CONCLUSION. 227 



joyful hour that shall restore him to all he has lately 

 parted from the writer of these pages was fain to 

 welcome the emprise of a task, which might have 

 scared away, as indeed it had done, all to whom life 

 was not so dead, that the only thing that could rise 

 again upon it was a blister. 



Such was in truth the condition under which, to 

 the amazement of that surrounding world called 

 ' Friends/ and the consternation of that critic's gal- 

 lery, one's own tenantry, I ventured on the solitary 

 occupation of a farm whose desolate and repulsive 

 features have been sufficiently portrayed, and with 

 little of exaggeration. Steeped to the eyes in all 

 those notions of science and exactness which a work- 

 ing University experience, and 'those Temples twain 

 Inner and Middle/ may be supposed to infuse into 

 the brains of younger sons, I plunged into my task 

 with all that sanguine and pedantic enthusiasm best 

 known, in farming, under the expressive title of ' Fire- 

 edge/ "A blessed thing," I have before said, "is 

 the untaught boldness of youth !" a blessed thing in 

 its way, and in its time and place. It is as much in- 

 tended, and has its appointed task, in the great Order 

 and Economy of things, as the most cautious sagacity 

 and profound experience of advanced life. "There 



Q 2 



