186 AGRICULTURE. 



in our agriculture, but they appear to have had none. We 

 can point to the period when the value of our sands was 

 doubled or trebled by the introduction of turnip husbandry, 

 and the consequent intimate union of the fleece and the 

 plough. We can tell that, through general enclosures, the 

 exhausted clays of our open fields were allowed to recover 

 their fertility by long rests in grass. Sowing corn by the 

 drill, threshing by horse power and by steam, permanent 

 under-drainage, the new Leicester sheep and the improved 

 short-horn, all attest our progress. They had nothing of 

 the sort. They describe a very advanced and refined 

 system of tillage, but they treat agriculture as an art 

 whereof the origin is veiled in the mists of antiquity, 

 which they do not seek to penetrate ; which had descended 

 to them in a state of perfection, beyond which they scarcely 

 ventured to look ; and which they must be careful not to 

 deteriorate. Dickson's abiding faith is, that they were 

 better farmers than the moderns, and, on almost every 

 point where ancient and modern practice differ, he gives 

 the preference to the former. Nor is he alone in these 

 opinions. The very latest historian of the Papal States 

 says, " Agricultural science has not been carried as high in 

 Scotland as it was carried more than two thousand years 

 ago by the Romans, as any one who has ever studied the 

 Scriptores Rei Rustica will readily admit" (vol. iii. p. 637). 

 Whether the Rev. John Miley, D.D., himself has ever 

 studied them, though he puts the word in italics, we are 

 somewhat doubtful ; but, at any rate, from these judgments 

 we appeal to the results. No one, we believe, doubts or 

 denies, that the agriculture of Scotland, if imperfect, and 

 the still less perfect agriculture of England, have resulted 

 in constantly-increasing produce, and enabling those coun- 

 tries to supply not only an increasing population, but a 

 population whose scale of maintenance with the exception, 

 alas ! of the class of mere agricultural labourers has been 

 constantly improving. Confessedly the reverse was the 

 case in Roman agriculture. The successive writers speak 



