ll get the best _gill_ on your road, and
how it will be safest for you to make the last glass you take into toddy,
before you go to bed. We think he must often have taken up his night's
quarters at Tommy Robson's on the Reed Water, on his travels by Watling
Street to the Stagshaw Bank Fair.

Then he changes the scene for us. He is a ploughman for the time. He tells
how he managed his horses, guided his plough, turned over his furrows,
mended his harness, and how three times a-day he fed heartily and well
upon his oatmeal brose, and was healthy and strong in limb, happy in mind,
and free from care. We question if he is heartier or happier now.

Next we find him writing like one who has been promoted to the rank of
grieve or farm-steward. He has assumed the tone and look of a man who has
responsibility upon his shoulders--who has graver duties to perform, and
from whom more is expected. He tells us how he manages his men, apportions
their hours of labour, and distributes to each his appropriate quantity
and time of work. The scene shifts, and we see him in the market selling
his corn. He wants threepence a bushel more, and he will hold out till he
gets it. His sample is good, for his land has been well managed, and his
grain well cleaned; he knows what his article is worth, as things are
going in the market, and he will be an old corn-merchant who takes him in.

Or he has stock to sell, and there he goes into the whisky shop to finish
his bargain. You heard him ask ten shillings more than he meant to take?
That was because he knew the buyer was a higgler, and would have left him
at once had he refused to come down in his price. Now they are gravely
discussing the point over the gill-stoup. They are within half-a-crown
now. Another gill will close the bargain. It is finished; the buyer is
pleased; and our grieve is five shillings richer than if the bargain had
been closed briefly and in the open air.

He is not a bad writer for a practical man who enables you, in a book upon
farming, to call up successive transactions in a manner so vivid as this.

Next, he wishes to become a farmer on his own account, and he looks about
for a farm that will suit him. On this subject he has an excellent chapter
in his third volume. He has been faithful to his master, and now he acts
honourably towards his equals:--

"Here," he says, "let me mention at the outset, that it is considered
amongst farmers a dishonourable act to lo