short sweet grasses which, with the aid of
drain-pipes and careful cultivation, had superseded
the rushes and muss of the old park.
Further on, separated by an invisible fence,
fed the pets of the dairy. Pure Alderneys,
with dark beseeching eyes; worthy
of Juno, and more than one dappled, full-uddered
Durham, and a choice flock of
sheep, which gave a truly rural air to the
delightful scene.

Entering the house-farm from the park—
disturbing as we passed scores of half-tame
pheasants, that fluttered up a moment, and then
settled down again to feed—I found continued
revolution. Every fence perfect, every gate
swinging easily and catching fast; fields
drained, dried, squared, and released of useless
hedges (with enough left for shelter); some
rich with yellow corn fast falling before the
scythe and reaping-machine,—very different
from the old style, where scarlet poppies and
yellow charlock fought bravely, and not without
success, for half the ploughed ground.
Other fields, shaded with all the colours of
green roots, Scotch turnips, swedes, and mangolds,
flourishing and extinguishing weeds,
where never anything but weeds grew before.
Already, on a twenty-acre piece, clear of oats,
half-a-dozen of Howard's iron ploughs, each
drawn by a pair of quick-stepping horses,
driven curricle fashion, were at work,—a
practical satire on the Alexandrine style of
four straggling horses and two clumsy men
dragging a clumsy plough. Active boys, of a
breed new to Riverport, were at work everywhere
making war on weeds.

The lazy, drawling, thoughtless ways, once
chronic in Buckleigh Park, had yielded to
earnestness and active intelligence; just as
the mangy deer had been superseded by a
fine herd. A miserable five-score of bony, profitless
sheep, by two great flocks of Cotswolds
—the last great triumph of the skill of the
English stock-breeders—the clumsy wooden
ploughs, harrows, and head-thickening, soul-deadening
flail, were replaced by the best
work of the Ransomes, Garretts, Hornsbys,
and Crosskills, for sowing and gathering agricultural
crops.

To get implements with money and a friend
to choose them, is easy enough; to get labourers
to use them, and make them work the pace
required for the profitable use of modern implements,
requires qualities money cannot buy.

From the fields to the farmsteading was
the natural course, to see where was the produce,
and what the fertilisers of fields converted
in a few years from barrenness to
overflowing crops. Good sweet haystacks in
the corners of the grass fields, a fine array of
round corn stacks, neatly built on stone
tressels ranged around the huge barn,
gave good promise of the interior of the
farm-buildings. The huge barn, no longer
empty or cobwebbed, had been turned
into a business-like agricultural manufactory.
In one division a steam-engine roared
and worked machinery that threshed, winnowed,
and cast forth wheat at one end,
and sent the sheaves of straw rolling up
into the loft at the other. Under another
division, twenty-five great bullocks were fattening
in the boxes which have immortalised
the name of Warne—from the enlightened
Lothians to benighted Sussex. The same
capacious barn-roof covered a byre for the
milking of cows, and pens of numerous pigs,
whose food was cooked by the steam-engine
boiler.

But enough of agricultural technicalities.
From the farmstead to the village was the
next step. More revolutions there. In the
distance, saddle-backed, steep-roofed, belfried
buildings, told of chapels, or schools. The
high-backed bridge was clear of idlers, perhaps
a rural policeman on his rounds had
something to do with the clearance; but
wages to any extent for hard work had more.
An earthquake or an army of navigators
had been at work in the main street; for
fully a score of ancient dwellings, with their
green groundsel-covered and black thatched
roofs, had disappeared, and were replaced by
cottages pretty enough for pictures. Even
the butcher's shop—projecting with an overhanging
roof, capital for shade, and convenient
for displaying deceased muttons—was
a bit of architectural effect. The windows
where rags formerly did duty for glass had
disappeared, and so had the dishevelled
mothers and dirt-coloured children. The
tenants, matched the houses. Faces and hands
had not been forgotten when the water was
applied to the diamond-paned windows and
the scrubbing-brush to the floor.

A familiar humming sound drew me
towards the belfried stone building, in whose
style I recognised the picturesque taste of
a sculptor who does not disdain to be an
architect, or wood-carver, or anything else,
small or great, where beauty is required.
This was the infant-school, built and supported
at the cost of the new tenant of
Buckleigh Hall, and well filled with little
recruits, from as far round Riverport as little
legs can go or be carried. There, the future
peasantry and yeomanry of Buckleigh estate
were being trained—a rosy, happy, chirping
set. A little further on, the parish school
appeared; but, O! how changed—cleaned,
repaired, refitted. A trained master, bound
to know something, had replaced the makeshift
pedagogue. Maps, pictures and diagrams
—the famous black-board which so
much puzzled Lord Harrowby's inquiring
friend, explained the necromancy by which
the wild boys of the village had been reduced
to order, and inspired with a degree of
intelligence really alarming to any inquisitive
stranger like myself, who may venture to put
a question on arithmetic or geography.

In a word, the church, the schools, the
cottages, the shops, the streets, and the
inhabitants of Riverport, witness the care of a