Amateur Farming. 331 



influence of much travelling, his mind was not so expansive 

 as to fit him for economical reasoning. " He had no real con- 

 ception of the harmony of interests," says Rogers. " His entire 

 sympathy is with agricultural production. Everything must 

 lend itself to this result. The labour must be cheap, whatever 

 it cost in penury to the workman. The produce must be in- 

 creased by every effort of ingenuity and skill. The energies 

 of the farmer must be stimulated and his ignorance and sloth 

 cured by a rack rent." ^ 



We hardly think, however, that Rogers has read Young's 

 character aright. The learned historian of Work and Wages 

 holds a brief for the labourer, and cross-examines with all the 

 severity of a special pleader any witness hostile to his cause. 

 Many a man in Young's circumstances would have considered 

 that the task which he had set himself would require the un- 

 divided attention of a lifetime. As a specialist, therefore, he 

 would have deemed it his sole duty to study the interests of 

 agriculture, and would naturally have concluded that other in- 

 dustries might be left to take care of themselves. Nor, again, 

 does Mr. Prothero quite hit off his particular idiosyncracies. 

 After justly eulogising his keen observation and great talents 

 for description, and estimating him as one of the most en- 

 lightened and useful pioneers of agricultural improvement that 

 the century produced, he goes on to say : ^ " His enthusiasm is 

 always genuine if it is sometimes extravagant, as when he 

 praises the plumpness of Rubens' female portraits with the 

 eye of a grazier, or remarks of a fine Oorreggio : A fine picture 

 is a good thing, but I had rather it had been a fine tup." "We 

 cannot but think that Young's enthusiasm was sometimes 

 feigned and therefore extravagant. Was it likely that the 

 individual, who at thirteen could appreciate classical music, 

 and enjoy G-arrick's rendering of a tragic part, would be in 

 matured manhood such a bumpkin as to prefer the symmetry 

 of a sheep to a great artist's masterpiece ? Are the French 

 Travels the literary production of a mind wanting refine- 



* Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 475. T. Eogers. 

 ' Pioneers of English Farming, p. 62, R. S. Prothero. 



