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it, the mysteries of it — know all — would be deemed a learned 

 man in any scientific convention that ever assembled. There is 

 all geology there under your feet, open to your inspection, ready 

 to carry you back in knowledge to the flood, and beyond it, and 

 to show you all the secrets and marvels of creation that the Lyells 

 and Bucklands have ever written about. In your fields, and for- 

 ests, and waters, and the air, there is a chance for the patient 

 and intelligent observer to learn so much of animal life, in its va- 

 rious structures and habits, that he shall feel perfectly at home in 

 Agassiz's great Museum of Zoology, knowing already half that 

 can be taught there, and quite prepared to take in the other half. 



It might be an excellent thing, and certainly not a new thing, 

 for the young people of a farming town, those of them who want 

 to be educated and want to keep the dust, and mud, and brush, 

 and cobwebs of the farm out of their brains, to form themselves 

 into an association for the purpose of learning together, with mu- 

 tual helpfulness and stimulation, so much of nature and science as 

 they have the materials for, right about them. They could easily 

 come at the necessary books and apparatus. They could find 

 time, or make it, as all live and earnest people can. They have 

 eyes, and ears, and minds ; they can read, write, and cypher. 

 And that is enough to start with. The world of knowledge is be- 

 fore them, on the spot, at their very doors, over their heads and 

 under their feet. 



Finally, over and above the ordinary and universal means of in- 

 tellectual development, the Divine Providence, now and then, pre- 

 pares extraordinary means to the same end, in those social con- 

 vulsions and calamities that shake whole nations with the mighty 

 upheavals of thought and passion. I have already referred to an 

 influence of that kind as experienced by our fathers in the circum- 

 stances of the settlement of New England, and again in the Rev- 

 olution, — an influence not transient, but long transmitted. And 

 now, after a long interval of national quiet, it is being repeated 

 under circumstances difierent, but not less grand and awful. A 

 war of secession and disintegration is upon us. The nation's in- 

 tegrity and its very life is at stake. It is an epoch that the most 

 sluggish minds cannot sleep through. They who never thought 

 before must think now. They who never felt before must feel 



