had so many common-fields, and when almost every man that had a family had also a bit of land, either large or small. It is a very curious thing that the enclosing of commons, that the shutting out of the labourers from all share in the land; that the prohibiting of them to look at a wild animal, almost at a lark or a frog; it is curious that this hard-hearted system should have gone on until at last it has produced effects so injurious and so dangerous to the grinders themselves that they have, of their own accord and for their own safety, begun to make a step towards the ancient system, and have, in the manner I have observed, made the labourers sharers, in some degree, in the uses, at any rate, of the soil. The far greater part of these strips of land have potatoes growing in them; but in some cases they have borne wheat, and in others barley, this year; and these have now turnips; very young most of them, but in some places very fine, and in every instance nicely hoed out. The land that will bear 400 bushels of potatoes to the acre will bear 40 bushels of wheat; and the ten bushels of wheat to the quarter of an acre would be a crop far more valuable than a hundred bushels of potatoes, as I have proved many times in the Register.

O ENGLAND, Country of my heart's desire,
Land of the hedgerow and the village spire,
Land of thatched cottages and murmuring bees,
And wayside inns where one may take one's ease,
Of village greens where cricket may be played,
And fat old spaniels sleeping in the shade. -

O homeland, far away across the main,

How would I love to see your

face again!

Your daisied meadows and your grassy hills,

Your primrose banks, your parks, your tinkling rills,
Your copses where the purple bluebells grow,
Your quiet lanes where lovers loiter so,

Your cottage-gardens with their wallflowers' scent,
Your swallows 'neath the eaves, your sweet content!
And 'mid the fleecy clouds that o'er you spread,
Listen, the skylark singing overhead. .

That's the old country, that's the old home!
You never forget it wherever you roam.

1 Written for a Gramophone Record.

II

I know an English village, O so small!
Where every cottage has a whitewashed wall,
And every garden has a sweetbriar hedge,
And there's a cat on every window ledge.
And there's a cottage there with those within it
Whom I in fancy visit every minute.

O little village mine, so far away,
How would I love to visit you to-day!
To lift the latch and peep within the door
And join the happy company once more—
I think I'd try and catch them at their tea :
What a surprise for every one 'twould be!
How we would talk and laugh, maybe and cry,
Living our lost years over, they and I;
And then at dusk I'd seek the well-known lane
To hear the English nightingale again

That's the old country, that's the old home!
You never can beat it wherever you roam.

III

O London once my home but now so far,
You shine before me brighter than a star!
By night I dream of you, by day I long
To be the humblest even of your throng:
Happy, however poor, however sore,

Merely because a Londoner once more.

Your sights, your sounds, your scents-I miss them

all:

Your coloured buses racing down Whitehall;

The fruit stalls in the New Cut all aflare;

The Oval with its thousands gathered there

The Thames at evening in a mist of blue;
Old Drury with a hundred yards of queue.
Your sausage shops, your roads of gleaming mud,
Your pea-soup fogs-they're in my very blood;
And there's no music to my ears so sweet
As all the noisy discord of the street

That's my dear London, that's my old home,
I'll never forget it wherever I roam.

IV

And ah! the London pleasure parties too!-
The steamboat up to Hampton Court or Kew;
The walk among the deer in Richmond Park;
The journey back, all jolly, in the dark!
To Epping Forest up the Mile End Road,
Passing the donkey barrows' merry load;
Or nearer home, to Hampstead for a blow:
To watch old London smouldering below ;
Between the Spaniard's and Jack Straw's to pace
And feel the northern breezes in one's face;
Then at the Bull and Bush perhaps to dine
And taste again their famous barley wine!
Ah me! I wonder is it all the same ?
Is Easter Monday still the good old game?
I hear it yet, though years have rolled away,
The maddening medley of Bank Holiday.
That's my dear London, that's my true home,
I'll never forget it wherever I roam.