intricate problems of Euclid. A pretty mess these gentry made of it!
every one who had saved four or five thousand pounds by his trade must
now become a farmer! They all knew what profits the farmer was making,
and they not only envied him, but they made a desperate plunge to become
participators with him in the booty. There was scarcely an attorney
in the whole country that did not carry on the double trade of
quill-driving and clod-hopping. Most of them purchased land, even if
they borrowed the money to pay for it; and many, many of them, after
having farmed and farmed, till they had not a shilling in their pockets
to support their families, have been compelled to give up their estates
to the mortgagee. As an illustration of this fact, I could point out
numerous instances of this sort of mad folly. I remember an Irish
Barrister, who had married a lady of fortune at Bath, came and purchased
an estate in Sussex, adjoining one that I occupied; and this, as
he expressed himself, he did, that he might have the benefit of my
experience to assist him in the cultivation of it. He was to take the
timber at a valuation, and it is a sufficient proof of his ignorance
of these matters, that he really did not know the difference between a
hazel bush and an oak tree; for, although he was a very clever and an
ingenious man in his way, yet he actually applied to me, to know how
they would measure such _small timber_ as that which he pointed out to
me, which was nothing more than a _hazel bush!_ Such was his ignorance
of country affairs, that he did not know barley and wheat from grass,
nor beans from oats, when growing; and he seriously proposed, as the
best method of hatching young ducks, to set them under the rooks who had
made their nests in the lofty trees that surrounded his house; and yet
this gentleman must be a farmer, forsooth! But I am anticipating my
history. These facts must, however, convince every rational mind, that
this was such an unnatural state of things as could not exist for any
lengthened period. It did, nevertheless, drag on to the end of the war,