DISSOLVING VIEWS. 109 



a series of dissolving views, or some dioramic 

 transparency exhibiting Drains running, Sub-soil 

 crumbling, Ammonia fixing, Turnips growing, Sheep 

 fattening, Wheat reaping, and all the phenomena 

 that "trammel up the consequence" of agricultural 

 emprise, much after the fashion of the nursery tale 

 that finds such rapid denouement when "the cat 

 began to eat the mouse." 



Beautiful in every best sense of the word as an 

 improved and well-cultivated farm may be, how 

 bashfully does it reveal to any but the deserving 

 eye, the eye that has rightfully and laboriously 

 earned its perceptive skill, the developed capability 

 and power obtained by the soil from the judicious 

 appliances of art. The Painter may draw a Land- 

 scape, the Florist may furnish a Hothouse, the 

 Landscape-gardener may produce an "effect" with 

 compendious skill ; but there are two things in na- 

 ture bearing truthful analogy with each other, from 

 the world of matter to that of mind, which defy the 

 hand of imitation ; both are comprehended by the 

 one same word, CULTIVATION. It carries no label on 

 its back, no title-page or illustration to the idle spec- 

 ulation of the eye ; it is no talker ; it asks " an un- 

 derstanding, but no tongue;" full as Nature is of 

 ornament at every stage, she disdains to make an 



