MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



■while to execute only is the humble but indispensable office of the practical man. 

 And as with fruits and with animals, so it is with grains, which are said to be 

 the bounty, and with flowers, which have been called the smiles of God '. See 

 the dahlia, transplanted from its native Mexico, with its one simple, uniform 

 color: how it has been made — not, again, by your mere practical man, but by 

 thinking, cultivated, spirited horticulturists ; by your Wilders, and your Walk- 

 <ers, and your Hoveys, French, Breck, Lincoln, Colton, and a host of others that 

 might be named — to sport, either separately or combined on the same stem, the 

 most delicate and the gaudiest hues of every flower ! Let me rather insist that 

 progress in agricultural improvement and the love of flowers are identical with 

 advancement in civilization and the arts that most embellish life ; else how does 

 ■it happen that a passion for them breaks out and shows itself in the life and 

 Y/ritings of so many of the most gifted and illustrious men of all ages and 

 countries ? 



See, in the very midst of all the toils and anxieties of the Revolution, when 

 'fhe destinies of his country seemed to hang even more on his virtue than his 

 ■skill, and when his whole soul was devoted to her deliverance, how miimtelyall 

 the operations of his estates in Virginia were watched and directed by the Far- 

 mer of Mount Vernon ! Behold, again, the great Statesman of the West, volun- 

 tarily retiring from his commanding position in the Senate — that sheet-anchor of 

 the Republic — to look after and contemplate his flocks and herds, reposing on 

 beds of blue-grass in the shades of Ashland ! And do you not believe that your 

 adopted son, the ornament of your State, and the pride of his cotmtry, takes as 

 iiiuch pleasure in being known as the Farmer of Marshfield as in the title of 

 •''the Great Defender of the Constitution?" Nor, let me add, do I doubt that 

 feoth he and his great compeer, Senator Calhoun, from what we have heard of 

 iiis management, would shine as conspicuously in the field of Agriculture as 

 of politics. May I not add, even here, without ofi'euce or impiety, may Heaven 

 bless them both, for their powerful agency in averting one war, if they could 

 not anticipate and prevent another ! a war whereof the greatest evil would 

 have been the stain it would have left upon this boasted age of Christian civili- 

 zation ? 



And who, again, can doubt the inoral injhience of this passion for rural life 

 and its pursuits, when once it takes root in the heart ? Who, without unspeaka- 

 i/le admiration of the great Creator of all things, can contemplate, at this season, 

 the various and splendid hues of our — yes, of our — autumnal forests ? And pres- 

 ently, when stern Winter's icy breath shall wither every green, will not even he 

 'bring with him a feeling of comfort and grateful sensibility to the blessings, so 

 oniversal in our country, of a warm and comfortable home? Avhere every diligent 

 farmer may realize what Thomson says of Industry : 



• sullen Winter, cheered bv him, 



Sits at the social hcanli, and h!({)py hearu 

 Til' excluded tempest idly rave along." 



If, indeed. Agriculture be not in its nature a progressive, improvable art — if 

 its destiny be to travel the same dull round for ever, like a horse in a cider-mill, 

 without going forward — why not go back again to the practice of your Saxon 

 forefathers, and hitch your plow, as they did, to the tails of their oxen, until, as 

 iiate as the seventeenth century, since your first importation of cattle by Gov. 

 Wmslow, Parliament actually interfered to prevent the cruel practice, by "an 

 Act against plowmg by the tayle, and pulling the wool off' living sheep !" How, 



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