384 Memoir of Arthur Young, Esq. 



biographer, while he canvasses the public claims of a distin- 

 guisbed individual to the gratitude of posterity, to violate that 

 sacred principle of decorum, by which an impenetrable veil is 

 80 properly thrown over the private occurrences of domestic 

 history. Immediately after their marriage, they boarded with 

 his mother at Bradfield ; a mixture of families is never calcu- 

 lated to ensure harmony, and a declining purse, and the prudent 

 caution of an affectionate mother, induced him in the year 

 1767 to undertake the management of the farm of Samford 

 Hall, in Essex, which consisted of about 300 acres of land ; 

 but Fortune is not, as the Roman satirist would make us be- 

 lieve, a deity of our own creation ; various unforeseen circum- 

 stances, and unavoidable embarrassments from the want of 

 capital, induced him to give a hundred pounds to a farmer for 

 taking the estate off his hands ; and it is not a little singular, 

 that this same farmer, by the advantages of capital, very shortly 

 realized a fortune upon it. It was here, uniting the plough 

 and the pen, that he wrote his work, entitled, " Political 

 Essays on the present State of the British Empire," but 

 which was not published until 1772, in one volume quarto. 

 After having thus disposed of Samford Hall, he advertised 

 for another farm, and the knowledge which resulted from 

 viewing the different estates that were on this occasion pre- 

 sented to his notice, furnished him with the materials for his 

 tour, which he called, " The Six Weeks' Tour through the 

 Southern Counties" By the advice of his Suffolk bailiff, he 

 hired a farm of one hundred acres in Hertfordshire; and, from 

 viewing it in an uncommonly favourable season, they were both 

 deceived in the nature of the soil. " I know not," says Mr. 

 Young, to use his own energetic language, " what epithet to 

 give this soil; sterility falls short of the idea, — a hungry, 

 vitriolic gravel,— -I occupied for nine years the jaws of a wolf. 

 A nabob's fortune would sink in the attempt to raise good arable 

 crops, upon any extent, in such a country; my experience and 

 knowledge had increased from travelling, and from practice, but 

 all was lost when exerted upon such a spot. I hardly wonder 

 at a losing account, after fate had fixed me upon land, calcu- 



