EAEL LEicESTEii.] PEINCIPLES AND PEACTICE OF [state of ^ojbpolk. 



kept the formers of that day apart from each 

 other, and which held them in the bonds of 

 ignorance as to what was passing in every 

 district beyond the immediate limits of their 

 own, as complete as if they were so many 

 Eobinsou Crusoes, doomed to cultivate a piece 

 of solitary land, on a solitary rock, in the 

 middle of the Pacific. The man who entered 

 heartily into this work was Arthur Young, 

 the son of a prebendary of Canterbury. A 

 writer describes him as one of the most useful 

 and sagacious, if not one of the most brilliant 

 of men. Long before his time, however, Nor- 

 folk was celebrated for the superiority of her 

 roads. The inhabitants quoted with pride an 

 observation of Charles II., who said that the 

 county ought to be cut up to make highways 

 for the rest of the kingdom. This, however, 

 only proved how deplorable, in this respect, 

 were the other parts of the country. When 

 Young made his "tours," and visited Norfolk, 

 he did not fsill-in with a single mile of good 

 road in it. In Essex, the lanes were so narrow 

 that it was only possible for a carriage to get 

 along them. " Euts," says the writer already 

 quoted, "of an incredible depth; and chalk- 

 waggons stuck fast, till a line of them were in 

 the same predicament, and it required twenty 

 or thirty horses to be tacked to each, to draw 

 them out one by one. The thoroughfares, in 

 fact, were ditches of thick mud, cut up by 

 secondary ditches of irregular depth. In at- 

 tempting to traverse them, Young had some- 

 times to alight from his chaise, and get the 

 rustics to assist him in lifting it over the 

 hedge. Such was the state of things when, in 

 1.7G7, he abandoned the farm, in which he had 

 experimented too much to be successful, and 

 availing himself of the frank hospitality which 

 lias, in every age, been the characteristic of 

 our farmers and country gentlemen, made 

 those celebrated ' tours,' which are absolute 

 photographs of agricultural England, and are 

 models of what all such reports should be — 

 graphic, faithful, picturesque, and philosophi- 

 cal 1" Such was the man and his work, which 

 did so much to iin[);irt an impetus to agricul- 

 ture ; and which, from Ins time to the present, 

 has, without pause, continued to advance. 



THE EARL OF LEICESTER. 



Mr. Coke, of llolkham (afterwards Earl of 

 892 



Leicester), headed the agricultural movement 

 towards the close of the last, and throufrhout 

 the first quarter of the present century. Ee- 

 claiming the Norfolk wastes, marling the light 

 lands, extensively cultivating the turnip, and 

 introducing the rotation of crops, have all 

 been ascribed to Iiim. That he was the 

 originator of all these improvements, however, 

 can hardly be the case, as Young states, in his 

 Tours (published some years before Mr. Coke 

 held an acre in Norfolk), that every one of 

 these practices were then in common use. 

 But though the precise nature of what Mr. 

 Coke did has been exaggerated or misunder- 

 stood, what he really did accomplish was very 

 great. He is the first in the ranks of that 

 class of whom Young wrote in 1770 — " Let 

 no one accuse me of the vanity of thinking that 

 I shall ever, by writing, wean farmers from 

 their prejudices. All improvements in agri- 

 culture must have their origin in landlords." 

 Five years after this, Mr. Coke succeeded to 

 the estates of the Leicester famih' ; and here 

 we find it stated, that " the fine house at 

 Holkham, erected from the designs of Kent, 

 about the middle of the last century, bears an 

 inscription, which imparts that it was built in 

 the midst of a desolate track ; and its noble 

 founder was accustomed to say, at once jocu- 

 larly and sadly, that his nearest neighbour 

 was the King of Denmark. There was still 

 many a broad acre in its primitive sheep- 

 walks ; and Mr. Coke graphically described the 

 condition of portions of the property surround- 

 ing this princely mansion, by the remark, 

 'that he found two rabbits quarrelling for one 

 blade of grass.' " This was an unprofitable, as 

 well as an uninviting, condition of things; but 

 he was not disheartened. He immediately 

 set about applying the known methods prac- 

 tised, to bring into a state of fertility the 

 wilderness with which he was encompassed; at 

 the same time adopting such improvements as 

 suggested themselves on the existing modes. 

 He also endeavoured to persuade his neigh- 

 bours to adopt his practice. Having, by per- 

 severance, labour, and example, succeeded in 

 rousing them from the lethargy into which 

 they had sunk from the success which had 

 attended the practice of Lord Townshend, the 

 second revoltition commenced. The great 

 evil of the time, as we have already observed, 



