me mode of putting a stop to the frolicking at the village
on the approaching May-day. It drew, he said, idle people together
from all parts of the neighbourhood, who spent the day fiddling,
dancing, and carousing, instead of staying at home to work for their
families.

Now, as the Squire, unluckily, is at the bottom of these May-day
revels, it may be supposed that the suggestions of the sagacious Mr.
Faddy were not received with the best grace in the world. It is true,
the old gentleman is too courteous to show any temper to a guest in
his own house; but no sooner was he gone, than the indignation of the
Squire found vent, at having his poetical cobwebs invaded by this
buzzing, bluebottle fly of traffic. In his warmth, he inveighed
against the whole race of manufacturers, who, I found, were sore
disturbers of his comfort. "Sir," said he, with emotion, "it makes my
heart bleed, to see all our fine streams dammed up, and bestrode by
cotton-mills; our valleys smoking with steam-engines, and the din of
the hammer and the loom scaring away all our rural delight. What's to
become of merry old England, when its manor-houses are all turned into
manufactories, and its sturdy peasantry into pin-makers and
stocking-weavers? I have looked in vain for merry Sherwood, and all
the greenwood haunts of Robin Hood; the whole country is covered with
manufacturing towns. I have stood on the ruins of Dudley Castle, and
looked round, with an aching heart, on what were once its feudal
domains of verdant and beautiful country. Sir, I beheld a mere _campus
phlegrae_; a region of fire; reeking with coal-pits, and furnaces, and
smelting-houses, vomiting forth flames and smoke. The pale and ghastly
people, toiling among vile exhalations, looked more like demons than
human beings; the clanking wheels and engines, seen through the murky
atmosphere, looked like instruments of torture in this pandemonium.
What is to become of the country, with these evils rankling in its
very core? Sir, these manufacturers will be the ruin of our rural
manners; they will destroy the national character; they will not leave
materials for a single line of poetry!"

The Squire is apt to wax eloquent on such themes; and I could hardly
help smiling at this whimsical lamentation over national industry and
public improvement. I am told, however, that he really grieves at the
growing spirit of trade, as destroying the charm of life. He considers
every new shorthand mode of