A HAPPY VILLAGE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " STECTATOR."]
lately spent some weeks in a village, where I never saw any sign of drunkenness or idleness, where everybody was at work, and where I saw no signs of either wealth or poverty. One of the old inhabitants, whom I came to know and to respect, is a farmer, and, strange as it may sound, he had no fault to find with farming. His verdict was, " Nothing is the matter with farming if you've a mind to work." Daring a stay of nearly two months I never saw or heard of any public-house, beggar, or police-constable; never saw or heard of any clergy- man, though seeing a large church. I asked, " Have you a clergyman ? " and received the reply, " Oh, yes ; he never comes but on Sunday, and we never see him but in church. He lives in the next parish." In this land of labour and con- tentment I lived, amid some of the loveliest scenery in England, at a cost ridiculously small ; and in time began to wonder whether the many " burning questions of the day " are so "burning " when not fanned by the " wind of words," whether work and individual energy are not still, as they always have been, the only foundation of well-doing or well- being. This village, moreover, is in the Eastern Counties, within two miles of a large station on the Great Eastern
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