vantage, it is therefore clear, of turnips can never be from a consideration of the crop only the profit is distant; but it is, in a course of years certain; not only so, but it is the most certain, and most considerable of all others. The turnip culture and crop influences the whole course of your tillage for a long time; nor do I think it possible to make the most of your land, let it be of what quality it may, without them. By means of them you compass two things not easily reconciled; you have your land at once well enriched, and yet clear and sweet. You encrease your stock of cattle beyond what those who have not tried can well imagine; you send fat sheep to market in the winter and spring when they are dearest; you send grass lamb from the middle of May during the whole summer; and in countries where neither the grass nor hay, nor both together, will do any thing towards fattening an ox properly, you may fatten very well some few, either for your own use or market; indeed any number, if you should not prefer sheep, as being perhaps full as profitable, and much less troublesome, as they eat the turnips on the ground; whereas they must be plucked for oxen in the stall, and given them with hay, and now and then a little meal. It is, however, when the turnips are off the ground that the advantage begins. If your turnips are off before the end of February, my opinion is that the field ought to be sown with wheat; we have no wheat this year so promising in quality, or so great in quantity, as that which has been spring-sown upon turnip-ground. In a tour to Sussex this summer, I saw a field, on which nobody imagined there would be less than five quarters (ten barrels) an acre. The field is on the Duke of Richmond's farm; it is spring wheat; the soil a very ordinary loam, full of flints, and shallow. The spring wheat goes generally more into straw than winter corn; but it is always cleaner, and we choose it in preference for seeds. If the turnips are not eat off so early as the end of February, there is too much risk in attempting wheat. The land ought to be sown with oats or barley, but always accompanied with clover-seed and hay-grass. When the barley and oats are carried off, the field ought to be shut up for a little time; the grass gets up, and it may be grazed until the tenth or fifteenth of October without prejudice to it. Then shut up the field; and the next year you will have your clover either for grazing or cutting as you choose. With us this was but a poor year for clover. For my part I came off tolerably well. From one field I did not cut much less, if any thing, than two load an acre (1800 cwt. to the load). If the weather, which is now very unpromising, permits it, I shall have more than a load an acre for the second cutting, besides a tolerable feeding before I plough up the lay ground. The load of clover-hay sells from thirty to thirty-six shillings a load. This year it will be dearer. It is excellent food; better than any other hay for hard-working draft-horses who do not require wind for quick going. At Michaelmas you sow wheat upon one ploughing; and good wheat is had on this lay, and from ground otherwise very unfit for that grain; most of our wheat in this part of the country is on a clover lay; comparatively little upon a fallow. The course then of the turnip culture is this: 1. Fallow and turnips. 2. Barley with grass-seeds. 3. The grass-seeds for cutting or feeding. If your turnips should fail, that is, be destroyed by the fly, your ground is, however, in good order for wheat, and is therefore not lost. When I spoke of three ploughings for them, I scarcely allowed enough; they ought to have four or even five, especially if the land be at all heavy. The course you mentioned to me as practised by the smaller farmers of your country is not a very bad one. The potatoes, considered in themselves, are better than turnips; but then this is the only advantage. They do not improve the ground in an equal degree; they do not sweeten it so as to be a good preparative for the clover and bent seeds, and if the wheat (which is a very good idea) comes better after the potatoes than after the grass, as very probably it may, the barley does not come so well after the wheat, and will certainly leave the ground in very bad order; so that a year's fallow will hardly set it to rights again. The potatoe husbandry, to be carried on upon a large scale, and to the best advantage, must be expensive; and does comparatively very little towards the increase of food for cattle, and consequently for the improvement of land, and therefore falls much below the turnips, though I make no doubt but it may pay better for a year or two. The charge, I know, is considerable; but I am satisfied that no cheap method of tillage can be a good one. All profit of lands is derived from manure and labour; and neither of them, much less both of them, can be had but at a dear rate. I should not even consider the cheapness of labour in any particular part as a very great advantage. It is something, without doubt. But then I have always found that the labour of men is nearly in proportion to their pay. Here we are six pence a-day lower than within a few miles of London; yet I look upon the work there to be in effect nearly as reasonable as here; it is, in all respects, so much better and so much more expeditiously done. Wages are still lower in the further part of this county, near Northamptonshire. The work is still in that proportion worse than it is with us. On the whole, I would seriously recommend to you the turnip husbandry with all its expenses and its risques. The new price of lands with you can never be paid, but by an improved husbandry; by that it may, I have no doubt, much more profitably than the old rents were by the old methods, or rather the old want of all method. If I have tired you, the rainy day must be my excuse. When I can walk or ride out, I am a bad correspondent. Our winter here was terrible. The hay harvest well got in; but not a third of a crop. I had an hundred and ten load of natural hay last year; this year I have but forty-four. Turnips in very many places have failed. I have three pieces sowed with them one of eight, one of ten, and one of seven acres. The first is pretty good; the second about a third of a crop; the fourth has totally failed, though twice sowed. This is the first time I have failed in my turnips. The wheat which has been sown late upon lays is in general thin and blighted that on fallows very good; as is all the spring corn, if we should have weather for getting it in. Situated as you are, where I suppose you can have summer grazing on the mountains for a trifle, or may rent such ground reasonably, if you could make your lower farms convenient to the winter-feeding of cattle, you might have them in great numbers and with great advantage. I throw down my thoughts to you without method; if you should think in earnest, you and any other friends, of entering into our practices, I shall go more into the detail in my next. Tom English is well, but he has not been near us this summer. Pray let us hear from you. All here salute you and yours. I am, my dear Garret, faithfully yours, &c. EDM. BURKE. Beconsfield, August 23, 1771. I forgot to tell you that Mr. W. Burke had a letter from Captain Stolt from Madeira. He tells me Ned Nagle is well and behaves to his satisfaction. A WALK FROM FLORENCE TO SIENA. DEAR MIT is a fine May-day morning, bright and clear, except that some light fleecy clouds are floating beneath a sky of so deep a blue, that the like of it has never yet been enjoyed by you Northerns. Here we are outside the Porta Romana,―the road is all before us,— will you walk with me to Siena? If not better engaged in some historical matter of fact, or some metaphysical matter of nothing, I shall be happy of your company. But don't disturb yourself, don't call for your thick-soled shoes; I shall be content if you merely fancy yourself my companion as you read my letter ;-so pray keep your chair, or, if you will, loll upon a sofa, cushioned and comfortable; be in want of nothing but small chat for your amusement, and be ready to lend a good-natured ear to any talk on any subject that may be started on our journey. These suburbs, these villas with their eternal garden-walls,-let us pass them swiftly as we can. We will not even stop to throw away a glance at the Grand Duke's summer retreat on the Poggio Imperiale, whither his highness flies when the town is too hot to hold him. Now we have well nigh crossed this hill, what say you to the view? Is it not a rich and fertile plot of farms, enclosed within a circle of handsomely shaped hills? The vines, it is true, are not yet in their luxuriant foliage, but, to make amends, their young green is the more vivid, and forms a greater contrast with the other fruit-trees, and particularly with the sober hue of the olive. There in the midst, upon an isolated mount, stands the Certosa convent,-a heavy, an unsightly building, a blot on the beauty of nature. It is strange that Italian monks never show so much as an attempt at taste in their architecture; while our English ones appear to have studied the graces of their Gothic arches, shafts, and cornices, and have left behind them many stately records, which, even in their ruins, demand our gratitude. From the fifth to the seventh mile-stone, is the most romantic part of our journey. Here we are among steep hills, with wood and rock on every side. The road, as it winds upward, presents at every turn some novelty or some variety in the landscape. At the top of the hill, there is a fine and extensive prospect. What particularly pleased me, standing just there on the little hillock at the side of the road, was a sight of Florence with its palaces and towers; and Fiesole upon the hill beyond it, seen beneath the boughs of two oaks. I have never heard of the Florentines coming hither on a trip of pleasure; but it is not their fashion to go so far out of town with a basket of provisions; besides, they would think a gipsy party too unbecoming for city manners, and fear that the fact might be urged against them as a proof of their want of "educazione." If they can possibly overcome so great a difficulty, I recommend, for their health's sake, and as an agreeable change from their mixture of soups, stews, fries, and antibilious pills, that they should walk hither, sit upon the grass, eat heartily of a cold joint, and drink as jollily as they ought, of their own light Tuscan wine. I shall certainly set them an example. Now half an hour's walk brings us to San Casciano, a petty town, but it affords a coffee-house where we can get a good breakfast,-butter excepted, for that article is rarely found in Italy out of the principal cities, and there, generally speaking, more is consumed by the foreign visitors than by the natives. From San Casciano, well recruited with a breakfast, we descend by a long hill into a beautiful plain, or rather valley, which we must traverse for some distance on a level road. The dust looks formidable, but walk carefully and it rises no higher than your shoes; and though the sun is no longer clouded, we are relieved by a pleasant breeze. Observe the ingenuity of this beggar. The rogue never could have succeeded without adding another annoyance to his importunity; he therefore shuffles by my side, raising so thick a cloud of dust, that I am glad to bribe him away. There !-take your paltry coin, and let me gaze about me in comfort. The hills on each side of this valley have a peculiar grace in their sloping forms, and they are diversified by woods, with here and there a handsome villa. To walk through such a country is indeed an enjoyment; but perhaps it is still better to sit down in the midst of it upon a shady bank, especially as I begin to feel the effects of this unclouded sun. I like to loiter on my way, and stretch myself upon the grass, and take a book from my pocket, or hum an old song, or think upon my friends at home. On resuming our walk, we quitted the valley by a series of hills, which afforded us a view that was more extensive than delightful. Presently we came to a part of the road that reminded us of England, for there was a hedge-row on each side, with oaks that spread above our heads. We gazed upon many spots worthy of a painter or a poet; and on we walked till another town appeared, and that was Tavernelle. It was our intention to take some little rest and refreshment at that place, and we asked the first man we met where we could best be accommodated. He instantly proposed his own house, a sort of chandler's shop with an apartment for guests, which he assured us was both cool and airy. Whether owing to this man's good-tempered face of invitation, or to our own idleness, or to the glance we caught at three damsels in the aforesaid apartment, I cannot exactly determine; but in we went, and the table was quickly spread with very tempting fare. The girls were busily employed in straw-bonnet work. I should be sorry to be accused of telling tales, but the fidelity of this narrative requires that every particular should be stated. Be it known then that all our landlord's daughters were extremely attractive. One had red hair, to be sure,-I wonder how she came by it, but she knew how to remedy that defect, and in the most harmonious manner, by a green velvet cap with a gold border. Then she had "a grace, a manner, a decorum," that outshone her beauty. The second one, with her piercing eyes, somehow disconcerted me as I came into the room; but the sweetness of expression about her mouth made amends, and diffused a softness over her features, which I was not so much aware of at first sight. As for the third, she was a little rosy lass, beaming with mildness and affection, and her countenance was more intellectual than either of her sisters. I looked at her till I did not know what to wish. Not being married men, why should we hesitate to tell the whole truth? Well, we paid our devoirs to each in her turn; never did we watch the process of bonnet-making with such attention; and it may readily be imagined we did not fail to take up their work every now and then, examine into the curious construction of the plaiting of the straw, and |