THE PERFECTION OF PLOUGHING. 423 



which, though it may mount a fine beaver and wear the best 

 Saxony broadcloth, is only a soft name for villany ; that their 

 habits, like their ploughing, are direct and straight-forward, and 

 are opposed to all balks and all tortuous windings. I thank 

 God that the blood of such a people flows in my veins ; for I 

 look upon honesty as the true nobility of man, and the only aris 

 tocracy to which my heart burns to pay always its spontaneous 

 and unclaimed homage. ^ An honest man is the noblest work of 

 God ; &quot; a passage, of which a facetious divine, a man as true as 

 he was witty, once said, &quot;If it were not in the Scriptures, it 

 ought to be.&quot; 



LXXIX. THE PERFECTION OF PLOUGHING. 



The perfection of any art consists in its accomplishment of its 

 particular object in the best manner, and by the simplest means. 

 The perfection of ploughing consists in its performing its work 

 exactly as you wish or require to have it done. You wish 

 the surface soil of your field completely inverted. You wish 

 this to be done at a particular depth, and the furrow-slice to be 

 cut in perfectly direct lines. You desire it to be of a certain 

 width and certain thickness, and the same in every part of the 

 field. You require that it should be raised without breaking, and 

 either laid completely flat upon its back, or made to recline upon 

 its neighbor at a particular angle of inclination ; and you wish it 

 so done that, if it be greensward, every portion of the herbage 

 shall be completely shut in, and not a spire shall dare show its 

 head between the furrows, any more than a straggling French 

 man on the field after the battle of Waterloo. And you want 

 this performed at the rate of about an acre a day of eight hours 

 work, with your team moving at the rate of two miles or two 

 miles and a quarter per hour, so that they may work comfortably 

 every day in the week. You desire your ploughman to follow 

 his team, and execute his part with entire attention to what he is 

 about, without perturbation, without sweating, without fretting, 

 and especially without swearing, which some men whom I have 

 known, both at ploughing matches and in their own fields, have 



