The excellence of Scottish agriculture may be said by some to give rise to the excellent agricultural books which Scotland, time after time, has produced. But it may with equal truth be said, that the existence of good books, and their diffusion among a reading population, are the sources of the agricultural distinction possessed by the northern parts of the island. It is beyond our power, as individuals, to convert the entire agricultural population of our islands into a reading body, but we can avail ourselves of the tendency wherever it exists; and by writing, or diffusing, or aiding to diffuse, good books, we can supply ready instruction to such as _now_ wish for it, and can put it in the way of those in whom other men, by other means, are labouring to awaken the dormant desire for knowledge. Reader, do _you_ wish to improve agriculture? --then buy you a good book, and place it in the hands of your tenant or your neighbouring farmer; if he be a reading man, he will thank you, and his children may live to bless you; if he be not a reader, you may have the gratification of wakening a dormant spirit; and though you may appear to be casting your bread upon the waters, yet you shall find it again after many days. * * * * * POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER. No. VII. (The two following poems, "The Ideal," and, "The Ideal and Life," are essentially distinct in their mode of treatment. The first is simple and tender, and expresses feelings in which all can sympathize. As a recent and able critic, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, has observed, this poem, "still little known, contains a regret for the period of youthful faith," and may take its place among the most charming and pathetic of all those numberless effusions of genius in which individual feeling is but the echo of the universal heart. But the poem on "The Ideal and Life" is highly mystical and obscure;-- "it is a specimen," says the critic we have just quoted, "of those poems which were the immediate results of Schiller's metaphysical studies. Here the subject is purely supersensual, and does not descend to the earth at all. The very tendency of the poem is to recommend a life not in the actual world, but in the world of appearances [5]--that is, in the aesthetical world."