To be an authority on things agricultural is to speak on behalf of what was then, and is still, the most important interest of the whole country; to speak of agricultural labourers and of tenant farmers is to speak of the best blood of the country, the hope and stay of Great Britain. Here was opened a chance such as comes to few. If it had been properly followed up, if it had fallen to a practical man, there would have been perceived here an open door leading to an honourable career, a safe line, with a sufficient income. I mean that any of our great newspapers would have been glad to number on its staff, and to retain, one who could write with knowledge on things agricultural. Always, throughout the whole of his life, Richard Jefferies wanted someone to advise him, but never so much as at this moment. He had this splendid chance, and he threw it away, not deliberately, but from ignorance and want of aptitude in business. Yet the letters mark a new departure, for they made him write about the country. Success was before him at last, though not in the way he hoped. The first letter to the _Times_ was, for a young man of twenty-four, a most remarkable production. It was crammed with facts and information. In point of style it was clear and strong, without any faults of fine writing. It would be taken--I have no doubt at all that the editor so received it--as the letter of a clear-headed, well-informed, middle-aged Wiltshire farmer. He writes at full length, covering two columns and a quarter of the _Times_, in small print. The letter itself is so curious, as giving an account of a condition of things which has already greatly changed in the sixteen years since it was written, that I have placed it for preservation in an appendix to this volume. The leader on the subject in the _Times_ of the same day thus sums up the case: