the old and general methods." And again he
says,--"It requires ten times more of labor, of vigilance, of attention,
of skill, and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the
business of a farmer with success, than what belongs to any other
trade."

May not "A Farmer" take a little pride in such testimony as this?

One of his biographers tells us, that, in his later years, the neighbors
saw him on one occasion, at his home of Beaconsfield, leaning upon the
shoulder of a favorite old horse, (which had the privilege of the lawn,)
and sobbing. Whereupon the gossiping villagers reported the great man
crazed. Ay, crazed,--broken by the memory of his only and lost son
Richard, with whom this aged saddle-horse had been a special
favorite,--crazed, no doubt, at thought of the strong young hand whose
touch the old beast waited for in vain,--crazed and broken,--an oak,
ruined and blasted by storms. The great mind in this man was married to
a great heart.

It is almost with a feeling of awe that I enter upon my wet-day studies
the name of Oliver Goldsmith: I love so much his tender story of the
good Vicar; I love so much his poems. The world is accustomed to regard
that little novel, which Dr. Johnson bargained away for sixty guineas,
as a rural tale: it is so quiet; it is so simple; its atmosphere is
altogether so redolent of the country. And yet all, save some few
critical readers, will be surprised to learn that there is not a picture
of natural scenery in the book of any length; and wherever an allusion
of the kind appears, it does not bear the impress of a mind familiar
with the country, and practically at home there. The Doctor used to go
out upon the Edgeware road,--not for his love of trees, but to escape
noise and duns. Yet we overlook literalness, charmed as we are by the
development of his characters and by the sweet burden of his story. The
statement may seem extraordinary, but I could transcribe every rural,
out-of-door scene in the "Vicar of Wakefield" upon a single half-page of
foolscap. Of the first home of the Vicar we have only this account:--"We
had an elegant house, situated in a fine country and a good
neighborhood." Of his second home there is this more full
description:--"Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a
sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a
prattling river before: on one side a meadow, on the other a green. My
farm consisted of about twenty acres of ex