When Hesiod and Homer loved country life in Greece so long ago, can we be amiss in praising a country life in Ontario to-day? As my eyes run up and down the pages, I can hear the swallows twitter and the lark sing, in my fancy, as they heard them. They praise the crispness and freshness of the vegetables which their gardens yield them, and they can go on and describe feasts which they partake of at their country homes, the materials of which come almost without exception from their farms. Virgil, I infer, was not much of a farmer after all, but he tells us that he loved his country home, and seems not to have the most remote thought of removing to Imperial Rome. Mostly he praises the bees and the wine, so it is evident every one sees a beauty in country life for himself, as his peculiarities may be. Yet Virgil left us some very good hints, though he evidently made some mistakes. He tells us, for instance, that lands only need cultivating to obliterate the obnoxious weeds. Tull, however, said about one hundred years ago, that the land only needed mixing by deep ploughing to make it produce indefinitely. Now, Tull was a man of means, and only lived a rural life from the love of it, as did the old worthies whom I have instanced. Ontarians, we have a grand country, and we who are in it, let us stay therein and enjoy it. Let those persons remain in the cities who are now in them. For us nature in all its beauties is daily unfolded before our eyes, and let us daily enjoy those beauties. If we can by any means inculcate an increased love of country homes, we will continue to beautify our homes and improve our country. Real properties in the cities and towns of Canada have been very fluctuating, often being held at prices far beyond any intrinsic value they could possibly possess, while again, the very same properties fall away, and frequently become totally unsalable. Yet during commercial depression good farm lands have held their value very well and have even, after a temporary period of dulness, steadily risen in value year by year.