hions
of this world are changed; they must be cut down into primitive raiment
for the grandchildren.

But who says the English peasant is dull and unvaried in his character?
To be sure, he has not the wild wit, the voluble tongue, the reckless
fondness for laughing, dancing, carousing, and shillalying of the Irish
peasant; nor the grave, plodding habits and intelligence of the Scotch
one. He may be said, in his own phraseology, to be "betwixt and
between." He has wit enough when it is wanted; he can be merry enough
when there is occasion; he is ready for a row when his blood is well up;
and he will take to his book, if you will give him a schoolmaster. What
is he, indeed, but the rough block of English character? Hew him out of
the quarry of ignorance; dig him out of the slough of everlasting labor;
chisel him, and polish him; and he will come out whatever you please.
What is the stuff of which your armies have been chiefly made, but this
English peasant? Who won your Cressys, your Agincourts, your Quebecs,
your Indies, East and West, and your Waterloos, but the English peasant,
trimmed and trained into the game-cock of war? How many of them have
been carried off to man your fleets, to win your Camperdowns and
Trafalgars? and when they came ashore again, were no longer the simple,
slouching Simons of the village; but jolly tars, with rolling gait, quid
in mouth, glazed hats, with crowns of one inch high, and brims of five
wide, and with as much glib slang, and glib money to treat the girls
with, as any Jack of them all.

Cowper has drawn a capital picture of the ease and perfection with which
the clownish chrysalis may be metamorphosed into the scarlet moth of
war. Catch the animal young, and you may turn him into any shape you
please. He will learn to wear silk stockings, scarlet plush breeches,
collarless coats, with silver buttons; and swing open a gate with a
grace, or stand behind my lady's carriage with his wand, as smoothly
impudent as any of the tribe. He will clerk it with a pen behind his
ear; or mount a pulpit, as Stephen Duck, the thresher, did, if you will
only give him the chance. The fault is not in him, it is in fortune. He
has rich fallows in his soul, if any body thought them worth turning.
But keep him down, and don't press him too hard; feed him pretty well,
and give him plenty of work; and, like one of his companions, the
cart-horse, he will drudge on till the day of his death.

So in the north o