THE WASTE. 5 



wish to know it was that strange incomprehensible 

 infatuated damaging thing which from my cradle up- 

 wards I had heard described and deprecated under 

 the almost forbidden name of Farming. Dr. John- 

 son calls it the delight of destiny to counterchange 

 the plans and purposes of man ; but some other wise 

 man, I think it is Lord Bacon, tells us to ' choose the 

 life that is most useful, and habit will make it the 

 most agreeable/ But accident seems more potent 

 than destiny, plan, purpose, choice, or habit. On a 

 long sea- voyage, and in a rather dull and resourceless 

 foreign land, a couple of unbidden companions had 

 stuck by me with persecuting tenacity, and attracted 

 first my acquaintance then my intimacy, for sheer 

 want of anything else: they were two books: to wit, 

 Cobbett's edition of Tull's Works, and the Useful- 

 Knowledge Society's volumes on British Husbandry. 

 I read them, and re-read them; and then began 

 again: for nine mortal months I was reduced to 

 gorge my literary appetite upon these husks, as I 

 at first regarded them. The Georgics of Virgil had 

 begun and ended all my previous acquaintance with 

 farming ; they were the sole associating tie that con- 

 nected me with this sudden and enforced onslaught 

 upon the ' theory and practice of Agriculture/ and I 



