August 



fields of waving grain, the smell of new-mown 

 hay, the running brook, the hills and plains, 

 where one hears at intervals the lowing of the 

 herd and the hum of insects, 



"And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks," 



in these daily associations, and with the qui- 

 etness brooding over a farmer's life, what can 

 there be to contract his sympathies, shorten 

 his outlook, and harden him to all the finer in- 

 fluences of nature ? 



An eminent English writer somewhat dispar- 

 ages this class of laborers, in alluding to " the 

 honesty and the narrow-mindedness of the agri- 

 culturalists. " It is a little anomalous that sound 

 morals and narrow minds should develop out of 

 the same soil, like the self-same fountain send- 

 ing forth sweet water and bitter. It would be 

 unreasonable to expect that, without special in- 

 tellectual training, this honorable class of peo- 

 ple would in any systematic manner, and in a 

 scientific spirit, contemplate the objects and 

 operations of nature. But it would seem as if 

 there might be a peculiar responsiveness to 

 those influences that come, not through books 

 and technical training, but absorbed impercep- 

 tibly from a permanently surrounding atmos- 



239 



