A WOKD AT PARTING. 113 



who has known and felt it what a blessed thought 

 is a well-drained Field! A portion, a small yet 

 measurable portion of Nature's reality, brought by 

 the hand of man from sterility to fruitfulness from 

 its first and incomplete existence to its intended and 

 developed state. What a thought to cheer and 

 lighten the dull November fog that hundreds and 

 thousands of acres in this moist England of ours 

 which once began their annual saturation with the 

 Autumn rains, and lay in barren quagmire the live- 

 long Winter through, unwakenable from the clammy 

 trance of their yearly death even by the cheerful 

 voice and breath of coming Spring, are now gently 

 transmitting through their porous texture, the health- 

 ful rain that feeds what it once poisoned ; and that 

 as every shower ceases, then comes a rich after-gift 

 of atmospheric air following in a thousand sinuosi- 

 ties the threadlike channels down which the rain, 

 like a pioneer, has foutid and led the way through 

 the soil, to the very drain, three or four feet below 

 the surface. What a thought is this, to those who 

 know it, and have earned its pleasure ! 



Nature abhors a vacuum. True, most true, O 

 philosophic chemist! Where the drop has once dis- 

 appeared through the soil, it has dragged the air 

 after it, and with the air, its burthen of medicament, 



