10 



INFLUENCE OF HORTICULTURE. 



place, and shifted to a different soil every 

 season. 



It has been shrewdly said that what qua- 

 lities we do not possess, are always in our 

 mouths. Our countrymen, it seems to us, 

 are fonder of no one Anglo-Saxon word 

 than the term settle* It was the great ob- 

 ject of our forefathers to find a proper spot 

 to settle. Every year, large numbers of 

 our population from the older States, go 

 west to settle ; while those already west, 

 pidl up, with a kind of desperate joy, their 

 yet new-set stakes, and go farther west to 

 settle again. So truly national is the word, 

 that all the business of the country, from 

 State debts to the products of a " truck 

 farm," are not satisfactorily adjusted till 

 they are " settled ;" and no sooner is a pas- 

 senger fairly on board one of our river 

 steamers, than he is politely and emphati- 

 cally invited by a sable representative of 

 its executive power, to " call at the cap- 

 tain's office and settle /" 



Yet, as a people, we are never settled. 

 It is one of the first points that strikes a 

 citizen of the old world, where something 

 of the dignity of repose, as well as the va- 

 lue of action, enters into their ideal of life. 

 De Tocqueville says, in speaking of our 

 national trait ; 



" At first sight, there is something sur- 

 prising in this strange unrest of so many 

 happy men, restless in the midst of abun- 

 dance. The spectacle itself is, however, 

 as old as the world. The novelty is to see 

 a ivhole people furnish an exemplification 

 of it. 



" In the United States a man builds a 

 house to spend his latter years in, and sells 

 it before the roof is on ; he brings a field 

 into tillage, and leaves other men to gather 



* Anglo-Saxon sath-lian, from ihe verb settan, to set, to 

 cease from moiiou, to fix a dwelling place, lo repose, etc. 



the crops ; he embraces a profession, and 

 gives it up ; he settles in a place, which 

 he soon after leaves, in order to carry his 

 changeable longings elsewhere. If his 

 private affairs leave him any leisure, he 

 instantly plunges into the vortex of poli- 

 tics ; and if at the end of a year of unre- 

 mitting labor, he finds he has a few days 

 vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him 

 over the vast extent of the United States, 

 and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in 

 a few days, to shake oflf his happiness." 



Much as we admire the energy of our 

 people, we value no less the love of order, 

 the obedience to law, the security and re- 

 pose of society, the love of home, and 

 the partiality to localities endeared by birth 

 or association, of which it is in some de- 

 gree the antagonist. And we are therefore 

 deeply convinced that whatever tends, with- 

 out checking due energy of character, but 

 to develop along Avith it certain virtues 

 that will keep it within due bounds, may 

 be looked upon as a boon to the nation. 



Now the difference between the son of 

 Ishmael, who lives in tents, and that man 

 who has the strongest attachment to the 

 home of his fathers, is, in the beginning, 

 one mainly of outward circumstances. He 

 whose sole property is a tent and a camel, 

 whose ties to one spot are no stronger than 

 the cords which confine his habitation to 

 the sandy floor of the desert, who can 

 break up his encampment at an hour's no- 

 tice, and choose a new and equally agree- 

 able site, fifty miles distant, the next day — 

 such a person is very little likely to become 

 much more strongly attached to any one 

 spot of earth than another. 



The condition of a western emigrant is 

 not greatly dissimilar. That long covered 

 wagon, which is the Noah's ark of his 

 preservation, is also the concrete essence 

 of house and home to him. He emigrates, 



