following was the information we received. The
house and grounds of New Longwood are
the property of Government, and are at
present let to a retired officer, who makes
a considerable income by the two shillings
a-head exacted from each visitor to the old
house. Doubtless, the tenant, in his turn,
pays a rent proportionate to the probable
amount expected from the toll levied on
strangers.

Again, as to the Tomb. After the remains
of Napoleon were removed, Government sold
the ground. The present proprietor being
therefore at liberty, either to prevent intrusion
or to exact what he pleases from the
curious, consents to account the visit no
intrusion,  which is paid for at three shillings
a head.

HOPE.

AN EPIGRAM.

SWEET Hope of life, where shouldst thou dwell?
         Not with the eagle on the rock,
         The civic strife, or battle shock,
But near thy sister Truth's deep well;
         Midst shadowy woods and grassy lanes,
         Where tenderness with beauty reigns,
And heaven's bright silence breeds a voice within!
         This be life's care to win,
         Its noblest scope—
"But not in solitude — alone—sweet Hope!

SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES.

THE largest and most interesting question,
connected with humanity, is:—how are its
labouring classes to be secured the greatest
amount of morality and happiness? For
nineteen-twentieths of the world this means,
how are those who till the land to be
remunerated, and in what relation are they
to be placed with regard to the land itself ?
Rousseau would have commenced such an
inquiry by asking, what was the state of
nature ? But history would have answered
that the state of nature, in Europe at
least, was a state of violence, where the rude
pastoral tribe always subdued the agricultural
one, and reduced it to slavery or serfage. We
must begin, therefore, to trace the peasant
from his lowest point of degradation ;—
when slavery was the general law of the
world, and man, whose lot was slavery, was
a chattel. To find such a state of things
now, we should go to Carolina or Brazil,
where the question is mixed up with
considerations of colour, of export, and of
race; but these questions would lead us far
from our purpose, which is merely to consider
man, as connected with, and affected by, the
tenure of land, in Europe.

To look for serfage now, would require far
research. It exists in Russia, no doubt; but,
even there, it has been modified, or is expiring.
It has been abolished on the lands of the
crown; the Imperial serfs being henceforth
tenants, who pay rent — not in money, but in
kind.

The grade above serfage, in the history of
the European peasant, is formed by a division
of the land, part of which is abandoned to the
peasant to feed himself and his family; he
paying rent, in the shape of so many days'
labour, to be employed on another portion
of land which is reserved to the landlord.
This is the robot, which prevailed so very
generally throughout Hungary, Gallicia, part
of Poland, and, indeed, all Sclavonian countries.
The arrangement was not without its good
effects. It gave a comparatively independent
character to the peasant; who had a
property in a certain portion of the soil, from
which he became irremovable, as long as he
performed his labour contract. Yet, although
this raised the peasant in the scale of
humanity and society, it placed him in a
state of antagonism with his landlord. The
peasant was no sooner in possession of his
own half of the land, than the landowner
thought that he had made a bargain
disadvantageous to himself. Hence his bailiff, or
representative, if riot himself, became rigid
in the exaction of the labour-rent. Of the
depth and extent of the feuds thus engendered,
an idea may be formed from the
circumstance, that when the Austrian
authorities of Gallicia became alarmed at the
disaffection and frowardness of the landed
proprietors, they had but to promise impunity
to the peasants, to induce them to burn the
houses, and massacre the persons and families
of their landlords.

There was another way by which the landlords
or their representatives won back from
the peasant those advantages which the
substitution of a labour-rent for serfage had procured
him. This was lending money to the peasant;
thus getting him into debt, and enforcing, by
the severe laws of debtor and creditor, that
supremacy that the law no longer sanctions,
from master to servant, or from landlord to
tenant. This habit of the poor man running
into debt, and of the rich man exercising
usury, is one of the characteristics of the
old and barbarous states of society; and it is
engendered much more naturally in southern
than in northern climes. In the South, the
season of the year for tilling the earth,
preparing it in time to produce the annual crop,
is comparatively short, and is almost
confounded with the time of harvest; so quickly
is everything brought to maturity. Spring is
the great time for production in the South ;
then all is alive—man and nature look active.
But there is more than the agricultural
population can do. Fresh hands must be
employed; their labour paid as wages. The
South, too, often produces for exportation, and
this of course requires more manipulation,
labour, and capital. The peasant cannot provide
them, and he is therefore in the hands of his
landlord, or the capitalist, or both.

The East, notwithstanding all that travellers