so often fail, what can he hope for, who depends upon labourers whose
mistakes he cannot correct, and whose indolence, and even dishonesty, he
is scarcely able to check? The failure of crops which depend for their
success upon the knowledge and activity of the principal; and the
necessary and constant outlay, which is great beyond the conception of a
novice, may ruin even him who farms his own land, when the care of it is
only a secondary object; and this it will generally be to a professional
man.

The expected pleasures of fanning will be likely to disappoint, even
more than its profits. When the fields are waving with abundance,
nothing appears more delightful than to direct the labours they require;
but the enjoyments of the harvest month, when all the weary toil of
preparation is forgotten, will be found a poor compensation for the
daily annoyances of the year. To be excelled in management by the
uneducated, and over-reached by the cunning: to study systems of
agriculture, to be thwarted in carrying them into effect, and when they
fail, to become an object of contemptuous pity to the ignorant but
successful followers of the old routine: to find that all around take
advantage of his ignorance: that servants, the best with other masters,
become careless and unfaithful with him: to become involved in petty
disputes with low neighbours, and to be unable to avoid them except by a
forbearance which encourages aggression: to find, that with all his
attention and trouble, the income lags far behind the outgoings--those
are among the pleasures of a gentleman farmer.

To Captain Pellew, the employment was peculiarly unsuitable. His mind,
happy only while it was active, could ill accommodate itself to pursuits
which almost forbade exertion; and a business within the comprehension
of a peasant was not for a character which could fill, and animate, with