30 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



great advocate, the statesman, the intense and ardent lover of 

 American nationality, who has just gone to his long rest, found 

 a halm for his distracted brain, when, withdrawing from the 

 controversies of the court room, he sought repose in the silence 

 of his library, and learned that the " whole brotherhood of 

 industry " may find there " rest from labor, succor under its 

 burthens, forgctfulness of its cares, composure in its annoy- 

 ances." And he says, with his own peculiar beauty: " Happy, 

 then, is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all 

 fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading. True balm 

 of hurt minds ; of surer and a more healthful charm than 

 ' poppy or mandragora, or all the drowsy syrups of the world " 

 — by that single taste, by that single capacity, he may bound in 

 a moment into the still region of delightful studies and be at 

 rest. He recalls the annoyance that pursues him ; reflects that 

 he has done all that may become a man to avoid or bear it ; he 

 indulges in one good long human sigh — picks up the volume 

 where the mark kept the place — and in about the same time 

 that it takes the Mahometan in the Spectator to put his head in 

 the bucket of water and raise it out, he finds himself exploring 

 the arrow marked ruins of Ninevah with Layard, or worship- 

 ping at the springhead of the stupendous Missouri with Clark 

 and Lewis ; or watching with Columbus for the sublime moment 

 of the rising of the curtain from before the great mystery of 

 the sea ; or looking reverentially on while Socrates — the dis- 

 course of immortality ended — refuses the offer to escape, and 

 takes in his hand the poison, to die in obedience to the unrighteous 

 sentence of the law ; or, perhaps, it is in the contemplation of 

 some vast spectacle or phenomenon of nature that he has found 

 his quick peace — the renewed exploration of one of her great 

 laws — or some glimpse opened by the pencil of St. Pierre or 

 Humboldt, or Chateaubriand, or Wilson, of the ' blessedness 

 and glory of her own deep, calm and mighty existence.' " 



Whoever has seen the care-worn and exhausted form of that 

 great laborer in the law, as he turned his steps from the scene 

 of his commanding intellectual efforts, to seek that repose of 

 which he speaks, will feel how dear to him must have been 

 every promise of rest to the heavy-laden. The painful languor 

 of the cloister and the court room, that withering physical 

 prostration which attends an over-tasked brain, linds but poor 



