wine or cider, pruned
their fruit-trees and vines, looked after their bees, all for
themselves. And some at least, and perhaps the most, of these economies
were open to the poorest labourer. Though he owned no land, yet as the
tenant, and probably the permanent tenant, of a cottage and garden he
had the chance to occupy himself in many a craft that tended to his own
comfort. A careful man and wife needed not to despair of becoming rich
in the possession of a cow or a pig or two, and of good clothes and
household utensils; and they might well expect to see their children
grow up strong and prosperous in the peasant way.

Thus the claim that I have made for the peasant tradition--namely, that
it permitted a man to hope for well-being without seeking to escape from
his own class into some other--is justified, partially at least. I admit
that the ambition was a modest one, but there were circumstances
attending it to make it a truly comforting one too. Look once more at
the conditions. The small owners of the parish might occupy more land
than the labourers, and have the command of horses and waggons, and
ploughs and barns, and so on; but they ate the same sort of food and
wore the same sort of clothes as the poorer folk, and they thought the
same thoughts too, and talked in the same dialect, so that the labourer
working for them was not oppressed by any sense of personal inferiority.
He might even excel in some directions, and be valued for his
excellence. Hence, if his ambition was small, the need for it was not
very great.

And then, this life of manifold industry was interesting to live. It is
impossible to doubt it. Not one of the pursuits I have mentioned failed
to make its pleasant demand on the labourer for skill and knowledge; so
that after his day's wage-earning he turned to his wine-making or the
management of his pigs with the zest that men put into their hobbies.
Amateurs the people were of their homely crafts--very clever amateurs,
too, some of them. I think it likely, also, that normally even
wage-earning labour went as it were to a peaceful tune. In the elaborate
tile-work of old cottage roofs, in the decorated ironwork of decrepit
farm-waggons, in the carefully fashioned field-gates--to name but a few
relics of the sort--many a village of Surrey and Hampshire and Sussex
has ample proofs that at least the artisans of old time went about their
work placidly, unhurriedly, taking time to make their products c