80 



Ivjluence of Horticulture. 



Vol. XII. 



vast enough to hold the greatest of ancient 

 empires; which drives the emigrant's wag- 

 on across vast sandy deserts to California, 

 and over rocky mountains to Oregon and 

 the Pacific; which builds up a great State 

 like Ohio in thirty years, so populous, civil- 

 ized and productive, that a bare recital of 

 its growth sounds like a genuine miracle to 

 European ears; and which overruns and 

 takes possession of a whole empire like that 

 of Mexico, while the cabinets of old monar- 

 chies are debating whether or not it is ne- 

 cessary to interfere and restore the balance 

 of power in the new world as in the old. 



This is the grand and exciting side of the 

 picture. Turn it in another light, and study 

 it, and the effect is by no means so agreeable 

 to the reflective mind. The spirit of unrest, 

 followed into the bosom of society, makes of 

 man a feverish* being, in whose Tantalus' 

 cup repose is the unattainable drop. Unable 

 to take root anywhere, he leads, socially and 

 physically, the uncertain life of a tree trans- 

 planted from place to place, and shifted to a 

 different soil every season. 



It has been shrewdly said, that what qual 

 ities we do not possess are always in our 

 mouths. Our countrymen, it seems to us, 

 are fonder of no one Anglo-Saxon word than 

 the term settle. It was the great object of 

 our forefathers to find a proper spot to settle. 

 Every year large numbers of our population 

 ftom the older States, go west to settle; 

 while those already west pull up, with a 

 kind of desperate joy, their yet new-set 

 slakes, and go farther west to settle again. 

 So truly national is the word, that all the 

 business of the country, from State debts to 

 the products of a " truck farm," are not sat- 

 isfactorily adjusted till they are "settled;" 

 and no sooner is a passenger fairly on board 

 one of our river steamers, than he is politely 

 and emphatically invited by a sable repre- 

 sentative of its executive power to " call at 

 the captain's office and settle .'" 



Yet, as a people, we are never settled. It 

 is one of the first points that strikes a citizen 

 of the old world, where something of the 

 dignity of repose, as well as the value of 

 action, enters into their ideal of life. De 

 Toqueville says, in speaking of our national 

 trait : 



"At first sight, there is something sur 

 prising in this strange unrest of so many 

 happy men, restless in the midst of abun- 

 dance. The spectacle itself is, however, as 

 old as the world. The novelty is to see a 

 whole people furnish an exemplification of it. 

 "In the United States a man builds a 

 house to spend his latter years in, and sells 

 it before the roof is on ; he brings a field 

 into tillage, and leaves other men to gather 



the crops; he embraces a profession and 

 gives it up; he settles in a place which he 

 soon after leaves, in order to carry hia 

 changeable longings elsewhere. If his pri- 

 vate affairs leave him any leisure, he in- 

 stantly plunges into the vortex of politics; 

 and if at the end of a year of unremitting 

 labour, he finds he has a few days' vacation, 

 his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast 

 extent of the United States, and he will tra- 

 vel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to 

 shake off his happiness." 



Much as we admire the energy of our 

 people, we value no less the love of order, 

 the obedience to law, the security and re- 

 pose of society, the love of home, and the 

 partiality to localities endeared by birth or 

 association, of which it is in some degree 

 the antagonist. And we are therefore deep- 

 ly convinced, that whatever tends, without 

 checking due energy of character, but to 

 develope along with it certain virtues that 

 will keep it within due bounds, may be look- 

 ed upon as a boon to the nation. 



Now the difference between the son of 

 Ishmael, who lives in tents, and that man 

 who has the strongest attachment to the 

 home of his fathers, is, in the beginning, 

 one mainly of outward circumstances. He 

 whose sole property is a tent and a camel, 

 whose ties to one spot are no stronger than 

 the cords which confine his habitation to the 

 sandy floor of the desert, who can break up 

 his encampment at an hour's notice, and 

 choose a new and equally agreeable site, 

 fifty miles distant, the next day — such a 

 person is very little likely to become much 

 more strongly attached to any one spot of 

 earth than another. 



The condition of a western emigrant is 

 not greatly dissimilar. That long covered 

 wagon, which is the Noah's ark of his pre- 

 servation, is also the concrete essence of 

 house and home to him. He emigrates, he 

 " squats," he " locates," but before he can 

 be fairly said to have a fixed home, the spi- 

 rit of unrest besets him ; he sells his "dig- 

 gins," to some less adventurous pioneer, and 

 tackling- the wagon of the wilderness, mi- 

 grates once more. 



It must not be supposed, large as is the 

 infusion of restlessness into our people, that 

 there are not also large exceptions to the 

 general rule. Else there would never be 

 growing villages and prosperous towns. Nay, 

 it cannot be overlooked by a careful observer, 

 that the tendency to " settle" is slowly but 

 gradually on the increase, and that there is, 

 in all the older portions of the country, 

 growing evidence that the Anglo-Saxon 

 love of home is gradually developing itself 

 out of the Anglo-American love of change. 



