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which, unfolding in their gigantic proportions, lifted him 

 lip, despite his defects of character, above the level of 

 princes and potentates, and made him world-renowned ; 

 and so he loved the farm through life, and at length re- 

 tired to its peaceful bosom to lay down his great head 

 grown weary, and died there. And, from the fresh 

 green fields and the sweet sylvan haunts of the farm, 

 breathing in the inspiring breeze and catching the wild 

 free notes of the woodland songsters, sprung our own 

 Whittier, the minstrel of freedom, the bard of humanity ! 

 For the power such men develope comes of their early 

 wrestling with the forces of nature,' and laboring to sub- 

 due this hard Northern earth. And it is the cheerful 

 labor, and the all embracing glory of the farmer's life, to 

 conquer and subdue nature, to bring its wild chaos into 

 smiling order, to civilize the savage waste, to make two 

 blades of grass grow where only one grew before, till 

 plenty take the place of want, and barrenness and deso- 

 lation give way to culture and beauty. And what de- 

 light to the heart of the husbandman to see the dry sand 

 hill covered Avith vines and fruit trees, and green with 

 the waving corn ! What joy and exultation to gaze on 

 the meadow, fdled a few short months ago with useless 

 alders and coarse sedge rotting in the stagnation of the 

 pestilent waters — now rejoicing with the nodding heads 

 of nutritious herds-grass, or rich with the luxuriance of 

 growing crops ; and all the work of his own hand, the 

 achievement of his own genius ! And in this is summed 

 up the labors and the glories of the farmer's life, the hus- 

 bandman's noble mission. The civilization and the cul- 

 ture of the earth ; the development of nature into order 

 and beauty ; the transformation of the world into an 

 Eden, a garden of loveliness and delight ; the bringing 

 back to man the ancient prophetic Paradise. 



