84 CHRONICLES OP A CLAY FARM. 



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

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

 dissolving views, or some dioramic transparency ex- 

 hibiting Drains running, Sub-soil crumbling, Am- 

 monia 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 power, the developed capa- 

 bility obtained by the soil from the judicious 

 appliances of art. The Painter may draw a Land- 

 scape, 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 imitation ; both are comprehended 

 by the one same word, CULTIVATION. It carries no 

 label, no title-page or illustration to the idle specu- 



