a
pity that such men are no more to be seen? High farming was unknown when
the old Suffolk yeoman lived. I claim for Bernard Barton that this
sketch of the Suffolk yeoman is the best thing he ever wrote. Bernard
Barton's daughter married the great Oriental scholar, Edward Fitzgerald,
the friend of Carlyle and correspondent of Fanny Kemble, who lived in the
neighbourhood of Woodbridge, and whose fame now he is no more is far
greater than when he lived. Little could he have anticipated that in
after years literary men would assemble in the quiet churchyard of Boulge
to erect his monument over his grave, or to found a society to perpetuate
his name.

As I lean back for another glance, my eyes, as Wordsworth writes, are
filled with childish tears--

My heart is idly stirred.

I see the dear old village where I was born, almost encroaching on Sir
Thomas Gooch's park, at Benacre Hall; I see the old baronet, a fine old
bigoted Tory, who looked the picture of health and happiness, as he
ambled past on his chestnut cob, wearing a blue coat, a white hat and
trousers, in summer; his only regret being that things were not as they
were--his only consolation the fact that, wisely, the Eternal Providence
that overrules all human affairs had provided snug rectories for his kith
and kin, however unworthy of the sacred calling; and had hung up the sun,
moon and stars so high in the heavens that no reforming ass

Could e'er presume to pluck them down, and light the world with gas.

Then comes the village medico, healthy and shrewd and kindly, with a firm
belief--alas! that day is gone now--in black draught and blue pill. I
see his six sunny daughters racing down the village street, guarded by a
dragon of a governess, and I get out of their way, for I am a rustic, and
have all the rustic's fear of what the East Anglian peasant was used to
term "morthers"; and then comes the squire of the next parish, in as
shabby a trap as you ever set eyes on, and the fat farmer, who hails me
for a walk, and going to the end of a field, joyously, or as joyously as
his sluggish nature will permit, exclaims, "There, Master James, now you
can see three farms." My friend was a utilitarian, and could only see
the beautiful in the useful. Then I call up the memory of the village
grocer, a stern, unbending Radical, who delights me with the loan of
Cruikshank's illustrations to the "House that Jack Built," mysteriously
wrapped in brown paper