THE v 



JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AXD RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. IV. 



DECEMBER, 1849. 



No. 6. 



V Movable property, or capital, may pro- 

 cure a man all the advantages of wealth; 

 but property in land gives him much 

 more than this. It gives him a place in 

 the domain of the world ; it unites his life 

 to the life which animates all creation. 

 Money is an instrument by which man can 

 procure the satisfaction of his wants and 

 his wishes. Landed property is the estab- 

 lishment of man as sovereign in the midst 

 of nature. It satisfies not only his wants 

 and his desires, but tastes deeply implanted 

 in his nature. For his family, it creates 

 that domestic country called home, with all 

 the loving sympathies and all the future 

 hopes and projects which people it. And 

 whilst property in land is more consonant 

 than any other to the nature of man, it also 

 affords a field of activity the most favorable 

 to his moral development, the most suited 

 to inspire a just sentiment of his nature 

 and his powers. In almost all the other 

 trades and professions, whether commercial 

 or scientific, success appears to depend 

 solely on himself — on his talents, address, 

 prudence and vigilance. In agricultural 

 life, man is constantly in the presence of 

 God, and of his power. Activity, talents, 

 prudence and vigilance are as necessary 

 here as elsewhere to the success of his la- 

 Vol. iv. 19 



bors ; but they are evidently no less insuf- 

 ficient than they are necessary. It is God 

 who rules the seasons and the temperature, 

 the sun and the rain, and all those phe- 

 nomena of nature which determine the suc- 

 cess or the failure of the labors of man on 

 the soil which he cultivates. There is no 

 pride which can resist this dependence, no 

 address which can escape it. Nor is it 

 only a sentiment of humanity, as to his 

 power over his own destiny, which is thus 

 inculcated upon man ; he learns also tran- 

 quility and patience. He cannot flatter 

 himself that the most ingenious inventions, 

 or the most restless activity, will secure his 

 success ; when he has done all that de- 

 pends upon himself for the cultivation and 

 fertilization of the soil, he must wait with 

 resignation. The more profoundly we exa- 

 mine the situation in which man is placed, 

 by the possession and cultivation of the 

 soil, the more do we discover how rich it is 

 in salutary lessons to his reason, and be- 

 nign influences on his character. Men do 

 not analyze these facts ; but they have an 

 instinctive sentiment of them, which pow- 

 erfully contributes to the peculiar respect 

 in which they hold property in land, and 

 to the preponderance which that kind of 

 property enjoys over every other. This 



