I thought, for a moment,
of presenting it to Mr Fairscribe; but that confounded
passage about the prodigal and swine-trough---
I settled at last it was as well to lock it up
in my own bureau, with the intention to look at it
no more.
But I do no know how it was, that the subject
began to sit nearer my heart than I was aware of,
and I found myself repeatedly engaged in reading
descriptions of farms which were no longer mine,
and boundaries which marked the property of
others. A love of the _natale solum_, if Swift be right
in translating these words, ``family estate,'' began
to awaken in my bosom; the recollections of my
own youth adding little to it, save what was connected
with field-sports. A career of pleasure is
unfavourable for acquiring a taste for natural beauty,
and still more so for forming associations of a
sentimental kind, connecting us with the inanimate
objects around us.
I had thought little about my estate, while I possessed
and was wasting it, unless as affording the
rude materials out of which a certain inferior race
of creatures, called tenants, were bound to produce
(in a greater quantity than they actually did) a
certain return called rent, which was destined to
supply my expenses.
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