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Egyptians" comprised at one time alt the learning of the world. 

 Into Egypt God sent the miserable nomadic Jews to learn Ag- 

 riculture, before they could be fitted for the great mission to 

 which they were called. Without that agriculture the little 

 territory of Palestine could never have supported its great pop- 

 ulation, and the Hebrew nation would not have arisen above 

 the level of their kinsmen, the barbarian Arabs of the south ; 

 without that Jerusalem would not have been, the temple^ and 

 the altar would not have existed ; the throne of David at most 

 would have been acknowledged only by roving tribes, and Sol- 

 omon would have been without the wealth or ■svisdom of his 

 day. 



In the line of great nations Greece followed, whose agricul- 

 ture was honored, as is evidenced by their festivities and sac- 

 red mysteries, and the deification of Ceres, the goddess of ag- 

 riculture, and of Bacchus, the god of wine. Next came Rome, 

 that owed what she was to Agricultui'e. Her poets sang the 

 praises of her husbandmen. Vigil, whose poetry revolution- 

 ized Roman agriculture, writes thus : 



«' Now, Msecenus, I begin to sing 

 "What shall make joyful corn-fields in the spring ; 

 And tell the husbandmen beneath what sign 

 To turn the earth and train the clinging vino ; 

 "What care the oxen and the flocks will please ; 

 And great experience of the frugal bees." 



Her orators, like Cicero, could say — " I have now come to the 

 farmer's life, with which I am exceedingly delighted, and 

 which seems to me to belong especially to the life of a wise 

 man." Her statesmen and warriors were as renowned in asrri- 

 culture as in the Senate and on the battle-field. Cincinnatus, 

 who drove the enemy from the gates of Rome ; Paulus -iEmil- 

 ius, whose triumph was graced by the Macedonian king ; 

 Scipio, who broke the power of Carthage ; Cato, the favorite 

 of the people — the warrior and the statesman, whose writings 

 were authority to the husbandmen of his day — were all practi- 

 cal agriculturists. 

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