NEW ENGLAND FARMING. 47 



felt everywhere, and wliicli control mankind with calm and 

 noiseless power. 



This is the real and comparative value of New England farm- 

 ing. It may not have arrived at any great degree of perfection. 

 It may be deficient in method and in the application of what 

 are called scientific principles ; it may have deteriorated for 

 the last few years, as we are told by those who profess to know, 

 but this is its true position upon which its prospects depend. 

 A distinguished gentleman has informed us that from 1840 to 

 1850 the process of agriculture was " altogether a retrograde 

 movement, and the lessening crop per acre, year by year, was 

 so serious as to threaten tlie existence of the interest." And 

 he goes on with figures to prove it. Now all this may be true. 



It is possible that the loss of land per year by exhausting 

 culture in Massachusetts alone, amounted to one million five 

 hundred and eighty-one thousand five hundred and seventy-two 

 dollars, and that " the waste is equal to two and nine-tenths of 

 one per cent, on the value of the farms." But this does not 

 go to disprove the deep and vital interest our people feel in 

 agriculture, nor to diminish its importance and influence. It 

 may be true, as has been said elsewhere, that " New England 

 does not produce the bread she eats, nor the raw materials of 

 the fabric she wears ;" and that a multitude of her agricultural 

 towns are undergoing more or less rapidly, a process of depopu- 

 lation. But the inference drawn from these statements, that 

 New England agriculture is dying of a slow and consuming 

 disease, is by no means true ; neither is it true that farming 

 here is on the decline, because the reality does not agree with 

 the vague and rosy ideal which fills the mind of sentimentalists 

 and dreamers. 



The joys, and pleasures, and attractions of farming life are not 

 measured by the amount of pinks and pansies which grow under 

 the windows, nor by the amount of physical beauty inclosed 

 within the domestic walls. The sorrows, and hardships, and 

 depressing influences of agriculture do not arise from the neces- 

 sity for constant labor which attends it. I will never allow that 

 the farming population of New England is becoming " anin^al- 

 ized " by devotion to its calling. Neither will I believe that 

 the deep and innate sense of the true nature of this calling — 

 that sentiment, unexpressed, perhaps inexpressible — that char- 



