OUR HOME ISLANDS; THEIR PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY. CHAPTER I. AGRICULTURE. HISTORICAL SKETCH. Appointment of Labour-Its Advantages-Agricultural and Pastoral Pursuits-The Divine Promise-Husbandry of the Jews-Of the Greeks and Romans-The Ancient Britons-The Anglo-Saxons-Dialogues of Alfric-Culture of the Vine-Feudal System adverse to Industry-Early Promoters of British Husbandry-Its recent Progress-Deep Drainage -Manures-Improvement of Implements-Steam-power in the FensRapid Improvement in Scotland-Smith of Deanston-Changed Aspect of the Country-Lincoln Heath and Dunston Pillar-Natural and Spiritual Culture. THE Occupations relating to the field and the fold are the most ancient of the every-day toils of life. They are also the most healthy, while usually genial, being connected with a pure atmosphere, free from irksome confinement, and conducted amidst the simplicity, beauty, or grandeur of natural scenery. It might be inferred from the constitution of the mind and body, that from the beginning the human race was designed for a career of activity, in the exercise of the understanding and of industrial handicrafts. But this is placed beyond doubt by the sacred record B respecting the father of our family in his state of innocence :- "The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." Upon the fall of our first parents, one part of the Divine sentence passed upon them made subsistence to depend upon an amount of personal toil that would tax the physical energies and mental faculties:-"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground;" and in all subsequent times this condition has been generally exacted. Society has indeed in all communities its privileged classes, to whom bodily labour is not a necessity, the means of procuring food, raiment, and the enjoyments of life having descended to them by inheritance. But the multitude daily eat the bread of carefulness, gathered by continuous effort in scenes of agricultural and commercial activity. The thought is true and healthy, that the general con-. dition upon which subsistence depends is an express appointment of Providence; and that though the imposition of onerous toil came originally upon our race as a penal sentence, its practical operation, viewed upon a large scale, is most benign. Experience has amply contradicted the imagination entertained in a bygone age, that to be withdrawn from material affairs and given up to contemplation is the highest style of man; that celestial purity may be gained by quitting the intercourse of life, with its ordinary avocations, happiness be enjoyed in a state of physical inertness; for humanity has presented in such circumstances a shocking spectacle of mental and moral deterioration. The tendencies of our nature may well serve to convince us, that the occupation of the and |