'I envy the lot of such, but it will quickly be my lot. The period of forgetfulness, or of tranquil existence in another scene, is hastening to console me. Meanwhile my task shall be to deliver to you and posterity a faithful narrative. The horrors of this scene are only portions of the evil that has overspread the Roman world, which has been inflicted by the cavalry of Scythia, and which will end only in the destruction of the Empire, and the return of the human species to their pristine barbarity.'

Brown was also a writer on political questions, and an able one, but even here he characteristically adopted the methods of the romancer. His most remarkable political production is an address to the United States Government in 1803, on the advantage of acquiring Louisiana from the French. This vast transMississippian territory, of which the existing State of Louisiana is but a small portion, had been ceded by Spain to France in 1801; and in 1803, Napoleon, fearful of its falling into the hands of England, was meditating the sale of it to the United States. Brown's pamphlet is to some extent, as it is described, an argumentative appeal to the United States Government, but the vital part of it is a supposititious translation of an imaginary French State paper, represented to have been drawn up by a French Counsellor of State, recommending the acquisition of Louisiana by France from Spain at the time when this acquisition, soon actually made, was being negotiated between the two countries. The counsellor, in the first place, dissuades Bonaparte from attempting the re-conquest of St. Domingo, and rather advises the colonisation of Australia. This may seem fanciful, but, in fact, Napoleon, about this very time, sent out an expedition designed to pave the way for this undertaking; and a map, reproduced in Mr. Rose's recent biography of him, adorns the southern coast of Australia with the title, 'Terre Napoléon.' Considering, nevertheless, that the project is not likely to be carried into effect, the counsellor extols the advantage to France of the possession of Louisiana, and ingeniously introduces the circumstances which ought to render the French occupation distasteful to the United States, thus indirectly, for American readers, recommending the purchase which Brown is advocating. Can it be thought, the imaginary Frenchman asks, 'that the Americans will willingly admit into their vitals a formidable and active people, whose interests are incompatible at every point with their own; whose enterprise will inevitably interfere and jar with theirs; whose

neighbourhood will cramp all their movements, circumscribe all their future progress to narrow and ignominious bounds, and make incessant inroads on their harmony and independence? This gives occasion for drawing a picture of the American nation as, in Brown's view, it then appeared to the nations of Europe. It is thought to be weak on several accounts. From having a hostile nation of slaves in its bosom. From the clashing interests and jealousies of the States. From its division into hostile factions. From the perverse attachments and antipathies of the people to European nations. From the want of national spirit, patriotism, sense of national honour, or love of national glory. From the love of gain and the exceeding sensibility to commercial interests. From the ease with which the Indians can at all times be set on to carry fire, the tomahawk and scalping-knife into the American settlements, by any European nation having colonies on their

borders.

The cradle of the young giant was indeed beset by serpents! Louisiana was purchased from France in 1804, and the acquisition is regarded as the chief glory of the administration of President Jefferson. Brown was not not a supporter of this administration. He thought Gallatin, the Financial Secretary, its ablest member. Madison, Secretary of State, and afterwards President, he considered, in Dunlap's words, ' a man of genius and industry, somewhat slow and much deficient in energy. Mr. Jefferson, as a polite scholar and accomplished gentleman, doubting received truth, and extremely credulous to whatever served to confirm his favourite theories; deficient in the science of politics, but of great address in screening himself from dangers and responsibilities.' These judgments have been substantially confirmed by posterity. Brown was a man of great sagacity, and if not an original thinker himself, was receptive of the ideas of others, as shown by his attitude towards the speculations of Godwin. Had his life been prolonged, he might have become a distinguished publicist. It must be remembered that he was not a New Englander, and was exempt from the Puritan antecedents which contributed to mould the most eminent American writers and thinkers of his day. Neither was he affected by French influences like Jefferson and his circle. He was a native of Pennsylvania, the Quaker State; his lineage was Quaker; his mental constitution exemplified that union of sobriety with mysticism which characterises the Friend.

507

SOME PEASANT WOMEN

ALTHOUGH few, perhaps, could say precisely how and when they have become acquainted with her, everyone must know the typical old cottage woman of a certain order of books, who studies her Bible, keeps her spectacles among the geraniums on the windowsill, has a little hoard of money concealed in the teapot on the mantelpiece, and, according to her religious persuasions, entertains the Dissenting minister or the vicar's daughter to tea. She is an engaging old figure in her way. Illustrators of Christmas numbers show her toothless and benevolent of aspect; yet not more benevolent (nor much more toothless) than we are led to suppose her by the writers. She is spotlessly clean, she is eaten up with humility, she can curtsey to her betters in a way to turn good children green with envy, she is invariably a widow, has generally been the heroine of a love affair with a scamp named Willie, and the only human failing allowed her is an infrequent dash of low cunning, to temper for incredulous readers her astounding simplicity. In short, when one considers how worthy she is, and how many times the pattern of her has been recommended to the poor, it seems marvellous that any well-appointed cottage home should be without a specimen of her in the flesh.

Truth, however, is wont to be marvellous, and, odd though it seem, it is yet true that in actual life I for one have never met a living example of these charming old ladies; and after a good many years in a rural neighbourhood I should still be at a loss where to put my hand on one, if inquiry should be made.

It is true that in many respects the parish is peculiar. Reclaimed within living memory from shaggy furze-common, little of the land in our village has ever felt the plough or known the attentions of careful farming. All round the valley there has been prosperous agriculture, but just here the cottagers dwell for the most part on the same small holdings into which the common was broken up at the time of enclosure forty years ago. Consequently we have no rich farmer, no employer of labour, to curb the rude independence of the inhabitants. The folk earn their living outside the parish; within, a little awed, it may be, by the 1 Copyright, 1902, by George Sturt, in the United States of America.

policeman, they do much as they like, with none to interfere. The ancient Radical gibe at the influence of squire and parson in our villages would have little meaning in this one. There is no squire; and the parson struggles single-handed at his unappreciated task. Consequently the village is without those mellow traditions of respect for the gentry' which are preserved so religiously by those toothless old tea-drinkers in the books. It is no place for ladies like these, and few things would more surprise me than to learn of the existence of such an one in the neighbourhood.

But indeed I am inclined to doubt the existence of this particular kind of old woman in any parish whatever. I am sceptical of the whole species. They have a suspicious air of being one of those curious types, unrelated to anything real, which art occasionally originates for its own purposes, and perpetuates for purposes of art-manufacture. One guesses where they originate. Their birthplace is the country parsonage; their home is in the imaginations of the idly good. You can tell by some elusive flabbiness in the make of them that they have not stood up to life and faced it as your real cottage woman must do unless she will die.

Of quite another breed are the village women I have met; the old are different, and the younger in no wise bid fair to become at all like the examples set before them, by picture and letterpress, in the pages, for instance, of the parish magazine. Their fate would not permit it; but were their fate kinder it is not credible that their own temper would ever accept that feeble mould. For although old women have long been a byword for all sorts of feebleness, working-class old women at least ought not to be accused of that particular brand of insipidity attributed to them in Sunday books. They should have their due. It should be remembered of them that they are the mothers of strong men, of men who drink beer rather than tea, of men perhaps the most capable for hard work that the world has seen. Changed though they must be from the pattern of their remote forebears, who helped turn Britain into England, the mothers of our peasants retain probably more of the tough quality of Alfred's days than is to be found among women elsewhere. Whatever else may be said for them or against, they are English to the marrow of their aged bones.

The first that comes to mind, for instance-what an unconscious but true patriotism she displayed in her fears for the threatened

robustness of the young generations! She is dead some years since, but I have not yet forgotten the exalted fierceness of her indignation in the only conversation with her that I ever had.

True it is that in some ways Mrs. Stone was an exceptional person. Gaunt and tall—she must have stood six feet high-and without suspicion of a stoop, at eighty years old she walked regularly two or three times a week from her cottage to the town and back-a three-mile walk-to do her poor shopping. Poor it was, because she could no longer work, and the five shillings allowed her weekly by the parish was practically all her income. I do not know how she contrived to live on next to nothing, but through all her long life she had schooled herself to live on very little. Her husband was bed-ridden for thirty years before he died, and required so much attention from her that she was unable to go out to work, like other women of her class, but kept her home together by such scanty laundry-work as could be brought to her. To make both ends meet on such terms was a sufficient exercise in thrift, without saving; consequently in her old age she owned no little hoard of money, but went half-starved, although none, seeing her, would have suspected that. Her severe, aquiline features, her tall, slowly-moving form, would have suited the abbess of a convent, and so would her austere temper. She was a devout Churchwoman; had had visions too-one of them a vision of glory in heaven that had almost thrown her backward in the road, she told me, and had intimated to her the coming of blessed death to a cancerous neighbour whom she had been helping to nurse. In another way also her piety was instanced. On being given the opportunity, though she was not urged, to subscribe her penny to the village Jubilee memorial (a much-needed pump it was to be, by the way) old Mrs. Stone was forced reluctantly to confess her poverty as it has been described above, but, she said, 'I'll give ye my prayers,' and she said it in such a manner that made the offer seem worth taking, though it could not figure on a subscription list.

What followed, however, has for ever freed her in my mind from taint of resemblance to the namby-pamby old things of parish-magazine manufacture. For, having evinced her approval of such practical benefits as a Jubilee pump, she turned upon other innovations that displeased her, to rend them with her anathemas. The Board school, she maintained, was doing nothing else than sap the vigour of the working classes. She objected to it root