ided a rough
guidance as to conduct--an unwritten code to which, though we forget it,
England owes much. It seems singular to think of now; but the very
labourer might reasonably hope for some satisfaction in life, nor
trouble about "raising" himself into some other class, so long as he
could live on peasant lines. And it is in the virtual disappearance of
this civilization that the main change in the village consists. Other
changes are comparatively immaterial. The valley might have been invaded
by the leisured classes; its old appearance might have been altered; all
sorts of new-fangled things might have been introduced into it; and
still under the surface it would have retained the essential village
characteristics, had but the peasant tradition been preserved in its
integrity amongst the lowlier people; but with that dying, the village,
too, dies where it stands. And that is what has been happening here. A
faint influence from out of the past still has its feeble effect; but,
in this corner of England at least, what we used to think of as the
rural English are, as it were, vanishing away--vanishing as in a slow
transformation, not by death or emigration, not even by essential change
of personnel, but by becoming somehow different in their outlook and
habits. The old families continue in their old home; but they begin to
be a new people.

It was of the essence of the old system that those living under it
subsisted in the main upon what their own industry could produce out of
the soil and materials of their own countryside. A few things,
certainly, they might get from other neighbourhoods, such as iron for
making their tools, and salt for curing their bacon; and some small
interchange of commodities there was, accordingly, say between the
various districts that yielded cheese, and wool, and hops, and charcoal;
but as a general thing the parish where the peasant people lived was the
source of the materials they used, and their well-being depended on
their knowledge of its resources. Amongst themselves they would number a
few special craftsmen--a smith, a carpenter or wheelwright, a shoemaker,
a pair of sawyers, and so on; yet the trades of these specialists were
only ancillary to the general handiness of the people, who with their
own hands raised and harvested their crops, made their clothes, did much
of the building of their homes, attended to their cattle, thatched their
ricks, cut their firing, made their bread and