abundant leisure at his command. To split pine-logs, dig a garden,
pull a heavy boat down the lake after fish, tramp up the hillside to
collect the sheep, are simply so many exercises of the body, the
equivalents of which town youths find in the gymnasium or the football
field; the difference is that all this exertion in the gymnasium, which
the town youth takes to keep up his health, would in the country _keep
him_. The same amount of muscular exertion which a town youth puts
forth to chase a ball round a twenty acre field would, if properly
applied, put a roof over his head and food on his table. The sports of
the civilised man are means of life to the natural man. If a man must
needs sweat, and be bemired, and have an aching back, it is surely
better economy to have a house and a good meal at the end of it all
than merely a good appetite for a meal that he has yet to pay for. I
do not object to buy health in hard physical exercise if I can buy it
in no other way; but I am better satisfied if I can buy health and a
meal at the same time and for the same price. This is practically what
is done every day by men who live in the country. In a town they would
undertake an equal amount of muscular exertion for the sake of health,
and would find that they still had 'to go to business' to live; here
they have done their business in doing their pleasure.

Earth-hunger is without doubt the most wholesome passion men can
entertain, and if Governments were wise they would do all they could to
fortify and gratify it. On the contrary, the settled policy of English
Government is entirely hostile to it. There is no country where it is
so difficult to acquire freehold land in small quantities--a subject on
which I shall have more to say presently. Bad land-laws lie at the
back of what we call the urban tendencies of modern life. If fifty
years ago the Irish peasantry had had the same facilities for acquiring
land that they have to-day, it is safe to say that there would have