squires and farmers, who walked or stood about in groups conversing with each other.
There were a few quiet shops in the street, one a bookseller's. Everything in the way of stationery sold there was of the cheapest description, showing that the owner catered for a class who were not disposed to spend their money on mere luxuries; but on the counter I saw works, which certainly argued an enlightened public in Wooler and its neighbourhood. Erckmann-Chatrian's novels, the Duke of Argyll's "Reign of Law,"—such were the books sold on one counter, while the other was devoted to the sale of lollipops and sugar-candy. But I doubt, however, whether the youngsters of Wooler saw any incongruity in these things; for they take equally well to the sweets of learning and of good-stuff. That same afternoon a number of boys running out of school overtook me in the fields. Three of them almost immediately stretched themselves on the grass and recommenced summing. The English Presbyterian schoolmaster at Wooler told the Government Commissioner, Mr Henley, that he had four boys in his school learning Latin,—one the son of a gamekeeper,. another the son of a shepherd, a third the son of a skinner of sheep, and the fourth the son of the widow of a railway porter. Two others learnt French and Euclid, one a shepherd's son, and the other a hind's.
At the beginning of the last century, the country round about' here was almost in a state of nature, now there are few parts of England so well cultivated. Turnip-growing is the work to which the Northumbrian farmers devote their best energies. Thousands of acres are planted here along the base of the Cheviots, upon which, when its verdant herbage begins to fail, the sheep are fed. It is curious to note, as one may frequently at this time of the year, a party of women and boys turnip-hoeing, and all working in a line, with one man as overseer directing them. To a stranger unaccustomed to such a sight it unpleasantly recalls old scenes in the sugar plantations of Jamaica or of South Carolina. But with such a people as the Northumbrians anything like slave-driving is quite impossible. The arrangement is the result of systematic farming, the application of the rules of the factory to the field.
Just outside Wooler is Humbleton Hill, an outpost of the
