ON THE MISTAKES OP CITIZENS IN COUNTRY LIFE. 125 



try life, that meadows do not give up their sweet incense, or corn- 

 fields wave their rich harvests without care, that "work-folks" are 

 often unfaithful, and oxen stubborn, even an hundred miles from the 

 smoke of towns, or the intrigues of great cities. 



Another, and a large class of those citizens, who expect too much 

 in the country, are those who find, to their astonishment, that the 

 country is dull. They really admire nature, and love rural life ; but, 

 though they are ashamed to confess it, they are " bored to death," 

 and leave the country in despair. 



This is a mistake which grows out of their want of knowledge 

 of themselves, and, we may add, of human nature generally. Man 

 is a social, as well as a reflective and devout being. He must have 

 friends to share his pleasures, to sympathize in his tastes, to enjoy 

 with him the delights of his home, or these become wearisome and 

 insipid. Cowper has well expressed the want of this large class, and 

 their suffering, when left wholly to themselves : 



" I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd, 

 How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude ! 

 But give me still a friend, in my retreat, 

 Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet. 



The mistake made by this class, is that of thinking only of the 

 beauty of the scenery where they propose to reside, and leaving out 

 of sight the equal charms of good society. To them, the latter, 

 both by nature and habit, is a necessity, not to be wholly waived for 

 converse of " babbling brooks." And since there are numberless 

 localities where one may choose a residence in a genial and agree- 

 able country neighborhood, the remedy for this species of discontent 

 is as plain as a pike-staff. One can scarcely expect friends to follow 

 one into country seclusion, if one will, for the sake of the picturesque, 

 settle on the banks of the Winipissiogee. These latter spots are for 

 poets, artists, naturalists ; men, between whom and nature there is 

 an intimacy of a wholly different kind, and who find in the struc- 

 ture of a moss or the flight of a water fowl, the text to a whole 

 volume of inspiration. 



The third class of the disappointed, consists of those who are 

 astonished at the cost of life in the country. They left town not only 



