So spends many a farmer of the old stamp his day, and at night he takes his seat on the settle, under the old wide chimney--his wife has her little work-table set near--the “wenches” darning their stockings, or making up a cap for Sunday, and the men sitting on the other side of the hearth, with their shoes off. He now enjoys of all things, to talk over his labours and plans with the men,--they canvass the best method of doing this and that--lay out the course of to-morrow--what land is to be broke up, or laid down; where barley, wheat, oats, etc. shall be sown, or if they be growing, when they shall be cut. In harvest-time, lambing-time, in potato setting and gathering time, in fact, almost all summer long, there is no sitting on the hearth--it is out of bed with the sun, and after the long hard day--supper, and to bed again. It is only in winter that there is any sitting by the fire, which is seldom diversified further than by the coming in of a neighbouring farmer, or the reading of the weekly news. Such is the rustic, plodding life of many a farmer in England, and there is no part of the population for which so little has been done, and of which so little is thought, as of their farm-servants. Scarcely any of these got any education before the establishment of Sunday schools--how few of them do yet, compared with the working population of towns? The girls help their mothers--the labourers’ wives--in their cottages, as soon almost as they can waddle about. They are scarcely more than infants themselves, when they are set to take care of other infants. The little creatures go lugging about great fat babies that really seem as heavy as themselves. You may see them on the commons, or little open green spots in the lanes near their homes, congregating together, two or three juvenile nurses, with their charges, carrying them along, or letting them roll on the sward, while they try to catch a few minutes of play with one another, or with that tribe of bairns at their heels--too old to need nursing, and too young to begin nursing others. As they get bigger they are found useful in the house--they mop and brush, and feed the pig, and run to the town for things; and as soon as they get to ten or twelve, out they go to nurse at the farm-houses; a little older, they “go to service;” there they soon aspire to be dairymaids, or housemaids, if their ambition does not prompt them to seek places in the towns,--and so they go on scrubbing and scouring, and lending a hand in the harvest-field, till they are married to some young fellow, who takes a cottage and sets up day-labourer. This is their life; and the men’s is just similar. As soon as they can run about, they are set to watch a gate that stands at the end of the lane or the common to stop cattle from straying, and there through long solitary days they pick up a few halfpence by opening it for travellers. They are sent to scare birds from corn just sown, or just ripening, where