CONCLUSION. 259 



solitude as a schoolboy marks off the weary list of 

 weeks that must intervene before the joyful hour 

 that shall restore him to all that he has lately parted 

 from the writer of these pages was fain to welcome 

 the emprise of a task, which might have scared 

 away, as indeed it has done, any to whom life was 

 not so dead, that the only thing that could rise again 

 upon it was a Blister. 



Precisely this was my condition when, to the 

 amazement of that surrounding world called 

 "Friends," and the consternation of that surround- 

 ing gallery of criticism, one's own tenantry, I ven- 

 tured on the solitary occupation of a farm whose 

 desolate and repulsive features had been sufficiently 

 portrayed, and with little of exaggeration. Steeped 

 to the eyes in all those notions of science and exact- 

 ness which a working experience at the Universities, 

 and " those Temples twain, Inner and Middle," may 

 be supposed to infuse into the brains of younger 

 sons, I plunged into my task with all that sanguine 

 and pedantic enthusiasm best known, in farming, 

 under the expressive title of "Fire-edge." "A 

 blessed thing," I have before said, " is the untaught 

 boldness of youth ! " a blessed thing in its way, and 

 in its time and place. It is as much intended, and 

 has its appointed task, in the great Order and 



