"We may, then, look to a time when farming will become a commercial speculation, and will be carried on by large joint-stock concerns, issuing shares of ten, fifteen, or fifty pounds each, and occupying from three to ten thousand acres. Such companies would, perhaps, purchase the entire sewage of an adjacent town. Their buildings, their streets of cattle-stalls, would be placed on a slope sheltered from the north-east, but near the highest spot on the estate, so as to distribute manure and water from their reservoirs by the power of gravitation. A stationary steam-engine would crush their cake, and pulp their roots, pump their water, perhaps even shear their sheep. They would employ butchers and others, a whole staff, to kill and cut up bullocks in pieces suitable for the London market, transmitting their meat straight to the salesman, without the intervention of the dealer. That salesman would himself be entirely in the employ of the company, and sell no other meat but what they supplied him with. This would at once give a larger profit to the producer, and a lower price (in comparison) to the public. In summer, meat might be cooled by the ice-house, or refrigerator, which must necessarily be attached to the company's bacon factory. Except in particular districts, it is hardly probable that the dairy would be united with the stock-farm; but if so, the ice-house would again come into requisition, and there would be a condensed-milk factory on the premises."
This was going back to the right line. He seems, however, to have done no more in this line until August of the next year (the month after his marriage), when he returned in earnest to the rural life, and never afterwards left it. His earliest and fastest friend was _Fraser's Magazine_, now, alas! defunct. But he was speedily engaged to write for other papers and magazines. His real literary life, in fact, may be said to begin at this period. The "Farmer at Home" was the title of this paper singled out by the _Spectator_ as the best of all the papers for the month. Here there occurs a really striking passage on the "Farmer's Creed." They live, says the writer, amid conditions so unchanging that they have acquired a creed of their own, which they rarely express, never discuss, and never fail to act upon.