to find just fault with, unless some important fact or principle was at stake. Not to make enemies needlessly. Never to write all the truth, but reserve some of it to fall back upon. This reserve of facts to be brought up as a last resort should those first produced be assailed and denied. Never to hazard any statement on hearsay, no matter how credible the informant might seem to be; for there were often local and private influences that prejudiced very good and well-meaning men against landowners and their agents, and led them to give a high colour to matters which, though facts, were not facts of the shape and colour which they represented them to be. And then he was pleased to say that he had confidence in my discretion; that it was the absence of all acrimonious feeling which he had observed in my letters upon landlords and farmers that had led him to ask for my assistance. He made some other observations about what I had written, which it is not for me to repeat, and then, taking me by the hand, bade me go upon the mighty work which, with him and his fellow Leaguers, I had undertaken. Heaven, he said, only knew how much labour we had before us, and how long we would have to work; but so righteous did he believe the cause to be, so well founded in justice and sound national policy, so all-important to our own country and to the whole human race, that he felt confident of ultimate success, and, further, he believed that every man working to ensure that success, with zeal and honesty of purpose, would feel a consciousness of well-doing within his own mind that would be a reward for any amount of labour, though, at the same time, the League would defray all necessary expenses of such assistants as myself.

This interview occurred, I think, on the 24th of August 1842, and on the 25th I proceeded on a journey into Buckinghamshire, as related in No. I. of "Notes from the Farming Districts."

THE WHISTLER.

NOTES FROM THE FARMING DISTRICTS.

No. I.

Notices the Poet Gray and the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard."-Touches on the Ideal, and comes down to the Real-Enters on the merits and management of Farm-yard Manure, as seen at Stoke Poges, and as written of by Mr James Jackson, an eminent agriculturist.

THE "Country churchyard" of Stoke Poges, which has long been the shrine of the Poet Gray, which in his lifetime drew forth the language of his sweet fancy, and at his death received into its earthly keeping all that part of him that had died or could die this doubly sanctified churchyard was to me the principal object of attraction on entering the county of Buckingham. From the Slough station on the Great Western Railway I proceeded along a pleasant road hedged on each side by thorns, clean, neat, compact, and highly creditable to the locality, when compared with the wide, unserviceable, waste-spreading fences so commonly seen in other parts. All that grew in the fields of crop-kind looked well, and all that had been taken off to barn or market was well spoken of, so far as brief conversations with farmers and work people elicited information. The generous summer had done so much for the perfection of an abundant harvest, that a passer by could not help feeling happy with the happy farmers, whether the science and industry of the latter rendered them deserving of the sympathy or not. Therefore I passed on, to reach, while the sun still brightened the tree tops, the place of the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard."

I found the poet's grave by the tombstone erected to his mother's memory; and the deep shade of the heavy broad yew trees realized his description. The "frail memorials" of which he speaks were also evident enough. Indeed their reality despoiled some of the poetry of the expression; for they were not merely "frail," poetically speaking, as all monuments are, but they were positively so, being in many cases made of wood. However, a considerable majority of the "mute inglo

rious Miltons" and the "village Hampdens" were without any mark or monument save the grass rankly rising on their graves, to die when winter comes. But all of them had that deathless memorial around them which their poet had reared, and which obtains for their humble resting-places a more than common respect. The churchyard being completely imprisoned in a thicket of gigantic trees, and these being again surrounded by the formal neatness of a gentleman's park, a stranger would look in vain for the place where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," but for the white spire that shews itself among the trees, or for "some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood," who may be seen clipping a hedge or milking a cow in the adjoining meadows. The late Mr Penn of Stoke Park, a descendant of the family of the celebrated Quaker of Pennsylvania, erected a monument to Gray, on which is inscribed some of the poet's own lines. It stands at the bottom of the park, three or four hundred yards from the churchyard, and is altogether, in situation, style, and adornments, so out of keeping with the place where the body lies, (so I thought,) that I hastened away from it to find, or imagined to find, the "nodding beech," or some other of his favourite trees. I entered a grassy enclosure, from which many miles of country could be viewed. The woods and fields, reddened by the setting sun, stretched far away, and united Berkshire with the blue horizon of the south, while Windsor Castle sat in the centre of the scene, like a giant at rest, bathing his feet in the deep Thames and the gathering fog which rose upon the water's breast.

But though the ideal, rather than the real, had possession of the mind, I was constrained to hold companionship with the latter, and I found it associate itself with me in the shape of sundry cart-loads of cow and horse dung. I had pleased myself with the probability of Gray having stood on the same spot where I then stood, viewing the scene that I then viewed, sitting down to rest on the clean grass where I thought of sitting myself down to rest, when I perceived that all the grass was covered by a dry substance that had once been farm-yard manure. It had once been manure; and had it been taken to a field and ploughed into the soil, it might have continued to be manure until it was decomposed by the chemical influence of the matter composing that soil, after which its fertilizing power would have existed for a few years as a portion of the soil itself. But it had been carted out and spread upon the surface of a pasture-field, the bodily substance of it-that over which the sun and the gases of the air had no other power than to dry and leave to crumble-was there;

but as dead and incapable of quickening vegetable life as the dry dust in the adjacent grave-yard was of renewing its own animal existence. At the hamlet of Stoke I observed that the manure was laid up in heaps in the yard, exposed to the wasting power of the air, instead of being retained in a hollow or pit, or beneath a covering, where all its powers could be preserved. And, unfortunately, this manner of wasting manure is common over all parts of England, unless, perhaps, in Norfolk and Northumberland, or some parts of Suffolk. And not only this manner of wasting it, by laying it up in dunghills instead of putting it into dungpits, but the absurd practice of spreading it on grass-lands to lie and wither is a universal practice, and a practice so wasteful that, in manure alone, the farmer loses more than he would lose by the total repeal of the corn-laws, were these laws repealed before he brings his present crop to market. The loss by the manure is a positive loss; the loss by a repeal of the corn-laws is a supposed one; both of which, with some others, I shall estimate in the course of these letters. Meantime, for the good of the farmers of the comparatively well cultivated district of Stoke Poges, for the better economy of all cultivators, and especially for the benefit of a bread-eating population, who have a right to claim that the land and its fruits should not be wasted, I shall give a few extracts from a practical farmer and standard author on the value of that article which is so universally wasted-farm-yard manure. The work from which I quote is that of Mr Jackson of Pennycuik. He says

"The situation of the dungpit should be near the stables and cow-houses, and placed so low that all streams of urine from them should flow at once into it, so that nothing be lost." And he adds-"It should be covered by a roof, so as to prevert the action of the sun. He also says "It is of the utmost importance, though too frequently neglected, to convey to the pit the entire liquid refuse of the farm-yard, provided the quantity be not so great as to make it advisable to have a separate pit for its reception." And of dung-heaps carted to the fields he says" In every instance the dung-heap in the fields should be placed in a hollow situation with a substratum of earth, and should have a scattering of a few inches of earth over it and around the sides, to keep in the volatile gases." And again he says-"At whatever time the dung is applied, it should in the first place be scattered evenly over the land, and ploughed in as speedily as possible. Every instant in which it is exposed to the air it is losing its value."

To the foregoing, the editors of Jackson's work, the Messrs Chambers of Edinburgh, add a note, which states-"We have

seen lands in Germany covered with stable dung which had evidently been exposed on the surface for weeks, and was as dry as a chip." If such is to be seen in Germany, it is also to be seen in England, and in almost every part of it. But it is not to be seen in Belgium nor in China, two countries where manure is better cared for than in any other part of the world.

Jackson says "There is no farmer but must have occasion to keep up the fertility of his land by the application of lime, bone-dust, rape-cake, and other ingredients, and a great part of this expense may be saved by collecting and applying what is absolutely wasting in his farm steading." And once more says, speaking of collecting the liquid manure-"To accomplish this object, proprietors of lands should, if required, assist the tenantry in the erection of cisterns; for, as these are not removable, few tenants having only a nineteen years holding would be willing to defray the expenses out of their own funds.

he

Now when the manure of the farm-yard is so wasted as we see it; when it is so valuable as we find it proved to be; when it is even doubtful if a tenant with a lease of nineteen years (the common term of Jackson's locality) can venture the expense of the necessary apparatus for collecting manure, what are we to expect of the English farmers whose landlords leave them to flounder on as they did fifty years ago; who give them yearly holdings of their farms, and employ lawyers to collect rents at rent time, votes at voting time, petitions at parliament time, and who, under a pretence of securing to them a protection from foreign competition, keep them in an unceasing fear of insecurity in respect of their own conduct?

But there is in many cases much to be said in defence of the landlords, inasmuch as the tenures by which the land is held are of such a nature as to mar all improvements and to render leases inoperative. It is said that James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, declared, after his return from an agricultural project in England, that he found it more necessary to be an acute lawyer than a skilful farmer.

No. II.

September 19, 1842.

It has been alleged that the name of Buckingham is derived from the natural forests of beech-trees which grow in some parts of the county, and which by the Saxons were called Buccan; but this is an error, none of these forests have been at any time in the vicinity of the town of Buckingham, the point at which the name was first fixed. The word boch sig