FAKMERS' INSTITUTES. 325 



The country farm house houie of Whittier seems familiar to us from his own 

 stories and from its picture, that brightens so many of our walls throughout the 

 land. The cities draw our men of literary taste only by their greater facilities 

 for reference to the learning of the past. The love of country life is almost 

 universal. 



Now, I would not have it thought that every literary man has done his duty 

 by farm life, or that all alike appreciate its character ; I mean simply to show 

 that it has gained fully its share of notice and kind regard ; no other art begins 

 to equal it. That some of the poets have chid the English peasantry for want 

 of sense to appreciate their privileges, I grant, and too often they have deserved 

 it: but the ploughman and the shepherd have held a place in the poet's resjject 

 from the very beginning. In one of the oldest English poems it is '"Peter, the 

 p)loughman," and he alone, who sees the evils within and without the church from 

 the seven deadly sins, and to whom all look for a remedy. Among Chaucer's 

 nine and twenty pilgrims of all classes, the country gentleman is praised for hos- 

 pitality; the country parson, for true following of his master, the great Shep- 

 herd; and the ploughman, the parson's brother, is of all the one who lives in 

 peace and perfect charity. 



" God loves he best with all of his true heart, 

 And then his neighbor rightly as himself."' 



A century later, in Skelton's verse, it is Colin Clout, the shepherd, who sees 

 the evils of corruption and hypocrisy; and a century later still, the star of 

 Elizabeth's court. Sir Philip Sidney, frames his ideal Arcadia among a race of 

 shepherds. Indeed there is no end to the array of evidence that farming has 

 not lacked the sympathy and active interest of literary men ; the real difficulty 

 has been to bring the tillers of the soil and these strong aids of his together. 

 If the farmer has not felt the poet's lifting power, it is because he has not sought 

 it, and often has not known of its existence. AVhy should he not, in this new 

 era of social culture and of scientific lore, add every help that poets give toward 

 loving and enjoying that wherein he labors? The poet's work in every calling 

 is but just begun ; the world is gaining now a second inspiration from the words 

 of long ago. Let our sons and daughters learn the treoisures stored for them in 

 words of sympathy and cheer, in kind enticement to a fuller satisfaction in the 

 work they do, and they will be, not merely contented with their lot, but proud 

 to be not only '•' hone and sinew'' for the race, but trains and hearts as well. 

 The way is opening toward a liberal culture that should make us better men and 

 women, as well as better farmers. With this to hope for, we can safely appro- 

 priate to ourselves the address of the poet Thomson to his countrymen : 



•' Ye generous Britous, venerate the plovigh, 

 And o'er your hills and long withdrawing vales 

 Let Autumn spread his ti*easures to the sun, 

 Luxuriant and unbounded! As the sea 

 Far through his azure turbulent domain 

 Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores 

 Wafts all the pomp of life into your ports. 

 So with superior boon may your ricli soil 

 Exuberant nature's better blessings pour 

 O'er every laud, the nalied nations clothe. 

 And he the exhaustless granary of the world! 



So literature and agriculture, instead of being antagonistic, lift each other to 

 a better, higher enjoyment and profit on both sides. T^t this, then, be my 



