CHAPTER XIII 



ON THE MISTAKES OF CITIZENS IN 

 COUNTRY LIFE* 



NO one loves the country more sincerely or welcomes 

 new devotees to the worship of its pure altars more 

 warmly than ourselves. To those who bring here 

 hearts capable of understanding the lessons of truth and 

 beauty which the Good Creator has written so legibly on 

 all his works; to those in whose nature is implanted a 

 sentiment that interprets the tender and the loving, as well 

 as the grand and sublime lessons of the universe, what a life 

 full of joy, and beauty, and inspiration, is that of the country; 

 to such, 



- "The deep recess of dusky groves, 



Or forest where the deer securely roves, 



The fall of waters and the song of birds, 



And hills that echo to the distant herds, 



Are luxuries, excelling all the glare 



The world can boast, and her chief fav'rites share." 



There are those who rejoice in our Anglo-Saxon inheri- 

 tance of the love of conquest, and the desire for boundless 

 territory, -- who exult in the "manifest destiny" of the 

 race, to plant the standard of the eagle or the lion in every 

 soil, and every zone of the earth's surface. We rejoice 

 much more in the love of country life, the enjoyment of 

 nature, and the taste for rural beauty, which we also inherit 

 from our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and to which, more than 

 all else, they owe so many of the peculiar virtues of the 

 race. 



With us as a people retirement to country life must come 

 to be the universal pleasure of the nation. The successful 

 * Original date of January, 1.S1'.). 

 193 



