Amateur Farming, 341 



ful service to his employers in Grub Street, with a careful 

 attention to the duties of his bucolic profession. It is doubtful 

 if his countrymen have ever fully appreciated all the good which 

 he did to Ecglish and Irish agriculture. Public institutions 

 voted him their thanks, agricultural societies presented him 

 with useless medals, the King gave him a Merino ram, and 

 read with avidity all his works ; eventually the Nation took 

 him away from the sights and smells of the country which he 

 loved, and made him her Secretary of Agriculture in the town 

 which he loathed. But the man who is said to have saved the 

 Irish Nation alone some £80,000 a year by exposing the follies 

 of paying a bounty on the land carriage of its corn, deserved 

 more generous usage than were any such empty compliments 

 as these. It would have been well if the Government had 

 pensioned him oflP before his eyesight failed, on some rustic spot 

 where, in his own expressive words, he could behold " the 

 russet landscape stealing into verdure till every scene is preg- 

 nant with delight — each field alive with tillage opening the 

 grateful bosom of the earth to receive the seeds of those in- 

 numerable plants which vegetate for the wants or blossom for 

 the pleasures of mankind." It is sad to think of Young to- 

 wards the close of his life unable, save in imagination, to 

 picture " the lawn alive with sheep, or spread with the 

 picturesque labours of the haymaker, the stately oxen varying 

 their march with the heat of the day, now in the vale, then in 

 the shade of some spreading beech, or catching every breeze 

 on the elevation of a hill, while the tinkling of the distant 

 fold closes the eve." What a Principal would he not have 

 made, had the Nation carried out such an institution as Evelyn 

 planned, i.e., a college for the reception of persons of a philo- 

 sophic turn of mind, with its library, elaboratory, aviary, 

 olitory garden, pavilion and conservatory, together with their 

 healthful rustic surroundings ! 



The premature failure of Young's eyesight was, though the 

 Nation did not recognise it as such, a public loss. But when he 

 could no longer stimulate his fellows to fresh agricultural 

 undertakings with his pen, his voice to the very last remained 

 at their disposal. We do not care, however, to linger over the 



