and his imagination refined it, and his fancy set it
aflow in those jocund lines which bound and writhe and exult with a
passionate love for the things of field and air.

* * * * *

I close these papers, with my eye resting upon the same stretch of
fields,--the wooded border of a river,--the twinkling roofs and spires
flanked by hills and sea,--where my eye rested when I began this story
of the old masters with Hesiod and the bean-patches of Ithaca. And I
take a pleasure in feeling that the farm-practice over all the fields
below me rests upon the cumulated authorship of so long a line of
teachers. Yon open furrow, over which the herbage has closed, carries
trace of the ridging in the "Works and Days"; the brown field of
half-broken clods is the fallow ([Greek: Neos]) of Xenophon; the drills
belong to Worlidge; their culture with the horse-hoe is at the order of
Master Tull. Young and Cobbett are full of their suggestions; Lancelot
Brown has ordered away a great straggling hedge-row; and Sir Uvedale
Price has urged me to spare a hoary maple which lords it over a
half-acre of flat land. Cato gives orders for the asparagus, and Switzer
for the hot-beds. Crescenzi directs the walling, and Smith of Deanston
the ploughing. Burns embalms all my field-mice, and Cowper drapes an urn
for me in a tangled wilderness. Knight names my cherries, and Walton,
the kind master, goes with me over the hill to a wee brook that bounds
down under hemlocks and soft maples, for "a contemplative man's
recreation." Davy long ago caught all the fermentation of my manure-heap
in his retort, and Thomson painted for me the scene which is under my
window to-day. Mowbray cures the pip in my poultry, and all the songs of
all the birds are caught and repeated to the echo in the pages of the
poets which lie here under my hand; through the prism of their verse,
Patrick the cattle-tender changes to a lithe milkmaid, against whose
ankles the buttercups nod rejoicingly, and Rosamund (which is the nurse)
wakes all Arden (which is Edgewood) with a rich burst of laughter.

And shall I not be grateful to these my patrons? And shall I count it
unworthy to pass these few in-door hours of rain in the emblazonment of
their titles?

Nor must I forget here to express my indebtedness to those kind friends
who have from time to time favored me with suggestions or corrections,
in the course of these papers, and to those others--not a few-