THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 207 



scious of our ignorance when we have occasion to 

 address the owners by name. * Talking makes a 

 ready man, reading a full man, writing an exact 

 man,' says the old proverb. That laying out of 

 a subject in detail which talking requires, Clothing 

 it in simple and intelligible language, yet illustrated 

 with analogies and metaphor, suited to the individual 

 addressed, is an exercise in itself susceptible of such 

 improvement, that one is sometimes tempted to ask, 

 whether, after all, language owes more to Thought, 

 or thought to Language. 



And thus, in the conversations that ensued with 

 Mr. Greening, derived from my original promise 

 to him to put this question of Steam-cultivation into 

 * plain English,' I soon felt that it is one thing to see 

 a matter as plain as a pike-staff before your own 

 mind prepared to understand it, and a very different 

 thing to make it intelligible to those who have never 

 given any express attention to it before. In defe- 

 rence to its importance I will try to restate the whole 

 question ; dropping, for continuity's sake, the dia- 

 logue form in which the subject was, by frequent 

 and useful objections on his part, made to develope 

 itself. 



