ADDRESS. 



As I present myself at a farmers' festival, to address an 

 assembly of husbandmen, my position reminds me of a story, 

 familiar to all school-boys in those less-enlightened, but not 

 less happy days, when Rollin and Goldsmith were held to be 

 good authority in matters of Grecian history. The Spartans — 

 so ran the tale — at a certain period in their career, seemed to 

 have lost the prowess and prestige which had so long made 

 them to be dreaded as the fighting game-cocks of Greece,^ 

 having suffered repeated defeat at the hands of the great Mes- 

 senian, Aristomenes. In this emergency, they so far humbled 

 themselves as to beg their great hereditary rival to send them 

 a general who might once more lead them to victory. At first, 

 they must have regarded the prompt response of Athens, as 

 nothing more nor less than a grim, practical joke ; — for she 

 sent them not a Themistocles — not, as in later days, a 

 Kimon — but only a poor, limping schoolmaster. Tyrtajus, 

 however, was more than a mere pedagogue — and it was not 

 long before the men of the Eurotas, roused by his inspirino* 

 ■words, and marching to his patriotic melodies, with the 



