those who live on it. If
we look on land as the unit, then the Bavarians get better results
than we in Iowa, but if we look on human labor as the unit, then the
Iowa farmers are far ahead of those of Bavaria."

It may be remarked that if the Iowa farmer, who gets his results by
the use of machinery, was to adopt also the intensive practice of the
Bavarian farmer, he would secure at once the greatest efficiency per
acre and per man, and that is the true purpose of agriculture.]

[Footnote 58: It is one of the charms of Varro's treatise that he
always insists cheerfully on the pleasure to be derived from the land.
It is the same spirit which Conington has remarked cropping out in
many places in Virgil's _Georgics_--the joy of the husbandman in his
work, as in the "iuvat" of

"iuvat Ismara Baccho
Conserere, atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum."

This is the blessed "surcease of sorrow" of which the crowded life of
the modern city knows nothing: but, as the practical Roman indicates,
it will not support life of its own mere motion. Cf. Dr. Johnson's
picture of Shenstone: "He began from this time to entangle his walks
and to wind his waters: which he did with such judgment and such fancy
as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of
the skillful. His house was mean, and he did not improve it: his care
was of his grounds.... In time his expences brought clamours about
him, that overpowered the lambs' bleat and the linnets' song; and his
groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies."]

[Footnote 59: Walter of Henley, in thirteenth century England, drove
home a shrewd comment on the country gentleman who farms without
keeping accounts and thinks he is engaged in a profitable industry.
"You know surely," he says, "that an acre sown with wheat takes three
ploughings, except lands which are sown yearly, and that one with
another each ploughing is worth six pence, and harrowing a penny,
and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels. Now two
bushels at Michaelmas are worth at least twelve pence, and weeding a
half penny and reaping five pence, and carrying in August a penny: the
straw will pay for the threshing. At three times your sowing you ought
to have six bushels, worth three shillings; and the cost amounts to
three shillings and three half pence, and the ground is yours and not
reckoned."

Of Walter of Henley little is known, but it is conje