very doubtful for the entire group. Then the truth came out. Things, always bad, had become unbearable at the Black Mill. The violence and cruelty of the Black Miller seemed as if they had reached their height; and when he threatened, as he did, to murder them all, one by one, the bravest or the most hopeful could not believe that threat a mere empty sound, meaning nothing. Then the degrading irregularities by which poor Barbara had been so long humiliated were now flaunted openly before her eyes, and the last remnant of home, honour, and respect, destroyed; for preparations were being made, without disguise, for turning wife and family out of the mill, to instal in their stead the woman Hopfgärtner and her unlawful children. In short, what with cruelty, vice, and meanness carried to the very verge of starvation, it had become a hand-to-hand struggle for life or death between the family and the father. defence, for it was either his life or theirs. But justice has little inclination for psychology in any of its forms, and rarely enters into causes when it can deal with results. It took somewhat into consideration though the bad character of the man, and the tremendous provocation which the family had received, and assigned a lighter sentence than would otherwise have been awarded to parricide and assassination. Conrad and Wagner, as chief actors, were condemned to civil death, with solitary confinement for life, heavily chained and fettered, the "bullet" superadded; Frederic, as an accomplice of the first grade, to fifteen years' imprisonment; Barbara, as an accomplice of the second grade, to eight years' imprisonment; Anna Wagner to one year's confinement in the House of Correction; but Margaret and Kunigunde, the two daughters, were declared innocent, and left to their own misery and desolation. The history of this crime is recorded in Hitzig's New Pitaval, and has served as occasion for much German philosophy and reasoning. Moralists and divines have been sadly puzzled where to draw the line between self-defence that is lawful, and self-defence that is criminal: whether a known aggression, planned and to come, may be evaded by the same action as would be recognised and allowed if the strife had really begun. It has also been made a question of the difference lying between public and private tyranny; and whether, what has been admired when directed against a public tyrant, may at any time be admitted when turned against a domestic despot. THE IRON AGE OF AGRICULTURE.* The day-labourer Wagner bore as little good will to the Black Miller as any other; and such service as he proposed to himself to offer the family, would bind the young sons to him for ever, unlock the family coffers, and make him master and independent for life. They were a poor, frightened, broken-necked race, only fitted to be the prey of a bolder spirit like himself. The sons fell into the snare, and at last were won over to consent-not to a murder, but to a blow in self-defence, for the protection of their beloved mother. But at first only by the milder means of sorcery and magic. The witch-wife Anna undertook this part of the business, and hung up a pair of the father's stockings in the chimney; by which, according to the laws of witchcraft, his life would have wasted away as the stockings shrivelled and consumed. But finding that these WHEN the last bull has been handled, the last charms and conjurations had no effect, the matter pony trotted out, the last aldermanic pig comwas trusted to the man's surer hand. Steel might pelled to cease snoring, stand up, and show himdo what sorcery was incapable of, and Wagner self-when, in fact, the live-stock department has must murder the old man before the old man been examined to the best of the stranger's power had time to murder them. When they had con--although he may not, perhaps, be able to equal sented to this, Wagner prepared for his part with the Australian colonist at Leeds, who thought he as much indifference as if he had been bidden to had individualised every horned animal in the slaughter a sheep or an ox, earning his hundred yard-he will probably turn from nature and guldens for the job quite as tranquilly as by any art in feeding and breeding to pure art in iron, other manner of labour possible to him. In the steel, and wood, and proceed to the long still and heavy darkness of that terrible August streets of sheds filled with productions of night-the whole family aware of what was the agricultural engineers; first surveying the taking place by the door of the miller's sleep outlying machinery at rest or in motion-steam ing room- Wagner struck down their old tyrant engines and barn machinery, and strange, new, in the midst of his sins, the sons aiding actively, ponderous objects which, too lofty to go under the mother more passively, with her prayers. cover, form an outer girdle along a considerable Then they carried the corpse to the saw-mill, segment of the enclosing fence. This is the where they buried it; but a year or so after-iron age of agriculture, and these are the results wards they dug it up again-after the mill had been searched" by the friendly magistrate and flung it down that rocky rift where the soldiers of the new commissioners found it. Now that the thing was discovered and known, all evasion was at an end. Wagner confessed to every particular, with the same brutal indifference as had characterised him all along; and the wife and sons excused themselves as well as they could, on the plea of necessity and self and the aids of what the French call the intensive system of cultivation; these are the produce of railroads, chemical manures, deep drainage, steam-driven factories; of an unlimited demand for meat and bread; and of free trade-for the late Protectionist farmer draws his stores of seed and cattle-food from every quarter of the *See Agricultural Encampments in No. 186, and Show Cattle in No. 138. world, and cannot move a step without his new friend, the agricultural engineer. It is very difficult to give an idea, even to a visitor full of what he has seen at the Baker-street Show, of the effect of the streets between sheds filled with goods chiefly for the use of farmers and partly for the sightseeing public who crowd these agricultural thoroughfares. There are the tools and machines for breaking up and stirring the ground, from the simple spade or steel fork to the plough and many-tined cultivator, from the horse-plough at five pounds to the steam-cultivator at from two hundred to seven hundred pounds; there are the machines for sowing seed, from the hand-dibble to the drill, in all its varieties, dry and with water, with chemical manure and without, in lines and broadcast, for the flat and the ridge, for plains and for steep hills; there are horse-hoes as well as handhoes, and every contrivance for extirpating weeds and ridging up earth round roots; there are sickles and scythes of new and old patterns, and a dozen different kinds of corn-reaping and grass-mowing machines; there are an endless variety of contrivances moved by hand, by horsepower, by steam, for thrashing out, collecting cleaning, and sorting every kind of seed crop. Then follow the endless contrivances for feeding cattle and manufacturing meat: our modern demands for meat cannot be satisfied by mere grass and hay, or roots, or corn, or lentils in their natural state-they are sliced, pulped, and steamed in half a dozen different ways. Great is the noise of chaff-cutters, for horse, hand, and steam-power; working continually with a whizzing noise which would be unbearable in a more confined space. Other machines split beans, crush oats, grind corn, and in every possible manner profess to save the time, the teeth, and digestion of meat-making animals. At the same time, steam-engines, portable or fixed, painted in the gayest colours, send their driving wheels round, setting in motion elaborate machinery which works here only at straw but which is ready to take in sheaves of corn at one end and deliver it as grain in sacks, cleaned, weighed, and ready for market at the other. Carts and waggons, sufficient to supply a small army, are ranged side by side, with rollers of every form capable of reducing the most stubborn clods to dust, and of, for a time, solidifying the loosest soil; and then mixed up amongst these serious and costly utilities are scattered a thousand amusing and useful miscellanies, and not a few “notions," like Peter Pindar's "razors, made to sell," garden-chairs and iron network, sausage and washing machines, and at Leeds some machines "contrived a double debt to pay"-one day to make butter and the next to wash the butterman's shirt! and a thousand small knick-knacks to tempt the wives, the daughters, and the great folks who, with more zeal than knowledge, patronise the great show. From pony-carriages to nutmeg-graters, from side-saddles to bread-making machines, new Thirty years ago, before railroads opened up cheap conveyance, and trained skilled mechanics had developed the tools for making machinery, with rare exceptions the agricultural implements were made either on the farm or at the nearest blacksmith's shop. If the ploughshare was purchased, the wheelwright and the joiner did the work the jack-of-all-trades, shepherd or carter, could not do in the winter's evening. We are now passing through the iron age to which we arrived by the sheep-feeding age, and we are rapidly arriving at the steam age of agriculture. Dry as figures are generally considered, on this they are eloquent. At Cambridge, in 1840, there were thirty-six implements exhibited. Howard showed wooden ploughs, both wheel and swing. At the present, if you pass between the river and the railway, you see Howard's factory at Bedford-a magnificent quadrangle, dedicated to the manufacture of iron ploughs, harrows, and steam cultivators. Hundreds of mechanics are employed there, acres are covered with ploughs and harrows ready for despatch to every district of England, the colonies, and the chief agricultural countries of Europe. Lincoln, Boston, Leiston, Ipswich in truly rural Suf folk, and other towns too numerous to mention, also support factories, created by the demands of the iron age of agriculture. In 1841, at Liverpool, there were three hundred and twelve implements exhibited; the department was considered to have attained an impossible importance in five hundred implements at Derby. But at Leeds there were one hundred and three stands; three hundred and fifty-eight exhibitors, who brought to the ground five thousand five hundred articles to show and sell. At Derby, the catalogue was a thin pamphlet, in large type; at Leeds the catalogue filled four hundred closely-printed pages. the difference in quality was even more remarkable than in quantity. But At Leeds stern business was the rule; the im plements, with rare exceptions, had been tried and approved, and were to be had in any number, and at certain prices. At Derby, in the golden age of the Royal Society, new inventions were as plentiful as blackberries, and amateurs occurred on every leaf of the catalogue; in the first five pages the names of a peer, a squire, and an M.P., are found as inventors and exhibitors; at Leeds new implements were very rare, and amateurs rarely soared beyond a garden squirt or similar innocent toy. The chief novelty and greatest triumph was steam cultivation, which there conquered the prejudices of incredulous landlords; farmers had worked the system two years before. The amateurs have had their day, and very useful they were in their day. The success of the annual show now depends on the men who buy to earn a profit out of laud from men who make to realise a profit, and on the sight-seers. It is rather interesting to trace the sprouting of the certain valuable mechanical aids to agricul ture at the Royal Society's Shows. At Derby the first idea of universal pipe-drainage was suggested by Read's hand-made pipe. At the same show the doom of wooden-frained harrows was sealed, for the iron zigzag harrow there appeared. The judges reported that they could not decide on the comparative merit of steam-engines, but they were coming into use as a matter of business. Tuxford, of Boston, had made the first years before, but there were no means of sending such a bulky machine to any customer except by horse-teams. inventor was fortunate enough to be able to wait for steam. In 1856, at Chelmsford, a great change took place in the arrangements of the implement department. The vast increase in the number of articles sent induced the council to consent to divide the competition into three classes, one to be tried every third year. Even this was found too much for the judges, and the prize list is now spread over four years. Exhibitors at Chelmsford were also allowed to put the machinery in motion, and a very dull department from that year became alive and interesting to the unmechanical spectators. At an adjourned trial of the steam cultivator, in 1856, experienced farmers became convinced that it had left theory and reached the point of fact. But the Council declined to A thrashing-machine, which attempted to do what machines in every village do now, was another curiosity in 1843. The following year, 1844, at Southampton, Crosskill's clod-crusher, which had for years been creeping into notice, took a gold medal and its position as a standard bestow the two hundred pounds, part of five implement, and one of the Society's successes. hundred pounds recommended to be given At Shrewsbury, in 1845, appeared the horizontal as a reward for ingenuity by the judges. Since tile-making machine, which satisfied all the de- that year steam cultivation trials have taken mands of the founder of deep uniform agricul- place annually, but as we remarked in 1859, tural drainage. The only machine or implement without the aid of prizes, the problem was being ever brought out by the Society's prizes. 1846, worked out in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordat Newcastle, was marked by the Society's shire. doing a bit of deep-draining on the town moor, much against the grain of the commoners, and not without a large expenditure of beer by a patriotic Newcastle man. This converted the northern county to deep drainage. The following year, at Northampton, a complete set of steel-edged draining tools were, for the first time, exhibited. At Norwich, in 1849, a trained mechanic became the company's engineer. At Exeter, in 1850, was shown the germ of Fowler's steam plough, in an attempt to lay drain pipes of wood by machinery. At Chester, in 1858, fifteen years after the week when the exhibition of a few portable steam-engines was looked upon as a novelty, one hundred and twelve were entered for competition. One Lincoln firm alone turns out as many a day as they proposed, when they founded their establishment, to turn out in a week. At Chester the steam ploughing prize of five hundred pounds was awarded. Since that date, and especially at Warwick, in 1859, and at Leeds in 1861, the annual shows have, as fairs, bazaars, and agricultural conversazione, been glorious, but as machinery rewarding agricultural mechanical merit, more and more contradictory and absurd. In 1851 the Society held no implement show, and the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park brought Not to be forgotten, before we leave the out, without a prize, the first reaping-machine show, are the agricultural seed-shops, which (from America) that ever attracted serious year after year have grown and grown again in notice in England; and Mr. Pusey, acting as extent and importance. On the arrangement agricultural commissioner, discovered two imple- and adornment of these shops for a sale of less ments-Bentall's broadshare and Coleman's cul- than a week many hundred pounds must be extivator-which had escaped the attention of the pended. We stop opposite a one-storied pavilion Society's judges, although the farmers of England of gaily-painted wood, with two wings connected had long previously made them into standard in- by a long portico, fitted as a shop, where speciplements. Since 1851 the Royal Agricultural mens of everything valuable and rare grown in Society have repeatedly tried, reported on, and the world and cultivated in Europe may be seen awarded prizes to reaping-machines. There are in one shape or another. The one wing is the three principles, or plans, on which reaping-sleeping apartment of the numerous army of machines have been made; all have been re-assistants, the other is the office of the chief. warded twice, and it is impossible to learn from the Society's decisions which is to be preferred. Reaping-machines and dearth of labour led to the importation of grass-mowing-machines, which also, without prizes, were brought out, and have been widely adopted by farmers. At Lincoln, in 1854, swing-ploughs were signally defeated by wheel-ploughs, but that did not at the time produce much effect on the Lincolnshire prejudices in favour of the county swingploughs. Cotgreave's plough, produced at Lincoln, for performing three operations at onceploughing, lifting, and subsoiling-came too soon. No horse team could work it. The Before each is a railed-in plot, planted with evergreens, quite as spacious as many London gardens. In the long alcove devoted to business, the advanced-guard is formed of sacks, open and full of the choicest varieties of every kind of agricultural seed and lentil, supported, as they should be, by accurately-coloured wax models of every kind of root that cattle feed on and men do not despise-mangolds of gigantic size, purple and golden yellow, round as bombs or conical as Whitworth missiles; specimen turnips, *Farming by Steam. All the Year Round, May 14, 1859. swedes, and hybrids, whose names and qualities fill one of the many learned volumes in Chiswick type, issued as trade circulars by the firm. Behind, roots, specimens of grain in the ear, wheat from every county and every country, where fine samples, red or white, are to be obtained; barley for beer, oats for horses and Scotchmen, and buckwheat, which peasants eat in France and pheasants in England. Grasses support the grains in brilliant bunches; the Italian rye-grass, a modern introduction, long esteemed in the cheese farms of Lombardy, which, properly watered with liquid manure, gives six famous crops every year; the gigantic Tussac grass from the wind-beaten Falkland Islands, which at one time was to have made the fortune of the cattle-feeders in the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides, but somehow failed; and the Pampas grass, and a dozen tall tufted pasturage grasses for ornamenting clumps on velvety lawns or quick covert for game. Then the long wall of the arcade is covered not only with specimens, but with water-colour drawings of rare and beautiful flowers and pictures of the pines-we beg pardon, the Coniferæ-in full growth, whose merits, qualities, and prices also form a volume at once learned and familiar. We may judge something of the quality of the visitors by the preparations made in this shop and museum. Of every valuable or rare and beautiful plant, shrub, or tree exhibited, there is an attempt to give the seed, the flower, the fruit, if any, in dried specimens, or in drawings or in models, and to each specimen is attached the scientific as well as the trade name. It is by degrees that the shop has grown into a museum, stimulating geographical as well as botanical knowledge, and showing our agricultural friends that commerce has laid the whole world under contribution for their mutual benefit. Spain and Russia, Italy and France, India and China, Egypt and California, and all the rest of the lately United States, have been hunted over to supply grain, lentils, and oilseeds, roots, shrubs, trees, and flowers for use and ornament for the farm, the garden, the park, the lawn, or the hill-side plantation. The labours of centuries are epitomised in this agricultural pavilion. We must add a few words at parting on the financial results of the last great show. The prizes given at Oxford amounted to quite eight hundred pounds; at Leeds the amount was exactly three thousand two hundred and fortytwo pounds. There was subscribed by the town and neighbourhood five thousand pounds. There entered in five days more than one hundred and forty-five thousand visitors, who paid the first day five shillings each, the second and third days two shillings and sixpence each, the fourth and fifth one shilling each, and altogether nine thousand nine hundred and fifteen pounds. There were sold of implement catalogues five thousand, live-stock catalogues seven thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, at one shilling each. Thus Leeds produced in payments and subscriptions, for one week's exhibition, fifteen thousand five hundred and fifty-eight pounds twelve shillings, while real business in sales of and orders for stock and implements must have been little under half a million-a very striking example of what private enterprise and public spirit, commerce and amusement, landlords and tenants, men of business and men of rank combined can do in this country to amuse themselves and advance the progress of agriculture. Therefore, Long live the Royal Agricultural Society Exhi bition! May its shadow and its substance never be less." AN ENGLISH-AMERICAN SEA DUEL. In the year of grace 1813, the United States flag having been planted aboard several English prizes, there was immense self-laudation all through America, and the British lion, formerly so terrible on sea and land, was assumed to be now quite toothless and worn-out, and not worth the trouble of kicking. This sort of thing got to be unbearable to the officers and crews of the British blockading ships off Boston, and Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke, then commanding his Majesty's Shannon, determined to try what he could do to lower the arrogant tone of the Americans. The Shannon and her consort, the Tenedos, had long been watching some American shipsof-war-namely, the President, the Congress, and the Chesapeake; but the first two managed to sail away in the darkness, leaving the Chesapeake fitting in new masts and bending new sails in Boston harbour. It was provoking that the others should have slipped from his clutches, thought Captain Philip Broke, but it would go hard with him if the Chesapeake escaped him too; for the gallant captain had it at heart to read the foe a lesson, and make him learn the difference between the past tense and the future. So he loitered and cruised about, and on the 1st of June, 1813, as the Chesapeake stood in the harbour with royal yards across and ready for sea, the Shannon appeared in the offing, and every one knew that before night some bloody work would be done, and that either America would have once more triumphed, or the British flag be once more in the ascendant. Seeing the Shannon all prepared, Captain Broke sent on board a certain Captain Slocum, an American prisoner, with a letter to Captain Lawrance (promoted from the victorious little United States Hornet to the Chesapeake not many days before), which letter began thus: "Sir,-As the Chesapeake appears now ready for sea, I request you will do me the favour to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship, to try the fortunes of our respective flags." He then went on to pledge his honour that no English ship should interfere. The Chesapeake was superior to the Shannon in size and crew. She carried forty-nine guns, and the Shannon forty-four; she had four hundred and forty men on board (certainly somewhat disaffected because of ununpaid prize-money), the Shannon had but three On receiving the challenge the Chesapeake "took in her royals and top-gallant sails, hauled in her courses," and came out, slowly and majestically, all gay with flags and colours, bearing, besides her three ensigns, a large white flag at the fore with "Free-Trade and Sailors' Rights" emblazoned in broad bold letters upon it. The Shannon had only a rusty old blue ensign at her peak, though down below she had something better than strips of showy bunting to trust to, having wisely cared for discipline and temper rather more than for seaman's coquetry of ship's apparel. As the Chesapeake came out of the harbour on that bright calm sunny June day, the Shannon filled and stood under easy sail, running a little before the wind, till she got to somewhere about six leagues from Boston lighthouse, within sight of land, and at signal distance. This was about four o'clock. Up came the Chesapeake gaily, with characteristic insolence firing a gun at the Shannon, as if to bring her to, and to remind her there was to be no skulking that day, and that running easily before the wind was all very well as a display of the ship's paces, but would not do if carried too far. In answer to that iron word so boldly and sarcastically uttered, the Shannon hauled up, and reefed her topsails, "her foresail brailed up, and her maintopsail flat and shivering," so that the Chesapeake could overtake her; for the ships were now about seven miles apart, and the game was drawing to its culmination. At half-past five the Chesapeake "luffed up" to about half a pistol-shot of the Shannon; then laying herself yard-arm and yard-arm with her foe, poured in her opening broadside. The Shannon returned it with terrible effect. Through mast and sail and rigging and hull that broadside flew and tore, striking down men and officers by scores, doing such deadly work, and so suddenly, that the men faltered, and after a few more of the same kind, grew unsteady at their guns, and worked them wildly and weakly. Then Captain Broke, seeing the enemy, as he says in his despatch, "flinching at his guns," called up his boarders, and the whole living tide of resistless fury and wrath poured like a stream of fire on the deck. handred and ten, made up with some of the their prophecies; when the smoke, clearing crew of the Tenedos, and anything the captain away, showed the Chesapeake, with her three could pick up round about; yet the contest gay ensigns down, and the Union Jack floating was not unequal, according to his calculation; in their place. Seventy-seven officers and men for were not British pluck and endurance worth lay dead on the Chesapeake deck-a hundred more than mere numerical superiority? more were wounded; but the Shannon had lost only twenty-three, with only fifty-two wounded. Of these Captain Broke himself was one, but not badly hurt. His head had been laid open with a sabre-cut as he boarded, but he was able to go on with the fight and attend to his duty, while poor Captain Lawrance, of the Chesa peake, had been mortally wounded at an early part of the fray, and his untimely disablement had undoubtedly helped to dishearten his men and make them "flinch at their guns." Furthermore, it was stated by the officers, who survived the fight only to be tried by a court-martial when they got home, that Lawrance called for his boarding party to come forward before the English captain had given his order, but that, by some fatality, a negro bugler had been substituted for the appointed drummer: he, paralysed with terror, had hidden himself below, and when brought on deck and ordered to sound, was so frightened and undone that he could not get out a note. Lawrance then sent a verbal message, but without effect; and the moment after fell back on the deck, shot through the body. It was when he was carried below that the men faltered: and then Captain Broke headed his boarders, and the Chesapeake was his prize. Again, the same officers stated that the British fired a volley down the hatchways and into the cockpit, where the wounded and the vanquished had taken refuge; but this charge was met by a counter-statement that the Chesapeake men had fired up the hatchway after she had struck her flag, and was no longer free to defend herself. More than this, the English accused the Chesapeake of firing on them from the rigging, and of finding a huge barrel of lime standing on the forecastle with its head knocked off-for what purpose no one could tell, except to fling into the eyes of the enemy, which, if true, was fatal to all ideas of honour or nobleness in American warfare. Also, they said that the shot used was of a diabolical kind: angular jagged bits of iron, broken gunlocks, and copper nails, intended to fester in the body, and produce cruel and unnecessary torments. But it is only fair to the dead brave to state that Captain Broke's despatches say nothing of all this; nor did Wilson Croker in his official announcement The fight was desperate but short. In fifteen in the House; and that the most positive notice minutes from the time the Chesapeake had we have of these crimes is in James's Naval fired her first volley the whole thing was History, a work so full of party-feeling and indone. The thousands and thousands of specta-justice to the other side as to be utterly unretors thronging the hill and lining the shores liable. Be that as it may, however, the two about Boston some with watches in their ships were now under English colours, and hands, betting on the time it would take their sailed away together-Captain Philip Broke, for ship to beat the Britisher's-made no question as to how the fight would turn. Their ship was the largest and the heaviest, their men the strongest and most numerous, their luck confirmed, their cause most righteous; the event was known already, according to the wording of public thanks, a gold medal, and a baronetcy, and Captain John Lawrance, for a prisoner seaman's grave at Halifax. He died of his wounds on the sixth of June, and the British buried him with all due naval honours, every English captain in the harbour following him to |