splendid and expensive steading), it does not stand || the tenant over and above £1 per acre of yearly rent! Seldom in Scotland is so rare an opportunity afforded for realising farming profits; although the rent named is a common one for the best and most advantageously situated farms both in England and Ireland. The permanent improvements on Auchness include not only draining, but subsoiling, as well as farm-buildings, and the reclamation of waste land. Half the farm required, however, no drainage; the other half was thorough-drained, with tiles and slate soles-the drains at first being 2 feet 2 inches deep, and 15 fect apart; but this drainage being found imperfect, they were increased to 3 feet, and placed from 21 to 24 feet apart. On the removal of the first crop of oats from the drained land, it was subsoiled to a depth of 15 inches across the line of the drains, ameliorated during the winter by exposure to the weather, and limed, before turnip sowing, with 80 bushels per acre. fields, and mixed in alternate layers with the dung. If anybody supposes high farming a sort of child's play, he will thus see that he is egregiously mistaken. Altogether, five thousand loads of manure, exclusive of artificials, are given to the green crops. It is frankly acknowledged that the main source of increased productiveness on the farm is the extraordinary quantity of manure applied to these crops, and all the work, apparently, of ten horses, which, consequently, are not idle! No fixed rotation of cropping is observed. Such is not compatible with the genius of high farming. The last cropping comprised, for instance, fifty-five acres Italian rye-grass, clover, and pasture; thirty of oats, and twenty-five of potatoes after clover, &c.; fifty-five of turnips; fifty five of wheat, and from thirty to forty, being the reclaimed moss, in potatoes. A large proportion in potatoes! but "there's the rub"-these potatoes were the money-making portion at the moment, and it is "high farming" to push for profits. The magnificent farm buildings, the admirable Italian rye-grass, sown in April, is cut four times plan of which is worth the whole cost of the pam-in the course of the season. But how is it got to phlet, afford under one roof accommodation for al- grow? Those to whom the Belgian husbandry of most the entire stock of the farm! Feeding byres green cropping, stall feeding, and liquid manuring for eighty cattle, with front passages for feeding, is a mystery will not readily surmise. But the and rear passages for cleansing, occupy the princi- urine pumped from the spacious tank is diluted in pal ranges. The cattle are arranged in two rows, an equal quantity of water, and applied daily to separated by a wall, either half being capable of each morning's cutting from a broad-wheeled cart. isolation in case of necessity. The barn, threshingYet some farmers are so absurd as to hold it for an house, turnip-house, granary, and store for cut or established fact, that all the benefits of liquid mabruised grain (used in feeding) are relatively so dis- nuring will not repay the trouble and expense of posed that a lying shaft extending from the mill-carting it. They may learn from Mr. M'Culloch's wheel drives also the grain-bruisers and turnip-cutters. The dung-house, forty-nine feet by thirtythree, is covered over. The tank, thirty-one feet long, ten feet wide, and four deep, capable of containing 7,724 gallons of liquid manure, is arched over. Besides the principal range, suites of farin and riding stables, cow-byre, pig-house, poultryhouse, and other offices, surround the paved stablecourt, kitchen-court, &c. The farm buildings are ventilated with great care. Each window is hung on a pivot, and tile-holes are introduced a little above the ground behind, and at a level, in front of the cattle, in connection with air-pipes through the roof. A portion of moss land is reclaimed each year. To the acre of reclaimed land three hundred loads of sand and gravel are applied. The expense is £10 an acre; but, owing to the fortunate circumstance of the potato crops raised on the reclaimed land being free from disease in seasons when sound potatoes have been scarce, this has been fairly compensated. In the ordinary management of this farm, the covered dung-house being at a lower level than the byres, the dung can be wheeled in successive layers over the heap; and the urine, as it comes from the byres, can be conveyed in wooden gutters over the top of the dung, whilst whatever liquid finds its way to the bottom is caught by the tank. Besides the farm dung, five hundred loads of seaware and two thousand loads of peat-moss (exposed for a year to the atmosphere)—and no trifling ad vantages are these are annually carted out to the industrious, minute, and special application, and his four crops a-year, that "where there is a will there is a way." Eighteen acres, treated in this way, in fact, yield food from 10th May till 17th August for seventy two-year-old cattle, and ten work horses; only the latter cannot do without their oats and straw, of which also they have a full allowance. Further, the same eighteen acres soil and satisfy sixty cattle and the ten work horses up till 14th October, by the aid of an acre and a half of turnips and 280 bushels bean meal, boiled, with chaff. In other words, nineteen and a half acres yield five months' sustenance to sixty-seven cattle, on the average, besides ten work horses. Bones and guano are applied in the culture of the turnips, which are carefully manipulated, about a tenth of the crop being of the early white and yellow kinds; the rest Swedes. Wheat is taken after. Of cattle, 130 are sold fat off the farm every year, and the same number of young purchased to replace them. They get turnips and straw till the grass is ready, are then turned out to summer grazing, and tied up again in the beginning of October for winter feeding. Others are soiled all summer, on cut grass, clover, and early turnips, in the stalls, with a feed of boiled chaff occasionally. When all tied up for winter feeding, the stock are fed twice a-day on cut Swedish turnips, at the rate of 150 pounds a-day each, administered in equal doses of seventy-five pounds, with a supply of boiled food (an admixture of oats, bean, or linseed meal, and cut straw) in the middle of the day. The cattle are kept very clean, brushed down with a whale- ||pears to him to be one of the most extraordinary bone brush, called a dandy, daily; get plenty of time || propositions ever made to the agriculturists of Brito rest, and, as will be seen, are not annoyed by tain; and he denounces the scheme as a most unfrequent visits from the feeder. fair means of attempting to show a large return These are the whole details of the practical ma- from a farm. With more reason, Mr. Munro opnagement so much talked of and commended at poses the results of corn-farming to this high farmAuchness; and are given to supply the reader withing, against which he thus rails, for making the most of itself. For if high farming be inapplicable to the corn-districts of Ross-shire, then is Mr. Munro left in the lurch. His calculations, founded on twenty-six years' experience, show, left to pay the rent and provide the farmer's profit on a farm of 464 acres, only £798 9s. 11d.; and deducting 30s. an acre, or £699, as rent, there would remain but 4s. 4d. per acre, or £102 in all, as farmer's profit. Indeed, he asserts that the state of the markets since his calculation was made has converted even this ba lance to a deficit of £32 15s. ld.! a lively picture of the bustling and active life of the high farmer. Mr. Caird has been blamed-more especially by an anonymous writer, designating himself "A Perthshire Farmer"-for contrasting the results of this incessant and laborious exertion of the present tenant of Auchness with those of the old-world system previously pursued upon the farm. Adopting this mode of comparison, however, he has attempted to show that whilst Mr. McCulloch pays a rent of £110 above the former tenant of Auchness, and expends three times the sum formerly spent on the farm in labour, equivalent to the com- Having brought forward these examples of fortable subsistence of some ten families, at the ordi-agricultural controversy in reference to the leading nary wages of married ploughmen in this country, topic of high farming, it may probably suffice to besides laying out £526 more in manures and cattle say that the Carse of Gowrie branch of the confood, or, in all, effecting a total increase of expendi-flict, already sufficiently noticed, is by no means ture of £910 15s. 8d.-equal to nearly 70s. an acre; mature, as the farmers are writing second answers he realises £2,518 for the former tenant's £649, be- for Lord Kinnaird to revise. His lordship will ing an increase of £1,876. Now the "Perthshire no doubt dispose of many of the points at issue Farmer" has a different way of computing all this. summarily enough; but, on the whole, the literary He thinks that we have nothing to do with the activity now astir among our farmers must eventuate former tenant, and is for comparing the results with in good. The cultivation of the country stands none their own expenditure; and he thinks there are a the worse chance of being improved for having few items of expenditure to be added to those spe- especial attention directed to it, and a searching cified by Mr. Caird-seed, for instance (a strange investigation instituted into its results, in all their omission, for seed is not to be had scot free), £594|| possible aspects. Abroad, as well as at home, the 108.; keep of horses, £300; their tear and wear, same questions are beginning to be asked respect£47; tradesmen's accounts, £42 10s.; tear and ing the profits of farming; and to have hesitated wear of implements, £49; travelling and market in such an inquiry would, at this moment, have expenses, £60 10s.; cattle insurance, £88; interest thrown this country more in arrear in the general on capital, £150-not one of which can we affect race of productive emulation than any other cirto say might not be chargeable in a fair balance.cumstance that could be named. By a strange sheet. The result, instead of £1,876 of an increase, appears to be £17 18s. 8d. of a loss! coincidence, it was only the other day that a paper, called The American Cultivator, fell into our hands, Mr. Caird's more formidable, because more calm in which the question of farming profits is directly and resolute, opponent, coming forward not to grap-raised; and a writer, controverting the positions of ple with high farming as a system (though practically condemning the risk incurred in raising so largely of potatoes), but pitting against the humbler pretensions of common corn-farming in Scotland, is Mr. Munro, of Allan, near Tain. Pursuant to our purpose of avoiding the politics of this question, we shall attend only to the agricultural criticism emanating from this source. Mr. Munro thinks that the secret of Mr. M'Culloch's high and most remunerative farming lies in growing most extensively the most uncertain root known, under a system quite opposed to the acknowledged rules of good farming, by which the same plant or grain should be as seldom as possible repeated on the same land. Sixty five acres of potatoes upon a 260-acre farm, and 40 acres of which to be perpetually growing them, ap some previous correspondent, shows that the average net profit of the whole of 64,363 acres of wheat, barley, oats, and Indian corn, in Seneca County, U.S., was nine dollars per acre, or eighteen per cent. net profit on capital-whilst the manufacturers of New England, believed to be as prosperous as any in the world, have not for the last ten years netted seven per cent. per annum on their capital. Amongst the profits of the Lakeland Farm of Mr. Foster, in Seneca County, fifty-five acres of wheat land are estimated to have produced twenty-eight per cent. on the value of the land (for the farmers there are their own landlords). On these grounds, the American upholds the business of farming as the most profitable and prosperous in existence. D THE PAGE OF ST. LADISLAS. A HUNGARIAN TALE. BY PERCY. B. ST. JOHN. They could not reach each other even by the tips of their fingers; and yet it was to pass an hour in low whispered talk with her that Karolus, or Charles Kumbor, rode miles several times a-week. But this time it was not to talk of love, but of war. off the royal allegiance; and St. Ladislas himself was about to march against them, and his favourite page, Karolus Kumbor, must needs follow. In the dusk of the evening, and amid the blast of a severe storm, a horseman entered the long, straggling street of Great Varadein, in Hungary. Like most of the vast assemblages of huts, dignified with the name of towns, the Great Varadein was simply a huge village of half tents, half huts, where the Magyar pea| A province was in rebellion. The Kumanes had shaken santry vegetated, with their pigs and horses, after a fashion semi-Irish, semi-Bedouin-serf, or slave; to speak plainly, the Hungarian peasantry of those days endured all the miseries of poverty and degradation attached to their position-which, however, was no worse than that of the millions everywhere-where chivalry and feudalism held glorious revel. To work and sleep was about the extent of their enjoyment; and though it was not late in the evening, yet all had retired to their houses, and not even a dog looked out to examine what the stranger wanted. And yet it was in the good old times, in the very old times, when St. Ladislas was King of Hungary, and when the Kumanes were in rebellion against their sovereign lord and master. But communications were not rapid in those days, and the inhabitants of Varadein were not aware that at that very moment a motley host of rebels were encamped in their neighbourhood. The cavalier, as far as could have been judged by the pale moonlight, was young and handsome, while a rich costume, a rude counterpart of that of the modern hussar, was only half-hidden by a travelling cloak. After riding some distance into the crowd of huts, the traveller approached a spot where some houses of better aspect spoke of wealth and power. There was the church, the bishop's palace, the palace of the vayvode, and various dwellings belonging to the nobles who owned the surrounding soil-the magnate of the locality alone boasting a baronial castle. The cavalier turned down a narrow lane, or pathway, which led along the vast garden of the episcopal palace. Having reached the end of it, he tied his horse to a tree, and then, standing on the animal's back, gained the wall. To leap into the garden was then the work of an instant. The garden was large, and the wall of upright wooden beams stuck in the ground and dovetailed together, so as to form, as it were, a palisado. The young man seemed to know the ground well, for he took an alley that led towards the palace, and stood, in a few minutes, under its walls. He was expected. Scarcely had his foot touched the sloping surface of rock and bush, that led to the foot of a tower, forming the corner of the palace, than a whispered voice was heard. It would be unnecessary to relate the conversation which ensued. Klara was all tenderness and gentle. ness, begging the youth to be careful of his life, but to be valiant as became a true Hungarian. Though it was the bishop's daughter who spoke-for in those days the bishops married in Hungary without scandalising the faithful-she had all the fiery energy of her martial land. Karolus made all the usual promises which affection prompts; and then, after bidding each other adieu, a little more melancholy than usual, the lovers parted. He even Kumbor easily found his way back, and gained the summit of the palisado without difficulty. leaped down upon the muddy swamp outside; but, this done, was astonished to find his favourite Zugso called after his master's horse-no longer attached to the tree where he had left him. Boiling with indignation, the young noble turned round in search of him. He was quietly awaiting him, attached to a larch at some distance from the wall. Karolus, considerably puzzled at this event, walked quickly across the meadow, and then saw a tall Hungarian, standing with his back against the tree to which the horse was attached. "how darest "Slave!" cried the hotheaded youth, thou lay thy hand upon my horse?" "It was too near the bishop's palace for the honour of his daughter," said the Hungarian, coldly. Karolus looked at the other with a fierce and terrible expression. The Magyar peasant stepped back, and unloosed his long hunting-knife. But the page seemed to recollect himself. "Puzco!" said he, recognising the best dancer in Varadein, and the most active in all the varied games of the day, a tall, handsome, but rather sullen youth, who was said to be far too independent for a serf. "Puzco," replied the other, in a husky voice. Karolus burst into a hearty and uncontrollable fit of laughter. An idea seemed to strike him, so richly comic, that he could not credit its existence. It struck him that Puzco was in love with the bishop's daughter. Puzco, a serf, a shepherd, an animal belonging to the soil. There was a time-and in some ill-organised and silly heads such ideas still ferment-when the rich and noble, that is, the fortunate, the lucky, or the strongest, or the most successful, looked upon the poor as another race; when a noble lady would admit her porter or her lacquey into her bedroom while dressing, under the impression that that was not a man; when, in fact, the aristocracy looked upon the people as not only hewers of wood and drawers of water, but as cattle. No wonder if these looked on them as their || executioners, or their natural enemies, and have repaid them, whenever they have had an opportunity, their blasphemous and pagan appreciation of God's children. And yet such people have, with such ideas, dared to call themselves Christians, without one element of Christian belief in their souls. Karolus, the page, a true noble of his day, could not restrain his hilarity. It was too much for him. One of these early heralds of reformation--and much as belief has been reformed, practice has as much need of reformation as ever-had formed the mind of Puzco, which stood out in a marked manner from that of his fellow serfs. But the priest was dead, and Puzco had retained but coarse notions of the ideas implanted in him by Father John. He knew, however, one thing-that accident alone made Karolus any way his superior. The page, far more amused than irritated at the idea The peasant stood, uncertain how to act, but almost of having a rival who could never afflict him with any annihilated with a sense of his own debasement as he fear, even of the most vague character, pursued his heard the other laugh. He comprehended him; and way, musing as he went, towards the camp of King wild was the storm that raged in the breast of the serf St. Ladislas, not forgetting, however, to make inquiras he asked himself why he, young, handsome, withies relative to the position of the Kumanes, in search of every faculty as fit for action and renown as the other, whom he had been despatched by his master. should not look with an eye of affection on the bishop's daughter. He asked himself why a minister of the God of Christianity must needs have one of the rich and powerful of the land for a son-in-law, and scorn him, the poor peasant. Instinct told the white slave that, despite all the sophistry of the world, the holy bishop could not be a Christian when he condemned and despised the poor, for whose consolation Christ came upon earth. "My lord laughs," said Puzco, bitterly, "but may not the peasant and the noble both admire the sun? Does not the blue water of the Szamo wash both the black stones and the shining gold from the mountains?" "True, Puzco; but you don't seriously enter the field as my rival?" asked the young lord, perfectly annihilated with surprise. "Your rival, lord and master!" said Puzco, bitterly; "are you not rich, and I poor? Am I not a serf, and you a noble? Am I not as the beast of burden in the fields, and you as the falcon? Do I not wear a bunda of sheepskins, and a black suvey, and have you not brave armour, and shining gold upon your pelisse? I am a man, and thou art a man. I am God's creature, and thou art God's creature; but I shall stand equal with thee only before God." And Puzco bounded into the thicket, and disappeared. At all times, and in all lands where the Christian religion has been accepted and taught, there have been those who have understood it as something better than a theory. They have sought to put its tenets into practice, the very first of which should be, that there can be no more distinction between men upon earth than there will be in Heaven. Any person who believes that there are two races of men-one born to enjoy, the other to suffer; the one noble, the other servile-is simply not a Christian in any sense of the word. Long before the earliest reformers of note, there were priests who looked at Christianity in a less narrow point of view than did the rich divines whose province it was to administer to the vanity and insolence of nobles and princes, by hiding from them the fact, that assuming the name of believers and followers of Christ is not being so; and that pride, and insolence, and tyranny, and pillage, and oppression, and debauchery, and seduction, and worse, are not Christian virtues; and yet, such is the stolid ignorance of mankind, that the authors of such deeds were allowed, and still are allowed, to be Christians; a Christian without real humility, which consists in placing one's self not above, but below the rest of mankind in our own eyes. But he arrived exhausted with fatigue at the camp of the King, who had long been in bed, and without disturbing the monarch's rest. He had learned nothing by his journey, absolutely nothing, except that a pea sant had a soul, and eyes, and wishes, and even a heart for love, which in those days was, in reality, a discovery. When about midday he rode forth, in all his gorgeous finery, to attend on St. Ladislas, he had forgotten even this, for the brilliant cavalcade of knights, and their more humble footmen, were about to march against the rebel horde, which had been denounced as having attacked Varadein. The King rode his favourite Zug, so famous in Hungarian legend; and the cohort around him was all that the most warlike heart could have desired. On they sped, eager to meet the foe, sending scouts out every now and then in search of any sigus of the enemy. They found none for some time. At last, however, after some hours' march, a horseman came with the intelligence that the Kumanes had assaulted and taken Great Varadein, and were engaged in pillaging and devastating the place. "Sire," cried Karolus, addressing the monarch, "will you allow your faithful page to hurry on? His affianced bride is in Varadein, and he fears the ferocity of the rebels." "Take a fitting escort, handsome page," said St. Ladislas, with a smile, and " haste on. Thy master will not be long behind." Karolus Kumbor needed not twice telling, and in half-an-hour he was in sight of the town which contained the object of a long-cherished passion—the Klara who had been selected as his bride when both were children. As usual in such cases, the mutual passion was not so strong as if their affection had been checked; and they were forced to create a romantic mystery where it was not required, to suit their love to the height of the songs and ballads of the day, which never ventured to suppose feelings approved of on all sides worthy of chronicling. But such is the inevitable fate of the romancist; his task is never an agreeable one, for the taste of mankind is not, unhappily, to be pleased by simple narratives of gentle and happy affection. The scouts of the rebels were sharply on the look out, and at once warned their comrades of the coming of Karolus Kumbor and his band of gallant knights. The pillagers stopped not to contest their plunder, but hurried away with all they could carry, leaving the palace of the bishop in flames. When Karolus drew rein in the square, he found the prince-priest surrounded by a crowd, who were endeavouring in vain to comfort him. And then the two men sprang upon the astounded half-dozen of Kumanes, laid two low by one stroke, and, "My child! my child!" he cried, in a tone of pas-encouraged by the sight of Klara, stretched at the foot sionate grief; "give me back my child." of a tree, and bound with thongs, they attacked the Karolus and his com "Where is Klara ?" asked Karolus, without dis-others with desperate energy. mounting. A hundred voices replied that the palace had been fired in the confusion of the attack; and when succour came, a party of young Kumanes, headed by one of their chiefs, had rode away, the commander bearing the young girl on the horse beside him. The Page of St. Ladislas calmly took council with all who could inform him, despite the poignant grief he experienced, and then, the road taken by the ravishers being indicated, he galloped away, with but five followers, on the track of the Kumanes. The road they had taken, one rude and rugged enough, was that of Transyivania, and led to that country through a series of ravines, woody tracks, and mountain passes, which could easily be defended against a large force. But Karolus cared not for danger. He was in the times of chivalry; and had the lovely girl been any other than his beloved, he would have been bound to do the same. He rode hard and fast for two hours, at the expiration of which time his horse began to give evident signs of being completely worn out; and then only he remarked, that such had been his precipitation that a single companion alone remained with him. At the same moment, a peasant, driving a mule, came forth from a thicket, and prepared to follow the track to Varadein. Karolus at once questioned him, and found that, about an hour before, he had concealed himself to escape a rude band of horsemen, who bore along with them a girl on one of their steeds, filling the air with her shrieks and groans. The young man, who knew that his horse could go no further, and who feared nothing save the demand for a rich ransom, at once dismounted, and let his good Zug graze alongside the steed of his friend. Then, having got some provisions from the peasant, they refreshed themselves, and tried to snatch a few hours of rest. It was about midnight when they awoke; and both at once remounted, and pursued their journey. For a couple of hours they again advanced on their way, until they found themselves at the foot of the Cserhalom, or hill of oaks, and near a low chain of steep and rugged hills, where lay concealed a band of runaway and revolted serfs, who revenged their former slavery by pillaging and waylaying all the nobles they happened to meet. The two young men at once perceived the light of a fire, amidst a grove of trees. Both dismounted, drew their sabres, and commenced climbing the hill. They observed dead silence, and were fully aware that they were advancing to a perilous and unequal encounter. But they hesitated not. Scarcely had they entered the grove when they heard voices. "I tell you," cried one, "you may get ransom for whom you will; I mean to have this girl. She is pretty and tempting, and my own prize." "That remains to be seen, Csisco," replied another, "for my part I shall have my share of the gold. If she be the bishop's daughter, the old Pope will give a good ransom for her.” 'Brigand!" thundered Karolus, "nor girl, nor ransom! I am here, Klara." panion were good swordsmen. They knew well the use of the weapons they wielded. Their adversaries, At Ilis comrade was dead, as were three of the Kumanes, while both he and the three others were so desperately wounded as to leave little prospect of their recovery. In fact, the young man had received so many, and such terrible wounds, that he felt himself dying. Klara, he saw, was gone, and then he fell insensible. Some three weeks later, though to Karolus it appeared only a few seconds, he, for the first time, opened his eyes with any sense of what was going on around him. He gazed almost vacantly on the locality he occupied. He was in a dark mountain cave, of small dimensions, but lying on a bed which was soft and pleasant, and which he at once felt was covered with fresh linen. Opposite to him was a deep cavity, that served as a fireplace, near which sat an old woman, who was, however, neither hideous nor repulsive. She was a decent, respectable-looking person, clean, and engaged in preparing some savoury mess. weak to speak or move, almost too weak to think, and "I fear me his "It has ceased," he said, in a low, measured, but clear tone. The old woman clasped her hands, gazed curiously at the sick man, and then disappeared, to return next This was instant accompanied by another person. Klara, paler, thinner, than she was wont, and with an air of gravity he had never seen on her; but still Klara. She had in her hand a beverage that she had been absent preparing. 66 "You must not speak, Karolus," said she, gently; 'you must not utter one word. Be assured you are safe, and in generous hands. Both I and you have been saved by a miracle. Do not speak, Karolus. I will give you this drink; and then sleep again, for one refreshing slumber will do you more good than all your long lethargy." A look from the sick man was easily understood by the young girl, and she told him how long he had been insensible. "But not another word-go to sleep; now that you are free from your terrible accesses, we can move you from this cave." We, thought the young man; who is we? But the |