can have a ride before breakfast. Bonnet is to pay Miss Patty a shilling a week. In another note he reasons with the little patient on the childishness of demurring at medicines. She is ordered steel, and only takes it under protest. He urges her by the love she bears her father to follow out the doctor's orders in every particular. Change of air was tried, but the precious life could not be saved. She died about twelve months after his visit to Burke. "On Friday morning, June 19, at twelve minutes past one," he writes, "my dear, angelic child breathed her last." In a note below follows a later entry, "Here was my call to God. Oh! may it prove effective.”

He never recovered from the blow. In his overpowering grief he could not bear to part with the mortal remains of his darling. When, at last, he consented to interment, the coffin was placed under the family pew, her heart lying where he knelt in prayer. He wept himself blind; the terrible calamity that now gradually overtook him being indeed imputed to excess of weeping.

Sorrow mastered, unmanned a nature singularly hopeful and elastic. He became a prey to morbid introspection, to the gloomiest views of human life. He fell at last into the mood that incites men to write or read such works as "Baxter's Saints' Rest," or in our own day, to join the Salvation Army. The blindness came on by slow degrees, and for some time he remained at his post.

"In London, I am alone and therefore at peace," he writes significantly in 1798. "I rise at four or five, and go to bed at nine or ten. I go to no amusements, and read some Scripture every day. I never lay aside my good books but for business."

He still continues to see old friends, however, and his former interest in public affairs does not wholly desert him. During the same year he visits Pitt several times at Holwood, and throws heart and soul into new enterprises. The loss of his child has awakened pity for suffering childhood. In one month alone we find seven dinners given to about forty-eight poor children each time. Another entry is to this effect: "Dinner to fifteen poor children, eleven shillings, another dinner, do., do., another to thirty-seven poor children, sixteen shillings and sixpence,” and so on, and so on. Perhaps the following note may have something to do with these charities. "1798. Sold copyright of

my travels for 280 guineas." What travels these were he does

not say.

The business of the Board was still carried on as laboriously as before, but in 1808 he writes that his sight is so indifferent he is afraid of writing at all, and further on, "My eyes grow worse and worse. For me to read a letter of two sheets and a half would be a vain attempt. I pick out as much as they will let me."

Three years later he was operated upon for cataract, and from a curious and interesting letter written by his wife, we learn the cause, or supposed cause, of failure. All seemed going on well with the somewhat intractable patient, and the oculists held out good hope of recovery on one condition. He must remain calm. Weeping would be fatal. Wilberforce paid him a visit as he sat bandaged in a dark room. The visitor had been cautioned on no account whatever to agitate him, but either underrating his friend's susceptibility or his own, he began in his soft gentle voice, "The Duke of Grafton is dead," and went on to speak of the duke's death so touchingly that the other burst into tears. The mischief was done past recall. The last twelve years of life were spent by Arthur Young in total blindness. They were busier for all that than those of many men in the meridian. He was now chiefly at Bradfield, where the indefatigable veteran severely taxed the energies of his comparatively youthful associates. Besides his secretary, M. de St. Croix, he often enjoyed the friendly services of a granddaughter of Dr. Burney's, Miss Francis by name, a lady who, like Mezzofanti, was a monster of languages, a Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglot." It was a definite understanding that this linguistic knowledge-to what special uses it was put we are not informed-should be kept up. Every day Miss Francis enjoyed an hour or more for the purpose of reading a little Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and so on. In a letter to her brother, Mary Young, the only surviving daughter, amusingly describes one of these long, well-filled days. When at Bradfield, she tells us, Miss Francis slept over the servant's hall with a packthread round her wrist, this packthread passing through the keyhole communicated with Arthur Young's room, and when he wanted to awake. her, which was generally between four or five o'clock in the morning, he pulled

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it, on which she immediately rose. The pair would then sally forth for a two hours' walk on the turnpike road, stopping at some farmhouse to take milk, and afterwards distributing religious tracts at the cottages by the way, Miss Francis questioning the people upon their principles, reading to them, and catechizing the children. "At half-past eight1 they return," writes Miss Young, 66 as that is the hour M. St. Croix gets up, who finds it quite enough to read and write for two hours and a half before breakfast. After breakfast the three adjourn to the library till one, when Mr. St. Croix takes his walk for an hour, Miss Francis and my father read, write, or walk till three o'clock. He puts children to school at Bradfield, Cockfield, and Stanningfield, and every Sunday they meet and are catechized. Every Sunday night a hundred meet, when Mr. St. Croix reads a sermon and chapter, and my father explains for an hour, after which a prayer dismisses them. Last Sunday they (Arthur Young and the linguist) went to church at Acton. Every Sunday they go to Acton or Ampton, each church ten miles out and ten home, besides teaching the schools and the meeting in the hall." She adds, "My father has taken out a license for the hall (i.e. Bradfield), as there is an assembly of people which would have been liable to information." This letter bears date May 13, 1814.

The Sunday evening services made a deep impression on the country folks. The villagers of Bradfield and the neighbourhood still talk of the blind old Squire who was a great preacher. They know little or nothing of his literary fame. The achievement by which he will be remembered is to them a sealed book. But he lives in local memory as a second Wesley, a wonderful stirrer-up of men's consciences, an unrivalled expounder of the Gospel. There is still living at Bury St. Edmunds (1889) a nonagenarian who has a vivid recollection of Arthur Young's sermons. In his vehemence the orator would move to and fro till he gradually had his back turned to the congregation, whereupon his daughter or secretary would gently place their hands upon his shoulders and restore him to the proper position.

It is a touching figure we now take leave of, that blind, fervid, silver-haired preacher, a hundred eager faces fixed upon

1 There seems some confusion here, surely six must be meant.

d

his own, the rapt silence of the crowded meeting-place only broken by his trembling, impassioned tones. For the story of Arthur Young's life is mainly told. The world had not yet lost sight of him. He was from time to time pleasantly re minded of the conspicuous part he had played in it. He tells us how, in 1815, when breakfasting with Wilberforce, he met General Macaulay, who, recently travelling from Geneva to Lyons, had visited a French farm, where he found everything "in the highest style of management, and so much superior to all the rest of the country, that he inquired into the origin of such superiority. The answer of the owner was, 'My cultivation is entirely that of Monsieur Arthur Young, whose recommendations I have carried into practice with the success you see.'" For the most part the remaining years were uneventful. He bore his privations and infirmities with resignation, and retained full possession of his faculties to the last. He died at Sackville Street on the 20th April, 1820, and was buried at Bradfield. The handsome tomb in the form of a sarcophagus erected to his memory stands close to the roadside, over against the entrance to his old home. Passers-by may read the somewhat stilted yet veracious inscription on the outer slab :

"Let every real patriot shed a tear,

For genius, talent, worth, lie buried here."

In France such a man would have had his statue long ago. Perhaps this more modest tribute were more to his taste. That a native of his beloved Suffolk, herself a frequent wayfarer throughout the length and breadth of France, should edit his French Travels a hundred years after they were written, would surely have pleased Arthur Young well.

Of his children two survived him, his daughter Mary, who died unmarried, and his son Arthur, whose son, the present owner of Bradfield, is the last of Arthur Young's race and name.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales. London, 1768. 8vo. Second edition, enlarged, 1769. 8vo. Third edition, 1772. 8vo.

A Six Months' Tour through the North of England, containing an account of the present state of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Population in several counties of this kingdom. London, 1771. 8vo. 4 vols. Plates.

The Farmer's Tour through the East of England; being a Register of a Journey through various counties, to inquire into the state of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Population. London, 1770-71. 8vo. 4 vols.

Tour in Ireland; with general observations on the present state of that kingdom in 1776-7-8. Dublin, 1780. 8vo. 2 vols. London, 1780.. 8vo. 2 vols.

Travels during the years 1787, 1788, 1789, and 1790, undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France. Bury St. Edmunds, 1794. 4to. 2 vols. Vol. I. is a second edition, the first edition having been published in 1792. Reprinted, Dublin, 1798. 8vo. 2 vols.

The Farmer's Letters to the People of England; containing the sentiments of a practical Husbandman on the present condition of Husbandry, &c. London, 1768, 1771. 8vo. 2 vols. The Farmer's Guide in Hiring and Stocking Farms. London, 1770. 8vo. 2 vols. With plans.

Rural Economy, or Essays on the Practical Part of Husbandry. London, 1770. 8vo.

A Course of Experimental Agriculture. London, 1770. 4to. 2 vols.

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