REVIEWS. 



1. Address before the Norfolk Agricultural Society at Dedham, September 26, 



1851: By George R. Russel. 

 Mr. Russell's address before the Norfolk Society — one of the youngest, but certainly 

 one of the most energetic in IMassachusetts — deserves more than ordinary attention. It is 

 a production full of vigor, earnestness and pith. It is replete with evidences of scholarly 

 culture, adding what is even more important, a right understanding of the present condi- 

 tion and wants of the agricultural class; and it is enlivened with genial strokes of humour 

 that doubtless gave it no little effect in the delivering, 



Mr. Russel speaks to the point on the all important sulject of agricultural education, 

 and we cordially agree Avith his views as expressed in the following extract : 



" The advance of our cultivation is often retarded by the indifference of the cultivator. 

 There are to be found those who scoff at book-farming as useless, maintain that there can be 

 no imi)rovement in the management of the soil, and look at a newly-invented implement as 

 an insult to their ancestors. They would go on as the latter have done, not reflecting, 

 that if successive generations did not add something to the stock of knowledge, we might 

 get back to that patriarchal period when the broadest branched tree was the best house, 

 and red paint the most fashionable garment; when the economy of the kitchen consisted 

 in robbing the hoard of the squirrel, and the ten fingers were the only tools that scratched 

 the t^ice of mother earth. 



A blind reverence for the past is the great stumbling-block of the present, and flagrant 

 injustice to the future. Do as our fathers did! It is well we should, when we can do no 

 better; but man has been made a progressive creature, is endowed with aspirations after 

 excellence, has implanted in him a restless energy that is continually urging him onward. 

 He could not stop if he would. He partakes of that law of motion which governs all 

 things, from the smallest particle of animated dust, up to the infinite worlds which, clus- 

 ter on cluster, system witliin system, Avhirl in endless revolution round the throne of God. 



The fanatic, who threw a stone at the Earl of Rosse's telescope, because it pryed into 

 mysteries, intended, as he believed, to be concealed from human curiosity, was a t3'pe of 

 that conservatism which would have no new farming. It would not encourage the undi- 

 tiful longings of children, who strive to know more than their parents. It would level 

 the school-house, entertaining Jack Cade's opinion of men " that usually talk of a noun 

 and a verb and such abominable words." Of what use is education, but to engender 

 self-conceit and encourage wasteful expenditure. Whjr buy volume on volume, and cover 

 black. boards with cabalistic characters, when " our forefathers had no other books but 

 the score and the tally.?" 



Advancement is the destiny of man. He who stops in the race is run over, and left 

 behind, crippled and forgotten. Whatever may be the limit to human attainment, it 

 has not yet been discovered. We nress forward to an eminence from whicii we hope to 

 behold all created things, but it is reached only to find heights to be climbed and diffi- 

 culties to be surmounted. 



It is too generally supposed, that education should be confined to the " learned profes- 

 sions" — that it is well to fill the heads of law3'ers, doctors, andclergjmien; but as for the 

 farmer, merchant, and mechanic, it is better that their drudgery should not be disturbed 

 by any information beyond the rudiments. If the farmer can read the almanac and week- 

 ly newspaper, the merchant keep his accounts in tolerable condition, and the mechanic 

 spell out the orders on his slate, they are presumed to be amplj'' provided with all the 

 erudition necessary for their vocations. The patronage of the state and the munificence 

 of private individuals have been reserved to encourage a course of education, which had 

 its origin in the wants of a privileged class of a bygone age, and is, now, of questionable 

 use, even to those who intend to enter the pulpit, the sick chamber, or the courts of law. 

 But, for the ordinary purposes of active life, the college student, when he is turned adrift 



ith his diploma in his pocket, is about as helpless and useless an object as can be cast 



le cold charities of the world. His nursing mother, after softly rocking his crad 

 slumber of four years' duration, suddenly shakes him off, in an unweaned state, thrusts 



