246 Notices of some Gardens and Country Seats 



stubbles, which were everywhere foul, indicatmg shallow 

 ploughing and bad fallowing. The best parts of the farm- 

 yard manure are allowed to be washed away by the frequent 

 rains, and the weeds in the hedges and by the road sides are 

 allowed to ripen their seeds, which are disseminated over the 

 cultivated grounds, by the winds in some cases, and the birds 

 in others. We saw one or two thrashing machines of the 

 very worst construction. But it is unnecessary to say more 

 than that 15 tons per acre are reckoned a good crop of tur- 

 nips, in a county which abounds with some of the best turnip 

 soils in England ; and the climate of which, from its warmth and 

 moisture, is peculiarly favourable to the culture of that root and 

 of the potato. In a word, with the exception of the grass lands, 

 the cattle, and the culture exhibited by the bailiffs on one or 

 two gentlemen's estates, we saw nothing that we could commend. 

 In proportion as Devonshire is in a backward state in 

 respect to rural improvement, notwithstanding its fine cli- 

 mate, in the same proportion is it susceptible of amelioration ; 

 and we amused ourselves, while travelling from one point to 

 another, in fancying what we should do if we had the com- 

 mand of an extensive Devonshire estate. As the celebrated 

 Arthur Young, in his Annals, indulged in a reverie of the 

 same class*, we trust the precedent will be accepted as an 



* '• ' I wish I was a king,' said a farmer's boy: ' Why, what would you do if 

 you was a king?' ' I would swing upon the gate and eat bacon all day long.' 

 So I also may wish I was a king ; if I did, it would be for the pleasure of 

 executing such a plan as this for a personal amusement. I would send a 

 message to the House of Commons, desiring to be invested with a power, on 

 my own personal examination in any progresses I might make through my 

 dominions, of ordering the necessary enclosures, buildings, and expenditures 

 for the establishment of farms in tracts now waste. And I should be very 

 well assured that my faithful Commons would not refuse it. They would, on 

 the contrary, be happy in promoting the royal pleasures that had for their end 

 the cultivation, improvement, and population of the kingdom. They would 

 rejoice to see the presence of their sovereign diffusing industry; making barren 

 deserts smile with cultivation, and peopling joyless wastes with the grateful 

 hearts of men, who, through these efforts, had exchanged the miseries of 

 poverty for cheerfulness, content, and competence ; rearing the quiet cottage 

 of private happiness, and the splendid turrets of public prosperity. These 

 should be my amusements ; doubtless they are such as kings would look down 

 upon with a contempt equal to mine at the swinging and bacon of a country 

 boy. But I should feel an enjoyment as refined, perhaps, as that which arises 

 from desolated though conquered provinces, from the triumphs that military 

 glory erects on the ruin and sufferings of humanity. And when I died my 

 memory would have the honour of being forgotten ; for I should rank with 

 those kings of ancient days, dignes sans doiite de no% eloges puisqiie I'/iistoire ne 

 les a jjas noinmes. (Ckaste/hcx de la Felicite ptihlique, Amst. anon.) The sen- 

 timent is more just, though not so strikingly expressed as that very pretty 

 one of D'Alembert, who, praising Charles V. of France, adds, ' Quoique 

 moins celebre dans I'histoire qu'une foule de rois qui n'ont ete qu'heureux 

 ou puissans.' " (^Annals of Agriculture, vol. i. p. 62.) 



