I had often been struck with the flourishing appearance of cottage gardens, but then those gardens were of old date and had reached that perfection in course of years.  But here the thing seemed to grow up under one’s eyes.  All was effected by sheer energy.  Instead of spending their evenings wastefully at ‘public,’ these men went out into their gardens and made what was a desert literally bloom.  Nor did they seem conscious of doing anything extraordinary, but worked away in the most matter-of-fact manner, calling no one’s attention to their progress.  It would be hard to say which garden of the two showed the better result.  Their wives are tidy, their children clean, their cottages grow more cosy and homelike day by day; yet they work in the fields that come up to their very doors, and receive nothing but the ordinary agricultural wages of the district.

This proves what can be done when the agricultural labourer really wants to do it.  And in a very large number of cases it must further be admitted that he does want to do it, and succeeds.  If any one when passing through a rural district will look closely at the cottages and gardens he will frequently find evidence of similar energy, and not unfrequently of something approaching very nearly to taste.  For why does the labourer train honeysuckle up his porch, and the out-of-door grape up the southern end of his house?  Why does he let the houseleek remain on the roof; why trim and encourage the thick growth of ivy that clothes the chimney?  Certainly not for utility, nor pecuniary profit.  It is because he has some amount of appreciation of the beauty of flowers, of vine leaf, and green ivy.  Men like these are the real backbone of our peasantry.  They are not the agitators; it is the idle hang-dogs who form the disturbing element in the village.

The settled agricultural labourer, of all others, has the least inducement to strike or leave his work.  The longer he can stay in one place the better for him in many ways.  His fruit-trees, which he planted years ago, are coming to perfection, and bear sufficient fruit in favourable years not only to give him some variety of diet, but to bring in a sum in hard cash with which to purchase extras.  The soil of the garden, long manured and dug, is twice as fertile as when he first disturbed the earth.  The hedges have grown high, and keep off the bitter winds.  In short, the place is home, and he sits under his own vine and fig-tree.  It is not to his advantage to leave this and go miles away.  It is different with the mechanic who lives in a back court devoid of sunshine, hardly visited by the fresh breeze, without a tree, without a yard of earth to which to become attached.  The factory closes, the bell is silent, the hands are discharged; provided he can get fresh employment it matters little.  He leaves the back court without regret, and enters another in a distant town.  But an agricultural labourer who has planted his own place feels an affection for it.  The young men wander and are restless; the middle-aged men who have once anchored do not like to quit.  They have got the four points of their own genuine charter; those who would infuse further vague hopes are not doing them any other service than to divert them from the substance to the shadow.