30 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



follow if you do not precede us." That is the best that can be 

 said to-day ; I trust ere long to be able to speak more to the pur- 

 pose. 



I do not seek to disguise the magnitude and the difficulty of the 

 work I contemplate that of revolutionizing our Agriculture, and 

 making it the most elevated and ennobling, because the most intel- 

 lectual, pursuit of man. I realize the mountains of Prejudice that 

 are to be leveled, the Dead Seas of Ignorance that must be filled 

 up, the constitutional immobility of Conservatism that must be 

 overcome, before the end can be attained. But I see also how 

 " the stars in their courses " fight in behalf of Progress and En- 

 lightenment how immense has been the march of Intelligence as 

 well as Invention and Physical Improvement in our age how the 

 Steamboat, the Railroad, the Steam Press, the Ocean Steamship, 

 the Electric Telegraph, are speeding us onward with a momentum 

 the world has never before known and I hear a voice from all 

 these and many a kindred impulse and influence, bidding Man the 

 Cultivator advance boldly and confidently to take his proper post 

 as lord of the animal kingdom and wielder of the elements for the 

 satisfaction of his wants and the development of his immortal 

 powers. I hear them calling him to vindicate the discernment or 

 the prescience of those glorious old Greeks who gave our Earth 

 in her young luxuriance the name of Kosmos or BEAUTY a name 

 belied by our scarred and stumpy grain-fields, our seared and 

 barren pastures, our bleak and arid deserts, our foul, malarious 

 marshes ; but which Science shall yet justify and joyous Labor 

 perpetuate. In spite of all distractions and impediments, " the 

 world does move," and even the most sluggish and stubborn are 

 carried along with it. Our Agriculture, as a whole, is more 

 skillful and efficient than it was thirty or forty years ago ; and it 

 is now improving in accelerated ratio. Even I, the descendant 

 of a line of poor cultivators, stretching back, very likely, to him 

 who through his own blindness and fatuity lost the situation of 

 head-gardener in Eden even I feel the all-pervading impulse 

 toward improvement and reform. I can never be a Scientific farm- 

 er I am too old and too heavily laden with duties and cares for 

 that but my son, if he lives, shall be. The little I can teach him 



