keepers about my ways to ascertain the extent of my lunacy, I conclude your letter to have been the result of one of your own vagaries, which evaporated as the ink dried. Small as the scale of my experiment has been, I am free to confess, my dear Eusebius, that had my scale been extended, I do not believe you to have been guilty of any exaggeration, nor that your picture would have been a caricature. I will, in the very commencement, set your mind at rest. My farming, of which you make so black an account, is at an end—"Othello's occupation's gone"—I have in disgust thrown all up—the unpleasant feeling has worn off, and I can now laugh with the best of them, at myself. I made known to you my intention to purchase a few acres; you said nothing to dissuade me from so doing. I bought, and thinking the next step in life was to acquire some knowledge of agriculture, determined to manage it myself; perhaps I should have said mismanage. I had no conception of the interest taken in these pursuits; my anxiety, at first pleasing, soon became so intense as to be perfectly painful. I will not tire you with an account of all my minute concerns—you have well described them by asserting they would afford no rest. But so had I been given up to other, I may say quite other, pursuits, that though for a time I had with much resolution discarded them practically, they would force themselves upon my mind, when I was striving to fix it upon matters relating to my new occupation. The effect was, that I began to be a cold utilitarian, and to look upon my former studies with something like contempt—then as enemies. This was a lamentable state; I had forsaken the delight of all my days, and resembled Cowley's state, described by him in the "Abeyance of Love,"
"Thousand worse passions then possess'd
The interregnum of my breast."
I felt degraded, for I had lost one ingredient of happiness, and certainly not found another. And I was conscious that I was, in all proper knowledge that should become a man, (i. e. a farmer,) decidedly inferior to the lowest of the grade. I am afraid, had prosperity crowned my little attempt, I should have become penurious and avaricious. I was like the glass-seller in the "Arabian Tale," in building castles, and destroying the means whereof to build them. I will not be wearisome by enumerating all my little disasters, but merely tell you how I managed about my sheep. I had a day-labourer who served me as a hind: he was a faithful and honest fellow, I believe, but a bit of a wag; he had a dry humour about him, not that I, by any means, would say he did not do his best to moisten it; he was about forty years of age, a little man, every feature in his face seemed to have a screw in it, which he could move either way at pleasure; whenever he spoke seriously he always looked straight at a wall, (if one was near him,) or the bole of a tree, or, if no such object presented itself, at his fingers, (and they looked like things grown out of rough ground;) but whenever there was a sly meaning in what he had to say, he always looked up in your face, let out some of his screws, and tightened others, and nearly half-closed one eye, and all but quite the other, and inclined his head a trifle towards his right shoulder. This would have amused me, but I soon discovered it was his usual mode of telling that something or other went wrong, something out of its usual course, which he meant to show went wrong through my fault. But "revenons a nos moutons"—my first purchase of sheep happened thus: I was recommended to send to the fair of , and told what I ought to give for half-a-score of ewes. Before the fair day, however, as I was walking along the road, near my garden gate, I met a large flock of sheep, and some drovers. I found they were going to the fair. Here, thought I, is an opportunity not to be lost—no trouble of sending to fair—and a manifest saving in having them driven home; I found, too, the price was much under what I was told to give, so I thought myself perfectly safe: sheep were sheep, and the sheep I bought—and without the aid of my man. When he came up, (as he was sent for to put the sheep in the field,) I said with an air of some importance, never having been the master of so many animals before, "Here, Richard. I have bought to-night these sheep." "Which, sir," said he, "ewes or wethers?" I am ashamed to confess, Eusebius, that
