t
even indicated. Husbandry has in our time been glorified in eloquence
which for the most part is vain, endeavouring, as it does, to prove a
falsity--that the agricultural life is, in itself, favourable to gentle
emotions, to sweet thoughtfulness, and to all the human virtues.
Agriculture is one of the most exhausting forms of toil, and, in itself,
by no means conducive to spiritual development; that it played a
civilizing part in the history of the world is merely due to the fact
that, by creating wealth, it freed a portion of mankind from the labour
of the plough. Enthusiasts have tried the experiment of turning
husbandman; one of them writes of his experience in notable phrase.

"Oh, labour is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it
without becoming proportionately brutified. Is it a praiseworthy matter
that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and
horses? It is not so."

Thus Nathaniel Hawthorne, at Brook Farm. In the bitterness of his
disillusion he went too far. Labour may be, and very often is, an
accursed and a brutalizing thing, but assuredly, it is not the curse of
the world; nay, it is the world's supreme blessing. Hawthorne had
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, wh