WILLIAM HOWITT'S RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.
THESE volumes present a complete view of a country life in all its phases, so far as extent of subject and arrangement go. Under the section of Life of the Aristocracy, Mr. hooter expounds the advantages possessed by the " gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," in the nature of the climate, the character of the country both natural and improved, and in the luxuries that may be enjoyed in the remotest spot by means of our high civilization and thcilities for transport. lie investigates the effects pro- duced by the great landed proprietor dividing his time between his own estate and the dissipations of London,—finding something favourable to say on both sides of the question ; and he describes the occupations the gentry may discover in field sports, planting, scientific farming, and gardens. The agricultural population are similarly analyzed in the mass: and individuals are personified and shown in action, as well in the class of farmers and farm-servants, as in the singular North of England Bondage System,—of which presently. A third division of the work exhibits what seem to Mr. HOWITT the picturesque and moral features of the country. Amongst them he reckons Gipsies,—whose treatment displays as much of the bookmaker as the observer of nature ; 01(1 English Houses,—an agreeable account of the general impressions conveyed by these vestiges of baronial times, with a picturesque description of a few of the most celebrated; and Nooks of the World,—by which is meant those quiet out-of-the-way districts of England, remote from coaches and turnpike-roads, where primitive simplicity may still be found. The Forests of England form another leading section; and are considered historically, legally, and in a politico-economical view, followed by a description of the only two yet remaining, New Forest and " Merry Sherwood." In saying that sixteen chapters are devoted to thecondition, festivities, and pursuits of the rural population, we indicate the length at which this subject is in- vestigated, and the dry task it would be to follow an enumera- tion of their contents. Another section is devoted to some fa/It about the country ; in which Mr. Hewrr claims for Englishmen and moderns a nicer perception of its beauties and a greater love for them than he allows to the Continental or the Classical writers. Upon the last point we cannot altogether agree with him. Saying nothing of the Greek dramatists and pastoral writers, (for our author seems to except Hosrea,) we suspect that the Eclogues and Georgics of VIRGIL alone will produce pieces of rural painting which he would be troubled to match. We fear he confounds deep love with many words, and does not sufficiently bear in mind the pregnant brevity of the classic. He may not allow, too, for his own intimacy with the original images which English poets describe, and his unacquaintance with those in Greece and Italy.
It would be impossible for WILLIAM HOWITT to write a book upon the Country without many passages of nice observation and genuine poetical feeling. But his Rural Life in England, though originating in the success of his Book of the Seasons, is interior to that delightful volume, in raciness and spontaneity of spirit, The Seasons was the cream of a mind which had looked upon nature from its childhood, and poured out con! amore the best of its stores without regard to any thing save its own impulses. The Rural Life has more marks of contrived design than of native conception : the author seems to have taken up his subject with a view to exhaust it en talgie,—thinking more of what ought to be said than of what he was inspired to say. Hence, in the treatment of parts, there is often a want of dis- tinctness and directness. The main image is overlaid by a crowd of subordinates, not connected with it, but suggested by it. The thoughts of the writer are more in the nature of reverie than reflection : he sometimes displays rather an encycloptedic
cha-
racter, in commencing his subjects with a cut and dry account of their history from the earliest times, and allows the bookmaker to become too apparent on other points. The gems of the work are the pastoral pictures.—woodland or rustic scenery, where art has only modified nature, but not changed her primitive features. Such are these
CHARACTERISTICS OF TARR SCENERY.
Who floes not often, in the midst of brick-and-mortar regions, summon up before his imagination this old park or forest scenery ?—the ferny or heathy slopes, under ()Id, stately, gnarled oaks, or thorns as old, with ivy having stems nearly as thick as their own, climbing up them, and clinging to them, sod sometimes incorporating itself so completely with their heads as to make them look entirely iv■-ttees. The footpaths, with turf short and soft as velvet, run- ning through the bracken. The sunny silence that lies on the open glades and brown uplands; the cool breezy feeling uuder the shade ; the grasshopper daf- t/tering amongst the bents ; the hawk hovering and whimpering overhead ; the keeper, lounging along in velveteen jacket and with his gun, at a distance, or firing at some destructive bird. The herds of (leer, fallow or red, congregated beneath the shadow of the trees, or lying in the sun if not too warm, their quick ears and tails keeping up a perpetual twinkle; the belling of scattered deer, as they go bounding and mincing daintily across the openInga, here and there— the old ones hoarse and deep, the young shrill and plaintive. Cattle with whisking tails, grazing sedately; the woodpecker's laughter front afar; the treecreeper runtliog up the ancient boles, always beginning at the bottom, and going upwards with a quick, gliding progress ; the quaint cries of other birds and wild creatures, the (laws and the rooks fi.eding together, and mingling their different voices of pert and grave accent. The squirrel running with extended tail along the ground, or flourishing it over his head, at he sits on the Use ; or fixing himself, when suddenly come upon, in the attitude of an end, brown, de- cayed branch by the tree-side, as motionless as the deadest branch in the forest. The hum of insects all around you, the low still murmur of bunny nautie,
Nature's ceaseless hum,
Veice of the desert, caner Muni)."
The pheasant's crow ; the pheasant with all her brood (springing around you, one by one, from the turf where you are standing amid the bracken—here one, there one, close under your feet, with a sudden, startling whirr,—to compare nature with art, count' y scenes with city ones, like so many squibs and crack- ers fired off about you in smart succession, where you don't lurk for them. That most ancient and most original of all ladders, a bough with some pegs driven through it, reared against a tree for the keeper to reach the nests of hawks or magpies, or to fetch down a brood of young jackdaws fur a pie, quite as savoury a dish as one made with young rooks or pigeons; or fir him to sit )(loft amongst the foliage, and watch for the approach of deer, or fisen when he is commis-tuned to shoot one. The profound and basking vilenee all around you, n, you sit on come dry ferny mound, owl look far and w i he tlnuirgh the glimmering heat or the cool shadow. The fur-off sounds—rooks, telling of come old ball that stands slumberously amid the woods ; or dogs, s( tiding from their hidden kennel amongst the trees, their sonorous yelling. Forest smells, that rise up deliciously as yen cross thin thickets, or tread the spongy turf all fragrant with thyme and sprinkled with the light hare-bell. Huge limbs of oak riven off by tempests, or the old oak itself, a vast, knotty, and decayed mass, lying on the ground, and perhaps the woodmen gravely labouring upon it, lopping its boughs, riving its huge, misshapen stem, piling it iu stacks of cordwood, or binding them into billets. The keeper's house near, in its own paled enclosure ; end all about old thorns hung with the dried and haggard remains of wild. cats, pole-cats, weasels, hawks, owls, jays, and other vermin as he deems them ; or the same most picturesquely displayed on the sturdy boles of the vast oaks ; and lastly, the mere, the lake, in the depths of the wood- lands, shrouded in screening masses of flags and reeds, the beautiful flowering. rush, the magnificent great water.doek, with leaves as huge and green as if they grew by same Irdian river, the tall club-mace, the thousands of wild- ducks, teals, or wigcons, that start up at your approach with clattering wing% and cries of quick alarm.
In the chapters on farming and rural occupations, a good deal of valuable information is collected together; sometimes only compiled, but often drawn immediately from observation. Of this kind is the sketch of the Bondage System of the North of England, already alluded to.
A person from the South or Midland counties of Eoglandjourneying North- ward, is struck when he enters Durham or Northumberland, with the sight of bands of women working in the fields under the surveillance of one man. Oss or two such bands, of from half a dozen to a dozen women, generally young, might be passed over ; but when they recur again and again, and you observe them wherever you go, they become a marked feature of the agricultural system of the country, and you naturally inquire how it is that such regular bands of female labourers prevail there. The answer, in the provincial tongue, is, " 0 they are the Bone-ditches," i. e. Bondage.. Bondages! that is an odd sound, you think, in England. What ! have we bondage, a rural serfdom, still existing in free and fair England? Even so. The thing is astoauding enough, but it is a fact. As I cast my eyes for the first time on these female bands in the fields, working under their drivers, I was, before making any inquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the slave-gangs of the West Indies' turnip-hoeing, somehow, associated itself strangely iu my brain with sugar-cans dressing; but when I heard these women called Bondages, the association be- came tenfold strong. On all the large estates in these counties, and in the South of Scotland, the bondage system prevails. No married labourer is permitted to dwell on these estates, unless he enters into bond to comply with this system. These labourers are termed hinds. Small houses are built for them on the farms; and on some of the estates—as those of the Duke of Northumberland—all these cot- tages are numbered, and the number is painted on the door. A hind, there. fore, engaging to work on one of the farms belonging to the estate, has a house assigned him. He has 41. a year in money ; the keep of a cow; his fuel found him ; a prescribed quantity of coal, wood, or peat to each cottage; be is allowed to plant a certain quantity of land with potatoes; and has thirteen boles of corn furnished him for his family consumption; one-third being oats, one-third barley, and one-third pease. In return for these advantage., be is bound to give hist abour the year round, and also to furnish a woman labourer at Is. per day during harvest, and ttd. per day for the rest of the year. Now it appears, at once, that this is no hereditary serfdom—such a thing could not exist in this country : but it is the next thing to it, and no doubt has descended from it ; being serfdom in its mitigated form, in which alone modern notions and feelings would tolerate it. It may even be said that it is a voluntary system; that it is merely married hinds doing that which unmarried farm ser- vants do everywhere else—hire themselves on certain conditions from year to year. The great question is, whether these conditions are just and favourable to the social and moral improvement of the labouring class ; whether, indeed, it be quite of so voluntary a nature as at first sight appears; whether it be favourable to the onward movement of the community in knowledge, virtue, and active and enterprising habits.
These agreeable volumes are illustrated by numerous and spi- rited vignettes and tail-pieces, beautifully engraved on wood.
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