TURNPIKE. See HIGHWAY and ROAD. | TURN-REST PLOUGH. See PLOUGH. TURNSTONE. (Strepsilas interpres.) This bird, in habit, resembles some of the smaller plovers or the sanderling. It frequents our coast, either singly or in small flocks, from August throughout the winter till May, when it leaves us to go northward to breed, and returns in August with its young, which, at that time, have none of the fine rich red, black, or white colours so conspicuous in the adult birds. It feeds on the smaller crustacea, and the soft-bodied animals inhabiting thin shells, turning over stones, and searching among sea-weed for its food. The whole length of the bird is nine inches and a half. (Yarrell's Brit. Birds, vol. ii. p. 422.)

TURPENTINE. A transparent oleoresinous substance, which exudes naturally, but is chiefly obtained by incision, from various species of pine. There are several kinds of turpentine, namely, common, Bordeaux, Canadian, Strasburg, Venice, and American white. The Chian turpentine is the production of the Pistacia Terebinthus; but all of them possess the same general and chemical properties.

TUSSER, THOMAS, a celebrated agricultural writer. Five-and-twenty years after the publication of the first English work upon agriculture (Fitzherbert's Boke of Husbandrye), appeared (in 1557) the One Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, by Thomas Tusser. This celebrated work must be regarded more as a series of poet

ical good farming, and domestic directin and axioms, than as a regular treatise up agriculture. All that is known of the author of this curious production has bee collected by Dr. Mavor, in his able edition of Tusser's book, and by my brother, Mr. George W. Johnson, in his History of English G dening; and both these authors have he obliged to content themselves chiefly with Tusser's own account of himself; for Tu ser did what few men ever attempt, wrote his own life, and in a manner s more rare, in verse. His life was full of adventure; for he evidently had all restlessness of genius, with the unsettle habits too commonly confirmed by c tinued change of occupation.

He was born about the year 1515, Rivenhall, a village on the high road be tween the towns of Witham and Kelder, in Essex, of a family allied by marriage the higher ranks of society." He says f himself,

"It came to pass that born I was.
Of lineage good, of gentle blood,
In Essex layer, in village fair,

That Rivenhall hight;
Which village ly'd by Banktree side:
There spend did I mine infancy;
There then my name, in honest fart,
Remain'd in sight."

He was, considerably against his indiation, educated for, and became, a chorister at the collegiate chapel of Wallingford Berkshire. His voice, it seems, was ex lent; and, in consequence, he was pressed as the despotic custom then permitted,

He

the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral.
speaks feelingly of a chorister's miseries:

"O painfull time, for every crime !
What touzed ears, like baited bears!
What bobbed lips, what jerks, what nips!
What hellish toys!

What robes how bare, what college fare!
What bread how stale, what penny ale!
Then Wallingford, how wert thou abhorr'd
Of seely boys!"

From London he was sent to Eton, and became a student there, under Udall, about 1534, whose severity of discipline he has recorded. He then proceeded to Trinity Hall, Cambridge; but leaving it on account of ill health, he was dissuaded from returning by William Lord Paget, who kept him about the court, as one of his retainers (most likely as a chorister), for ten years: he left that nobleman, however, without any improvement of his fortune. Retiring to Katwade (Catiwade), in Suffolk, he took a farm, and it was here that he composed his Book on Husbandry. He says of himself:

"When court 'gan frown, and strife in town,
And lords and knights saw heavy sights;
Then took I wife, and led my life

In Suffolk soil.

Behold of truth, with wife in youth,
For joy at large, what daily charge..
Through children's hap; what opened gap,
To more begun :

The child at nurse, to rob the purse,
The same to wed, to trouble head;
For pleasure rare, such endless care,
Hath husband won."

Ill health induced him again to remove; and he then took the glebe land of Fairstead in Essex, near his native village. Fearing the death of the clergyman, he moved to London; but hastened thence, in 1574, to Trinity College, Cambridge, that he might be beyond the influence of the plague. The time he spent at Fairstead

"From thence so sent, away I went,
With sickness worn, as one forlorn,
To house my head at Fairsted,
Where whiles I dwelt

The tithing life, the tithing strife,
Through tithing ill of Jack and Gill,
The daily pays, the miry ways,-
Too long I felt.

"When charges grew, still new and new,
And that I spy'd, if parson dy'd,

(All hope in vain) to hope for gain,
I might go dance;

Once rid my hand, of parsonage land,
Thence, by and by, away went I,

To London straight, to hope and wait,
For better chance."

He returned, however, to the metropolis, and died there, about 1580, certainly before 1585, as is proved by the title-page of the edition of his work published that year. That he possessed religious and moral feelings of the most excellent kind, peeps out in many parts of his works. He thus concludes, for instance, the sketch of his own life:

"Friend, all things weigh'd, that here is said,
And being got, that pays the shot,
Methinks of right, have leave I might,

(Death drawing near)

To seek some ways, my God to praise,
And mercy crave, in time to have,
And for the rest, what He thinks best,

To suffer here."

He was buried in the church of St. Mildred in the Poultry, according to Stowe, with this epitaph:

"Here Thomas Tusser, clad in earth, doth lie,
That sometime made the Points of Husbandry:
By him then learn thou may'st; here learn we must,
When all is done, we sleep, and turn to dust:
And yet through Christ to heaven we hope to go;
Who reads his books, shall find his faith was so.

This is an outline of all that is known of this extraordinary man. In whatever capacity he at various times lived he acted with ability, yet never so as to benefit his fortune. That he excelled as a singer is certain; for none but those of more than ordinary powers are admitted into the royal choir. As a courtier he was unfrowned upon till the disgrace of his patron. As a farmer it is evident that he possessed a correct knowledge, from his work upon the subject. The same book testifies that, as an author and a poet, he was far above mediocrity. Fuller, in his Worthies of Essex, describes him, in his usual quaint manner, as "a musician, schoolmaster, serving man, husbandman, grazier, poet, more skilful in all than thriving in any vocation. He spread," he adds, "his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon." The testimony of Fuller to the excellent private character of Tusser is valuable as coming from one who must have been the contemporary of many persons who well remembered our author. "I hear," says Fuller,

"no man to charge him with any vicious extravagancy or visible carelessness." The true reason of his ill success in life is to be found, perhaps, in the verses of a poet almost his contemporary. Peacham, in his Minerva, a book of emblems, published in 1612, has a device of a whetstone and a scythe, with this beneath :

"They tell me, Tusser, when thou wert alive,
And hadst for profit turned every stone,
Where'er thou camest thou couldst never thrive,
Though hereto best couldst counsel every one;
As it may in thy Husbandry appear,
Wherein afresh thou liv'st among us here.
So, like thyself, a number more are wont

To sharpen others with advice of wit,

When they themselves are like the whetstone blunt." With the remarks of Dr. Mavor on the ill fortune of Tusser, I will conclude this rapid sketch of his life:- "The precepts of Tusser, indeed, are so excellent, that few can read them without profit and improvement; but between the cool collected good sense that sometimes appears in an author's works, and his conduct, as influenced by the temptations and perplexities of life, the discordance is often extreme. Some men are the shuttlecocks of fortune, and, with the best intentions, are always wrong; with the most serious resolutions of consistency and propriety, are easily driven from their course when they come in contact with the world. Between a courtier and a practical farmer the contrast is so great, and especially between a poet and a plodding man of business, that we need not be surprised our author was unsuccessful in the management of rural affairs. Yet he appears to have possessed such a degree of pious resignation to the will of God, of Christian charity, and of good humour under all his miscarriages, that his character rises high in our esteem, independent of his merits as a writer."

Tusser's work first appeared in 1557, entitled "A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie:

"A hundreth good points of husbandry

Maintaineth good household, with huswifry.
Housekeeping and husbandry, if it be good,
Must love one another like cousinnes in blood.
The wife, to, must husband as well as the man,
Or farewel thy husbandry do what thou can.

Imprinted at London, in Flete strete, within Temple barre, at the sygne of the hand and starre, by Richard Totell, the third day of February, An. 1557. Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum."

A copy of this edition, which Dr. Mavor considers to be unique, is in the British Museum. It consists of only thirteen quarto leaves.

The Book of Huswifry, it is supposed, was at first printed by itself; it was afterwards added to the editions of the Husbandry..

Editions of this work appeared in 1561. 1562; and another, "newly corrected and amplified," 1570, 1571 (Watts). To these succeeded an enlarged edition bearing the following title: "Five hundred points of good husbandry, united to as many of good huswifery, first devised and now lately augmented with diverse approved lesso concerning hopps and gardening and other needeful matters, together with an abstract before every moneth containing the whak effect of the sayd moneth, with a table and a preface in the beginning, both te cessary to be reade for the better under standing of the booke. Set forth by Thomas Tusser, gentleman, servant to the br able lorde Paget of Beudesert. Imprinted at London, &c., by Rychard Tottell; Anne 1573." Reprints appeared successively n 1577, 1580 (the first complete editioal 1585, 1586, 1590, 1593, 1597, 1599, 160 1604, 1610, 1614, 1620, 1630, 1638, 1672 1692, all in quarto, black-letter, except that of 1600, which is stated to be in fol Martyn mentions another edition, in 1631. One, entitled Tusser Redivivus, was edited by a Mr. Hilman, in 1710, 8vo. and further notes in 1744. An edition edited by Dr. W. Mavor in 1812, 4to. an 8vo. with many notes and additions.

To this I am indebted for nearly whole of the preceding information onecerning the editions of Tusser.

To this Book of Husbandry, says Weste is often joined The Booke of Regarde.co taining the Castle of Delight, the Garden Unthriftinesse, the Arbour of Virtue, the Castle of Repentance. Another work ascribed by Haller to the pen of Tusse viz. Tractatus de Agricultura Versibusiglicis. London, 1638-72. Both these as mentioned works are extremely rare.

Tusser dedicated his book first William Paget, in an acrostic, and after death to the Lord Paget of Beaudes. his son and heir. From this we find that Tusser shared an author's very comm fate, for he tells us —

"By practice and ill speeding,

These lessons had their breeding,
And not by hearsay or reading,

As some abroad have blown;
Who will not thus believe me,
So much the more they grieve me,
Because they grudge to give me,

What is of right mine own."

scribed in his prefatory address to the Its price, when first published, as d reader, was only 4d. or 8d. He says,

"What is a groat
Or twain to note,
Once in the life,
For man or wife?"

The style in which Tusser wrote his ha is plain, and sometimes rather bloker