90 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



I tell you, I knew then, if I liad heard it doubted, or had 

 felt a doubt before, that tlie mind of the farming class is still 

 capable of the highest vigor and elevation. If it has been 

 growing stagnant and torpid, or seeming so, there is deep, 

 strong life beneath the surface ; and if there was any tendency 

 to declension, it has been stayed, by this dread calamity, that 

 exhibits at once the severity and the goodness of God. 



And this reviving and reinvigorating influence will not pass 

 away with the trials that produced it. When God educates, it 

 is not for a day, but for generations. When he quickens a new 

 life in the soul of a people, it is a life that lasts. When he 

 touches the human harp with his own mighty but tender hand, 

 the sound remains in the strings for an age, and for ages. 



Long after this war shall have closed, and its distresses passed 

 away, its moral and intellectual compensations will remain. 

 Every village will have its war-worn veterans to tell the story 

 of Antietam, and Gettysburg, and Port Hudson, and many 

 another field of daring and achievement. Almost every farm- 

 house in the land will have its sacred and inspiring memories 

 of a father, son or brother, who fought for his country, whom 

 they, and their posterity after them, must henceforth love and 

 take thought for as their very mother. 



And every village graveyard will have its green mounds, 

 that shall need no storied monuments to clothe them with a 

 peculiar consecration — graves that hold the dust of heroes — 

 graves that all men will approach with reverent steps — graves 

 out of whose solemn silence shall whisper inspiring voices, 

 telling the young from generation to generation, how great is 

 their country's worth and cost, and how beautiful and noble it 

 ■was to die for it. 



