14 THE BOOK OF THE LANDED ESTATE. 



be well prepared to carry out farm improvements on a large scale, such 

 as a landed estate involves ; and from his having obtained, besides, a 

 theoretical education, bearing on the same subject, he must be well 

 qiialified, in other respects, to deal with the management of landed 

 property. 



Men who have been brought up in the country from boyhood always 

 make better agents than those who have been reared in towns. Indeed, 

 it seems but natural to suppose that such should be the case. Young 

 men brought up in towns are generally ignorant of country matters, and 

 seldom take to them from choice in after life, and therefore do not 

 generally make good land-agents. On the other hand, young men who 

 are brought up in the country have the most of their associations con- 

 nected with it, and their earliest impressions derived from it, so they are 

 most at home among such scenes in after life, and consequently are the 

 persons who are most likely to make the very best of land-agents. 

 This is a point but seldom taken into consideration by proprietors in 

 choosing agents to act for them on their estates, but it is not the less 

 necessary that they should do so ; for the impressions received in youth 

 form, in most cases, the basis of character in the man ; and this holds 

 true in the case of land-agents as much as in most other professions. 

 Nearly all of the most successful improvers or estate agents are men 

 who have been trained from early life in the country, where farming 

 was daily going on before them ; where they saw, and could not avoid 

 seeing, certain operations in this respect attended with certain results, 

 and where they heard the farmers and their friends talk and reason 

 about crops and cattle, and the best mode of dealing with certain kinds of 

 land, &c. &c. An agent, to be a successful manager of an estate, must, 

 therefore, not only have a thorough practical training and theoretical 

 education to fit him for the position, but also have had early associations 

 in connection with the country to give him a strong natural bias for 

 the work ; and proprietors should take this into consideration in choosing 

 an agent, as it sometimes happens that, from not bearing this in view, 

 men of town-bred associations and habits are appointed, who are apt 

 to grow tired of country life, and so become careless in conducting their 

 business, which, generally speaking, requires not only energy, but a 

 certain amount of professional enthusiasm, to secure its satisfactory 

 management. 



