AGRICULTURE AN ART. 3 



with us bring their own reward. It has been long noticed that 

 the physical, moral and intellectual conditions of a people 

 depend on climatic characters ; and the harder the soil and 

 more obstinate the earth, the freer and more developed the race 

 which subdues it. The circumstances which develop intelli- 

 gence, enable intelligence in turn to develop the utmost possi- 

 bilities ; and when man emerges from barbarism, which only- 

 feeds and clothes his body, into civilization, he rises to the fine 

 arts, whether in the primeval occupation of agriculture, or in 

 those more assthetical pursuits by which he builds finely and 

 conceives and executes works of beauty and wonder which will 

 for centuries endure. 



Agriculture, considered in the light of an art, is no longer 

 the confined and selfish consideration of how to feed and clothe 

 a family or the dwellers on a given area of the farm; mere labor 

 of the most uncultivated kind can do as much ; rather than this 

 little and narrow view, it becomes a branch of national industry, 

 and maintains relations to the prosperity of a country. The 

 object is now to make the most returns from the outlay ; to enable 

 the land from year to year to yield five-fold and ten-fold ; to 

 swell the aggregate sum of a state's productive resources ; to 

 invite capital to invest in its speculations ; to convert sterility 

 into fruitfulness ; to anticipate exigencies for future time ; to 

 leave the world better than it was found, and restore to the 

 primal paradise the portions cursed by the ignorance and selfish- 

 ness of man. You are familiar, gentlemen, with the name of 

 Downing, who is considered in this country what Paxton is in 

 England ; men estimate him not so much by his knowledge and 

 descriptions of fruits and fruit trees, as by his endeavors to 

 introduce correct ideas of landscape gardening — of the con- 

 struction of elegant and commodious dwellings, and of a higher 

 style of life in the pursuit of horticulture ; to wdiich science he 

 was devoted. The art of agriculture docs in the grander 

 modes what landscape gardening does in the narrower ; and 

 there can be no reason why the most ordinary farm in Essex 

 County should not borrow something from a higher style, to 

 improve it and enhance its value. 



The time may be distant when in this country we shall be 

 obliged to cultivate as carefully and scrupulously as is needful 

 in older and more thickly settled countries, yet there can be no 



