the piano, &c., of which Herr Riehl deplores the appearance in some parts of Germany, has yet made its way into Westphalia, south of the Coal Basin. Like their cottages, and the hills and valleys around them, the villagers too have a family likeness, at which Riehl must rejoice, as the very embodiment of primitive custom and unbroken uniformity of life. The artist, he says, who would paint mediæval German faces with historical truth, must take his models from among the peasants, whose features, in some districts, resemble at this day the effigies of princes and nobles in churches of the thirteenth century. Michelet, interpreting such a phenomenon, might regard the resemblance as a proof of actual consanguinity on the part of the peasant with exalted personages of an earlier age. 'Le serf en moyen âge, est-il libre? Sa femme en pratique n'est pas plus sienne que l'esclave antique. Les enfants, sont-ils ses enfants? Oui et non. Il est tel village où la race entière reproduit aujourd'hui les traits des anciens siegneurs.'

If there really is a family resemblance of this kind to medieval grandees on the part of the Sauerland peasantry, one must own that it is not more flattering to the beauty than to the morality of the former, for the latter are not a comely race. In plain truth, from the baby (and the villages swarm with babies in a manner formidable for the France of the future, if hopeful for the manufacturer in the Ruhr Basin) to the grown man or woman, there is an all-pervading ugliness, which no visitor can fail to remark. Other causes, however, than a common ancestry of oppressors,

may account for the family likeness, as well as the rude looks and manners of these villagers; and one seeks some other explanation, the more that there was in Westphalia one class of peasants with peculiar freedom and rights of self-government; although there was likewise a large class of serfs, and old men are still to be met who remember being called 'sclaven' in their childhood. Freemen or serfs, however, they all suffered alike from war, invasion, and rapine; and the blood of the conqueror and the freebooter may thus be mingled with theirs. But the general likeness comes, doubtless, in part of a legitimate family relationship, for some names are so common that their possessors are distinguished by numbers.* The severe out-door labour which all the women undergo, is another cause of coarse-featured resemblance, and is at the same time in all probability the main cause both of the persistent boorishness of the people, and of the uncleanliness of their houses. Captain Burton comments with satisfaction on the superior physique of German over both Brazilian and American women, which he traces to out-door labour. 'Not a few,' he says, 'of the (Brazilian) women possess that dainty delicate beauty which strangers remark in the cities of

Speaking of a similar circumstance in his own department of La Creuse, in the centre of France, M. Léonce de Lavergne says:-' Chaque village a dû être à l'origine la résidence d'une seule famille, car les habitans portent presque toujours le même nom.'-Économie rurale de la France. The present writer was likewise struck, in traversing the villages of La Creuse, by a physical resemblance of the villagers; but these, unlike the peasantry of Sauerland, are a very good-looking race, due probably to a happier history, and lighter labours in the field on the part of the women.

*

the Union. The want of out-door labour shows its effect as palpably in the Brazil as in the United States. The sturdy German fraus who land at Rio de Janeiro look like three American women rolled into one. Travellers are fond of recording how they see with a pang girls and women employed in field-work. But they forget that in moderation there is no labour more wholesome, none better calculated to develop the form, or to produce stout and healthy progeny." The due moderation, however, is not observed in the mountains of Westphalia, nor in many other parts of Germany; and Herr Riehl himself is driven to admit that the looks of the women suffer from the severity of their labours. The imposition of heavy field labour upon women is no doubt traceable in part to primitive German life, or the primitive division of employments -man, the warrior; woman, the labourer. But modern causes preserve the custom: the younger men are absent in the army; and those who have served their time, are tempted from the farm by the mines and manufactures around them. In Siegerland it is not uncommon for peasants to be co-proprietors in a mine which they work at themselves. Female husbandry becomes thus the cardinal feature in the rural economy, and the great extent of ground under meadow and wood makes such husbandry possible, the amount of tillage being small. The rich irrigation of the valleys yields four or five cuttings of grass, from which the cattle get the greater part of their food; and the hill

* Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil,' i. 392.

sides are cropped for the most part only in the year after the removal of the wood, which is their main growth; the wood-rights,' like the water-rights,' being carefully guarded, and every gemeinde, or commune, having both its 'wood-overseer' and its 'wateroverseer.' Several causes combine to make wood here one of the principal objects of husbandry: the infertility of the hills, the continued rise for two centuries in the price of wood, and the great demand for bark for tanning, which is one of the chief local industries -skins coming for the purpose to Siegen from all parts of the world. It is the old custom, howevǝr, to estimate a peasant property by its amount of meadow land, though the hill-side attached to it may be three or four times as large. A plough as old as the time of Arminius is a sign of the tenacity with which ancient custom is still clung to in this hitherto isolated district; and the introduction of improved agricultural machines will greatly lighten the labours of the women, by enabling the men to get through a much greater amount of work during their periodical visits to the farm.

The persistence of ancient custom is doubtless attributable in part to the environment of the physical world. Mountains have played a great part in shaping the history of mankind; they have been staunch guardians of customs, and obstacles to new ideas and arts. There is a literal truth in Shakespeare's phrase, 'mountainous error,' which may perhaps have been present to the fancy of the poet, though the connection between mountains and custom in this literal sense is

But higher moun

the converse of that in his verse.* tains than any in Sauerland or Siegerland can no longer shut out movement or change. Already the manufacturer's villa rises along the iron road which joins Siegen with the Basin of the Ruhr; the steam-hammer resounds in the valley of the Lenne; and long trains laden with sulphur from the Siegena mines leave the station of Grevenbrück for the markets of all central Europe. It is happy for Westphalia that the future of Germany does not depend, as Herr Riehl contends, on the immobility of the peasantry-the steadfastness of their adherence to immemorial usage. The order of things which rests on such a basis is apt to give way of a sudden, like the mountain and mountainous error' which the railway removes. It is on peasant property in land, not on peasant custom, that the stability of Germany rests; and sixty years ago Prussian statesmen Prussia saw with terror, in 1808,' says Gustav Freytag, 'how insecure was a State which had so great a claim on the bodies, and so little on the hearts, of its people.' The worst traits of the German bauer-his boorishness, his obstinacy, his laziness at work for another-belong to the past; they are the vestiges of ages of barbarism, servitude, and military oppression; while his best qualities-his sobriety, honesty, and thrift for his family-are the offspring of peasant property.

arrived at that conviction. 6

That the future of Germany rests on the peasant is

What custom wills, in all things should we do it,

The dust on antique time would lay unswept,

And mountainous error be too highly heaped

For truth to over-peer.'-Coriolanus, act ii. sc. 3.