RURAL STUDIES.*
THERE is a pleasant Transatlantic flavour about this little volume which will prove the more grateful to Englishmen, since the author's admiration for the old country is everywhere apparent. The book is written for the benefit of New Englanders, and abounds with pregnant hints and felicitous remarks upon landscape garden- ing, amateur farming, and a number of kindred topics. Mr. Reuter states in his preface that these Rural Studies are designed more for suggestion than instruction. They set us thinking, instead of retailing the results of thought ; they are dis- cursive, but not vague ; they are marked with manly feeling and good taste, and the writer will carry with him the sympathy of all readers who can appreciate these qualities. He is apparently a sagacious, clear-headed, American farmer, who will not neglat any opportunity of improving his crops, but who has at the same time—what is not American—a tender love of all country beauty and of simple rural enjoyments. Why, he asks, may not taste and economy walk hand in hand, why may not a man grapple with God's acres, "putting the stamp of his energy and toil upon them," and at the same time add the grace of art to the unadorned loveliness of nature, or gladden his soul with the beauty of the fields and hedgerows, with the song of birds and the fragrance of flowers? A house in the country is one thing, a home there is another ; and he lammts that in America rural dwelling-places are built without any regard to durability, and that rural homesteads lack the charm belonging to estates which have descended from father to son. "The rule is dispersion, sale, alienation ; and not one man in a thousand is shaded by the oaks that gave shelter to his grandsire."
Mr. Reuter writes with enthusiasm in favour of a country life, and echoes in picturesque prose the praises of the poets. But he is quite aware that rural happiness, like a coy mistress, must be sought with patience and trust, and that the eager ambition and hot haste of our age are inimical to its enjoyment. It is true, as De Quincey says, that the great despisers of rural scenery, its fixed and permanent under-valuers, are rustics, but it is equally true that few men who up to middle age have been fighting the battle of life in cities are able to find the happiness they expect to find in the seclusion of the country. The change is so great, that a man should be confident of his own resources before he ventures to make it.
Very sound advice is given to "New Yorkers" who wish to
have their farm of a few acres twenty or thirty miles from the city. They are told that a country home such as a man may love cannot be hastily improvizecl or bought with so many dollars. It must grow slowly into shape, it must bear upon it the stamp of the owner's mind, it must gather round it happy associations, before it can become in the true sense of the word a home. They are cautioned not to boast overmuch of the mere size of their place, as "if there exist an artist feeling it will be riotous of its wealth upon a bare acre of ground," and they are told the unpleasing fact that as country gentlemen and amateur farmers they have many lessons to learn from England. The author, indeed, shows throughout the book a keen sense of his countrymen's deficiencies in all rural and /Aeolic acquirements.
"In Eng-T d," ho writes, "bad ploughing is rare, in Now England good plough g is even rarer. I go still farther, and say, though and Ffint■for Country Plana. By the Author of "My Farm of ndon: S.mps.m friate JOU, and Cc. 1937. * Rural se gdgewood."
doubtless offending the patriotic susceptibilities of a great many, that not one American farmer in twenty knows what really good ploughing is." Again, in speaking of country roads, he says, "A neat and well ordered public road in any of the rural districts of America is altogether exceptional. Throughout. Great Britain a slatternly and ill kept one is most rare. For the most part American high roads through the rural districts offer to the eye two great slovenly stretches of land, cumbered with stones, offal, wood-yards, and gaping with yellow chasms of earth, from which, every springtime and autumn full shovelfuls of clay are with- drawn to patch the road-bed which lies between. Under such conditions the utmost neatness and regularity which the farmer may bestow upon his field and crops lose half their effect, and the landscape lacks that completed charm which regales the eye along the rural by-roads of England."
In the union of poetical feeling with the knowledge derived from practical experience consists, perhaps, the main charm of these essays. Whilst writing them, the author has had in his memory the melody of old poets and the rural sayings of Arcadian prose- writers, but although he loves sometimes to dream he is no dreamer, and it is pleasant to hear him declare, "There is no manner of work done upon a New England farm to which some day I have not put my hand, whether it be chopping wood, laying wall, sodding a coal pit, cradling oats, weeding corn, shearing sheep, or sowing turnips." Indeed, he is convinced that in this as well as other pursuits practical experience is the best teacher, and that "adventurous philosophers whose brains bristle with theories, and who are without that breadth of knowledge which enables a man to compare theory with theory, make the worst farmers it is possible to imagine? To men such as these he would prefer the old-fashioned farmer who follows in the track of his forefathers, and has no faith in modern improvements :—
" Waal," he makes such a one say, "I've pooty much made up my mind that books is books, and farmin' is farmin'. I've nothin' to say agin these gentlemen that like to spend money a' ditchin' ; I've nothin' to say agin a good tidy crittnr, and you may call her Durham, or you may call her what you like. If she fills a pail she comes up to my idea of a good crittur ; if she doant, she doant. That's my opinion. May be I'm wrong, but that's my way o' lookin' at it."
The chapters on "Railway Gardening" and on "Landscape Treatment of Railways" are, we think, especially worthy of atten-
tion. In England, as in America, the formation of railways has created a vast quantity of waste land, much of which might be used for purposes of utility and beauty. The baldness of the rail- way embankment is at present an eyesore in the landscape, but there seems no reason why, at least in the vicinity of towns, it should not give place to cultivation. If there be a reason, we should be glad to hear it.
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