augmented in the exact ratio of the increased time,
multiplied by the augmented force of the
machinery."

"Be fruitful and multiply," said the God
of Nature;–––" You must be starved, if you
do! " say the beldame economists. Meantime,
an immense proportion of the habitable
and fertile earth lies quite uncultivated, the
vast seas are full of prolific food, and the land
which is cultivated, is not made the most of.
The art of tilling has not kept pace with other
improvements. Before the wonders of steam
appeared in the world there was occasionally a
random attempt to introduce some improvement
in tillage, but the experiments originated
in a wish rather than in any definite plan, and
were of course a failure and an absurdity. Dean
Swift brought his pungent satire to bear upon
these attempts, in his account of the grand
Academy of Lagado, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver
says he was highly pleased with a projector
who had discovered a plan for turning up the
ground with hogs, to save the charge of
ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method was
beautifully simple. In a given field you bury
at six inches distance, and eight inches deep,
a quantity of acorns in long rows. You then
drive six hundred hogs into the field, who, in
search of the food they most love, will root
or plough up the whole into furrows, with
their snouts. The absurdities committed soon
led to a cessation of all mere experiments,
until at length came steam-engines, and
thence, in due course, the dream of a steam-
plough. This dream we are peradventure
about to see realised in a few months; and
then, though our million of agricultural
horses will be diminished, our fine breed of
Yorkshire and Lancashire ploughmen will
not be thinned; any more than spinning and
weaving machinery exterminated––––as was
awfully predicted it would–––our army of
spinners and weavers.

"I was bred to the plough," said Robert
Burns, when addressing a letter to the wealthy
gentlemen of the Ayrshire Hunt:–––" I am
independent;" but it may turn out that the
plough of old will soon be a sorry thing to
depend upon. We are rather reminded of the
Prologue to Chaucer's "Ploughman Tale,"
though he could have had no anticipation
that his cessation from this labour would be
final.

"The Ploughman plucked up his plough,
     When Midsomer moon was comen in,
And saied his beasts should eat ynowe,
     And lye in the grasse up to the chin.
He shook off shore, and coulter off drowe,
     And honged his harnis on a pin."

"Our strongest hope for the improvement
of our social condition," says Miss Martineau,
"lies in the directing of intelligence full upon
the cultivation of the soil." The more the
powers of science are brought to bear upon the
tillage of the earth, and the production and
manufacture of food, the greater will be the
number benefited, and the more speedily will
Miss Martineau's axiom be verified. Cordially
coinciding with that lady, we wish all success
to the important undertaking of Lord
Willoughby de Eresby, and shall be glad to find
he accomplishes and establishes what has
hitherto been confined to experimental trials.

A SACRED GROVE.

HERE Silence is the queen of time; her hand
Is raised and the tide trembles to a pause.
Beauty, too awful to be loved, awakes
And spell-binds Man's repose. The sunken sun,
Whose mantle's gold is melted in the tint
Of evening's purple sadness, near the west
Lingers awhile, as loth to quit the scene.
Yet 'tis not sadness all; for though the trees,
Heavy with cumbrous melancholy, sweep
Their sombre-foliaged boughs close to the grass,
And solemn twilight peers between the trunks,
Tinging the dome of yonder vacant fane––
O'er all a spirit of subdued emotion
Breathes in pathetic sweetness, deep diffused.

    In this dim palace of grey Solitude,
Where not a sigh wafts o'er the lily's urn,
And nought, save marble forms of tenderest grace,
With pensive attitude stand in lone bowers––
The heart, upheaving into the fresh air,
Itself abandons to the scene, and claims
Kindred with placid Death, and those lost hopes
That lived around the loved ones, now no more.
Their tombs smile pale beneath these cypress
      boughs,
Heavy with memory of all the past.

     Moveless I stand before these moveless trees–––
Breathless as those broad boughs; and gazing thus,
At the dark foliage imaged in the pools,
Which deepen, as the brooding mind surveys
Their trance and awful beauty; 'tis a scene
That lures us backward to an elder time,
Through ages dim–––and, thence, into a realm
Whose secret influence fills us with its soul–––
Shadows of things which are not of the world,
And hopes that burn, yet find no vent save tears.

"CAPE" SKETCHES.

CAPE WANTS are neither peculiar nor
numerous. Captain Smoke, in Jerrold's comedy
of " Bubbles of the Day," confides to his friend,
Lord Skindeep, that he is " terribly in want
of a thousand pounds." The reply is " You
may take it as a general rule, Captain Smoke,
that every man wants a thousand pounds."
As with men so with Colonies. The sun never
sets upon one of the dependencies of Great
Britain, young or old, which would not be the
better for a thousand pounds. Our Colonies
feel, however, another want;–––it is for
something to which the Smokes of the old
country show a very marked aversion; and
that is labour. " Capital and labour! " is a
cry which reaches us from every quarter of
the earth. The demand does not resound so
loudly perhaps from the Cape as from other
and newer Colonies; but the want of the
first necessities of enterprise, civilisation, and