PREFACE. ix 



formly found an accompaniment of the priestly cha- 

 racter, that it acquired a portion of its sanctity, and 

 the rude Lombard, or half-civilised Frank, looked with 

 a kind of awe upon waving corn and rich clover as 

 if they were the result of a higher intelligence and 

 purer life than he possessed. Even the highest 

 officers in the Church were expected to attend to 

 these agricultural conquests. In this century we find 

 that when kings summoned bishops to a council, or 

 an archbishop called his brethren to a conference, 

 care was taken to fix the time of meeting at a season 

 which did not interfere with the labours of the farm. 

 Privileges naturally followed these beneficial labours. 

 The kings in their wondering gratitude surrounded 

 the monasteries with fresh defences against the envy 

 or enmity of the neighbouring chiefs. Their lands 

 became places of sanctuary as the altar of the church 

 had been." 



After a perusal of the above, beginning to cast 

 about to see how far agriculture might have drifted 

 from that noble position, I was glad but lately to find 

 framed in a leader of the Times a formal recognition 

 of the merits of our science now-a-days in the follow- 

 ing terms : — " No branch of manufacture, indeed, has 

 taken greater strides of late than have been made in 

 farming ; a good farmer is the real man of progress 

 in the present day." 



An Elsley Vavasour may smile — his type is dying 

 out before Kingsley's pen — but as long as the colonist 

 takes forth, and the foreigner finds he must return to 



