plants, preserve the fruits from the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, which had access to the garden; and to keep all his abode, and the domain around it, in good order. This was the first employment of man, which, by the wise and benevolent arrangements of his Maker, was to cheer and accelerate the hours of innocence and peace. After his expulsion from the garden on account of his transgression, the command which he had received at his formation, to cultivate the ground, was renewed; and the curse under which it was laid, rendered his exertions more necessary than before. This may be one reason that Adam initiated his eldest son in the art of cultivating the soil, which now refused to produce the necessaries of life in sufficient abundance and perfection, without the skill and industry of man; while he devoted Abel, his younger son, to the easier and more simple occupation of a shepherd.

In the first ages of the world, men were chiefly employed in digging and throwing up the earth, by means of rude and inconvenient implements: but Noah made important advances in the art of husbandry, and found out fitter instruments of cultivation than were known be fore his time. This patriarch, the second father of our family, is called a man of the ground-in our translation, a husbandman, because of his improvements in agriculture, and his inventions for subduing and fertilizing the soil. In consequence of the divine malediction, useless or noxious plants obtained the ascendancy, and obstructed the growth of esculent vegetables. These obstructions were to be removed, which required great pains and labour; and the sterility of the ground was to be corrected, and its productive energy excited and improved, by the operations of the plough.

b

The surface of the ground was probably divided into fields, and secured to individual proprietors, long before the flood. By that dreadful catastrophe, the whole earth reverted to its natural, undivided, unappropriated state; but how long it continued in common, we have no means of ascertaining. In the days of Abraham, who lived at no great distance of time from the flood, the lands of Canaan had become in some degree the exclusive property of the nation by whom they were occupied; and been even subdivided into small fields, and claimed as the legal inheritance of private individuals, except the pastures which appear to have remained in common through many suceeeding ages. The patriarch bought a field from Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a burying-place; and the transaction shews, that the property was perfectly well defined; that Ephron had the same absolute right to it, as any landed proprietor of our times has to his estate. And upon the purchase money being paid, the sacred historian says, "The field of Ephron which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field and the cave which was therein; and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession, in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city." The minute division of landed property in Egypt, is attested by the same infallible authority; for,

C

b The Arabian husbandmen on the east side of Jordan wear long white shirts girded round the loins, but neither turbans nor other coverings for their heads. They retain the beard, while the hair is suffered to hang in long and curling locks over the neck. They possess their lands in common; and the only claim they have to the possession of any particular spot, is that of having plowed and sown it, which entitles the person who does so to reap the harvest upon it for that season. Buckingham's Trav. vol. ii, p. 115, 116. • Gen. xxiii, 11, 20.

under the administration of Joseph, the people of that country were compelled by the famine to sell "every man his field ;" and "Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharoah." When the sons of Israel had conquered the land of promise, it was, by the divine command, surveyed and divided by lot, first among the twelve tribes ; and then the portion of each tribe was laid out in separate inheritances, according to the number of the families composing the tribe; and thus every man in the nation had his field, which he was directed to cultivate for the support of himself and his family. To prevent mistake and litigation, these fields were marked off by stones set up on the limits, which could not be removed without incurring the wrath of heaven. The divine command, in relation to this matter, runs in these terms: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's land-mark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess." In Persia, land-marks are still used: in the journey from Arzroum to Amasia, Morier found the boundaries of each man's possession, here and there, marked by large stones. Land-marks were used in Greece long before the age of Homer; for when Minerva fought with Mars, she seized with her powerful hand, a piece of rock, lying in the plain, black, rugged and large, which ancient men had placed to mark the boundary of the field.

Their inheritances were again divided into parts, which the Hebrews distinguished by the name of portions, or pieces of ground; and distributed by measure into acres. The distribution of a field into acres, is ascertained by a d Deut. xix, 14. e Trav. vol. i, p. 332. f Iliad, lib. xxi, l. 405, 406.

passage in the first book of Samuel, which is couched in these terms: "And that first slaughter which Jonathan and his armour-bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plow."

The land of promise was distinguished by extraordinary fruitfulness: Jehovah was pleased, in a special manner, to bless the springing of the earth, and to crown the year with his goodness; yet this peculiar favour did not supersede the vigilance and activity of the husbandman. The prophet Isaiah intimates, that his countrymen began their operations in the field by erecting fences, and gathering out the stones, and clearing away other incumbrances: " My well beloved has a vineyard in a very fruitful hill; and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof." Thorns, or other useless plants, were either dug up by the roots, or consumed by fire. "For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." Rich as the soil of Palestine certainly is, it refused at no time the aid of manure, which travellers and historians tell us is the case in some countries. This fact we discover in several parts of Scripture, but particularly in the parable

f 1 Sam. xiv, 14.

8 Mr. Buckingham, who describes the mountainous regions of Judea, as for the most part, an assemblage of naked rocks and precipices, admits the surprising richness of the elevated plains, " abounding with the most beautiful prospects, clothed with thick forests, varied with verdant slopes, and possessing extensive levels of a fine red soil. The landscape alone, which varied at every turn, and gave us new beauties from every different point of view, was, of itself, worth all the pains of an excursion to the eastward of Jordan." Trav. vol. ii, p. 104, 105, 106–108, 390, &c. &c.

of the barren fig tree: "Let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it; and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then shall we cut it down." Thus we find

the Jewish farmer, however highly favoured, was obliged to follow the rule which Virgil prescribed to his countrymen, to saturate the parched soil with rich dung, and scatter sordid ashes upon the exhausted lands:

"arida tantum

Ne saturare fimo pingui pudeat sola: neve

Effetos cinerem immundum jactare per agros." Geor. lib. i, 1. 79.

Not satisfied with cultivating the rich plains and fertile valleys of his native land, he reduced the barren rocks and rugged mountains under his dominion, and compelled them to minister to his necessities. For this For this purpose he covered them with earth; or, where this was impracticable, he constructed walls of loose stones, in parallel rows along their sides, to support the mould, and prevent it from being washed down by the rains. On these circular plots of excellent soil, which gradually rose one above another, from the base to the very summits of the mountains, he raised abundant crops of corn and other esculent vegetables: or, where the declivity was too rocky, he planted the vine and the olive, which delight in such situations, and which rewarded his toil with the most picturesque scenery, and the richest products. Thus, the places where only the wild goat wandered and the eagle screamed, which appeared to be doomed to perpetual nakedness and sterility, were converted by the bold and persevering industry of the Syrian husbandman into cornfields and gardens, vineyards and olive plantations, the manifest traces of which, in all the mountains of Palesj Luke xiii, 8.

VOL. II.

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