It is these that make oceans and mountains; it is pennies that make millionaires. But this the countryman cannot see. Not him alone either; the dislike to little profits is a national characteristic, well marked in the farmer, and indeed in all classes. I, too, must be humble, and acknowledge that I have frequently detected the same folly in myself, so let it not be supposed for an instant that I set up as a censor; I do but delineate. Work for the cottager must be work to please him; and to please him it must be the regular sort to which he is accustomed, which he did beside his father as a boy, which _his_ father did, and _his_ father before him; the same old plough or grub-axe, the same milking, the same identical mowing, if possible in the same field. He does not care for any new-fangled jobs: he does not recognise them, they have no _locus standi_--they are not established. Yet he is most anxious for work, and works well, and is indeed the best labourer in the world. But it is the national character. To understand a nation you must go to the cottager. The well-to-do are educated, they have travelled, if not in their ideas, they are more or less cosmopolitan. In the cottager the character stands out in the coarsest relief; in the cottager you get to 'bed-rock,' as the Americans say; there's the foundation. Character runs upwards, not downwards. It is not the nature of the aristocrat that permeates the cottager, but the nature of the cottager that permeates the aristocrat. The best of us are polished cottagers. Scratch deep enough, and you come to that; so that to know a people, go to the cottage, and not to the mansion. The labouring man cannot quickly alter his ways. Can the manufacturer? All alike try to go in the same old groove, till disaster visits their persistence. It is English human nature. APRIL GOSSIP