120 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



be asked for modified self-interest. It is easy to say 

 that Land may be let like a House, or a Wharf. So 

 it may. But with the mere lease ends all the simili- 

 tude ; except such as lies between dead stone walls 

 shaped and laid together by human hands, and the 

 living teeming earth whose fertile bosom is impregnate 

 with the perpetual action of a life-producing agency. 

 We talk of the ' constituents of the soil/ and some- 

 thing we may know of them : but who can unravel 

 the wondrous tale of their intercourse and inter-ac- 

 tion, or bind them captive to the dry covenants of a 

 motive-chilling lease ? So may a leaf or a flower be 

 'manufactured/ or an animal 'carved' in wood or 

 stone: but they are deficient in that one element 

 which was said to have reached its acme from human 

 art when the watch was heard ticking in the pocket of 

 the dead soldier. 



In a word, brick-and-mortar walls, lath-and-plaster 

 partitions, oak floors, and marble chimney pieces, are 

 dead things, the fitting subjects of a dead contract : 

 but there is a still life, a rebounding vitality for good 

 or ill in the Soil, the glorious handywork of a higher 

 manufacture that will hardly brook the dull sloth of 

 sleeping partnership. Not organized itself, it is yet 

 the active source of organism. Its gifts come to man 



