her faults the book has--as what book is
without them?--but as a practical manual for those who wish to be
good farmers, it is the best book we know. It contains more of the
practical applications of modern science, and adverts to more of
those interesting questions from which past improvements have sprung,
and from the discussion of which future ameliorations are likely to
flow, than any other of the newer works which have come under our eye.
Where so many excellences exist, we are not ill-natured enough to
magnify a few defects.

The excellence of Scottish agriculture may be said by some to give
rise to the excellent agricultural books which Scotland, time after
time, has produced. But it may with equal truth be said, that the
existence of good books, and their diffusion among a reading
population, are the sources of the agricultural distinction possessed
by the northern parts of the island. It is beyond our power, as
individuals, to convert the entire agricultural population of our
islands into a reading body, but we can avail ourselves of the
tendency wherever it exists; and by writing, or diffusing, or aiding
to diffuse, good books, we can supply ready instruction to such as
_now_ wish for it, and can put it in the way of those in whom
other men, by other means, are labouring to awaken the dormant
desire for knowledge. Reader, do _you_ wish to improve agriculture?
--then buy you a good book, and place it in the hands of your tenant
or your neighbouring farmer; if he be a reading man, he will thank
you, and his children may live to bless you; if he be not a reader,
you may have the gratification of wakening a dormant spirit; and
though you may appear to be casting your bread upon the waters, yet
you shall find it again after many days.

* * * * *

POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.

No. VII.

(The two following poems, "The Ideal," and, "The Ideal and Life,"
are essentially distinct in their mode of treatment. The first is
simple and tender, and expresses feelings in which all can sympathize.
As a recent and able critic, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, has
observed, this poem, "still little known, contains a regret for the
period of youthful faith," and may take its place among the most
charming and pathetic of all those numberless effusions of genius in
which individual feeling is but the echo of the universal heart. But
the poem on "The Ideal and Life" is highly mystical and