HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 285 



less. The only idea of elegance and beauty which 

 finds footing, is of something extraneous outside his 

 life not mating with his opportunities or purposes 

 and only to be compassed, as a special extravagance, 

 upon which some town joiner must lavish his ogees, 

 and which shall serve as a blatant type of the farm 

 er s forehandedness. This is all very pitiful ; it 

 gives no charm ; it educates to no sense of the tender 

 graces of those simple, honest adornments which 

 ought to refine the country-liver, and to refine the 

 tastes of his children. I am not writing in any spirit 

 of sentimental romanticism. If Arcadia and its pas 

 torals have gone by (and I think they have), God, 

 and nature, and sunshine, have not gone by. Nor 

 yet the trees, and the flowers, or green turf, or a 

 thousand kindred charms, which the humblest farmer 

 has in his keeping, and may spend around his door 

 and homestead, with such simple grace, such afflu 

 ence, such economy of labor, such unity of design, as 

 shall enchain regard, ripen the instincts of his chil 

 dren to a finer sense- of the bounties they enjoy, and 

 kindle the admiration of every intelligent observer. 



A neglect of these attractions, which are so con 

 spicuous along all the by-ways of England, and in 

 many portions of the continent, is attributable per 

 haps in some degree to the unrest of much of our 

 rural population. The man who pitches his white 



