Wet-Weather Work: Iii

III.

WILL any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy shower ? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush : — the vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them today,) — the wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and trending eagerly downward,—the swift, petulant dash into the little pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they form,—the land smoking with excess of moisture,—and the pelted leaves all wincing and shining and adrip.

I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal chiaroscuro of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf his “Rivers of France”: a book over which I have spent a great many pleasant hours, and idle ones too, — if it be idle to travel leagues at the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his distance from home : no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order every scythe out of the field.

In the “ Chair of Gargantua,” on which my eye falls, as I turn over the pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background; — its extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky, from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on ; yet all the water under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail, near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three fishermen’s boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.

When I have once opened the covers of Turner, — especially upon such a wet day as this, — it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orléans. From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne. Turner does not go there, indeed; the more ’s the pity; but I do, since it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the pleasant Bourbpnnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor, half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.

And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my “ Tristram Shandy,” (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd’s pipe, from which she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.

It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abbé Delille was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the “ Gardens ” or the other verse of Delille.

Out of his own mouth (the little greenhacked book, my boy) I will condemn him: —

The baguette of Delille is no shepherd’s crook ; it has more the fashion of a drumstick,— baguette, de tambour.

If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds of rain over Turner’s pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the oliveorchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I read an old Sirvente of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and steeds caparisoned, —

It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,¹ who lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen : —

But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse, the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times : —

I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had fully intended to open my rainy day's work ; but Turner has kept me, and then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.

When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my last “ spell of wet,” it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant commemorative poem of “ Ambra,” which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which, whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural images — fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the wind — as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan, we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped with such a relishing gusto into the colors of the hyacinths and trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and wanton spring.³

But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain Bolognese noble, Bero by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs: Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar, Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which, with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of “ Cynegeticon " and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed three books on kitchengardening. I name these writers only out of sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through I know not what out-of-the-way libraries ; and if found, no essentially new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the treatise of Creseenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses, or the outlay of villas ; but in all that regarded general husbandry, Crescenzi was still the man.

I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the “ empurpled hill-sides” of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his “Arcadia ” ? — a dead book now, — or “ Amyntas,” who, before he is tall enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has a store of cattle, “ richissirno d' armenti” ?

Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. “ Pluck some leafy branch,” he says, “ and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their strife ”: —

So the Swiss,⁴ he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are appeased by some grave old gentleman, who sats a few pleasant words, and orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget outrage. It may have been the sixteenthcentury way of closing a battle.

Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm like the chirping of a bird ; — as where he paints (in the very first scene of the “ Pastor Fide”) the little sparrow Hitting from fir to beech, aud from beech to myrtle, and twittering, “ How I love ! how I love ! ” And the bird-mate (“ il suo dolce desio ”) twitters in reply, “How I love, how I love, too!” “Ardo d’ amove andt to.

Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a flower, — except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and learned ; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castilian: but nobody reads him; he has only a little crypt in the “ Autori Divers!.” I think of him as I think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning deshabille with only the added improvisation of a rose.

In his “ Asolani” Bembo gives a very full and minute description ot the gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the Queen ot Cyprus. Xothing could be more admirable than the situation : there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered, with oaks; there were grottos in the sides ot cliffs, and water so disposed—in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks — as to counterfeit all the wildness ot Nature ; there was the same stately array of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, 1 dare say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione. Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever that amount may have been.) and some seventy odd retainers, held her court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or eight, and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to those recitations of song, part ot which he has recoi ded in the “ Asolani.” I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since doing service as a farmer’s barn; and the traces ot a Diana and an Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were crunching their clover-hay

All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all times, depended very much upon architectural accessories : colonnades and wall - veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at Home, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white decks ox statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to threw the hills of Tivoli and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (fattori) who gallop across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvylooking ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company with one ot them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna, (which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall fiud a tall stone house smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the fattore; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished here and there with flitches ot bacon ; a scant fire of fagots is struggling into blaze upon an open hearth ; and on a low table, bare of either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of polenta, which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a Scotch colley,—"a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the bandages from a squalling hamlino,— a mixed odor of garlic and of goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency, — and you may form some idea of the home of a small Homan farmer in our day. It falls away from the standard ot Cato; and so does the man.

He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds, and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory: whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I cannot say.

Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers : the intervening thrift of I uscany had always its influence. The meadows of Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of grass in the season ; the valley of the CHtuinnus is like a miniature of the Genesee ; and around Perugia the crimsontasselled clovers, in the season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.

The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of the latter I cannot speak from personal observation ; but the dairy-farm, Cascina, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the Cajano property of the great Lorenzo.

I he stables were admirably arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were invariably reared by hand ; and the average per diem of milk, throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheesetubs of Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new Gonfaloniere, whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their baitings with the tender vetches.

The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do credit to any age or country.

About the better - cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction. lanes of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals, and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and arc raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.

I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are mainly taken ; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It, is yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things. Yet it, brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white flnials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the thrushes, as in the “ Pastor Fido,” filling all the morning air with their sweet

the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter of mulbcrrv-leaves, and the beggar in steeplecrowned hat, who says, “ Grazia,” and

“ A rivedervi! ” as I drop him a few kreutzers, and rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.

About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to the Luke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this style : — "I lniue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit & pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookcs of Husbandry, collected & set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered & increased his worke, with wine owns readings obseruations, joined with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in the like ease haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile : Neither is it my mittde, that this either his doings or mine, should deface, or any wayes darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes of suih om countrymen of England, as haue plentifully written of this matter : but always haue, & do giue them the reuerence & honour due to so vertuous, & well disposed Gentlemen, namely, Master Fits Herbert, & Master Tusser:whose workes may, in my fancie, without an} presumption, compare with any, either Varro, Columella, or Palladius of Home.”

The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farmpractice in general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods ; the third, to cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile, was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe ; and his work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural literature since the days of Creseenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of the old fables of the Latinists, — respects the force of proper incantations, has abiding faith in “the moon being aloft” in time of sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, “ will prosper the better for being stolen ” ; and “ If you breake to powder the home of a Ram & sowe it watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage” (Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully when in full bloom ; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have been kept sound for three years.

Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to Heresbach. They are as good as they were then ; and the poetry none the worse : —

The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I dare not say poetry) with which he closes his Eighth (Cent. I.)

And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor prison, —

And through the “Drerne” of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, “ green y-powdered with daisy.” Upon the half-ploughed laud, lying yonder veiled so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all “ forswat,”

But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry (even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down in grass of that height.

Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true, — a certain “ Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyneoln,” and a Henri Calcoensis, among them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early experiences in a lawyer’s office, and some later experiences of the legal profession; he may have written well upon “ Tenures,” but he had not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.

I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of that sweet ballad of the “ Nut Browne Mayde ” has come to us in a Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon “ the crafte ot graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts.” What could be happier than the conjunction of the knight of “ the grenwode tree ” with a good chapter on “ graffynge ” ?

Fitz-herbert’s work is entitled a “ Boke of Husbandrie,” and counts, among other headings of discourse, the following : —

“ Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen.”

“ To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it.”

“ The fyrste furryng of the falowes.”

“ To make a ewe to love hir lambe.”

“ To bye lean cattel.”

“ A shorte information for a young gentvleman that entendeth to thryve.”

“ What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally.”

(seq.) "To kepe measure in spendynge.”

“ What be God’s commandments.”

By all which, it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of husbandry as did Xenophon.

Among other advices to the “ young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve ” he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if “ he fynde any horses, mares, swyne, shepe, bcastes in his pastures that be not his own ; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture uppon his grasse, whereby he

may take double herte, bothe losse of his grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fvndeth or seeth anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables & wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo she we him the defautes. For this,” says he, “ used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a styeke.”

Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.

“ It is a wives occupation to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte, wash & wring, to make hey, to shore eorne, & in time of needs to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough, to lode hay come & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell butter, ehese, mylke, egges, dickens, kapons, liennes, pygges, gees & al maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging to a household, & to make a true rekening & aecompt to her husband what she hath receyved & what she bathe payed. And yf the husband go to market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke maner. For if cue of them should use to diseeive the other, he disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be true ether to other.”

I come next to Master Tusser,—poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond, happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this: —

I cannot help considering poor Tusser’s example one of warning to all poetically inclined farmers.

He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after impressed for the choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Afterward he was for some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lives “in clover.” It appears that he had some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go up to London, where he remained some ten years, — possibly as singer, — but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and commenced as farmer in Suffolk, —

from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and commences chorister again ; but presently takes another farm in Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by collecting tithes for the parson. But be says, —

Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague, we find him returned to London, to die,—where he was buried in the Poultry.

There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The instance is not without its modern support : I have the honor of acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated hens.

What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes : he does not seem to count his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us strongly suspect that he deserved it all.

Fuller, in his “ Worthies,” says Tusser “ spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon.” In short, though the poet wrote well on farmpractice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping, and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant. I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision : —

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of English authors, “the most ingenious husbandman of his age.”⁵ He is elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln’s Inn, who had two estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin’s Lane. He was an enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries, corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that, “ rare and peerless plant, the grape,” he insists upon the wholesomeness of the wines he made from his Bednall-Grcene garden : “ And if,” he says, “ any exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe any true skill in the judgement of high country wines: although for their better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these wines) gaue this sentence upon them : that he neuer drank any better new wine in France.”

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the speech of the ambassador ; French ambassadors are always so complaisant !

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that “ delicate Knight,” Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by a sight of a cherrytree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had gone by in England. “ This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then with a scoope or borne, as the heat of the weather required : and so, by witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect cherrie-colour : and when he was assured of her Majestie’s comming, he remoued the Tent, and a few sunny dales brought them to their full maturities.”

These notices are to he found in his “ Flores Paradisoe.” Another work, entitled “ Dyners Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land,” enumerates, in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new matters (in that day) as “salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth, moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust, soap-boilers ashes, and marle.” But what I think particularly commends him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers, is his little tract upon “ The Setting of Corne.” ⁶

In this he anticipates the system of “dibbling” grain, which, notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century ⁷ as a new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed, proposed the drill, and repeated tillage ; but certain advantages, before unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh, in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; “ why the corne shootes into so many eares ” ; how the ground is to be dug for the new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes and covering the grain.

I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by giving his own envoi to the most considerable of his books: — “Thus, gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary conceit in a Scholler’s private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand of experience : and having also given thee a touch of Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature proceedeth.”

Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on “Soyles”; for, in 1591, he had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books, or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of July, 1617 : —

“ I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.

“GERVIS MARKHAM.”

He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the " Maison Rustique ” of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging, compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received. His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of infirmities.

I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the “ Country Housewife.” In this book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the details of a “ humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep in his family.”

“As thus: — first, a shield of brawn with mustard ; secondly, a boyl'd capon ; thirdly, a boyl’d piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat’s tongue rosted ; sixthly, a pig rosted ; seventhly chewits baked ; eighthly, a goose rosted ; ninthly, a swan rosted ; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted; twelfth, a pasty of venison ; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly ; fourteenth, an olive pye ; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or dowsets”

This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment of a worthy friend ; is it any wonder that he wrote about “ Country Contentments ” ?

My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all the land under my eye ; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them, where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture to my mind.

I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his BednallGreene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays, which Sir Hugh must know,—in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens, as well as many kindred matters ; and through his wide correspondence, Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day to his friend, the French Ambassador.

I can fancy Gervase Markham “ making a night of it” with those rollicking bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the “ Mermaid,” or going with them to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,—the latter taking the part of Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of “ Every Man in his Humour.” his friends say that this Will has parts.

Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father’s steward, for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did) ; and Sir Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients ; and in virtue of his knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious “ Arcadia,” which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read everywhere : nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra hills of Ireland.

And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that “ shepherd of the sea,” visited the poet, and found him seated

Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the introduction of that new esculent, the potato ? Did they talk tobacco ? Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or upon the probable “ clip ” of the year ?

Nothing of this ; but

The lines would make a fair argument of the poet’s bucolic life. I have a strong faith that his farming wms of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do not believe that he could have set, a plough into the sod, or have made a good “ cast ” of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last time, —

I wish I could love his “ Shepherd’s Calendar ”; but I cannot. Abounding art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may he ; but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes, no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no sky-piercing falcon.

And as for the “ Faëry Queene,” if I must confess it, I can never read far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties. It is a marvellously fair sea and broad, — with tender winds blowing over it, and all the ripples are iris-hued ; but you long for some brave blast that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming curlew.

In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest, — as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil that lifts heavily.

And so I leave the matter, — with the “ Faëry Queene ” in my thought, and leaning on my spade.