Then there are intellectual entertainments and deliberative proceedings of grave moment arranged for the elder portion of the great congregation.  While groups of blushing lads and lasses are hunting the handkerchief in the hustle and tussle of the ring under the great, solemn elms, a scene may be witnessed on the lawn nearer the mansion that ought to have been painted long ago.  Two or three double-horse wagons are ranged end to end in the shade, and planks are placed along from one end to the other, making a continuous seat for a score or two of orators.  In front of this dozen-wheeled tribune rows of seats, capable of holding several hundred persons, are arranged within hearing distance.  When these are filled and surrounded by a standing wall of men and women, three or four deep, and when the orators of the day ascend over the wheels to the long wagon-seat, you have a scene and an assembly the like of which you find nowhere else in Christendom.  No Saxon parliament of the Heptarchy could “hold a candle to it.”  Never, in any age or country of free speech, did individual ideas, idiosyncrasies, and liberty of conscience have freer scope and play.  Never did all the isms of philanthropy, politics, or of social and moral reform generally have such a harmonious trysting time of it.  Never was there a platform erected for discussing things local and general so catholic as the one now resting upon the wheels of those farm wagons.  Every year the bland and venerable host succeeds in widening the area of debate.  I was invited to be present at the Festival this year, but was too far on the road to John O’Groat’s to participate in a pleasure I have often enjoyed.  But I read his resume of the year’s doings, aspects and prospects from Japan to Hudson’s Bay with lively interest and valuable instruction.  He seldom presides himself as chairman, but leaves that post of honor to be filled, if possible, by the citizen of some foreign country, if he can speak English tolerably.  This gives a more cosmopolitan aspect to the assembly.  But he himself always makes what in Parliament would be called “a financial statement,” without the reference to money matters.  He sums up the significance of all the great events of the year, bearing upon human progress in general, and upon each specific enterprise in particular.  With palatial mansions, parks, and farms great and small, scattered through several counties, he is the greatest radical in England.  He distances the Chartists altogether in his programme, and adds several new points to their political creed.  He not only advocates manhood suffrage, but womanhood suffrage, and woman-seats in Parliament.  Then he is a great friend of a reform which the Chartists grievously overlook, and which would make thousands of them voters if they would adopt it.  That is, Total Abstinence from Tobacco, as well as from Ardent Spirits.  Thus, no report of modern times equals the good Squire’s summing-up, which he gives on these occasions, from