e at our own Newport, they build palaces in
paddocks, have acres of glass, rear the most marvelous of pines and
peaches, and have model farms which cost them thousands of pounds
a year. To this class is owing in a great degree the extraordinary
increase of Leamington, Torquay, Tonbridge Wells, etc.--places which
have made the fortunes of the lucky people who chanced to own them.

English ladies, as a rule, take a great deal of interest in the poor
around them, and really know a great deal of them. The village near
the hall is almost always well attended to, but it unfortunately
happens that outlying properties sometimes come off far less well. The
classes which see nothing of each other in English rural life are the
wives and daughters of the gentry and those of the wealthier farmers
and tradesmen: between these sections a huge gulf intervenes, which
has not as yet been in the least degree bridged over. In former days
very great people used to have once or twice in the year what were
called "public days," when it was open house for all who chose to
come, with a sort of tacit understanding that none below the class
of substantial yeomen or tradesmen would make their appearance. This
custom has now fallen into disuse, but was maintained to the last by
the Hon. Doctor Vernon-Harcourt, who was for more than half a century
archbishop of York, and is yet retained by Earl Fitzwilliam at
Wentworth House, his princely seat in Yorkshire. There, once or twice
a year, a great gathering takes place. Dinner is provided for hundreds
of guests, and care is taken to place a member of the family at every
table to do his or her part toward dispensing hospitality to high and
low.

During the summer and early autumn croquet and archery offer good
excuses for bringing young people together, and reunions of this kind
palliate the miseries of those who cannot afford to partake of the
expensive gayeties of the London season. The archery meetings are
often exceedingly pretty fetes. Somtimes they are held in grounds
specially devoted to the purpose, as is the case at St. Leonard's,
near Hastings, where the archery-ground will well repay a visit. The
shooting takes place in a deep and vast excavation covered with the
smoothest turf, and from the high ground above is a glorious view of
the old castle of Hastings and the ocean. In Devonshire these meetings
have an exceptional interest from the fact that they are held in the
park of Powderham Castl