^^^^AlMli 







DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AU'D ITS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. XII. 



BOSTON, JUNE, 1860. 



NO. 6. 



NOURSE, EATON & TOLilAN, Pboprietoes 

 Office 34 ilEncuANis' Row. 



SIMON BROWN, EDITOR 



FRED'K nOLBROOK, ) Associate 

 HE.VRY F. FRENCH, Editors. 



CALENDAR FOR JUNE. 



Now is the high tide of the year, 

 AnJ whatever of life liath ebbed away 



Comes flooding bade with a ripply cheer. 

 Into every bare inlet and creek and bay. 



LOWELI. 



U N E — the very 

 name brings a pic- 

 ture before us — a 

 L picture to ■which 

 the most matter- 



/ oi-iact person is 



~ ' hardly indifferent. 

 The great, gaunt 

 trees, which groan- 

 ed and shrieked in 

 the blasts of win- 

 frx ter, and whose ten- 

 der leaves have 

 f looked chilled and 

 nipped in the east 

 Avinds of a north- 

 ern spring, each 

 one has now be- 

 come a "thing of 

 beauty," which 

 Mr. Keats says is 

 "a joy forever." 

 There is an old house — indeed, there are many 

 such — but we refer to that particular one which 

 now comes back to your memory. It may have 

 been a house of some pretensions when it was 

 new ; perhaps it heard the cannons of the Revo- 

 lution in the days of its youth ; but its "glory 

 has long since departed," and nothing now re- 

 mains to it but an air of antique respectability. 

 It has, too, an expression of melancholy, as if it 

 missed the master's hand — the master who was 

 carried over the threshold one pleasant au- 

 tumn day so long ago. As you passed by it, 

 last winter, it looked only a black, mournful pile 

 against the drifted snow. But look again, in this 

 pleasant month of June! The horse chestnut 



trees are covered with great green leaves and 

 beautiful blossoms, the elms look up again and 

 show themselves for Avhat they are — the finest of 

 all American forest trees — and the maple bends its 

 graceful head in the summer air. There are cin- 

 namon roses looking over the fence, and a sjTin- 

 ga which perfumes the air for rods around. But 

 the old house — what has come over it, this sunny 

 morning ? You see its tall chimneys, and catch 

 glimpses of its sombre hues through the trees, but 

 how picturesque, how home-like it seems — how 

 much more attractive than that smart, newly- 

 painted dwelling that stands near, whose green 

 blinds are the only verdant thing about it, unless 

 it be the man who set it there as a target for the 

 hot suns of July and August to shoot their arrows 

 at ! Nature knows how to beautify the most des- 

 olate spot, and although she sometimes makes a 

 sandy desert without tree or shrub, she never de- 

 signed it for human habitation. 



Last winter, the windows of our old house re- 

 minded one of the eye-holes in a skeleton's head ; 

 but now, as they are thrown open, through their 

 leafy screen, the people who sit at them seem as 

 if sitting in a bower of interlacing branches and 

 vines. 



Lest somebody should mistake the tenor of our 

 remarks, and compare us to that man Aladdin, 

 who preferred old lamps to new ones, we would ex- 

 plain that this is by no means the inference to be 

 drawn ; but this, namely, that if the charms of na- 

 ture can so beautify a musty old dwelling such as 

 we have described, what can they not be expect- 

 ed to do for a brand-new one ? 



Mr. Hawthorne does not, as an author, believe 

 in old houses — he has intimated as much in his 

 "House of the Seven Gables," and his "Marble 

 Faun," and it is ungenerous to demand that a 

 man's private habits shall conform to the senti- 

 ments he may think it beneficial to impress upon 

 the public, otherwise somebody might suggest an 

 incongi-uity between his known penchant for the 



