388 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



place in the annals of agricultural improvement, advised farmers, 

 who would improve their cultivation and management, &quot;to go 

 abroad and see what other people were about.&quot; Every observing 

 man, who acts upon this advice, will find its advantages. I have 

 often heard it said, and, if I thought it of any value in the case, I 

 should say that my own experience confirmed it, that one of the 

 best modes of understanding a book written in a foreign language 

 is to read different versions or translations of it. The different 

 forms of expressing the same thought adopted by different per 

 sons, or the different conceptions which different minds gather 

 from the same expressions, whether in themselves right or wrong, 

 may give us a clew to the true meaning, and correct many a mis 

 construction, or reveal and make light many a hidden or obscure 

 passage. This analogy suggests the true mode in which an in 

 quisitive mind may gather instruction and knowledge from the 

 practices of other men. 



Three things seem to me absolutely essential to human prog 

 ress in any and every art, in any and every science. The first 

 is a profound conviction of the imperfection of all human knowl 

 edge ; the second, an entire distrust of all human infallibility ; the 

 third, a perfect docility of mind, and a readiness to receive light 

 and instruction from any and every quarter where it may be 

 gathered, or by which it may approach us. Self-esteem, which, 

 when combined with a good measure of benevolence and con 

 scientiousness, and so leading men to admit and respect the just 

 claims of others, is a useful and harmless sentiment, and prompts 

 to many valuable enterprises, when found excessive, and in a 

 great degree unqualified, becomes an almost hopeless impedi 

 ment to improvement. 



I was told, before I left the country, by some American friends, 

 that there was nothing in the way of agriculture to be learned in 

 England, and that American agriculture was as improved as 

 English agriculture. I had been but a short time in England 

 before I heard, from various quarters, that in no country on the 

 globe had agriculture reached that degree of improvement which 

 it had attained in England ; and really in some cases, at public 

 dinners, when, in the language of modem agricultural chemistry, 

 the gases of the wine began to stimulate the brain, one would be 

 almost led to infer that agriculture itself was a recent invention 

 of British genius ; and England presented herself to the en- 



