Agricultural Report. 1 1 1 



f . May your traders grumble when bread is high, 



And your farmers when bread is low, 

 And your pauper brats, scarce two feet high, 



Learn more than your nobles know? 

 May your sick have foggy or frosty weather, 



And your convicts all short throats, 

 And your blood-covered bankers e'er hang together, 



And tempt ye with one-pound notes! 



And so, with hunger in your jaws, 



And peril within your breast, 

 And a bar of gold, to guard )our laws, 



For those who pay the best ; 

 Farewell to England's woe and weal ! 



. . For our betters, so bold and blythe, 

 May they never want, when they want a meal, 



A Parson to take their Tithe! ' 



" Wine," the " Sea," the " Beggar's Song," the " Blood-Horse," and a dozen 

 others, we should quote if we had space. We have shewn the estimation in which 

 we hold the volume hy what we have already selected. The tempting character of 

 the songs has almost caused us to overlook the " Dramatic Fragments," with which 

 the volume closes. There are nohle things among them, worthy the golden time of 

 English dramatic literature, and as deserving of being transferred to memory as the 

 songs themselves, many of which will become familiar as household words, and 

 haunt the heart, alike in its melancholy and its mirth. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



WE adverted in our last Report to the everlasting and quickly succeeding 

 reverses of this our proverbially fickle and capricious climate, rendering the occu- 

 pation of a fanner, especially under our still existing burdensome and oppressive 

 system of taxation, one of the most adventurous and uncertain in which a man 

 can be engaged. The retrospect is ruinous, but astounding to those affected by it. 

 During the last autumn, that most important process, committing to earth the 

 seed wheat, was carried through under the happiest auspices, the foul state of the 

 land considered, and perhaps the largest breadth of wheat sown ever before witnessed 

 in this country. There was scarcely a failure to form the subject of a complaint, 

 the young wheats springing forth from the earth, and covering it with luxuriance. 

 So open and mild was the season, that at Christmas the grass-lands were 

 covered with the verdure of spring, and the cattle maintained abroad, instead of 

 being taken to winter quarters. Turnip-seed was to be purchased at the very lowest 

 rate, and subsequently, in many instances, to be had gratis for the sake of clearing 

 the lands. It was even apprehended that the stock of hay and fodder would 

 become a drug at the end of the spring season. A sad reverse however was in 

 embryo, and soon made its appearance. During the greater part of the four suc- 

 ceeding months, chilling winds, hoar frosts and unwholesome heavy fogs prevailed, 

 changing the fine and healthy verdure of the wheat plant to a pale and sickly 

 yellow, giving it, on poor soils especially, a rough and dingy appearance, and 

 laying a foundation for rust and mildew, and those other too well known conse- 

 quences of blight. Such a state of the weather necessarily impeded the spring 

 tillage upon all heavy lands. On the arrival of the accustomed grass season, there 

 was scarcely a bite for a lamb, and cattle were seen in many parts wandering over 

 that which should have been their pasture, in a state of absolute starvation. The 

 tone was now sadly changed, and instead of the apprehension of a surplus of fodder 

 at the conclusion of the season, was substituted a well grounded fear that it would 

 he in great want and demand! Our late and last reverse has been of a more 

 auspicious character, indeed a providential one. Genial and invigorating warmth 

 of temperature, alternating with refreshing showers, have succeeded to alternate 

 cold rains and drought, and the corn and grass lands have received the most sudden 

 and beneficial improvement. Finally, there is, in many parts, a remaining surplus 



