352 THE VILLA GARDKNER. 



is any enjoyment in retiring to the country and doing nothing there. Every 

 retired man of business, who wishes to be as happy in the country as he was 

 in town, must betake himself, if his residence be on a small scale, to garden- 

 ing ; and, if it be on a lai-ge scale, to farming and planting. Some of the 

 operations of farming may be recommended to a country gentleman, as a 

 substitute for hunting and shooting. We particularly allude to the occasional 

 holding of the plough; an operation which calls into moderate exercise every 

 part of the body, and which also engages the mind in keeping the furrow 

 straight. We speak from experience, when we say that we consider this the 

 most agreeable of all farming operations, and one by which a maximum of 

 exercise may be obtained with a minimum of fatigue. The handles of the 

 plough, draw, as it were, the operator after it, and the necessity of keeping 

 his eye on two points, seen through between the pair of horses, occupies his 

 attention. This attention, however, is only kept alive in ploughing with a 

 plough in which the horses are yoked abreast ; for in those cases in which 

 they are yoked in a line, the straightness of the furrow does not depend on 

 the holder of the plough, but on the driver of the horses. The holder of the 

 plough, in this latter case, is little better than a machine, and the operation, 

 as he performs it, can no more be compared to holding a plough and pair, as 

 practised in Northumberland, Berwickshire, &c., than the wooden plough in 

 Middlesex can be compared to the iron plough of Mid-Lothian. In short, the 

 occupation of ploughing with two horses is a iit exeixise for a gentleman and 

 a philosopher ; and we can readily conceive the country gentlemen of 

 Britain, at some future time, substituting this, and other agricultural labours, 

 for the sports of the field. We have known several gentlemen in Scotland, 

 of independent fortunes, follow the plough a poi-tion of every day, when 

 they were not otherwise engaged, and the weather would permit. There can 

 be no doubt, also, that emigrants take pleasure in this exercise ; and we can 

 readily imagine that the sons of some of our landed proprietors, who now 

 cultivate their own grounds in Australia or North America, are far happier 

 in labouring in their fields with their own hands, than they would have been 

 had they remained at home, and been compelled to seek for occupation in 

 mere amusement. 



429. Moral i7ijiuence of farming. — It has generally been thought that the 

 habit of labouring with animals, or looking after them, has a tendency to 

 brutalise, or at least to render coarse, rather than refined, farmers and their 

 servants. This is, no doubt, to a certain extent true, where farming is pur- 

 sued on the old system, and where all the animals of the farm are managed 

 by main force ; but, on the modern system of farming and managing animals, 

 the whip and the goad are no longer employed ; and horses, instead of being 

 broken in by main force, undergo a similar treatment to human beings, com- 

 mencing with their earliest years, on a system analogous to that of the infant 

 schools. It is easy to conceive that this mode of managing animals must 

 require quite a different kind of masters from what they have hitherto had ; 

 and that, by reaction, the gentleness and humane treatment which the man 

 is compelled to show the animal, cannot fail to have a corresponding effect in 

 humanising himself. This mode of treatment was first published by William 

 Skirving, Esq., of Strathruddy, but it has only been lately adopted as a 

 system, by some of the best Scotch agriculturists, and by the trainers of 



