very brilliant, was decided and constant. If
there was anything like a relapse, and neglect of good culture, it was
most marked shortly after the Restoration. The country-gentlemen, who
had entertained a wholesome horror of Cromwell and his troopers, had,
during the Commonwealth, devoted themselves to a quiet life upon their
estates, repairing the damages which the Civil War had wrought in their
fortunes and in their lands. The high price of farm-products stimulated
their efforts, and their country-isolation permitted a harmless show of
the chivalrous contempt they entertained for the _novi homines_ of the
Commonwealth. With the return of Charles they abandoned their estates
once more to the bailiffs, and made a rush for the town and for their
share of the "leeks and onions."

But the earnest men were at work. Sainfoin and turnips were growing
every year into credit. The potato was becoming a crop of value; and in
the year 1664 a certain John Foster devoted a treatise to it, entitled,
"England's Happiness increased, or a Sure Remedy against all Succeeding
Dear Years, by a Plantation of Roots called Potatoes."

For a long time the crop had been known, and Sir Thomas Overbury had
made it the vehicle of one of his sharp witticisms against people who
were forever boasting of their ancestry,--their best part being below
ground. But Foster anticipates the full value of what had before been
counted a novelty and a curiosity. He advises how custards, paste,
puddings, and even bread, may be made from the flour of potatoes.

John Worlidge (1669) gives a full system of husbandry, advising green
fallows, and even recommending and describing a drill for the putting in
of seed, and for distributing with it a fine fertilizer.

Evelyn, also, about this time, gave a dignity to rural pursuits by his
"Sylva" and "Terra," both these treatises having been recited before the
Royal Society. The "Terra" is something muddy,[4] and is by no means
exhaustive; but the "Sylva" for more than a century was the British
planter's hand-book, being a judicious, sensible, and eloquent treatise
upon a subject as wide and as beautiful as its title. Even Walter
Scott,--himself a capital woodsman,--when he tells (in "Kenilworth") of
the approach of Tressilian and his Doctor companion to the neighborhood
of Say's Court, cannot forego his tribute to the worthy and cultivated
author who once lived there, and who in his "Sylva" gave a manual to
every British p