of Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior":

"Who, doomed to go in company with pain,
And fear, and bloodshed--miserable train!--
Turns his necessity to glorious gain."

Finally, the countryman who feels discontented with his lot--and there
are few indeed who do not occasionally pine for a change of
employment--should go on a railway journey through "the black country"
at night, and mark the fierce light that reddens the murky skies as the
factory fires send forth their livid flames and clouds of sooty smoke.
He should watch the swarms of long-suffering human beings going to and
fro and in and out like busy bees around their hive, toiling, ever
toiling, round about the blazing fires. He should spend an hour in the
streets of Birmingham, where, as I passed through one fine September
morning recently on my way to Ireland, the atmosphere was darkened and
the human lungs stifled by a thick yellow fog. Or he should go down to
the engine-room of a mighty liner, when it is doing its twenty knots
across the seas, and then think of his own life in the happy hamlets and
the fresh, green fields of our English country.

* * * * *

Coming once more down the hill into the valley of the Coln, we must
cross the old Roman road known as the Fossway, follow the course of the
stream, and, about a mile beyond the snug little village of Fossbridge,
we reach the great woods of Chedworth.

These coverts form part of the property of Lord Eldon. His house of
Stowell stands well up on the hill. It is a grey, square building of
some size, placed so as to catch all the sun and the breezes too,--very
much more healthy and bright than most of the old houses we have passed,
which were built much too low down in the valley, where the winter
sunbeams seldom penetrate and the river mists rise damp and cold at
night. As we walk along the drive which leads through the woods to the
Roman villa, any amount of rabbits and pheasants are to be seen. And
here take place annually some of those big shoots which ignorant people
are so fond of condemning as unsportsmanlike, simply because they have
not the remotest idea what they are talking about. Why it should be
cruel to kill a thousand head in a day instead of two hundred on five
separate days, one fails to understand. As a matter of fact, the bigger
the "shoot" the less cruelty takes place, because bad shots are not
likely to be present on these occasions, whilst in sm