Memoir of Arthur Young, Esq. 295 



the amusement of the farmer : the perpetual renovation of 

 employment is to him a source of perennial pleasure. To see 

 every object budding into life, at the genial summons o£ 

 returning spring, while all the colours of reviving nature glow 

 with a lustre excited by the efforts of his industry. The russet 

 landscape stealing into verdure till every scene is pregnant 

 with delight. Each field, alive with tillage, opening the 

 grateful bosom of the earth to receive the seeds of those 

 innumerable plants which vegetate for the wants, or blossom 

 for the pleasures, of mankind. To hail the yellow shoots that 

 scatter their pale verdure over the glebe, which each returning 

 sun matures into mellower tints. To eye with rapture the 

 brighter hues that paint the spots where art contends with 

 nature ; and the gradations of luxuriant growth that follow the 

 variations that experiment has traced. With warmer suns to 

 see the lawn alive with sheep, or spread with the picturesque 

 labours of the hay-maker ; the stately oxen varying their 

 march with the heat of the day, now in the vale, then in the 

 shade of some spreading beech, or catching every breeze on 

 the elevation of a hill, while the tinkling of the distant fold 

 closes the eve. To assist with incessant attention the progress 

 of vegetation towards the maturity of harvest, — towards that 

 season of joy, when crowded barns prove insufficient for the 

 increase which art and industry command ; when the orchard's 

 loaded branches bid streams nectareous warm the peasant's 

 heart. — When sliding through the sky, 



' Pale suns unJ'cU at distance roll away,' 



and gild with tlieir beams another hemisphere, not idle in their 

 absence, the provident husbandman sees his flocks and herds 

 securely sheltered, warmly imbedded, and treated luxuriously 

 with verdant vegetation, even in the chilling blasts of frost and 

 snow. The planter, appropriating the right soil for the beauties 

 of the landscape, marks his barren spots, and the prop/ietic eye 

 of taste sees refreshing shades thicken over the bleak hills ^ 

 then also the properties of your soils demand attention ; tiie 

 laboratory opens its recesses, and gives to wintry darkness 



