the air--act undoubtedly a part, and a large part, in vegetation, does
it follow that they are equally salutary in any quantities, at any
depths? Or that, though it may be useful to diffuse one of these
agents as extensively as may be in the earth, that therefore it will
be equally useful to render the earth in the same degree pervious to
all? It is a dangerous way of reasoning in physics, as well as
morals, to conclude, because a given proportion of anything is
advantageous, that the double will be quite as good, or that it will
be good at all. Neither in the one nor the other is it always true
that two and two make four.'

This is magnificent, but it is not farming, and you will easily believe
that Burke's attempts to till the soil were more costly than productive.
Farming, if it is to pay, is a pursuit of small economies; and Burke was
far too Asiatic, tropical, and splendid to have anything to do with small
economies. His expenditure, like his rhetoric, was in the 'grand style.'
He belongs to Charles Lamb's great race, 'the men who borrow.' But
indeed it was not so much that Burke borrowed as that men lent. Right-
feeling men did not wait to be asked. Dr. Brocklesby, that good
physician, whose name breathes like a benediction through the pages of
the biographies of the best men of his time, who soothed Dr. Johnson's
last melancholy hours, and for whose supposed heterodoxy the dying man
displayed so tender a solicitude, wrote to Burke, in the strain of a
timid suitor proposing for the hand of a proud heiress, to know whether
Burke would be so good as to accept 1,000 pounds at once, instead of
waiting for the writer's death. Burke felt no hesitation in obliging so
old a friend. Garrick, who, though fond of money, was as
generous-hearted a fellow as ever brought down a house, lent Burke 1,000
pounds. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who has been reckoned stingy, by his will
left Burke 2,000 pounds, and forgave him another 2,000 pounds which he
had lent him. The Marquis of Rockingham by his will directed all Burke's
bonds held by him to be cancelled. They amounted to 30,000 pounds.
Burke's patrimonial estate was sold by him for 4,000 pounds; and I have
seen it stated that he had received altogether from family sources as
much as 20,000 pounds. And yet he was always poor, and was glad at the
last to accept pensions from the Crown in order that he might not leave
his wife a beggar. This goo