11 



vitality and intelligence. Who can behold the mysterious move- 

 ments of the steam engine, without being forcibly impressed with 

 the idea, that it acts like a thing of life, that it is some huge 

 monster, a subdued Polyphemus, who, breathing vapor, and 

 smoke, and fire, labors, in agony and wrath, obedient to the will 

 of man. Located in the gorges of the mountains, it drains sub- 

 terranean rivers, from the profound caverns of the miner ; and 

 affixed to the fleets of commerce and of war, they are driven 

 triumphantly through adverse tides and storms, like roused 

 leviathans. 



The unnatural alienation of the sciences and arts, which so 

 long retarded every other branch of national industry, had the 

 same deleterious effect on tillage, which was also doomed to en- 

 counter other difficulties, equally, if not more discouraging. It 

 was too generally considered as a degrading occupation, and was 

 scarcely ranked among the pursuits of the learned, and affluent, 

 until Lord Bacon and the erudite Evelyn deemed it worthy of 

 attention, and gave it the sanction of their illustrious names. 



The first English treatise on rural economy was Fitzherbert's 

 " Book of Husbandry," which was published in 1 634. Tusser's 

 " Five Hundred Points of Husbandry " appeared about thirty 

 years after, and was followed by Barnaby Googe's " Whole Art 

 of Husbandry," and " The Jewel Houses " of Sir Hugh Platt. 

 Early in the eighteenth century, the celebrated treatise of Jethro 

 Tull excited much attention, and several new works of consider- 

 able consequence were announced before 1764, when the valu- 

 able publications of Arthur Young, Marshel, and of numerous 

 other authors, spread a knowledge of cultivation, and cherished 

 a taste for rural improvements throughout Great Britain, which 

 has rendered that kingdom as distinguished for its tillage, as for 

 its advancement in manufactures and commercial enterprise. 

 Agriculture has covered her barren heaths with luxuriant crops, 

 converted her pools and morasses into verdant meadows, and 

 clothed her bleak mountains with groves of forest trees, while 

 horticulture is rapidly extending her beneficent and gladsome 



