A closing observation or two, however, we beg to offer. We look upon a good book on agriculture as something more than a lucky speculation for the publisher, or a profitable occupation of his time for the author. It is a gain to the community at large,—a new instrument of national wealth. The first honour or praise in reference to every such instrument, is, no doubt, due to the maker or inventor—but he who brings is into general use, merits also no little approbation. Such is our case with respect to the book before us. We shall be glad to learn that our analysis of it contributes to a wider circulation among the practical farmers of the empire, of the manifold information which the book contains, not so much for the sake of the author, as with a view to the common good of the country at large. It is to the more general diffusion of sound agricultural literature among our farmers, that we look for that more rapid development of the resources of our varied soils which the times so imperatively demand. To gain this end no legitimate means ought to be passed by, and we have detained our readers so long upon the book before us, in the hope that they may be induced to lend us their aid also in attaining so desirable an object.
We do not consider The Book of the Farm a perfect work: the author indulges now and then in loose and careless writing; and this incorrectness has more frequently struck us in the later portions of the work, no doubt from the greater haste of composition. He sets out by slighting the aids of science to agriculture; and yet, in an early part of his book, tells the young farmer that he "must become acquainted with the agency of electricity before he can understand the variations of the weather," and ends by making his book, as we have said, a running commentary upon the truth we have already several times repeated, that SKILFUL PRACTICE IS APPLIED SCIENCE.
These, and no doubt other faults the book has—as what book is without them?—but as a practical manual for those who wish to be good farmers, it is the best book we know. It contains more of the practical applications of modern science, and adverts to more of those interesting questions from which past improvements have sprung, and from the discussion of which future ameliorations are likely to flow, than any other of the newer works which have come under our eye. Where so many excellences exist, we are not ill-natured enough to magnify a few defects.
The excellence of Scottish agriculture may be said by some to give rise to the excellent agricultural books which Scotland, time after time, has produced. But it may with equal truth be said, that the existence of good books, and their diffusion among a reading population, are the sources of the agricultural distinction possessed by the northern parts of the island. It is beyond our power, as individuals, to convert the entire agricultural population of our islands into a reading body, but we can avail ourselves of the tendency wherever it exists; and by writing, or diffusing, or aiding to diffuse, good books, we can supply ready instruction to such as now wish for it, and can put it in the way of those in whom other men, by other means, are labouring to awaken the dormant desire for knowledge. Reader, do you wish to improve agriculture? —then buy you a good book, and place it in the hands of your tenant or your neighbouring farmer; if he be a reading man, he will thank you, and his children may live to bless you; if he be not a reader, you may have the gratification of wakening a dormant spirit; and though you may appear to be casting your bread upon the waters, yet you shall find it again after many days.
* * * * *
POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
No. VII.
(The two following poems, "The Ideal," and, "The Ideal and Life," are essentially distinct in their mode of treatment. The first is simple and tender, and expresses feelings in which all can sympathize. As a recent and able critic, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, has observed, this poem, "still little known, contains a regret for the period of youthful faith," and may take its place among the most charming and pathetic of all those numberless effusions of genius in which individual feeling is but the echo of the universal heart. But the poem on "The Ideal and Life" is highly mystical and obscure;— "it is a specimen," says the critic we have just quoted, "of those poems which were the immediate results of Schiller's metaphysical studies. Here the subject is purely supersensual, and does not descend to the earth at all. The very tendency of the poem is to recommend a life not in the actual world, but in the world of appearances [5]—that is, in the aesthetical world."
It requires considerable concentration of mind to follow its meaning through the cloud of its dark and gigantic images. Schiller desired his friend Humboldt to read it in perfect stillness, 'and put away from him all that was profane.' Humboldt, of course, admired it prodigiously; and it is unquestionably full of thought expressed with the power of the highest genius. But, on the other hand, its philosophy, even for a Poet or Idealist, is more than disputable, and it incurs the very worst fault which a Poet can commit, viz. obscurity of idea as well as expression. When the Poet sets himself up for the teacher, he must not forget that the teacher's duty is to be clear; and the higher the mystery he would expound, the more pains he should bestow on the simplicity of the elucidation. For the true Poet does not address philosophical coteries, but an eternal and universal public. Happily this fault is rare in Schiller, and more happily still, his great mind did not long remain a groper amidst the 'Realm of Shadow.' The true Ideal is quite as liable to be lost amidst the maze of metaphysics, as in the actual thoroughfares of work-day life. A plunge into Kant may do more harm to a Poet than a walk through Fleet Street. Goethe, than whom no man had ever more studied the elements of the diviner art, was right as an artist in his dislike to the over-cultivation of the aesthetical. The domain of the Ideal is the heart, and through the heart it operates on the soul. It grows feebler and dimmer in proportion as it seeks to rise above human emotion…. Longinus does not err, when he asserts that Passion (often erroneously translated Pathos) is the best part of the Sublime.)
[Footnote 5: Rather, according to Aesthetical Philosophy, is the actual world to be called the world of appearances, and the Ideal the world of substance.]