No. 112.] 639 



mingle the idea of a garden abounding in living waters and in 

 fruits, with the images and reveries of primitive felicity en earth, 

 of a happj hereafter in heaven. What dies all this prove, gen- 

 tlemen? That the imagination of man. in all its various dreams 

 of a paradise, has been unable to devise anything more charming 

 than a terrestrial or a celestial garden, with living water, s) ade, 

 flowers, fruit, a green sod, irees, a propitious sky, serene stars — a 

 reciprocal friendship so to speak, between man and the soil. So 

 true it is too, that even in his most delicious rev^eries, man has 

 been able to invent nothing more perfect than nature. A spot in 

 the sunshine, protected frum intruders, embellished by vegetation, 

 animated by the birds of heaven, and animals the friends of man, 

 made sacred by the work of his hands, and made h<dy by the pre- 

 sence of the Creator; the habitation of the family, the abode of 

 love, of friendship, as it has been for a succession of immortal 

 generations. In such an abode it is that human nature has al- 

 ways placed happiness, and is it not there you persevere in seek- 

 ing it? In seeking it, not always perfect and unchangeable as in 

 our dreams, but in seeking it at least in those briel and imperfect 

 glimpses which it has pleased God now and then to permit us to 

 obtain in tnis world below." 



Siich are the reveries, and such the anticipations, do not doubt 

 it, of many a heart-wt-ary dweller in the great neighboring city, 

 and to your genial soil and climate he looks for that happy spot 

 and resting place, wliich is tu be his earthly Elysium. Nor is it 

 for the rich alont*,or the mighty ot the earth, that the simple and 

 pure 4 njoynients springing from its cultivation are re^ervt d. No ;. 

 f(>r. again to borrow from our eloquent Frenchman, " there is no 

 need of wealth, of magnificence, of extended d^'Uiain, to enjoy all 

 tliat (o>d has hidden of happiness in the culture or spectacle of 

 vegetable life. There are pleasures which it is not given to for- 

 tunt; to appropriate and ninnopf»li<=»'. N;iture is never aristocra- 

 tir ; she has not endowed the poor with other perce]>tioDS than 

 the lich of natural delig!»t8, nor the idhr than the lalxjring man. 

 Howi ver vjc^t, or however c«»ntracted the s\mve devoted by man 

 ti» thi< j)ursHit, hi^ >( ul (an "id\ receive the same aniount of gra- 

 tiiioatlnn from its pleasures ; the hup.ian soul is thus constituted 



