* LANDLORD AND TENANT.' 127 



dung-fork a hard and pitiless struggle ; there 

 plenty of manure-heaps, but wastefully and un- 

 evenly applied : here again is loss of time upon too 

 close a minuteness and pettiness of culture, there 

 too large and daring a system, which risks the whole 

 space upon a single crop. Every variety and sub- 

 variety of character is self-drawn and pictured on 

 the soil, a photographic portrait of the cultivator. 

 And so it is upon that great Allotment-field could 

 one but as easily look over it the farms spread, 

 border-to-border, over the various geological systems 



of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 



* * * # * 



To this same wide Field, with its many modes of 

 tillage, its various kinds of produce, and equally 

 varied character both of occupation and of owner- 

 ship, insensibly flew the thoughts of the puzzled 

 reader of a certain budget of fourteen letters, and 

 of another about the same in dimension, which the 

 following post brought from the punctual Messrs. 

 Penn and Debbitt. 



Reflection might well be allowed to be more long- 

 winded, and Imagination itself to be more fanciful 

 than usual even with the Chronicler, when arrived 

 at the end of the last of these missives and the 



