Excerpt from Time, 1889, Vol. 2: A Monthly Magazine You can canter over your estate easily on a little cob, he remarked, and when the men learn from their children who have been out after the partridge eggs, or upon some other simple but improper quest, that you were down yesterday at the eighteen acre, it is astonishing how bright and fresh and neat the eighteen acre will look the next day. The master's eye makes the corn grow. And here I wish to make a remark which I verily believe to be true, but which will cause many people to be very angry with me. Years of oppression, if you like to call it so - or of absence of anything like the intelligent use of their freedom, as I should prefer to call it - have at this time brought the agricultural labourer to a condition very little different from that of a serf. Some people will tell you that he is elevated intellectually, morally, and physically as compared with what he was twenty years ago. Perhaps he is, to a trifling extent, but it is a very trifling extent. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any country in the world where, as compared with England, the lower classes are in such a state of brutishness. Russia may perhaps be the one exception, but Russia, if so, is aware of the fact, and rather glories in it than otherwise, rejoicing that she can turn out her serfs by the thousand as England can her tin, and coal, and iron. Mr. Keane, always practical, remarked that farming in England was wholly played out, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred carried on at a loss, and he must tell Philip candidly that he had had higher views for Florence than that she should become a farmer's wife, or even the wife of what is ordinarily called a squire. She had a big fortune, and would have a bigger, and her position ought to match and indeed with any other man than Philip he would not have discussed such a proposition. But he liked Philip, and he considered his daughter's happiness before anything else. He would talk it over with Florence, and would let Philip know his decision. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.