h he
instituted and encouraged gave a new and healthier direction to
inquiries connected not only with agriculture, but with every
experimental art.

Thus, Gabriel Platte, publishing his "Observations and Improvements in
Husbandry," about the year 1638, thinks it necessary to sustain and
illustrate them with a record of "twenty experiments."

Sir Richard Weston, too, a sensible up-country knight, has travelled
through Flanders about the same time, and has seen such success
attending upon the turnip and the clover culture there, that he urges
the same upon his fellow-landholders, in a "Discourse of Husbandrie."

The book was published under the name of Hartlib,--the same Master
Samuel Hartlib to whom Milton addressed his tractate "Of Education," and
of whom the great poet speaks as "a person sent hither [to England] by
some good Providence from a far country, to be the occasion and
incitement of great good to this island."

This mention makes us curious to know something more of Master Samuel
Hartlib. I find that he was the son of a Polish merchant, of Lithuania,
was himself engaged for a time in commercial transactions, and came to
England about the year 1640. He wrote several theological tracts, edited
sundry agricultural works, including, among others, those of Sir Richard
Weston, and published his own observations upon the shortcomings of
British husbandry. He also proposed a grandiose scheme for an
agricultural college, in order to teach youths "the theorick and
practick parts of this most ancient, noble, and honestly gainfull art,
trade, or mystery." The work published under his name entitled "The
Legacy," besides notices of the Brabant husbandry, embraces epistles
from various farmers, who may be supposed to represent the progressive
agriculture of England. Among these letters I note one upon "Snaggreet,"
(shelly earth from river-beds); another upon "Seaweeds"; a third upon
"Sea-sand"; and a fourth upon "Woollen-rags."

Hartlib was in good odor during the days of the Commonwealth; for he
lived long enough to see that bitter tragedy of the executed king before
Whitehall Palace, and to hold over to the early years of the
Restoration. But he was not in favor with the people about Charles II.;
the small pension that Cromwell had bestowed fell into sad arrearages;
and the story is, that he died miserably poor.

It is noticeable that Hartlib, and a great many sensible old gentlemen
of his date, spoke of the art o