DEVOTED TO AGKICULTUHB AND ITS KINDilED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



YOL. XIII. 



BOSTON, MARCH, 18G1. 



NO. 3. 



NOURSE, EATON & TOLSIAN, Proprietors. cttv/toivt -D-DmiT-nT -c-nTrp^D FRED'K HOLTiROOK, ) Associate 



Office. ...34 Merchants' Ro\y. felMUJN iJKOWH, EDirOK. HEXRY F. FRENCH, ] Editors. 



SUGGESTED BY "MAHCH." 



"If now in beaded rows, drops deck the spray, 

 While Phcebus grants a momentary r?y, 

 Let but a cloud's broad shadow intervene, 

 And stiffened into gems the drops are seen, 

 And down the furrowed oak's broad southern side 

 Streams of dissolving rime no longer glide. 



Though night approaching, bids for rest prepare, 

 Still the Sail echoes throu;;h the frosty air, 

 Nor stops till shades of deepest darkness comes 

 Sending at length the weary laborer home." 



Bloomfield's Fanner's Boy. 



E\v of our 

 agricultural 

 friends, per- 

 haps, can say 

 that their in- 

 itiation into 

 the myste- 

 ries of farm- 

 work was al- 

 together at- 

 ij^' tractive, or 

 ,/ their experi- 

 ,,-te^ence of rural 

 '^ life, and the 

 routine of 

 domestic du- 

 ties, such as 

 to inspire 

 them with 

 any very viv- 

 id ideas of farming as a pursuit ; and this may 

 as safely be said of most of the other avocations 

 of life. Most boys have a constitutional horror 

 of soiled hands, and the employment of heaping 

 up stones in the stubble fields, weeding corn and 

 dropping potatoes, is of a nature to aggravate, 

 rather than to flatter this superfine taste. 



But where is the man — no matter what may be 

 his position or influence in society — who does 

 not look back upon the days spent upon the old 

 homestead, with feelings of mingled pleasure and 



regret ? Has after-life, with all its brilliant re- 

 alizations, furnished him with that calm and quiet 

 fullness of delight, which, without the lassitude 

 consequent upon satiety of the world's pleasures, 

 he tasted in the rural shades of his rural home ? 

 x\nd it is to that point of the heart and its affec- 

 tions that he turns in after years with feelings of' 

 the most fervent delight. 



The physical and moral training which he re- 

 ceived in that old homestead, prepared him for 

 the field of active labor in which he has since 

 been so profitably employed. While he has gone 

 on strengthening his resources by the acquisition 

 of new ideas, he has perpetually been reminded 

 of the advantages he enjoyed while under the dis- 

 cipline of teachers whose lessons were the les- 

 sons of experience, and whose schoolroom was 

 the field. 



We think it was M. I'Abbe Raynal who re- 

 marked that America had not produced a single 

 man of genius. From this imputation it was, 

 at the time, difficult to escape. But the case is 

 now diflPerent in its aspects. Our literature is 

 rapidly expanding and purifying itself, and has 

 already become a vital force, if not a principal 

 motor in our national mechanism. Men of tal- 

 ent and men of genius have graced its annals — 

 not the mere hot-house plants of 



"Those institutions in whose halls are hung 

 Armor of the invincible knights of old," 



but the noble, sun-matured, toil-hardened produc- 

 tions of the field — men whose childhood was fa- 

 miliar with the plow, the scythe and the wood- 

 man's axe, and who could leap the rainbow of the 

 brook, and "swim and reswira streams" in com- 

 panion with which the "broad Hellespont" of 

 Leander is but as a pool produced by a summer 

 shower. We are not, perhaps, so sensible of the 

 advantages we possess, as we should be. With 

 a literature ready-made to our hands, we have not 

 to contend with obstacles such as for a long time 



