THB 



JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. IV. 



APRIL, 1850. 



No. 10. 



In the old fashioned way of travelling, "up 

 hill and down dale," by post coaches, it 

 was a great gratification (altogether lost in 

 swift and smooth railroads,) to stop and rest 

 for a moment on a hill-top, and survey the 

 country behind and about us. 



Something of this retrospect, is as re- 

 freshing and salutary in any other field of 

 progress. Certainly, nothing will carry us 

 on with such speed as to look neither to the 

 right or left, to concentrate all our powers 

 to this undeviating straight forward line. 

 But, on the other hand, as he who travels 

 in a rail-car knows little or nothing of the 

 country, except the points of departure and 

 arrival, so, if we do not occasionally take a 

 slisrht glance at things about us, we shall 

 be comparatively ignorant of many inte- 

 resting features not in the straight line of 

 " onward march." 



One of the best signs of the times, for 

 country people, is the increase of agricultu- 

 ral papers in number, and the still greater 

 increase of Subscribers. When the Albany 

 Cultivator stood nearly alone in the field, 

 some fifteen years ago, and boasted of 20,- 

 000 subscribers, it was thought a marvel- 

 lous thing, — this interest in the intellectual 

 part of farming ; and there were those who 

 thought it " could not last long." Now, 



Vol. iv. 31 



that there are dozens of agricultural jour- 

 nals, with hundreds of thousands of readers, 

 the interest in "book farming" is at last 

 beginning to be looked upon as something 

 significant ; and the agricultural press be- 

 gins to feel that it is of some account in the 

 commonwealth. When it does something 

 more — when it rouses the farming class to 

 a sense of its rights in the state — its 

 rights to good education, to agricultural 

 schools, to a place in the legislative halls, 

 where farmers shall not only be talked about 

 in complimentary phrase, as "honest yeo- 

 men," or the " bone and sinew of the coun- 

 try," but see and feel, by the comparison of 

 po<ver and influence with the commercial 

 and professional classes, that they are such, 

 then we shall not hear so much about the 

 dangers of the republic, but more of the 

 intelligence and good sense of the people. 



Among the good signs of the times, we 

 notice the establishment of an Agricultural 

 Bureau at Washington. At its head has 

 been placed, for the present at least, Dr. 

 Lee, the editor of the Genesee Farmer, — a 

 man thoroughly alive to the interest of the 

 cultivators of the soil, and awake to the 

 unjust estimation practically placed upon 

 1 farmers, both by themselves and the coun- 

 | try at large. If he does his duty, as we 



