son Tom. The Church, the Law, and Medicine all shut their doors in his face. Open the gate of a field and turn him in to pick up what pasture he can find; and my word for it, he’ll not die of hunger. Look at his big limbs and his love of action! Why, he is built for a husbandman. Even if you could put him to some gentlemanly way of making a living in town, he would not be so happy and so healthy as in the country. When he comes to spend a few days with us, the lad is in his element, and works with his cousins right handily. Put him in a field, brother, put him in a field.’ Uncle Lucas quite astonished his more cultured relatives by his long speech; still more, by the almost pathetic earnestness of his appeal. The reverend cousin, who had smiled compassionately at the rude beginning of the harangue, grew attentive as it went on; and at the end, clapped his hands approvingly. ‘Bravo, Uncle Lucas!’ he cried; ‘thou art the one wise man amongst us.—A farmer let Tom be, doctor. Churches may fall, legal systems vanish, the healing art be substituted by universal hygiene, but the tillage of the land must ever demand tillers. During the period of change that has set in so strongly, let us see what remains least affected by the mutations of time and circumstance. While man lives on the earth he must eat; and the purveyor of food, therefore, has a first lien upon all the productions of society. It flashed into my mind, as Uncle Lucas was speaking, that perhaps the greatest result of all the metamorphoses going on will be the sublimation of husbandry. From the beginning, it has been regarded as an inferior career, and has to a certain degree been shunned. The age of Feudalism has gone; the age of Gentility is going; the real age of Utility is coming. When it is established, the husbandman will be duly honoured and duly rewarded, as the pre-eminent citizen, as the venerated conduit through whose limbs and brain that daily bread flows for which we are bidden to pray.’ A pause followed, during which Tom’s father began to smile hopefully, and his mother regained serenity. ‘We educated men,’ said the reverend cousin, concluding the business, ‘have not done our duty by your class, Uncle Lucas. We have kept our intellectual children from your business, to the great retardation of agricultural science. Now that the professions are no longer profitable, we shall send some of our best youth to your pursuits. We will begin with Tom. In the fields, he will find a career open to every talent that providence has endowed him with.’ Uncle Lucas prevailed, and Tom ‘was turned into a field.’ What the result will be in these times of agricultural depression, is a thing of the future. SKETCHES. I.