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Nevertheless poverty and a sensitive heart are no protection against the snares of Satan; on the contrary, it is just because he has a sensitive heart that the Dorset peasant is all the more easily crushed and rendered reckless by adversity. Periods of semi-starvation and wretched cottages drive such natures into vice and practical atheism. At whose door lies the sin?

Is this the practical result of modern social economy? If so it is a system by which the poor get poorer, and the rich richer; a system, the evil effects of which are more manifest in the country than in the town, since it is evident that the small landed proprietor, the small farmer, are everyday losing ground, while the great landed proprietor and the large farmer are every day adding to their domains and increasing the acreage of their farms.

These poems give many proofs of the decay of a class of men of more value to the country than the gr£at noble, or the large scientific farmer. The first, at best, is only the capital of the column, the ornament and exemplar of society; the second useful as he increases the aggregate wealth of the country; but the class which is being extinguished in their favour made men, made families, with as real a family pride and a far deeper attachment to the old roof-tree than can ever be the case with those who are wealthy enough to have several residences. Nothing can be worse for any country than the severing of the people from the soil, and turning all but a very few into mere tenants at will. To destroy a race of men who are at once free yet contented—a race of men whose spirit has been so well expressed by our poet in the following lines:—

I'm landlord o' my little farm, &emsp;I'm king 'ithin my little pleäce;