The harrow, an implement well known to King David, for he put the subjected Ammonites under it, was unknown then in Greece! They _raked_ in the grain. That was but the second stage in the progress of tillage; the first undoubtedly being that in which their plough was a pointed stick, and their harrow a bush; as the most ancient drawing of hay-forks shews that they were forked sticks cut from the thicket. But to leave those primitive times of Greece,--there is no nation that at once acquired so vast a military renown and yet retained such a passion for the peaceful pursuits of agriculture as Rome. Nothing is so soon familiarized to the mind of the school-boy as the fact of their generals, dictators, and emperors tilling their own lands--leaving them with reluctance for state honours, and retiring to them with gladness to end their days in meditative tranquillity. Cicero tells us that couriers were first introduced by them, to run between the capitol and their farms, that they themselves might leave them only on most important occasions. Almost every one of their writers on rural affairs, whose works have reached us, were men of distinction in the state. Varro was consul; Cato, the most remarkable man of his time, filled the highest offices; Columella and Palladius were men of note; and Pliny, a patrician officer, was governor of Spain. But what is more remarkable even is, that such men as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, men of imaginative genius, and so involved in court life, or the business of government, should be such passionate lovers of rural concerns. Everyone knows how their writings overflow with the praises of country life, and what delight they took in their farms and villas. Cicero seems as though he could never have done with telling us of the pleasure he took in farming. “I might expatiate,” he says, “on the beauty of verdant groves and meadows, on the charming aspects of vineyards and olive-yards, but to say all in one word, there cannot be a more pleasing, or a more profitable scene than that of a well-cultivated farm. In my opinion, indeed, no kind of occupation is more fraught with happiness, not only as the business of husbandry is of singular utility to mankind, but, as I have said, being attended with its own peculiar pleasures. I will add too, as a further recommendation, and let it restore me to the good graces of the voluptuous, that it supplies both the table and the altar with the greatest variety and abundance. Accordingly, the magazines of the skilful and industrious farmer are plentifully stored with wine and oil, with milk, cheese, and honey; as his yards abound with poultry, and his fields with flocks and herds of kids, lambs, and porkets. The garden also furnishes him with an additional source of delicacies, in allusion to which the farmers pleasantly call a certain piece of ground allotted to that particular use, their _dessert_. I must not omit, likewise, that