VOL,. XVIII. ■SO. 40. 



AND HORTICULTURAL REGIS '1£R 



335 



■ nfono. '• by the force of vegotation,"* is likciy 

 lUf- a bettor iiitroiliietion to a wide and stic- 

 _. -iful and profitable practice, llian to have spent 

 days and nij^lits and irmnlhs and years in stiidyint; 

 the hnman frame, in watching (he aspects and pro- 

 gress of diseases, and gatheiing Icnowledge and 

 skill in the painful and disgii.sting but benevolent 

 and useful offices of dissecting rooms and hospitals. 



Law is a profession full of study and labor, of 

 perplexing difficulties and subtleties, which are sore 

 entanglements to the oonscicnct ; busied, in too 

 many cases, about little else than the chicaneries 

 and vices a'nd tricks and crimes of the unprincipled 

 and profligate ; where a man sells liiniself to his 

 client — perhaps the greatest villain unhung — soul 

 and body; and whi-re, after he has coniuiitted him- 

 self to his cause, it must be his great business to 

 study what advantage he can take of his adversary ; 

 or to creep stealthily in the daik and see if his op- 

 ponent has left his garden gate open or his door 

 unlatched ; or if perchance he has dropt asleep on 

 Ithe edge of a precipice, that whether innocent or 

 'blameablej he may shove liini over: and then, if by 

 lany art or skill he can untie the net or break the 

 meshes of the snare in whcli his client, whose 

 name he knows is Legion, is caught, and set him 

 free again to prey upon society — why then he h^is 

 done only his duty ; if such a course, by any honest 

 rule of morals, can be dignified with the sacred 

 name of duty. 



What shall we say of theology, I mean sectarian 

 theology ; for a minister must be sectarian or parti- 

 san, or he will have few friends. Sectarian theolo- 

 gy is generally a muddy pool, where the deeper 

 one plunges the thicker it becomes, until perhaps 

 he loses himself in the bathos of metaphysical subtle- 

 ty and jargon. Here, if a man is .simple-hearted, 

 and frank and cheerful and playful, and does not 

 go about in the world with the face of one who has 

 just risen in his grave clothes, and when you offer 

 to shake hands with him, does not deem it iieceasii- 

 ry to prove his dignity by putting into your warm 

 grasp a bundle of icicles, people will say he is not 

 serious ; and when Sunday comes, before he can 

 preach, like an honest man, on righteousness, tem- 

 perance, or judgment to come, perhaps he must look 

 out of his window at the vane of his church and 

 see which way his people have determined the 

 wind shall blow that day ; or else, if he is not John 

 Rogersized, his crying children shall have no more 

 bread and milk from that magnahimou.s people. I 

 ask, what attractions has such a profession, thus 

 servilely dependent on popular caprice, likciy to 

 have with an honest and independent mind? 



What shall we say of politics as a profession .' — 

 a game full of uncertainties ; where to-day men 

 shout hoeinna, and to-morrow there is none so vile 

 as to do you reverence ; — where in {;encral all is as 

 heartless and hollow as heartless and hollow can 

 be ; where every man is for himself, or for the pub- 

 lic, if the public is for him, — and where, in tlie race 

 of competition, like shipwrecked sailors in a storm, 

 they will shove their own friends and companions 



"•The following is an inscription on a gravestone of a 

 man much esteemed by his neighbors, in Edgartown, 

 Mass , which shows that there is no limit to the eccen- 

 tricities of the Ituman ininU V\ e cannot say mucli for 

 the poetry : of tbe sentiment we say nothing. It was in- 

 scribed upon it by a direction in his will, and made indis- 

 pensable upon his heirs. 



" By the force of vegetation 



I was brought to life and action. 

 When life and action that shall cease 

 ] shall return to the same source." 



from the same floating fragment, if in any respect 

 they endanger or impede their own arrival at the 

 shore; where men, however honorable their purpo- 

 ses, and liigh-minded and upright their conduct, 

 must come before the public as a target to be pelt- 

 ed and shot at with missiles as vile as those who 

 send them ; and where if you break or slip the 

 collar of party, though it may chafe your neck so 

 bad^', that "the iron enters into your soul," then 

 the hounds are unleashed upon you, and will hunt 

 yi.u to the death without favor or pity. 



The profession of agiiculture bears vith it none 

 of these evils. If there lives the man who may eat 

 his bread with a conscience nt peace with man and 

 God, it is the n^an who has brought that bread out 

 of the earth by his own honest industry. It is can- 

 kered by no fraud — it is wet by no tears — it is 

 stained with no blood. The profe>-sion of agricul- 

 ture brings with it none of those agitating passions 

 which are fatal to peace, to satisfaction, or to the 

 enjoya ent even of the common blessings of life. 

 ■| he profession of agriculture presents few tempta- 

 tions to vicious indulgence, ond removes a man 

 from those seductions by which too often in other 

 situations, health and character and peace are sac- 

 riHced. 'I'ho profession of agriculture is favorable 

 to health, and to long life, to habits of industry and 

 frugality, temperance and self-government, to the- 

 cultivation of the domestic virtues, and to the calm 

 and delicious enjoyment of domestic pleasures in 

 all their purity and fulness. 



Allow me to speak of agriculture in the nc.\t 

 place in its aspect of utility and beneficence. In 

 this respect, as far as its power extends, no profes- 

 sion goes before it. The man who does what he 

 can to multiply the productions of the earth, labors 

 most efTeotually at the advancement of the general 

 welfare and comfort. The more bread, the more 

 meat, the more wool, the more lla-x are raised, so 

 arc the necessary supplies of life cheapened, and 

 the more comfortably are the poor fed and clothed 

 and lodged and sheltered ; the more are early mar- 

 riages promoted ; and then the more are the ties of 

 social life strengthened; the more are the domes- 

 tie virtues, the virtues of all others most conducive 

 to man's happiness and his moral improvement, 

 formed and encouraged. 



What a means of imparting pleasure is an im- 

 proved agriculture. How many charming exam- 

 ples present themselves among us of improvements 

 which every eye gazes upon with unmingled de- 

 light. Let a man according to his power, take his 

 ten, his twenty, his f^fty, his hundred acres. Let 

 him comb the hair and wash the face of nature.— 

 Let him subdue, clear, cultivate, enrich, embellish 

 it.. Let him smooth the rough places, and drain the 

 wet, and fill up the sunken, and enrich the barren. 

 Let him enclose it with a neat and substantial fence. 

 Let him line its borders and roadsides with orna- 

 mental trees, and let him stock every proper part 

 with vines and fruits. Let his fields and meadows 

 wave with their golden harvests, andle-t his liiHs be 

 covered with the herds, rejoicing in the fulness 

 with which his labors, under the blessing of God, 

 have spread their table, and who, when he goes a- 

 mong them, hasten from all sides to meet him, and 

 gratefully recognise- in him' a friend and benefactor, 

 and lick the hand which is accustomed to feed and 

 fondle them. Here now let us see the neatly paint- 

 ed cottage with its green shades, its piazzas Irellised 

 with vines, its sides covered with the spreading elm 

 or the flowering acacia, with here and there the 

 beautiful fir to shade the picture, and the mountain 



ash, showing its rich cliisters of crimson Iruitamong 

 the deep green foliage, and the smooth and verdant 

 lawn, stretching ils soft and beautiful carpet in the 

 front view ; then look again, and see the parents at 

 the close o day, resting from their labors and en- 

 joying the calm evening, with the pledges of mutual 

 and dev(.ted affection rioting before them in all the 

 buoyancy of youthful innocence and delight; and 

 if at such an hour a.-i this, yon can hear tlie liymn 

 of grateful praise rising from this humble abode of 

 peace and love, and it.< charming notes mingling 

 with the music of the gurgling brook that flows near 

 by, or broken by tile occasional shrill and hollow 

 notes of the gentle and fearless birds; which deem 

 themselves loving members of this loving house- 

 hold, — if then, whether traveller or sojourner, your 

 heart is not touched with this charming and not unu- 

 sual picture of rural felicity, cease to call yourself 

 a man. If still yon sigh for the bustle and the 

 noise and the confinement of the city, with its im- 

 pure water, with its offensive odors, with its despi- 

 cable affi'ctations, with its heartless formalities, 

 with its violent e.xciteinents, with its midnight fes- 

 tivities,, wkh its utter destitution of sympathy, with 

 its low estimate of human life, with its squalid pov- 

 erty, its multiplied forms of wretchedness and crime, 

 its pride, its vanity, its ambition, its pomp, its ser- 

 vility ; tlien go back into your gilded prison-house, 

 and to pleasures which an uncorrnpted and refined 

 taste, accustomed to drink in the free air of heaven, 

 and to appreciate its freshness, its purity and its- 

 salubrity, will find no occasicm to covet or envy. 

 The man;, who by his cultivation and good husband- 

 ry presei*ts such a picture to the passer-by, shall he 

 not be called a benefactor to the community ? Has 

 he not done much to improve and bless society by 

 his example ? Has he not built a monument to his 

 own honor, more eloquent than the sculptured mar- 

 hie i- 



I have already anticipated, in some measure, 

 much that I designed to say of agriculture as mat- 

 ter of taste and of science ; and of the profession of 

 agriculture in its moral and religious character. — 

 As matter of science and as concerned directly with 

 the profoundest intellectual investigations, I know 

 few pursuits of practical life that should take a 

 higher rank. Botany, geology, chemistry, natural 

 philosophy, in all its departments, vegetable physi- 

 ology, comparative anatomy, the propagation of 

 fruits, the improvement of plants and animal.^, the 

 changes of the nature of plants by art, the habits of 

 animals, of birds, insects and reptiles, the influen- 

 ces of meteorological changes, the mechanical con- 

 struction of implements of husbandry, the influence 

 of other arts upon the rural arts, the political econo- 

 my of agriculture, agricultural education, agricul- 

 tural, improvement, are all matters of science, all 

 having a direct bearing upon, and an immediate 

 affinity with agriculture.. The art must remain in 

 its infancy until all these: subjects of science are 

 studied and applied in their connexion with it. 



As matter of taste agriculture presents scope and 

 demand for the exercise of the most refined senti- 

 ments. The farm offers a field for the embellish- 

 ments of taste in the construction of buildings, in 

 the laying out of grounds, in the leading of water 

 courses, in the arrangement of the garden, in the 

 planting of trees, in the cultivation of flowers, so as 

 to combine and embody the highest eflibrts of the 

 graphic art. As yet ornamental farming has made 

 little progress among us. In Europe it has be- 

 come a study and has engaged the attention of 

 some of the brightest intellects. Your own county 



