Where Xenophon comes to speak of the details of farm-labor, of ploughings and fallowings, there is all that precision and particularity of mention, added to a shrewd sagacity, which one might look for in the columns of the “Country Gentleman.”  He even describes how a field should be thrown into narrow lands, in order to promote a more effectual surface-drainage.  In the midst of it, however, we come upon a stereorary maxim, which is, to say the least, of doubtful worth:—­“Nor is there any sort of earth which will not make very rich manure, by being laid a due time in standing water, till it is fully impregnated with the virtue of the water.”  His British translator, Professor Bradley, does, indeed, give a little note of corroborative testimony.  But I would not advise any active farmer, on the authority either of General Xenophon or of Professor Bradley, to transport his surface-soil very largely to the nearest frog-pond, in the hope of finding it transmuted into manure.  The absorptive and retentive capacity of soils is, to be sure, the bone just now of very particular contention; but whatever that capacity may be, it certainly needs something more palpable than the virtue of standing water for its profitable development.

Here, again, is very neat evidence of how much simple good sense has to do with husbandry:  Socrates, who is supposed to have no particular knowledge of the craft, says to his interlocutor,—­“You have satisfied me that I am not ignorant in husbandry; and yet I never had any master to instruct me in it.”

“It is not,” says Xenophon, “difference in knowledge or opportunities of knowledge that makes some farmers rich and others poor; but that which makes some poor and some rich is that the former are negligent and lazy, the latter industrious and thrifty.”

Next, we have this masculine ergo:—­“Therefore we may know that those who will not learn such sciences as they might get their living by, or do not fall into husbandry, are either downright fools, or else propose to get their living by robbery or by begging.” (sec. xx.)

This is a good clean cut at politicians, office-holders, and other such beggar craft, through more than a score of centuries,—­clean as classicism can make it:  the Attic euphony in it, and all the aroma of age.

Once more, and it is the last of the “Oeconomica,” we give this charming bit of New-Englandism:—­“I remember my father had an excellent rule,” (Ischomachus loquitur,) “which he advised me to follow:  that, if ever I bought any land, I should by no means purchase that which had been already well-improved, but should choose such as had never been tilled, either through neglect of the owner, or for want of capacity to do it; for he observed, that, if I were to purchase improved grounds, I must pay a high price for them, and then I could not propose to advance their value, and must also lose the pleasure of improving them myself, or of seeing them thrive better by my endeavors.”