away from
their native place. While Mr. Pitt was breaking his heart over
Austerlitz; while Napoleon was playing his last throw at Waterloo; while
the Birmingham men were threatening to march on London, the Squire was
riding peacefully day by day, in the lanes and spinneys of his lovely
countryside. He never would allow a stranger to settle on his property,
and he was never quite pleased if any of the fisher girls married
pitmen. He did not mind when the hinds and the fishers intermarried, but
anything that suggested noise and smoke was an abhorrence to him, and
thus he disliked the miners. A splendid seam of coal ran beneath his
land. This coal could have been easily won; in fact, at the place where
the cliffs met the sea, a two-foot seam cropped out, and the people
could go with a pickaxe and break off a basketful for themselves
whenever they chose; but the Squire would never allow borings to be
made. He did not object to the use of coal on abstract grounds, but he
was determined that his property should not be disfigured. Once, when a
smart agent came to make proposals respecting the sinking of a pit, the
Squire took him by the shoulders and solemnly pushed him out of his
study. He fancied that a colliery would bring poachers and squalor and
drunkenness, and many other bad consequences, so he kept his fields
unsullied and his little streams pure. Without knowing it, the Squire
was a bit of a poet. For example, he had one long dell, which ran
through his woods, planted with hyacinths and the wild pink geranium.
These flowers came in bloom together, and the effect of the great sheet
of blue and pink was indescribable. He was very proud of this piece of
work, and he always looked happy as he went down the path in the spring
time.

The Squire had the most intimate acquaintance with the circumstances of
every man, woman, and child on his property. If he rode out at two in
the afternoon and heard that a fisherman was suffering with rheumatism,
it was almost certain that the fat man-servant from the Hall would call
at the sick man's house before the day was out with blankets and wine,
and whatever else might be needed. Yet the Squire was by no means
lavish. In making a bargain with a tenant he never showed the least
generosity. On one occasion he set a number of gardeners to work in a
very large orchard where the trees were beginning to feel the effects of
time. The men were likely to be employed for at least three years, so