bells call the toilers to prayer and thanksgiving, and all will be desolation.  If only the capitalist or wealthy man of business would take up his abode in these places, all might be well.  But, alas! the peace and quiet of such out-of-the-way spots, with all their fascinating contrast to the smoke and din of a manufacturing town, have little attraction for those who are unused to them.  And yet there is much happiness and content in these rural villages.  The lot of those who are able to get work is a thousand times more supportable than that of the toiling millions in our great cities.  There is less drinking and less vice among these villagers than there is in any part of this world that we are acquainted with; consequently you find them cheerful, good-humoured, and, if they only knew it, happy.  Grumble they must, or they would not be mortal.  Ah! if they could but realise the blessings of the elixir of life—­pure air, and fresh, clear, spring water, and sunshine—­three inestimable privileges that they enjoy all the year round, and which are denied to so many of the inhabitants of this globe—­there would be little grumbling in the Cotswolds.

     “From toil he wins his spirits light,
      From busy day the peaceful night;
      Rich from the very want of wealth
      In heaven’s best treasures, peace and health.”

      GRAY.

“But these villages are so dull, and life is so monotonous there,” is the constant complaint.  But what part of this earth is there, may I ask, that is not dull to those who live there, unless we drive out dull care and ennui by that glorious antidote to gloom and despondency, a fully occupied mind?  There are two chapters in Carlyle’s “Past and Present” that ought to be printed in letters of gold, set in an ivory frame, and hung up in the sleeping apartment of every man, woman, and child on the face of this earth.  They are called “Labour” and “Reward.”  In those few short pages is embodied the whole secret of content and happiness for the dwellers in quiet country villages and smoky towns alike.  They contain the philosopher’s stone, which makes men cheerful under all circumstances, but especially those who are poor and down-trodden.  The secret is a very simple one; but if the educated classes are continually losing sight of it, how much easier is it for those who have only the bare necessaries of life and few of the comforts to become deadened to its influence!  It lies first of all in the realisation of the fact that the object of life is not to get, still less to enjoy, riches and pleasure.  It teaches for the thousandth time that the humblest and the highest of us alike are immortal souls imprisoned for threescore years and ten in a tenement of clay, preparing for a better and higher existence.  It reverses the position of things on earth—­placing the crown of kings on the head of the toiling labourer, and making “the last first and the first last.”  Its very essence lies in the dictum of the old monks, “Laborare est orare” ("Work is worship").