The portrait of the smaller farmer, who, in this time, tilled his own ground, is even more severely sketched by Bishop Earle.  “A plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow and unfilled.  He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy....  His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations.  He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English.  His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, wilt fix here half an hours contemplation.  His habitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes that let out smoak, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grand-sires time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity.  He apprehends Gods blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but on good ground.”

Such were the men who were to be reached by the agricultural literature of the day!  Yet, notwithstanding this unpromising audience, scarcely a year passed but some talker was found who felt himself competent to expound the whole art and mystery of husbandry.

Adam Speed, Gent., (from which title we may presume that he was no Puritan,) published a little book in the year 1626, which he wittily called “Adam out of Eden.”  In this he undertakes to show how Adam, under the embarrassing circumstance of being shut out of Paradise, may increase the product of a farm from two hundred pounds to two thousand pounds a year by the rearing of rabbits on furze and broom!  It is all mathematically computed; there is nothing to disappoint in the figures; but I suspect there might be in the rabbits.

Gentleman Speed speaks of turnips, clover, and potatoes; he advises the boiling of “butchers’ blood” for poultry, and mixing the “pudding” with bran and other condiments, which will “feed the beasts very fat.”

The author of “Adam out of Eden” also indulges himself in verse, which is certainly not up to the measure of “Paradise Lost.”  This is its taste:—­

    “Each soyl hath no liking of every grain,
    Nor barley nor wheat is for every vein;
    Yet know I no country so barren of soyl
    But some kind of come may be gotten with toyl. 
    Though husband at home be to count the cost what,
    Yet thus huswife within is as needful as that: 
    What helpeth in store to have never so much,
    Half lost by ill-usage, ill huswifes, and such?”

The papers of Bacon upon subjects connected with rural life are so familiar that I need not recur to them.  His particular suggestions, however sound in themselves, (and they generally are sound,) did by no means measure the extent of his contribution to the growth of good husbandry.  But the more thorough methods of investigation which he instituted and encouraged gave a new and healthier direction to inquiries connected not only with agriculture, but with every experimental art.