plunder of Carthage. "The improving a kingdom in matter of husbandry
is better than conquering a new kingdom," says old Samuel Hartlib,
Milton's friend, in his _Legacie_. It is a curious fact that as the
Romans derived agricultural wisdom from their ancient enemies, so did
the English. Cf. Thorold Rogers' _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_.
"We owe the improvements in English agriculture to Holland. From this
country we borrowed, at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
the cultivation of winter roots, and, at that of the eighteenth, the
artificial grasses. The Dutch had practised agriculture with the
patient and minute industry of market gardeners. They had tried
successfully to cultivate every thing to the uttermost, which could be
used for human food, or could give innocent gratification to a refined
taste. They taught agriculture and they taught gardening. They were
the first people to surround their homesteads with flower beds, with
groves, with trim parterres, with the finest turf, to improve fruit
trees, to seek out and perfect edible roots and herbs at once for man
and cattle. We owe to the Dutch that scurvy and leprosy have been
banished from England, that continuous crops have taken the place of
barren fallows, that the true rotation of crops has been discovered
and perfected, that the population of these islands has been increased
and that the cattle and sheep in England are ten times what they were
in numbers and three times what they were in size and quality."]

[Footnote 46: The Roman proverb which Agrius had in mind reminds one of
the witty French woman's comment upon the achievement of St. Denis in
walking several miles to Montmartre, after his head had been cut off,
(as all the world can still see him doing in the verrieres of Notre
Dame de Chartres): "en pareil cas, ce n'est que le premier pas qui
coute."]

[Footnote 47: To this glowing description of agricultural Italy in
the Augustan age may be annexed that of Machiavelli on the state of
Tuscany in his youth: "Ridotta tutta in somma pace e tranquillita,
coltivata non meno ne' luoghi piu montuosi e piu sterili che nelle
pianure e regioni piu fertili...." It is our privilege to see the
image of this fruitful cultivation of the mountain tops not only in
Machiavelli's prose, but on the walls of the Palazzo Riccardi in
Gozzoli's _Journey of the Magi_, where, like King Robert of Sicily,
the Magi crossed

"Into the lovely land of Italy
Whose lo