possessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that
peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a
smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound
teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children
necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from
the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead
of life. The painter is still under the influence of idyllic
literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the
cultivated and town-bred, rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic
ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic
shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers
dance in the chequered shade, and refresh themselves, not immoderately,
with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual
ploughmen thinks them jocund; no one who is well acquainted with the
English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no
sense of beauty beams, no humor twinkles,-the slow utterance and the
heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal, the
camel, than of the sturdy countryman with striped stockings, red waist
coat and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peasant.
Observe a company of haymakers, when you see them at a distance,
tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon
creeps--slowly with its increasing burthen over the meadow, and the
bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you
pronounce the scene "smiling," and you think that these companions in
labor must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give
animation. Approach nearer, and you will certainly find that haymaking
time is a time of joking, especially it there are women among the
laborers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and
expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your idyllic
conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the
mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant,
except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the
English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot.

The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket books and
ne