of a student returning the answer of the Moral Philosophy question to the Mathematical question; but these mistakes were good-naturedly passed over, as arising from the hurry and agitation of the moment, and being mere inversions in the order of memory. When, however, the rumour of the Royal Visitation reached the ears of the two Great Northern Universities, it was wisely considered that it would be very beneficial to the credit of the place, should the commissioners hear of some candidates being rejected. Accordingly, a week or two before the period of trial, the minds of the prospective graduates were smitten by the news of a terribly difficult examination being prepared for them; in consequence of which some who were doubtful whether or not they should be at the trouble to accept so empty an honour, found that it was likely to be too full for their grasp, and so declined the attempt. Others went boldly forward. A sufficient number were rejected, to satisfy the consciences of the Professors for all the unqualified they had permitted to pass before; and, ever since, the graduation has been a matter of doubt, terror, and difficulty. The graduation being over, and the students having spent about half a day in destroying each other's gowns, each man, after the principles of Hobbes, attacking the property of his neighbour, the dull routine of the academical winter may be considered at an end; and an afterpiece, very different from the dry matter in which they have been engaged, is all that remains to be attended to, before the general dispersion. The Graduation Ball, which has, during the whole session, been nearest the hearts of those personally interested in it, begins, towards the termination of the season of labour, to be whispered of in the polite world of Aberdeen. The rooms are hired; store of provisions is laid in; fiddlers are gathered together, blind and otherwise; invitations are issued; the dressmakers' girls look forward with the hope of acquiring an invitation from some teaching cousin ; and the high-bred belles of Union Street hink they may drop in to see what sort of creatures will be there. The rooms are lit up on the appointed night; the fiddlers are prepared; gay figures crowd in. The eccentric looking students are singularly altered in appearance. Where is our friend from Braemar, whom we characterized a while ago? An acute eye, acquainted with his huge physiognomy, may contrive to discover him. He is strangely metamorphosed indeed. His face is burning red like a furnace. His long red hair which hung down upon his eyes, has been mounted in great sturdy curls over his forehead, A stiff white stock encumbers his throat. His great horny hands have been forced into white kid gloves, from which he very naturally dreads they may never be released; and his feet have exchanged their monstrous iron-ribbed protectors, for tight little dress shoes, which he is conscious any undue motion may rend to tatters. Although he has submitted his unruly heels for a couple of months to the persevering discipline of a dancing-master, it is plain that he does not feel himself yet audacious enough to figure forth before so numerous an assembly. Plucking up courage, however, he approaches a Professor's daughter; but forgetting, in the confusion of the moment, the proper sentence of appeal, which he vainly thought he had committed, along with his Greek roots and his problems, to the stronghold of his memory, his wish resolves into the simple request, "Wud ye jist tak a daunce wi' me, Mem?" The request is very probably acceded to; but the rustic finds, from the manner in which he has performed his part, that a little something to drink is absolutely necessary for clearing his memory. There is plenty of wine, porter, and whisky in the next room; after some few retreats to which, he feels as if he were on his native hills. He then perceives a number of people rushing round the room in a manner which he thinks it would not be difficult to imitate; and he plunges into a waltz, from which he bolts off at a tangent, clearing an avenue to the extremity of the apartment. Resolved that his third attempt shall not be so unsuccessful, he chooses to perform his native dance, and dashes into a strathspey, kicking up his heels, to the admiration and terror of all the beau monde standing by. The pale, studious tutor eyes him with envy. Wine and revel are not for him. He too, however, is altered in his appearance, his hair is brushed with careful smoothness to one side, and his old rusty dress is exchanged for a hard-won suit of glossy black. But his air of retired diffidence still hangs about him; and he has encountered many internal misgivings, before he has brought his courage to the point of making an inaudible request to a fair pupil to dance a quadrille. Meantime, the younger gentlemen are flirting about as gay as butterflies, and the Matrons and Professors are absorbed in Whist. Time flies on, and things begin to get a little confused or so. The gentlemen gather themselves into noisy groups, and perform feats of agility; leaping over sofas, and balancing chairs. The lights begin to go out of themselves, or gentlemen have extinguished them by pitching tarts and sandwiches at them. The fair ones gradually retire, and as they disappear, the mirth of the unrestrained males gets more boister ous. What on earth are they about now? They have commenced a ram reel, and the remaining ladies have fled in terror. The mirth and fun get fast and furious. The dignity of Professors is not much respected; and probably some of the sturdiest of the revellers will lay hold of the fat sacristan, and tumble him round the room like a foot-ball. A few more windows and lamps than usual are broken during that eventful night; a few signs are removed; a few watchmen are floored; and a few young gentlemen are locked up in the watch-house. As soon as the students have recovered from the blue devils, the Highlanders return to their hills, to plough, and herd sheep; the tutor retires to his studies; and the young gentlemen are sent to school to learn English Grammar, Writing, and Arithmetic; and then peace reigns for seven long months in the vicinity of the two Great Northern Universities. POLITICAL ECONOMY FOR FARMERS, CHAPTER 1. The Philosophy of Full Cultivation, deduced from an Inquiry into the Relative Aptitudes of Soils. Ir is our object in the present paper to develop an important economical truth, which, we believe, is but imperfectly understood, and of course imperfectly acted upon by the majority of our agriculturists; and it probably will not the less ensure their respect for our lucubrations, if we distinctly inform them, at the outset, that we mean to exhibit how they might become nearly independent of that mother of all evil-the Corn Law. We do not indeed propose to elevate the land of this country, as if by some magical influence, into a natural equality with the luxurious straths of Poland or Lower Russia, or to drive the unprohibit ed Canadian from Mark Lane, by rendering our Scottish heaths as rich as the deep mould still slumbering intact beneath his forests; but we would call it emphatically to mind, that we have an advantage which neither Canadian, Russian, nor Pole can pretend to, or will be able to pretend to for yet a few generations. We have in this country an amount of hoarded wealth, or CAPITAL, to be found in no other region of the world; and by its proper, and full, and scientific application, we are persuaded that in agriculture, as in those branches of manufacture where our superiority is derived chiefly from it, we may approach much more nearly to independence of the FREE competition of the most favoured foreigner. 1st, £10_16 2d, No. 1. Total £50 Our assertion will, in the first instance, probably sound like a paradox to all ears practical; and to ears philosophical, it may resemble the announcement of some such economical scheme of agricultural economy, as was wont of old to emanate from the adyta of the Anti-Theoretical School, but all we ask is attention; and that we may not run the hazard of asking too much even of this, let our exposition forthwith proceed :-It will be granted, we fancy, that, in Great Britain at present, there are under cultivation soils of considerable variety, and very different fertilities. Soils of different fertilities may be defined-soils which, to the same outlay, return different quantities of produce; and it will aid us in our contemplation of what may all be deduced from this fact, if we imagine the existence of a farm composed of equal quantities of five of these varying soils, represented by the five annexed squares. The first square may represent the best land; and we shall suppose that, to an outlay of £10, (this including interest of capital, and all expenses of labour, but no rent,) it is capable of returning 16 quarters, as marked within it. The second square again returns, to the same outlay, only 13 quarters; the third, 10; the fourth, 7; and the fifth only 4 which last quantity will not do more, at the average price of 50s. per quarter, than pay what we have supposed to be the cost of production. Now there is a law with regard to the powers of return possessed by soils of 1st, £10_10 the supposed character, which must 2d, here be especially observed. The re- 3d, turn of 16 quarters, to the outlay of Total. £40 10-13 3d, 10-10 16 4h, 10- 7 5th, 10— 4 50 qrs. No. 2. 1st, £10-13 2d, 10-10 3d, £10 on the first soil, is indeed its tional 16 quarters, but it may produce 13 quarters, which is still a paying re turn. In the same manner, a third 1st, £10— 4 £10 may be laid out upon the same £10 4 qrs. ground with a return of 10 quarters; a fourth with a return of 7 quarters; and a fifth with a return of 4,-beyond which last it is clear no fresh outlay ought to be attempted; as, at the usual price, it could no longer replace itself. Following the same supposition, similar profitable outlays may be made in regard of the secondrate, third-rate, fourth-rate, and fifth-rate soils before mentioned; and in order that the circumstances of the farm, when in this state of full cultivation, may be apprehended at a glance, we have placed on the left of the annexed squares the several outlays or doses of £10, with their corresponding returns; and on the right the totals alike of expense and return. Such, we have said, will be the circumstances of the farm when in a state of full or thorough cultivation. It is clear, either that the whole money laid out with these returns upon the superior soils will pay, or. that the farmer is quite wrong in cultivating soil No. 5. In no one of the supposed cases is a less return obtained than in the last; and in all situations it ought, therefore, to be acted upon without doubt or hesitation, and quite as an established axiom, that the best soils should be dosed with capital, or cultivated, until the last sum of money applied to them is repaid by no greater return that the worst cultivated soils would produce to it, were it laid out as a FIRST DOSE upon them. We are so particular in announcing and explaining this important economical principle, from our intimate acquaintance with the great vice of practical agriculture. It is not to be denied, that in some few of the best districts of the country it is acted upon with admirable and precise accuracy; but in general, (speaking in regard of the multitude of farmers,) soils are cultivated rather in regard of their extent than of their quality; and a fine piece of land will be left not more than half wrought, or half manured, where corn is invoked, by all Pluto's art, from a sandy bent, or some light shallow heath, which has been painfully scratched into fresh surface by the plough.* We have just been residing in the central district of one of our richest Scottish counties, where we had the pleasure of seeing an enterprising and talented manufacturer, who has recently become agriculturist, operating upon the principles here unfolded, in the most fearless and effective style; and he reaps, in consequence, at least four times the harvest ever reaped on the farm before. The neighbouring farmers wonder, and feel some jealousy, albeit, at the discredit thus sideways thrown upon the craft; and, moved by half spite, they declare that it will not pay. Were our friend vindictive, he might retort with good emphasis; for these practical men are in the yearly habit of laying out money even for a less return than he does,-the difference between them being simply this, that they but half exhaust, while he fully exhausts the profitable capabilities of the good soils. The very idea of the nonpaying of such enterprise is, under present circumstances, an absurdity. The rent of a farm is calculated, in every case, in relation to the state of cultivation in its particular district; so that any individual who sees into the truth of things, and therefore fully cultivates, not only pockets his profits as a farming-capitalist, but a great portion of rent also. Sup The practical observer cannot travel through a single county, even in Scotland, far less in England or Ireland, without being struck with amazement at the extent of fine soils which are half cultivated, or even wholly neglected, while wretched heaths are tortured to produce food; and food is therefore so dear! He feels, as if instinctively, that this could not be, unless "something were rotten in the state of Denmark." The difference between half and full cultivation, as explained in our paper, will shew the astonishing amount of the evil. pose, for instance, it were the practice of the locality in which our foregoing imaginary farm is situated, to lay out only £10 on each of the patches of land above specified, it is clear that the scientific and rational cultivator could afford to pay the average rent out of No. 1 alone. By acting upon the principles above detailed, he would have made field No. 1 as valuable as an ordinary and routine agriculturist would make the whole farm; so that he has Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5 to the bargain; or, in other words, he is of these both laird and farmer, so long as the lease lasts. The view now taken cannot be too deeply, or too widely impressed. That it is accurate there cannot be a doubt; and of how much importance a full and complete understanding and acceptance of it would be to the sagacious agriculturist, we leave it to himself to discover; entering, however, a touching appeal to his candour, as to whether he does not owe radicalism a good turn, should the truth for the first time have met his eye in these pages; and if he ought not to remember the service when he is complacently pocketing his cash! The object of our present exposition, however, is not to serve the purpose of the individual, but to establish a great and general truth, and to follow out its social consequences. That the good soils of this country are not so well cultivated, proportionally speaking, as the bad ones, is quite a matter of notoriety. In some few straths in Scotland, where the rich alluvium almost invites to cultivation, full justice is indeed done to it; but in no other district in the United Kingdom, in no district, even in Scotland, where the good land is merely interspersed with the indifferent, is more than half justice done to it. Now, we beg to refer again to our five squares, and to request attention to the effect of this notoriously imperfect cultivation of the good soils. Say that the first two doses of capital only are laid out upon No. 1, (a supposition not far from the general truth,) the first two upon No. 2, the first two also upon No. 3, the first one upon No. 4, and the first one upon No. 5, it is clear that the price charged to the public will be the price of raising the corn upon No. 5, or, according to our supposition, 50s. per quarter; whereas the effective demand on the part of the public, will, in regard of the whole extent of land we speak of, be 80 quarters, the quantity produced entire. Now, upon the principles just expounded, this amount of price ought to furnish 120 quarters; and if only 80 quarters are required, cultivation might have stopped betwixt Nos. 3 and 4, and the requisite supply been thus furnished to the people at 26s., or at most at 28s. Our imaginary statistics are of course not to be twisted into real statistics, but to be taken as a mere illustration. Facts are before us, however, which show that, by an ample and proportionate cultivation of the best soils, prices might, in this manner, be reduced at least 6s. and 7s. per quarter; and as the foreigner can in no case undersell us by more than 10s., we think we are not wrong in our estimate of the effect of complete and free cultivation in this country, cultivation such as British capital might give our soils, when we state that it would, of itself, almost protect our agriculturist from competition. It was long a favourite idea of Sir Henry Parnell's, that, by means of internal improvement, we might thus get wholly quit of the knotty problem of the Corn Law; and unquestionably his idea was right. The only error was, in conceiving it possible to bring about these improvements by mere persuasive means. * Sir Henry alludes to this subject in a note to his Financial Reform. We beg to reprint it entire, as his authority is always valuable :-" When (in 1813) the |