to
be hoped that the American Agricultural Colleges will adopt some similar
plan, and illustrate the methods they teach upon lands which shall be
open to public inspection, and upon whose culture and its successes
systematic reports shall be annually made. Failing of this, they will
fail of the best part of their proper purpose. Nor would it be a
fruitless work, if, in connection with such experimental farm, a weekly
record were issued,--giving analyses of the artificial manures employed,
and a complete register of every field, from the date of its
"breaking-up" to the harvesting of the crop. Every new implement,
moreover, should be reported upon with unwavering impartiality, and no
advertisements should be received. I think under these conditions we
might almost look for an honest newspaper.

* * * * *

Writing thus, during these in-door hours, of country-pursuits, and of
those who have illustrated them, or who have in any way quickened the
edge with which we farmers rasp away the weeds or carve out our pastoral
entertainment, I come upon the names of a great bevy of poets, belonging
to the earlier quarter of this century, that I find it hard to pass by.
Much as I love to bring to mind, over and over again, "Ivanhoe" and
"Waverley," I love quite as much to summon to my view Walter Scott, the
woodsman of Abbotsford, with hatchet at his girdle, and the hound Maida
in attendance. I see him thinning out the saplings that he has planted
upon the Tweed banks. I know how they stand, having wandered by the hour
among them. I can fancy how the master would have lopped away the boughs
for a little looplet through which a burst of the blue Eildon Hills
should come. His favorite seat, overshadowed by an arbor-vitae, (of which
a leaf lies pressed in the "Scotch Tourist" yonder,) was so near to the
Tweed banks that the ripple of the stream over its pebbly bottom must
have made a delightful lullaby for the toil-worn old man. But beyond
wood-craft, I could never discover that Sir Walter had any strong
agricultural inclination; nor do I think that the old gentleman had much
eye for the picturesque; no landscape-gardener of any reputation would
have decided upon such a site for such a pile as that of Abbotsford: the
spot is low; the views are not extended or varied; the very trees are
all of Scott's planting: but the master loved the murmur of the
Tweed,--loved the nearness of Melrose, and in every old bi