awfully proper image and superscription. There
are no blanks in the matrimonial lottery nowadays, but the prizes are
all of a value, and there is but one kind of article given for the
ticket. Courtship is an absurdity and a sheer waste of time. If a man
could but close his eyes in a ball-room, dash into a bevy of muslin
beauties, carry off the fair one that accident gives to his arms, his
raid would be as reasonable and as likely to produce happiness as the
more ordinary methods of procuring a spouse. If a man has to choose
one guinea out of a bag containing one hundred and fifty, what can he
do? What wonderful wisdom can he display in his choice? There is no
appreciable difference of value in the golden pieces. The latest
coined are a little fresher, that's all. An act of uniformity, with
heavy penalties for recusants, seems to have been passed upon the
English race. That we can quite well account for this state of things,
does not make the matter better, does not make it the less our duty to
fight against it. We are apt to be told that men are too busy and
women too accomplished for humour of speech or originality of character
or manner. In the truth of this lies the pity of it. If, with the
exceptions of hedges that divide fields, and streams that run as
marches between farms, every inch of soil were drained, ploughed,
manured, and under that improved cultivation rushing up into
astonishing wheaten and oaten crops, enriching tenant and proprietor,
the aspect of the country would be decidedly uninteresting, and would
present scant attraction to the man riding or walking through it. In
such a world the tourists would be few. Personally, I should detest a
world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered
with harvest in autumn. I wish a little variety. I desiderate moors
and barren places: the copse where you can flush the woodcock; the
warren where, when you approach, you can see the twinkle of innumerable
rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, would not feel sorry although
Reynard himself had a hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands
of his rising family cost Farmer Yellowleas a fat capon or two in the
season. The fresh, rough, heathery parts of human nature, where the
air is freshest, and where the linnets sing, is getting encroached upon
by cultivated fields. Every one is making himself and herself useful.
Every one is producing something. Everybody is clever. Everybody