and reflect the gloom of the great arch of heaven overhead, in plots of vivid greenery and waving corn, and a maze of glittering dancing lanes of water. At all times, it seems a fit resting-place for the last days of a dying mythology.
With the barren Cars of the older times is connected a peasantry that is changing as the soil itself has changed, only more gradually, for the sluggish current of their life and habit is but slowly beaten back by the impetus of modern innovations. Still, in time, the running water carries away the stagnant, and so already, it is only here and there that one can find traces of the poor ague-shaken, opium-eating creatures of earlier times. Many an old woman eats opium openly, and I fear all the men who can get it—will drink gin. But the days are gone by when the one or the other was in constant and daily need, to still the shaking or deaden the misery born of the fever-mists and stagnant pools. Nevertheless, whether it be due to the climate, or the scarcity of railways, or the character of the people themselves, civilization seems a long way behindhand in North Lincolnshire, when compared with other parts of England.
It seems as if it were off the high-road, so to speak, of busy modern English life. Lindsey is entirely agricultural, and in these days of depression amongst farmers, and of absentee landlords, it is visited by few strangers; and the only resident upper class is represented by the clergy, and a very mixed set of tenant-farmers, who, in trouble themselves, generally care little for the people under them, except as regards their work and pay.
This is, I dare say, unavoidable; but it throws the people back on themselves, and accounts, no doubt, for the survival of much amongst them which has decayed elsewhere. Even their speech sounds strange to a modern English ear, for it is almost pure Saxon, and keeps many of the original inflexions which we have lost. Certainly it bears signs of the many races that have dwelt in Lincolnshire, and surely no county in England has known more
