f course," they say, "we shall be sorry for the
poor people to be turned out, but we should like to have nicer
neighbours, of our own sort." So in their own valley these English
people are not safe from molestation. With scarce more care for them
than would be shown by a foreign invader, gentility pursues its ungentle
aims. No cottager can feel quite secure. A dim uncertainty haunts the
village, with noticeable effect upon everybody's activities. For a sort
of calculating prudence is begotten of it, which yet is not thrift. It
dissuades the people from working for a distant future. It cuts off
hope, benumbs the tastes, paralyzes the aspiration to beautify the home
which may any day have to be abandoned.

And in the long run this effect, from which all the people suffer more
or less unconsciously, is more injurious than the actual misfortune of
having to move, which, after all, falls upon the few only. Not that I
would make light of that calamity. Men under its shadow lie awake o'
nights, worrying about it. While I am writing here, in a cottage near at
hand there is a man under notice to quit, who is going through all the
pitiful experiences--wondering where in the world he shall take his wife
and children, fearing lest it should have to be into some backyard in
the town, dreading that in that case he will be too far away from his
day's work and have to give it up, and scheming to save enough, from the
cost of bread and boots, to pay for a van to move his furniture. It is
not for any fault that he is to go. And indeed he is being well treated;
for the owner, who wants to occupy the cottage himself, has waited
months because the man cannot find another place. Nevertheless he will
have to go. As a rule, a man under notice to quit is in the position of
standing by and seeing his home, and his living, and the well-being of
his family sacrificed to the whim of a superior whom he dares not
oppose; and I do not dream of arguing that that is a tolerable position
for any Englishman to be in. None the less, it is true that these acute
troubles, which fall upon a few people here and there, and presently are
left behind and forgotten, are of less serious import than the injury to
the village at large, caused by the general sense of insecurity.

The people's tastes are benumbed, I said: their aspirations to beautify
their homes are paralyzed by the want of permanence in their condition.
To make this quite plain, it would be only need