“Well, this land my father made over by deed of gift to me, reserving to himself the rents for life, but granting to me full liberty to ‘improve’ and lay out what I pleased; charged also with the maintenance of a schoolmaster for the little school-house I built in memory of my late wife, who loved the place and people. With this arrangement I was well pleased, and at once began to enclose and drain, and, on Adam Smith principle, make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. This has gone on for some years, affording labour to the few folks there, and some of their neighbours. Of the prejudices of the old farmers, the less said the better; and as to the prospective increased value of rental, I may look, at least, for my five per cent., may I not? I am well repaid, at present, by the delight gained to me in wandering over this little Arcady, where I fancy at times I still hear the strains of the pipe of the shepherd Lord Clifford of Cumberland, blending with the crow of the moor-fowl, the song of the lark, and cry of the curlew, the bleating of sheep, and heaving and dying fall of the many waters. To think of all this, and yet men prefer the din of war or commercial strife! It is so pleasant a thing to know all the inhabitants, and all their little joys and woes,—like one of your bishops; and to be able to apportion them their work. Labour, there, is not accounted degrading work; even stone-breaking for the roads is not pauper’s work, and a test of starvation, but taken gladly by tenant farmers to occupy spare time; for I at once set to work to make roads, rude bridges, plantations of fir-trees, and of oak and birch, which once flourished there, as the name signifies. “I am now laying out some thousands of pounds in draining and liming, and killing out the Alpine flowers, which you tell me [7] is not wrong to do, as God has reserved other gardens for them, though I must say not one dies without a pang to me; yet I see there springs up the fresh grass, the daisy, the primrose—the life of growing men and women, the source of labour and of happiness; God be thanked if one does even a little to attain that for one’s fellows, either for this world or the next! “How I wish you could see them on our one day’s feast and holiday, when all—as many as will come from all the country round—are regaled with a hearty Yorkshire tea at the Hall, as they will call a rough mullioned-windowed house I built upon a rock rising from the river’s edge. The children have their games, and then all join in a missionary meeting, to hear something of their fellow-creatures who live in other lands; the little ones gather their pennies to support and educate a little Indian school child; [8] this not only for sentiment, but to teach a care for others near home and far off.