in the intervals of their more important business, and in order to heighten the relish of the rest, the sports of the field claim a share of their amusements. * * * Of country occupations I profess myself a warm admirer. They are pleasures perfectly consistent with every degree of advanced years, as they approach the nearest of all others to those of the purely philosophical kind. They are derived from observing the nature and properties of their own earth, which yields a ready obedience to the cultivator’s industry, and returns with interest what he deposits in her charge.”--_De Senectute._ He then goes on to tell us what delight he took in the cultivation of the vine; in watching the springing and progress of corn; the green blade pushing forth, shooting into a knotted stem, nourished and supported by the fibres of the root, terminated in the ear in which the grain is lodged in regular order, and defended from the depredations of birds by its bearded spikes. He tells us that he could name numbers of his most distinguished friends and neighbours, and some of them at very advanced ages, who take such interest in all that is going on at their farms, that they will be present at every important agricultural operation--many of them engaged in improvements of which they will see neither the benefit nor the end. “And what,” says he, “do these noble husbandmen, when they are asked for what purpose they dig and plant, reply,--‘In obedience to the immortal gods, by whose bountiful providence we received these fields from our ancestors, and whose will it is that we should deliver them down with improvement to posterity!’” And this generous and high sense of duty it was which animated the Romans during the better portion of their republic, and kept alive their virtue and their simplicity of life, so far as to give them power to despise wealth, and to command the fortunes of other men. Cicero is delighted with this noble principle, and he reverts with enthusiasm to the picture of Manlius Curius, who, after having conquered the Samnites, the Sabines, and even Pyrrhus himself, passed the honourable remainder of his age in cultivating his farm. He adds, “I can never behold his villa without reflecting with the highest degree of admiration both on the singular moderation of his mind, and the general simplicity of the age in which he flourished. Here it was, while sitting by his fireside, that he nobly rejected the gold which was offered him on the part of the Samnites, and rejected it with this memorable saying, ‘that he placed his glory, not on the abundance of his own wealth, but in commanding those amongst whom it abounded.’” With equal exultation he refers to the enthusiasm into which Xenophon in his treatise of ŒCONOMICS breaks forth in the praise of agriculture, and relates the interview of Lysander, the Spartan ambassador, with Cyrus the younger, as told by Socrates to his friend Critobulus, in which Cyrus assures Lysander that all the trees,