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PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON CULTURE. 



THE French boast that their country possesses greater 

 advantages than any other for the successful culture of the 

 vine, and that for centuries her vineyards have been regarded 

 as one of the principal sources of her territorial riches, and 

 that the exportation of their produce has been the certain 

 means of making the balance of trade with foreign nations at 

 all times in her favour. If we banish from our recollection 

 the once luxuriant fields of now enervated Italy, and pass from 

 the recollection of the genial climes and bright sun of Spain 

 and Portugal, we shall doubtless be compelled to acquiesce 

 with the sons of France, so far as relates to the eastern hemi- 

 sphere, but when we recur to our own happy country, combin- 

 ing every variety of clime and soil, with the conscious know- 

 ledge that she is yet but in her infancy, and look forward with 

 the gaze of anxious hope to her high destiny, can we as Ame- 

 ricans fail to reply to that nation in her own language : 



Voila I'Amerique ta rival ! 



Too long indeed have the natural riches of our soil remained 

 subject to the bias of contracted vision, and dormant beneath 

 the eye of prejudice. Too long indeed have Americans listen- 

 ed to the counsel of strangers to their country and to its in- 

 terests, rather than seek for facts in the bosom of her grate- 

 ful soil, thereby allowing their own reason and intelligence to 

 be the dupe of foreign ignorance, envy and rivalry. " France," 

 says a French writer, (who seems more conversant with flowers 

 of rhetoric than with those of horticulture,) " possesses in her 

 vineyards mines of wealth, whose advantages are furnished by 

 natural causes which secure to her a superiority in this respect 

 which no other nation can dispute." Happily for ourselves 

 we live in an age and country in which the people are but 

 little prone to credit such exclusive possession of nature's gifts, 

 and it will create exceeding disappointment in all unprejudiced 

 minds, if the lapse of a few short years shall not place this 

 affected superiority of France among the fictions and delusion! 



