"CALX" AND RECALCITBATION. 57 



old Evelyn must have especially had in his eye when 

 he talked of "a roscid and fertile mould." 



" Easy work it is to preach about farming experi- 

 ments," thought I to myself, as I wandered in the 

 gloomy evenings of December and January, among 

 the square clods that lay exhumed upon the surface 

 of the field, with the spade-mark inscribed in frozen 

 obduracy upon their sides, like the blocks in the 

 quarries of Syracuse dated with the tool-m'arks of 

 twenty centuries ago! "Easy work to preach ex- 

 periments, that take a year to make, and another to 

 judge of, and another, and perhaps another still, to 

 see the whole result of, to men whose ' threescore 

 years and ten' were hardly a sufficient Lease in 

 which to scrape together a dozen facts beyond what 

 their fathers knew ! A pretty homily upon LEASES 

 there lies in these clods that have been keeping sen- 

 try here these three months, while the Manufacturer 

 has worn a steam-engine from new to old, and the 

 Trader has turned over half his capital, and briskly 

 put in a fresh stock of 'Spring Fashions.' In the 

 name of Common Sense, that useful 'raw material' 

 which England has as plentiful as Coal and Iron, 

 what dead carcase has been chained to this living 

 Art of Arts, to clog its progress and to rot its vital 



powers, by adding the curse of INSECURITY of TENUKK 

 3* 



