INFLUENCE OF HORTICULTURE. 15 



" At first sight, there is something surprising in this strange un- 

 rest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance. The 

 spectacle itself is, however, as old as the world. The novelty is to 

 see a whole people furnish an exemplification of it. 



" In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter 

 years in, and sells it before the roof is on ; he brings a field into 

 tillage, and leave other men to gather the crops ; he embraces a 

 profession, and gives it up ; he settles in a place, which he soon 

 after leaves, in order to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If 

 his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into 

 the vortex of politics ; and if at the end of a year of unremitting 

 labor, he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls 

 him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel 

 fifteen hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his happiness." 



Much as we admire the energy of our people, we value no less 

 the love of order, the obedience to law, the security and repose of 

 society, the love of home, and the partiality to localities endeared 

 by birth or association, of which it is in some degree the antagonist. 

 And we are therefore deeply convinced that whatever tends, without 

 checking due energy of character, but to develope along with it 

 certain virtues that will keep it within due bounds, may be looked 

 upon as a boon to the nation. 



Now the difference between the son of Ishmael, who lives in 

 tents, and that man who has the strongest attachment to the home 

 of his fathers, is, in the beginning, one mainly of outward circum- 

 stances. He whose sole property is a tent and a camel, whose ties 

 to one spot are no stronger than the cords which confine his habita- 

 tion to the sandy floor of the desert, who can break up his encamp- 

 ment at an hour's notice, and choose a new and equally agreeable 

 site, fifty miles distant, the next day such a person is very little 

 likely to become much more strongly attached to any one spot of 

 earth than another. 



The condition of a western emigrant is not greatly dissimilar. 

 That long covered wagon, which is the Noah's ark of his preserva- 

 tion, is also the concrete essence of house and home to him. He 

 emigrates, he " squats," he " locates," but before he can be fairly 

 said to have a fixed home, the spirit of unrest besets him ; he sells 



