Ainatetir Farming. 337 



domi stirred up all that wealth of energy which lay dormant 

 within him. The same man who had lost the means of a 

 livelihood by making three thousand fruitless experiments in 

 Suffolk husbandry, sat soberly and calmly down to win it 

 back by writing a ten volume History of Universal Agriculture. 

 Alas ! this equally futile effort brought no grist to its author's 

 mill, for though even yet in existence it is in manuscript 

 form only. Happily for his countrymen an abundance of his 

 literary ventures are still available, of which the forty-five 

 volumes of the Annals and the Political Essays are eloquent 

 witnesses of his vast energy as an editor, of his deep research 

 as a student, and of his wide influence as an expert. There is 

 hardly a detail in practical husbandry, or a question relating 

 to the landed economy, on which somewhere or other in his 

 writings he has not had something original to say. When 

 we come to consider how few good agricultural works there 

 were at his period ; when we recall to the reader's memory 

 that incident, which happened not so very long before Young's 

 time, of a Lord Chancellor who had read every English work 

 on the subject on which he could lay hands, pronounced them 

 all a tissue of folly and contradiction, and ended by making 

 a holocaust of the entire collection ; we may partly realise 

 what Young's practical experience and literary skill combined 

 effected for his countrymen. 



The remaining biographies of eminent husbandmen to be 

 described in this chapter will teach us how, by force of ex- 

 ample, they succeeded in spreading abroad a better system of 

 husbandry. But they themselves obtained the bulk of their 

 more advanced practice from a perusal of Young's books. He 

 was not so much instrumental in conveying knowledge to the 

 common farmer, as in becoming the vehicle by which the 

 latter's want of knowledge was made known to the experts. 

 His friend Paris illustrates in far better words than we could 

 employ, another side of his public usefulness, "The practices," 

 Paris says, " found advantageous in particular places were 

 diffused throughout the Empire. Local knowledge became 

 general science, and the ability possessed by a few to cultivate 



II. z 



