with pleasant faces to swing from the tall pine. This makes every vineyard luxuriate in plenteous increase. There is fulness in hollow valley and deep hill-gorge, and in every place to which the god has turned his comely head. Duly then will we husbandmen give Bacchus the celebration he claims in the songs our fathers sung, with offerings of loaded platters and steaming cakes; led by the horn the consecrated goat shall be set before the altar, and the dainty entrails shall be roasted on spits of hazel.

Again, too, there is that other heavy toil of dressing vines, `a drain which is never satisfied; for the whole soil has to be broken up every year thrice and again, and the clods to be crushed incessantly with the hoe's back; the whole plantation has to be lightened of its foliage. Back upon the husbandman comes his labour in a round, as the year retraces its own footsteps and rolls round upon itself. And now already when the vineyard has shed its lingering leaves, and the cold north wind has stripped the woods of their beauty, even thus early a keen farmer stretches his forethought to meet the coming year, and with Saturn's hooked fang in hand pursues the forlorn vine, clipping it as it grows, and prunes it to the shape he will. Be the first to dig the ground, the first to cast away and burn the 'lopped boughs, the first to carry back the poles under cover, the last to put in the sickle. Twice a year the leaves encroach on the vines; twice a year the crop is overgrown with weeds and clustering briars; the one task is as hard as the other. Praise a large estate as you will, but farm a small one. Then, too, there are the rough twigs of butchers' broom to be cut up and down the woods, and the water-reed on the river-side, and the dressing of the untended willow to keep your hand at work. And now suppose that the vines are tied up, the plantations have done with the pruning hook, and the last dresser is singing the song of 'all rows finished,' still there is the earth to be

disturbed and the dust raised, and the grape when fully ripe has to meet the terrors of Jupiter.

On the other hand olives need no dressing at all; they claim nothing from curving hook or tearing rake, when once they have struck root into the soil and weathered the air. The earth itself, when the crooked fang unlocks it, gives the young plants moisture, and yields teeming produce by the ploughshare's aid. Do this, and rear the olive to the fatness which makes it Peace's darling.

Apples again, so soon as they have felt their trunks firm under them and come into their strength, climb their way rapidly to the sky by their own power, and need no help from us.

life no

Meanwhile the whole forest is teeming with young less, and the birds' wild haunts are ablush with blood-red berries. The lucerne is eaten for fodder, the tall wood supplies pine torches, and night-fires are fed and give light to the house. And can men stand in doubt about planting and expending pains? Why go through the greater trees? take but willows and lowly brooms, even they afford leaves for cattle and shelter for shepherds, hedges for crops and food for honey. Ay, and what joy to gaze on Cytorus all waving with box, and those groves of Narycian pitch! what joy to look on fields that owe no debt to the rake, none to aught of man's culture! Nay, those barren forests on the top of Caucasus, which the gusty eastern blasts are for ever wasting and whirling, yield each tree a produce of its own, yield good timber for shipping in their pines, for houses in their cedars and cypresses. Hence the farmer turns spokes for wheels, drum-boards for waggons, and curved keels for vessels. Twigs are freely yielded by the willow, leaves by the elm, strong spear-shafts by the myrtle and the cornel, the warrior's friend; yews are bent into Ituræan bows.

Nor does the smooth linden or the lathe-polished box

.

refuse to take shape and be hollowed by the sharp steel. The light alder, too, swims the torrent wave, sped down the Po; bees too hive their swarms in the hollow cork-bark and the trough of the decaying ilex. What of equal account has come from Bacchus' gifts to man? Bacchus! he has even given occasion to crime; it was he that tamed with the deathstroke the Centaurs he had first maddened, their Rhoetus and their Pholus, and their Hylaeus, menacing the Lapitha with his mighty bowl.

O happy, beyond human happiness, had they but a sense of their blessings, the husbandmen, for whom of herself, far away from the shock of arms, Earth, that gives all their due, pours out from her soil plenteous sustenance. What if they have not a lofty palace with proud gates disgorging from every room a vast tide of morning visitors; if they have not doors inlaid with sumptuous tortoiseshell to gloat on, and tapestry with fancy work of gold, and bronzes of Ephyra; if their white wool is not stained by Assyrian drugs, or their clear oil's service spoiled by the bark of casia, still they have repose without care and a life where fraud and pretence are unknown, with stores of manifold wealth; they have the liberty of broad domains, grottos and natural lakes, cool Tempe-like valleys, and the lowing of oxen, and luxurious slumbers in the shade are there at their call. There are lawns and dens where wild beasts hide, and a youth strong to labour and inured to scanty fare. Here, too, is religion and reverend elders; among them it was that Justice left the last print of her feet as she withdrew from earth.

As for me, first of all I would pray that the charming Muses, whose minister I am, for the great love that has smitten me, would receive me graciously, and teach me the courses of the stars in heaven, the various eclipses of the sun and the agonies of the moon, whence come quakings of the earth, what is the

force by which the deep seas swell to the bursting of their barriers and settle down again on themselves-why the winter suns make such haste to dip in ocean, or what is the retarding cause which makes the nights move slowly. But if I should be restrained from sounding these depths of nature by cold sluggish blood stagnating about my heart, then let me delight in the country and the streams that freshen the valleys-let me love river and woodland with an unambitious love. O for those plains-for Spercheius and Taygete, the revel-ground of Spartan maidens! O for one to set me down in the cool glens of Hamus, and shelter me beneath the giant shade of its boughs!

Happy the man who has gained a knowledge of the causes of things, and so trampled under foot all fears and fate's relentless decree, and the roar of insatiate Acheron. Yet not the less blest is he who has won the friendship of the rural gods, Pan, and old Silvanus, and the sisterhood of Nymphs. He is not moved by honours that the people confer, or the purple of empire, or civil feuds, that make brothers swerve from brothers' duty; or the Dacian coming down from the Hister, his sworn ally; no, nor by the great Roman state and the death throes of subject kingdoms: he never felt the pang of pity for the poor, or of envy for the rich. The fruits which the arms of the trees present, which the country yields cheerfully of its own sweet will, these he gathers; the iron rigour of law, the mad turmoil of the forum, the public archives, he has looked on none of them. Others are disturbing the darkness of the deep with their oars, rushing on the sword's point, winding their way into courts and kings' chambers. One is carrying havoc into a city and its wretched homes, all that he may have a gem to drink out of, and Tyrian purple to sleep on; another is hoarding up wealth, and lying on the burying-place of his gold; one is staring in rapt admiration

at the Rostra; another, open-mouthed, is swept away by the plaudits of commons and senate as they roll, aye, again and again along the benches; men are bathed in their brothers' blood, and glory in it; they exchange the home and hearth-stone of their love for a life of exile, and seek out a country that lies under another sun. Meanwhile the husbandman has displaced the soil with his crooked plough-share-thence comes his year's employment-thence comes sustenance for his country and his own little homestead alike, and for his herds of oxen and the bullocks that have served him so well. The stream of plenty knows no pause; the year is always teeming either with apples or with animal produce, or the sheaf of Ceres' corn-ears, loading the furrows with increase, and bursting the barns. Winter is come: the berry of Sicyon is being bruised in the oil presses; see how fat the swine come off from their meal of acorns; there are arbutes in the woods for the picking, or for a change, autumn is dropping its various produce at his feet, and high up on the sunny rocks the vintage is being baked into ripeness. Then, too, there are his sweet children ever hanging on his lips— his virtuous household keeps the tradition of purity; the cows are letting down their milky udders, and fat kids in grass luxuriant as they, are engaging together horn against horn. He, the master, keeps holidays, and stretched at ease on the grass, with a turf-fire in the middle, and a merry company wreathing the bowl, calls on thee, god of the wine press, with a libation, and sets up on the elm a mark for spearing matches among the herdsmen, and they strip their bodies, hard as iron, for a country wrestle. Such were the arts of cultivation practised of old by the Sabines, and by Remus and his brother; such, in fact, the life in which Etruria grew to strength, and in which Rome has become the glory of the earth, embracing seven hills with the wall