brary-chair listening to the welcome drip from the
eaves, I bethink me of the great host of English farm-teachers who in
the last century wrote and wrought so well, and wonder why their
precepts and their example should not have made a garden of that little
British island. To say nothing of the inherited knowledge of such men as
Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert, Hugh Platt, Markham, Lord Bacon, Hartlib, and
the rest, there was Tull, who had blazed a new path between the turnip
and the wheat-drills--to fortune; there was Lord Kames, who illustrated
with rare good sense, and the daintiness of a man of letters, all the
economies of a thrifty husbandry; Sir John Sinclair proved the
wisdom of thorough culture upon tracts that almost covered counties;
Bakewell (of Dishley)--that fine old farmer in breeches and top-boots,
who received Russian princes and French marquises at his
kitchen-fireside--demonstrated how fat might be laid on sheep or cattle
for the handling of a butcher; in fact, he succeeded so far, that Dr.
Parkinson once told Paley that the great breeder had "the power of
fattening his sheep in whatever part of the body he chose, directing it
to shoulder, leg, or neck, as he thought proper,--and this," continued
Parkinson, "is the great _problem_ of his art."

"It's a lie, Sir," said Paley,--"and that's the _solution_ of it."

And yet Dr. Parkinson was very near the truth.

Besides Bakewell, there was Arthur Young, as we have seen, giving all
England the benefit of agricultural comparisons by his admirable
"Tours"; Lord Dundonald had brought his chemical knowledge to the aid
of good husbandry; Abercrombie and Speechly and Marshall had written
treatises on all that regarded good gardening. The nurseries of
Tottenham Court Road, the parterres of Chelsea, and the stoves of the
Yew Gardens were luxuriant witnesses of what the enterprising gardener
might do.

Agriculture, too, had a certain dignity given to it by the fact that
"Farmer George" (the King) had written his experiences for a journal of
Arthur Young, the Duke of Bedford was one of the foremost advocates of
improved farming, and Lord Townshend took a pride in his _sobriquet_ of
"Turnip Townshend."

Yet, for all this, at the opening of the present century, England was by
no means a garden. Over more than half the kingdom, turnips, where sown
at all, were sown broadcast. In four counties out of five, a bare fallow
was deemed essential for the recuperation of cropped