Beneath the overwhelming sense of his position, that he belongs to a neglected, despised caste, he is, in the locality alluded to, truly a dull fellow. That the peasant there is not an ass or a sheep, you only know by his standing on end. You hear no strains of country drollery, and no characters of curious or eccentric humor; all is dull, plodding, and lumpish.
But go forth, my masters, to a greater distance from the luminous capital of England; get away into the Midland and more Northern counties, where the pride of greatness is not so palpably before the poor man’s eyes—where the peasantry and villagers are numerous enough to keep one another in countenance; and there you shall find the English peasant a “happier and a wiser man.” Sunday-schools, and village day-schools, give him at least the ability to read the Bible. There, the peasant feels that he is a man; he speaks in a broad dialect, indeed, but he is “a fellow of infinite jest.” Hear him in the hay-field, in the corn-field, at the harvest-supper, or by the village ale-house fire, if he be not very refined, he is, nevertheless, a very independent fellow. Look at the man indeed! None of your long, lanky fellows, with a sleepy visage; but a sturdy, square-built chap, propped on a pair of legs, that have self-will, and the spirit of Hampden in them, as plain as the ribs of the gray-worsted stockings that cover them. What thews, what sinews, what a pair of calves! why, they more resemble a couple of full-grown bulls! See to his salutation, as he passes any of his neighbors—hear it. Does he touch his hat, and bow his head, and look down, as the great man goes by in his carriage? No! he leaves that to the cowed bumpkin of the south. He looks his rich-neighbor full in the face, with a fearless, but respectful gaze, and bolts from his manly breast a hearty, “Good day to ye, sir!” To his other neighbor, his equal in worldly matters, he extends his broad hand, and gives him a shake that is felt to the bottom of the heart. “Well, and how are you, John?—and how’s Molly, and all the little ankle-biters?—and how goes the pig on, and the garden—eh?”
Let me hear the dialogue of those two brave fellows; there is the soul of England’s brightest days in it. I am sick of slavish poverty on the one hand, and callous pride on the other. I yearn for the sound of language breathed from the lungs of humble independence, and the cordial, earnest greetings of poor, but warm-hearted men, as I long for the breeze of the mountains and the sea. Oh! I doubt much if this
Bold peasantry, a country’s pride,
is lowered in its tone, both of heart-wholeness, boldness, and affection, by the harsh times and harsh measures that have passed over every district, even the most favored; or why all these emigrations, and why all these parish-unions? What, then, is not the English peasant what he was? If I went among them where I used to go, should I not find the same merry groups seated among the sheaves, or under the hedgerows, full of laughter, and full of droll anecdotes of all the country round? Should I not hear of the farmer who never wrote but one letter in his life, and that was to a gentleman forty miles off; who, on opening it, and not being able to puzzle out more than the name and address of his correspondent, mounted his horse in his vexation, and rode all the way to ask the farmer to read the letter himself; and he could not do it—could not read his own writing? Should I not hear Jonathan Moore, the stout old mower, rallied on his address to the bull, when it pursued him till he escaped into a tree? How Jonathan, sitting across a branch, looked down with the utmost contempt on the bull, and endeavored to convince him that he was a bully and a coward? “My! what a vaporing coward art thou! Where’s the fairness, where’s the equalness of the match? I tell thee, my heart’s good enough; but what’s my strength to thine?”
Should I not once more hear the hundred-times-told story of Jockey Dawes, and the man who sold him his horse? Should I not hear these, and scores of such anecdotes, that show 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 I will not believe but that, in many a sweet and picturesque district, on many a brown moor-land, 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, laborers, hewers of wood, or drawers of waters—
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 labor and care enough, as their fathers had, but that they have the pride of homes, hearts, and sympathies still.
Let England take care that these are the portion of the English peasant, and he will never cease to show 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 who so readily pleased; wrong him, and who so desperate in his rage?