1824.] Pleasures and Advantages of Agriculturé. When I was at the University of Edinburgh, I found that the Hebrew language was regularly taught there: and I have lately understood with much surprise, that at our English Universities, lectures only, on this lan guage, are given. After leaving College, the Clergymen of our Church acquire their knowledge of a language, to them the most important of any in the best manner they can by private instruction. Foreigners are astonished at finding such an obvious want, amounting to a positive defect, at Oxford and Cambridge, otherwise so renowned for every other department of instruction and knowledge. Yours, &c. JOHN MACDONALD. Mr. URBAN, July 2. TAKE a sensible delight in travelling into different counties near the time of harvest, and surveying the face of the country, adorned with a sort of gaiety and smile, and overspread with waving crops of varied complexion and appearance. As I am a follower of nature, I take greater pleasure in the silent contemplation of these objects, than in the noise, flutter, and artificial glare of great towns and cities, and can safely say, that I am never less alone than when I am thus engaged without company. My entertainment becomes quite an act of religion, and I discern with admiration and gratitude, the Creative Power, exerting itself in every blade of grass, and multiplication of grain, for the benefit of mankind. I see the effect of the curse on the ground, which, without labour, brings forth nothing that is useful; and of the blessing too, conveyed in that voice, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it. As a lover of my country, I consider these things as the inexhaustible source of its strength and riches; and when I read of our exports to all other countries, I call to mind the fertility of that island which fed the Romans, and enabled them to be masters of the world, and begin to think I live in the granary of Europe. f compare the present state of this spot with other places, and with itself, when uncultivated by the arts of civilization and commerce, and over-run with bushes, bogs, ignorance, and superstition; and, like the patriot of old, who rejoiced that he was born a man, a Greek and an Athenian, bless myself that I am a native of Britain, in its 13 full age of freedom, plenty, religion, and literature. I am so full of this subject, from a late ramble, that you will allow me to throw together, in the form of an Essay, a few loose thoughts on the busi ness of Agriculture, which, for antiquity, has no rival. It began with our world, and was the employment of its first inhabitant, who was to get his bread in the sweat of his brow: When Adam dug and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? The second parent of our species entered upon the renovation of it, with an act of husbandry and planting. His descendants, the greatest princes, and the wisest states, have ever made these the objects of their inquiries, studies, and injunctions: they practised it themselves, and made it a principal point of their politics to reward the improvement and punish the neglect of them. Mago, à noble Carthaginian, wrote 28 volumes on the subject; and Athens idolized those who instructed them in the methods of cultivating the ground; and the Eleusinian, the greatest of their mysteries, were a piece of grateful devotion to the person who introduced tillage and corn into their country: and Socrates, a man of the greatest discernment in the affairs of life, declared, that he was much deceived, if there could be found out, for an ingenious man, a more pleasing or more useful employment. It is no wonder that Agriculture has been the point of attention, the business and amusement of the world, in every age and part of it, since it forces itself upon us, on account of its necessity, in consequence of the Divine appointment. Other arts and employments may serve for the embellishments of human life, but this is requisite for the support of it. The justice of the offended Creator was seen in the sentence of labour pronounced on his sinful creatures; and his wisdom and goodness strone out in the perpetual execution of it, by so constituting the earth, that, without such labour, the bulk of mankind should not continue their existence, or enjoy the conveniencies of it. This was not then the passionate curse, but the skill of the Governor of the world, unattainable by human legislators, to make his laws execute themselves; and even the few who plead an exemption from this general law of their nature, feel the conse quences 14 Pleasures and Advantages of Agriculture. quences of their mistake, by the exchange of true and equable pleasure for false and imaginary, by the decay of strength and spirits; impairing their fortunes, and beggaring their posterity; and, after all, by submitting to the greater disgust and fatigue of idle ness. For the all-wise and benevolent Architect has so constituted the frame of things, that duty and interest go hand in hand; labour and pleasure succeed each other like day and night; and what He has made necessary, He has made delightful. As hunger, thirst, and weariness, are the infirmities of our nature, eating, drinking, and rest, which are the removal of them, are accompanied with their proper gratifications; and as the cultivation of the earth was to be the laborious employment of the greater part of mankind, so more satisfaction and amusement were to attend it, than is to be found in any other way of life. The labours of the country are accompanied with that vigour and flow of spirits, which alone make life a blessing to the possessor; and the products of it are what our constitutions are formed to like best; what is most agreeable to our taste, delightful to our eyes, and feasts our imagination. The inhabitant of the field enjoys a happiness, which his indolent landlord is too often a stranger to; his meals are more grateful, his life more innocent, and his sleep less disturbed. Men may imprison themselves in large inclosures of brick or stone; may hurry from place to place, and from one amusement to another; but happiness seems to have fixed her seat in rural scenes. Hither, people of business and whim come as often as they can, and when they are unable, import as many of them as they can into their own dwellings; for Nature will be listened to, or punish us for our want of attention to her gifts; expellus, furca licet, usque recurret. Hither, also, fancy strolls to gather up the most agreeable images of things: the assembly, the splendidly-lighted room, the equipage, the dress, do not please the mind of man, in any degree equal to the verdant lawn, the waving field, the gliding stream, the enamelled meadow, the fragant grove, the melodious birds, the sportive cattle, the open sky, and starry heavens: and the ladies must excuse my want of taste or manners, in thinking, that the neat, tucked-up, [July, nimble lass, is a more pleasing figure than a Duchess, in the most gaudy and expensive dress; and that an industrious house-wife, who has made ten thousand cheeses, and brought up half a score of lusty children, is more amiable in the eye of unprejudiced reason, than the finest lady who has made two millions of insipid and unmeaning visits, and propagated chit-chat from one end of the town to the other. The labours of the country-life will rise in our esteem, if, besides their agreeableness to our nature and frame, we consider them as the fruitful source of all the wealth of a nation, and productive of all that is necessary to the being and well-being of mankind. Trade and commerce, which are esteemed the two great fountains of national wealth, cannot have a place, but on the foundation of this original and natural employment. Trade and commerce are nothing else but the manufacture and exchange of the produce of the earth. The flax must grow before it can be worked up into cloth; the trees must flourish on which the natural spinster with his thread is fed, before the loom can display its art; and the herbage must nourish the flocks whose wool is to cover and warm us. The true riches of every state is, not the extent of its domain, but the due cultivation of it; and to suppose gold and silver to be such, argues an utter ignorance of the nature of the thing. A nation may be the sole proprietor of all the gold and silver in Peru and Mexico, and yet, by neglecting to cultivate its lands, and the trade arising therefrom, acquire only the bare advantage of being the carriers of Europe, and depend upon others for the necessaries of life. The old farmer in the fable well understood this, who, on his death-bed, told his sons of a treasure hid somewhere in his grounds, which would, sooner or later, turn up under the plough, if they would be indefatigable in employing it. The hope of this imaginary booty led to such a culture of the land, as made them find above ground the treasure which they vainly sought for beneath it. The whole wealth of the first ages of the world consisted in the produce of the ground, and the pasturage of cattle upon it; and in token of this, the first money that was coined, bore the impression of these real blessings of life. Isaac's blessing and en dowment 1824.] Pleasures and Advantages of Agriculture. dowment of his son, was the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Job was the greatest of all the men of the East, for his substance was 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, and 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 she-asses, and a very great household. Pharoah no sooner got possession of all the corn, than he became master of the money of the neighbouring countries, and the properties and persons of all his subjects.-The best way to discern the true nature of all imaginary wealth, such as gold, and silver, and precious stones, is to try if one can eat or drink them, or make convenient cloathing of them. A Phrygian Prince, who was so rich that he was able to maintain the many millions which followed Xerxes into Greece, but under such a deplorable misapprehension of the true wealth as to wear out his subjects in digging for these rich minerals, to the neglect of husbandry and the desolation of his provinces, on his return from the army, was enter tained by his wife with the most exquisite dainties of every sort, made to the life out of solid gold and silver, which could neither allay his hunger, nor quench his thirst. It is said, that he had sense enough to recover from his mistake, and applied himself from that time to the true interest of his country. Agriculture not only furnishes wealth to a nation, but hands also, able and willing to defend it; and is, perhaps, the best nursery for good soldiers in the world. Other arts and employments of life, a few only excepted, naturally tend to debase the courage and impair the strength of those who follow them; but the labours of the country brace the nerves, give health to the complexion, strength to the sinews, vigour to the constitution, inure to weather and fatigue, and keep the vital spark glowing, by continual exercise. Such men propagate a numerous and hardy race, who people the state, enrich it with their labours, and defend it with their strength. The nature of their business trains them to assiduity and watchfulness; inspires them with an eagerness to maintain what they have made their property by the sweat of their brows. Egypt was the most fruitful and best cultivated country in the world, and, in consequence, its military atchievements make the first figure in history. The most heroic 15 generals and dictators among the Romans were fetched from the plough: they learned first to subdue the stubborn earth, and that made their swords fall so heavy on the necks of their enemies. A country-life, which thus qualifies men for necessary defence, naturally introduces a disposition averse to civil discord and offensive war. The occasion having ceased, their swords easily become plough-shares, and their spears pruning-hooks. They have gained a property in the state, and therefore wish its safety; and are no enemies to government, while they enjoy protection and security from it. They have learned the method of acquiring legal possessions, and are therefore not prone to rapine and invasion. They have something to lose, and of course avoid the danger and mischiefs of quarrel and disturbance. On the contrary, the inhabitants of the little uncultivated states of Afric (and it appears to be the same in all other similar places) are continually fighting and squabbling: strangers to the arts of civil life, and the sweets of possessions increased by honest labour, they acquire a ferocity of manners, like the wild beasts they pursue; they invade, plunder, butcher, and enslave one another; are injurious, because they are idle; fearless, because poor; uneasy for want of necessaries, and therefore rapacious and cruel. It may be thought declamation to suggest, that Agriculture is perhaps the parent of all those sciences, arts, and employments, which have since carried their heads so far above her. The methods of numbering and measuring; mathematics, and that branch of them, geometry, are said to owe their origin to Egypt, where it was necessary, by their means, to preserve the boundadaries of their lands, annually overflowed by the Nile, which threw down and obliterated all distinctions of property. Attention to the respective seasons of husbandry, produced that observation and skill in the adjustment and motions of the heavenly bodies, which constitute the science of Astronomy. The first iron used was, most likely, hammered for the use of the fields; and the first music, perhaps, sounded at rural festivities. Mechanics and navigation took their rise from the various inventions of lifting, conveying, and transporting the fruits of the earth from place to place. But 16 Holy Trinity Church, Kingston-upon-Hull. But Agriculture rises still higher in our estimation, and reads continual lectures, not only in speculative, hut practical philosophy; it leads to morality, and every social virtue, and enforces a due regard to and dependence on the Supreme Being, in which consists the essence of Religion. Socrates sends us to the earth, which yields returns proportioned to the labour bestowed on it; and this is a lesson on justice to the faithful beast, which is fed by the ground, and helps man in his task of manure and cultivation; him he teaches gratitude; and to the mutual good offices in the various employments of the year, that men may be instructed in the use which they may render to society, when we confide in and assist each other. A greater than Socrates has directed us to the ant, to acquire diligence and wisdom; and a greater still, commissions the ox, who knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, to lead us to the consi, deration of that Being, who feeds and governs us. The influence of uncertain seasons, the genial shower, the parching draught, the ratling hail, the pestilential vapour, the reviving dew, the blasting lightning, the canker. worm, and the caterpillar, conspire to raise a reverential awe of Him, who kills with the breath of his displeasure, an acknowledgment, trust and adoration of the great Proprietor of all things; who crowneth the year with his good ness, and whose clouds drop fatness; who poureth down the former and the latter rain in its season; who (according to that most exalted image in the noble simplicity of the words of sacred poetry) openeth his hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness. AN AGRICULTURIST. Mr. URBAN, the Church of the Holy Trinity (called [July, in niches at top; the walls finished by a plain parapet, except the East end, which has an open battlement. Entering through a porch by the South door of the transept, on the right, is a niche canopied; on a plain altar or base, a recumbent female figure in the costume of the 15th century, head uncovered, resting on cussions tasselled, the hands folded over the breast, round the waist a girdle of rose work; this figure was accidentally discovered last summer, when repairing the Church, the niche having been walled up and hid from view at some remote period; for what purpose does not appear. The nave is pewed and fitted up for worship, the pillars are plain, massy, and well-proportioned. Those of the choir are remarkably slender and lofty; the groined vaulting neat, but sadly defaced, by having the compartments filled with paintings in imitation of Italian panels; around this part of the Church (which is never used unless when the communion is administered) are the ancient carved stalls in good preservation. The eastern window of the North aile has the following shields in stained glass: five fusels in fess, and a lion rampant, quarterly, Percy:England and France, quarterly :-and, three ducal coronets in pale:-these are the only remains of stained glass in the Church, the greater part having been destroyed in the civil war. A niche in the South wall, near the Vestry door, has two recumbent bronze effigies (lately repaired) of a Merchant and his lady, dressed in the Elizabethan style also many flat monumental slabs of the 16th and 17th centuries, in memory of merchants belonging to the place, with inscriptions and effigies inlet into the stone, some with brasses of the same age. A seat on the left of the Vestry door, has a rude carving of St. George and screen-work, separating the choir from the transept; over the altar a painting of the Last Supper. A fine tower rises from the middle of the Church to the height of 147 feet; it has two tiers or stories of windows above the roof of the transept, the heads of the lower story are adorned with flat pointed arches, while those of the upper one are equilateral, the heads of both filled with tracery; this is worthy of observation, as a notion has been entertained by some an tiquaries, |