children. He will see a rosier, fatter, bigger-boned race growing
up, which bids fair to surpass in bulk the puny and ill-fed
generation of 1815-45, and equal, perhaps, in thew and sinew, to the
men who saved Europe in the old French war.

If it should be so (as God grant it may), there is little fear but
that the labouring men of England will find their aristocracy able
to lead them in the battle-field, and to develop the agriculture of
the land at home, even better than did their grandfathers of the old
war time.

To a thoughtful man, no point of the social horizon is more full of
light, than the altered temper of the young gentlemen. They have
their faults and follies still--for when will young blood be other
than hot blood? But when one finds, more and more, swearing
banished from the hunting-field, foul songs from the universities,
drunkenness and gambling from the barracks; when one finds
everywhere, whether at college, in camp, or by the cover-side, more
and more, young men desirous to learn their duty as Englishmen, and
if possible to do it; when one hears their altered tone toward the
middle classes, and that word 'snob' (thanks very much to Mr.
Thackeray) used by them in its true sense, without regard of rank;
when one watches, as at Aldershott, the care and kindness of
officers toward their men; and over and above all this, when one
finds in every profession (in that of the soldier as much as any)
young men who are not only 'in the world,' but (in religious
phraseology) 'of the world,' living God-fearing, virtuous, and
useful lives, as Christian men should: then indeed one looks
forward with hope and confidence to the day when these men shall
settle down in life, and become, as holders of the land, the leaders
of agricultural progress, and the guides and guardians of the
labouring man.

I am bound to speak of the farmer, as I know him in the South of
England. In the North he is a man of altogether higher education
and breeding: but he is, even in the South, a much better man than
it is the fashion to believe him. No doubt, he has given heavy
cause of complaint. He was demoralised, as surely, if not as
deeply, as his own labourers, by the old Poor Law. He was
bewildered--to use the mildest term--by promises of Protection from
men who knew better. But his worst fault after all has been, that
young or old, he has copied his landlord too closely, and acted on
hi