I will not quote, where so much depends upon the atmosphere which the poet himself creates, as he waves his enchanter’s wand.  Over all the type his sweet power compels a rural heaven to lie reflected; I go from budding spring to blazing summer at the turning of a page; on all the meadows below me (though it is March) I see ripe autumn brooding with golden wings; and winter howls and screams in gusts, and tosses tempests of snow into my eyes—­out of the book my boy has just now brought me.

One verse, at least, I will cite,—­so full it is of all pastoral feeling, so brimming over with the poet’s passion for the country:  it is from “The Castle of Indolence":—­

    “I care not, Fortune, what you me deny: 
    You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace;
    You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
    Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
    You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
    The woods and lawns, by living stream at eve: 
    Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
    And I their toys to the great children leave;
    Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.”

Another Scotchman, Lord Kames, (Henry Home by name,) who was Senior Lord of Sessions in Scotland about the year 1760, was best known in his own day for his discussion of “The Principles of Equity”; he is known to the literary world as the author of an elegant treatise upon the “Elements of Criticism”; I beg leave to introduce him to my readers to-day as a sturdy, practical farmer.  The book, indeed, which serves for his card of introduction, is called “The Gentleman Farmer";[F] but we must not judge it by our experience of the class who wear that title nowadays.  Lord Kames recommends no waste of money, no extravagant architecture, no mere prettinesses.  He talks of the plough in a way that assures us he has held it some day with his own hands.  People are taught, he says, more by the eye than the ear; show them good culture, and they will follow it.

As for what were called the principles of agriculture, he found them involved in obscurity; he went to the book of Nature for instruction, and commenced, like Descartes, with doubting everything.  He condemns the Roman husbandry as fettered by superstitions, and gives a piquant sneer at the absurd rhetoric and verbosity of Varro.[G] Nor is he any more tolerant of Scotch superstitions.  He declares against wasteful and careless farming in a way that reminds us of our good friend Judge ——­, at the last county-show.

He urges good ploughing as a primal necessity, and insists upon the use of the roller for rendering the surface of wheatlands compact, and so retaining the moisture; nor does he attempt to reconcile this declaration with the Tull theory of constant trituration.  A great many excellent Scotch farmers still hold to the views of his Lordship, and believe in “keeping the sap” in fresh-tilled land by heavy rolling; and so far as regards a wheat or rye crop upon light lands, I think the weight of opinion, as well as of the rollers, is with them.