his drowsy song; boozy Anacreon flings grapes; the purple violets and
the daffodils crown the perfumed head of Heliodora; and the reverent
Simonides likens our life to the grass.

Nor will I part company with these, or close up the Greek ranks
of farmers, (in which I must not forget the great schoolmaster,
Theophrastus,) until I cull a sample of the Anthology, and plant it
for a guidon at the head of the column,--a little bannerol of music,
touching upon our topic, as daintily as the bees touch the flowering
tips of the wild thyme.

It is by Zonas the Sardian:--

[Greek: Ai o agete nxouthai oimblaeides akra melissai,
_K.T.L.,]

and the rendering by Mr. Hay:--

"Ye nimble honey-making bees, the flowers are in their prime;
Come now and taste the little buds of sweetly breathing thyme,
Of tender poppies all so fair, or bits of raisin sweet,
Or down that decks the apple tribe, or fragrant violet;
Come, nibble on,--your vessels store with honey while you can,
In order that the hive-protecting, bee-preserving Pan
May have a tasting for himself, and that the hand so rude,
That cuts away the comb, may leave yourselves some little food."

Leaving now this murmur of the bees upon the banks of the Pactolus,
will slip over-seas to Tusculum, where Cato was born, who was the oldest
of the Roman writers upon agriculture; and thence into the Sabine
territory, where, upon an estate of his father's, in the midst of the
beautiful country lying northward of the Monte Gennaro, (the Lucretilis
of Horace,) he learned the art of good farming.

In what this art consisted in his day, he tells us in short, crackling
speech;--"_Primum_, bene arare; _secundum_, arare; _tertium_,
stercorare." For the rest, he says, choose good seed, sow thickly, and
pull all the weeds. Nothing more would be needed to grow as good a crop
upon the checkered plateau under my window as ever fattened among the
Sabine Hills.

Has the art come to a stand-still, then; and shall we take to reading
Cato on fair days, as well as rainy?

There has been advance, without doubt; but all the advance in the world
would not take away the edge from truths, stated as Cato knew how to
state them. There is very much of what is called Agricultural Science,
nowadays, which is--rubbish. Science is sound, and agriculture always an
honest art; but the mixture, not uncommonly, is bad,--no fair marriage,
but a monstrous concubinage, with a monstrous proge