THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD 199 



the same the same blatant discord, the same monoto- 

 nous roundabout, the same poor gingerbread. 



The ploughs are at work, travelling slowly at the 

 ox's pace up and down the hillside. The South Down 

 plough could scarcely have been invented ; it must have 

 been put together bit by bit in the slow years slower 

 than the ox; it is the completed structure of long 

 experience. It is made of many pieces, chiefly wood, 

 fitted and shaped and worked, as it were, together, 

 well seasoned first, built up, like a ship, by cunning 

 of hand. 



None of these were struck out a hundred a minute 

 by irresistible machinery ponderously impressing its 

 will on iron as a seal on wax a hundred a minute, and 

 all exactly alike. These separate pieces which compose 

 the plough were cut, chosen, and shaped in the wheel- 

 wright's workshop, chosen by the eye, guided in its turn 

 by long knowledge of wood, and shaped by the living 

 though hardened hand of man. So complicated a 

 structure could no more have been struck out on paper 

 in a deliberate and single plan than those separate 

 pieces could have been produced by a single blow. 



There are no machine lines no lines filed out in iron 

 or cut by the lathe to the draughtsman's design, drawn 

 with straight-edge and ruler on paper. The thing has 

 been put together bit by bit : how many thousand, 

 thousand clods must have been turned in the furrows 

 before the idea arose, and the curve to be given to this 

 or that part grew upon the mind as the branch grows on 

 the tree ! There is not a sharp edge or sharp corner in 

 it; it is all bevelled and smoothed and fluted as if it 

 had been patiently carved with a knife, so that, touch 

 it where you will, it handles pleasantly. 



In these curved lines and smoothness, in this perfect 



