w small fir copses are
scattered about, the only relief to the eye; all else is level, dull,
monotonous.

When the village is reached at last, it is found to be of considerable
size. The population is much greater than might have been anticipated from
the desert-like solitude surrounding the place. In actual numbers, of
course, it will not bear comparison with manufacturing districts, but for
its situation, it is quite a little town. Compared with the villages
situate in the midst of great pastures--where grass is the all-important
crop--it is really populous. Almost all the inhabitants find employment in
the fields around, helping to produce wheat and barley, oats and roots. It
is a little city of the staff of life--a metropolis of the plough.

Every single house, from that of the landowner, through the rent; that of
the clergyman, through the tithe--down to the humblest cottage, is
directly interested in the crop of corn. The very children playing about
the gaps in the hedges are interested in it, for can they not go gleaning?
If the heralds had given the place a coat of arms it should bear a sheaf
of wheat. And the reason of its comparative populousness is to be found in
the wheat also. For the stubborn earth will not yield its riches without
severe and sustained labour. Instead of tickling it with a hoe, and
watching the golden harvest leap forth, scarifier and plough, harrow and
drill in almost ceaseless succession, compel the clods by sheer force of
iron to deliver up their treasure. In another form it is almost like the
quartz-crushing at the gold mines--the ore ground out from the solid rock.
And here, in addition, the ore has to be put into the rock first in the
shape of manure.

All this labour requires hands to do it, and so--the supply for some time,
at all events, answering the demand--the village teemed with men. In the
autumn comes the ploughing, the couch-picking and burning, often second
ploughing, the sowing by drill or hand, the threshing, &c. In the spring
will come more ploughing, sowing, harrowing, hoeing. Modern agriculture
has increased the labour done in the fields. Crops are arranged to succeed
crops, and each of these necessitates labour, and labour a second and a
third time. The work on arable land is never finished. A slackness there
is in the dead of winter; but even then there is still something
doing--some draining, some trimming of hedges, carting manure for open
field work. But beyond