Читать книгу The Rural Life of England - William Howitt - Страница 9

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Res rustica, sine dubitatione, proxima, et quasi consanguinea Sapientiæ est. Columella De Re Rustica.

Oh, blessed, who drinks the bliss that Hymen yields,

And plucks life’s roses in his quiet fields.—Ebenezer Elliot.

There may be a difference of opinion as to the strict utility or wisdom of the pursuits noticed in the last chapter;—of the excellence and rationality of those which form the subject of this, there can be none. Nothing can be more consonant to nature, nothing more delightful, nothing more beneficial to the country, or more worthy of any man, than the Georgical occupations which form so prominent a feature in the rural life of England. Whether a country gentleman seek profit or pleasure in them, he can, at any time, find them. While he is increasing the value of his estate, he is in the midst of health, peace, and a series of operations which have now become purely scientific, and have called in to their accomplishment various other sciences and arts. In every age of the world agricultural pursuits have formed the delight of the greatest nations and the noblest men. Some of the most illustrious kings and prophets of Israel were taken from the fold or the plough. David and Elisha are great names in the history of rural affairs. King Uzziah “built towers in the desert, and digged many wells, for he had much cattle both in the low country and in the plains; husbandmen also, and vinedressers in the mountains, and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry.” How delightful are the associations which the literature of Greece and Rome has thrown around country affairs! Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus—how elysian are the glimpses they give us into rural life! how simple, how peaceful, how picturesque! Laertes, that venerable old monarch, pruning his vines, and fetching young stocks from the woods for his fences. Eumeus, at his rustic lodge, entertaining his prince and his king. Hesiod himself, wandering at the feet of Helicon, less impressed with the sublimity of the poet than with the spirit of the husbandman! He shews us the very infancy of agriculture: