CONCLUSION. 235 



welcome the emprise of a task which might have 

 scared away, as indeed it had done, all to whom life 

 was not so dead, that the only thing that could rise 

 again upon it was a blister. 



Such was in truth the condition under which, to 

 the amazement of that surrounding world called 



* Friends,' and the consternation of that critic's 

 gallery, called Tenantry, I ventured on the solitary 

 occupation of a farm whose desolate and repulsive 

 features have been sufficiently portrayed, and with 

 little of exaggeration. Steeped to the eyes in all 

 those notions of science and exactness which a work- 

 ing University experiences, and * those Temples twain, 

 Inner and Middle,' may be supposed to infuse into 

 the brains of younger sons, I plunged into my task 

 with all that sanguine and pedantic enthusiasm best 

 known, in farming, under the expressive title of 



* Fire-edge.' * A blessed thing,' I have before said, 

 ' is the untaught boldness of youth ! ' a blessed thing 

 in its way, and in its time and place. It is as much 

 intended, and has its appointed task, in the great 

 Order and Economy of things, as the most cautious 

 sagacity and profound experience of advanced life. 



* There is that scattereth and yet increaseth : ' and 

 He who appointed life as an advancing experience, 



