future history, we have not been able to learn any particulars; but we hold him firmly to have been a man to whom a disingenuous stratagem was an impossibility. THE ENGLISH PEASANT. THE ENGLISH PEASANT is generally reckoned a very simple, monotonous animal, and most people, when they have called him a clown, or a country hob, think they have described him. If you see a picture of him, he is a long, silly-looking-fellow, in a straw hat, a white slop, and a pair of ankleboots, with a bill in his hand—just as the London artist sees him in the juxta-metropolitan districts -and that is the English Peasant. They who have gone further into England, however, than Surrey, Kent, or Middlesex, have seen the English Peasant in some different costume, under a good many different aspects; and they who will take the trouble to recollect what they have heard of him, will find him a rather multifarious creature. What He is in truth a very Protean personage. is he, in fact? A day-labourer, a woodman, a ploughman, a wagoner, a collier, a worker in railroad and canal-making, a game-keeper, a poacher, an incendiary, a charcoal-burner, a keeper of village ale-houses, and Tom-and-Jerrys; a tramp; a pauper, pacing sullenly the court-yard of a Parish Union, or working in his frieze-jacket on some parish farm; a boatman, a road-side stonebreaker, a quarry-man, a journeyman bricklayer, or his clerk, a shepherd, a drover, a rat-catcher, a mole-catcher, and half a hundred other things, in any one of which he is as different from the sheepish, straw-hatted, ankle-booted, and billholding fellow of the print-shop windows, as a Cockney is from a Newcastle keelman. In the matter of costume only, every different district presents him in a different shape. In the counties round London, east and westward, through Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, &c., he is the white-slopped man of the London prints, with a longish rosy-cheeked face, and a stupid, quiet manner. In Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and in that direction, he sports his olive-green slop, and his wide-awake, larking-hat, bit-o'-blood, or whatever else the hatters call those round-crowned, turnedup-brimmed felts of eighteen-pence or two shil lings cost, which have of late years so wonderfully taken the fancy of the country chaps. In the midland counties, especially Leicestershire, Derby, Nottingham, Warwick, and Staffordshire, he dons a blue slop, styled the Newark frock, which is finely gathered in a square piece of puckerment on the back and breast, on the shoulders, and at the wrists; is greatly adorned in those parts also with flourishes of white thread, and invariably has a little white heart stitched in at the bottom of the slit at the neck. A man would not think himself a man if he had not one of these slops, which are the first things he sees at a market or a fair, hung aloft at the end of the slop-vender's stall, on a crossed pole, and waving about like scare-crows in the wind. Under this, he generally wears a coarse blue jacket, a red or yellow shag waistcoat, stout blue worsted stockings, tall, laced ankle-boots, and corduroy breeches, or trousers. A red handkerchief round his neck is his delight, with two good long ends dangling in front. In many other parts of the country, he wears no slop at all, but a corduroy or fustian jacket with capacious pockets, and buttons of giant size. That is his every-day, work-a-day style, but see him on a Sunday or a holiday; see him turn out to church, or wake, or fair,—there's a beau for you. If he has not his best slop on, which has never yet been defiled by touch of labour, he is conspicuous in his blue, brown, or olive-green coat, and waistcoat of some glaring colour,-scarlet, or blue, or green striped, but it must be showy; and a pair of trousers, generally blue, of a width ample as a sailor's nearly, and not only guiltless of the foppery of being strapped down, but if he find the road rather dirty, or the grass dewy, they are turned up three or four inches at the bottom so as to show the white lining. On those days, he has a hat of a modern shape, that has very lately cost him four-and-sixpence, and, if he fancies himself rather handsome, or stands well with the women, he cocks it a little on one side, and wears it with a knowing air. He wears the collar of his coarse shirt up on a holiday, and his flaming handkerchief round his neck puts forth dangling ends of an extra length, like streamers. The most troublesome business of a full dress day is to know what to do with his hands. He is dreadfully at a loss where to put them. On other days, they have plenty of occupation with their familiar implements, but to-day they are miserably sensible of a vacuum; and, except he be very old, he wears no gloves. They are sometimes diving into his trouser-pockets, sometimes in his waistcoat-pockets, and |