126 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



Not organised itself, it is yet the active Source of 

 Organism. Its gifts come to man duty-laden. To 

 take the one without the other is, in the long run, 

 impossible. And curiously enough, the Earth is 

 herself the first witness of a breach of the duties 

 she devolves on and between those who cultivate, 

 or inherit her gifts, as she was of the earliest 

 wrong committed between man and his brother 

 man. She speaks, with most miraculous organ ; 

 and tells you the character of the cultivator, or the 

 proprietor, or both, as plainly as your eyes may 

 choose to read it. 



Take a walk through an Allotment ground. To 

 an expert eye, does not each little oblong plot of 

 land, with its varied produce, care, culture, and con- 

 dition, tell its separate tale, as if the soil were the 

 destined mirror of the hand and mind of man? 

 Does it need the voice or finger of the showman to 

 point out the characteristics of the several occu- 

 pants ? Here there is industry, there idleness : 

 here again is hard labour, without skill or know- 

 ledge ; there you have experimental attempts, de- 

 spising established practice overmuch, and ending 

 in failure : here again is toil over-tasked and strug- 

 gling against want of means the spade without the 



