186 HAMPSHIRE, FRANKLIN, AND 



which mark our day. It is greatly for the interest of these 

 three classes that they should be established in convenient 

 proximity, and that a familiar intercourse should be maintained 

 between them. The intermingling of different kinds of pop- 

 ulation is one of the most powerful civilizing agents. It nour- 

 ishes a genuine esprit du corps, whilst at the same time it dis- 

 courages a conceited clannishness. It is one of the many bene- 

 fits which we are to realize from our great net work of rail- 

 roads, from those fire-breathing and rough-mannered yet benefi- 

 cent giants, whose pathway often lies through the quietest 

 hamlets in the land. An agricultural population is likely to 

 be somewhat scattered. They cannot generally, as in these 

 favored river towns, group their houses upon the fair plain or 

 on the sides of the hills, that form as it were the frame of their 

 great meadow landscape ; each household must bide upon its 

 own domain, and by its own stutf, relying very much upon its 

 -own resources for society. In such circumstances, the currents 

 of life will flow on too sluggishly, and dullness will creep over 

 the faculties of the mind, if not of the body. We occasion- 

 ally hear of a sleepy hollow, even in our day. 



A manufacturing population, on the other hand, will be dis- 

 tinguished by singular activity of brain, excited by the frequent 

 contact of minds ; by that spirit of intellectual life which 

 animates large masses, coming we know not whence, and the 

 danger here is, that the artisan will be stimulated to a morbid 

 activity, a feverish restlessness, which will lead to a sad waste of 

 energy. The farmer is likely to be an ultra conservative, the 

 artisan an ultra reformer. The one depends unwisely upon 

 Providence, the other is ready to intermeddle with his con- 

 ceited plans. Let the two classes act each upon the other and 

 you produce a just equilibrium of forces. The dividing lines 

 between the two populations must not be so deeply drawn, as 

 to prevent a constant and easy intermingling, the daughter 

 returning to her father's hill-side farm house, and the young 

 man, amidst the various exciting occupations of artisan life, not 

 allowing himself to forget or lose the true movement of the 

 scythe and axe arm. Let the different classes of laborers come 

 together as freely and frequently as may be, especially in our 



