committed a folly, and he paid for it in loss of mental balance. For
him, plainly, it was no suitable task to feed cows and horses; yet many a
man would perceive the nobler side of such occupation, for it signifies,
of course, providing food for mankind. The interest of this quotation
lies in the fact that, all unconsciously, so intelligent a man as
Hawthorne had been reduced to the mental state of our agricultural
labourers in revolt against the country life. Not only is his intellect
in abeyance, but his emotions have ceased to be a true guide. The worst
feature of the rustic mind in our day, is not its ignorance or grossness,
but its rebellious discontent. Like all other evils, this is seen to be
an inevitable outcome of the condition of things; one understands it only
too well. The bucolic wants to "better" himself. He is sick of feeding
cows and horses; he imagines that, on the pavement of London, he would
walk with a manlier tread.

There is no help in visions of Arcadia; yet it is plain fact that in days
gone by the peasantry found life more than endurable, and yet were more
intelligent than our clod-hoppers who still hold by the plough. They had
their folk-songs, now utterly forgotten. They had romances and fairy
lore, which their descendants could no more appreciate than an idyll of
Theocritus. Ah, but let it be remembered that they had also a _home_,
and this is the illumining word. If your peasant love the fields which
give him bread, he will not think it hard to labour in them; his toil
will no longer be as that of the beast, but upward-looking and touched
with a light from other than the visible heavens. No use to blink the
hard and dull features of rustic existence; let them rather be insisted
upon, that those who own and derive profit from the land may be constant
in human care for the lives which make it fruitful. Such care may
perchance avail, in some degree, to counteract the restless tendency of
the time; the dweller in a pleasant cottage is not so likely to wish to