because the peasants are
educated and refined, so much as because they are not _half_-educated
and _half_-refined, but simple, honest, god-fearing folk, who mind their
own business and have not sought out many inventions. I am referring now
to the labourers, because the farmers are a totally different class of
men. The latter are on the whole an excellent type of what John Bull
ought to be. The labouring class, however, still maintain the old
characteristics. A primitive people, as often as not they are "nature's
gentlemen."

In the simple matter of dress there is a striking resemblance between
the garb of these country people and that of the highly educated and
refined. It is an acknowledged principle, or rather, I should say, an
unwritten law, in these days--at all events as far as men are
concerned--that to be well dressed all that is required of us is _not to
be badly dressed_. Simplicity is a _sine qua non_; and we are further
required to abstain from showing bad taste in the choice of shades and
colours, and to wear nothing that does not serve a purpose. To simple
country folk all these things come by nature. They never trouble their
heads about what clothes they shall wear. The result is, the eye is
seldom offended in old-fashioned country places by the latest inventions
of tailors and hatters and the ridiculous changes of fashion in which
the greater part of the civilised world is wont to delight. Here are to
be seen no hideous "checks," but plain, honest clothes of corduroy or
rough cloth in natural colours; no absurd little curly "billycocks," but
good, strong broad-brimmed hats of black beaver in winter to keep off
the rain, and of white straw in summer to keep off the heat. No white
satin ties, which always look dirty, such as one sees in London and
other great towns, but broad, old-fashioned scarves of many colours or
of blue "birdseye" mellowed by age. The fact is that simplicity--the
very essence of good taste--is apparent only in the garments of the
_best_-dressed and the _poorest_-dressed people in England. This is one
more proof of the truth of the old saying, "Simplicity is nature's first
step, and the last of art."

The greatest character we ever possessed in the village was undoubtedly
Tom Peregrine, the keeper.

"A man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."

The eldest son of the principal tenant on the manor, and belonging to a
family of yeoman farmers wh