394 Ulironiclcs of a Clay Farm. [September, 



about for a year or two like a duck, and retired — "Z«?ne." It was but 

 a simple equation — a very simple one — to say wben tbe rent would 

 come to zero. It looked on the rental-book like an annual sum in 

 reduction; facilis descensus Avenii, literally translated into plain 

 English. What was to be done with it? This brings me to to my 

 proposition No. 2 : which is in fact what is commonly called " No. 

 1" — myself If there was in the catalogue of human pursuits one 

 which I hated and feared, dreaded and despised, didn't know, didn't 

 wish to know — it was that strange, incomprehensible, infatuated, 

 damaging thing which, from my cradle upward, I had heard de- 

 scribed and deprecated under the almost forbidden name of — Farm- 

 ing. Dr. Johnson calls it the delight of destiny to counterchange 

 the plans and purposes of man ; but some other wise man, I think 

 il is Lord Bacon, tells us to " choose the life that is most useful and 

 habit will make it the most agreeable." But accident seems more 

 potent than destiny, plan, purpose, choice or habit. On a long sea- 

 voya'ge, and in a rather dull and resourceless foreign land, three 

 unbidden companions had stuck by me with an almost persecuting 

 tenacity and attracted first my acquaintance, then my intimacy, for 

 sheer want of anything else : they were books : to wit, Cobbett's 

 edition of Tull's Works, and the Useful Knowledge Society's two 

 volumes on British Husbandry. I read them and re-read them ; 

 and then began again : for nine mortal months I was reduced to 

 gorge my literary appetite upon these husks, as I at first regarded 

 them. The Georgics of Yirgil had begun and ended all my pre- 

 vious acquaintance with farming ; they were the sole associating tie 

 that connected me with this sudden and enforced onslaught upon the 

 " theory and practice of Agriculture," and I returned to England — 

 poor wretch — in worse condition than I went — in fact given up by 

 the " Faculty" as a confirmed — Book-farmer. 



With this morbid predisposition upon me — imagine me exposed 

 unexpectedly to the fatal atmosphere of a sick room in which lay a 

 dying man, as he devoutly believed — a land-steward — siricken with 

 influenza, caught upon the marsh; imagine the reports, the lectures, 

 the death-bed warnings I had to sit and listen to, about this blessed 

 fiirm ! He described it as you would a pestilence; a terror to all 

 around; it must be cured (or killed?) not for his own sake, but as 

 you would treat a diseased ewe, or a truss of mouldy hay. It was 

 painful, yet ludicrous, to hear him, for he talked like a dying man 

 of a bad child — that would " be sure to come to harm some day or 



