for the sustenance of their daily lives. The more reflecting, 

 to whom the present brings up the past from which it came, 

 as the sea-shell vibrates to the listening ear with the roar of 

 its far-off ocean-home, passes in thought from the farmer's 

 heads in the enclosures of the fair-oround back on the line of 

 the centuries, over the slow migrations from the East upon 

 which these faithful animals have been the indispensable com- 

 panions and servants of our race, and finds in the associations 

 of the day, the spirit of a hoar antiquity. Cattle of their kin 

 went with Israelites through the divided waters. They trod 

 the threshing-floors of Judea. They were the flocks the 

 shepherds tended, who saw the risen star of Bethlehem. 



It is not, however, so generally considered that agriculture, 

 from the necessity of fixed habitations to which it gives rise, is 

 the foundation of our civilization. The permanent home which 

 agriculture establishes, marks the civilized man. With this 

 comes the stable social order, the civil polity, the sentiment of 

 country, the record of history, the gathering accumulations of 

 progress by successive generations, and the durable architec- 

 ture of religion and the State. No roving race could build 

 the Pyramids or the Parthenon. The ancient Greeks habitu- 

 ally contrasting their condition with that of the wandering 

 Scythians of the North, well knew the ground of their pre- 

 eminence, and venerated Demeter, the divine genius of Agri- 

 culture, as the founder of civilization. What wonder, then, 

 that on the days of her high festival, a people proud of their 

 beloved Athens, the sculptured city of ancient Grecian art, and 

 filled with the patriotism that fought at Marathon, should with 

 the greatest fervor of devotion, throng the precincts of her 

 temple, and with primal rites of sacrifice and stately pomp of 

 solemn ceremonies, honor her who was the mother of their 

 pride and joy ! 



This lofty plane of life the race has never left. And here 

 to-day, in the new world of the West, in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury of our Lord, beneath a roof dedicated to Christian wor- 

 ship, and mindful of our common country, we render hearty 



