“This consideration teaches us that tillage, as an object of national care and encouragement, is universally preferable to pasturage, because the kind of provision which it yields goes much farther in the sustentation of human life. Tillage is also recommended by this additional advantage--that it _affords employment to a much more numerous peasantry_. Indeed pasturage seems to be the art of a nation, either imperfectly civilised, as are many of the tribes which cultivate it in the internal parts of Asia, or of a nation, like Spain, declining from its summit by luxury and inactivity.”[192] Elsewhere Paley asserts that “luxury in dress or furniture is universally preferable to luxury _in eating_, because the articles which constitute the one are more the production of human art and industry than those which supply the other.” XXXII. ST. PIERRE. 1737-1814. Principally known as the author of the most charming of all idyllic romances--_Paul et Virginie_. Beginning his career as civil engineer he afterwards entered the French army. A quarrel with his official superiors forced him to seek employment elsewhere, and he found it in the Russian service, where his scientific ability received due recognition. Encouraged by the esteem in which he was held, he formed the project of establishing a colony on the Caspian shores, which should be under just and equal laws. St. Pierre submitted the scheme to the Russian Minister, who, as we should be apt to presume, did not receive it too favourably. He then went to Poland in the vain expectation of aiding the people of that hopelessly distracted country in throwing off the foreigners’ yoke. Failing in this undertaking, and despairing, for the time, of the cause of freedom, we next find him in Berlin and in Vienna. He had also previously visited Holland, in which great refuge of freedom he had been received with hospitality. In Paris, upon his return to France, his project of a free colony found better reception than in St. Petersburg--owing, perhaps, to the not altogether disinterested sympathy of the Government with the recently revolted American colonies. To further his plans he accepted an official post in the Ile de France, intending eventually to proceed to Madagascar, where was to be realised his long-cherished idea. On the voyage he discovered that his associates had formed a very different design from his own--to engage in the slave traffic. Separating from these nefarious speculators, he landed in the Ile de France, where he remained two years. It is to the experiences of this part of his life that we owe his _Paul et Virginie_, the scenes of which are laid in that tropical island.