and solicit indulgence for some imperfect recollec- 

 tions of the past, and brief considerations of the 

 present condition of the art to whose prosperity the 

 festival is dedicated. 



The first step of civilized man on the New Eng- 

 land shore is so recent, that the outline of his ear- 

 liest footprint is still uneffaced. Through the anti- 

 quity of two centuries, we may view the origin of 

 cultivation almost as distinctly, as if we could turn 

 back the wave of improvement which has swelled 

 over the continent, until it again sunk down into the 

 little ripple by the rock of Plymouth. 



Stoughton eloquently says, " God sifted a whole 

 nation, that he might send choice grain over into 

 this wilderness." When the wheat winnowed from 

 the old world was cast upon the new, the earth was 

 not entirely unprepared for its reception. The 

 smoke curled upward in blue wreathes over the 

 wigwam of the Indian, and around the bark tents 

 were spots where the husbandry of the native in- 

 habitants had been exercised. He, whose cup was 

 filled from the fountain, whose store house in the 

 wild was ample, whose hordes of deer roved through 

 boundless woods, who found a banquet where the 

 oak strewed acorns or the stream poured from its 

 urn, needed no great extent of arable land to 

 supply his simple wants. Agriculture must have 

 been rude, while the hatchet of stone chipped down 

 the trees, and the spade of shell scooped in the 

 sod. Yet vast tracts of ground had been then 

 opened to the sun. Agents more powerful than 

 human strength and diligence had wrought in the 

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