The period, fancifully denominated the age of gold, was not one of simple fiction. It had its date and existence, without a doubt, in the progress of every primitive nation. It was, unquestionably, that period when the great majority of mankind was engaged in agriculture—when there were no strifes of commercial enterprize—when the jealousies of trade provoked not to war, and its attractions seduced none from the paths of industry—before cunning had sapped the strength from manhood, and baseness had corrupted the soul of magnanimity! Agriculture, being expressly a divine institution, had the natural effect of subduing the passions of men, of regulating their appetites, promoting gentleness, harmony, and universal peace among them. The earth was enriched by judicious cultivation, and the population of the world was necessarily and proportionately increased:

“Their harvests ever swell

The sower’s hopes: their trees o’er laden, scarce

Their fruit sustain; no sickness thins the folds:

The finny swarms of ocean crowd the shores,

And all are rich and happy.”¹

The principles of agriculture were simple, exceedingly. That they might be made so, God, himself, was the great first planter.² He wrote its laws, visibly, in the brightest, and loveliest, and most intelligible characters, every where, upon the broad bosom of the liberal earth; in greenest flowers, in delicate fruits, in beguiling and balmy flowers! But he does not content himself with this alone. He bestows the heritage along with the example. He prepares the garden and the home, before he creates the being who is to possess them. He fills them with all these objects of sense and sentiment which are to supply his moral and physical necessities. Birds sing in the boughs above him, odors blossom in the air, and fruits and flowers cover the earth with a glory, to which that of Solomon, in all his magnificence, was vain and valueless. To his Hand we owe these fair groves, these tall ranks of majestic trees, these deep forests, these broad plains covered with verdure, and these mighty arteries of flood and rivers, which wind among Page 32 →them, beautifying them with the loveliest inequalities, and irrigating them with seasonable fertilization. Thus did the Almighty Planter dedicate the great plantation to the uses of that various and wondrous family which was to follow. His home prepared—supplied with all resources, adorned with every variety of fruit and flower, and chequered with abundance, man is conducted within its pleasant limits, and ordained its cultivator under the very eye and sanction of Heaven. The angels of Heaven descend upon its hills, God, himself, appears within its vallies at noonday—its groves are instinct with life and purity, and the blessed stars rise at night above the celestial mountains, to keep watch over its consecrated interests. Its gorgeous forests, its broad savannahs, its levels of flood and prairie, are surrendered into the hands of the wondrously favored, the new-created heir of Heaven! The bird and the beast are made his tributaries, and taught to obey him. The fowl summons him at morning to his labors, and the evening chaunt of the night-bird warns him to repose. The ox submits his neck to the yoke—the horse moves at his bidding in the plough, and the toils of all are rendered sacred and successful by the gentle showers and the genial sunshine which descend from heaven, to ripen the grain in its season, and to make earth pleasant with its fruits.

The origin of agriculture being thus dignified, the art was pursued by the Grey Fathers of the infant earth! Its kings and princes drove the harrow, and dropped the grain, and danced, with songs of thanksgiving, around the harvest. Their exercises continued to ennoble it; and, for ages, the destinies of the world were happily committed to the hands of men, whose chief distinction lay in their superior use of the sickle and the ploughshare. These were the patriarchal ages. Toil, then, if a duty, was no less an unadulterated blessing. Nothing can exceed the sweetness and felicity with which the poets expatiate upon this happy period. They sang, in its praises, without qualification, that it gave health to the body, strength to the frame, energy to the will, and nobleness to the purpose—that it conduced temperance, pure desires, devout thought, and becoming patriotism—that it inspired happy feelings among the people, brought the young together in fruitful marriage, and blessed the eyes of the patriarchal fathers with glimpses of a third and fourth generation. These were the very days of Astraea—the days of peace, and sunshine, and innocent mirth—of a long life of youth, unembittered by disease—health to the last—and when Death drew nigh, his approach was gentle and kind, like that of some friendly attendant, who lets down the curtains around us, and soothes us to repose. The toils of the day, in this happy period, were begun and closed in music. The shepherds led their flocks over the mountains, to the delicious strains of flute and flagelot—drew them together by the same process when they wandered, and, with a like summons, compelled them to follow homeward at the approach of evening. But the Golden Age was of short duration only. The same sweet instrument, in course of time, became the agent of a sterner influence. That which had been the chosen voice of love, now spoke in Page 33 →louder language at the requisitions of hate! The herdsmen and shepherds, when they became warriors, went into battle,

“In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood,

Of flutes and soft recorders.”

Hence the origin of martial music. The plaintive notes which had led the shepherds and their kine, and responded to their doubts and hopes, in melodious murmurs which betokened gentleness and peace, were now exchanged for those of angry warfare, wild passions, and insatiate ambition.

“So violence

Proceeded, and oppression, and sword law,

Through all the plain.”

The application of an agent, once so innocent, whose only language, hitherto, had been that of love, to the purposes of strife and aggression, betrays, of itself, how large and how sudden was the change which had taken place in the minds and condition of the people. But this belongs, seemingly, to the usual, if not the natural order of events. The age of Iron had succeeded to that of Gold. Sterner feelings and passions overthrew the simplicities which had hitherto characterized the primitive races of the earth; even as the stronger appetites and desires of the man overgrow and absorb those, more gentle and limited, which prevail in the bosom of the child. Change naturally follows in the paths of prosperity, and the very accumulation of wealth occasions new desires, and suggests new necessities. When men had so far advanced in art as to be enabled to tame and gather within their folds the wild herds of the plain and prairie, a portion of their numbers was necessarily withdrawn from the cultivation of the earth, and assigned the duties of herdsmen. These were required to contend with the yet unsubdued monsters of the wilderness—to grapple with the Asiatic tiger, the swarthy and fierce lion of the Numidian deserts, and to level their sharp arrows at the breast of the Caucasian vulture. The herdsman consequently became the hunter, and the use of arms brought with it a passion for their exercise. The world soon became filled with a class, of whom Nimrod, that mighty hunter before the Lord, is a sufficient sample. The transition was not difficult, from hunting the wild beast of the forest, to hunting MAN! and WAR became the next and natural employment of the hunter. It was not easy for men, who had been accustomed, for years, to rove at will, in pursuit of their prey, to fall back, after their final conquest of the common enemy, upon the peaceful and regular employments of agricultural life. The occupation was too tame, too wanting in those excitements, the desire for which had become habitual, in consequence of their employments; and they yearned for the licentious pleasures of their wild and warlike pastimes. They had tasted the sweets of power—they had acquired the appetite for blood—they felt their Page 34 →strength—knew the weakness of the peaceful and unsuspecting farmer, and they selected him as their victim. He was more profitable as a victim, and far less to be feared as an enemy, than the lion of Numidia. The grain was no sooner ripened, than the warlike tribes descended from the mountains to the plains, and gathered their harvests with the sword. Vainly did the farmer strive to defend his possessions. The savage, inured to arms, and delighting in his exercise, was necessarily triumphant. Butchery followed, and the devastated fields grew fat in the blood of those who could till them no longer. Who shall predict—or limit the penalties which flow from every departure from the impervious line of duty? These crimes—this fatality, were the inevitable result, accruing from the adoption, by the herdsman, as a trade and occupation, of one of the incidental necessities of his condition. The first ordinances of the Deity were forgotten. The decree of labor, pronounced by the Creator as a judgment, has ever been borne, except for the brief and blessed period described in the age of Gold, with discontent, by the creature. The herdsman gladly becomes the hunter—the hunter, the warrior—the warrior, the robber; and the peaceful farmer is sure to be the victim. Hence, the desertion of fields, the depopulation of countries, the desecration of altars, the famine, the slaughter and undiminished misery every where! In proportion as the pursuits of agriculture became insecure, the races of men decline! This is the unerring law of God’s providence, and the unerring consequence of man’s disobedience. It cannot well be otherwise; and with the decline of population, will be the equally certain decline of prosperity and happiness. Such has been the history of all the nations. With the lapse of the patriarchal ages, Asia, the first and loveliest garden of the earth, became a desert, or something worse—Africa, a land of howling cannibals, which it must long continue; and when, in the progress of pursuing centuries, Europe grew maddened with the perpetual and exhausting strifes between the despoiled and the spoiler, the providence of God vouchsafed America as a new Land of Promise, and of refuge to the fugitive. But in that new land—that seemingly virgin empire—what was the melancholy history? The colonists found a wilderness, but there was no peace. Even here the same bitter seed had been sown, and the same bitter fruits were gathered. The same inevitable fate had followed the same wilful disobedience of mankind. The departure from those holy laws which enjoined industry, and blessed with abundance, had produced, among the red men of the new world, the same profitless scenes of strife and carnage which had distinguished the career of the ancestral nations. It was the wretched boast of the American savage, that he was the conqueror of the country! That he had invaded a numerous and highly civilized people—that he had ravaged their fields—sacked and destroyed their walled places—and having consumed the common enemy, had, at length, in the absence of all other victims, turned the barbed edges of his thirsty tomahawk upon his own brother. But what was the history of the people thus destroyed? Were they wise—were they Page 35 →virtuous? For what unhappy sins had the Deity delivered them into the power of their wild invaders? Had they become inert in the accumulation of superfluous wealth? Did they disregard the wholesome laws of their creation? Did famine enfeeble their energies; or, in the sweet peacefulness of a golden age, that disarmed every domestic enemy, did they become heedless of those dangers which might follow the sudden presence of a foreign one? Perhaps, if we might trace the tale of their fortunes to its source, it would not be unlike that of all the rest! There was strife among themselves, which facilitated the progress of the invader, and sharpened his arrows. Faction strove with faction for the treasures of the commonwealth, or—which is the same—for its control. Then perished the public liberties. Then labor became a mercenary, and changed his ploughshare for the deadly brand of battle. Then industry and art were dispossessed of their fruits, and so, dishonored; and the city grew rank and ready for any pollution. When its suburban fields flourished no longer in smiling yellow beneath the mellowing signs of the autumnal heavens, its golden age was gone—gone for ever! Then was it only fitting that the mountain robber should descend to the harvest that was ready to his hands. So long as he heard from its busy streets the clink of the morning hammer, and beheld the keen scythe throughout the long hours of the autumnal day, so long did he tremble to encounter the muscular hands which grasped them. But when these tokens of sure strength and manly virtue were withdrawn, then did he know that the Age of Iron was begun. Toil had given place to cunning and the barriers of moral and physical defence were all swept away.

The story is every where the same. It admits of no variation. The golden age is the age of agricultural preeminence. The nation whose sons shrink from the culture of its fields, will wither for long ages, under the imperial sway of Iron. It may put on a face of brass, but its legs will be made of clay. It may hide its lean cheeks, and all external signs of its misery, under the harlotry of art, but the rottenness of death will be all the while revelling upon its vitals, and a poisonous breath will go forth from its decay which will spread its loathsome taint along the shores of other and happier and unsuspecting nations!³

The Earth is ours as a sacred trust, and we must put it to good interest. It is to go through the hands of our sons, and our sons’ sons—it is to be their patrimony, and is to provide the portions of our daughters. Originally yielded to man as a garden, shall we return it to the Giver as a wilderness? Not if we feel the solemnity of our trusts—not if we are true to ourselves and faithful to our children. The Good Farmer will shrink from none of his obligations, but, in their cheerful acknowledgment, he will bring back the golden ages of the world! He will address himself to his labors with a zeal which will prove him equally sensible to his duties and his fortunes. He, above all men, will be soonest likely to learn obedience to that stern religious truth, which teaches, that it is only by Page 36 →treading always in the path of duty, that we can promote our substantial interests. I have depicted, in my mind’s eye, the noble character of a perfect agriculturist—perfect, I mean, within the limits of our human capacity for perfection. I assume him to be taught in his art from the earliest moment of his boyish performances. His eyes have first opened upon the fields of green in Summer, and have seen their maturing progress to the golden fruition of the Harvest. His earliest tasks have been to follow the husbandman, and to imitate, within his strength, the toils that he beholds. The exactions of a judicious parent subject him to the daily duties which belong to his lot in life, and to the profession which he is required to pursue. Taught thus, by early habit and education, to subdue his duties to the narrow limits in which his lot has been cast, the approach of manhood is marked by no violent transitions of his moral nature. The appetite which craves for change and various excitement, has no longer a power over his performances; and he passes into his new condition of superior trust and duty, with no other feeling than one of an increased human responsibility. The course of tuition to which he has been subjected, admirably subdues the presumption which is but too much the characteristic of all inexperienced intellect. He has learned to obey, as the grand initial lesson in the task of governing. He beholds around him the few paternal acres which bound his fortunes, and which, he wisely resolves, shall bound his appetites also. Commanded to toil, by the direct decree of God, and equally by the obvious moral and physical advantages which result from daily labor, he addressees himself to this necessity with a smiling countenance, a manly energy, a cheerful heart, and a steady resolution. His neighbor salutes him with tidings of great gain in the cities by trade and speculation—of fortunes made in the twinkling of an eye, and by the mere motion of lips or finger—but he remains unseduced. The sun, which contributes so greatly to perfect his toils, is not more regular in his rising and his setting. He knows no fluctuations of resolve—his duties are designated from week to week, and month to month, and season to season; full of variety, but always the same, and going on as certainly as any one of the thousand operations in the natural world, of which he hourly avails himself. By this stability he establishes the first just proof of his superior moral strength. The caprices of intellect are always to be regarded as conclusive proofs of an inferior moral nature. For, in the language of Samson, the wrestler,

“What is strength without a double share

of wisdom—vast, unwieldy, burdensome;

Proudly secure, yet liable to fail,

By weakest subtleties?”

The Good Farmer knows that he can only be successful by a constant, patient, undeviating adherence to his daily duties. Nor, pursuing them with patience, will he ever find them wearisome. There is nothing in nature less monotonous than Page 37 →the aspect of the progressing seasons, and the changing, and all lovely, aspects which they, in turn, effect upon the earth. From the world of forensic strife—from the cup of social scandal—from the loud laugh of the lively coterie—from the toils of the city and the camp—all men, turn, at length, for relief and restoration, to the unsophisticated face of nature, and find solace and refreshment; and he who contemplates her daily, discovers even in her seeming uniformities, and pure and placid transitions, the progress of a change, as constant as that of the magician’s glass, and far more wonderful than any in Arabian story.

The Good Farmer stands in the sight of God, in a three-fold aspect. As a subject of his power and his bounty—dependent upon his indulgence, and commanded by his laws—as the citizens of a community, variously composed, but of creatures having alike nature with himself, governed by like necessities and supplied by like weaknesses—and as an individual man, having a duty to himself not inferior to any of the rest, and, under the guidance of just laws of reflection, happily harmonizing with all their requisitions. In his first relation, the Good Farmer will seek to know, and endeavor to perform, all the obligations of religion. The first of these is labor, that being the first law ever delivered by the Deity to expatriated man. He will know, that, without industry, all his prayers and painstaking, all his gifts to the church, and all his forbearances to his fellow, will still leave incomplete those performances which the Divine decree has pronounced to be essential. He will avoid all immoral contact and drive evil passions from his thoughts. For these, indeed, there will be little or no room in the heart of one who prosecutes his daily duties with energy and zeal. Such a man seldom departs from his estate, and only in compliance with the requisitions of society and the laws. No foreign attractions can beguile him from those fields, which, through long cultivation, he at length learns to regard with something of the same affection which he feels for the children of his loins. In truth, the children of his thoughts, and hopes, and labors, are every where around him. The old walks grow natural to his footsteps—the old trees wear the faces of familiar friends. He loves to linger as he traverses the daily paths; to rest beside the fountain, or beneath the tree, and surrender himself to peaceful meditations. It is in this way that the choice humanities grow up and gather about his heart. It is by this sort of contemplation that his soul feels the force of that Divine benediction which is written on the wide face of universal nature; “peace on earth, and good will to all men!” and higher musings than these arouse him to loftier if not to lovelier desires. The growth of the tender plant, the tiny shaft of grass, or the pale blue flower of the spring time, awakens him to thoughts and fancies, which, if they were less vague and mysterious, would be less true to the cravings of his immortal spirit. The progress of the infant plant and flower carries him away from themselves to their mighty original, and his mind wanders among mysterious apprehensions of those yet more wondrous mysteries, the Future and the Page 38 →Eternal! These musings naturally arise to the thoughts of one who contemplates, long and earnestly, the fluctuations of the seasons—the beautiful forms of birth, and the scarcely less beautiful aspect of decay, in the vegetable nature. It is surely no less wonderful than beautiful to behold the first shoot, the small green spear of the infant plant, as it pierces, in April, the cold and heavy clod, which vainly strives to bar its progress into life and light. The Good Farmer is, in some sort, the creator of that plant; and this conviction is well calculated to fill his mind with religious musings. To be a Good Farmer, he must, indeed, be something of a religious man. If he has properly attended to his daily concerns, he must have acquired a habit of contemplation which suffers nothing in the visible world to escape his sight, and subjects all that he sees to the action of an equally vigilant thought. The most silent and unobtrusive changes of the season, command his attention and awaken his solicitude. He beholds, with serious eye, when the forest, casting its green mantle, wraps itself in robes of the still gorgeous but melancholy autumn. The sombre tone of the wintry heavens deepen the shadow upon his countenance, as, in the progress of the year to its close, he is reminded of the shortness of life and its melancholy termination: nor is the change in his reflections unnatural and unbecoming, when, with the opening of another spring, he glows in sympathetic rejoicing with that sun, whom he now beholds, caparisoned like a bridegroom, and preparing to run his fresh career of strength and youth and loveliness.⁴ The slightest changes in the woods, or upon the fields, awaken his intelligence and invigorate his industry; and like the sailor, to whom loneliness of life teaches a habit of contemplating the minutest aspect of the uncertain world in which he wanders, he learns to study the face of the heavens, and the language of the winds, and to trace, in the motion of clouds, and the pale but lovely light of different and distant stars, that knowledge, imperfect but still of use, which warns him of the approach of foul, and counsels him to take advantage of favorable weather. The representative of God on earth—the especial agent of his will—selected from all other animals to receive his laws, and carry out to their fit completion, his divine purposes on earth—can it be doubted that the elements are commissioned in his service, even as the beast whom he subjects by his arts, and the savage whom he overcomes by his valor?

In the economy of his plantation the Good Farmer insists upon obedience. The responsibility is his, and the authority is necessarily his also. This, he promptly enforces, without faltering and without delay; and in this way, and by this only, can he avoid the humiliating necessity and pain of punishment. He regards his servants as so many children, entrusted to his guardian management, whom he is to subdue to obedience, and instruct in the regular toils of industry. He compels their labor in moderation, and rejoices to increase their comforts, and to behold their growing improvement. Upon this depends equally their happiness and his own. His example is such as must contribute daily to raise Page 39 →their respect for his authority, and increase their attachment to his person. He is, himself, industrious, methodical in all his proceedings, and inflexibly temperate. Just in his dealings with all men, he exhibits to all an example of justice which must be felt, and will inevitably be followed in time by all in his neighborhood. The seeds of good are never entirely lost—the germ is indestructible—though they ripen slowly, and perhaps only in the shade. He incurs no debt which may be avoided, and is thus secure from those harassing cares, and wretched annoyances, which so certainly pursue the debtor—drive him from his labors, subject him to all sorts of shifts and subterfuges, and, finally, hunt him down to infamy and ruin. He rises among the first at morning and lies down among the last at night. He finds sufficient employment for all the intervening hours. Time never hangs wearily upon his hands. He has no yawning exercises. He knows nothing of that cowardly temper which skulks from the sight of the industrious, and shrinks from the manly toils which the moral citizen delights to grapple. He suffers none of those gnawing miseries which dog the steps of the profligate and idle. His slumbers are instantaneous and refreshing. He springs from his couch with the cheerfulness of the bird, that darts upward to Heaven with the first blush of sunlight, and bathes its enthusiastic wings in the soft blaze of its dawning splendor. His habits of dress and diet are uniformly simple. His carriage and manners are direct but gentle, frank but unobtrusive. His mind is prompt and lively, while the regularity of his exercise renders his body healthful and his spirits elastic. He loves amusements for their own sake, and for the vast moral good which their employment engenders—but his amusements, like those of the ancient Greeks, are such as interfere with no duties, produce no physical evils, and tend either to the exercise of manliness, skill, or ingenuity. He does not, because he is a laboring man, fancy that books are no part of his business. He knows better. He knows that they are essential to his duties. He knows that knowledge is virtue and power—that ignorance is beastliness and shame, and that books contain these lessons of wisdom and experience—scarcely desirable from any other source within the seventy years of human struggle on earth—which, if rightly studied, will enable him to increase, equally, his virtues, his worth, his knowledge and his interests. He knows, besides, that, in our country, and in the recent state of the world, there is no excuse for ignorance. The means of knowledge are comparatively easy of attainment, and if there be difficulties, the love of knowledge will find it easy to overcome them all, even were they twice as great, as numerous and strong. Ignorance is, prima facie, evidence, of a slothful temper, a mind disposed to low indulgences, and a moral sense that will not often scruple, if temptation be obvious and the prospect of impunity strong. For his children, in particular, the Good Farmer will carefully provide all the means of education. Not those vicious helps in the shape of juvenile keys, guide books, vocabularies, etc., intended to make the road to knowledge a royal one, which is the pernicious Page 40 →sin of book-making in the present age—but those humble and much neglected books of the olden time, which first showed the way to the beginner, furnished him with a helping hand ‘till he could step fairly, and then left him to rough out the rest, by dint of his own diligence and unremitting perseverance. The Good Farmer feels the importance of knowledge for his children, to be far greater now than it was in his boyhood, for the world every where around him is growing wiser and stronger, and the child who grows up in ignorance to day, will fall an easy prey to the sharper, whose activity necessarily keeps pace in every country with the activity of the national mind. Besides, there are among us, more honorable reasons for his education. It is the virtue of democratic institutions to lift the humble into hope—to elevate the worthy—to subdue the arrogant—to stimulate and force modest merit into performance and noble purpose. The honors of the country are free to the poorest son of the soil. The only distinctions which they require are those of virtue and intelligence. Such, at least, is the theory, and such will be the working of that theory, whenever education shall so far lift the laboring and the poor, as to make them superior to the glazing artifices of smooth demagogues and lying prophets. Shall he, who has the largest interest in the soil, its honors and responsibilities—shall he be the last to bring forward his sons in their contemplation? Shall they alone be excluded, by his indifference, from the high dignities and proud trusts to which the institutions of their country invite? Will he, who has so large an interest in their pride, their glory and their future happiness—cut them off from the honorable toils of that competition, which may confer upon the family name a lasting reputation, transmitting it to future generations in fortunate connection with that of the Franklins, the Pinckneys, the Hamiltons, and the many illustrious beside of that glorious catalogue, whose titles to immortality, are contained in the same charter which established the liberties of the country? He would be a most unnatural father who could consider this misfortune, and recognize it as the sure result of his own wilfulness or indifference.

In the cultivation of his fields, the Good Farmer, in our country, is not often to be found. The providence of God has been so heedful of the wants of man, that the creature has grown heedless and improvident for himself. We have very few really good farmers. Nature, the universal and blessing mother, has heretofore left us little to prepare. But we have tasked her indulgence too far, and the necessities of our condition, under the wasteful manner of our cultivation, and the increasing numbers of our population, are forcing upon us, providently, the tastes of superior labor, industry, and ingenuity. It is becoming more and more necessary, with the progress of each day’s experience, to make our toils more general, to make our tillage more thorough, more analytical, and, in consequence, more intellectual. The business of a Good Farmer is not that of the hod-man. Page 41 →He must think as well as plow. He must carry into the cultivation of his fields a spirit of inquiry and a habit of research, such as necessity has already forced into nearly every other department of human occupation. The topic of inquiry and discovery are not less numerous in Agriculture than in Commerce, Mechanics, Manufactures, and those nobler arts, which refine the manners, elevate the mind, and subdue the heart to love, forbearance, and that rational temper, which makes us delight in seeking, and rejoice in finding, all the thousand concealed forms of beauty which God has every where scattered around us, in waiting for our search. The Good Farmer will seek for these. He will cultivate with care the lovely objects of his own land—he will require from the hands of Commerce the gifts, the fruits, the flowers of other countries. He is, however, first supposed to inquire what the genius of the place in which he lives demands. What will best grow under the climate and in the soil which he designs for tillage. He clears the sufficient quantity of land, estimated with due reference to the labor he resolves to bestow upon it—and, at the outset, as he designs to preserve his woods from waste, he proceeds, by the only agent through which he can hope to accomplish this object, to make manure as an essential part of his annual crop. This is the grand essential which, until lately, has been grossly disregarded in our country.⁵ For this object, he preserves the brush, the stubble, the leaves, and all that easily destructible matter which his more profligate neighbor consumes. There is very little mystery in the preparation of manure. An observing mind will soon adopt the best method. All matter which goes rapidly to decay, is proper for this purpose. How beautifully does nature, herself, suggest the adoption of this economy, when she every where provides, contiguous to the soil, the substance, whether of marle, clay, lime, or leaves, which is to maintain its fecundity and preserve it from decay. There is not an element of prosperity, in the whole history of the earth’s cultivation, which he may not gather from a close analysis of the land which he tills—and labor, regular but in moderation, will produce the necessary exercise of thought and scrutiny, which leads inevitably and equally to his own, and the improvement of his soil. He very soon perceives and venerates that provision of maternal nature that causes the tree to cast its leaf on the approach of winter, that the earth may be warmly clad and protected from its biting frosts, while its saps descend for shelter, at the same period, into the same venerable sanctuary. As the leaf rots, the soil receives the benefit of this primitive manure, and is thus prepared for the stimulating influence of that warmer season when its duties of regeneration are required to begin. With this certain and regular provision before his eyes, the Good Farmer readily sees where he may find the substance which will always resuscitate his fields. Once in possession of the allotted number of open acres, he preserves his forest from those two merciless assailants, so commonly and improvidently employed among us, the axe and the torch. He Page 42 →lays bare no new fields but renovates the old by a resort to the natural comfort of those woods which he thus protects. The mighty trees which, with ignorant and savage profligacy, we daily overthrow, he regards as sacred objects. It is with something of a pang that he sometimes feels the necessity of laying the axe to their roots. In preserving them, he does more than simply acknowledge a reverence for majesty, and years, and beauty. Their preservation involves a great physical good. They are so many natural barriers against mal’aria, and stand between his children and that host of diseases, various and fatal, which are almost certain to follow all new clearings. Nay, more, he selects the forest trees and transfers them at convenient periods of leisure to his open grounds, increasing the beauty of the one, and securing the posterity of the other. To promote the loveliness and grace of all objects which meet his eye, is—if he be a father, and would desire that his children should grow up in a proper taste for the harmonious, the beautiful and the gentle, as much the duty of the Farmer, as it is of the Poet and the Painter. There is a moral grace which the mind as decidedly derives from the contemplation of innocent and lovely objects, as in the daily study of abstractions which have this purpose for their end. Then, as his taste ripens and his judgment expands, smooth green lawns appear upon his landscape; the trees are grouped in patriarchal families about his habitation; his avenues conduct the eye through lovely vistas, into favorite haunts of solitude and beauty, while his fields, green and golden, lift their clusters and sheaves of promise, in profuse tribute to the indulgent Heavens which have smiled upon their increase. The Good Farmer may easily realize all these blessings and create all these beauties. These make the Golden Age—these restore the prosperity of his race. Worlds of moral discovery, volumes of latent good, benefits that bless equally the one explorer who seeks, and the fortunate many who find, lie beneath the surface, to be secured only by a fervent adoption, and the patient practice, of the few natural laws which I have here laid down. The picture might be enlarged; the canvas might receive a thousand new tints and aspects, all tributary to the prevailing sentiment which makes it beautiful, and leaves it pure. But the imagination of each must fill up the outlines for himself, and if thought co-operate with the desire, and the love of truth be a consideration, then will the performance be easy. Truth lies within our hearts and beneath our feet, even as the forms of beauty lie couched among the stationary rocks, and simply waiting for the ethereal fingers of the creative artist. If we seek we shall find. This is true of all the forms of human labor; but, that which is devoted to the cultivation of the earth, into which we must all be resolved, is sure, if properly pursued, of greater discoveries. Love, Charity, Peace, Religion, and numberless saints beside, work with the Good Farmer, and lovely beyond compare is the sweet progeny which spring from their co-operation. Page 43 →Only suffer them to see that you desire their help, and oh! how happy will they be to descend at your bidding.