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be a republican in the schools of antiquity,* "much better to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece, than the barbaric pride of a Norwegian or Hunnish stateliness," and let us add, will come much more to despise that slavish and nauseating subserviency to rank and title, with which all European literature is steeped through and through. If Americans are to study any foreign literature at all, it ought undoubtedly to be the Classical, and especially the Greek.

The very difficulties of these studies, which make it necessary that so many years should be devoted to them-the novelty, the strangeness of the form, are a great recommendation. This topic is a most important one, and we would gladly follow it out; but we have already far exceeded our limits. We will just observe, that the reason which Quinctilian gives for beginning with the Greek, is of universal application. The mother-tongue is acquired as of course-in the nursery-at the fire-side-at the parental board-in society-every where. It is familiar to us long before we are capable of remarking its peculiarities. This familiarity has its usual effects of diminishing curiosity and interest, and of making us regard, without emotion and even without attention, what, if it came recommended by novelty, would leave the deepest impression. It is so with every thing in nature and in art. "Difficulties increase passions of every kind, and by rousing our attention and exciting our active powers, they produce an emotion, which nourishes the prevailing affection."+ Before his eighth year, a boy should be perfectly well grounded in the rudiments of English---and then, if his master be a scholar that deserves the name, he could learn his own language better by having occasion to use it in translations, both prose and metrical, of the ancient languages, than by all the lessons and lectures of a mere English teacher from his birth to his majority. Indeed, it would be difficult, in the present state of our literature to imagine any thing more insipid, spiritless, imperfect, and unprofitable than such a course. But we must break off here.

We were going to appeal to experience, but we know the answer that will be made. It is not sufficient; but, this too, must be deferred. In the mean time, we earnestly exhort our readers to consider the state of the question as we have put it. Not to have the curiosity to study the learned languages, is not to have any vocation at all for literature: it is to be destitute of liberal curiosity and of enthusiasm; to mistake a self-sufficient and superficial dogmatism for philosophy, and that complacent indolence which is the bane of all improvement for a proof of

* See Lowth's first Lecture before referred to. Ilume's Essay XXII. of Tragedy.

the highest degree of it. As somebody quoted by Horne Tooke says, qui alios a literarum et linguarum studio absterrent, non antique sapientiæ, sed novæ stultitia doctores sunt habendi. Mr. Grimké's speculative opinions we think utterly erroneoushis excellent example cannot be too closely imitated-but it is unfortunately easy for all to repeat the one, while few have the industry and perseverance to follow the other.

ART. II.-1.

2.

The Horse-Hoeing Husbandry: or, a Treatise on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation, &c. By Jethro Tull, of Shelborne, in the County of Berks. To which is prefixed an Introduction. By WILLIAM COBBETT. London.

The Manures most advantageously applicable to the various sorts of Soils, &c. By RICHARD KIRWAN, Esq. 7th Edition. London. 1808.

3.

Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. By Sir H. DAVY, LLD. F. R. S. &c. Philadelphia and Baltimore. 1821.*

4. A New System of Cultivation, without lime or dung, or summer fallows; as practised at Knowle farm, in the County of Sussex. By Major General ALEXANDER BEATSON, late Governor of the Island of St. Helena, &c. Philadelphia. Matthew Carey & Son. 1821.

FROM the time of the ancient Romans to the book of Jethro Tull, we know of little that has added to the theory or practice of Agriculture, that deserves to mark an era in its history either as an art or a science. The Rei Rustica Scriptores (I. Matt. Gesner. Leips. 1735 4to.) including M. Cato, Varro, Columella and Palladius, not forgetting Virgil, have furnished the materials of Bradley's Survey of Ancient Husbandry, and Dickson's Husbandry of the Ancients: which, if meant to supersede the original authors, should be read in conjunction with the agricultural Travels of Chateauvieux, and the Vestiges of Ancient Customs in Modern Italy, by the Rev. Mr. Blunt. From Hesiod, and

* To this edition is added, "A Treatise on Soils and Manures, by a practical Agri culturist," which is an encumbrance of no value whatever.

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from the Geoponika collected by Cassianus Bassus, very little worth notice, either in practice or theory, can be collected.

To Tull, succeeded the Agriculture dependent on a rotation of crops; then the Turnip husbandry, of which Lord Townsend, who introduced it into Norfolk, has the merit. The investigations of the chemical action of manures, by Kirwan and Davy, have thrown some light on this most important branch of Agriculture as a science. To their contributions we mean to add some ideas of our own; which, in truth, is the motive that has induced us to offer to our readers, the observations submitted to them in the present number of this Review.

The works of Du Hammel de Monceau, the experiments of M. Creté de Palleuil, the improvements introduced by M. Lavoisier on his own farm, and some of the late treatises on Agriculture by M. Yvart, M. Bosc, and others in France, are marked by much knowledge and good sense: but no country has paid half as much attention to this subject as Great Britain: it is there only we can see profuse expenditure in tillage judiciously and profitably employed; and if the theory and practice of Agriculture have improved, we must attribute it chiefly to Jethro Tull, Home Lord Kame, Arthur Young, Marshall, Sir John Sinclair, Mr. Coke of Norfolk, and the elaborate surveys made under the direction of the English Board of Agriculture.

It is not our intention to go through a regular course of Husbandry, or to enter minutely into a review of the doctrines, theoretical and practical, or the various merits or demerits of the books, whose titles we have prefixed to this article, and which we have again carefully perused for the present purpose. But we wish to give a brief view of the prominent points of British Agriculture, which, however familiar in that country, we are inclined to believe are not so well known, or so much appreciated as they deserve to be in this: and on the theory of manures in particular, we are desirous of expressing our opinions, because we feel persuaded that the English writers have been deficient in confining their views and explanations to the laws of Chemical Philosophy.

Jethro Tull, who published in 1731 and 1733, and who died in 1749, may be considered as the father, 1st, of the practice of pulverizing the soil to a degree not in use before. It is true, he considered this practice essential, not only as affording a more easy passage to the tap-roots, and the lateral fibres of roots, and encouraging their growth, but as a complete substitute for manuring; inasmuch as he considered earth itself, as a pabulum or food of plants: wherein he was undoubtedly in error:-2ly, of the Drill-Husbandry:-3ly, of the Horse-Hoeing Husband

ry:-4ly, of the abolition of Fallows :-and 5ly, as the obvious result of his principles-Deep Ploughing.

It is long before the precepts of good sense and sound philosophy are brought into common practice. We think it may be said, that accurate pulverization and deep ploughing, are, as yet, very uncommon in our Southern States generally, and in SouthCarolina in particular; although the hot and dry summers of a southern climate seem peculiarly and loudly to call for this practice. Suppose a field ploughed 4, 8, and 12 inches deep,

4 A

8 B -12 C

when rains come, on whose moisture the plants will have to subsist during, perhaps, a two-months drought, the four-inch ploughing will be thoroughly soaked with moisture for four inches down to A; and the water will percolate with difficulty through the unstirred ground from A to B; but will run off, in great part, to supply springs and hollows at a lower level, and be lost to the field. But if the ground be ploughed, eight inches from the surface, down to B, there will be a body of moist earth for the gradual supply of the roots, eight inches deep instead of four; and will, therefore, last twice as long as the moisture contained between the surface and A. So, if the ground be well ploughed and stirred as low as C, the supply of moist earth will take a long period of evaporation from below, before it be exhausted. The absolute quantity of moisture retained, will of course depend on the capacity of the soil for retaining moisture; but be this more or less, the above reasoning will hold good: the ground will be thoroughly soaked, so far and no farther than it can permit the water to percolate; when the under soil is so hard as to present an obstacle to its passage, it will run off to some lower level, or be converted into a reservoir of water, which the heat of the earth will gradually evaporate among the roots of the plants. To make a sandy soil more retentive of moisture, Gen. Beatson's plan of manuring with half burnt clay, pulverized, to the amount of from thirty to fifty loads per acre, would, undoubtedly, be attended with the happiest effects; and we are fully inclined to believe this would be an addition, as valuable, at least, as the same quantity of stable manure; for it would be more permanent. Deep ploughing, therefore, furnishes a reservoir of moisture for the roots to feed upon, when the surface earth is parched by long-continued heat. All this is familiar to every gardener; and we believe this mode of explaining one of the good effects of deep ploughing in our climate will be intelligible and perhaps convincing: but it will take a long time to persuade

a planter or farmer, that the practice of a gardener will repay the cost.

Another advantage of deep ploughing and pulverization, is the facility it affords to the tap roots and side shoots that branch off from the main root, to extend themselves, to find nourishment, and to contribute to the growth of the plant. About the middle of October, we went into a cotton field of poor and sandy soil, and plucked up two plants by the root; digging down (not a difficult operation) to the bottom of the main tap root. One of them was from a part of the field where the soil was loose and well pulverized for about four inches deep; the other plant was taken from a part of the field where the earth appeared to be more baked and hard; the larger root (the first mentioned) was seven inches long from the surface of the ground; the other was six inches long. The root from the part of the field most loose and pulverized, was about double the size of the other, and its side shoots about six times the thickness of the other; it weighed also about three times as much. The whole field had not (from appearances) been stirred by the plough more than about four or five inches deep; but the superior size of the larger root was manifestly owing to the facility afforded to the side shoots in their search for food. We think it not too much to say, that had the whole field been ploughed twelve inches deep, the crop on the same space of ground would probably have been doubled. All that we have read, and all that we have seen, convinces us, that the nearer Agriculture approaches to Horticulture, the more perfect will it be, and the better will it remunerate the labour expended.

General Beatson, from examining the East-Indian and Chinese ploughs, so light and simple in their structure, and the effect produced by them, arrived at the opinion, that deep ploughing could be effected more easily, more cheaply, and as perfectly, by means of light ploughs or scarificators drawn by one horse, and repeatedly working in the same furrow till the required depth was obtained, than by heavy ploughs drawn by four oxen or horses; and that the required pulverization of the soil would be more easily and effectually produced by this repetition, than by one deep ploughing in the common way. Hence, he runs a light plough or a scarificator six or eight times along the same furrow. If the facts detailed in his book are fairly related, of which we see no reason to doubt, the practice recommended by him, is attended with the desired success; and a great improvement on small farms it will assuredly prove. Heavy ploughs and a numerous team, cannot be prudently purchased, or easily maintained, but by farmers on an extensive scale, who can supply constant work to this expensive team; and, therefore, deep and ef

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