THEORY AND PRACTICE. 99 



with in a hurry, and got their fingers burnt, and had 

 to " drop it " like a hot Potato, before they had had 

 time to stop and look it in the face. 



Fortunately I was a beginner in the full sense of 

 the word. Fashionable opinion was no more a 

 " child of mine " than antiquated Prejudice. I had 

 the same profound respect for each and both ; that 

 sort of profound respect which makes you take your 

 hat oif very low and keep a certain distance oif. 

 ]STot that I was in love with my own opinion, for I 

 had none to be in love with. My agricultural intel- 

 lect realized Locke's theory of the rasa tabula. Bare 

 fallows had reached a respectable old age, if not a 

 green one, in the world's history ; I had no personal 

 quarrel of my own against them ; the half of the 

 field set apart for the trial was hideously foul, and 

 stiffer land than the part under turnips ; manure 

 was deficient, and spring-time busy ; every thing 

 seemed to favor and suggest the comparison, so I 

 made it. A dull, lumbering piece of work it is, too, 

 to spend the "long, long summer hours" in lazily 

 turning the "grcate clottes" as old Fitzherbert calls 

 them, in that quaint passage where he cautions his 

 brother farmers not to le in too great a hurry to 

 break them, a piece of advice which every farmer 

 has told as a new discovery of his own touching 



