would remain altogether unsown, because
hand-labour could never get through the
work in time. Again, instead of a general
muster to thresh out in a hurry with
the flail, the steam-engine with its steady
speed does the work when wanted, without
waiting for rainy days, idle hands, and an
empty barn. At Boxted Lodge, by way of a
practical lesson, Mr. Fisher Hobbes had the
same field reaped, ploughed, and sown, in the
same day; and had part of the wheat thus
reaped, threshed out, ground into flour by
steam-power, and made into bread for his
dinner-party: thus exhibiting a specimen of
the system of continuous machine-work to
which the best agriculturists are coming.

What we still need, is, an economical steam-
cultivator, which will work from light to
dark, and even, after dark, with lamps, if
necessary, to take advantage of short and
doubtful seasons, superseding the slow plough,
as the machine-drill has superseded the
broadcast sower. That invention is coming,
and then the circle of machine cultivation
will be nearly complete.

Yet, after all, we must not forget that
agricultural results have their bounds; we
cannot invent a sun, or improve our national
seasons. There is a well-defined limit to the
growth of corn; it cannot be rolled out by
the yard or the bushel; the utmost we can
do is to use up every hour of farming weather,
and to waste no land or manures on weeds.

QUIET PEOPLE.

SHE was dignified, but not graceful; moral,
I should say, without delicacy; with common
sense, but little taste; and apparently
wealthy, without talent of any kind. She
was tall, but there was no breadth about her
person, though she certainly was not thin.
She had no superfluity of waist, nor, to adopt
Falstaff's pun, waste of any kind, though she
was not spare and meagre. There was plenty
of bone and muscle, but they lacked fleshly
covering, and the blood revelled not in veins
like hers. It was impossible that I could
like the lady; yet she must have been liked,
for she was married. Her husband was above
the common size, with a full, handsome
countenance, inclined to sensuality, but slenderly
endowed with intellectual expression. He,
it was evident, could not, at any rate, have
been fascinated with his companion. Yet
they might have been suited to each other,
for both appeared to manifest an equal
degree of stolidity. They were, indeed,
average specimens of respectability, without
merit. On horseback, both would have
probably looked well enough; for they would
have overtopped their steeds nobly, and, I
think, the lady might have looked even
elegant on a palfrey sufficiently large not to
make the contrast too great between her and
it.  But they were out of place in a fashionable
crowd; and I could not imagine them, in
any company, maintaining conversation with
any degree of intelligence.

Still it was strange that such people should
become the subjects of observation. There
must have been something to have caused
that—something phreno-typical (I hope the
word is understood) to compel so much
speculation in an unconcerned spectator.
But, I have frequently remarked that
awkwardness of any kind is of itself suggestive.
It indicates a point in the manners of the
individual, where art has not interfered, and
where, accordingly, a display of natural
character may be expected. However, I looked
in vain for any such intimation, and therefore
my curiosity, if I had any, remained
ungratified.

Did they belong to that class of people
who have no character except that of station
and incapacity? I was both inclined to
believe this and to doubt it. I thought, at
length, that if their acquaintance could be
made in private, they might not be altogether
uninteresting as human beings, though
essentially common-place in their minds and
habits. Over a breakfast-table, now, I
imagined, while their appetites were sharp,
there might escape them certain signs by
which one could detect in them their
relative idiosyncracies—a long word which I
would willingly change, but cannot—some of
the attributes, I mean, belonging to willing
and desiring beings, having individual life
and passions.

It fell out, at last, in the oddest manner,
that I became intimately acquainted with
these married specimens of vis inertiæ) in
ordinary life. Their name was Pilkington.
Mr. and Mrs. Pilkington, of Ranelagh Villas,
St. John's Wood. My friend Tom Goodwood
introduced me at once; they were old
acquaintances of his, and readily admitted
me into their family circle on his introduction.
Next day, I found myself at dinner
with them and Tom Goodwood at the villa
near the park.

It was a pretty villa enough; but I dislike
the low roof and the contracted chamber, so
constructed to please, the fancy of the architect,
not for the convenience of the tenant.
Mr. and Mrs. Pilkington, however, were well
enough satisfied. The villa was like every
other in the neighbourhood, and, therefore, in
their eyes, it was all that it should be. I thought
they stared at me, when I hinted an objection
to the arrangement of a few little things,
daring to doubt whether another kind of
contrivance would not have been more useful.
It seemed to strike them as a new idea that
such matters should be regulated by their
utility. They were, in all respects, the same
identical kind of things, in the same identical
kind of arrangement that were in every
other house in the same locality. There
was a convention in the furniture, too. All
had been sent in from the maker's on a
general plan for furnishing the like of such