with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation; adapted
to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover--requiring, however, a summer
fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year,
etc." This is not an unpleasing style on agricultural subjects--nor an
uncommon one....

* * * * *

You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as
it has undergone no change since I saw you. I read of mornings--the same
old books over and over again, having no command of new ones; walk with
my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open
windows, up to which China-roses climb, with my pipe, while the
blackbirds and thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the
nightingale to have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a
spring (bating the last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with
warmth. And such verdure! white clouds moving over the new-fledged tops
of oak-trees, and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to
tell of, how new to see! I believe that Leslie's "Life of Constable" (a
very charming book) has given me a fresh love of spring. Constable loved
it above all seasons: he hated autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont, who was of
the old classical taste, asked him if he did not find it difficult to
place _his brown tree_ in his pictures, "Not at all," said C, "I never
put one in at all." And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the
old masters' landscapes, and quoting an _old violin_ as the proper tone
of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid
it down on the sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of
all this, I have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles
indeed; but I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures
that are not like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by