"LANDLOKD AND TENANT." 147 



established practice overmuch, and ending in fail- 

 ure : here again is toil overtasked and struggling 

 against want of means the spade without the 

 dung-fork a hard and pitiless struggle ; there 

 plenty of manure-heaps, but wastefully and unevenly 

 applied : here again is loss of time upon too close a 

 minuteness and pettiness of culture, there too large 

 and daring a system, which risks the whole space 

 upon a single crop. Every variety and sub-variety 

 of character is self-drawn and pictured on the soil, 

 a photographic portrait of the cultivator. And so 

 it is upon that great Allotment-field could one 

 but as easily look over it the Farms spread, 

 border-to-border, over the various geological systems 



of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 



A * * * & 



To this same wide Field, .with its many modes 

 of tillage, its various kinds of produce, and equally 

 varied character both of occupation and of owner- 

 ship, insensibly flew the thoughts of the puzzled 

 reader of a certain budget of fourteen letters, and 

 of another about the same in dimension, which the 

 following post brought from the punctual Messrs. 

 Penn and Debbitt. 



Reflection might well be allowed to be more long- 

 winded, and Imagination itself to be more fanciful 



