Page:First impressions of England and its people.djvu/48

40 inscription held in such faithful keeping by the founders bronze or the sculptor's marble; and never was there epitaph of human composition so scrupulously just to the real character of the dead.

I found three guests in the coffee-house in which I lodged,—a farmer and his two sons: the farmer still in vigorous middle life; the sons robust and tall; all of them fine specimens of the ruddy, well-built, square-shouldered Englishman. They had been travelling by the railway, and were now on their return to their farm, which lay little more than two hours' walk away; but so bad was the evening, that they had deemed it advisable to take beds for the night in Durham. They had evidently a stake in the state of the weather; and as the rain ever and anon pattered against the panes, as if on the eve of breaking them, some one or other of the three would rise to the window, and look moodily out into the storm. "God help us!" I heard the old farmer ejaculate, as the rising wind shook the casement; "we shall have no harvest at all." They had had rain, I learned, in this locality, with but partial intermissions, for the greater part of six weeks, and the crops lay rotting on the ground. In the potatoes served at table I marked a peculiar appearance: they were freckled over by minute circular spots, that bore a ferruginous tinge, somewhat resembling the specks on iron-shot sandstone, and they ate as if but partially boiled. I asked the farmer whether the affection was a common one in that part of the country. "Not at all," was the reply: "we never saw it before; but it threatens this year to destroy our potatoes. The half of mine it has spoiled already, and it spreads among them every day." It does not seem natural to the species to associate mighty consequences with phenomena that wear a very humble aspect. The teachings of experience are essentially necessary to show us that the seeds of