250 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



More than two hundred years ago, actuated by these principles, 

 our feeble towns, holding a precarious existence in a savage wil- 

 derness, made grants of land for educational purposes. Amidst 

 the hardships and in the gloomy isolation of colonial life, the 

 stern, ascetic fathers knew and felt the first approach of sin. 

 Satan came among them, not clad with the allurements and 

 charms of cultivated and fashionable society, but appealing at 

 once to their grosser passions, which the severe and rigorous 

 restraints of law, and a somewhat hard and discouraging phi- 

 losophy, irritated to a spirit of defiance and rebellion. They 

 knew how prone to barbarism is a life in the wilderness. They 

 knew the value of that cheerful courage with which education 

 and religion fill the heart amidst the refinements of civilized 

 life. And while the dark cloud hung over them, and the weight 

 of stern endeavor pressed upon them, and the tempter assailed 

 the secret and hidden recesses of their hearts, and there was no 

 relief to the gray and sombre coloring of life, and there was no 

 external beauty to cheer the soul, either of song, or picture, or 

 church, or symbol, they frowned upon their gross and human 

 weaknesses and turned to the school-house and the meeting- 

 house for their support and inspiration. They believed in an 

 educated Commonwealth, and in the power of an enlightened 

 mind to dispel the gloom of the wilderness and to diffuse a vital 

 heat through the coldest and darkest caverns of the human 

 heart — the heat given to more ardent souls by music and poetry 

 and eloquence and art, and the luxurious sublimity of archi- 

 tecture, expressive of human aspirations and desires. 



The bestowal of gifts upon schools and colleges was the sacri- 

 fice which the Puritan made on the altar at which he worshipped. 

 An educated man he respected — an ignorant man he despised ; 

 believing that it was " one chiefe project of y^ ould deluder, 

 Sathan, to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures." 

 And he even witnessed with composure the operation of the 

 school-house in bringing men to the enjoyment of suffrage, that 

 sacred right, which he had reserved to the church alone. And 

 his school-house brought men to a level. It revolutionized town 

 after town, until the right to vote became as universal as the 

 right to hold property. The right to civil position became gen- 

 eral, and the graduate of the district passed on into the town- 

 meeting to take his part in that controversy and debate which 



