lly of whole villages being
pulled down and razed, in order to prevent them "becoming nests of
beggars' brats." A member of Parliament did not hesitate to confess
before a Parliamentary Committee, that he "had pulled down between
twenty-six and thirty cottages, which, had they been left standing,
would have been inhabited by young married couples." And what becomes of
the dispossessed? They crowd together in the cottages which are left
standing, if their owners will allow it; or they crowd into the
workhouses; or, more generally, they crowd into the towns, where there
is at least some hope of employment for themselves and their children.

Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not
sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers
regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the
rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of
manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks
volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their
country's pride."

The intellectual condition of the country labourers seems to be on a par
with their physical state. Those in the western counties are as little
civilized as the poor people in the east of London. A report of the
Diocesan Board of the county of Hereford states that "a great deal of
the superstition of past ages lingers in our parishes. The observation
of lucky and unlucky days and seasons is by no means unusual; the phases
of the moon are regarded with great respect,--in one, medicine may be
taken, in another it is advisable to kill a pig; over the doors of many
houses may be found twigs placed crosswise, and never suffered to lose
their cruciform position; and the horseshoe preserves its old station on
many a stable-door. Charms are devoutly believed in; a ring made from a
shilling, offered at the communion, is an undoubted cure for fits; hair
plucked from the crop on an ass's shoulder, and woven into a chain, to
be put round a child's neck, is powerful for the same purpose; and the
hand of a corpse applied to the neck is believed to disperse a wen. The
'evil eye,' so long dreaded in uneducated countries, has its terrors
among us; and if a person of ill life be suddenly called away, there are
generally some who hear his 'tokens,' or see his ghost. There exists,
besides, the custom of communicating deaths to hives of bees, in the
belief that they invariably abandon