13 



the fireside, where Doddridge learned the story of the Cross, 

 aud West earned the loving kiss that "made him a painter." 



Such, reduced to simple facts, is nearly the education that 

 our own Essex has always encouraged. I will put this state- 

 ment on trial for its verity, and any one may look up the ev- 

 idence. We have not despised the college or the classics ; 

 yet the 3'oung men who from our midst have entered on them, 

 have carried thither more of sound and useful education than 

 they added thereafter ward. It was learned at home, by 

 snatches, after supper, or in the little common school, a mile 

 from the house in summer, but surely two when the snow was 

 deep. It was learned because it was hungered for, and not 

 because it was fashionable ; because the boy verily thought 

 that strength and wisdom were the noblest attributes of man, 

 and to these he labored gloriously to aspire. Such motives 

 have for two hundred years urged the youth of Essex forward 

 toward learning, and the result — is it not written and laid up 

 in the archives of the nation and the world ? Yet all this is 

 not the way of merchants and manufacturers. It is hardly 

 the method of the counting-room or the quarter-deck. But 

 where you see the cows thick on the pastures, where you can 

 count the corn-rows a mile off in spring, for freedom of 

 weeds, and the apples are heaped under the autumnal trees 

 as if busy ants had piled them, — there are boys who demand, 

 and find out, why they carry one for every ten, and girls that, 

 being taught the revolution of the earth, would at least get 

 an idea that it turned over. But a step beyond this shows 

 Agriculture as (lie Stimulus of Science. 



The world is to-day proud of its science — proud of what it 

 has learned of the laws of nature. It is so proud and so 

 pleased with its scales and measures of the inanimate world, 



