longer to mystify their readers. A temporary rise in the price of grain would have this effect. Such a brief respite might lull even the fears of the sufferer, although, while the organic disease remains uncured, it is certain to destroy him. The inconsiderate, and those whose interest is to delude or to be deluded, think the question settled by individual farms letting higher than before, and point triumphantly to "grass parks" maintaining their value, or rising in rent. They are ignorant that, as far as farmers are concerned, they must, in many localities, take grass, whatever it may cost them, unless they are to alter and subvert their whole system of farm management, which would involve a loss more fatal than that which, with open eyes and under dire necessity, they are content to endure. There is some fragment of truth, too, in one part of Sir James Graham's speech on Mr Disraeli's motion--in several respects the most audacious oration ever spoken in the House of Commons. "Shopkeepers retiring from business," said the member for Ripon, "small merchants in country towns--(ironical cheers and laughter)--I repeat it, small traders of little capital in country towns, are now waiting the moment to make investment in farms."--(_Times_, 10th Feb.) Isolated cases of this kind may be occurring, as they always have done, and, generally speaking, after a brief career, the _emeritus_ shopkeeper retires, impoverished and disappointed. The merchant, deluded with some poetical fancy about the charms of a country life, takes a farm, but, like Dr Johnson's tallow-chandler, who retired to the country, but could not keep from town on "melting days," his heart is not in his work, and he gets disgusted with the details of agriculture, and the affairs of his farm speedily fall into confusion. Is Sir James Graham serious in thinking that the prosperity of our domestic agriculture is to be recovered or maintained by "retired shopkeepers,"--that is, by men unbred to the business, strangers to its duties, and, of necessity, utterly destitute of any practical knowledge of agriculture? Mr Stephens anxiously prescribes a course of careful study and practice to his agricultural pupil; but Sir James Graham can, with his wand, metamorphose retired shopkeepers into _extempore_ farmers. What elevated notions the Knight of Netherby must entertain of the qualifications of an English farmer, and of the importance of the agricultural art--an art that it had been hitherto supposed required great experience, and a knowledge of the elements of all sciences, to study and conduct it to perfection! But if retired shopkeepers are the men for the present emergency, has Sir James Graham an army of them sufficiently numerous to occupy the abandoned territory? For before Sir James Graham's remedy--if its application is to be coextensive with the malady--can come into operation, he presupposes the extermination of the present race of farmers.