Mr. John Morley says fills the young orator with the same
emotions of enthusiasm, emulation, and despair that (according to the
same authority) invariably torment the artist who first gazes on 'The
Madonna' at Dresden, or the figures of 'Night' and 'Dawn' at Florence.
All these things you know, else are you mighty self-denying of your
pleasures. But it is just possible you may have forgotten the following
extract from one of Burke's farming letters to Arthur Young:

'One of the grand points in controversy (a controversy indeed chiefly
carried on between practice and speculation) is that of _deep
ploughing_. In your last volume you seem, on the whole, rather
against that practice, and have given several reasons for your
judgment which deserve to be very well considered. In order to know
how we ought to plough, we ought to know what end it is we propose to
ourselves in that operation. The first and instrumental end is to
divide the soil; the last and ultimate end, so far as regards the
plants, is to facilitate the pushing of the blade upwards, and the
shooting of the roots in all the inferior directions. There is
further proposed a more ready admission of external influences--the
rain, the sun, the air, charged with all those heterogeneous contents,
some, possibly all, of which are necessary for the nourishment of the
plants. By ploughing deep you answer these ends in a greater mass of
the soil. This would seem in favour of deep ploughing as nothing else
than accomplishing, in a more perfect manner, those very ends for
which you are induced to plough at all. But doubts here arise, only
to be solved by experiment. First, is it quite certain that it is
good for the ear and grain of farinaceous plants that their roots
should spread and descend into the ground to the greatest possible
distances and depths? Is there not some limit in this? We know that
in timber, what makes one part flourish does not equally conduce to
the benefit of all; and that which may be beneficial to the wood, does
not equally contribute to the quantity and goodness of the fruit; and,
_vice versa_, that what increases the fruit largely is often far from
serviceable to the tree. Secondly, is that looseness to great depths,
supposing it is useful to one of the species of plants, equally useful
to all? Thirdly, though the external influences--the rain, the sun,