hands for satisfying the demands of existence is a restraint upon ignoble and mischievous employments, while by efforts to render labour most productive, to economize it and enlarge its results, the inventive faculties of the mind are called into exercise and its capacity is improved. The most moral, intelligent, enterprising and manly nations, are those upon whom a pressing necessity is laid to be industrious; while the people are generally low in the scale of civilization, without dignity of character or intellectual eminence, and the slaves alternately of debasing indolence and passionate excitement, in those tropical regions where the climate and the exuberance of nature render the supply of material wants comparatively easy. 66 Agricultural and pastoral pursuits, the two great branches of husbandry, are of equally ancient date. Cain was a tiller of the ground; Abel a keeper of sheep; and Jabal, in the seventh generation from Adam, was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle,” or the first of those wandering shepherds, who to this day in the east live under tents, and migrate with their flocks and herds, according to the season and the state of the pasturage. Noah, upon coming out of the ark to re-people the desolated earth, "began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard." We know nothing of the methods employed in the primitive cultivation of the soil. But if, as is probable, the task involved difficulty and anxiety, the more welcome would be the assurance which God was pleased to make to the post-diluvian patriarch, and which was intended to encourage effort and sustain hope, after a tremendous expression of the Divine displeasure,—“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.' Age after age the promise has been faithfully kept. With unfailing precision the earth has performed its axical rotation, causing diurnal alternations of light and darkness; and has accomplished its annual revolution, with an axis invariably inclined to the plane of its orbit, producing regularly recurring days and nights of unequal length, and annual changes of seasons. There has never been a year of winter or one of summer; and there never can be under existing cosmical arrangements. Winters of unusual rigour, and summers of excessive warmth are common; but it is a well-ascertained fact that extreme seasons have little or no effect upon the mean annual temperature, which never varies to any extent from the standard proper to each locality. Years differ from each other in the distribution of cold and heat through the different months, while the annual supply is subject to very slight variations. Thus "He is faithful that promised;" and as surely as the covenant of seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, cold and heat, day and night, is kept, so will every assurance of the Divine mercy and grace be accomplished. The ancient Jews, unlike their present descendants, were not addicted to trade and commerce, to which indeed the Mosaic law gave no encouragement. Though seated on the shores of the Mediterranean, a situation favourable to extended commercial operations, and with the example of the enterprising Phonicians before them, they regarded such pursuits with aversion, and devoted themselves to general husbandry, the products of which were intimately blended with their religious festivals. To promote irrigation in a land periodically dry, they constructed The seedtime reservoirs to collect and retain the rain-water; and by banking up soil in terraces, the slopes of the mountains, up to their summits, were brought under cultivation, crowned with aromatic flowering plants and olive-trees, yielding honey to the bee and oil to the husbandman. This was anticipated in the song of Moses; "He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock." Wheat, barley, and rye were sown in the fields. extended from the beginning of October to the beginning of December: the harvest was gathered in April, May, and the commencement of June. Corn was separated from the ear by the tread of cattle, to which allusion is made in a well-known precept; while the smaller grains, as vetches, dill, and cummin, were threshed out with the flail. Winnowing was performed by throwing with a shovel the mass of grain and chaff across the wind, which carried away the lighter material, and left the grain pure, after the operation had been several times repeated. It usually took place in the evening, and early part of the night, in order to profit by the breezes which arise at eventide, and prevail more or less till daybreak. " Behold," it was said of Boaz, "he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing-floor." In eastern lands, owing to the powerful and oppressive heat of the day, a considerable amount of agricultural labour is performed on bright nights, for some hours after sunset, and before sunrise. The corn plants are said to have been brought from Egypt into Greece by the Athenians, but it does not follow that this was the first importation of these invaluable products into Europe, over which they were gradually disseminated at an unknown epoch. They were carefully cultivated by his countrymen, in the time of Hesiod, who occupied a farm at the foot of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, and has given lively sketches of modes of husbandry and rural manners in his agricultural poem, "Works and Days." It was common to plough the land twice or thrice before sowing it, more from the imperfection of the implements than from any other cause. The ordinary seedtime was in September and October; and a person followed the sower, who laboriously covered up the seed, no instrument like the harrow being known. The crop was ripe towards midsummer, and was reaped with a serrated hook. Slaves and hired labourers were employed in this service, under the direction of an overseer. They cut the stalks in the middle, and collected them in sheaves, or simply cut off the ears, and threw them into wicker baskets. The reapers commenced their labours early, as Hesiod addresses them in the following terms: "Whet the keen sickle, hasten every swain, From shady booths, from morning sleep refrain- Fields after being cropped were generally left fallow during the ensuing season. No employment was reckoned more honourable by the early Romans than the culture of the soil, while commerce, with its subsidiary arts, was despised. In their best age, the men who served the state as generals, consuls, and senators, were taken from the plough; and they returned to it again at the end of their public engagements. To be a good husbandman was synonymous with being a good citizen; to farm ill was an offence for which the delinquent might be called before the censor; and so ambitious was each one of success, that an extraordinary instance of it roused the superstition of a neighbourhood, as having been effected by superhuman means. Cresinus was summoned before an assembly of the people on a charge of sorcery, founded on his reaping much larger crops than others from a small plot of ground. In answer to the charge, he produced his efficient implements of husbandry, his well-fed oxen, and a hale young woman, his daughter; and pointing to them exclaimed, "These, Romans, are my instruments of witchcraft; but I cannot here show you my labours, sweats, and anxious cares." In the later days of the republic, the great landed proprietors, who held nearly exclusive possession of the Italian soil, committed the management of their estates to a villicus, or slave bailiff, who, with his wife, the villica, superintended all the concerns of the farm-house, villa rustica, and the adjoining property. It was not less important at that time, than at present, for the owner to receive a full return of the produce of his lands. He had a huge residence in the capital to keep up, a luxurious style of living to maintain; and if a politician, involved in the furious party contests of the period, there was a fortune to be spent in bribing the electors to obtain an office, and in furnishing the crowd with games and spectacles to preserve popularity. A large regular income was therefore needed, besides the occasional plunder of a province. Hence, the magnates, whose extensive properties were chiefly cultivated on their own account, had to turn from high affairs of state,-stirring up the commons to vote a friend to the tribuneship, |