MANURES. 91 



enlightened age ; but beyond the contribution of this oc- 

 casional homily, it is, of course, no affair of ours. Each 

 man assures his neighbour that the process of desiccation 

 is quite easy, and the art of deodorising almost nice ; but 

 nobody " goes in." The reader, I have no doubt, has with 

 me had large experience of this perversity in neighbours, 

 and ofttimes has been perplexed and pained by their 

 dogged strange reluctance to follow the very best advice. 

 There was at Cambridge, five-and-twenty years, an insolent, 

 foul-mouthed, pugnacious sweep, who escaped for two terms 

 the sublime licking which he ''annexed" finally, because no 

 one liked to tackle the soot. There were scores of under- 

 graduates, to whom pugilism was a thing of beauty and a 

 joy for ever, who had the power and the desire to punish 

 his impudence, but they thought of the close wrestle, — 

 they reflected on the " hug," and left him. To drop 

 metaphor, there is no more valuable manure ; but it is, 

 from circumstances which require no explanation, more 

 suitable for the farm than the garden, especially as we have 

 a substitute, quite as efficacious, and far more convenient 

 and agreeable in use. 



No, not " burnt earth." I spoke as earnestly as I could 

 of the value of that application in my last chapter (p. 77), 



