skill. They fill them well, too, in very trustworthy and
industrious fashion. A few of them have learnt trades, and are saving
money, as bricklayers, carpenters, clerks even. It was from the ranks of
this group that a young man emerged, some years ago, as a speculating
builder. He put up three or four cottages, and then came to grief; but I
never heard that anybody but himself suffered loss by the collapse of
his venture. He has left the neighbourhood, and I mention him now only
to exhibit the middle-class tendencies of his kind. You will not find
any of these men going to a public-house. The "Institute" caters for
them, with its decorous amusements--billiards, dominoes, cribbage; but
they do not much affect the Institute Reading Room; indeed, I believe
them to be intellectually very docile to authority. Opinions they have,
on questions of the day, but not opinions formed by much effort of their
own. The need of the village, as they have felt it, is less for mental
than for ethical help. They desire something to guide their conduct and
their pastimes, and this leads them to respond to the invitation of the
Church and its allied influences.

I have an impression, too, that indirectly, through their example,
others are affected by those influences who do not so consciously yield
to them; at any rate a softening of manners seems to be in progress in
the village. It is not much, perhaps; it is certainly very indefinite,
and no doubt there are other causes helping to further it; but, such as
it is, the chief credit for it is due to the lead given by the Church.
Indeed, no other agency has done anything at all in the way of proposing
to the people an art of living, a civilization, to replace that of the
old rustic days.

2. With few exceptions the newspapers--chiefly weeklies, but here and
there a daily--which come into the villagers' hands are of the "yellow
press" kind; but for once a good effect may be attributed to them. It
resembles that which, in a smaller way, springs from the opportunities
of travelling afforded by railways. Just as few of our people now are
wholly restricted in their ideas of the world to this valley and the
horizons visible from its sides, but the most of them, in excursion
holidays at least, have seen a little of the extent and variety of
England, so, thanks to the cheap press, ideas and information about the
whole world are finding their way into the cottages of the valley; and
at the present s