XXIV. 

 CONCLUSION. 



DAY after day, month after month, year after year, 

 the labor of the Husbandman begins afresh. It is 

 without end, middle, or beginning. It defies all the 

 " Unities " of Time, Place, and Action. And as its 

 nature is, so must be its everlasting development, 

 literary as well as otherwise. To give it a some- 

 what livelier tongue, to rescue it, at least for an 

 occasional hour, from a tone and treatment which 

 under the boasted title of "practical," would scare 

 away from its deeply interesting discussion all that 

 has adorned, as well as advanced, so many other 

 equally laborious and less naturally attractive pur- 

 suits, was the motive that suggested the too desul- 

 tory chronicle of deeds, of words, of thoughts, that 

 these pages have imperfectly recorded. A story 

 without an end, a soliloquy without a speaker, a 

 dialogue without a denouement, and, what is worse 



