Influence of Horticulture 273 



State like Ohio in 30 years, so populous, civilized and pro- 

 ductive, that the bare recital of its growth sounds like a 

 genuine miracle to European ears; and which overruns 

 and takes possession of a whole empire, like that of Mexico, 

 while the cabinets of old monarchies are debating whether 

 or not it is necessary to interfere and restore the balance of 

 power in the new world as in the old. 



This is the grand and exciting side of the picture. Turn 

 it in another light, and study it, and the effect is by no 

 means so agreeable to the reflective mind. The spirit of 

 unrest, followed into the bosom of society, makes of man a 

 feverish being, in whose Tantalus' cup repose is the unat- 

 tainable drop. Unable to take root anywhere, he leads, 

 socially and physically, the uncertain life of a tree trans- 

 planted from place to place, and shifted to a different soil 

 every season. 



It has been shrewdly said that what qualities we do not 

 possess, are always in our mouths. Our countrymen, it 

 seems to us, are fonder of no one Anglo-Saxon word than 

 the term settle.* It was the great object of our forefathers 

 to find a proper spot to settle. Every year, large numbers 

 of our population from the older States go west to settle; 

 while those already west, pull up, with a kind of desperate 

 joy, their yet new-set stakes, and go farther west to settle 

 again. So truly national is the word, that all the business 

 of the country, from State debts to the products of a truck 

 farm, are not satisfactorily adjusted till they are "settled;" 

 and no sooner is a passenger fairly on board one of our river 

 steamers, than he is politely and emphatically invited by a 

 sable representative of its executive power, to ''call at the 

 captain's office and settle.'" 



Yet, as a people, we are never settled. It is one of the 

 first points that strikes a citizen of the old world, where 

 something of the dignity of repose, as well as the value of 

 action, enters into their ideal of life. De Tocqueville says, 

 in speaking of our national trait: 



* Anglo-Saxon sath-lian, from the verb sedan, to set, to cease from 

 motion, to fix a dwelling-place, to repose, etc. A. J. D. 



