II
Among the meadows the buttercups in spring are as innumerable as ever and as pleasant to look upon. The petal of the buttercup has an enamel of gold; with the nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow ground, but not reflecting the sunlight like the outer layer. From the centre the golden pollen covers the fingers with dust like that from the wing of a butterfly. In the bunches of grass and by the gateways the germander speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, like Prometheus' fire, from the summer sky. When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of sorrel are so thick and close that at a little distance the surface seems as if sunset were always shining red upon it. From the spotted orchis leaves in April to the honeysuckle-clover in June, and the rose and the honeysuckle itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not grubbed many hedges—only a few, to enlarge the fields, too small before, by throwing two into one. So that hawthorn and blackthorn, ash and willow, with their varied hues of green in spring, briar and bramble, with blackberries and hips later on, are still there as in the old, old time. Bluebells, violets, cowslips—the same old favourite flowers—may be found on the mounds or sheltered near by. The meadow-farmers have dealt mercifully with the hedges, because they know that for shade in heat and shelter in storm the cattle resort to them. The hedges—yes, the hedges, the very synonym of Merry England—are yet there, and long may they remain. Without hedges England would not be England. Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees—I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges.
We have still the woods, with here and there a forest, the beauty of the hills, and the charm of winding brooks. I never see roads, or horses, men, or anything when I get beside a brook. There is the grass, and the wheat, the clouds, the delicious sky, and the wind, and the sunlight which falls on the heart like a song. It is the same, the very same, only I think it is brighter and more lovely now than it was twenty years ago.
Along the footpath we travel slowly; you cannot walk fast very long in a footpath; no matter how rapidly at first, you soon lessen your pace, and so country people always walk slowly. The stiles—how stupidly they are put together. For years and years every one who has passed them, as long as man can remember, has grumbled at them; yet there they are still, with the elms reaching high above, and cows gazing over—cows that look so powerful, but so peacefully yield the way. They are a better shape than the cattle of the ancient time, less lanky, and with fewer corners; the lines, to talk in yachtsman's language, are finer. Roan is a colour that contrasts well with meadows and hedges. The horses are finer, both cart-horse and nag. Approaching the farmsteads, there are hay-ricks, but there are fewer corn-ricks. Instead of the rows on rows, like the conical huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them with the eye—the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly after harvest. The barns are going by degrees, passing out of the life of farming; let us hope that some of them will be converted into silos, and so saved.
At the farmsteads themselves there are considerations for and against. On the one hand, the house and the garden is much tidier, less uncouth; there are flowers, such as geraniums, standard roses, those that are favourites in towns; and the unsightly and unhealthy middens and pools of muddy water have disappeared from beside the gates. But the old flowers and herbs are gone, or linger neglected in corners, and somehow the gentle touch of time has been effaced. The house has got a good deal away from farming. It is on the farm, but disconnected. It is a residence, not a farmhouse. Then you must consider that it is more healthy, sweeter, and better for those who live in it. From a little distance the old effect is obtainable. One thing only I must protest against, and that is the replacing of tiles with slates. The old red tiles of the farmhouses are as natural as leaves; they harmonise with the trees and the hedges, the grass, the wheat, and the ricks. But slates are wrong. In new houses, even farmhouses, it does not matter so much; the owners cannot be found fault with for using the advantages of modern times. On old houses where tiles were once, to put slates is an offence, nothing less. Every one who passes exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at home; they nestle together, and look as if you could be happily drowsy and slumber under them. They are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, with the exception of the slates—the hateful slates—the farmsteads are improved, for they have lost a great deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which was there.
The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one thing is certain about them—they are not English. Fortunately there are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye accept them.
Intrinsically there is nothing used in modern agriculture less symmetrical than what was previously employed. The flails were the simplest of instruments, and were always seen with the same accompaniment—the interior of a barn. The threshing-machine is certainly not less interesting; it works in the open air, often with fine scenic surroundings, and the number of people with it impart vivacity. In reaping with the reaping-hook there were more men in the wheat, but the reaping-machine is not without colour. Scythes are not at all pleasant things; the mowing-machine is at least no worse. As for the steam-plough, it is very interesting to watch. All these fit in with trees and hedges, fields and woods, as well, and in some cases in a more striking manner than the old instruments. The surface of the ground presents more varied colours even than before, and the sunlight produces rich effects. Nor have all the ancient aspects disappeared as supposed—quite the reverse. In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other ends. That there are many, very many things concerning agriculture and country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I have often pointed out, and having done so, I feel that I can with the more strength affirm that in its natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever.
It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some who depict country scenes on canvas that they omit these modern aspects, doubtless under the impression that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so many illustrations seem to proceed upon the assumption that steam-plough and reaping-machine do not exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what it did a hundred years ago. These sketches are often beautiful, but they lack the force of truth and reality. Every one who has been fifty miles into the country, if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they are not real. You feel that there is something wanting, you do not know what. That something is the hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the sky above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty years from the picture? That is what it usually means—fifty years left out; and somehow we feel as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not of our day. The actual fields, the actual machines, the actual men and women (how differently dressed to the conventional pictorial costumes!) would prepare the mind to see and appreciate the colouring, the design, the beauty—what, for lack of a better expression, may be called the soul of the picture—far more than forgotten, and nowadays even impossible accessories. For our sympathy is not with them, but with the things of our own time.