A CONVERT, AND A HERETIC. 25 



form, and then, leaving a train of smoke and brim- 

 stone, vanished with a clap of thunder from before 

 the eyes of my catechist, I do not think his face 

 would have assumed a greater expression of re- 

 sourceless and complete astonishment than followed 

 this extraordinary announcement of the reason for 

 a farming operation. Vainly had I attempted to ex- 

 plain in former conversations that when a field is 

 effectually drained, the furrows are -tnderground, 

 three feet deep ; and that one of the great objects of 

 breaking the subsoil is to enable the water to go 

 where it was intended to go, DOWNWARDS ; that every 

 unevenness of the surface was a source of deviation, 

 and therefore of unequal distribution, of that rich 

 food which falls from Heaven, Oxygen and Hydro- 

 gen, commonly called WATER; that on the best 

 land, farmed in the best way, furrows are avoided as 

 a nuisance and a loss, except as a mark for measure- 

 work ; and that the object of draining and subsoiling 

 was as the object of all Art is to imitate NATURE 

 in her most perfect examples. 



The paradox of yesterday is the truism of to-day. 

 Gas-lamps light up towns and Great Westerns cross 

 the Atlantic, though Davy laughed at the one and 

 Lardner at the other. And the principle of the 



