A RURAL INSTITUTE. 5

ter, though they may have blazed out, for a while, dazzling the world with their splendor, like other freebooters, their reign has been short, and their ruin cer- tain. The history of European nations, for the last two thousand years, is little more than a melancholy detail of the ef- fects of this mad principle of government.

THE UTILITY of a public seminary of agriculture will, perhaps, be thought too evident to require to be explained: for if public seminaries of language have assisted in diffusing the principles of grammatic learning, and promoting lite- rary pursuits, and if the public universi- ties have tended to promote the interests of general science, establishments of a similar tendency, it may be inferred, will as assuredly promote the advancement of agriculture.

England, at present, does not produce a supply of food for its own inhabitants; while a considerable portion of its lands