VI.

A NEW ENGLAND SQUIRE.

RANK has a grandfather living in the country,

FRA

a good specimen of the old fashioned New England farmer. And-go where one will, the world over-I know of no race of men, who taken together, possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of those elements of comfort, which go to make a home beloved, and the social basis firm, than the New England farmers.

They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined; they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic; they know only so much of older nations as their histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable world they hold no place;—but in energy, in industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge,

and in manly independence, they make up a race, that is hard to be matched.

:

The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of intelligence, and sterling worth, infants, compared with then and the farmers of England are either the merest jockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their sacks, samples, and market-days;-or, with added cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly, as that their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and are to be left to their cattle and the goad.

There are English farmers indeed, who are men in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the current of the year's intelligence; but such men are the exceptions. In New England, with the school upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, freeacting church, to watch every valley with week-day quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound, the men become as a class, bold, intelligent, and honest actors, who would make again, as they have made before, a terrible army of defence; and who would find reasons for their actions, as strong as their armies.

Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely, but neat. Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy

for the gew-gaws of foreign importation, and makes it a point to appear always in the village church, and on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun. He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none. He is known as the Squire, throughout the township; and no important measure can pass the board of select-men without the Squire's approval:—and this, from no blind subserviency to his opinion, because his farm is large, and he is reckoned "fore-handed," but because there is a confidence in his judgment.

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the country parson, or of the school-master, or of the Village doctor; and although the latter is a testy politician of the opposite party, it does not at all impair the Squire's faith in his calomel;-he suffers all his Radicalism, with the same equanimity that he suffers his rhubarb.

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the small farmers consider the Squire's note of hand for their savings, better than the best bonds of city origin; and they seek his advice is all matters of litigation. He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire in a New England village implies; and many are the country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from the door of the great dining room.

The defendant always seems to you, in these

important cases,-especially if his beard is rather long, an extraordinary ruffian; to whom Jack Sheppard would have been a comparatively innocent boy. You watch curiously the old gentleman, sitting in his big arm chair, with his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuff box in hand, listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him. ponder deeply-with a pinch of snuff to aid his judg ment, and you listen with intense admiration, as he gives a loud, preparatory "Ahem," and clears away the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong practical sense, which distinguishes the New England farmer, getting at the very hinge of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision, and satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk, as much as by the leniency of his judgment.

His lands lie along those swelling hills which in southern New England, carry the chain of the White and Green Mountains, in gentle undulations, to the borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred acres,—“ suitably divided," as the old school agriculturists say, into "wood-land, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house, a large irregularly built mansion of wood, stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx, a little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them

a high timber gate, opens upon the scattered pasture lands of the hills: opposite to this, and across the farm-yard which is the lounging place of scores of rednecked turkeys, and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow land, which rolls with a heavy "ground swell," along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadowgate, its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer time, with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking scythes.

The high-road passes a stone's throw away; but there is little "travel" to be seen; and every chance passer will inevitably come under the range of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes of the stout dairy-maid :—to say nothing of the stalwart Indian cook.

This last, you cannot but admire as a type of that noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how she must regard the white interlopers upon her own soil; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's farming privileges, with more modesty than you would suppose. You learn, however, that she pays very little regard to white rights,—when they conflict with her own; and further learn, to your deep regret.