POSITION OF THE FARMER. 87 



like a bottomless cliasm, the warm and vigorous health we now 

 behold may ere long be quenched by " the pestilence which 

 walketh in darkness, and by the destruction which wasteth at 

 noon day." In all this strange and exciting history it appears 

 that not to race alone, but chiefly to the occupation of its 

 people, are the real greatness and perpetuity of a nation to be 

 ascribed. Tyre and Athens, and Palmyra were great, but they 

 were as evanescent in their national existence, as the meteor 

 that shoots across the evening sky. Venice grew up into the 

 majestic proportions of a republic, gorgeous, commanding, 

 powerful on sea and on land, the queen of the Adriatic, con. 

 trolling almost the commerce of the world ; but her people 

 have returned to their original huts upon the lagunes, and her 

 pride crumbles and moulders along her once royal canals. 

 Holland struck an early blow for freedom, but the accidents of 

 trade proved to be a poor foundation for a republic, and her 

 freedom sunk with her ships. Within their narrow and 

 crowded limits these nations compressed all that was brilliant, 

 all that was refined, and elegant, and fearless ; they wore for a 

 time the most glittering jewels in the crown of their nation- 

 ality ; the monuments which they erected stood upon the 

 foundations of wealth, and education, and energy, and dazzling 

 success. Commerce and manufactures poured into their laps 

 unbounded treasures. And in establishing their institutions 

 they seemed to vie with the defiant mountains, which point to 

 the eternal heavens, unmindful of decay or change. But the 

 enervating effects of those luxuries which the excessive accumu- 

 lations of wealth always bring, the debasing influences of trade, 

 the physical disability which comes upon a crowded population, 

 the shifting and uncertain chances of commerce, the absence 

 of a permanent and immovable national bond, were the fatal 

 inheritance which reduced these nations to decay, or destroyed 

 that freedom for which they had devoted all their energies. 

 They either accepted a tyrant or were despoiled by an invader, 

 because their estimate of their privileges was based upon their 

 power to trade, and because their palaces and storehouses were 

 easily plundered and destroyed. The elements of character, 

 the tenacity of purpose, which belong to a rural population, 

 had no seat in the market places of these gorgeous and epheme- 

 ral civil organizations. 



