Page:The English Peasant.djvu/117

 (Golden Hours, 1871.)

dwell far from the great stream of life is ever the fate of the agricultural labourer, and this is why he naturally tends to barbarism. The early Christians had such a sense of his shortcomings in this respect that they used the term "pagani" the country people, to express the state of mental and spiritual ignorance. But the Fair helped to send a few rays of knowledge into his poor benighted mind, and to keep alive those social qualities which in his case often seemed in danger of dying out. At the fair he discovered that there was a world beyond his village, and infinitely wonderful things in it. And even the sports, brutal as many seem -to us now, brought out a spirit of emulation and kept up a sense of self-respect, which was a real good in men, whose souls were in danger of being crushed by daily drudgery and unintermitting toil.

But better than all was the opportunity it afforded for the reunion of families early broken by the exigencies of a dire poverty. The elder boys and girls cheered their labours all the year by the thought of seeing their parents and their brothers and 103