to such
entertainment as may belong to my wet farm-days, I should present to
them at once my oldest acquaintance,--the view from my library-window.

But as yet it is only coarsely outlined. We may some day return to it
with a fond particularity; for let me warn the reader that I have that
love of such scenes, nay, for the very verdure of the lawn, that I could
put an ink-mark for every blade of the fresh-springing grass, and yet
feel that the tale of its beauty, and of its emerald wealth, were not
half told.

This day we spend in-doors, and busy ourselves with the whims,
doctrines, and economics of a few

OLD-TIME FARMERS.

The shelves where they rest in vellum and in dust are only an
arm's-length from the window; so that I can relieve the stiff classicism
of Flaxman's rendering of the "Works and Days," or the tedious iteration
of Columella and Crescenzio, by a glance outside into the rain-cloud,
under which lies always the checkered illustration of the farming of
to-day, and beyond which the spires stand in sentinel.

Hesiod is currently reckoned one of the oldest farm-writers; but there
is not enough in his homely poem ("Works and Days") out of which to
conjure a farm-system. He gives good advice, indeed, about the weather,
about ploughing when the ground is not too wet, about the proper timber
to put to a plough-beam, about building a house, and taking a bride.
But, on the other hand, he gives very bad advice, where, as in Book II.,
(line 244,) he recommends to stint the oxen in winter, and (line 285) to
put three parts of water to the Biblian wine.

Mr. Gladstone notes the fact that Homer talks only in a grandiose way of
rural life and employments, as if there were no small landholders in his
day; but Hesiod, who must have lived within a century of Homer, with
his modest homeliness, does not confirm this view. He tells us a farmer
should keep two ploughs, and be cautious how he lends either of them.
His household stipulations, too, are most moderate, whether on the score
of the bride, the maid, or the "forty-year-old" ploughman; and for
guardianship of the premises the proprietor is recommended to keep "a
sharp-toothed cur."

This reminds us how Ulysses, on his return from voyaging, found seated
round his good bailiff Eumaeus four savage watch-dogs, who straightway
(and here Homer must have nodded) attack their old master, and are
driven off only by a good pelting of stones.

This Eumaeus, by the way,