194 AGRICULTURAL WRITERS. 



beguiling him into taking a Hertfordshire farm of lOO acres, by seeing it 

 in a favourable season, and by its having a good residence attached. 



This farm he has thus described — " 1 know not what epithet to give 

 this soil, — sterility falls short of the idea of such a hungry, vitriolic gravel. 

 I occupied for nine years the jaws of a wolf. A nabob's fortune would 

 sink in the attempt to raise good arable crops in such a country." 

 Finding that it would not return him a subsistence, he accepted an 

 engagement as Parliamentary reporter for the Morning Post, a most 

 incongruous employment for a farmer, because it compelled his absence 

 from his home during six days of the week. Yet he retained it for 

 several years — walking seventeen miles down to his farm every Saturday 

 evening, and returning to London every Monday morning. " I worked," 

 are his own words, " more like a coalheaver, though without his reward, 

 than like a man acting from a predominent impulse." Passing over the 

 publication of several of his agricultural tours, we come to the year 1784 

 when he commenced his " Annals of Agriculture," in which he appeared 

 both as editor and author throughout its forty-five volumes, until blind- 

 ness closed his literary labours. It had this guarantee of trustworthy- 

 ness — no essay was admitted without the name and address of the 

 writer. Its correspondents, consequently, are singularly eminent ; and 

 even George III. contributed to its seventh volume a report, under the 

 name of " Ralph Robinson," of Mr. Ducket's farm at Petersham. 

 His "Farmer's Kalender" was another remarkable book in its day, which 

 ran through many editions, revised by many various authors, during last 

 centurv. Undaunted by failure, Mr. Young was about to embark in the 

 cukuation of a vast tract of waste land in Yorkshire, when in 1793 

 he was appomted to the Secretaryship of the newly established Board 

 of Agriculture. 



" What a change," he writes, " in the destination of a man's life ! 

 Instead of entering, as I proposed, the solitary lord of 4,000 acres, in the 

 keen atmosphere of lofty rocks and mountain torrents, with a little 

 creation rising gradually around me, making the desert smile with cul- 

 tivation, and grouse give way to industrious population, behold me at a 

 desk, in the smoke, the fog, and the din of Whitehall. Society has 

 charms — true, and so has solitude to a mind employed. The die, how- 

 ever, is cast ; and my steps may still be, metaphorically, said to be in the 

 furrow." But to "the furrow" the society did not exclusively attend. 

 Its transactions were disfigured by political dissertations, and it conse- 

 quently so lost the support and respect of a largf" portion of the agri- 

 culturists who differed from its political tenets, that it ceased to be 

 useful. Government then withdrew from it the annual grant of ^^3,000 ; 

 and in 18 16 the Society ceased to exist. Mr. Young had not been able 

 to perform the duties of Secretary for some years previously; and he did 

 not long survive its failure, for he died in 1820. in the 8oth year of his 

 age, at Sackville Street, London, and was buried at Bradford. 



