he minuteness of which the
reader will pardon, of the face of this country as it was, and had been
through centuries, till within the last sixty years. Towards the head of
these Dales was found a perfect Republic of Shepherds and
Agriculturists, among whom the plough of each man was confined to the
maintenance of his own family, or to the occasional accommodation of his
neighbour[59].

[59] One of the most pleasing characteristics of manners in secluded and
thinly-peopled districts, is a sense of the degree in which human
happiness and comfort are dependent on the contingency of neighbourhood.
This is implied by a rhyming adage common here, '_Friends are far, when
neighbours are nar_' (near). This mutual helpfulness is not confined to
out-of-doors work; but is ready upon all occasions. Formerly, if a
person became sick, especially the mistress of a family, it was usual
for those of the neighbours who were more particularly connected with
the party by amicable offices, to visit the house, carrying a present;
this practice, which is by no means obsolete, is called _owning_ the
family, and is regarded as a pledge of a disposition to be otherwise
serviceable in a time of disability and distress.

Two or three cows furnished each family with milk and cheese. The
chapel was the only edifice that presided over these dwellings, the
supreme head of this pure Commonwealth; the members of which existed in
the midst of a powerful empire, like an ideal society or an organised
community, whose constitution had been imposed and regulated by the
mountains which protected it. Neither high-born nobleman, knight, nor
esquire, was here; but many of these humble sons of the hills had a
consciousness that the land, which they walked over and tilled, had for
more than five hundred years been possessed by men of their name and
blood; and venerable was the transition, when a curious traveller,
descending from the heart of the mountains, had come to some ancient
manorial residence in the more open parts of the Vales, which, through
the rights attached to its proprietor, connected the almost visionary
mountain republic he had been contemplating with the substantial frame
of society as existing in the laws and constitution of a mighty empire.

* * * * *

SECTION THIRD.

CHANGES, AND BULKS OF TASTE FOR PREVENTING THEIR BAD EFFECTS.

Such, as hath been said, was the appearance of things till within the
last si