er by eight aldermen or ten or twelve burgesses,
as at Bath, Andover, Tiverton, Banbury, &c.; in another by a small number
of burgesses--three or four or five, as at Rye, Winchelsea, Romney, &c.
As to what was called long ago tenure in boroughs there was no end to its
absurdity. At Midhurst the right was in the possession of a hundred
stones erected in an open field; at Old Sarum it was in the remaining
part of the possession of a demolished castle; at Westbury in a long
wall. In many other places it was in the possession of half-a-score or a
dozen old thatched cottages, the conveyances to which were made on the
morning of election to a few trusty friends or dependents, who held a
farcical election, and then returned them to the proprietor as soon as
the business was finished. In the little borough of Aldeburgh, where
Crabbe was born, the number of electors was eighty, all the property of a
private individual; at Dunwich, a little further on the coast, the number
of voters was twelve; at Bury St. Edmunds the number of voters was
thirty-seven; another little insignificant village on the same coast was
Orford, where the right of election was in a corporation of twenty
individuals, composed of the family and dependents of the Marquis of
Hertford. No wonder the popular fury swept away the rotten boroughs, and
no wonder that the long struggle for reform ended in the triumph, not so
much of the people, as the middle-class.

CHAPTER III.
VILLAGE LIFE.

In recalling old times let me begin with the weather, a matter of supreme
importance in country life--the first thing of which an Englishman
speaks, the last thing he thinks of as he retires to rest. When I was a
boy we had undoubtedly finer weather than we have now. There was more
sunshine and less rain. In spring the air was balmy, and the flowers
fair to look on. When summer came what joy there was in the hayfield,
and how sweet the smell of the new-mown hay! As autumn advanced how
pleasant it was to watch the fruit ripening, and the cornfields waving,
far as the eye could reach, with the golden grain! People always seemed
gay and happy then--the rosy-cheeked squire, the stout old farmer with
his knee-breeches and blue coat with brass buttons, and Hodge in his
smock-frock, white as the driven snow, on Sunday, when he went now to his
parish church, or more generally to the meeting-house, where he heard
sermons that suited him better, and where the musical pa