It will take some years to work out complete results; it is, however,
gratifying to see a landowner placing himself in the hands of competent
advisers, planning not for the profits of the hour, but for the future, for
the permanent health, happiness, and prosperity of all dwelling on his
property.
The pecuniary results promise to be highly satisfactory; it is already
evident that increased rents will be accompanied by increased prosperity, and
it is thought in the neighbourhood that in the next ten years, the property
will, from the judicious expenditure of 30,000 pounds, be worth at least
300,000 pounds.
So much for employing a scientific and practical agriculturist as land agent,
instead of a fashionable London attorney. {193}
YORKSHIRE.
From Manchester to Leeds is a journey of forty-five miles, and about two
hours. We should like to describe Yorkshire, one of the few counties to
which men are proud to belong. We never hear any one say, with conscious
pride, "I am a Hampshireman or an Essex man, or even a Lancashireman," while
there are some counties of which the natives are positively ashamed.
But we have neither time nor space to say anything about those things of
which a Yorkshireman has reason to be proud--of the hills, the woods, the
dales, the romantic streams,--above all, of the lovely Wharfe, of the fat
plains, the great woods, the miles of black coal mines, where we have heard
the little boys driving their horses and singing hymns, sounding like angels
in the infernal regions, the rare good sheep, the Teeswater cattle, that gave
us short-horns, of horses, well known wherever the best are valued, be it
racer, hunter, or proud-prancing carriage horse; hounds that it takes a
Yorkshire horse to live with; and huntsmen, whom to hear tally-away and see
ride out of cover makes the heart of man leap as at the sound of a trumpet;
foxes stanch and wily, worthy of the hounds; and then of those famous
dalesmen farmers, tall, broad-shouldered, with bullet heads, and keen grey
eyes, rosy bloom, high cheek bones, foxy whiskers, full white-teethed,
laughing mouths, hard riders, hard drinkers, keen bargainers, capital
fellows; and besides those the slips, grafts, and thinnings from the farms,
who in factories, counting-houses, and shops, show something of the powerful
Yorkshire stamp.
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