This writer does not despair of revival as a result of large and drastic changes. “The monopoly of great farmers must be broken up,” he boldly declares, “before the dawn of hope can rise upon the English peasant.” He has discovered deep in the heart of the country labourer that “Love of the Land” which has survived through all the generations of hopeless drudgery. He recognises it as “a survival from the days when an able-bodied Englishman, bred on and to the land, might cherish the hope of one day calling a corner of it his own, at least as the tenant of a landlord without personal interest in the degradation of his dependants.” Here is the sole asset we possess in the work of rural revival. Parliament has been attempting by legislation to give to some select persons in the villages direct access to the land. The labourer to-day is slowly and doubtfully realising that a law has been passed which is designed to work for his benefit. The whole conception is new to him. “Law” he has hitherto regarded as something remote or inimical, symbolised by the village policeman, or the magistrates who penalise poaching and petty larceny. Those who made themselves missionaries of the new Act in the villages found everywhere this first incredulity. They announced the decree of Government that henceforth the first charge on the land should be the allotment or small holding; that nothing was to stand in the way of the provision of such holding when it was desired; that, if necessary by compulsion, the claims of sport, the claims of pleasure, the ambitions of the large farmer adding field to field, the prejudice or caprice of those who dislike the creation of these small plots and gardens, were to be made to yield to the primary necessity of finding land for the landless. The labourer was silent, astonished, doubtful, wondering if this was a new trick designed for his disadvantage. There were meetings at night, to which men came furtively; suggestions that one is a “spy,” and dogged silence until he has departed; doubt as to what Mr. A. (the landlord) would think of it, or whether Mr. B. (the farmer) would dispossess all those who apply for land, or if Mr. C. (the vicar) would be inclined to look favourably on the affair. The stirring and the movement for a time seemed real; far more real than many had ventured to hope for when the Act was passing through Parliament. But the rather cumbrous machinery is difficult to put into operation, and the future is still uncertain. If the Parish Councils and County Councils and Central Commissioners prove adequate to the situation, they may yet reveal life where there now is little but death, and a transformation of England’s deserted countryside. If the difficulties are insuperable or action too long delayed, with Councils embarking upon one experiment chosen from ten applications, postponing for months or years any energetic action; there will be no vocal protest, and few who cannot look beneath