rt of the old county. Good night, Jack. I wish
you success, old fellow, with all my heart, and I hope after all
that you may leave St. Ambrose's within the year."

CHAPTER XLVI

FROM INDIA TO ENGLEBOURN

If a knowledge of contemporary history must be reckoned as an
important element in the civilization of any people, then I am
afraid that the good folk of Englebourn must have been content,
in the days of our story, with a very low place on the ladder.
How, indeed, was knowledge to percolate, so as to reach down to
the foundations of Englebournian society--the stratum on which
all others rest--the common agricultural labourer, producer of
corn and other grain, the careful and stolid nurse and guardian
of youthful oxen, sheep and pigs, many of them far better fed and
housed than his own children? All-penetrating as she is, one
cannot help wondering that she did not give up Englebourn
altogether as a hopeless job.

So far as written periodical instruction is concerned (with the
exception of the _Quarterly_, which Dr. Winter had taken in from
its commencement, but rarely opened), the supply was limited to
at most half a dozen weekly papers. A London journal, sound in
Church and State principles, most respectable but not otherwise
than heavy, came every Saturday to the rectory. The Conservative
county paper was taken in at the Red Lion; and David the
constable, and the blacksmith, clubbed together to purchase the
Liberal paper, by help of which they managed to wage unequal war
with the knot of village quidnuncs, who assembled almost nightly
at the bar of the Tory beast above referred to--that king of
beasts, red indeed in colour but of the truest blue in political
principle. Besides these, perhaps three or four more papers were
taken by the farmers. But, scanty as the food was, it was quite
enough for the mouths; indeed, when the papers once passed out of
the parlours, they had for the most part performed their mission.
Few of the farm-servants, male or female, had curiosity or
scholarship enough to spell through the dreary columns.

And oral teaching was not much more plentiful, as how was it
likely to be? Englebourn was situated on no trunk road, and the
amount of intercourse between it and the rest of the world was of
the most limited kind. The rector never left home; the curate at
rare intervals. Most of the farmers went to market once a week
and dined at their ordinary, discussing county politics according