and criticisms.  All kinds of ambitions and motives have been ascribed to him.  Many a burly, red-faced farmer, who boasts of an unbroken agricultural lineage reaching back into the reign of Good Queen Bess, will tell you over his beer that the Alderman’s doings are all gammon; that they are all to advertise his cutlery business in Leadenhall Street, Barnum fashion; to inveigle down to Tiptree Hall noblemen, foreign ambassadors, and great people of different countries, and bribe “an honourable mention” out of them with champagne treats and oyster suppers.  Indeed, my Quaker host largely participated in this opinion, and took no pains to conceal it when speaking of his enterprising neighbor.

From what I had read and heard of the Tiptree Hall estate, I expected to see a grand, old, baronial mansion, surrounded with elegant and costly buildings for housing horses, cattle, sheep, and other live stock, all erected on a scale which no bona fide farmer could adopt or approximately imitate.  In a word, I fancied his barns and stables would even surpass in this respect the establishments of some of those most wealthy New York or Boston merchants, who think they are stimulating country farmers to healthy emulation by lavishing from thirty to forty thousand dollars on a barn and its appurtenant out-houses.  With these preconceived ideas, it was an unexpected satisfaction to see quite a simple-looking, unassuming establishment, which any well-to-do farmer might make and own.  The house is rather a large and solid-looking building, erected by Mr. Mechi himself, but not at all ostentatious of wealth or architectural taste.  The barns and “steddings,” or what we call cowhouses in America, are of a very ordinary cast, or such as any country-bred farmer would call economical and simple.  The homestead occupies no picturesque site, and commands no interesting scenery.  The farm consists of about 170 acres, which, in England, is regarded as a rather small holding.  The land is naturally sterile and hard of cultivation, most of it apparently being heavily mixed with ferruginous matter.  When ploughed deeply, the clods turned up look frequently like compact masses of iron ore.  Every experienced farmer knows the natural poverty of such a soil, and the hard labor to man and beast it costs to till it.

To my great regret, Mr. Mechi was not at home, though he passes most of his time in Summer at Tiptree.  But his foreman, who enters into all the experiments and operations which have made the establishment so famous, with almost equal interest and enthusiasm, took me through the farm buildings, and all the fields, and showed me the whole process and machinery employed.  Any English or American agriculturist who has read of Alderman Mechi’s operations, would be inclined to ask, on looking, for the first time, at his buildings and the fields surrounding them, what is the great distinguishing speciality of his enterprise.  His land is poor; his housings are simple; there