320 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



Xor aught besides of prospect, grove, or song, 

 Dim grottoes, gleaming lakes, and fountains clear. 

 Here, too, dwells simple truth, plain innocence, 

 Unsullied beaut}"; sound unbroken youth, 

 Patient of labor, with a little pleased, 

 nealth ever blooming, unambitious toil; 

 Calm contemplation, and poetic ease." 



" This is the life which those who fret in guilt 

 And guilty cities, never knew ; the life 

 Led iXv pi'imeval ages, nncorrupt. 

 When angels dwelt, and God himself, with man. 



So Virgil, who sang of Rome's foimdation, the loftiest theme to Romans, 

 found nothing low iu country life, and sj^eut some of his best energies in pic- 

 turing to his uoble patron, Maecenas, its toils and trials with its joys. Minute 

 directions for successful care of lands, of crops, of horses, beeves, or bees seemed 

 not beneath the notice of the first jjoet in the most literary age of Rome. 



Horace, a contemporary, dealt more with .social life, Avith feasts, and city 

 manners; yet his love for country life is ever showing itself enough to suggest 

 his fitness to enjoy the farm wliich Maecenas gave him in recognition of his 

 talents. 



But the poets were not the only cultivated men among tlie ancients who found 

 their thoughts drav/n toward agricultural pursuits. 



Philosophy was in those days mostly confined to speculation upon the obscurer 

 methods of nature, often far from the truth, and further from any practical 

 life. Yet agriculture was quite as near the thoughts of philosophers as any of 

 the arts. Socrates, to be sure, the most practical of them all, was busied with 

 the morals of city life and politics. Yet Xenophon, one of his favorite pupils, 

 and the most finished of Greek prose writer.^, makes Socrates give the sanction 

 of his voice and methods to a treatise on the garden, the farm and the rural 

 household. Thus does he exalt these erery-day affairs beside the highest 

 thoughts upon the soul's immortality. Then Cato, tiiat "noblest Roman of them 

 all," who learned the Greek language at 80 years, gave his name to a treatise 

 that is still studied. 



But I have kept you long enough among the ancients, and Avill not name 

 another, lest the attractions in tho.?e old masters detain us from the fresher and 

 more abundant stores nearer home. If any wish to pursue the subject further, 

 or to trace agricultural writings through the early centuries in Europe, "Wet 

 days at Edgewood,-' by Donald G. Mitchell, will give 3'ou an index, with noAv 

 and then a delightful glance that may lead you to still deeper researches in a 

 well furnished library. The same book may help us too, in our search througli 

 English literature. 



It might be easy and pleasant to trace a train of similar sentiments througli 

 five centuries of English poetry, from the notable Frankelin, the ploughman, 

 and the country parson of Chaucer, to the simple "Betsy and I,"' of a Carle- 

 ton ; but the experience of us all is enough to confirm the general statement of 

 its presence. I purpose to do more and less than this a little, — more, in classi- 

 fying somewhat the various ways in which men of literary culture have tried to 

 help agriculture ; less, in taking samples only, wherever they occur most avail- 

 able, without trying to give a complete list of authors, or their works. Of here 

 and there one, I shall try to give some idea in slight detail and very meagre 

 quotations. 



Let us begin with the most obvious, though not always the most effective, 



