'TALPA' LOQUITUR. 155 



I know not whether other * employers of labour ' 

 have felt this sort of paulo-post-futurum experience 

 as I have done. But I suspect so ; for every man is 

 (and it is comforting to think so) only the unit of a 

 class. It is difficult to study for years the character 

 of a soil, without learning something of the character 

 of those employed upon, aye and even of those who 

 visit t it. And this has been my especial grievance, 

 and one which Time, the ' smooth-handed god,' has 

 increased, not lightened. People who derided my 

 ' improvements,' laughed at my ' deep ' drains, bewept 

 my grubbed-up ash-stumps, mourned over my oblite- 

 rated hedgerows, turned up noses at my tank, 

 listened with mock-gravity to my l mysterious ' re- 

 marks about the ' ecomony of warmth ' as cheaper 

 than the ' equivalent in food,' and a great many 

 other things that it would take an inventory to tell, 

 do now come and preach to me such admirable 

 sermons on my poor old antiquated texts, that 

 I should really begin, as other worthies have done 

 before me, to doubt my own identity, but for a 

 little store laid by in a corner, of the capital I began 

 with, and which I commend again to all beginners 

 namely, of philosophy. 



* The mind,' says an old author, ' like the body, 



