10 MR. Oliver's address. 



ing, in amusements and in gaming, I employ in the reviewing 

 of my studies." 



Let me then commend to you books on farming, and the 

 farming of books. The printed book is more reliable and perma- 

 nent than the spoken word. The act of preparing a really good 

 book on farming, or upon any other useful art or science, is 

 undoubtedly a slow and laborious process, but it is of immense 

 benefit to him who prepares it, — specially if such literary labor 

 be made a regular business in youth, and so grow into perma- 

 nent habit afterwards, — and will profit reader after reader, when 

 the hand of the writer shall be palzied in death, and he be 

 sleeping the sleep of the grave. 



Now, for my single self, I am not now, I never have been, 

 and I very much fear, (and lament it whilst I fear it,) that I 

 never shall be a farmer, nor a practical or amateur agricultu- 

 rist, in any way. I have already reached the hill-top, and pas- 

 sed over the summit-level of man's pilgrimage, and as I look 

 upon 



" The dowii-liill of life, which I find I'm declining," 



as saith the old song, — as I pass towards the time when 



"My way of life, 

 Falls into the sere and yellow leaf, 

 Which doth accompany old age ;" — Macbeth. 



As I shift into the sixth period of Shakspeare's seven ages, 



" Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, 

 With youthful hose well saved, a world too wide 

 For my shrunk shanks, — my big manly voice, 

 Turning again towards childish treble, that pipes 

 And whistles in the sound," — As You Like It. 



I can discern, (would that it were otherwise,} in the dim 

 vista that spreads out between my steps and the dark stream 

 that bounds life's narrow day, no broad acres to be called my 

 own, and to be, in the culture and adornment thereof, the sol- 

 ace of life's later years. 



It is related by the Historian Livy, that, on a certain occas- 

 ion, Tarquin, the last King of Rome, sent his two sons, Titus 

 and Aruns, to consult the celebrated oraclo at Delphi in Greece. 

 The two young princes took with them, for sport, their cousin 

 Brutus, who, for fear of being put to death by the jealous ty- 



