CITIZENS RBTIEING TO THE COUNTRY. 135 



natural wealth of the soil has been exhausted, is not a profitable 

 business for amateurs — but quite the reverse. And a citizen who 

 has a sufficient income without farming, had better not damage it 

 by engaging in so expensive an amusement. 



" But we must have something to do ; we have been busy near 

 all our lives, and cannot retire into the country to fold our hands 

 and sit in the sunshine to be idle." Precisely so. But you need 

 not therefore ruin yourself on a large farm. Do not be ambitious 

 of being great landed proprietors. Assume that you need occupation 

 and interest, and buy a small piece of ground — a few acres only — 

 as few as you please: — ^but without any regard for profit. Leave 

 that to those who have learned farming in a more practical school. 

 You think, perhaps, that you can find nothing to do on a few acres 

 of ground. But that is the greatest of mistakes. A half a dozen 

 acres, the capacities of which are fully developed, will give you 

 more pleasure than five hundred poorly cultivated. And the 

 advantage for you is, that you can, upon your few acres, spend just 

 as little or just as much as you please. If you wish to be prudent, 

 lay out your little estate in a simple way, with grass and trees, and 

 a few walks, and a single man may then take care of it. If you 

 wish to indulge your taste, you may fill it with shrubberies, and 

 arboretums, and conservatories, and flower-gardens, till every tree 

 and plant and fruit in the whole vegetable kingdom, of really 

 superior beauty and interest, is in your collection. Or, if you wish 

 to -turn a penny, you will find it easier to take up certain fruits or 

 plants and grow them to high perfection so as to command a profit 

 in the market, than you will to manage the various operations 

 of a large farm. We could point to ten acres of ground from which 

 a larger income has been produced than from any farm of five hun- 

 dred acres in the country. Gardening, too, offers more variety 

 of interest to a citizen than farming ; its operations are less rude 

 and toilsome, and its pleasures more immediate and refined. Citi- 

 zens, ignorant of farming, should, therefore, buy small places, rather 

 than large ones, if they wish to consult their own true interest and 

 happiness. 



But some of our readers, who have tried the thing, may say that 

 it is a very expensive thing to settle oneself and get well established, 



