corrupt agents, of a system of persevering, fatal misrule, such as was
never equalled in any age or in any country.

To proceed--I now found that I was encountering greater difficulties than
I had anticipated. Though it was very easy to learn to drive plough, yet
it was a very different thing to be able to hold plough well. I returned
home at night ten times more tired than I was when I drove the first day;
my feet were not only sore, but my legs and arms ached ready to drop off,
and my hands were in a gore of blood, and blistered all over. My poor
mother began now to lament my undertaking, and threw out hints how much
better and easier it would have been to have gone to Oxford, and have been
now preparing myself by study to become a candidate for the black cloth,
and to be a respectable clergyman, instead of being a _clod-hopper_. In
the midst of her advice and admonition my mother did not forget to wash my
hands and feet, and plaster up my lacerated flesh; and as soon as she had
made me comfortable I retired to rest. I rose refreshed, and returned the
next day with renovated vigour to my task. To be brief, I soon because a
good ploughman. My father daily witnessed with considerable anxiety my
zealous and persevering exertions; and as I proceeded, he encouraged me by
the most animating hopes of future prospects; he informed me that he had
remarked with no small pleasure my determination to excel in every thing
that I undertook; and that I set about every thing with an enthusiasm
calculated to surmount all difficulties, which was, as he justly observed,
the only way to attain any object, or to arrive at any degree of
perfection.

I had now regularly persevered with the most assiduous industry for more
than a fortnight, and although I was but a tall thin stripling, I
perceived that I gathered strength with my labour; and what I at first
found to be the most trying exertion and severe hard work, as I became