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not hear these, and scores of such anecdotes, that shew the simple life of the district, and yet have more hearty merriment in them than much finer stories in much finer places? Hard times and hard measures may have quenched some of the ancient hilarity of the English Peasant, and struck a silence into lungs that were wont to crow like chanticleer;" yet will I not believe but that in many a sweet and picturesque district, on many a brown moorland, in many a far-off glen and dale of our wilder and more primitive districts, where the peasantry are almost the sole inhabitants, whether shepherds, labourers, hewers of wood, or drawers of water,

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"The ancient spirit is not dead.”

That homely and loving groups gather round evening fires beneath low and smoky rafters, and feel that they have labour and care enough, as their father had, but that they have the pride of homes, hearts, and the sweetness of mutual sympathy, still. Let England take care that these are the portion of the English Peasant; and he will never cease to shew himself the noblest peasant on the face of the earth. Is he not that, in his patience with penury with him, and old age and the Union before him? Is he not that when his landlord has given him his sympathy? When he has given him AN ALLOTMENT-Who so grateful, so industrious, so provident, so contented, and so respectable?

The English Peasant has in his nature all the elements of the English character. Give him ease, and he is readily pleased; wrong him, and who so desperate in his rage?

In his younger days, before the care of a family weighs on him, he is a clumsy, but a very light-hearted creature. To see a number of young country fellows get into play together, always reminds one of a quantity of heavy cart-horses turned into a field on a Sunday. They gallop, and kick, and scream: there is no malice, but a dreadful jeopardy of bruises and broken ribs. Their play is truly called horse-play. It is all slaps and bangs, tripping-up, tumbles, and laughter. But, to see the young peasant in his glory, you should see him hastening to the Michaelmas fair, statute, bullroasting, or mop. He has served his year; he has his money in his pocket, his sweetheart on his arm, or he is sure to meet her at the fair. Whether he goes again to his old place or a new one, he will have a week's holiday. Thus, on old Michaelmas day, he and all his fellows, all the country over, are let loose, and are on the way to the fair the houses are empty of them; the highways are full of them.

There they go, streaming along, lads and lasses in all their finery, and with a world of laughter and loud talk. See, here they come flocking into the market-town! And there, what preparations for them shows, strolling theatres, stalls of all kinds bearing clothes of all kinds, knives, combs, queen-cakes, and gingerbread, and a hundred inventions to lure those hard-earned wages out of his fob. And he does not mean to be stingy to-day. He will treat his lass, and buy her a new gown into the bargain. See, how they go rolling on together! He holds up his elbow sharply by his side, she thrusts her arm through his, up to the elbow, and away they go, a walking miracle that they can walk together at all. As to keeping step, that is out of the question; but besides this, they wag and roll about in such a way, that keeping their arms tightly linked, it is amazing they don't pull off one or the other. But they don't. They shall see the shows, and stand all in a crowd before them with open eye, and open mouths, wondering at the beauty of the dancing women, and their gowns all over spangles, and at all the wit, and grimaces and summersets of harlequin and clown. They shall have a merry dinner, and a dance, like a dance of elephants and hippopotami, and then

"To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new."

:

And these are the men that become sullen and desperate that become poachers and incendiaries. How, and why? It is not plenty and kind words that make them so. What then What makes the wolves herd together, and descend from the Alps and the Pyrenees? What makes them desperate and voracious, blind with fury, and reveling in vengeance? Hunger and hardship! When the English Peasant is gay, at ease, well fed and well clothed, what cares he how many pheasants are in a wood, or ricks in a farmer's yard? When he has a dozen backs to clothe, and a dozen mouths to feed, and nothing to put on the one, and little to put in the other, then that which seemed a mere playful puppy suddenly starts up a snarling red-eyed monster!-How sullen he grows! With what equal indifference he shoots down pheasants or game-keepers. How the man, who so recently held up his head and laughed aloud, now sneaks a villanous fiend, with the dark lantern and the match to his neighbour's rick! Monster! can this be the English Peasant? "Tis the same! 'Tis the very man! But what has made him so? What has thus demonized, thus infuriated, thus converted him into a walking pestilence? Villain as he is, is he alone to blame-or is there another?

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If we must take a trip for pleasure, do let us make it as much like business as possible.

MR. DEPUTY BUTTS.

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

BY A "KNIGHT OF THE ROAD."

Of all travellers living, your Commercial Traveller is he, who is ever designedly "at home," and never, even accidentally, "abroad." No member of the travelled club, (not the club of commerce, but of fashion), admission into whose select circle is only attainable by some such remarkable achievement as the performance of a thousand-milesjourney in a direct line from St. Pauls, ever saw so far before him, or understood so well the principle of perpetual motion. It would not be easy to form a more accurate notion of the identity of a Commercial Traveller, than by picturing him to the mind's one eye, as the very antipodes of the ordinary Tourist. Imagine a lounger, a saunterer, a scene-sketcher, a stroller on a grand scale, a shifter from inn to inn, a foolish fluttering bird of passage

" -That has but one

Imperfect wing to soar upon;"

a stray pigeon for cosmopolitans all the world over to pluck; a crawler from city to city; a Wandering Christian avoiding the Jew in his own country; a will-o'-the-wisp without a light; a flitter from pillar to post, and back again; a twin brother of the fair inconsistent, who could turn and turn, and yet go on, and turn again, and not get forward after all, nor backward to any purpose; a determined sight-seer with his eyes shut; an incorrigible trip-taker whom nothing in nature can move; an automaton wound up, and thus set going; a day-dreamer who is never awake; a sort of somnambulist who has taken up his bed and walked in short, a thoroughly idle, listless, gentlemanly victim to custom and polite prescription; a genuine Man of Fashion on his Travels :-imagine that, and then you very plainly see something which the Commercial Traveller is not.

Every man, according to Hamlet, "hath business and desire, such as it is;" but no traveller hath business and desire like his, who travels in the service of commerce. His very pleasures are, in

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