evening a week. What, then, is the labourer to
do? Let any one put himself in his place, try to realise his feelings
and circumstances. At present, till education extends, he must go to the
public-house. Is he to be punished and deprived of his game of skill
because in large towns it bears evil fruit? Surely the law could be
somewhat modified, and playing permitted under some restrictions.

The early closing has been an unalloyed good in these rural districts.
The labourer is a steady drinker. He does not toss down glasses of stiff
brandy and whisky. His beer requires time to produce an effect. The last
hour does the mischief. Since the earlier closing the village streets
have been comparatively free from drunken men. In any case, the
agricultural labourer is the most lamb-like of drunkards. He interferes
with no one. He unhinges no gates, smashes no windows, does no injury.
He either staggers home or quietly lies on the grass till the liquor
passes off. He is not a quarrelsome man. He does not fight with
knuckle-dusters or kick with his heavy boots. His fights, when he does
fight, are very harmless affairs. No doubt his drunkenness is an
offence; but it is comparatively innocuous to the general public.

Religious feeling does not run high among the labourers. A large
proportion of them are Nonconformists--principally Methodists. But this
is not out of any very decided notion as to the difference of ceremony
or theological dogma; it arises out of a class feeling. They say, or
rather they feel, that this is _their_ church. The parish church is the
church of the farmers and the gentry. There is no hostility to the
clergyman of the parish, no bitter warfare of sect against sect, or of
Methodist against Churchman. But you see very few of the farmers go to
chapel. The labourer goes there, and finds his own friends--his cousins
and uncles--his wife's relations. He is among his own class. There is no
feeling of inferiority. The religion taught, the service, the hymns, the
preacher, all are his. He has a sense of proprietorship in them. He
helps to pay for them. The French peasant replied to the English
tourist, who expressed surprise at the fanatic love of the populace for
the first Napoleon--"he was as much a tyrant as King Louis was." "Ah,
but Napoleon was _our_ king." So the labourers feel that this is their
religion. Therefore it is that so many of them gather together (where
there are no chapels) in the cottage of some m