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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
163
There
is
no
help
in
visions
of
Arcadia;
yet
it
is
plain
fact
that
in
days
gone
by
the
peasantry
found
life
more
than
endurable,
and
yet
were
more
intelligent
than
our
clod-hoppers
who
still
hold
by
the
plough.
They
had
their
folk-songs,
now
utterly
forgotten.
They
had
romances
and
fairy
lore,
which
their
descendants
could
no
more
appreciate
than
an
idyll
of
Theocritus.
Ah,
but
let
it
be
remembered
that
they
had
also
a
home,
and
this
is
the
illumining
word.
If
your
peasant
love
the
fields
which
give
him
bread,
he
will
not
think
it
hard
to
labour
in
them;
his
toil
will
no
longer
be
as
that
of
the
beast,
but
upward-looking
and
touched
with
a
light
from
other
than
the
visible
heavens.
No
use
to
blink
the
hard
and
dull
features
of
rustic
existence;
let
them
rather
be
insisted
upon,
that
those
who
own
and
derive
profit
from
the
land
may
be
constant
in
human
care
for
the
lives
which
make
it
fruitful.
Such
care
may
perchance
avail,
in
some
degree,
to
counteract
the
restless
tendency
of
the
time;
the
dweller
in
a
pleasant
cottage
is
not
so
likely
to
wish
to
wander
from
it
as
he
who
shelters
himself
in
a
hovel.
Well-meaning
folk
talk
about
reawakening
love
of
the
country
by
means
of
deliberate
instruction.
Lies
any
hope
that
way?
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