y blind for some time, a
misfortune which did not prevent him working hard. In his well-known
_Tours_ he often had much difficulty in obtaining information, and
confesses that he was forced to make more than one farmer drunk before
he got anything out of him.

The exodus from the country to the towns then, as so often in history,
was noted by thinking people, but Young says it was merely a natural
consequence of the demand for profitable employment and was not to be
regretted; but he wrote in a time when the country population was
still numerous, and there was little danger of England becoming, what
she is to-day, a country without a solid foundation, with no reservoir
of good country blood to supply the waste of the towns.

When Young began to write, the example of Townshend and his
contemporaries was being followed on all sides, and this good movement
was stimulated by Young's writings. Farming was the reigning taste of
the day. There was scarce a nobleman without his farm, most of the
country gentlemen were farmers, and attended closely to their business
instead of leaving it to stewards, 'who governed in matters of wheat
and barley as absolutely as in covenants of leases,' and the squire
delighted in setting the country a staring at the novelties he
introduced. Even the stable and the kennel were ousted by farming from
rural talk,[442] and citizens who breathed the smoke of London five
days a week were farmers the other two, and many young fellows of
small fortune who had been brought up in the country took farms, and
the fashion was followed by doctors, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers,
sailors, and merchants. The American and French War of 1775-83 and the
great conflict with France from 1793 to 1815 were, however, to divert
many of the upper classes from agriculture, for they very properly
thought their duty was then to fight for their country; so that we
again have numerous complaints of agents and stewards managing estates
who knew nothing whatever about their business. It was not to be
wondered at that all this activity brought about considerable
progress. 'There have been,' said Young about 1770, 'more experiments,
more discoveries, and more general good sense displayed within these
ten years than in a hundred preceding ones,' a statement which perhaps
did not attach sufficient importance to the work of Townshend and his
contemporaries, and to the 'new husbandry' of Tull, which Young did
not appreciate at its fu