-manufactures operated as a strong temptation to choose
that mode of labour in neglect of husbandry. They also participate in
the general benefit which the island has derived from the increased
value of the produce of land, brought about by the establishment of
manufactories, and in the consequent quickening of agricultural
industry. But this is far from making them amends; and now that
home-manufactures are nearly done away, though the women and children
might, at many seasons of the year, employ themselves with advantage in
the fields beyond what they are accustomed to do, yet still all possible
exertion in this way cannot be rationally expected from persons whose
agricultural knowledge is so confined, and, above all, where there must
necessarily be so small a capital. The consequence, then, is--that
proprietors and farmers being no longer able to maintain themselves upon
small farms, several are united in one, and the buildings go to decay,
or are destroyed; and that the lands of the _estatesmen_ being
mortgaged, and the owners constrained to part with them, they fall into
the hands of wealthy purchasers, who in like manner unite and
consolidate; and, if they wish to become residents, erect new mansions
out of the ruins of the ancient cottages, whose little enclosures, with
all the wild graces that grew out of them, disappear. The feudal tenure
under which the estates are held has indeed done something towards
checking this influx of new settlers; but so strong is the inclination,
that these galling restraints are endured; and it is probable, that in a
few years the country on the margin of the Lakes will fall almost
entirely into the possession of gentry, either strangers or natives. It
is then much to be wished, that a better taste should prevail among
these new proprietors; and, as they cannot be expected to leave things
to themselves, that skill and knowledge should prevent unnecessary
deviations from that path of simplicity and beauty along which, without
design and unconsciously, their humble predecessors have moved. In this
wish the author will be joined by persons of pure taste throughout the
whole island, who, by their visits (often repeated) to the Lakes in the
North of England, testify that they deem the district a sort of national
property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to
perceive and a heart to enjoy.

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS.

MR. WEST, in his well-known Guide to