The Rural Magazine, and Literary Evening Fire-Side, Vol. 1 No. 08 (1820)

Vol. I. Philadelphia, Eighth Month , 1820. No. 8.
Some of the most important practices of agriculture belong to all our climates. Irrigation , beautiful, elegant, profitable irrigation , or the watering of grounds, by turning upon them streams that have been wont to run waste, and pour their unused vegetative powers into navigable rivers, is a great example. The venerable and judicious Arthur Young wrote to his compatriots in England, from the districts of Piedmont and Milan, the best irrigated parts of the valley of the Po , that such was the perfection of that branch of agriculture and the connected branches of working and neat cattle, dairies, rice, &c. that, excellent as was their English system in his vicinity, his friends could have no conception of perfection in farming, without visiting that part of upper Italy. The orange trees are carefully irrigated in the kingdom of Portugal, as are the vines of Madeira, and the rice in those of our southern states which produce that wholesome, valuable and delightful grain.
Let us, then, in every section of our country, keep attention on the stretch to improve our whole landed interest , which, like our great internal seas, our heaven dispensed lakes, is the natural head, from which the sister streams of commerce and manufactures are, unforcedly, to flow, and run till the end of time.
FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.
Travel in the younger sort is a part of education; in the elder a part of experience. Bacon.
In pursuance of the plan proposed in the initial number of these papers, which, although a mortifying consideration to the pride of authorship, it is quite probable many of my readers have already forgotten; I shall, on the present occasion, avail myself of one of the sources of instruction and gratification there indicated—foreign travel. The friend to whom I am indebted for the following remarkable incidents, illustrative of the present state of morals in Italy, has not long since returned from a tour through England, France, Italy, Switzerland, and part of Germany; with an increased attachment for his native country and her admirable institutions.