MR. DUNCAN'S GUERNSEY.
IT is unfortunate for provincial history that no great genius has yet devoted himself to the subject, and furnished a model which suc- ceeding writers might follow ; for though particular imitation is bad, yet an established method of treatment is more desirable than the uncertain flounderings of average ability, just as commonplace breeding is better than none at all. But the want of a model does not even prevent imitation ; it only sends it into a wrong channel. In default of an acknowledged exemplar, the county or district chro- nicler now fix,es his attention on the great historians of great em- pires, and makes their narrative of important events the model after which he unfolds the little affairs of his province or his parish. The erection of a church or a manor-house is told with as much minuteness as the foundation of Rome—nay, with more, from the plentifulness of the facts in the tradesmen s bills ; the building of a bridge across some obscure brook is developed at much greater length than CESAR deemed necessary for the narration of his passage across the Rhine ; whilst the squabbles of district courts and petty officers are described with as much fulness as the differ- ences or discussions which have affected the fortunes of great states.
Such things no doubt must be told ; all we ask for is that they should be told on a fitting scale and in an appropriate style. A little affair in itself can never inspire the interest of a great event, and if it be necessary to mention it, the result alone should be given, unless some curious circumstances are connected with it and im- part to it an anecdotical character. But we think the true ele- ments of attractive provincial history are not to be found in the public affairs of the county, so much as in its natural history, its local peculiarities and traditions, the illustrations of the biography of its eminent men, but not the biography itself, and the characters it has produced—whether those characters appeared in the shape of a landlord greatly differing from others of his class by vices, virtues, or oddities, or of a bold peasant, a singular recluse, or agreat criminal. As regards plan, Mr. DuscAN's History of Guernsey is exceed- ingly good : he separately presents the political, commercial, and ecclesiastical history of the island, describes its constitution and military government, together with its antiquities, architecture, natural history, agriculture, horticulture, meteorology, climate, and diseases ; whilst an appendix contains a series of biographical sketches of the most eminent Guernsey-men. The execution is below the plan, not merely from the defects already alluded to of detailing petty events at an undue length, but often from a certain antiquarian dryness and lifelessness of manner. The chapters on ecclesiastical architecture, antiquities, natural history, climate and diseases, hor- ticulture, and meteorology, which are contributed by different friends of Mr. DUNCAN, have the advantage over the main history in being written by persons conversant with the subjects, and pos- sessing a freshness which mere compilation must always want. The whole volume, however, is somewhat deficient in attractiveness, unless for native Guernsey-men or persons interested in the island.
Of the different sections, those on agriculture and horticulture strike us as being the most readable and interesting. They display a thorough knowledge of the subject, abound with facts fresh if not new, and leading to practical conclusions ; and they contain a good deal of information. One of the most curious points about the agriculture is the tenure of land—a mode by which the tenant possesses the fee-simple, subject to an annuity in corn.
" An island whose productive surface thus consists of little more than ten thousand acres of orchard, garden, arable, and pasture land, cannot be expected to afford a great variety or any very enlarged system of agriculture. There are, however, circumstances connected with the tenure of property, its extreme subdivision and fertility, and with the numbers and comforts of its inhabi- tants, which may suggest useful reflections to the farmer, the political econo- mist, and the statesman of large countries. The tenure of property partakes of the double nature of land held as a farm subject to the payment of annual rents, and as land held as freehold in perpetuity. A purchase may be made by the immediate payment of the price agreed upon; or by the payment of a part only and the conversion of the remainder into corn-rents to be annually paid ; or, finally, by converting the whole of the price into such rents. In the two last cases, where a part of or the whole of the price is stipulated for in annual rents, the purchaser is to all intents and purposes as much the proprietor as in the first case, where the whole price is paid down in cash ; and so long as the stipu- lated rents are paid, he and his heirs can never be disturbed, but hold the land as freehold for ever. To the former proprietor the rents are guaranteed by the land sold, and by all the other real property held at the time of sale by the purchaser free from incumbrance ; and the rents being transferable, and such property being always in demand, money can be raised by their sales with as much ease as it could before on the land itself. Thus, without the necessity of cultivating the soil, the original possessor enjoys the net income of his estate, secured on the estate itself, which he can resume in case of non-pay- ment ; while the purchaser, on the due payment of the rent charged, becomes real and perpetual owner, having an interest in the soil far above that of farmers undei,any other tenure. Experience has proved, that under this tenure a spirit of industry and economy is generated, producing content, ease, and even wealth from estates which in other countries would hardly be thought capable of affording sustenance to their occupants. And thus also arose two classes mutually advantageous to each other,—the one living on its income, or free exercise of trades or professions; the other composed of farmers raised to the rank of proprietors, dependent alone on their own good conduct. The faculty of acquiring land in perpetuity, without paying any purchase-money, is undeniably proved to have been of infinite benefit to the people of this is- land; but it is obvious that this source of so much good could never have ex- isted, or could never continue without a corresponding security, well guaranteed to the original proprietor of land, before he parted with it. " This relation of landlord and tenant being peculiar to the Channel Islands, it may be advisable, for the sake of English readers to whom the system is a novelty, to explain it more fully by an example. Suppose A possesses land valued at twelve hundred pounds, which he desires to sell, as we should say in England, or to give to rent, as the phrase runs in Guernsey, the following would be the process. A would either convey his estate to B, the purchaser, wholly in quarters, without receiving any cash, or, as is the more usual mode, he would receive one-fourth of the price, and convert the remainder into quarters. One Guernsey quarter is equivalent to twenty pounds sterling, local currency. In the first case, B would have to pay annually to A sixty quarters, the interest on twelve hundred pounds, the assumed cost of the estate at the rate of five per cent. per annum ; in the second case, he would have to pay an- nually forty-five quarters. The reason why it is usual to pay one-fourth of the purchase-money in cash is, that such payment may be some guarantee to A that B will faithfully work the estate and pay the rent regularly ; for should the rent fall in arrear, then A, by a process called saisie, may totally eject B from the property ; and the three hundred pounds paid by B when the con- tract was passed would be lost to him for ever. In this manner, then, is the seller or landlord secured in the receipt of the equivalent for which he has parted with the estate. As soon as the contract is executed, B can fell timber, convert meadow into arable, and arable into meadow, and perform any and every act that a tenant in fee-simple can do in England. The estate thus ac- quired descends to the heirs of the blood of the purchaser, lawfully begotten, and on failure of direct issue to his nearest of kin. Sometimes these annual quarters are made permanent, but most frequently they are redeemable by certain instalments, as the buyer and seller may have agreed."
To this system Mr. DUNCAN attributes much of the high cha- racter and prosperity of the Guernsey-man, and suggests its intro- duction into Britain ; which there is nothing at all in theory to prevent, and nothing in practice except habit and opinion. In England, land has a political and feudal or fashionable value, over and above its mere money value ; so that most of the great landlords would not consent to part with an acre of ground for double or treble its actual worth. How far the Guernsey mode might be introduced with advantage on waste lands, may be a question worth trying.
The mildness of the climate renders Guernsey more favourable for flowers than that of England even in our most favoured spots, though it does not seem to be so exempt from severe frosts as is popularly supposed.
rLowsas OF GUERNSEY.
Floriculture is rather a favourite pursuit among all ranks. The gardens of the gentry are of no great extent, but they are often well stocked with beanti- ful and valuable plants; and there are few cottagers who do not consider a little flower-plat almost indispensable in front of their dwellings. It is, indeed, in this department of gardening that the many advantages of our climate are fully displayed. Several of even the hardy flowers require less care with us than they do in England; and a variety of tender ones are grown in the open air which would hardly endure the same exposure in the warmest spots of Devonshire and Cornwall.
In this island, when the temperature falls to six degrees below the freezing- point, the season is considered unusually severe ; consequently, many of the Cape heath and hardier geraniums, as well as a number of shrubs and plants natives of Australia, of the central parts of America, and other warm climates, easily survive our ordinary winters in sheltered situations, sometimes without any injury whatever. The Bath scarlet geranium, for instance, has for years together been seen clothing cottage-walls to the height of ten or twelve feet with its dazzling blossoms. The cobra scandens, maurandia barclayana, and other creepers of a similar nature, are found still more hardy, and spring up naturally from seed at the foot of the walls against which they are planted. Fuchsias grow with surprising luxuriance, the stronger sorts soon becoming shrubs of most inconvenient size, unless trained to a single stem like standard roses. Shrubby calceolarias last many years; even the tender heliotropium peruvianum continues to produce its fragrant flowers till late in November, and though cut down by a slight frost, will often spring up again from the root in the following spring.
It is true that the extraordinary winters of 1837-S and 1840-1 proved fatal to many of the most interesting exotics which had for years been the pride of our gardens. The geraniums and Cape heaths, and most of the Australian shrubs, either died to the ground or were completely destroyed. During the last winter, the myrtle itself, and the coronilla, were in many gardens severely injured, perhaps in some instances killed. The beautiful dianthus puniceus, which had generally survived in 1833, perished this year in every garden. What, however, fortunately renders it probable that seasons like that we have just experienced only happen in these islands after long intervals, is the fact that every plant was destroyed of a species of leptospermum, which had long been quite common in our shrubberies as a hardy evergreen, and of which some specimens must have previously withstood the frosts of nearly fifty winters.
For the culture of roots and bulbs we enjoy remarkable advantages. The periods of frosty weather are, even in the worst seasons, of such short duration, that the ground seldom freezes more than an inch or two in depth, and a slight covering of snow is sufficient to keep away the frost altogether ; so that the situation of such plants below the surface of the soil insures in almost every case a complete protection from the cold. But it is especially in the culture of those kinds whose period of rest is the summer season, and which vegetate principally during the cool and rainy months of the year, that our climate claims a superiority almost unequalled north of the Mediterranean. As hardy plants in their torpid state are indifferent to the cold of winter, so these, finding our summer sufficiently warm and dry to induce that state of perfect rest essential to their health, are indifferent as to any deficiency in its temperature, compared with that of the same season in other countries; while the mildness and moisture of our autumn and winter and the earliness of our springs are admirably adapted to perfect their growth and insure a rich dis- play of bloom. Among the most interesting flowers belonging to the class of winter-growing plants, are the innumerable species of ixia, sparaxis, and other cognate genera of Cape bulbs. The greater part of those hitherto introduced appear to thrive in nearly the same perfection and beauty as in their native soil; all of them perfecting their seeds, and some propagating in this manner almost like weeds. Many fine sorts are frequent in cottage-gardens ; where, though treated with no particular care, they emulate the commonest flowers in health and luxuriance.
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