grove. Steeple Land is a roundish knoll, of some height, from which spot the distant spire of Danbury Church can be occasionally seen. Abbot's Bury refers to some dwelling, or spot, connected with an abbot's history;bury meaning simply a residence. Lastly, Downshire Bottom is a low marshy field, near the brook. The word shire, from the Saxon verb, which means to divide, is seldom used but for the great partitions of the kingdom into counties. Sometimes, however, as in our case, it has an application, of smaller importance, to the situation of a particular estate. I know a place called Upshire Hall in our county. 25 TILLAGE. WE find that, even in Paradise, man had employment appointed him, the object of which was, to aid nature in the production of food for his subsistence. It is true, that the varieties of the earth's provision were designed by the Almighty, without any of our contrivance, and that these have always grown in a way that the understanding of man has not been able even to comprehend. But, ignorant as we are, and vain as would be our attempt to interfere with the designing part of creation, we can do much by observation and the exercise of our reasoning and bodily powers marking what circumstances of an external kind have an influence upon these things; - what is favourable, and what injurious; so that skill and labour may arrange matters to improve the desired result. God entrusts the fitful gales of heaven to scatter innumerable seeds, which are to produce food or shelter for myriads of inferior animals, or to deck the wilderness with flowers. But he employs a more regular and important agency for the spread and cultivation of those plants, which are especially destined for the support of man and of those creatures which subserve to his wants;-even the mind and hand of the great consumer, man himself. It is not presumption to say that man assists the purposes of nature, any more than to affirm that the motions of the elements may do the same. The Creator appoints and employs the instrument, whatever it be, whether an intelligent or inanimate machine; and we may, therefore, as truly admire his work and wisdom in the fruits of human art and labour, as in any of those natural wonders, in the formation of which the busy brain and finger of our race have had nothing at all to do. Things are so ordered, excepting in a very few spots of the globe, that Nature performs but little for man, unless man, in his turn, perform something for Nature. She gives an abundance of materials and inducements, and then says, 'Work! Work!' If, instead of obeying this reasonable injunction, we merely reach forth an indolent hand to receive her bounties, she usually bestows them in diminishing and inferior portions, until, at length, our very necessities are unsupplied. In England, certainly, fruitful as it now is by the effects of human labour, we could scarcely exist a year on the mere donations of the soil and of the skies. It is as true, that the great mass of the people must work, as that they must eat. They must ply well their brains and their hands, or the table even of the cottager will lose its plainest viands. Persons brought up in cities are too apt to think that grass and corn, beef and mutton, grow as matters of course; and that the countryman has nothing to do but to cut and eat. I hope to be able, before I have done, to shew my young friends that this is quite a mistake. We will now take a little notice of those processes of moving the soil, which constitute the art of tillage. The PLOUGH is, and has been, the grand implement of husbandry for this purpose, amongst all civilized nations. The form and power have varied much, as they now do in different parts of England: but the intent and general |