joined to the power of suggesting what may help

the world.

Whether he was essentially author turned farmer, or farmer turned author, Arthur Young has the first place in English literature as a farmer-author. Other practical men have written practical books of permanent value, which have places of honour in the literature of the farm; but Arthur Young's writings have won friends for themselves among readers of every class, and be long more broadly to the literature of the country. Between 1766 and 1775 he says that he made The pen

£3,000 by his agricultural writings. brought him more profit than the plough. He took a hundred acres in Hertfordshire, and said of them, "I know not what epithet to give this soil ; sterility falls short of the idea; a hungry vitriolic gravel-I occupied for nine years the jaws of a wolf. A nabob's fortune would sink in the at

pt to raise good arable crops in such a country.

My experience and knowledge had increased from travelling and practice, but all was lost when exerted on such a spot." He tried at one time to balance his farm losses by reporting for the Morning Post, taking a seventeen-mile walk home to his farm every Saturday night.

In 1780 Arthur Young published this "Tour in Ireland, with General Observations on the Present State of that Kingdom in 1776-78." The general observations, which give to all his books a wide general interest, are, in this volume, of especial value to us now. It is here reprinted as given by Pinkerton.

1

In 1784 Arthur Young began to edit "Annals of Agriculture," which were continued through forty-five volumes. All writers in it were to sign their names, but when His Majesty King George III. contributed a description of Mr. Duckett's Farm at Petersham, he was allowed to sign himself "Ralph Robinson of Windsor,"

In 1792 Arthur Young published the first quarto volume, and in 1794 the two volumes of his "Travels during the years 1787-8-9 and 1790, undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France." This led to the official issue in France in 1801, by order of the Directory, of a translation of Young's agricultural works, under the title of "Le Cultivateur Anglais." Arthur Young also corresponded with Washington, and received recognition from the Empress Catherine of Russia, who sent him a gold snuff-box, and ermine cloaks for his wife and daughter. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1793 his labours led to the formation of a Board of Agriculture, of which he was appointed secretary.

When he was set at ease by this appointment, with a house and £400 a year, Arthur Young had

been about to experiment on the reclaiming of four thousand acres of Yorkshire moorland. The

Agricultural Board was dissolved in 1816, four years before surveys of the agriculture of each county were made for the Agricultural Board, Arthur Young himself contributing surveys of Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Sussex.

Arthur Young's sight became dim in 1808, and blindness gradually followed.

He died in 1820 at

his native village of Bradfield, in Suffolk, at

the age of seventy-nine years.

H. M.