discourse. It lays its hand on the grandest and most beneficent 

 objects with which the intelligence of man converses, and draws 

 for its uses from sea and vapor, wind and cloud, Pleiades 

 and Orion, and the glorious luminary which bears health and 

 healing on its wing as well to plant and animal as to man. It 

 assembles in its splendid panorama the genius and the cunning 

 of all useful and ornamental arts. It plays familiarly with the 

 results of the most subtle scientific investigation and appro- 

 priates them at its pleasure to the melioration and enlargement 

 of its own domain. It smites, as with an enchanter's wand, 

 the rock whence flowed the inspired pastorals of David, and tlie 

 idyls of Theocritus and Virgil, and lo ! it gushes again in the 

 sweet song of Burns, in the magnificent melody of "Wordsworth, 

 and inspires our own Bryant to sing for a celebration like this : 



" The proud throne shall crumble, 

 The diadem shall wane, 

 The tribes of earth shall humble 

 The pride of those who reign ; 

 And war shall lay his pomp away, — 

 The fame that heroes cherish, 

 The glory earned in deadly fray 

 Shall fade, decay and perish. 

 Honor waits o'er all the earth, 

 Through endless generations, 

 The art that calls her harvests forth, 

 And feeds the expectant nations." 



And, finally, it summons religion from her calm and holy 

 retreats, to kindle her altars to the praise of Him " who giveth 

 rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and crowneth the year 

 with his goodness." 



The vocation of the farmer, therefore, is not exceeded in 

 importance by any other. The cultivation of the earth is the 

 noblest calling of man. But not every man who uses farming 

 tools is a farmer. Not all digging, ploughing, planting, har- 

 vesting is farming. The real farmer is one who understands 

 his art. The only proper farming is labor on the soil under 

 the guidance of a mind well-instructed in all knowledge per- 

 taining to the soil. Farming is education applied to agricul- 

 tural production. Its best analogies are found in the walks of 

 the most liberal culture. It is the art of medicine and surgery 



