they try to push through the Poultry, the
Lord Mayor only knows!

Upon this, another consideration
supervenes:—if there will be a deficiency of
walking and riding room for the welcome
invaders, how are they to be housed?

Although a great pressure of business is
being forced upon house agents, by persons
living in more affluent neighbourhoods, who
hope to make harvests of profit from the
influx of strangers; yet, such strangers as
can afford good accommodation and high
rents, will, we apprehend, form but a small
minority. The bulk of visitors will be of
the artisan and humbler classes; yet, for
such persons, has any temporary accommoda-
tion been planned, upon a comprehensive
scale? Londoners in their own rank are not
so circumstanced as to be able to turn out of
their houses to oblige, even to their own
profit, the coming strangers. Tents are not
particularly adapted for an English climate;
still, as few of the class we advert to will be
able to afford to remain long at the multitudinous
Congress, slightly-constructed buildings
would suffice. These ought to be set
about without loss of time.

THE ACE OF SPADES.

HONEST John Sillett solves, by the most
satisfactory of all tests—that of fact and personal
experience—one of the most momentous
problems of social economy. He demontrates
that spade husbandry is not only the
most productive, but the most profitable system
of agriculture. His theory is, that small
farms will not only maintain large families in
comfort and independence, but leave a much
larger proportionate margin than the most
approved system of "high farming under
liberal covenants," on a great food manufactory;
that in this country, at the present, and
even lower prices, the tiller of the soil may
"earn a good living," and that the establishment
and extension of peasant proprietories
could not fail to promote the virtuous industry
and happiness of the people, and, consequently,
the greatness and good order of
the State.

John Sillett's histoiy is that of the pursuit
of digging under difficulties. He ended in the
calling which Adam began, but by no means
in a Paradise.

"I served my apprenticeship," quoth John,
"to a grocer and draper, and at the expiration
of my time I went to London. I lived in
different situations as a linen-draper, and a
short time at Birmingham, in the same trade.
I afterwards returned into the country, and
went into business as a general shopkeeper, in
a village called the ' Garden of Suffolk; ' but
it proved a very unproductive garden to me,
for after a six years' struggle, I was placed on
the wrong side of fortune." He returned to
London, carried on the business of haberdashery,
&c., was compelled by bad health to
restore the country-bred lungs of his family
to Suffolk once more, and there, in the old
line, to keep still on the lee-shore of bad luck—
Jack of all trades, hitherto master of none—
although the profitless slave of each.

Like the highly-respectable father of Young
Norval,

"His constant care was to increase his store,"

but he couldn't manage it; and so he longed,
like Norval junior, to " follow to the field"
not some warlike lord—but a plough.

"Having a natural taste for a rural life, and
reading works on Husbandry," he continues,
"I was always anxious to catch hold of any
books or articles in the newspapers on the
subject. The first thing that particularly
struck my attention was an article in a
newspaper, headed, 'How to keep a Cow and a
Pig upon an Acre of Land.' Delighted with
this account, I purchased, on the demise of
my mother, two acres of land sold under my
father's will. I gave one hundred and eighteen
pounds per acre (two hundred and thirty-six
pounds), besides the expenses incurred upon the
purchase. This same piece of land my father
purchased, thirty years before, for one hundred
and thirty pounds. Our present agricultural
distress exhibits, therefore, itself in doubling
the price of land. This land is freehold,
tithe-free, and land-tax redeemed, and,
consequently, entitles me to a vote for the
county. I was afterwards offered four hundred
and eighty pounds per acre for my
purchase; but by and bye I proved that I could
turn it to better account by keeping it, and
tilling it."

The "article in the newspaper" was soon
"topped'' by John's cabbage Mentor, William
Cobbett, who in his "Cottage Economy,"
showed him "how to keep a cow off a quarter
of an acre of land." His freehold has a
northern exposure. It had no buildings on
it. He had to become his own architect,
bricklayer, and builder. He "could not afford
brick buildings,"so he" erected them on a
wooden frame, and covered them in with
pantiles, and enclosed them with walls of clay;"
which he "collected from his ditch, and
hedge ditch." In this way he raised a good
cow-house, two piggeries, a shed for keeping
roots, a brick laid drain and tank, and keeps
"adding as he requires" buildings, of which,
even for two acres, he finds himself still
deficient. It is with excusable pride, that he
says, "This I did with my own hands at leisure
times."

How he was called "mad" for breaking up
his pasture; how he keeps cows, and fattens
and rears calves; how he manages his
"dairy;" and how he produced four crops
from the same piece of ground within the
year; he discourses with the authority derived
from actual experiment.

"I had not long begun my labours," he continues,
"before I was beset by my neighbours.
They were quite sure I did not know what I