218 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



' But the Plough had left its ridge-and-furrow 

 impress not more in the fields than, alas ! on the 

 mind of the agriculturist of that day. It was long, 

 and naturally so, before he could bring an imagina- 

 tion preoccupied with the old-established system of 

 field-culture, to recognise its impending emancipation 

 from the whole chain of subordinate necessities ex- 

 acted by the employment of horse-labour. The old 

 fable had become reversed : the quadruped was riding 

 the man : and to shake him off was now the difficulty ! 

 For a century after its invention, the Steam-engine 

 lay still-born to the soil, and the virtue unappreciated 

 of a new power which could antiquate mere imple- 

 ments altogether, and convert the cultivating agent 

 into a machine, in the strict sense of the word ; a 

 machine whose locomotion across the field was a mere 

 collateral incident, not a means ; as the sheep, or ox, 

 walks over the pasture to crop it, but does not crop 

 it by walking. 



* And yet it was somewhat strange, too, that re- 

 cognition should have been so tardy, and prejudice so 

 ineradicable on this point, when we reflect that modes 

 of tillage already existed, so totally and specifically 

 different in action from all horse-worked implements, 

 as those both of the Spade and its more ancient con- 



