£ TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



immortal existence, and, indeed, with a mysterious inner life. This inner life is never 

 satisfied — is forever impelling us to action. It rests not in its primal condition, but by 

 thorough education becomes expanded, elevated and beautiful. Man finds himself 

 placed in a world where everything may be made subservient to some high and noble 

 purpose, and he who best understands the capacities and necessities of his inner life, 

 joyfully enters the field, joyfully treads the intricate path. Guided by a love of the 

 true, guided by the light of a God given reason, he boldly grasps half-acknowledged 

 truth, and firmly establishes speculations which have but timely escaped the lips of 

 the discoverer, and thus he lays the fouudation stones of practical truth. 



But this is toil — but in this toil he finds the highest earthly pleasure — it may be in 

 one department of practical life, it may be in another. God has wisely made the 

 demands and capacities of this inner life of mankind different. With some, it is Art ; 

 with others, Science ; with others, Literature ; with others, Imagination. The world 

 is various. Its flowers, its fruits, its grain, its minerals, its oceans, its lakes, its rivers, 

 its waterfalls, its soils, its mountains, its valleys, its rocks, its trees, its shrubs, are all 

 before us ; and what is more, a vast and varied humanity, adapted to every animate and 

 inanimate department of the great organism. 



One of these departments of life has called us together ; and every one of us can 

 bear testimony, three times each day, to its practical value, while it extends back to the 

 earliest and simplest organizations of humanity. Moreover, we look with interest on 

 the power which the Horticultural department is now exerting, and the position 

 among the departments of life, in its conveniences, beauty, usefulness and wealth, 

 which it has assumed. The day is past when the Farmer and Gardener are looked 

 down upon as among the lower grade of society I I know there is still a class, (a small 

 class, however,) in this age, whose qualifications for usefulness and happiness, are 

 eating, and drinking, and dressing — a class to whom pastures, and copses, and gardens, 

 and harvesting, and fall feed, are Gothic words. These same, however, pretending to 

 know the world, prick up their ears when you talk about " scales," and " cost prices," 

 and " the credit system," and "merchants' exchange;" but affect to be ignorant of 

 Nature, her beginnings, and gifts, and bounties. 



This ignorance is frequently voluntary, and founded on the conceit they have 

 for their own callings and professions ; and if they hear you talk of the first men, 

 of the Patriarchs, or of their truth, their love, their faith, their order, they wonder 

 how Jacob and Esau got on in life together without an attorney! How Job could 

 have argued his cause without legal counsel ; whether Solomon entertained the " Queen 

 of Sheba" with balls and operas; and how Adam could have got along without a 

 private " secretary or a barber." 



This class among us is small, and growing beautifully less. The Horticulturist and 

 Agriculturist of our day are not the children of Issacher, whose coat-of-arms was an 

 ass crouching between too heavy burdens ; neither is it the escutcheon of Judah — a 

 young Lion from whom the scepter shall not depart — but it is indeed a scepter hung 

 with Apricots, and Strawberries, and Grapes, wreathed with Dahlias and Roses — a 

 scepter which has descended from the primal cultivators of Eden, down through all 

 succeeding ages, until the Prairies of the Great West are studded all over with its 

 beauty, and excellence, and wealth, which a true knowledge of these sciences ever 

 brings. 



