DEVOTED TO AGRICULTimE AWD ITS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. XIIL 



BOSTON, JUNE, 1861. 



NO. 6. 



NOT:rsE, EATOX & TOLMAX, Proprietors. cTivyrmw tj-Dmitrw T.■nT'T'/^o FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) Associate 



Oi'*-i0i:....34 ilERCHANTd' liow. SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. HEXRY F. FRENCH; j Editors. 



THOUGHTS FOR JUNE, 



Dost then the green earth teem with gladness? 

 Has Nature dropt her robe of sadness? 

 Do the swains pipe ; — the floclis rejoice j 

 The mountains echo Bacchus' voice ; — 

 The mariners their sails unloose ; 

 The bees distil their lusciousjuice ? 

 IIi3 Spring inspired the warbling throng? 

 — And can't the poet make a song ? 



MELiiciAaoRS Sfrinq. 



E think the bard 

 scarcely needs an 

 apology for his 

 strains, at this 

 most glorious and 

 , jubilant season of 

 the year. It is 

 true, the bard 

 whose language 

 we have quoted 

 above, breathed 

 his song on the 

 plains of Syria, where 

 spring comes with a 

 more elastic step than 

 she comes to us in our 

 northern home on the 

 Atlantic slope of our 

 comparatively newly 

 discovered continent; 

 but her smiles are no 

 because the sunny days come 

 slowly, alternating with storms and tempests, and 

 the fair June lingers, as it were, tardily in the 

 lap of May. Flowers would not possess half 

 their sweetness, were it not for their frail and 

 perishing nature. The love of the beautiful is 

 inherent in our nature. It is this which causes 

 us, as children, to delight in the varying colors 

 of the soap bubble, and its buoyancy as it floats 

 on the surface of the stream, beautiful even as it 

 is evanescent. And how often have we, the wis- 

 est of us, bowed in adoring homage before a 



less exhilarating 



lovely face, or a faultless figure, and felt that it 

 was for the appreciation of such fascinating and 

 wondrous developments of loveliness, that our 

 most noble faculties were conferred upon us by 

 Him whose hand dispenses goodness, and who 

 formed us for a life of usefulness, as well as for 

 happiness and delight. 



When we look out upon the wide world, and! 

 permit our gaze to rest upon the great mass of ' 

 varied and ever varying life that pulsates without 

 the narrow circle of our own selfish interests, we 

 are often inclined to doubt whether, in the exorbi- 

 tance of our own self-love, we have not over- 

 looked, or neglected, more important duties than: 

 we have performed. From that region, there of- 

 ten comes to us a voice of upbraiding, which 

 makes itself heard, and which recalls us to our- 

 selves with an awakening sense of our obliga- 

 tions, and of the inhumanity, if not of the actual 

 criminality of longer disregarding them ! 



At such a moment, under the twilight skies of 

 the radiant and odorous June, 



"The friendships old and the early loves 

 Come back with the Sabbath sound of doves 

 In quiet neighborhoods," — 



causing us to realize that it was not all a dream 

 — an illusion of the senses, where the heroine of 

 "Jane Eyre" — one of the most exquisitely con- 

 ceived and beautifully executed things in mod- 

 ern literature — seemed to recognize the vision of ' 

 "Rochester," calling to her from the mysterious ; 

 darkness of night, and reminding her of much . 

 that her selfishness counselled her to forget. A 

 man is never more a man, than when he bares 

 his heart to the sweet and gentle influences of 

 nature ; never more truly religious, or more com- 

 pletely happy, than when, by extending the limits 

 of his own little world of self, he embraces with- 

 in its circumference a portion of the world with- 

 out. This is the act of philanthropy — of that 

 kindly charity which "hopeth all things," and is 



