experience had matured his judgment, he himself entertained the same opinion with his critics on the merits of his book. He was also, during the same period, a frequent contributor to the Museum Rusticum,' a periodical work on husbandry; upon whose discontinuance, he adapted several essays, intended for its pages, to a separate publication in the " Farmer's Letters," and "Rural Economy," two works anonymously printed, a few years after his removal from Bradfield. On quitting that village, he hired a farm called Sampford Hall, in Essex; but after six months' trial was obliged to relinquish it for want of funds; a relation, who had led him to expect an advance of money, having failed in the performance of his promise, in consequence of which Mr. Young was forced to pay a farmer a hundred pounds to take the house and land off his hands. Travelling afterwards to find a spot more suitable to his means, he formed in his mind a plan for an agricultural survey of England, which was afterwards executed, in a great measure under his direction, by the national society, to which he became secretary. He at last fixed himself near North Mimms, in Hertfordshire, where he continued for about nine years, repeating his experiments on land not very favourable to them, and, like many other ingenious speculators, losing his money well nigh as often as he did so. So warmly, however, was he still attached to his favourite pursuits, that he determined to promote and recommend them by his pen, and before he had completed his thirtieth year, published several works for the improvement of agriculture, particularly his Farmer's Letters, Rural Economy, (already alluded to,) and Tours through the Southern, Northern, and Eastern Parts of England; all of them replete with useful information. These Tours were performed in the years 1767, 1768, 1770, and 1771; and in the account which Mr. Young gave of them to the public, he mingled much interesting description of the country through which he passed, the seats which he visited, and other objects of curiosity, with the invaluable hints on rural economy carefully gleaned in his progress. During his visit to the north of England, an opportunity was afforded him of rendering essential service to a most extraordinary self-taught agriculturist, in humble life, a miner, at Swinton, named James Crofts, who, by the almost incredible devotion of twenty hours a day to hard labour, had, with his own hands, reclaimed ten acres of moor land, on which he kept three milch cows, an heifer, and a galloway. To encourage such

a rare instance of industry and application in the lower orders, Mr. Young set on foot a subscription for the benefit of this humble, but most valuable member of society, the produce of which freed him from his subterranean employment, and enabled him to direct his attention exclusively to the improvement of waste lands, an occupation for which he had, under every possible disadvantage, evinced an extraordinary adaptation of untutored genius. The tour occupied six months; and the account of its incidents, and of the information collected in the course of it, fills four goodsized octavo volumes, though their bulk might have advantageously been diminished, by the omission of such trite notices of paintings, which its author had hastily examined in his way, as " Dead partridge; very natural: Dead Christ; very fine: A dog; excellent: Alderman Hewett; very fine.' Notwithstanding these, and several defects of a similar nature, its general merit was, however, so correctly appreciated, that the name of Arthur Young, Esq. of North Mimms, Herts,' was, soon after its publication, affixed to the advertisement, as its author; the book itself, as well as his preceding works, having appeared before the public anonymously. Whilst residing in Hertfordshire, he also printed an Essay on Hogs, to which the gold medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts had been awarded. This was in 1769; and in the course of the following year he gave to the world his very valuable practical treatise, "The Farmer's Guide in hiring and stocking Farms;" and so indefatigably did he pursue his favourite object, that in the summer of 1770 he made his tour through the eastern counties of England, in continuance of his plan, imperfectly as he had then formed it, of an agricultural survey of the kingdom. The observations made during this journey were published in May 1771, and it is no small proof of their author's industry that they were printed so soon, as in the course of the year 1770, half of which at least was spent in travelling, and of the spring of 1771 he must have found time to print and publish his "Farmer's Guide," in two volumes octavo; his "Eastern Tour," in four; "Rural Economy," in one; a second volume of the "Farmer's Letters ;" and "A Course of Experimental Aguriculture," in two quarto volumes, besides superintending through the press the second edition, in four volumes octavo, of his Northern Tour. With so much to do, in so short a space of time, what wonder that Mr. Young should not have performed every thing he

undertook equally well. Who can be surprised at many defects in the style of works which, ex necessitate, must have been written in prodigious haste? Yet for pointing out some such defects, for questioning some of his experiments, this voluminous and rapid writer animadverted on some of his critics with a virulence and a coarseness which abundantly proves, that in the "genus irascabile," other authors are included than the irascabiles vates. Through life Mr. Young was certainly somewhat too prone to speculation, in the early part of it at least, not much to his own advantage; for after nine years' trial of his Hertfordshire farm, and the publication of nearly as many practical books upon his art, as he had cultivated it years, he was forced to confess,—in the bitterness of his wrath against those who, because he wrote so fast, not very unnaturally insinuated that he wrote for gain, that, what with his writing and his farming, he was at least a thousand guineas the poorer man, than when he first endeavoured to combine the very different characters of the practical and experimental agriculturist. From the further pursuit of this ruinous course, he was saved, however, by the death of his mother, which, by a previous agreement with his elder brother, put him in possession of the family farm at Bradfield; though before he took possession of it he had to raise twelve hundred pounds by mortgage, his brother having generously agreed to take that sum, instead of two thousand pounds, to which by the family arrangement he was entitled. He soon afterwards met with another instance of liberality, in one of his cousins, who refused to take advantage of a flaw in his aunt's will, vitiating a legacy which she had bequeathed to our agriculturist. With this, and what he obtained from the remnant of the fortune of another sister of his mother, after it had been frittered through a chancery suit, he was enabled to stock his farm. At the period of his entering on it, he had for some time been a married man, with a large and increasing family; considerations which should have taught him economy and retrenchment, though they did not; for he himself afterwards confessed his error, in living on his limited income like an independent gentleman, instead of contenting himself with the substantial comforts of the plodding practical farmers of the old school, a race now rapidly disappearing, if not, in some parts, utterly extinct. Here he settled for the remainder of his life, cultivating his paternal acres, though never, it is said, putting them in the condition which might be expected

from a man, who has certainly benefited his country by many excellent improvements in agriculture, and who, in theory at least, was an able farmer.

The agricultural tours which Mr. Young had planned, were never completed; that to the western parts of England, announced as in immediate contemplation, at the close of his eastern journey, having, in all probability, been suspended by his removal into Suffolk, and the occupation of his time in the cultivation of his own estate, until the more complete survey undertaken by the Board of Agriculture during his secretaryship to that institution, altogether superseded the design. Some memoranda of a journey into parts of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, are, however, to be found in the sixth volume of the Annals of Agriculture,' published in 1786, under the title of "Tour in the West," by the editor. Previous to his removal, in addition to the works already noticed, he had, however, printed two or three others, of which it will not be necessary to give much more than the titles. These were, a very sensible pamphlet on "The Expediency of a free Exportation of Corn;" "Proposals to the Legislature for numbering the People," a plan which has since been acted upon in our population returns with considerable national advantage; "Observations on the present state of the Waste Lands of the Kingdom," a most important branch of political economy, but very little attended to when Mr. Young wrote, and but too much neglected even at the present day. To these must be added, "Political Arithmetic," a larger treatise on the then state of Agriculture in Great Britain, and the principles of her policy in its encouragement, a work abounding in paradoxes; and an essay on the culture of Cole-seed for feeding sheep and cattle, for which the gold medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts was, for the second time, awarded him. The former of these works was addressed to the Economical Societies established in Europe; of one of which, at Berne, its author was already an honorary member, as he also was of the Agricultural Societies of Dublin, York, and Manchester. But his reputation was soon more widely spread abroad. His Agricultural Tours attracted the attention of the Empress Catharine, and were by her express order translated into the Russian language, her imperial Majesty at the same time sending several young Russians to the author, to learn the system of English agriculture under his immediate superintendence. To these students, the liberality and patriotic spirit of Prince Potem

kin soon added two others, and his example was subsequently followed by the Marquis de la Fayette.

During the whole of his life, Mr. Young was an attentive observer of passing events; but until the breaking out of the French revolution, an important epoch in the history of modern times, agriculture and political economy had chiefly engaged his attention, and formed the subjects of his literary productions. The next of these, in the order of their publication, was a Tour through Ireland, which, though printed so long since as 1780, may still be regarded as the best repository that has appeared of valuable facts, and useful suggestions, concerning that interesting, but misrepresented and misgoverned country. Mr. Young visited it in the years 1776, 7, 8, and 9, residing upwards of a year in the county of Cork, chiefly occupying his time in leasing and improving the estates of Lord Kingsborough. When he took their management, they were in a state bordering upon ruin; but under his direction and inspection, the farms were divided, the lands leased, the cottages repaired, and every thing, in short, assimilated as nearly as possible to the English plan. One obstacle indeed he could not remove; and even upon this improved estate the middle-man was therefore suffered to remain, a clog to every plan of effectual amelioration in the condition of the Irish farmers, we may safely add, and the present state of the country gives weight to the addition, of the Irish nation. His remarks upon the condition, habits, and manners, of that important part of the British empire, (though in his preface to the quarto edition, published by subscription, he complains of having lost money by the work,) soon became so deservedly popular, that a second edition was called for in a very few months. Nor has its reputation been diminished by the publications of more recent tourists; a most competent judge of its merits, Miss Edgworth, having in one of her later publications characterized it as "the most faithful portrait of its inhabitants, to whom it rendered essential service, by giving to other nations, and more especially to the English, a more correct notion than they had hitherto entertained of their character, customs, and manners.”

The author was, however, for a long time but little satisfied with the success of this work. In a singularly querulous memoir of the first thirty years of his farming life, written as he was attaining a state of convalescence from a very severe illness in 1790, he exclaims, in the bitterness of disappointed hopes, too sanguine perhaps to warrant an expec