DISSOLVING VIEWS. 83 



geological liberties people take with her in her old 

 age to what they used to do; inverting her estab- 

 lished strata, shovelling Lias, Chalk, and Red-sand- 

 stone over each other in most admired disorder, leav- 

 ing only these frail memorials standing as if by way 

 of a small sample of ' England before the Conquest ' 

 of spade and wheelbarrow. 



When looking over the changed aspect of a twenty 

 acre field, with its drained, deepened, levelled, manured, 

 turnipped, barleyed, soil, smoothly smiling under the 

 sunshine in its first year's Clover, how often I have 

 wished that some such relic of its original state could 

 have survived, to present to the imaginative eye that 

 now sees it for the first time, the long story 



" Eheu ! quantus equis, quantus crat sudor 

 Viris!" 



and furnish a reply of befitting smartness to the cold- 

 blooded cruelty of look and phrase that extinguishes 

 all your pride-full thoughts by some such damning 

 praise as this : " Well ! a very nice field ; a very 

 beautiful field, indeed ! very nice, but a I don't see 

 anything particular, not very particular at least, in 

 it. I'm no farmer, you know ; you'll excuse me," 

 &c. " Excuse you ! Why, what upon earth did you 

 come out to see?" I long to ask of each gaping 



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