She cultivates India corn, which grows with vast reeds, which is of great use; and has attempted the culture of rice, and some other things upon boggy ground, with tolerable success. As our cork used to come from France, and now grows in Italy, she has tried it here, where it thrives amazingly; it resembles the evergreen oak, and bears acorns. When you strip other trees of their bark, they die; but this grows stronger, and produces a new coat. She leaves nothing unattempted which has a chance of becoming useful. She also procured sheep from Norway, which are peculiar from having four horns, and being spotted like deer, with a coat of substance betwixt the hair and wool, which is admirable for many uses.
Edward IV has been greatly censured, as taking a very impolitic and injurious measure in making a present to the King of Spain of some Cotswold sheep; the breed of which has been very detrimental to the English woollen manufacture, which has been a national branch of trade ever since. The celebrated Buffon affirms, that our sheep are very far removed from their natural state; from which it has been the usual course of things to decline.
Lady Frances cultivates silk-worms. The ancient Romans for a long time never dreamed that silk could be produced in their country; and the first silk ever seen in Greece, was after the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. From thence it was imported into Italy, but was sold at the rate of an equal weight of gold.[12]
The Persians being the only people of whom it was to be had, would not permit a single egg or worm to be carried out of their country. Hence the ancient Greeks and Romans were so little acquainted with the nature of silk, that they imagined it grew like a vegetable. Holosericum, or a stuff made of silk only, was worn by none but ladies of the first rank.[13] But men of the greatest quality, and even princes, were contented with subsericum, or a stuff made of half silk; to that Heliogabulus is remarked for being the first who wore holosericum[14]. In the reign of the emperor Justinian, a trial was made for bringing silk-worms alive to Constantinople, but without success; however, two monks who had been employed in the affair, repeated the trial with silk-worms eggs.[15] The experiment succeeded so well, that to this Constantinopolitan colony, all the silk-worms, and silk manufactures in Europe owe their existence and origin. Till the middle of the twelfth century, all the silken stuffs at Rome and other parts of Europe were of Grecian manufacture. But Roger I. King of Sicily, about the year 1138, invading Greece with a fleet of vessels with two or three benches of oars, called Galeæ or Sagittæ (from whence are derived the words galley and saique) and sacking and plundering Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, brought away to Palermo, among other prisoners, a great number of silk weavers to instruct his subjects in that art. From them, as Otto Trisingensis de gestis Frederici, lib. I. cap. 23. informs us, the Italians soon learnt the method of manufacturing silk.
Lady Frances did not restrain farmers, or the sons of farmers from shooting, as none are better entitled to game than those whose property is the support of it.
'See that assemblage of the sons of wealth,
Whose pity and humanity extend
To dumb creation! with what costly care
They study to preserve the brutal race
From vulgar persecution! Truly great
Were such benevolence, could their design
Deserve so laudable a name!—Alas! What are they but monopolists in blood,
That to themselves endeavour to preserve
Inviolate the cruel privilege
Of slaughter and destruction? What is this
But petty tyranny, th' ambitious child
Of luxury and pride? If Heaven indulge
A right to kill, each free-born Briton sure
May claim his portion of the carnage. All
O'er nature's commoners, by nature's law,
Plead equal privilege: what then supports
This usurpation in the wealthier tribe;
The qualifying acres? no, proud man,
Possessions give not thee superior claim
To that, which equally pertains to all—
Whose property you timid hare, which feeds
In thy inclosure? thine? denied—allow'd,
Yet if the fearful animal be thine,
Because the innocently crops to-day
The herbage of thy freehold, whose will be
The claim to-morrow, when thy neighbour's soil
Affords her pasturage? Assuming man!
How is the hardy Briton's spirit tam'd
By thy oppressive pride!-when danger comes
Who shall defend thy property? thyself?
No; that poor Briton, whom thou hast undone
By prosecutions—will he not retort,
"What's liberty to me? 'tis lost! 'tis gone!
"If I must be oppress'd, it matters not
"Who are th' oppressors. Shall I hazard life
"For those imperious lordlings, who denied
"That privilege, which Heaven and nature meant
"For food, or sport, or exercise to all?"'
British Philippic.
Mr Burt devoted his time much to his grand-children, though he was far from wishing to obtrude too much knowledge on their tender years, as the mind may be overstrained by too intense application, in the same way as the body may be weakened by too much exercise before it arrives at its full strength.
Quintilian compares the understanding of children to vessels into which no liquor can be poured but drop by drop. But there is a certain season, when our minds may be enlarged—when a great stock of useful truths may be acquired—when our passions will readily submit to the government of reason—when right principles may be so fixed in us, as to influence every important action of our future lives. If at that period it is neglected, error or ignorance are, according to the ordinary course of things, entailed upon us. Our passions gain a strength that we afterwards vainly oppose—wrong inclinations become too confirmed in us, that they defeat all our endeavours to correct them. A superior capacity, an ardent thirst for knowledge, and the finest dispositions, soon discovered themselves in Lord Munster; particularly a singular warmth of affection, and disinterestedness of temper. And although experience evinces, that memory, understanding, and fancy, are seldom united in one person, yet he is one of those transcendant geniuses, who is blessed with all three. Mr Burt treated him always with that distant condescension, which, though it encourages to freedom, commands at the same time respect. He appeared in different characters to him, that he might find something new and agreeable in his conversation.
Montaigne says; 'there is nothing like alluring the passions and affections; otherwise we only make asses loaded with books.' Exquisite is the fruit produced by a right temperature of the different qualities, and mixture of the world and philosophy, business and pleasure, dignity and politeness. The Romans termed it Urbanitas, the Greeks Atticism.