said, gave an impulse in the same direction. Wraxall — for his authority, though slight, may suffice for such matters as these complains, towards the year 1781, that Mr. Fox, who in early youth paid great attention to his dress, had grown wholly to neglect it. "He constantly, or at least "usually, wore in the House of Commons, a blue frock coat “and a buff waistcoat, neither of which seemed, in general, "new, and both sometimes appeared to be thread-bare. Nor "ought it to be forgotten that these colours then constituted "the distinguishing badge or uniform of Washington and the "American insurgents." Yet here I cannot but suspect some misrepresentation of the motive. It is hard to believe, even of the most vehement days of party-spirit, that any Englishman could avowedly assume, in the House of Commons, the colours of those who, even though on the most righteous grounds, bore arms against England; and I should be willing to take in preference any other explanation that can be plausibly alleged.

By the influence, then, in some measure perhaps of both America and France, velvet coats and embroidered stomachers were, by degrees, relinquished. Swords were no longer invariably worn by every one who claimed to be of gentle birth or breeding. They were first reserved for evening suits, and finally consigned, as at present, to Court dresses. Nevertheless, several years were needed ere this change was fully wrought. In Guy Mannering, where the author refers to the end of the American War, he observes of morning suits, that "though the custom of wearing swords "by persons out of uniform had been gradually becoming "obsolete, it was not yet so totally forgotten as to occasion "any particular remark towards those who chose to adhere "to it." Thus it may be difficult to fix the precise period of this change. But no one, on reflection, will deny its

"Memoirs of my own Time," vol. ii. p. 2. ed. 1815. See also Mackenzie's Essay in the Lounger, dated April 9. 1785. Buff waistcoats were then, it seems, the usual badge of all Whig gentlemen at Edinburgh. And as for the Whig ladies, "I found that most of them wore a fox's tail by way of decoration on their head-dress."

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real importance. To wear a sword had been, until then, the distinguishing mark of a gentleman or officer. It formed a line of demarcation between these classes and the rest of the community; it implied something of deference in the last, and something of "knightliness," as Spenser terms it, in the former. Immediately after the cessation of this ancient usage, we find Burke lamenting that the age of chivalry was gone. Yet, although there was, or in theory at least there might be, some advantage in this outward sign of the feelings and the duties comprehended in the name of Gentleman, we must own that it was balanced by other evils, and especially by the greater frequency of duels it produced. Where both parties wore their swords, there was a constant temptation to draw and use them in any sudden quarrel. I may allege as a fair example the case, in 1765, of Mr. Chaworth and his country neighbour, Lord Byron, the grand-uncle and predecessor of the poet. These gentlemen had been dining together at the Nottinghamshire Club, which was held once a month at a tavern in Pall Mall. A discussion arose as to the comparative merits of their manors in point of game, and Mr. Chaworth was at length provoked into declaring that if it were not for Sir Charles Sedley's care and his own, Lord Byron would not have a hare on his estate. Upon this they withdrew to another room lighted by a single tallow-candle, where they drew their swords and fought, and where Mr. Chaworth was killed. Lord Byron was brought to trial before his Peers, and found guilty of Manslaughter only. *

The population of England and Wales is computed to have increased from 5,066,000 in 1710, to 7,814,000 in 1780.** Of our rising manufactures and manufacturers I have treated in another place. *** The agriculturists within that period were far indeed behind-hand if compared to those of the

Howell's State Trials, vol. xix. p. 1178-1235. But a different view of Mr. Chaworth's language is given in Walpole's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 51. ** Preface to the first volume of the Population Returns, 1831, p. 45. as derived from Mr. Finlaison's tables.

*** See vol. v. p. 1–12.

present day. Scarce any great and real progress in their modes of husbandry can be traced until after the accession of George the Third, when they were no doubt much animated by the personal example and predilection of the King in his farms both at Richmond and at Windsor. Until then the accounts from the most opposite quarters tell nearly the same tale of lands either wholly waste, or at least imperfectly tilled. Take, in the first place, the extreme northern county of Caithness. The daughter of Sir John Sinclair, in the biography which she has written of her father, states that when he first began his vigorous improvements, at the age of eighteen, and in the year 1772, the whole district round him presented a scene of most discouraging desolation. Scarce any farmer in the county owned a wheel-cart, and burdens were conveyed on the backs of women, thirty or forty of whom might be seen in a line, carrying heavy wicker-creels. "At that period," continues Miss Sinclair, "females did most of the hard work - driving the peats or "rowing the boats; and it sometimes occurred that if a man "lost a horse or an ox, he married a wife as the cheapest plan "to make up the difference." If we come to Northumberland, we shall find it alleged by Warburton, who was Somerset Herald to George the Second, and who published his "Vallum Romanum" in 1753, that "such was the wild and "barren state of this country, even at the time I made my "survey, that in those parts now called the wastes, and "heretofore the debateable grounds, I have frequently "discovered the vestiges of towns and camps that seemed never to have been trod upon by any human creature than "myself since the Romans abandoned them; the traces of "streets and the foundations of the buildings being still visible, only grown over with grass." The prevalence of turnip-growing in the place of fallows, which, says Mr. Grey of Dilston, has made a complete revolution in the management and value of land, took place in that county within the memory of living men. No turnip ever grew on a Northumbrian field till between the years 1760 and 1770, although

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they had been sown and reared in gardens for several years before. It may be said not only of Northumberland, but of all the counties which are, in fact, what it calls itself - north of Humber that, at the accession of George the Third, they were still, in great part, uninclosed. As in 1832 I was riding with the late Earl of Harewood, at his seat near Leeds, he pointed out to me the remains of a narrow horse-bridge, with a turnpike beside it. This, he said, was, till his childhood, the sole communication between the Leeds district and the north, and that was the first toll which, on coming into England, the Scottish drovers had need to pay.

But let us pass to Lincolnshire, a county renowned perhaps beyond any other of the present day for its skilful cultivation and luxuriant crops; and let us hear certainly one of the most experienced and able of our living agriculturists. Only a few years since, Mr. Pusey, then the member for Berkshire, was engaged in a critical examination of the farming around Lincoln. As he journeyed onward, his attention was arrested by a column seventy feet high, which stood by the road-side. On inquiry from his companion, Mr. Handley, he learnt that it was a land light-house, built no longer since than the middle of the last century, as a nightly guide for travellers over the dreary waste which still retains the name of Lincoln Heath. But though the name might linger, the scene had wholly changed; the spirit and industry of the people had reared the most thriving homesteads around the column,and spread a mantle of teeming vegetation to its very base. "And it was certainly surprising to me,' ," Mr. Pusey adds, "to discover at once the finest farming I had ever seen, "and the only land light-house that was ever raised.” **

As a hundred years ago,the lands were too often untilled, so were the cultivators of the land too often untaught. • Throughout England, the education of the labouring classes * See the Essay by Mr. John Grey of Dilston in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, vol. ii. p. 151-193.

** Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, vol. iv p. 287. This column,the "Dunston Pillar," is now, I believe, the property of the Earl of Ripon.

was most grievously neglected, the supineness of the clergy of that age being manifest on this point as on every other. It would be very easy to adduce many cases of deplorable ignorance and consequent credulity at that period both in individuals and in whole villages or parishes. A few will suffice, however, to establish my conclusion. A remarkable man, in after years the chief of a religious sect, William Huntington, - describes himself as the son of poor parents in the Weald of Kent. Without any instruction during his first childhood, he found his vacant mind fill with silly fancies. "There was," says he, "in the village an exciseman, “of a stern and hard-favoured countenance, whom I took "notice of for having a stick covered with figures, and an "ink-bottle hanging at his button-hole. This man I imagined "to be employed by God Almighty to take an account of "children's sins!"* A person of far superior merit and attainments, - Hannah More, declares that on first going to the village of Cheddar, near the cathedral city of Wells, "we found more than two hundred people in the parish, al"most all very poor; no gentry; a dozen wealthy farmers, "hard, brutal, and ignorant. We saw but one Bible "in all the parish, and that was used to prop a flower-pot!" Traces of ancient superstition were sometimes found to linger in the congenial darkness. Thus, in Northamptonshire, "Miss C. and her cousin, walking, saw a fire in a field, "and a crowd around it. They said, 'what is the matter? “Killing a calf. To stop the murrain.' They "went away as quickly as possible. On speaking to the clergyman, he made inquiries. The people did not like to "talk of the affair, but it appeared that when there is a "disease among the cows, or when the calves are born sickly, "they sacrifice, that is, kill and burn, one for good luck."**

What for?

*Life of William Huntington, S. S. (that is, Sinner Saved), by himself, in his "Kingdom of Heaven taken by Prayer," p. 35. ed. 1793. He adds, "I thought he must have a great deal to do to find out all the sins of "children, and I eyed him as a formidable being, and the greatest enemy "I had in all the world."

** Communication addressed to Jacob Grimm, and inserted by him in his Deutsche Mythologie, p. 576. ed. 1843. With his usual learning, he