The only gleam of the past happy days seemed to be on the head of the wise and loving Ann Woodburn. The effect of his father’s changed views, revealed on his deathbed, had been on Sir Henry Clavering such as she had hoped. He had thought deeply on this unexpected confession. The peace with which he had seen his father depart had made a deep impression on his mind through his affectionate nature. He had arrived soon so far, that he felt that there was something beyond the mere teachings of physical nature and the wisdom of the schools which we need to enable us to push off our spiritual bark into the unknown with confidence. He accepted, therefore, like his father, the Saviour which the Gospel proclaims, though ponderous difficulties lay betwixt his conceptions of this Saviour as a messenger of God, and as God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. But Ann, filled now with the brightest hopes, helped him along this valley of stumbling and of huge stones fallen from the bald rocks of long past ages. She put into his hands Paley’s “Evidences,” Butler’s “Analogy,” and other ably reasoned works of her Church, and marked with deep satisfaction their gradual effect. She no longer talked of leaving Sir Henry to his freedom of choice for a wife. She found herself daily drawn into a nearer and more kindred unity with him. All real obstacles to their marriage were, in fact, surmounted, and that event was regarded as at hand, when these unhappy circumstances connected with Letty’s fortunes, and others yet to be related, made her beg that the marriage might be a little delayed, that it might be celebrated under happier auspices, if possible. Meantime, the political difficulties of the period, and irritated condition of the people at large, and of the manufacturing population in particular, kept Sir Henry actively engaged in his magisterial duties. He generally looked in at the Grange in going to and returning from Castleborough; and whilst Ann was there, at Letty’s, he frequently went in and dined with them. Every day tended to present the excellence of his heart and the clear solidity of his mind more attractively to the whole Woodburn family. Ann only was held back from the goal of her earthly happiness by the cloud that lay on her most beloved ones.
The settlement of Mr. Trant Drury in their immediate neighbourhood had not proved such a source of satisfaction as had been hoped for. Those dictatorial and hurrying qualities in his character, which farmer Barrowclouch had noticed, soon began to press themselves unpleasantly on most of those around him. That he was a first-rate agriculturist of a particular school there could be no question; but it was a school essentially different from that which prevailed in all that part of the country. It was a country naturally fertile, varied in its features, and rendered extremely pleasant by the fine and free-grown fences, the scattered hedge-row trees, and patches of wood. With all these, Mr. Drury made war to the knife—no, to the hatchet and the saw. He expressed his great surprise that any agriculturists could yet be found who would sacrifice so much of their valuable land to the mere growth of useless bushes and almost worthless hedge-row trees. As to the woods and plantations, they might remain, and be made profitable by liberal thinning; but as for the hedges, he would have them all pared down to the shortest state possible to be fences at all, and the hedge-row trees, he would cut down every one of them. He would leave only here and there on the land a spreading tree for shelter for the cattle from the sun in summer; but as for hedges, they were useful only as a means of separating fields, and these he would cut to the quick, and narrow as much as possible; nay, he would cut down half of the hedges altogether, and leave the fields—especially the tillage fields—four of five times their present size. He calculated that nearly a tenth of the superficies of the country might be thus brought into profitable culture. As for the hedge-row trees, he said they were so frequently lopped on their trunks as they grew, to prevent their spreading too widely, that as timber they were a congeries of knots, and of no use but for firewood. In fact, he would have reduced the whole country to a condition as bare as the back of your hand; for beauty or the picturesque had no organ in his brain,—their place was engrossed by the organ of profit.
“Now, of what mortal use,” he would say to Mr. Woodburn, as he rode over his farm, or through the neighbourhood with him,—“of what mortal use are these little shapeless crofts and paddocks with their fences running in all sorts of ways but straight lines,—these little, often triangular plots, with their meandering huge hawthorn hedges, actually turning and doubling on themselves? Sweep all these crooked, scrambling fences away, and have some fine, large, shapely pastures instead. And here is a brook now—do look at it. Would any one have supposed, with the present value of land, that it should be allowed to turn and twine about as it does, forming what the Scotch call links, and as we may call them bows and loops, positively occupying three times the ground which it would if reduced to a straight, handsome course, as it soon might be?”
Mr. Woodburn replied “that in truth they might remove some of the rambling fences, and enlarge those little plots to advantage, but he should be sorry to see all those beautiful hawthorn hedges now throwing out their odorous sprays of wild roses and eglantine, cut close like the cropped bristly head of a parish pauper.”
“Beauty!” said Mr. Trant Drury,—“beauty! My dear sir, we cannot live by beauty. We cannot pay rent by beauty. The interests of this densely populated country cannot be maintained by empty notions of beauty. When you want to go to market with your produce, see what your crop of beauty will bring you. No, sir; as much corn, cattle, hay, potatoes, and the like substantials, for which we labour, and from which we must hope to live, as you please. The greatest possible return for the greatest possible amount of labour and skill expended;—that is my doctrine and my practice; and they are the only principles that will in the long run make this country what it ought to be.”
“But man cannot live by bread alone,” said Mr. Woodburn; “that is a principle established by an authority which I hope, Mr. Drury, you consider as of as much validity as your modern save-all doctrine.”
“I bow to the wisdom of our Lord,” said Mr. Drury; “but what He undoubtedly meant was, not your visionary thing beauty, but divine grace,—‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’”
“Very true,” said Mr. Woodburn; “and out of that divine mouth issued these divine words: ‘Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow.’ He who made beauty as well as material food, and showered it on the earth, and continues so to shower it, knew and knows that we want food for every part of our nature. ‘Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both it and them.’ Now, according to my notions, every part of us demands its proper food. Food for the support of the body, grace for the life of the soul, beauty for the imagination, love for the heart, and truth for the intellect. To feed only the body, and to devote all our labours and our lands only to this purpose, is, in my opinion, to make ourselves no better than the beasts that perish.”
Mr. Drury smiled contemptuously. “That is all very well for you, Mr. Woodburn, who live at ease on your own land; but that sort of doctrine won’t do for tenant-farmers.”
Mr. Woodburn thought it as good for tenant-farmers as for anybody else; and should be very sorry to see the tenant-farmers allowed to follow such a system of agricultural economy, as would make the whole country as bare as a drill-ground, and as ugly as sin. He had seen this style of cultivation carried out in some parts of the country, and he would sooner emigrate to the American forests than live in such a featureless district. He thought, to cut down hedges almost to the ground, and exterminate every tree, was by no means beneficial to cattle or sheep, which in cold weather, and especially during the sharp east winds of early spring, required shelter as well as food.