labourers, too, whom our land system crowds into towns, have not that subsidiary and durable resource which town labourers on the Continent are steadily gaining under their land system; nor have English labourers that providence and frugality which continental land systems nurture. The Irish land question is of more importance politically than the English for the hour, but it is not so economically even for the hour; and it is so politically for the hour only. Economically, the emergency is much greater at this moment in this than in the other island; the main land question here relates to a poorer class than even the Irish tenantry, and there is a much greater amount of material misery and actual destitution in England, traceable mainly to its own land system, though aggravated by that of Ireland and the consequent immigration of poverty. The day is not distant when the supreme question of English, as of Irish politics, will be whether the national territory is to be the source of power and luxury to a few individuals, or of prosperity and happiness to the nation at large? and whether those few individuals or the nation at large are to determine the answer? WESTPHALIA AND THE RUHR BASIN, IN few places are the old world and the new, the world of immobility and custom, and the world of change and progress, seen in closer proximity and contrast than in Westphalia; a province now heading the rapid march of Prussian industry, yet preserving not a few broad features of the Germany of the past. By the side of the peasant of the olden time, whom the conservative economist Herr Riehl, in his dread of revolution, regards as the emblem of all that is sound in the age, and the sole safeguard of the future of Germany, are the engineer, the miner, and the manufacturer, whom English economists, unable to boast of their own peasantry, are commonly better inclined to put forward as the types of the age, and the pledges of the future. The Basin of the Ruhr, occupying the middle region of the province, and reaching beyond it to the Rhine, is the chief seat of Westphalian mining and manufacturing enterprise; the mountains and valleys of Sauerland and Siegerland† in the south are the Reprinted from the 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1869. The general name of Sauerland is given to the mountainous region of Westphalia south of the Ruhr Basin. The country watered by the Sieg bears the name of Siegerland; the greater part of it, however, lying beyond Westphalia in the Rhine Province. strongholds of ancient rural life. But the genuine bauer is not extinct in the Ruhr Basin; and the train glides, the tall chimney rises, and the miner sinks his shafts and drives his adits among the southern hills. The prevailing characteristics, nevertheless, in the south are still those of rustic simplicity, and we may give to antiquity in our description the precedence it will not long survive to claim. The scenery of southern Westphalia is eminently picturesque in the sense to which Mr. Merivale limits. the term, as denoting effects due not to the imagination of the spectator bodying forth the forms of things unseen, but simply to the picture which nature herself puts before the eye. The traveller does not bring, but finds the charm of the landscape in steep wood-clothed hills and winding vales, with cottages and gardens clustering here and there. Most refreshing to the eye of the traveller from parched England last summer was the deep verdure of these valleys, though it was a year of drought also Westphalian. The perfection of the irrigation, the works for which serve also for draining, is celebrated over the continent of Europe, affording a practical refutation of the doctrine of some insular writers that peasants cannot accomplish such works. The rainfall is equal to that of Ireland, and it falls with such violence that all the elements of fertility would be washed off the hills but for the care with which they are planted; while the bas-fonds below would be now soaked into morasses, and now baked into aridity, but for the skill with which the descending streams are collected and distributed. It is scenery, however, it must be confessed, which lacks for the most part the charm of variety. Each turn of the road presents a picture of considerable beauty, but generally a repetition of the one just left at the other side of the hill. It is everywhere, too, picturesqueness on a small scale. The eye seldom meets the horizon in those pent-up valleys; and the mountains which enclose them rarely are high enough to tempt an ascent through the woods and shrubs which impede it, or to reward it with an extensive prospect if made. Now and again they form a fine natural amphitheatre, but even then the panorama is strictly confined. Like the social life of the people, the scenery owes much of its character to geological causes. Devonian rocks emerging in contorted forms from beneath the Ruhr Basin compose the hills; the main valleys run across the strike, the side valleys parallel to it; and the country is thus everywhere cut into deep glens enclosed within high narrow ridges. If, however, the grandeur of vastness,' which Mr. Merivale describes as the most powerful element in American landscapes, is here totally absent, there is a resemblance to American scenery which a stranger might hardly expect to find so near Rhineland, the country of feudal memorials and tower-crowned heights. Rarely does the ancient castle (more rarely still the modern) look down on the village. Siegen is an antique city,' but is without a rival; and it occupies the position of a great capital, though it has but seven or eight thousand inhabitants. The peasant proprietor is the chief potentate here; the wood cottage his cow and pig share with himself may 6 be the most sumptuous dwelling beheld in a long day's walk. Country gentlemen there are none; a few noble proprietors may be heard of, but they are absentees, their castles usually half in ruin, or clumsily patched, and inhabited by an agent or by retainers. The post coach-which, like the livery of the post-boy, never is cleaned―is, save an occasional cart, the only vehicle one meets along the principal roads; and, besides carrying the letters it did, until the new Ruhr-Sieg Railway was lately completed, the whole parcel delivery as well as passenger traffic of the district, though it holds but four passengers. Here and there a new house of stone or brick is now seen it is near a railway station that such an innovation is most likely to appear-but as a general rule the village cottages differ only in size, and are constructed as follows:-A framework of timber, painted black, is filled in with wattles and clay, whitewashed outside, the black stripes of the wood contrasting effectively with the white walls, and giving an external appearance of ornateness and neatness, by no means sustained by the real condition of things either within or around the house. Seen from without, too, most of these cottages look lofty and spacious; but the room for the family is really small, the upper part serving as a hay-loft or barn, and half the lower being pig-sty, cow-house, and stable, if a horse is kept. Small, indeed, is the attention to cleanliness or comfort in any part of the dwelling; the English visitor finds that dirt is not peculiar to the Irishman's cabin. No approach to the drawing-room furniture and luxury, |