HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 269 



I know a poet too, whose music floating over 

 Italy, before yet the battle blasts of her direst civil 

 strife were done, weaned soldiers from their blood 

 scent to the tranquil offices of husbandry ; and that 

 melody of the Georgics is floating still under all the 

 ceilings of all the school-houses of New England. 

 The most pretentious and the most ambitious c f the 

 later emperors of the East Porphyrogenitus has 

 left no more enduring monument of his reign, than 

 the cornpend of agricultural instructions, compiled 

 under his order, and bearing title of &quot; Geoponica 

 Geoponicorum.&quot; 



I observe, too, in my card-basket, the address of 

 a certain Pietro di Crescenzi, who has come all the 

 way from the fourteenth-century-Bologna to pay 

 me a visit in a tight little surtout of white vellum 

 that smacks of the loves of Bembo, or of the wicked 

 ness of the Borgia ; and who has talked of horses and 

 cattle, and wheat-growing, and vegetable-raising, as 

 familiarly as if he were justice of the peace in our 

 town. Lord Bacon has contributed to our stock of 

 information about garden culture, and the elegant 

 pen of Lord Kames has illustrated the whole subject 

 of practical husbandry. But I do not cite these 

 names for the sake of making any idle boust of 

 the antiquity and dignity of the craft ; we have too 

 much of that, I think, in our agricultural addresses, 



