26 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tliG appliances or apparatus that are conveniejit in teaching the 

 higher branches of education, the principles of artistic taste, of 

 aesthetic science and art, are in an eminent degree, at the com- 

 mand of the farmer. Who of us has not envied the lot of the 

 lazzaroni at Rome, who in spite of their poverty, can, some of 

 them at least, look daily upon the glories of the eternal city ; 

 can enter the courts of St. Peter's and admire its almost divine 

 majesty ; can gaze upon the paintings and statuary of the 

 Vatican, till they forget, in the ecstacy of their souls, the 

 hunger that gnaws their bodies. But why envy them ; at least, 

 why should the farmer envy tliem ? What is the dome of St. 

 Peter's, compared with that which every night overhangs his 

 own farm ? AVhat temple compares with that which the 

 Almighty has reared, seemingly to enwrap his own beautiful 

 nest ; where his loved ones lie ? What is it to tread the marble 

 pavement, and feel himself a pigmy beneath the ceiling which 

 human hands have reared, and a mere atom in the moving 

 crowd around him, when he may stand beneath the outspread 

 firmament with all its glittering stars, and feel that the ground 

 he stands on is his, his own, precious in his own eyes, as associ- 

 ated with all his labors and joys, and not disregarded of God, 

 whose rain and sunshine descend continually upon it. 



Painting is a glorious art. An ability to appreciate its beau- 

 ties, is a great acquisition. But who enjoys such advantages 

 for the development of a taste for this art, as the farmer ? In 

 a certain sense, his whole life is spent in a picture gallery. 

 The most beautiful subjects are continually before his eyes. 

 What sunsets, suggestive of the decline of his own peaceful 

 life. What sunrises, telling him of a newly invigorated exist- 

 ence after the night of death is passed. Every hour presents a 

 new landscape, a new study of color, of light, of shade, of 

 grouping, of tone. Every tree, every rock, is found to possess 

 its own peculiar beauty, and the fund of enjoyment is found to 

 be inexhaustible. So of statuary. I am serious, when I say, 

 that we may discover the elements of a divine beauty in the 

 stately form and tread of the ox, as plainly as in the propor- 

 tions of the Apollo Belvidere. The Yenus de Medici is beauti- 

 ful ; so is a cow. The Laocoon affords a startling display of 

 muscular effort and power ; so does a well-trained pair of cattle. 

 Niobe in tears awakens our sympathy ; so does a hen, fluttering 



