OXFORD SOCIETY. 97 



simple fact, that he does not know how happy he is, or may be, 

 compared with the merchant or professional man of his neigh- 

 borhood. He does not know how well he lives, or can live, 

 compared with men of the same amount of wealth in other pro- 

 fessions. It is rare that when a farmer comes into possession 

 of land, that he need lose it ,• while he, who procures a shop full 

 of goods, may stand trembling, and dreading the approach of 

 the neiiz-hborino; sheriff. At the close of harvest, the farmer 

 goes into his cellar, and it is filled with potatoes, apples, and 

 other vegetables, and his barrels full of meat ; step into his 

 dairy-room, and, there arranged in order, are rows of cheese 

 and firkins of butter, the housewife's pride. Pags into the 

 granary, and there are the heaps of corn and grain, looking as 

 if the owner was in the wholesale trade. Go on further to the 

 barn, and it is filled with hay and stock. This scene is not ex- 

 hibited once in a lifetime, but it is repeated, and may be wit- 

 nessed every year. 



There is something ennobling to the mind of the man who 

 has a title to a piece of land, — a title not received from his 

 fellow-man, but as it were from Heaven itself. He at once 

 feels conscious that the spot of land around him is his own. 

 No feudal lord ever felt safer than he, as he surveys his fields. 



Whenever I meet with a really intelligent farmer, who loves 

 his calling, loves his family, his neighbor, his country, and his 

 God — a man who is surrounded with the comforts of life, and 

 really enjoys them in the highest development of his social, in- 

 tellectual and spiritudl natures, I feel as though I was survey- 

 ing the man who was best fitted of any one on earth to go back 

 to that Eden of other days. Put him on a throne, would he be 

 happier than now ? Set him in Victoria's chair of state, which, 

 perhaps, is as easy and safe as any in the world, is it easier 

 than his own ? Is her sense of taste any keener than his ? 

 Does the air smell any more agreeably to her than to him ? He 

 can sleep with unbolted doors if he choose, and be safe, but can 

 she do the same ? She, no doubt, loves her children, but is her 

 love dearer than his ? Does the parental kiss taste more 

 sweetly by being granted from a queenly parent, than from a 

 tiller of the soil ? Can she put implicit confidence in friends 

 like him ? 



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