1857.] Chronicles of a Clay Farm. 539 



sprawling at its pleasure into tlie plow-land alongside, which it goes 

 to the very heart of the laborers themselves to desecrate, or reduce 

 to the regulation-standard. It is all very well under the glowing 

 candle-light, with the map of your farm spread out before you, and 

 its hideous hedgerows reduced to mere lines of sepia or lamp-black, 

 to cut and carve, at your will, ten or twelve large square comely- 

 looking fields out of thirty or forty unaccountably-shaped rhomboids 

 undreamt of in the hardest book of Euclid, and then to go and 

 dream the realization of your symmetrical example-farm, the wonder 

 and delight of ardent agriculturists ; but what a change comes over 

 the spirit of the dream, when you mizzle out o'doors in the foggy No- 

 vember morning, and come to a dead stand-still at the tangled side 

 of a fence (Bless me ! why it looked nothing on paper !) which has 

 furnished the talk of many a hunt-dinner for some centuries past, 

 for the splendid leaps and the splendid " purls," it has given rise — 

 or given fall — to. Its bight — its enormous width — its insurmount- 

 able, impracticable look altogether, require an eye quite as steady, 

 and a heart quite as firm as the hunter's, to take it. 



It seemed like sacrilege— indeed, I felt self-convicted, at the first 

 daring onslaught upon these giants of the olden time. I was oblig- 

 ed to " take a run at it" mentally, as it were, as many a man and 

 horse had before done boldly and in the flesh; and stuff my ears 

 against the covered reproaches of the workmen. 



" Famous bank for rabbits, this here, sir ! I've know'd twenty 

 couple killed in a day out of it, in my time, when Squire " 



" Ah ! well — never mind," — quoth I, sorely and interruptingly ; 

 " but what's that — what have you got there ? " 



" This, sir ? Lor' blesh ye ! this is the earth where that ould 

 vixen lived as gave you such a run last winter : I've know'd a litter 

 o' seven whelps reared in this hole, an' heard 'em yelping an' howl- 

 ing o' the summer evenings as if the' wondered when upon airth 

 cub 'unting 'ould begin!" 



This was the climax, usually. No martyr ever suffered more than 

 I used to carry home to breakfast tmo mh pectore, by way of travesty 

 to my over-night's imaginative enjoyment at the paper-prospect of 

 large enclosures and unimpeded plow-shares. 



But the day of compensation came at last ; and with it came my 

 first discovery of the extraordinary sheep-sightedness of spade-and 

 mattock-wielding humanity. Not till the fence was clear away, bank, 



