Mr. Fax took occasion, during a temporary absence of Miss Evergreen from the apartment in which they were taking refreshment, to say he was happy to have seen so amiable a specimen of that injured and calumniated class of human beings commonly called old maids, who were often so from possessing in too high a degree the qualities most conducive to domestic happiness; for it might naturally be imagined that the least refined and delicate minds would be the soonest satisfied in the choice of a partner, and the most ready to repair the loss of a first love by the substitution of a second. This might have led to a discussion, but Miss Evergreen’s re-entrance prevented it. They now strolled out among the cottages in detached parties and in different directions. Mr. Fax attached himself to Mr. Hippy and Miss Evergreen. Anthelia and Mr. Forester went their own way. She was above the little affectation of feeling her _dignity_ offended, as our female novel-writers express it, by the notions which the peasants had formed respecting her. ‘You see,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘I have endeavoured as much as possible to recall the images of better times, when the country was well peopled, from the farms being small, and cultivated chiefly by cottagers who lived in what was in Scotland called a _cottar town_.[68] Now you may go over vast tracts of country without seeing anything like an _old English Cottage_, to say nothing of the fearful difference which has been caused in the interior of the few that remain by the pressure of exorbitant taxation, of which the real, though not the nominal burden, always falls most heavily on the labouring classes, backed by that _canker at the heart of national prosperity_, the imaginary riches of paper-credit, of which the means are delusion, the progress monopoly, and the ultimate effect the extinction of the best portion of national population, a healthy and industrious peasantry. Large farms bring more rent to the landlord, and therefore landlords in general make no scruple to increase their rents by depopulating their estates,[69] though Anthelia Melincourt will not comprehend the mental principle in which such feelings originate.’ ‘Is it possible,’ said Anthelia, ‘that you, so young as you are, can have created such a scene as this?’ ‘My father,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘began what I merely perpetuate. He estimated his riches, not by the amount of rent his estate produced, but the number of simple and happy beings it maintained. He divided it into little farms of such a size as were sufficient, even in indifferent seasons, to produce rather more than the necessities of their cultivators required. So that all these cottagers are rich, according to the definition of Socrates;[70] for they have at all times a little more than they actually need, a subsidium for age or sickness, or any accidental necessity.’