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March-Beautiful Grouping.

into the bottom of it, where they were huddled in temporary confusion, then calling them by their names got them into order and bravely ploughed his way out again. This he repeated till the sides of the hole were as well ploughed as any other part of his little field, and the groupings of his eight oxen when they got into it, with their grandly strenuous labor as they were getting out of it, were well worth the study of an animal-painter. The clear early sunshine cast them into strong light and shadow, and the creamy white of the oxen was splendid against the dark reds and yellows of the earth.

That word 'splendid' which I have used just now, without especially thinking about it, reminds me of the right and accurate employment of the same word by Virgil with reference to a ploughshare. His 'sulco attritus (incipiat) splendescere vomer' is just one of those touches which show an artist's sense of what has been called the poetry of common things. Anybody can see that the Shah's diamonds are splendid, and perhaps the most essentially vulgar minds are the most likely to be strongly impressed by a splendor so much associated with great pecuniary value; but only an artist or poet would notice the shining of a common agricultural implement. And yet few things in the world are more resplendent than a well-used ploughshare as it catches the glory of the sunshine; and it may be doubted whether even the glitter of martial steel can awaken more poetical associations. It is a fine sight to see a flash of sunshine run along a restless line of bayonets, or on the burnished helmets of some emperor's regiment of guards; but a

true poet would be set dreaming just as surely by the polish of the ploughshare-a polish not due to any intentional scheming about effect, but simply a proof of labor, like that noble polish which comes of itself upon the laborious human mind when it has toiled in the intellectual fields. The mere fact that Virgil noticed the shining of a ploughshare nineteen hundred years ago is of itself a poetical association, as Thomson felt when he

wrote:

'Such themes as these the rural Maro sang
To wide imperial Rome, in the full height
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined.
In ancient times, the sacred plough employ'd
The kings and awful fathers of mankind.

And some, with whom compared, your insect tribes
Are but the beings of a summer's day,

Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm
Of mighty war; then, with victorious hand
Disdaining little delicacies, seized

The plough, and greatly independent lived.'

'I was bred to the plough,' wrote Burns, 'and am independent;' the two ideas of ploughing and independence connecting themselves together very easily, in part perhaps because the ploughman whilst he works is not commanded by another, but is lord of his own team, and guides his own implement as it makes the long furrow in the earth. There is certainly a great dignity in the grand old agricultural operations; so much dignity, indeed, that they are compatible with the grandest traditions of religious or political history. One is tempted to avoid the allusion to Cincinnatus because

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March-Strength needed in Ploughing.

it is so familiar to every one, but I may observe that the very familiarity of it, the universality of its reception and preservation in the memory of the cultivated world, is the proof that we have an ideal sense of a certain harmony and compatibility between the dignity of ploughing and the dignity of government which finds its satisfaction in the story of that worthy Roman. And I think the true dignity and grandeur of this labor is never so conspicuous as it is under circumstances such as those which I have just now attempted to describe, when the earth to be subdued is so difficult and rebellious, and it is necessary to have a strong team of six or eight well-trained oxen thoroughly under command. Think of the long hours from early dawn to sunset, with the incessant exercise of resolute will and strong, controlling arm on the plough-handle; a guidance needing far more strength than that of the seaman's tiller, whilst the team of animals is not so mechanically obedient as the unresisting ship! Steadily they all go forward together, team and plough and ploughman, through wind and calm, through shine or shower, and still the iron coulter turns up the heavy soil, resisting always, and always resisting vainly!

Sowing Its sublime Trust

XIX.

Spiritual Sowing- Parable of the Sower -Intellectual Sowing - Our Age more favorable to it than other Ages -An Old Peasant - The First Sower-The First Cultivator of the Cereals - Roman Bread-Our Ignorance of our earliest Benefactors.

OF

F at least equal dignity is the great religious act of sowing, with its sublime well-grounded confidence in the natural repayment of what we wisely trust to Nature. We are so familiar with this act of confidence that the meaning of it is almost lost to our apprehension, yet man's trust in the order of the universe is never more grandly proved than when he goes forth from some poor house where the children have scanty bread, and carries the precious grain and scatters it on the ground. There is another kind of sowing on which it is not always possible to have such secure reliance, because it is so difficult to know accurately the condition of the soil. He who sows corn sows it in earth that can be analyzed, and agricultural chemistry can tell him with great certainty what may be his chances of success; but who knows the minds of nations and their chemistry? who can tell whether the most precious seed-thoughts of philosophy will lie utterly unproductive or yield illimitable harvests? The condition of that soil varies from year to year; one year you might as well sow corn on

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March-Intellectual Sowing.

icebergs as trust any living thought to the deadly coldness of the world, and yet few years later this same world will be no longer an iceberg but good earth waiting for the seed. We all of us know the parable of the sower, how 'the sower soweth the word' by the wayside, and on stony ground, and amongst thorns, and finally on good ground also. That is the way the preacher sows his doctrine, and in every age from the day when that parable was first spoken the preacher has had exactly those chances of success. But it is not quite the same in the intellectual sphere, for here the soil itself all changes together, and in one age it will be all stones or thorns, whilst in another it will be good ground ready for the reception of great thoughts or astonishing discoveries. And whatever may be the faults of the age in which we live, whatever may be the crudeness, rawness, uncouthness, of our half-developed industrial system with the unpleasant forms of human life which it has made discouragingly conspicuous, one thing at least may be boldly advanced in defence of it; namely, that it is incomparably more favorable than any age that has preceded it to the sowing of the seeds of knowledge.

There is an old peasant near the Val Ste. Véronique whom I like to see especially at this time of the year. He is very tall and thin, with large bones, and a white head carried high with natural dignity. When he walks steadily along the furrow, casting the seed with that regular motion of the hand and arm which comes from years of practice, I look at him and think that, of all the