a few usages founded on superstitious rites and observancès, agriculture with them was simply an empirical art, founded upon long continued observation and experience.

Knowledge indeed is at all times a tree of slow growth, and late in arriving at maturity; in the early stage of its existence it may produce flowers, delightful to the eye, refreshing to the senses, and containing the germs of future development; but what fruits it then affords are sure to disappoint, and prove abortive; nor until it has become fairly established in the soil, and until its branches have become widely expanded, does the period arrive, at which it can be expected to bring forth any thing substantially serviceable, or can vindicate its pretensions to be regarded as useful as well as ornamental to society.

Thus long as chemistry has been known to us as a branch of philosophical inquiry, forty years have not elapsed since sir Humphry Davy accomplished the first great practical application of its principles to the purposes of humanity by his invention of the Miner's Lamp; and it was only the other day that Liebig made the first successful attempt to improve agriculture by the aid of the same science, when he suggested, on theoretical grounds alone, the addition of sulphuric acid to bones, as a means of rendering them, when used as a manure, more soluble in the juices of plants.

No wonder then that in the backward condition in which the physical sciences existed at the period to which I allude, no aid could be obtained from them towards the improvement of the arts of life; and hence that the most modern treatises on Roman agriculture which have come down to us should be in the main little more than the mere developments of the system recommended in the older ones, whilst, though much may have been added, nothing is to be found contradictory, to the plan inculcated by the former.

It seems to me therefore that it would be an unnecessary waste of time, were I to present you with a separate abstract of the precepts contained in the treatises of Cato and of Varro. Without meaning to institute any comparison between the intrinsic merits of these several treatises, or pretending to say which is the most original or the most accurate, I deem it best to take as my text-book the book which had the advantage at least of being the latest, and therefore of embodying in itself what was most worthy of note in the writings that had preceded it. I shall therefore bring before you principally the system of agriculture recommended in the treatise of Columella, only proposing to point out such differences in detail as may exist between him and the other authors who can be appealed to, together with so much of the subject-matter of each as is calculated to

convey to you some idea of the general tenor of their respective productions.

The oldest of the writers on Husbandry whose works have survived to the present day is Marcus Portius Cato the Censor, who flourished during the period of the second Punic war, and died in the first or second year of the third, at the age of 85."

He is often represented to us as the beau idéal of the old Roman; and he certainly may be regarded as a type, of the virtues which that nation prized most highly, as well as of the defects which clouded their great qualities in the estimation of all except themselves.

Lamartine, in his work on the French Revolution, has happily remarked-"Les poètes disent, que les nuages prennent la forme des pays qu'ils ont traversés, et se moulant sur les vallées, sur les plaines, ou sur les montagnes, en gardent l'empreinte, et la promènent dans les cieux. C'est l'image de certains hommes, dont le génie pour ainsi dire collectif se modèle sur leur époque, et incarne en eux toute l'individualité d'une nation."—"That, as the poets say, the clouds assume the form of the countries which they have traversed; and that, modelling themselves upon its valleys, plains, or mountains, they preserve the impression of each, and display it in the skies. This may be regarded as the type of certain men, whose genius is modelled upon the age in which

b He flourished from 234 to 149 B. C.

they live, and embodies in itself all the national peculiarities."

Now these are precisely the persons who hold the highest place in the estimate of their respective nations, or, at least, most completely command their sympathies.

Thus Alcibiades or Alexander in Greece; Cato in Rome; Henry IV. or Louis XIV. in the monarchical days of France; Cardinal Ximenes in Spain; Dr. Johnson in the literary, or Wellington in the military line in England; were objects of hero-worship amongst their countrymen; not only on account of their great talents, and the services they have rendered; but likewise as embodying those national characteristics which each member of the community takes a personal pride in seeing associated with acknowledged excellence, and which, he is willing to flatter himself, are connected with its possession.

The levity of the Greek- the Frenchman's fondness for pleasure and display-the superstition and austerity of the Spaniard-the contempt of theory, and exclusive attention to practical objects which distinguish the Englishman-and the aversion or indifference to all beyond the narrow pale of his native city, which rendered Roman patriotism only a somewhat more expanded forin of selfishness-are each exemplified in the individuals I have mentioned, who may be regarded as amongst the most generally renowned, at least, in their respective countries.

Hence it may have been in consequence rather than in spite of these defects in his character that Cato became the idol of popular admiration; since, as we have already seen, the popular hero in each country is the individual who most completely bears the impress of the national character.

Nevertheless, with respect to the personage alluded to, it must, I think, be admitted, that his chief virtue was a love of his country; and that even this did not prevent him from thwarting Scipio in his career of glory; whilst amongst his vices must be reckoned, avarice, selfishness, meanness, and want of humanity.

Even Plutarch condemns as barbarous his conduct in selling off his old and diseased slaves, to save the cost of maintaining them; and his inveterate hostility to Carthage indicated less perhaps the depth of his patriotism, than the moroseness and implacability of his temper.

Nor, with all deference to persons of higher authority upon such matters, who have expressed an opposite opinion, can I bring myself to admit, that the catastrophe which Cato's persevering enmity to Carthage mainly tended to produce, or at least to accelerate, was one calculated, so far as we can see, to promote the advancement of civilization, or that, by the destruction of that great commercial emporium, a benefit, as some have contended, was conferred on the human

race.

Let us consider for a moment what would have