88 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



fectly at home in Agassiz's great museum of zoology, knowing 

 already half that can be taught there, and quite prepared to 

 take in the other half. 



It might be an excellent thing, and certainly not a new thing, 

 for the young people of a farming town, those of them who 

 want to be educated and want to keep the dust, and mud, and 

 brush, and cobwebs of the farm out of their brains, to form 

 themselves into an association for the purpose of learning 

 together with mutual hopefulness and stimulation, so much of 

 nature and science as they have the materials for right about 

 them. They could easily come at the necessary books and 

 apparatus. They could find time, or make it, as all live and 

 earnest people can. They have eyes, and ears, and minds ; 

 they can read, write, and cipher. And that is enough to start 

 with. The world of knowledge is before them, on the spot, at 

 their very doors, over their heads and under their feet. 



Finally, over and above the ordinary and universal means of 

 intellectual development, the Divine Providence, now and then, 

 prepares extraordinary means to the same end, in those social 

 convulsions and calamities that shake whole nations with the 

 mighty upheavals of thought and passion. 1 have already 

 referred to an influence of that kind as experienced by our 

 fathers in the circumstances of the settlement of New England, 

 and again in the Revolution, an influence not transient, but 

 long transmitted. And now, after a long interval of national 

 quiet, it is being repeated under circumstances different, but 

 not less grand and awful. A war of secession and disintegra- 

 tion is upon us. The nation's integrity and its very life are at 

 stake. It is an epoch that the most sluggish minds cannot sleep 

 through. They who never thought before, must think now. 

 They who never felt before, must feel now. The intellect of 

 the nation is aroused in the presence of this immense issue'. 

 It is an educational epoch. Its perils, trials, sacrifices, are the 

 school-discipline of God. The mind of the people grows up 

 *whole cubits of stature in a short time. The heart of the 

 people is moved to its deepest depths, of all classes, but most 

 of the most numerous and the governing class, the agricultural. 

 And the heart is always the head's best ally. Deep feeling 

 begets strong thinking. Sentiments of patriotism and loyalty, 



