FARMS. 127 



lance, of attention, of skill, and let me add, of good fortune also, 

 to carry on the business with success, than what belongs to any 

 other trade." If this be so, how powerfully is the farmer 

 appealed to, to bring an exact education to his work ! How 

 necessary it becomes that his labor should be something more 

 than the mere application of brute force to subduing the soil! 

 And when we remember that amidst all the fluctuations of 

 trade, while the rich find their fortunes flying away from tiiem, 

 and the laborer is starving ; while manufactures and commerce 

 stand with folded arms, waiting to see what the great agricultu- 

 ral interests of our country are to do for their relief, the farmer 

 has reason to congratulate himself that he belongs to a class 

 whom panics seldom reach, and whose expansions and contrac- 

 tions are hardly perceptible — a class more sure of comfort and 

 a rational subsistence than any other in the world. Such a 

 calling as this deserves the most patient observation, the most 

 careful experiments, the most accurate record, at the hands of 

 all immediately engaged in it, and the most profound investiga- 

 tions which science can bestow upon it. For agriculture never 

 faileth. Whether there be manufactures, they may cease ; 

 whether there be commerce, it may vanish away. But so long 

 as man has a home and a country, he must recognize his 

 dependence upon the soil, and he must feel that an occupation 

 which lies at the foundation of society, and produces the yeo- 

 manry of every nation, is worthy of his highest powers both of 

 mind and body. 



The agricultural education, of which we speak as so impor- 

 tant to the farmer and so indispensable in his preparation for 

 his high calling, must begin early in life. The old adage that 

 " the poet is born, not made," applies with equal force to the 

 farmer. There is a love of country which must be inhaled 

 with the breath of childhood. There is a familiarity with the 

 commonest affairs of rural life, with the stones and the sods, 

 with the grasses and fruits, with the habits of animals, and 

 with what may be called the functions of agricultural existence, 

 which no devotion to natural history, no analysis of soils and 

 manures can ever give. Nature is very coy. She is not to be 

 wooed and won at a distance. She asks for no blind admira- 

 tion. But that acquaintance with her which will induce her 

 to " yield up all her secret store," must begin when the 



