as man. That my father is an embryo not more incomplete than any
present is quite true; but that, you will see on reflection, is saying
very little on his behalf. Even in the boasted physical formation of
us men, you are aware that the best-shaped amongst us, according to
the last scientific discoveries, is only a development of some hideous
hairy animal, such as a gorilla; and the ancestral gorilla itself had
its own aboriginal forefather in a small marine animal shaped like a
two-necked bottle. The probability is that, some day or other, we
shall be exterminated by a new development of species.

"As for the merits assigned to my father as landlord, I must
respectfully dissent from the panegyrics so rashly bestowed on him.
For all sound reasoners must concur in this, that the first duty of an
owner of land is not to the occupiers to whom he leases it, but to the
nation at large. It is his duty to see that the land yields to the
community the utmost it can yield. In order to effect this object, a
landlord should put up his farms to competition, exacting the highest
rent he can possibly get from responsible competitors. Competitive
examination is the enlightened order of the day, even in professions
in which the best men would have qualities that defy examination. In
agriculture, happily, the principle of competitive examination is not
so hostile to the choice of the best man as it must be, for instance,
in diplomacy, where a Talleyrand would be excluded for knowing no
language but his own; and still more in the army, where promotion
would be denied to an officer who, like Marlborough, could not spell.
But in agriculture a landlord has only to inquire who can give the
highest rent, having the largest capital, subject by the strictest
penalties of law to the conditions of a lease dictated by the most
scientific agriculturists under penalties fixed by the most cautious
conveyancers. By this mode of procedure, recommended by the most