578 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



childless farmer, one who is so by culpable coldness and 

 neglect of his own, is a selfish, chilly-hearted monster, who 

 walks his dismal pilgrimage in mouldy loneliness, and should 

 know no peace till he yields to matrimony. There are ver}- 

 many faculties given us by our Maker, to be cultivated by us 

 for our own happiness, and the more we cultivate the innocent 

 and refined ones, the happier and the better we shall be. Home, 

 with all its concomitants of wife, children, books, music, flow- 

 ers, and social intercourse, is, and ought to be, the dearest spot 

 of all the earth. You may make it, or mar it. Adorn, then, 

 your homes, within and without, and home shall adorn and 

 comfort you. Your children will be more attached to it, and 

 less likely to leave it for Californias or Far- Wests, and more 

 likely to settle in its neighborhood, and to build other and 

 tasteful abodes. Let me commend to you, in this connection, 

 the work on " Country Houses," by the late lamented Down- 

 ing, who perished in the " Henry Clay," to the deep sorrow of 

 every admirer of the beautiful in architecture, and in gardening, 

 and who had done so much for the ditfusion of an improved 

 taste in all that relates to rural affairs. There perished the 

 tasteful student of nature, whose life has been to his country- 

 men, a mission of beauty ; whose ripe judgment, and vivid 

 imagination, and loving insight into the sv^^eet, tender secrets 

 of mother-earth, have been bodied forth in artistic combina- 

 tions and suggestions, that have awakened a new spirit of 

 taste in the community, and made many a glorious landscape 

 a monument of beauty to his loved and honored name. 



His books will teach you, how easily you may combine the 

 beautiful with the good, the useful with the elegant. 



The whole country sutlers when such men as Downing and 

 Norton are taken away. The latter gentleman was appointed, 

 a few years since, to a new professorship in Yale College, that 

 of " Chemistry applied to Agricultvire and the Phenomena of 

 Vegetable and Animal Life." Though young, he w.as one of 

 the highest ornaments of learning, and gave assurance that 

 could not fail, that if spared, his influence and his teachings 

 would prove of the highest value to the agricultural interest. 

 Each was invaluable in his vocation, the one leading the way 

 and directing to the useful, and the other showing how to 

 unite ornament and beauty to utility. 



