84 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



sight-seeker, who seems to have expected a series of 

 dissolving views, or some dioramic transparency exhi- 

 biting Drains running, Sub-soil crumbling, Ammonia 

 fixing, Turnips growing, Sheep fattening, Wheat 

 reaping, and all the phenomena that ( trammel up the 

 consequence' of agricultural emprise, much after the 

 fashion of the nursery tale that finds such rapid 

 denouement when " the cat began to eat the mouse." 

 Beautiful in every best sense of the word as an 

 improved and well-cultivated farm may be, how 

 bashfully does it reveal to any but the deserving eye, 

 the eye that has rightfully and laboriously earned 

 its perceptive skill, the developed capability and 

 power obtained by the soil from the judicious ap- 

 pliances of art. The Painter may draw a Landscape, 

 the Florist may furnish a Hothouse, the Landscape- 

 gardener may produce an ' effect ' with compendious 

 skill; but there are two things in nature bearing 

 truthful analogy with each other, from the world of 

 matter to that of mind, which defy the hand of imita- 

 tion ; both are comprehended by the one same word, 

 CULTIVATION. It carries no label on its back, no 

 title-page or illustration to the idle speculation of the 

 eye ; it is no talker ; it asks " an understanding, but 

 no tongue : " full as Nature is of ornament, at every 



