HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



famous ones of Ravenna— of which Pliny 

 speaks— weighing three to the pound. 



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 hus- 

 bandry; 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 of the later 

 emperors of the East— Porphyrogenitus— has 

 left no more enduring monument of his reign, 

 than the compend of agricultural instructions, 

 compiled under his order, and bearing title of 

 "Geoponica Geoponicorum." 



I observe, too, in my card-basket, the ad- 

 dress 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 wickedness of the 

 Borgia; and who has talked of horses and cat- 

 tle, 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 il- 

 lustrated the whole subject of practical hus- 



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