which may keep served. Here lives the rich bourgeois; them from the public-house and ginI am wrong, the word is false-I must shop. Many of them give lectures; say gentleman: bourgeois is a French their sisters or daughters teach in Sunword, and signifies the lazy parvenus, day schools; in fact, they provide for who devote themselves to rest, and the ignorant and poor, at their own extake no part in public life; here it is pense, justice, administration, civilizaquite different; the hundred or hun- tion. I know a very rich man, who in dred and twenty thousand families, his Sunday school taught singing to who spend a thousand and more an- little girls. Lord Palmerston offered nually, really govern the country. And his park for archery meetings; the this is no government imported, im- Duke of Marlborough opens his daily planted artificially and from without; to the public, "requesting," this is the it is a spontaneous and natural govern- word used, "the public not to destroy ment. As soon as men wish to act the grass.' A firm and proud sentitogether, they need leaders; every as- ment of duty, a genuine public spirit, a sociation, voluntary or not, has one; noble idea of what a gentleman owes whatever it be, state, army, ship, or to himself, gives them a moral superiparish, it cannot do without a guide to ority which sanctions their command; find the road, to take the lead, call the probably from the time of the old rest, scold the laggards. In vain we Greek cities, no education or condition call ourselves independent; as soon as has been seen in which the innate nowe march in a body, we need a leader; bility of man has received a more we look right and left expecting him wholesome or completer development. to show himself. The great thing is In short, they are magistrates and pato pick him out, to have the best, and trons from their birth, leaders of the not to follow another in his stead; it great enterprises in which capital is is a great advantage that there should risked, promoters of all charities, all be one, and that we should acknowl-improvements, all reforms, and with edge him. These men, without pop- the honors of command they accept its ular election, or selection from govern- burdens. For observe, in contrast ment, find him ready made and recog-with the aristocracies of other counnized in the large landed proprietor, a man whose family has been long in the country, influential through his connections, dependents, tenantry, interested above all else by his great estates in

tries, they are well educated, liberal, and march in the van, not in the rear of public civilization. They are not draw ing-room exquisites, like the French marquises of the eighteenth century:

me into

an English lord visits his fisheries, | from his home, he dare not studies the system of liquid manures, the country to see his father without speaks to the purpose about cheese; | first asking if he may come; a servant and his son is often a better rower, to whom I gave my card refused to walker, and boxer than the farmers. take it, saying, "Oh! I dare not hand They are not malcontents, like the it in now. Master is dining." There French nobility, behind their age, de- is respect in all ranks, in the work. voted to whist, and regretting the mid- shops as well as in the fields, in the dle ages. They have travelled through army as in the family. Throughout Europe, and often further; they know there are inferiors and superiors who languages and literature; their daugh- feel themselves so; if the mechanism ters read Schiller, Manzoni, and La- of established power were thrown out martie with ease. By means of re- of gear, we should behold it recon. views, newspapers, innumerable vol- structed of itself; below the legal conumes of geography, statistics, and stitution is the social, and human action travels, they have the world at their is forced into a solid mould prepared finger-ends. They support and pre- for it. side over scientific societies; if the It is because this aristocratic network free inquirers of Oxford, amidst con- is strong that human action can be ventional rigor, have been able to free; for local and natural government give their explanations of the Bible, being rooted throughout, like ivy, by a it is because they knew themselves to hundred'small, ever-growing fibres, sudbe backed by enlightened laymen of den movements, violent as they are, the highest rank. There is also no are not capable of pulling it up altodanger that this aristocracy should be-gether. In vain men speak, cry out, come a set; it renews itself; a great call meetings, hold processions, form physician, a profound lawyer, an illus-leagues: they will not demolish the trious general, become ennobled and state; they have not to deal with a set found families. When a manufacturer of functionaries who have no real hold or merchant has gained a large fortune, on the country, and who, like all exhe first thinks of acquiring an estate; ternal applications, can be replaced by after two or three generations his fam- another set: the thirty or forty gentle. ily has taken root and shares in the men of a district, rich, influential, trustgovernment of the country: in this ed, useful as they are, will become the way the best saplings of the great pop- leaders of the district. "As we see in ular forests fill up the aristocratic the papers," says Montesquieu, speaknursery. Observe, finally, that an ing of England," that they are playing aristocracy in England is not an iso- the devil, we fancy that the people 'ated fact. Everywhere there are will revolt to-morrow." Not at all, it leaders recognized, respected, followed is their way of speaking; they only with confidence and deference, who talk loudly and rudely. Two days feel their responsibility, and carry the after I arrived in London, I saw adburden as well as the advantages of vertising men walking with a placara the dignity. Such an aristocracy exists on their backs and their stomachs, in marriage, where the man incontest- bearing these words: "Great usurpa ably rules, followed by his wife to the tion! Outrage of the Lords, in their end of the world, faithfully waited for vote on the budget, against the rights n the evenings, unshackled in his bus- of the people." But then the placard iness, of which he does not speak. added," Fellow-countrymen, petition !" There is such in the family, when the Things end thus; they argue freely, father can disinherit his children, and f the reasoning is good it will and keeps up with them, in the most spread. Another time in Hyde Park, etty circumstances of daily life, a de- orators were declaiming in the open gree of authority and dignity unknown air against the Lords, who were called in France: if in England a son, through rogues. The audience applauded or -health, has been away for some time hissed, as it pleased them. "After all," * In familiar language, the father is called in said an Englishman to me, "this is England the governor; in France le banquier. how we manage our usiness. With