“I was much pleased with all my tenants in Yorkshire. They are a very different sort of people from the farmers in ye south. They are alert in their business and interests, and far from the stupid state of savage. At the same time, they do not ape the manners nor imitate the dress of the fine folks. The farmer’s wife spins her husband’s shirts, and the daughters make butter and cheese at the hours our southern women work catgut and dress wire caps. Some of my tenants have been about fifty years on the estate; have married their sons to girls worth many hundred pounds, and have got their sons into their farms, and they are retired on a decent subsistance, gained by many years of frugal industry. They all pay duely on their rent-days. No complaint, on the part of the tenants, of poverty; or, on the landlord, of arrears. The land is in good condition, and by having been long settled, they have acquired an affection for the farm they are placed upon, and will always give as good a rent as it deserves; and they know the nature of the undertaking too well to give more. It is a folly to let farms too cheap; and it is both wickedness and folly to let them too dear. This year has been particularly unfavourable to my tenants, as the estates are chiefly meadow and pasture; and yet, though these estates had been lately raised, they did not ask any indulgence or favour. They said there had not been such a dry season these fifty years; and, with great good-humour, said they hoped the next would be better. Indeed, the drought is terrible for the dairy-farms. Hay here will be at an excessive price. The coal-owners who are not provident with stocks of it will be at vast expenses. I have always two years’ stock in hand. The further north, the greater the drought. I believe there has not been any material rain since the 18th of March. Cows there (and here) are obliged to be driven to the rivers to drink. Our little streams are all dry’d. My cows go every day to the Tyne to get drink. The Tyne Vale, where I live, used to look green and pleasant. The whole country is now a brown crust, with here and there a black hole of a coal-pit, so that I cannot boast of the beauty of our prospects. As to Denton, it has mightily the air of an ant-hill: a vast many black animals for ever busy. Near fourscore families are employ’d on my concerns here. Boys work in the colliery from seven years of age. I used to give my colliery people a feast when I came hither, but as the good souls (men and women) are very apt to get drunk, and, when drunk, very joyful, and sing, and dance, and hollow, and whoop, I dare not, on this occasion, trust their discretion to behave with proper gravity; so I content myself with killing a fat beast once a week, and sending to each family, once, a piece of meat. It will take time to get round to all my black friends. I had fifty-nine boys and girls to sup in the courtyard last night on rice pudding and boil’d beef; to-morrow night I shall have as many.