106 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



NORFOLK. 

 Report of the Committee. 



According? to the old Hebrew story, man was placed in a 

 garden to till and to keep it, and man will never be contented 

 and happy till he gets back into a garden again. The tales of 

 the gardens of Alcinous and the Hespcrides, prove to us that, 

 even in ancient times, men connected the golden age with 

 golden apples, and put Taradise always in gardens. And, with 

 the coming of the future Paradise, and the bright millennium 

 of human hopes and aspirations, there is always associated the 

 thought of the whole earth as one great garden of beauty and 

 "delight," (the translation of the word "Eden,") abounding 

 everywhere with luscious fruitage, and wreathed with sweetest 

 flowers. This hope is the ultimatum of all outward culture — 

 the crowning point of all outward earthly bliss. Even the 

 ancient prophet places his joyfully-anticipated millennium in a 

 garden, when he predicts that "the wilderness and solitary 

 plain shall be glad, (or fruitful,) and the desert shall rejoice 

 and blossom as the rose." 



In the progress of that civilization which is to beautify, 

 perfect, and bless the earth, first comes the wilderness, with 

 hunting and fishing, and an immethodical, careless, half-savage 

 cultivation of the soil ; next, the farm, with its careful system 

 and abundant products ; and lastly, and finally, the- garden, 

 with its various and delicious fruits, — fit food for the immor- 

 tals. And, if the civilization of our own land and the world 

 at large is to be judged by its gardens, or even by its syste- 

 matic and well-tilled farms, we can hardly yet be regarded as 

 having emerged from the original wilderness. 



Every friend of culture cannot but earnestly feel that the 

 end and aim of all outward civilization, is to bring back to 

 man the ancient Paradise ; and a desire to feed again on the 

 fruits that nourished his joyful days of primeval happiness, 

 gives him no peace, till, lo ! again the vines and the orchards 

 gladden the hill-sides, and the trees, bending down with their 

 golden perfumed bounty, win him back to the bliss of Eden, 

 that seemed once to have forsaken the world forever ! 



