s wing in summer but I feel an
inclination to take down the booklet of the good old Parson, drop into
my library-chair, and follow up at my leisure all the gyrations and
flutterings and incubations of all the _hirundines_ of Selborne. Every
country-liver should own the book, and be taught from it--nicety of
observation.

* * * * *

There was another clergyman of a different stamp,--the Reverend John
Trusler of Cobham, Surrey,--who wrote about this time a book on
chronology, a few romances, a book on law, and another upon farming. He
commenced public life as an apothecary; from his drug-shop he went to
the pulpit, thence to book-selling, and finally to book-making. I am
inclined to think that he found the first of these two trades the more
profitable one: it generally is.

Mr. Trusler introduces his agricultural work by declaring that it
"contains all the knowledge necessary in the plain business of farming,
unencumbered with theory, speculation, or experimental inquiry";--by
which it will be seen that the modesty of the author was largely
overborne by the enterprise of the bookseller. The sole value of his
treatise lies in certain statistical details with regard to the cost and
profits of different crops, prices of food, rates of wages, etc. By his
showing, the profit of an acre of wheat in 1780 was L2 10_s_; of barley,
L3 3_s_ 6_d_; of buckwheat, L2 19_s_; and a farm of one hundred and
fifty acres, judiciously managed, would leave a profit of L379.

These estimates of farm-profits, however, at all times, are very
deceptive. A man can write up his own balance-sheet, but he cannot make
up his neighbor's. There will be too many screws--or pigs--loose, which
he cannot take into the reckoning. The agricultural journals give us
from time to time the most alluring "cash-accounts" of farm-revenue,
which make me regard, for a month or two thereafter, every sober-sided
farmer I meet as a Rasselas,--"choring" and "teaming it" in a Happy
Valley; but shortly I come upon some retired citizen, turned farmer, and
active member of a Horticultural Society, slipping about the doors of
some "Produce and Commission Store" for his winter's stock of
vegetables, butter, and fruits,--and the fact impresses me doubtfully
and painfully. It is not often, unfortunately, that printed
farm-accounts--most of all, model-farm-accounts--will bear close
scrutiny. Sometimes there is delicate reservation of any charge for