drawing from the land the fullest produce and rearing upon it the
most vigorous and provident population,--this school, as is well
known, finds in the _statesmen_ of Cumberland one of its favourite
examples. In the days of border-wars, when the first object was to
secure the existence of as many armed men as possible, in readiness
to repel the Scot, the abbeys and great proprietors in the north
readily granted small estates on military tenure, which tenure, when
personal service in the field was no longer needed, became in most
cases an absolute ownership. The attachment of these _statesmen_ to
their hereditary estates, the heroic efforts which they would make
to avoid parting with them, formed an impressive phenomenon in the
little world--a world at once of equality and of conservatism--which
was the scene of Wordsworth's childish years, and which remained his
manhood's ideal.

The growth of large fortunes in England, and the increased
competition for land, has swallowed up many of these small
independent holdings in the extensive properties of wealthy men. And
at the same time the spread of education, and the improved poor-laws
and other legislation, by raising the condition of other parts of
England, have tended to obliterate the contrast which was so marked
in Wordsworth's day. How marked that contrast was, a comparison of
Crabbe's poems with Wordsworth's will sufficiently indicate. Both
are true painters; but while in the one we see poverty as something
gross and degrading, and the _Tales of the Village_ stand out from a
background of pauperism and crime; in the other picture poverty
means nothing worse than privation, and the poet in the presence of
the most tragic outcast of fortune could still

Have laughed himself to scorn, to find