Artists have often painted village politicians in earnest confabulation
in an oak-pannelled inn-parlour. I can only say that, so far as my
experience went, I found the village politician quite extinct. The
sort of talk I heard in village bar-rooms was inane and contemptible to
the last degree, and it never once touched on politics. Nor, as a
rule, was there any trace of that leaven of superior intelligence which
comes from a fusion of the classes. All the landlords were practically
non-resident. They knew nothing of their tenants; and that pleasant
intercourse between hall and cottage which poets and novelists depict,
rarely happened. Once a year, perhaps, and for a few weeks only, the
blinds of the Hall windows were drawn up; carriages rolled through the
park gates; young ladies, bright in Bond Street toilets, flashed like
deities upon the village street; my Lady Bountiful left a quarter of a
pound of tea at half a dozen cottages; and then the whole vision faded
like an unsubstantial pageant. The blinds were drawn down again, the
lodge-keeper went to sleep, and the monotonies of life submerged
everything like a wave. The clergyman alone remained as the symbol of
a fuller life, sometimes doing his duty with intelligence, sometimes
not; but the case was rare where any definite attempt was made to
uplift the village community by the infusion of any intellectual
interest, any sense of Art, or any care for honest sport. And here
lies the whole secret of the discontent of villages; their inhabitants
are conscious of unjust deprivations in their lot; and if they remain
villagers, it is rather from lethargy than love.

Were I to describe all the places I visited in search of a habitation,
my list would be interminable. I have given one example in Dawes'
Farm; let me give one other, as illustrating another kind of difficulty
in my quest.