Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/279

 and independent choice for its yearly labour-crown. A centenarian veteran, an agricultural labourer, had at last laid down his spade, because the country's crowded surface, the advanced chemistry of the day, and all the changed ways of these later times, had entirely superseded both spade and spadesman. After a long, laborious, and signally useful life, it only remained for the weary veteran, ere he left the world he had served so well, to claim of his county the crown of labour; and to the honour of that special world of classic and scientific attainments and reminiscences, his appeal was not put forth in vain.

And so also in Berkshire, with no less credit, albeit upon a different line of consideration, was the crown awarded to our youthful Victoria. But it was no easily won battle withal, for close upon the heels of the victor followed a troop of formidable, if unsuccessful, rivals. There was, first, a distinguished astronomer, who had laboriously compiled the exposition of the birth and entire physical development of the asteroidal group of our system; secondly, a widowed and struggling laundress, who had so brought up her large family, that every member of it afterwards rose to prosperity and distinction, and aptly illustrated the nature and training they owed to her by gratefully bringing their sheaves of plenty to the feet of such a mother; thirdly, a geologico-physical geographer, who, in his grand school atlas, had completed the earth's aspects back to the early tertiaries; and lastly, a smart brigaded young shoeblack, whose successive improvements in his machine, as to time-saving and reduction of charge, marked quite an era in his particular vocation,—for in those days machinery did