A dinner recently held at Bingley forms a step towards
carrying into the agricultural districts the right spirit of intercourse between the several classes of scciety. Bingley is a manufacturing town in a rural site ; if we mistake not, it suffered sorely during the long period of manufacturing distress : a resident lady has let a field in allotments at the usual rent—in retail, as it were, but at wholesale .price—to about sixty working men, to cultivate in the intervals of work; they have established among themselves a cricket-club ; and to celebrate those events the dinner was held. " Young England" was there, hot from the Manchester Athemeum ; and the new doctrines were preached to a willing semi-agricultural auditory. The composition of that auditory was the most interesting feature -of the festival : the manufacturers sat at the tables among their own workpeople ; farmers were mingled with the company ; and at the 'chief table, opposite to the Chairman Mr. BUSPEILD FERRAND, to Mr. DISRAELI and Lord Jolts MANNERS, and to the gentry of the neighbourhood, sat the allotment-tenants. They bad before been the playmates of Lord JOHN and Mr. FERRAND in a game at cricket. So sitting, they beard capital speeches from Young England ; and even Mr. FERRAND, inspired by the occasion and his own goodness of heart, "deviated into sense.' Part of the speeches the labourers might not understand,—for they are not up to the mark of Man- chester Athenseum; but the general drift they would readily corn- prebend, and they would be stimulated to understand more next year. Such is real social intercourse. Young England should carry this new fashion into the veritable agricultural districts. The plans of Young England, if they exist, may be unsubstantial and remote ; but at any rate the feeling evoked at such meetings is pleasanter, wiser, safer, than that which we see still suffered to burst forth at Highworth, in the despair and alienation of a mi- serable unemployed race, exasperated at instant misery and hope- less at the aspect of winter.
