When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my last "spell of wet," it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant commemorative poem of "Ambra," which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which, whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural images--fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the wind--as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan, we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped with such a relishing _gusto_ into the colors of the hyacinths and trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and wanton spring.[5] [Footnote 5: See Wm. Parr Greswell's _Memoirs of Politiano_, with translations.] But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain Bolognese noble, Bero by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs: Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar, Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which, with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of "_Cynegeticon_"; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses, or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry, Crescenzi was still the man. I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the "empurpled hill-sides" of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his "Arcadia"?--a dead book now,--or "Amyntas," who, before he is tall enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has a store of cattle, "_richissimo d'armenti_"?