17 



prepares and adapts a man to any peculiar trade or pro- 

 fession. If this, the only true principle, should be 

 applied to society, what sudden and often laugliable 

 changes Avould take place in the occupations and positions 

 of men. Here is a toiling blacksmith, who would be- 

 come a counsellor, or a judge ; there a poor counsellor, who 

 would make a first rate blacksmith. The boy in the col- 

 lege, beating his dull brains over Latin and Greek, 

 Algebraic formulas and conic sections, which he can 

 never understand or make any use of, would be meta- 

 morphosed into a smart, alacrious hack driver, or an en- 

 terprising, useful express man. The good parson, droning 

 there to his dozing congregation, would make an excel- 

 lent farmer, a most scientific agriculturist, and do more 

 good to mankind in the advancement of agricultural 

 science in a season, than he would in the pulpit during 

 a lifetime. And no one thing has done so much towards 

 retarding the advancement of the science of agriculture ; 

 towards making poor farms and miserable farmers ; to- 

 wards degrading the glorious occupation of husbandry, 

 and making it mean and contemptible in times past, as a 

 want of hearty love and inclination for the fiirmer's life, 

 and a consequent want of fitness for its manly and noble 

 pursuits, especially in those who have been placed on a 

 farm by the mere accident of birth, while they would 

 rather have been born any where else. And it is mainly 

 by the introduction of new and more living, life-giving 

 elements — by the accession of intelligent, earnest men, 

 filled wdth the love and devotion to the cause, that the 

 science of culture is being quickened to a glorious pro- 

 gress, till at length it shall take the high and command- 

 ing position among the various professions and callings, 

 to which it rightfully belongs. 



Behold there the true cultivator ! How his soul revels 

 in farm and garden ! How his genius expands itself 



