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run alone, being as yet afraid to trust itself beyond arm's-length from the chairs or tables, or any other substance of which it could lay hold. Simon himself was turned sixty. He was a short man, measuring not more than five feet five inches from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. His make was spare, but bony and muscular; his face, seamed as it was by exposure to weather, had, on the whole, a good expression; and there was a great deal more of intelligence in his keen black eye than you will often observe in the eye of an English peasant. Simon's ordinary dress, when he went abroad, was a short brown gaberdine, which reached barely to his knees, a pair of fustian trowsers, hobnailed shoes, and thick worsted stockings. His hat was made of straw, and manufactured by his own hands; and you never failed to observe a piece of black tape or ribbon bound round it, just above the brim. Simon was, or rather would have been, but for his determined predilection in favour of the primitive employment of the chase, one of the best and most trust-worthy labourers in the parish. Set him to what you would, he never failed to do you justice. I have had him, again and again, to dig in my garden, and have compared his diligence with that of other men who bore a fairer character, and I must do Simon the justice to say, that he has invariably worked harder for his day's pay than any individual among them. In the matter of honesty, again, you might trust him with untold gold. Much as he was disliked, and I know no character in a country place more universally disliked than a poacher, not a human being laid a theft or a robbery to his charge; indeed, he was so well thought of in that respect, that it was no uncommon circumstance for the persons who blamed him most severely, to hire him, when occasion required, to watch their orchards or hop-poles: For Simon was well known to fear neither man nor devil. He really and truly was one of the few persons, among the lower orders, whom chance has thrown in my way, whose propensity for poaching I should be disposed to pronounce innate, or a thing of principle.

As a proof of this, I need only men

tion that Simon and I have discussed the subject repeatedly, and that he has argued in favour of his occupation as stoutly and openly as if there had been no law in existence against it. "Why, you know, it is illegal," I would say; "and you must likewise know that it is little better than stealing. What right have you to take the hares or partridges which belong to another man?" "Lord bless you, sir," was Simon's invariable reply, "if you will only tell me to whom they belong, I promise you never to kill another while I live." 66 They belong," said I, "to those upon whose lands they feed. Would you consider it right to take one of Sir Harry Oxendeer's sheep or turkeys; why then will you take his hares or his pheasants ?" "As to the matter of that," replied Simon, "there is a mighty difference between sheep and hares. Sheep are bought for money, they remain always upon one spot, they bear the owner's mark, they are articles of barter and sale," (I profess not to give my friend's exact words, only the substance of his argument,) "and they have always been such. But the hare which is found on Sir Harry's grounds to-day, may be found on Squire Deeds's to-morrow, and mayhap Sir Edward Knatchbull's the day after; now, to which of these three gentlemen can the hare be said to belong? No, sir. God made the wild beasts of the field and the fowls of the air for the poor man as well as for the rich. I will never so far forget myself as to plunder any man's hen-roost, or take away his cattle; but as long as these old arms can wield a gun, and these old hands can set a snare, I will never be without a hare or a pheasant, if I happen to want it." There was no arguing against a man who would talk thus; so after combating the point with him for a time, I finally gave it

up.

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The worst of it was, however, that Simon not only poached himself, but he brought up his son to the same occupation. The Lees were notorious throughout the country. Not a gamekeeper round but knew them; nor was there one who did not, in some degree, stand in awe of them. It was suspected, too, that they had good friends somewhere behind the curtain; for though the patriarch had been con

victed several times, he always managed to pay the fine, and, except once, had never suffered imprisonment.

I deem it no part of a country clergyman's duty to quarrel with one of his parishioners because he happens to set the game-laws at defiance. Perhaps of all the laws that exist they are in themselves the least defensible, and they lead to consequences often more serious than their warmest advocate would willingly anticipate. But with the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy of these laws, I have no concern; there they are upon the statutebook, and, like all other laws, they ought to be observed. Still I repeat, that a clergyman has no business to quarrel with a poor man who transgresses in this point, and in none besides. For my own share, though I never told Simon as much, I could not but feel a kind of respect for him, such as I never felt for any other of the fraternity, because he not only deemed it unnecessary to deny his poaching, but defended it. I love to see men act upon principle, even when the rectitude of the proceedings may be questionable.

I have said that Simon Lee was no favourite among his neighbours, and the only cause which I have as yet assigned for the fact is, that he was a poacher. Doubtless this had its weight. But the love of poaching was, unfortunately for himself, not the only disagreeable humour with which he was afflicted. There exists not within the compass of the four seas a prouder spirit than that which animated the form of Simon Lee. He never would accept a favour from any man; he would not crouch or bend to the highest lord in the land. Yet Simon was no jacobin; quite the reverse. This was the genuine stubbornness, the hardy independence, which was wont to render an English peasant more truly noble than the titled slave of France or Germany, but which, unfortunately, has of late years yielded to the fashionable agricultural system, and to the ruinous and demoralizing operations of the poor laws.

Simon

was the son of a man who had inherited a farm of some thirty or forty acres, from a long line of ancestors; who loved his landlord, as the clansmen of the Highlands were wont to love their chief, and who prided himself in bringing up his children so as

that they should earn their bread in an honest way, and be beholden to no human being. Simon, being the eldest of the family, succeeded, on the death of his father, to the farm. But he had hardly taken possession when the rage for large farms began to show itself; and in a few years after, he was sent adrift, in order that his fields might be added to those of a wealthy tenant, who undertook to cultivate them better, and pay some two shillings per acre more to the landlord. Whether the new tenant kept his promise in the first of these stipulations may be doubted. In the last he was very punctual, and in a short time he rode as good a horse, and kept as good a table, as his landlord himself.

It was a severe wound to Simon's proud heart, his expulsion from his paternal roof. "In that house, sir," said he to me one day when we talked of the circumstance, "in that house I drew my first breath, and I hoped to draw my last. For two hundred and fifty years have the Lees inhabited it; and I will venture to say, that his ho nour has not upon all his lands a family who pay their rent more punctually than we did, or one more ready to serve him, either by day or night. Well, well, the landlord cares nothing for the tenant now, nor the tenant for the landlord; it was not so when I was a boy."

I have been told by those who remember his dismissal, that Simon seemed for a time, after leaving his little farm, like one who had lost everything that was dear to him. To hire another was impossible, for small farms were not to be had, and had the contrary been the case, it was more than questioned whether he could have brought himself to bestow the labour of a good tenant upon any besides the fields which he persisted in calling his own. Under these circumstances he took the cottage on the moor, as much, it was said, because it stood far from neighbours, as on any other account, and there he remained in a state of perfect idleness, till his little stock of money was expended, and he felt that he must either work or starve.

Simon had married before the inheritance came to him; his eldest boy was able to run about when he left it. His fifth was weaned, when at length the proceeds of the sale being exhausted, and all the little capital swallowed

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up, he found himself under the necessity of looking out for a master. I have always been at a loss to conceive why he should have applied to the very man who displaced him, in preference to any of the other parishioners, but so it was. He requested, and obtained permission to cultivate as a hind, at daily wages, those very fallows which he and his ancestors had so long tilled for their own profit; and from every account, no man could be more faithfully served than his employer, nor any lands more skilfully managed than those which he ploughed. Was this the affection of a rude mind to inanimate objects, or what was it?

Time passed, and Simon's family increased upon him, year after year. Still he laboured on; and though his wages were not, perhaps, competent to support a wife and eight children in comfort (for there were originally eight of them), still they made their wants square with their means, and so kept above the world. But there is no struggling against sickness. It pleased God to visit him with a malignant fever, of which every individual, from the father and mother, down to the infant at the breast, partook, and from which three out of the number never recovered. Alas! the rich man knows not what the poor man suffers, when disease takes up its abode in his dwelling. It is bad enough if his children be attacked; bad, very bad, because even then there is the doctor's bill to pay, and the little comforts to procure which the doctor may recommend as necessary to their recovery; but when he himself falls a victim to the infection, when the arm upon which all depend is unnerved by sickness, and the limbs which ought to provide food for halfa-dozen hungry mouths, are chained down to a wretched pallet-God forgive the rich man who knows of this, and leaves a family so situated to its fate! Such, however, was the case with Simon Lee and his household. For a full fortnight he was himself confined to bed. His wife caught the infection from him, and communicated it to the children. The little money which they had in the house was soon exhausted; they lived for a while on the produce of their garden; but at length nature rebelled, and Simon, after many a struggle, had recourse to the parish. I shall give the particu

lars of this application as they were communicated to me by one of the committee.

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"We were sitting," said my informant, as usual, of a Thursday evening, in the room allotted to us in the work-house. We had had a good many applications, for the typhus was prevalent at the time, and we had relieved several, when, on ringing the bell to see whether any more were waiting, to the astonishment of all present, in walked Simon Lee. first we hardly knew him, he was so wasted and so altered. But he looked at us with the same keen glance with which he used to regard us when he was one of our number, and stood leaning upon his stick in silence. Our overseer at that time was Farmer Scratch, a man, as you know him, not remarkable for his kindness of heart, or liberality of disposition. "What want you, Simon?" said he, " surely you cannot be in need of relief?" "I am in need, though," said Simon; "I would not have come here, were not my family starving." "We have no relief to give you," answered the overseer; you ought to have taken better care of your money when you had it. I wonder you are not ashamed to come here like a common pauper; you that used to grant relief, and not to ask it." Simon's blood rushed to his cheeks as the overseer spoke. He raised himself erect upon his staff, and looking proudly at us, he turned upon his heel and walked away. 'This is the first time I have asked alms,' cried he, as he opened the door, and it shall be the last.' Simon has had sickness in his family repeatedly since that time. I have known him be a full fortnight without work, yet he has never come to the parish since."

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I was a good deal struck and affected by this story, so I took the first opportunity that offered of discussing the subject of it with Simon himself. "It is all quite true, sir," said he. "The overseer was harsh, and I was proud, so we parted." "And how have you done since ?" asked I. “Why, bad enough sometimes," was the reply; "but poor folks, you know, sir, cannot be nice. And I will tell you. It never entered into my head till I was on my way home from the committee, that to be in want of food, whilst the hares were eating my cabbages every night, and the partridges

feeding not a rod from my door, was no very wise act. I poached, as you call it, to feed my children. I have never killed game for any other purpose; and whilst there is a head of it left, and I am able to catch it, they shall not be beholden to the parish for a meal."

I cannot help thinking that the history of Simon Lee, as far as it has yet been detailed, contains a lesson well worth the attention both of country gentlemen and farmers. Whilst the old system of land-letting continued, and every twenty or forty acres of ground supported an honest family, it is very probable that the landlord received a less sum in the shape of crop or yearly rent, and that the yeomanry rode poorer horses, and kept poorer tables, than they do at present. But it is equally certain, that the paupers to be relieved by their parishes then, came not up to one fiftieth part of those which are continually seeking and obtaining parochial relief now; and if the increased burthen thereby imposed upon the land be taken into

account, it will probably be found that agriculturists are not such decided gainers by the change as most of them imagine. Besides all which, it must be manifest to all who have eyes to look round them, and minds to comprehend what they see, that with the race of petty farmers has expired one of the finest and most virtuous classes of society. Their houses were the nurseries of good and faithful servants; they were themselves hospitable to the utmost extent of their means, and almost always honest. They were really, I say not upon principle, but certainly upon honourable prejudice, attached to the constitution in church and state. If, then, the country have suffered in its moral character by their annihilation, he must be a very short-sighted politician indeed who imagines that the injury thereby inflicted upon society can be at all compensated by any improvement in the art of agriculture, or increase of the amount of produce raised from the soil.

CHAP. II.

HAVING thus made my reader in some degree acquainted with Simon Lee and his family, I proceed at once to detail the circumstances which alone, when I took up the pen, I had intended to detail. Simon had been an inhabitant of his cottage on the moor upwards of twenty years before I came to the parish. The fits of sickness already hinted at had come and gone by long ago, and the habits consequent upon them were all entwined in his very nature, so as that nothing could remove them. In fact, Simon had ceased to be regarded by any of his neighbours with an eye of pity; for his misfortunes were all forgotten. Whilst his poaching propensity continuing in full vigour, all men spoke of him with abhorrence.

One of the first acts of a country clergyman, after he has settled himself in the spot where his duties lie, is, at least ought to be, to call upon the whole of his parishioners, rich and poor; and to make himself acquainted, as well as he can, with their respective characters and circumstances. In prosecuting these inquiries, he is, of course, liable to be imposed upon, ac

VOL. XIX.

cording as neighbours chance to live on good or bad terms with one another; for it very seldom happens, I am sorry to say, that the poorer classes speak of their acquaintances, except from the dictates of prejudice, either for or against them. Then every prudent man will hear all that is said, and remember it; but he will use it only as the mariner uses his log-book; he will take it as a guide in the meanwhile, but make large allowances for the possibility of being deceived. In the case of Simon, I found this caution peculiarly necessary. To whomsoever I put a question respecting the inhabitant of the cottage on the moor, the answer was invariably the same:"We know but little of him, sir, for he neighbours with no one; but they say he is a desperate fellow." By the farmers again I was told of his extreme insolence, whilst Sir Harry's gamekeeper, who attended my church, assured me "that he was the most troublesome rascal in all the county." So, thought I, here is a pretty sort of a person with whom I am to come into contact. But I remembered the lesson given to me by my good father,

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and under the idea that he really was a very wretched character, I resolved to spare no labour to effect his reformation.

The first time I visited Simon was in the month of October. As I was anxious to see and converse with the man himself, I delayed my stroll till the sun had set, and the hours of labour were passed; then, fully anticipating a disagreeable interview, I sallied forth. Half an hour's walk brought me to his hovel. I confess that the external appearance of it by no means induced me to doubt the evil rumours communicated from so many quarters; but appearances, I recollected, were often deceitful, so I determined to suspend my judgment till better grounds should be given for forming it. I accordingly knocked at the door; a rough voice called to come in; I pushed it open, and entered. Let me describe the coup d'œil as it then fell upon me.

Stepping over a sort of oaken ledge, perhaps three or four inches in height, I found myself in a large apartment, the floor of which was earthen, and full of inequalities. The apartment in question occupied the better part of the basement of the house; that is to say, it took in the whole of the lower story, except a scullery and coalhole, partitioned off at one of the extremities by a few rotten boards. There was no want of light here; for though the better part of each window was stuffed, as I have already described, there being two casements, besides a door on one side, and a like number on the other, besides various fissures in the wall, the crevices capable of admitting the sun's rays were greatly more abundant than may usually be seen in the English poor man's dwelling. The room was low in the roof, in proportion to its size. The walls, originally white-washed, were of a dingy brown; on the right hand as you entered, was the fire-place-a huge orifice-in the centre of which stood a small rusty grate, having a few sticks burning in it, and a pot boiling above them. On one side of this grate, and within the cavity of the chimney sat Simon. At his feet lay a lurcher, a spaniel, and two ragged black terriers; and he himself was busy twisting a wire, no doubt for some useful purpose. His wife (originally, I have been told, a pretty

woman, but now a hard-favoured slatternly dame) leaned over the pot, and was in the act of brushing off such particles of a handful of salt as adhered to her palm. The children, one apparently about five, the other about seven years old, were rolling in the middle of the floor, in a state but few degrees removed from nudity; whilst a taller girl, whose age I should guess about thirteen, dandled an infant in her arms beside an opposite window.

Such was the general aspect of the room, and the disposition of the family, when I entered. With respect to furniture, I observed a small deal table, four chairs, rush-bottomed once upon a time, but now greatly in need of repair, a stool or two, a little arm-chair, with a hole in its seat, and a long bench or form. But there were other implements to be seen more attractive than these. On the beam which ran through the middle of the ceiling, was suspended a long fowling-piece; there were cranks near it for two others, but at present they were empty. A game-bag, died all sorts of colours with blood and grease, hung upon a nail in the wall opposite to me; beside it were two flew-nets, such as fishermen use when they drag drains or narrow streams; and a third, of longer dimensions, fit for use in a pond or lake, was thrown across the boarding which separated the apartment from the coal-hole. Three or four shot-belts dangled over the fire-place; whilst several pairs of strong mudboots, leathern-gaiters, hob-nailed shoes, &c. &c., were scattered at random in the different corners of the

room.

The dogs, whose growling had been sufficiently audible even previous to my knock upon the door, no sooner eyed me, than with one accord they sprung to their legs, barking angrily, and showed every tooth in their heads, as if prepared to pounce upon me. They were, however, in admirable training. Simon had only to raise his finger, giving at the same time a low whistle, when they dropped down, as if they had been shot, and remained, belly to the ground, without moving limb or tail, during the whole of my visit. I could not but pity the unfortunate country gentleman, into whose presence these dogs, with their master, should make their way.

It was easy to discover from the

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