Arthur Young

“ The Norfolk farmers are rich and profligate; of course oaths and profanations salute the ear at every turn; and gentlemen and the great, when without ladies, are too apt to be as bad as the mob, and many of them much worse. I am never in such company, but the repugnance of my soul to it is so great, that much as I love agriculture I can renounce it with more pleasure than I can partake of it thus contaminated. I shall get to Bradfield as soon as possible, I hope on Saturday, and having much to do there, God send that employment may keep me out of all temptation. ”

“ An extravagant duchess, Paris toys, a great farm, little economy, and immense debts, will prove a canker in all the rosebuds of his garden of life. The providence of the Almighty governs all, and will not permit an utter forgetfulness of Him to produce even the temporal happiness which is alone sought for.
I am tired of the whole, and long for the retirement and quiet of Bradfield after so many weeks of London, and this finishing of hurry and bustle. ”

“ When a work appears, the object and execution of which are equally novel and unexampled, it is not surprising that a certain measure of success should attend such a work. Nothing in the least similar to it had before appeared in the English language; for though there had been a tour of Great Britain, and other tours through great part of the kingdom, yet all these works agreed in one circumstance—that of the authors confining their attention absolutely to towns and seats, without paying any more thought to agriculture than if that art had no existence between the towns they visited. ”

“ And what does one lose by religion? I enjoy all such pleasures of life as are unattended by remorse, just as much, or more indeed, far more, than I did while I was a dissipated character. Reading, composition, serious conversation on any topic worth discussing, the rural beauties of Nature, and the pleasures of agriculture, friendship, affection, not love, as it is called, the whole of which I fear is founded in lust, and proves nineteen times in twenty the tyrant of the breast, and the fertile source of ten thousand miseries! ”

“ This tour hangs on my mind; nothing would suit my feelings so well as to stay here in my present melancholy gloom, reading divinity, and endeavouring so steadily to fix my mind on eternity and the hope of joining my dear child, as to work a change in my habits, my life, my conversation, and pursuits; and to do all that human frailty will permit to reconcile myself to the Almighty. These thoughts, however, I shall try to preserve in spite of a journey. ”

“ To me be the melancholy duty of noting what is of much more moment than the descent of a peerage or the transfer of an estate—the loss of an animated improver; of one who gave importance to cultivation by a thorough knowledge of political economy, and bent all his endeavours towards making mankind happy by seconding the pursuits of the farmer and the enquiries of the experimentalist. ”

“ Do you 218mean your heart, and that the philosophical contemplation of so pure an engine as the plough is the sustenance of your best emotions? How will that agree with the panegyrist of a court and the satirist of a farm? Or is it that this inside of yours is a mere bread and cheese cupboard, which, certes, the plough can furnish? Or is it a magic lanthorn full of gay delusions, lighted by tallow from the belly of a sheep? Till you have settled these doubts, I know not which you prefer, manufactures for improving your complection, or agriculture for farming your heart. ”

“ The man who has never had his mind enlivened and his senses cheered by contemplating the scenes of nature or the employment of his fellow creatures, would feel much less at the thought of learning whether this would ever be his fate or not, than he who, once having felt in every variety the extent of the blessing, loses it, learns by experience the sadness of the contrast, and goes with a throbbing heart to enquire if any hope exists of again enjoying that power he would gladly forfeit all his possessions to recover. ”

“ How much have the clergy to answer for! Reading Barrow and South’s sermons, ‘The Image of God in the Creation,’ which is full of wit. Barrow is a most powerful writer, he pours out a torrent of matter, a stream of mind, as Johnson said of Burke; an amazing flow of conception and of expression, forcible and varied; a rich command of language, and such fertility that one of his sermons would make ten modern ones.
The life I am getting into here of walking and reading is such a contrast to that at London as to be a most pleasant change and recreation to my soul and body. ”

“ Mrs. Crewe arrived just before dinner, and though she exerted herself with that brilliancy of imagination which renders her conversation so interesting, it was not sufficient to raise the drooping spirits of Mr. Burke; it hurt me to see the languid manner in which he lounged rather than sat at table, his dress entirely neglected, and his manner quite dejected; yet he tried once or twice to rally, and once even to pun. Mrs. Crewe, observing that Thelwel was to stand for Norwich, said it would be horrid for Mr. Wyndham to be turned out by such a man. ”

“ I talked to Arthur, and strongly recommended to him to attend constantly and to keep himself clear from such a want of piety. He disapproves of it much; and I pray to God that yet he may not be corrupted by such evil examples, but imbibe a dislike to such want of gratitude. I watched for opportunities of serious remark, but none of effect offered except one observation on Lady Webster’s infidelity in religion, when I threw in a word or two. The very virtues of such people do mischief by recommending their irreligious example. ”

“ Yesterday I unpacked and set all my things in order. Mrs. Y. better than I expected, but I cannot perceive that warmth of gratitude to God which I hoped to find. I know not what to make of her state of soul! Pitt’s death made a considerable sensation, and I wonder not at it. The providence of the Almighty has taken the two men perhaps the most necessary to our worldly prosperity in order to show us that it is on Him only we should depend, and to convince us that vain is the arm of flesh. May He protect us! ”

“ The religious melancholia of his later years is explicable on several grounds: to the influence of his friend, the great Wilberforce; to the crushing sorrow of his beloved little daughter ‘Bobbin’s’ death; lastly, perhaps, to exaggerated self-condemnation for foibles of his youth. Few lives have been more many-sided, more varied; few, indeed, have been more fortunate and unfortunate at the same time.
The Memoirs, whilst necessarily abridged and arranged, are given precisely as they were written—that is to say, although it has been necessary to omit much, not a word has been added or altered. ”

“ Give me leave to return you my respectful thanks, and to assure you that in the twenty-six years I have had transactions with mankind, and whenever in my power have endeavoured to assist as many as I could, I have scarce ever met with so much gratitude as you have shown. It will not be in my power ever again to do you any acceptable service, but for your sake I shall be more ready to do a kind office than ever; so if I mended your fortune by helping you off a hurtful contract, you will mend my heart by making me more in love with mankind, and more ready to seek opportunities of being useful. ”

“ Lord Euston is going the tour of Suffolk, ordering returns to be made of all carts, waggons, horses, mills, and ovens; a step preparatory in the expectation of an invasion. But it is in everyone’s mouth that with such a price of corn half the country would join an enemy. I must freely confess I dread the result. We have no hope but in the protection of the Almighty, who has hitherto so wonderfully protected us; and what has been the gratitude shown to Him? ”

“ I am determined to go only to Woburn this year and not to Holkham; four days of noise and bustle are too much, I will get away in three; but a whole fortnight is horrible. I will get to Cambridge by Saturday, and I hope Jane will meet me there to spend Sunday, and perhaps Monday, with Simeon, and make him promise to meet Fry at Bradfield. Yesterday and this day hurry, bustle, packing up, paying bills, and recollection on the stretch lest anything should be forgotten. Wrote to Cordell, the bookseller, to settle with me for the Irish Tour. ”

“ To come into the country on the search for sheep and potato intelligence, and not to see such a man, would not be to make a very wise figure when we returned home. But I had not the honour to be known to the General. No matter; 4,000 sheep fed on potatoes were an object before which form must give way. I wrote a card, stating our pursuit, and wishes to have it gratified, desiring leave to view his flock. Those who know the General’s liberality and passion for agriculture will not want to be told what the answer was. ”

“ This I attribute as a fault in myself, and dare say it is for want of more grace and prayer. I love their company, and, some hankerings apart, desire no other. I hope with God’s blessing to improve in this respect—hitherto solitude has been my best friend. Here there are none to be acquainted with but a very few poor people who are never at their ease with me; and at London those I know are too much engaged to see many more than for a moment. Going to bed at nine o’clock prevents the society I might otherwise have there if it were followed up. ”

“ For my own part, my ill health, as I greatly fear, will make me unable to continue much longer on the theatre of agriculture; but if it pleases God that this nation is ever touched with a true vital sense of the uses of husbandry in their full extent (and runs not mad with the visionary notions of Colonies) , there will soon be a succession of younger and abler genius’s to perfect that, which I have had the honor and satisfaction of suggesting to my beloved but mistaken country. ”

“ On returning from Bristol to my mother at Bradfield, I found myself in a situation as truly helpless and forlorn as could well be imagined, without profession, business, or pursuit, I may add without one well-grounded hope of any advantageous establishment in life. My whole fortune during the life of my mother was a copyhold farm of twenty acres, producing as many pounds, and what possibility there was of turning my time to any advantage did not and could not occur to me ”

“ April 4.—At Bradfield. The pleasure of coming into the country from such a place as London is great and pure. The freshness and sweetness of the air, the quiet and stillness, the sunshine unclouded by smoke, the singing of the birds, the verdure of the fields, the budding out of vegetation, altogether is charming. ”

“ Like Lord Lauderdale, who declared that he feared nothing in this world nor in the next either! These people call themselves Deists; I think they must be atheists, or they are utterly in contradiction to themselves. It is a sin, and ought to be repented of, to go into such company. I feel myself here, looking on the tranquil bosom of the Ouse, as having escaped from a multiplicity of temptations, and that this is the first moment of my summer holidays, quiet and alone. This morning I had a letter from Jane, by which I find it is quite uncertain whether I shall meet her at Cambridge. ”

“ In government a professed aristocrat, in political economy a monopolist, who commends manufactures, not as a market for the farmer, but for the much nobler purpose of contributing to adorn your outside; and who can attain not one better idea of the immortal plough than that of giving some sustenance to your inside. ”

“ The reflection makes my blood almost run cold, and old and blind as I am, and scarcely exchanging in six weeks a single word with more than one or two 470persons out of my family, I feel a comfort and consolation, and I will add a measure of happiness, not one atom of which would be found in my bosom if I were not most perfectly convinced of the absolute truth and importance of that blessed religion which forms the sole enjoyment of my life. ”

“ Lord Sheffield never had a grain of religion, and his intimate connections with Gibbon would alone account for it. Of course he took no pains to instil it into his family, and if Mrs. Clinton and Lady Stanley have any, they are not indebted for it to their father or to his friend. A great number of persons of high rank, extraordinary talents, and great celebrity thus passing in review, and all of them (Burke alone excepted) without the least suspicion of religion attaching to their characters, yield a melancholy impression on the mind of a Christian. ”

“ How many millions of men are there that would smile if I were to mention the Sovereign of a great Empire giving a ram to a farmer as an event that merited the attention of mankind! The world is full of those who consider military glory as the proper object of the ambition of monarchs; who measure regal merit by the millions that are slaughtered ”

“ I have preserved it by a life of industry and singular success, or it had gone long ago. But such thoughts are wicked. All is in the hands of the great Preserver and Disposer of all earthly as well as all other existence.
How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to Woburn! This time twelvemonth I dined with the duke on the Sunday. The party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank; the entertainment more splendid than usual there. ”

“ If such things as you speak of are to be had every day, why are North Country farmers so poor? Here we give from ten to fifteen shillings per acre for lands not a whit better than you can have in the North for a penny. We get estates and live like gentlemen; North Country farmers are poor and live worse than our labourers. These are allowed truths, but utterly irreconcilable to the small share of reason I possess. All our good farmers can lay up from one to two years’ rent of their farms in common years, after paying the landlord, the parson, the poor, servants’ wages, &c. ”