ers,
but he was good-natured and obliging, and while he foraged their pony,
furnished their woodyard with logs and faggots, and supplied them from
his dairy, he gratuitously performed for the family at the hall many
other offices which tended to their comfort and convenience, but which
cost him nothing.

Mr. Ferrars liked to have a chat every now and then with Farmer
Thornberry, who had a shrewd and idiomatic style of expressing his
limited, but in its way complete, experience of men and things, which
was amusing and interesting to a man of the world whose knowledge of
rural life was mainly derived from grand shooting parties at great
houses.

The pride and torment of Farmer Thornberry's life was his only child,
Job.

"I gave him the best of educations," said the farmer; "he had a much
better chance than I had myself, for I do not pretend to be a scholar,
and never was; and yet I cannot make head or tail of him. I wish you
would speak to him some day, sir. He goes against the land, and yet we
have been on it for three generations, and have nothing to complain of;
and he is a good farmer, too, is Job, none better; a little too fond of
experimenting, but then he is young. But I am very much afraid he will
leave me. I think it is this new thing the big-wigs have set up in
London that has put him wrong, for he is always reading their papers."

"And what is that?" said Mr. Ferrars.

"Well, they call themselves the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge,
and Lord Brougham is at the head of it."

"Ah! he is a dangerous man," said Mr. Ferrars.

"Do you know, I think he is," said Farmer Thornberry, very seriously,
"and by this token, he says a knowledge of chemistry is necessary for
the cultivation of the soil."

"Brougham is a man who would say anything," said Mr. Ferrars, "and of
one thing you may be quite certain, that there is no subject which Lord
Brougham knows thoroughly. I have proved that, and if you ever have time
some winter evening to read something on the matter, I will lend you a
number of the 'Quarterly Review,' which might interest you."

"I wish you would lend it to Job," said the farmer.

Mr. Ferrars found Job not quite so manageable in controversy as his
father. His views were peculiar, and his conclusions certain. He had
more than a smattering too of political economy, a kind of knowledge
which Mr. Ferrars viewed with suspicion; for though he had himself been
looked upon as enlightened in this re