The "convulsion" anticipated by Cobbett has not come about. This is not a country of earthquakes or of violent social upheavals. Free Trade has beggared the agricultural interests, but, on his way to the Bankruptcy Court, the farmer contrives to live in better style than possible three quarters of a century ago, while his pretensions to gentility certainly have not decreased. As for the "funding and jobbing," Cobbett could never, in his wildest dreams, have foreseen Limited Liability and the fungoid growth of Stock Exchange speculation, or the modern "enslaving and starving system" of the gigantic Trusts that, like vampires, feed on the blood of industry. We need look for no convulsions; not even, unhappily, for the hanging, or, at least, the taxing out of existence, of the millionaires. Our expectations of the future are quite different. The people will inhabit the towns, and the country will become a huge preserve of game for the sport of the millionaires aforesaid; a preserve broken here and there by the model farm or the training establishment of some colossus of wealth. XXXVII BEYOND Dickleburgh, past the solitary "Ram" inn, a fine, dignified house still lamenting its decadence from a posting-inn to a beerhouse, Tivetshall level-crossing marks where the railway runs to Bungay and Lowestoft. Maps make Pulham St Mary the Virgin quite near, with Pulham St Mary Magdalene close by; Tivetshalls of different dedications, and other villages dotted about like plums in a Christmas pudding, but no sign of them is evident. Only windmills, whirling furiously on distant ridges, break the pastoral solitudes. In this conflict of charts, a carter jogging along the road with his team is evidently the authority to be consulted. "Coom hather," says the carter to his sleek and intelligent horses; and they coom accordingly, with much jingling of harness, and stand in the shade of roadside trees while their lord takes his modest levenses and haffles and jaffles--gossips, that is to say--with the landlord of the "Ram." "Tivetshall?" asks the carter, echoing a question; "niver heerd of un." Then a light breaks in upon him. "Oh, ay! Tishell we allus call 'em; Tishell St Marget an' Tishell St Merry," and with, a sweep of the arm comprising the whole western horizon, "Theiy'm ower theer." "And Pulham St Mary the Virgin?" "Pulham St Merry the Wirgin? oh, yis! Pulham Maaket, yar mean, bor. Et edd'n on'y a moile, ower _theer_"--a comprehensive wave to the eastwards.