xiv A Discourse on Agriculture, 



of him, " that he had well cultivated his spot of ground." 

 The leading propensities of her greatest men, were to cast 

 off their rohes of state, and lay aside their truncheons and 

 ensigns of power, to * cultivate their spots of ground." And, 

 in some instances, when absent on high commands, or impor- 

 tant public duties, their little farms were cultivated at public 

 expense. But if the illustriously didactic Virgil, could 

 now revisit the neighbourhood of Rome, and many parts of 

 the scenes of his still unrivalled Georgics, which were 

 composed at the instance of the crafty minister of Octavius 

 Crvsar, pompously styled Augustus, who patronized them, 

 to repair and make some amends for the waste and misery, 

 he had mainly himself occasioned ; the feeling poet might 

 again exclaim, as he did, in the character of Melibaus, in 

 his first eclogue ; 



" Impius haec tarn culta Novalia Miles habebit ? 

 Barbarus has Segetes ? en quo Discordia cives 

 Perduxit miseros ! en queis consevimus Agros !"* 



With no small degree of anguish he would perceive, that he 

 had written his yet justly admired agricultural lessons in 

 vain. The long and unprecedented ravages, with which Eu- 

 rope has been afflicted in our day, verify the remark of Mon- 

 tesquieu. In extensive regions of that quarter of the globe, 

 Agriculture has been either suspended or languishing. Where- 

 soever it had any activity, its scanty products have been con- 

 sumed, or trodden down by unrelenting and heartless spoilers. 

 The modern competitors for power, how far soever necessity 

 and self-preservation might justify most of them, and one, 

 beyond all the rest, in desolating ambition : have shewn them- 

 selves as perfect masters in the works of destruction, as their 

 examples, the ambitious, remorseless and sanguinary Cae- 

 sars of antiquity ? though, one excepted, they may not copy 

 them in personal flagitiousness. 



* Shall an impious soldier possess these well tilled fallows ? A barbarian 

 these crops? Behold the abyss, into which dissension has plunged our miserable 

 citizens ! Lo, for whom, we have sown our corn-fields ! 



