38 MR. Oliver's address. 



out before the light, the spirit and the progress of the age. If 

 nothing new is as good as the old, and the old Avas well enough 

 as it was, why then, use your fingers instead of a fork to put 

 your meat into your mouth ; use a piece of bark for a plate ; — 

 use the camel, the ass, the mule, — for all purposes of vicarious 

 locomotion, and put away your hissing-hot and thundering 

 iron-horse with his hurricane speed, and his shrieking, deafen- 

 ing whistle. None of you believe in any such nonsense, — and 

 if improvements in these things meet your approbation, and 

 you would never consent that the world should be without 

 them, why will you not use the same candor of judgment, in re- 

 lation to novelties, either of implement or of operation, in your 

 own calling ? 



Do not misunderstand me, and go away with the impres- 

 sion that since I commend to you the new and the progres- 

 sive, I have a low opinion of all the old of all ages of the 

 world, — or that I condemn or think slightingly of ancient 

 husbandry. Let me prevent such unjust deduction. In the 

 many years which I spent in studying the classical writers of 

 Greece and of Rome, I could not do otherwise, even with but 

 a moderate degree of attention, than to acquire some knowl- 

 edge of the agriculture of the ancients, and it was my first de- 

 sign to address you on that theme, contrasting it with the 

 methods of the moderns. But recording my thoughts as they 

 rose within me, I was led by them in another direction. Yet 

 let me here say in brief, what I might have said more in de- 

 tail, that agriculture was held in the highest estimation among 

 the earlier and later nations of antiquity. Kings were its "nur- 

 sing fathers, and Q,ueens its nursing mothers," — and the 

 mightiest Monarchs saw and felt their highest glory to be 

 found in honoring the plough. Egypt ascribed its introduc- 

 tion to mortals, as the great work of her gods, and Greece and 

 Rome dedicated temples and erected statues in its honor. The 

 greatest geniuses and the noblest intellects of antiquity threw 

 the whole force of their minds, in extolling its praises, in ad- 

 vocating its importance, and even, like glorious Virgil, in giv- 

 ing practical directions in all its important details, — and many 

 of these details furnish not only curious, but really useful in- 



