A small portion of his book is given up to the discussion of the theory of agriculture; but he fairly warns his readers that he is wandering in the dark.  If all theorists were as honest!  He deplores the ignorance of Tull in asserting that plants feed on earth; air and water alone, in his opinion, furnish the supply of plant-food.  All plants feed alike, and on the same material.  Degeneracy appearing only in those which are not native:  white clover never deteriorates in England, nor bull-dogs.

But I will not linger on his theories.  He is represented to have been a kind and humane man; but this did not forbid a hearty relish (appearing often in his book) for any scheme which promised to cheapen labor.  “The people on landed estates,” he says, “are trusted by Providence to the owner’s care, and the proprietor is accountable for the management of them to the Great God, who is the Creator of both.”  It does not seem to have occurred to the old gentleman that some day people might decline to be “managed.”

He gave the best proof of his practical tact, in the conduct of his estate of Blair-Drummond,—­uniting there all the graces of the best landscape-gardening with profitable returns.

I take leave of him with a single excerpt from his admirable chapter of Gardening in the “Elements of Criticism":—­“Other fine arts may be perverted to excite irregular, and even vicious emotions; but gardening, which inspires the purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to promote every good affection.  The gayety and harmony of mind it produceth inclineth the spectator to communicate his satisfaction to others, and to make them happy as he is himself, and tends naturally to establish in him a habit of humanity and benevolence.”

It is humiliating to reflect, that a thievish orator at one of our Agricultural Fairs might appropriate page after page out of the “Gentleman Farmer” of Lord Kames, written in the middle of the last century, and the county-paper, and the aged directors, in clean shirt-collars and dress-coats, would be full of praises “of the enlightened views of our esteemed fellow-citizen.”  And yet at the very time when the critical Scotch judge was meditating his book, there was erected a land light-house, called Dunston Column, upon Lincoln Heath, to guide night travellers over a great waste of land that lay a half-day’s ride south of Lincoln.  And when Lady Robert Manners, who had a seat at Bloxholme, wished to visit Lincoln, a groom or two were sent out the morning before to explore a good path, and families were not unfrequently lost for days[J] together in crossing the heath.  And this same heath, made up of a light fawn-colored sand, lying on “dry, thirsty stone,” was, twenty years since at least, blooming all over with rank, dark lines of turnips; trim, low hedges skirted the level highways; neat farm-cottages were flanked with great saddle-backed ricks; thousands upon thousands of long-woolled sheep cropped the luxuriant pasturage, and the Dunston column was down.