A CONVERT, AND A HERETIC. 23 



who feel justly proud of their commander : he had 

 arrived at the highest summit of his profession. He 

 returned to them with doubled authority and import- 

 ance; and the drainage of my first field was soon 

 accomplished : not as deeply indeed as we now call 

 deeply; but deep enough, after the ridges had been 

 twice cast, to allow Exall and Andrews' subsoiler to 

 follow r the cross-ploughing a year afterwards, and break 

 to pieces as obdurate a hearthpan as ever resisted the 

 root of an oak. 



' After the ridges had been twice cast :' how easy it 

 looks in print ! What a pretty little Example-farm 

 would England and what would not Ireland be, if 

 the Press could thus cultivate and civilize ! if ploughs 

 were printers' types and fields were paper if bogs 

 and fens and marshes could be drained like inkpots, 

 and every drop that falls from Heaven from which 

 there falls not one drop NO ! NOT ONE DROP too 

 much or too little were apportioned to its proper 

 place and task. It falls upon its proper place, and 

 under that place lies its task, would but Man talieve 

 and act upon the hint, and do his part, his gloriously 

 privileged part, in carrying out, for his own benefit, 

 the purposes of perfect Wisdom, the indications of 

 an ever-suggestive Handy-work. 



