48 Addrefs to the Society. 



As Agriculture is the bafis of Arts, by furnifliing the 

 materials upon which they work, fo it is the parent of fcience, 

 by uniting men in civil fociety, who without its aid would 

 have continued to be wandering favages, but little advanced 

 in improvement beyond the beads of the forefl that afforded 

 them a miferable and fcanty fubfiflance. It is for this reafon 

 that the Mythology of moil nations have made their golden 

 age confifl in the enjoyment of rural happinefs, and placed 

 the inventors of agricultural improvements among the number 

 of their Gods : Thus Ceres, Pan, Pomona, &c. were worfhipped 

 under different names by all the civilized nations of the Pagan 

 World. And our own holy Religion teaches us that the 

 cultivation of a garden, and the enjoyment of its fruits and 

 flowers, were the employment and reward of innocence when, 

 man was mod: perfeft. It is a little remarkable that innocence 

 and reafon ftill concur in receiving pleafure from the fame 

 objeft. The firft v/ifn of childhood is rural happinefs, nor 

 is that ever loil fight of, except where feme turbulent and 

 refifllefs palTion depraves and hurries away the foul. In every 

 period of life it animates virtuous and ingenuous minds. The 

 idea of a rural retreat in the evening of his days, accompanies 

 the Mechanic to his Ihop, the Merchant to the exchange, the 

 Lav/yer to the bar, the Phyfician to the fick bed, and the 

 Divine to the pulpit, who fees, even there, his earthly paradife 

 upon the confines of heaven, and hardly wilhes to enter the 



