86 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



parallel. The music of the mill has not yet been sung in strains 

 that have an irresistible charm. The sad and sorrowful lines 

 of the " Song of the Shirt," and of the " corn-law rhymer" are 

 about all that belong to the poetry of in-door toil. The 

 deafening noise of machinery, and the heat of the crowded shop, 

 however much they have done for the prosperity of mankind, 

 have never risen above the level of a useful and important 

 trial. No man turns to them for relief from higher and harder 

 cares. He whose exhausted brain seeks comfort and repose 

 from the toils of busy life, whose energies have been wasted in 

 the incessant strife of the forum or the pulpit, the bar or the 

 market-place, does not return to the work bench or the last for 

 the exhilaration he so much needs. Oh, no ! His thoughts 

 run back to green fields, to the silence of the country, to the 

 sights and sounds of agriculture. He finds there his sure 

 relief. Is he fortunate in business ? As he finds himself on 

 the down hill of life and thinks of its close, he buys a farm and 

 hopes to die there. Is he unfortunate in business ? He rakes 

 together the remnants of his broken fortune, and settles down 

 upon a farm. Has he been tossed all his life on the stormy 

 sea ? He looks about him to find the repose of country life. 

 Let his occupation be what it may, he hopes to own one day 

 land enough to establish his claim to the earth, and in the 

 peaceful retreat of which he can prepare himself for heaven. 

 It is nature, liberal, bounteous, benign, inexhaustible, responsive, 

 divine, which has appointed agriculture as her handmaid, and 

 has given her power to impart vigor to man for his active social 

 duties, and to receive him into her calm embrace when the 

 curtain falls and the great drama of his existence is brought 

 to a close. 



From the consideration of the social position of agriculture, 

 I now pass to its relation to the state. In obedience to the divine 

 law which called us into being the generations of men come and 

 go, man lives his appointed time, all latitudes, all races, all states, 

 all occupations become one under the universal law of birth, 

 maturity and decay. Not so, however, with nations. Empires 

 rise and fall, dynasty follows dynasty, monarchies and republics 

 succeed each other in rapid revolution, the exceeding glory of 

 to-day becomes clouded to-morrow, where once the arts of peace 

 prevailed, the horrors of anarchy and misrule may now yawn 



