Cato is made to place a great part of his own enjoyment, in these latter years of his, in the cultivation of his farm and garden (he had written, we must remember, a treatise ’De Re Rustica’,—­a kind of Roman ’Book of the Farm’, which we have still remaining).  He is enthusiastic in his description of the pleasures of a country gentleman’s life, and, like a good farmer, as no doubt he was, becomes eloquent upon the grand subject of manures.  Gardening is a pursuit which he holds in equal honour—­that “purest of human pleasures”, as Bacon calls it.  On the subject of the country life generally he confesses an inclination to become garrulous—­the one failing which he admits may be fairly laid to the charge of old age.  The picture of the way of living of a Roman gentleman-farmer, as he draws it, must have presented a strong contrast with the artificial city-life of Rome.

“Where the master of the house is a good and careful manager, his wine-cellar, his oil-stores, his larder, are always well stocked; there is a fulness throughout the whole establishment; pigs, kids, lambs, poultry, milk, cheese, honey,—­all are in abundance.  The produce of the garden is always equal, as our country-folk say, to a double course.  And all these good things acquire a second relish from the voluntary labours of fowling and the chase.  What need to dwell upon the charm of the green fields, the well-ordered plantations, the beauty of the vineyards and olive-groves?  In short, nothing can be more luxuriant in produce, or more delightful to the eye, than a well-cultivated estate; and, to the enjoyment of this, old age is so far from being any hindrance, that it rather invites and allures us to such pursuits”.

He has no patience with what has been called the despondency of old age—­the feeling, natural enough at that time of life, but not desirable to be encouraged, that there is no longer any room for hope or promise in the future which gives so much of its interest to the present.  He will not listen to the poet when he says again—­

  “He plants the tree that shall not see the fruit”

The answer which he would make has been often put into other and more elaborate language, but has a simple grandeur of its own.  “If any should ask the aged cultivator for whom he plants, let him not hesitate to make this reply,—­’For the immortal gods, who, as they willed me to inherit these possessions from my forefathers, so would have me hand them on to those that shall come after’”.

The old Roman had not the horror of country society which so many civilised Englishmen either have or affect.  “I like a talk”, he says, “over a cup of wine”.  “Even when I am down at my Sabine estate, I daily make one at a party of my country neighbours, and we prolong our conversation very frequently far into the night”.  The words are put into Cato’s mouth, but the voice is the well-known voice of Cicero.  We find him here, as in his letters, persuading himself into the belief that the secret of happiness is to be found in the retirement of the country.  And his genial and social nature beams through it all.  We are reminded of his half-serious complaints to Atticus of his importunate visitors at Formiae, the dinner-parties which he was, as we say now, “obliged to go to”, and which he so evidently enjoyed.[1]