x PREFACE. 



replenish the stock, which in all its varieties no 

 country seems capable as yet of producing to the 

 extent, or of the quality that our favoured islands do, 

 so long shall we claim a high niche for agriculture. 

 It yields a material which may be welded to the 

 noblest uses. Not only this, but I claim further, that 

 besides being a pursuit most eminently peaceful, 

 pleasant, and reasonably profitable — the knowledge 

 of which once acquired is nothing to carry — there is 

 a modern freemasonry about it. It is at once a pass- 

 port to the affections, an influential medium of com- 

 munication with all classes, from the merchant prince 

 who, investing his profit in landed estates, turns 

 invariably to be a lord of the soil, down to the yeo- 

 man who is your churchwarden, and the peasant whose 

 children are your Sunday scholars. Of those who 

 have possessed and availed themselves for good of 

 such knowledge a distinguished instance was Oberlin, 

 and it is perhaps to a kindred combination of the 

 practical and intellectual with the morally beautiful 

 that Bishop Selwyn owes his eminent success. Would 

 that the like of him were among us as the sand upon 

 the sea-shore for number. 



