THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 287 



August, 1870. 

 " More enjoyable if not your own," I murmur in- 

 wardly, as I fold up to return a most tempting 

 advertisement of an estate in North Wales, described 

 as a " virgin estate," and containing besides some 

 three thousand acres of cultivated land, no end of 

 gorse hills, undeveloped slate, imagined coal-beds, in- 

 numerable wild gorges and cascades, just exactly what 

 one enjoys most thoroughly as a tourist in quest of 

 refreshment after dusty, exhaustive work in chambers, 

 but what one wouldn't care to invest in, considering 

 the trouble the development of such varied resources 

 must entail, unless one were in possession of such a 

 glorious " accumulation during minority " as Lothair 

 found himself possessed of when he wavered between 

 building a cathedral and a nest of innumerable cot- 

 tages. There is a time of life at which one arrives 

 when trouble really does bore. Activity, mental no less 

 than bodily, one reads in disquisitions on the human 

 frame, begins to hang fire about the period when over- 

 trained athletes break down — that is upon the near 

 side of fifty. Then it is that Horatian maxims in- 

 fluence and Horatian pursuits absorb — deep-bodied 

 claret — the sound of rippling w^aters — the glancing, 

 lustrous leaves — the voice of birds — and the conscious- 

 ness of bills paid, with a juicy balance left. At this 

 period it is, perhaps, that the amateur agriculturist is 

 in his bloom. He has, by dint of judicious ample 

 expenditure, deep cultivation, minute oversight, and 

 unwearied persecution of weedlings, brought his land 

 to yield an annually improved solid lump. He can 

 afford to experiment in the way of thin sowing, and 



