20 



now covered and adorned by edifices of taste and 

 splendour, and crowded with monuments of civiliza- 

 tion. — So rapid and imperceptible therefore are the 

 improvements of the great age, that if we would pre- 

 serve around us at all the pristine charms of hill 

 and dale, of wild flowers and native forests, it must 

 be by horticulture and in our gardens. — For the 

 hammer and the noise of the busy muUitude, and the 

 axe of the emigrant, and the sweep of commerce, 

 and the sister arts, are onward with the velocity of 

 our rail roads, clearing the way and settling the 

 waste places, for more enduring power, and ex- 

 tended wealth than the woods and wilds of our 

 native soil can afford. 



Our national resources, too, physical and political; 

 and the giant strides of our people, already proclaim, 

 even beyond the Mississippi, the sway of civil insti- 

 tutions, and the glories of freedom : hurried before 

 their resistless march, the red man and his once 

 countless tribes, is flying from his hunting grounds 

 and council fires — and his lion heart and eagle eye 

 has cowered before the victorious arm of the white 

 man. 



Scarce two hundred, years have rolled away, since 

 the rock of Plymouth, and the heights of Jamestown 

 were pressed by pilgrims' feet, and consecrated to 

 human rights. — Now twenty-six commonwealths, 

 bounded by the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, 

 are before us, united by a common bond, and flour- 



