influences which the employment of husbandry exerted on the mind. _Omnium rerum, ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est Agriculturâ melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius._ And Ceres, according to the poet, _prima dedit leges_. This was indeed the doctrine of the more ancient Greek writers; and the object of the Eleusinian mysteries seems mainly to have been intended to represent the importance of agriculture as the handmaid of civilisation. The mind insensibly catches a hue and complexion from the natural objects with which it is conversant, and the beautiful in nature may be friendly to the beautiful in morals. .... "The soul At length discloses every tuneful spring, To that harmonious movement from without Responsive." The peaceful employments of the husbandman, and his daily converse with nature in her gentler as well as more solemn moods, can scarcely fail to be favourable to devotional feeling, and to the milder and more amiable virtues. Although this must be a matter of infinitely small moment to those in whose estimation the _summum bonum_ of human life consists "in buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest," yet a wise statesman might not be uninfluenced by such a consideration in cherishing a branch of national industry--of vital moment, no doubt, in its economic results, but so peculiarly propitious to the growth of the peaceful and patriotic virtues, to the rearing of a virtuous peasantry, and of brave and loyal yeomen, who in every peril have proved the thews and sinews of the commonwealth. Although the statesmen of the Augustan age correctly appreciated the importance of agriculture as the surest basis of national prosperity, yet the neglect of husbandry, and the consequent dependence of the people for their daily food on imported grain, which occurred at an after period, largely contributed to the decay of the Roman empire. The history of ancient Attica reads us a similar lesson. The Athenian farmers, anticipating the recommendation of Sir James Graham, devoted their attention more to pasturage than agriculture. The necessary result was an immense importation of corn to provide for the subsistence of a population unusually numerous and dense. Demosthenes tells us that the quantity of corn annually imported from the Crimea alone amounted to 400,000 _medimni_--a _medimnus_ containing about four of our bushels; and the peril of such stipendiary reliance for the staple article of the people's food on the caprice of neighbouring, or, it may be, hostile states, was bitterly experienced by the Athenians, and precipitated the crisis in which Grecian freedom and Grecian glory sank overwhelmed never to revive. But history has been written in vain for our modern statesmen, who are infinitely too wise to be instructed by the monitory lessons in the art of government which may be derived from the decline and fall of Greek and Roman greatness.