14 HORTICULTURE. 



empires ; which drives the emigrant's wagon across vast sandy de- 

 serts to California, and over Rocky Mountains to Oregon and the 

 Pacific ; which builds up a great State like Ohio in 30 years, so 

 populous, civilized and productive, that the bare recital of its growth 

 sounds like a genuine miracle to European ears f and which over- 

 runs and takes possession of a whole empire, like that of Mexico, 

 while the cabinets of old monarchies are debating whether or not it 

 is necessary to interfere and restore the balance of power in the new 

 world as in the old. 



This is the grand and exciting side of the picture. Turn it in an- 

 other light, and study it, and the effect is by no means so agreeable 

 to the reflective mind. The spirit of unrest, followed iato the bosom 

 of society, makes of man a feverish being, in whose Tantalus' cup 

 repose is the unattainable drop. Unable to take root any where, he 

 leads, socially and physically, the uncertain life of a tree transplanted 

 from place to place, and shifted to a different soil every season. 



It has been shrewdly said that what qualities we do not possess, 

 are always in our mouths. Our countrymen, it seems to us, are 

 fonder of no one Anglo-Saxon word than the term settle* It was 

 the great object of our forefathers to find a proper spot to settle. 

 Every year, large numbers of our population from the older States 

 go west to settle ; while those already west, pull up, with a kind of 

 desperate joy, their yet new-set stakes, and go farther west to settle 

 again. So truly national is the word, that all the business of the 

 country, from State debts to the products of a " truck farm," are 

 not satisfactorily adjusted till they are " settled ; " and no sooner is a 

 passenger fairly on board one of our river steamers, than he is 

 politely and emphatically invited by a sable representative of its 

 executive power, to " call at the captain's office and settle ! " 



Yet, as a people, we are never settled. It is one of the first 

 points that strikes a citizen of the old world, where something of 

 the dignity of repose, as well as the value of action, enters into their 

 ideal of life. De Tocqueville says, in speaking of our national 

 trait : 



* Anglo-Saxon sath-lian, from the verb settan, to set, to cease from mo- 

 tion, to fix a dwelling-place, to repose, etc. 



