admiring, seemed contaminated too. It was a
bad business.

But a day or two before that, as the winter
sun was setting, I watched, upon a certain
rising ground, another kind of machine at
work. It was the old plough. Two old horses,
wholly free from the infectious hurry of the age,
and an old labourer, to whose movements the
pace of those worthy animals was peculiarly well
adapted, were engaged in working this ancient
machine. How slowly it made its way along
the hill-side! How long each furrow was in the
making, and at the end of each what a good
opportunity for rest as the turn was made! The
slow undulating movement of the plough had
something infinitely graceful in it. The earth
was lifted gently and graciously and as if it were
touched by friends—not torn and lacerated by
the teeth of enemies. There was peace here.
It was all in harmony; in harmony with the
cawing of the mighty flight of crows, in
harmony with the bare trees, with the little brown
woods, with the golden clouds—with the mind
of the chance wayfarer who paused to look and
listen. He could scarcely be better employed
than in so looking and so listening, for the scene
and all its accompaniments were perfect. Eye
and ear were both made happy. In this chord
there was no one jarring note to spoil the melody.
Can a time ever come when the jar of the steam-
engine will assimilate with a lovely scene, and
when the clatter of the thrashing-machine will
mar the pleasure of a winter ramble no more
than the measured thump of the flail? The
thrashing-machine may separate the wheat from
the straw better than the flail, the ploughing-
machine may turn up a whole field in an incredibly
short time, but these things will never harmonise
with nature, and if we get to be indifferent to
them, and to admire nature in spite of them,
that is the very utmost that we may venture to
hope for.

The interests of the Poetical and of the
Picturesque are both concerned in this agricultural-
implement question. There was, until lately,
both poetry and picturesqueness mixed up with
almost every agricultural pursuit. If steam-
farming is to go on and prosper, it can be so no
longer. And doubtless it will go on, and will
prosper; and the beautiful, as is usual, and I
suppose right, will fall before the practical.
Alas! I am afraid I must put it on record
that the Picturesque is in a bad way. I don't
complain. It has had its day. We have
enjoyed it long, and it will take a long time to
destroy it everywhere. But it is on its last
legs. It is inconvenient and unprofitable. I
am told, and it is my business to chronicle
it, that even the old thatched roof is doomed.
It did not answer. It harboured insects.
It was dreadfully inflammable, and Io! the
new barns are being built with coverings of
slate—slate that looks hard, and blue, and cold
—slate that never becomes beautiful, even with
age—slate that the moss and the lichens abhor
—slate that is clean, and easily kept in repair,
and makes the best roof in the world. Yes,
we are to have farm-houses, and barns, and
out-buildings of brimstone-coloured brick and
blue slate—good sensible edifices, well in
character with the steam-plough and the thrashing-
machine.

But how beautiful that old roof was! It was
always out of repair—bless it. Half of it at
least was covered with patches of dense green
moss. The straw stuck out in places where it
had been mended. The line of it against the
sky, too, was always so irregular, for it was the
practice of the wooden structure beneath it to
give way here and there, and in those places
the thatch would sink, and so a break was made
in the line, which would otherwise have been
too straight. That was the roof in which the
birds could make themselves comfortable, and
portions of which vagrant sparrows who lived
at a distance could abstract when repairs
became necessary in their sylvan residences.
They will not find slate so convenient for their
purpose. That, too, was the roof of our infant
story-books. Little Red Riding-hood's
grandmother lived under it. The farmer, guiltless of
steam-ploughing, who appeared in the
Christmas-piece, welcoming the labourers who were
returning with the last harvest-load—this jolly
individual always stood at the door of a house
with a roof of thatch painted bright yellow,
and in a most triumphant state of repair.
Lastly, it was in that roof that the dormer-
window appeared peeping out of the thatch,
with its latticed panes, its clean white curtain,
and its frame of fragrant honeysuckle.

I do not despair of seeing the day when we
shall have slate roofs to our haystacks— roofs
that will lift on and off, and that can be clapped
over the newly-made rick, like a dish-cover on a
leg of mutton.

The useful is the enemy of the Picturesque.
There is no part of a house more agreeable to
the eye than its roof—a high roof— a steep roof
with gable points. But this is inconvenient.
The rooms in that roof are cold, their ceilings
are sloping, low in one part, high in another.
The dormer-windows, too, built out in the roof's
surface, are liable to many objections. You
attain a much greater degree of comfort by
carrying—as we now do—the wall straight up
to the top of the house; your upper rooms have
flat ceilings, are rooms, not garrets, are warm
and comfortable. But the high roof was the
prettiest, for all that.

I hope nobody will imagine for a moment
that I am objecting either to steam-agriculture,
or to square-topped houses. If by
mechanical ploughing and wire-fencing the ends
of agriculture are forwarded, we must have
steam-ploughs and iron fences. If the slate
house-top answers better than the thatch, I
am afraid we must own that it would be folly
not to adopt it; and if your house is more
comfortable with a flat and invisible roof than with
a high and sloping one, your choice is soon made;
only let us acknowledge that in connexion with
our modern improvements there is some loss as
well as some gain.