108 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



Red-sandstone over each other in the most admired 

 disorder, leaving only these frail memorials standing 

 as if by way of a small sample of " England before 

 the Conquest " of spade and wheelbarrow. 



"When looking over the changed aspect of a twenty 

 acre field, with its drained, deepened, leveled, ma- 

 nured, turniped, barleyed soil, smoothly smiling 

 under the sunshine in its first year's Clover, how 

 often I have wished that some such relic of its orig- 

 inal state could have survived, to present to the 

 imaginative eye that now sees it for the first time, 

 the long story 



" Eheu ! quantus equis, quantus erat sudor, 

 Viris ! " * 



and furnish a reply of befitting smartness to the 

 cold-blooded cruelty of look and phrase that extin- 

 guishes all your prideful thoughts by some such 

 damning phrase as this : "Well ! a very nice field ; 

 very beautiful field, indeed! very nice, but a I 

 don't see any thing particular, not very particular 

 at least, in it. I'm no farmer, you know ; you'll ex- 

 cuse me," &c. "Excuse you ! Why, what upon earth 

 did you come out to see?" I long to ask of each 

 gaping sight-seeker, who seems to have expected 



* " Alas ! how much of toil of man and boast 

 Has all this cost ! " 



