takes rank witli tlio hii'lic-it lurms of labor aiul hiariiiiii: 

 where and only where there is opportunity, inducement, 

 and necessity for the highest exercise of the intellectual 

 fjiculties. Now no man can pretend that agriculture in 

 the West is the intellectual exercise that it is with us. 

 It may indeed be true that there is as much mind em- 

 ployed upon the land there as in New England ; but 

 let no one assume from existing facts that the equality 

 will be maintained through generations and centuries. 

 The West has no character of its own. It is a vast 

 lake, kept constandy in motion by the number and 

 force of its tributaries, whose currents are distinctly 

 marked over its whole surface. When immigration 

 into the West shall cease, that vast region will be what 

 its own wants require, influenced in some degree, of 

 course, by the surrounding country. 



We all anticipate that the valley of the Mississippi 

 will be the home, the happy home of millions and tens 

 of millions of human beings. There, no doubt, the 

 graces as well as luxuries of civilization will abound ; 

 but it is not probable that the chief abodes of art, of 

 science, of intellectual labor, of inventive, creative 

 genius will be there. 



But plains not only fail to nourish and strengthen the 

 physical man by pure air and water, and an ever-press- 

 ing necessity ibr labor, but they lack proper food for 

 the intellectual man. Where are the poets, born upon 

 the plain, or the poets who have sung of the plain. 

 The plain is destitute of inspiration. The inspiration 

 common to all men has its root and support in the 

 feeling^that we are in the presence of God. To be 

 sure we are in his presence always ; but there is no 

 language of the plain, it has no voice, it utters nothing, 



