The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of intelligence and sterling worth, infants compared with them; and the farmers of England are either the merest ’ockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their sacks, samples, and market-days,—­or, with added cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly as that their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and are to be left to their cattle and the goad.

There are English farmers indeed, who are men in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the current of the year’s intelligence; but such men are the exceptions.  In New England, with the school upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free-acting church to watch every valley with week-day quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound, the men become, as a class, bold, intelligent, and honest actors, who would make again, as they have made before, a terrible army of defence,—­and who would find reasons for their actions as strong as their armies.

Frank’s grandfather has silver hair, but is still hale, erect, and strong.  His dress is homely but neat.  Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy for the gewgaws of foreign importation, and makes it a point to appear always in the village church, and on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun.  He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none.  He is known as the Squire throughout the township; and no important measure can pass the board of selectmen without the Squire’s approval;—­and this from no blind subserviency to his opinion,—­because his farm is large, and he is reckoned “forehanded,”—­but because there is a confidence in his judgment.

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the country parson, or of the schoolmaster, or of the village doctor; and although the latter is a testy politician of the opposite party, it does not all impair the Squire’s faith in his calomel; he suffers all his Radicalism with the same equanimity that he suffers his rhubarb.

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the small farmers, consider the Squire’s note-of-hand for their savings better than the best bonds of city origin; and they seek his advice in all matters of litigation.  He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire in a New-England village implies; and many are the sessions of the country courts that you peep upon with Frank, from the door of the great dining-room.

The defendant always seems to you in these important cases—­especially if his beard is rather long—­an extraordinary ruffian, to whom Jack Sheppard would have been a comparatively innocent boy.  You watch curiously the old gentleman sitting in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuffbox in hand, listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder deeply,—­with a pinch of snuff to