'CALX* AND RECALCITRATION. 37 



pair of harrows, into what old Evelyn must have 

 especially had in his eye when he talked of ' a roscid 

 and fertile mould/ 



'Easy work it is to preach about farming experi- 

 ments/ thought I to myself, as I wandered in the 

 gloomy evenings of December and January, amongst 

 the square clods that lay exhumed upon the surface 

 of the field, with the spade-mark inscribed in frozen 

 obduracy upon their sides, like the blocks in the 

 quarries of Syracuse dated with the tool-marks of 

 twenty centuries ago ! ' Easy work to preach experi- 

 ments, that take a year to make, and another to judge 

 of, and another and perhaps another still, to see the 

 whole result of, to men whose "threescore years 

 and ten" were hardly a sufficient Lease in which to 

 scrape together a dozen facts beyond what their 

 fathers knew ! A pretty homily upon LEASES there 

 lies in these clods that have been keeping sentry here 

 these three months, while the Manufacturer has worn 

 a steam-engine from new to old, and the Trader has 

 turned over half his capital, and briskly put in a fresh 

 stock of ' Spring Fashions/ In the name of Common 

 Sense, that useful ' raw material ' which England has 

 as plentiful as Coal and Iron, what dead carcase has 

 been chained to this living Art of Arts to clog its pro- 

 gress and to rot its vital powers, by adding the curse 



