SHELTEK, 
37 
farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one 
of them says pertinently that a great part of their 
failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely 
failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is incon¬ 
venient ; that is, it is the moral character that breaks 
down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the 
matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the 
other three succeed in saving their souls, but are per¬ 
chance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail hon¬ 
estly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring-boards 
from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its 
somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank 
of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off 
here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agri¬ 
cultural machine were suent. 
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a 
livelihood by a formula more complicated than the prob¬ 
lem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in 
herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his 
trap with a hair springe to catch comfort and independ¬ 
ence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into 
it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar 
reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage 
comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman 
sings, — 
“ The false society of men — 
— for earthly greatness 
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.” 
And when the farmer has got his house, he may not 
be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house 
that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid 
objection urged by Momus against the house which Mi¬ 
nerva made, that she “had not made it movable, by 
