THE 



Devoted to Agriculture, Horticulture, and the Household Arts. 



Agriculture is the nursing mother of the Arts. 1 Tillage and Pasturage are the two breasts of 

 — Xenophon. j the State. — Sully. , 



FRANK. G. RUFFIN, Editor. F. G. RUFFIN & N. AUGUST, Prop'rs. 



Vol. XVII. RICHMOND, VA., FEBRUARY, 1857. No. 2. 



NEW HAMPSHIRE AND VIRGINIA. 



What a New England man really means 

 when he states anything unfavorable to his 

 own country, its inhabitants, or its social sys- 

 tem, it is not easy to divine ; for the moment 

 you repeat it after him, he fires up and defends 

 himself against himself, not often with the 

 best manners, and very rarely in the best tem- 

 per. This irascibility may proceed from what 

 outside barbarians fancy they have sometimes 

 observed in this "peculiar people," these Is- 

 raelites of latter days, to wit: an intense ex- 

 clusiveness of national feeling, and an as- 

 sumption of superiority in all things requir- 

 ing ability, intellect or energy, which com- 

 monly amounts to boastfulness, and often to 

 arrogance. 



Towards us of the South this feeling is 

 manifested, and this superiority is claimed 

 somewhat more offensively than towards the rest 

 of the world : and if, once in a while, in order to 

 revive our drooping spirits, we venture to draw 

 a parellel between any features of the different 

 systems of North and South, we are met at once, 

 especially if themselves have furnished the 

 materials of the comparison, by " slavery, " in 

 some of its aspects, as conclusive of the 

 question. This reproach is deemed not only 

 5 



the impregnable position of argument, but also 

 the most seemly vent for a bitterness which 

 seeks at once an outlet and a justification. 



It has twice been our ill-fortune thus to pro- 

 voke on the South the taunts of Mr. French of 

 New Hampshire, who is an associate editor of 

 the New England Farmer. Once, several 

 years ago, in an address of this gentleman in 

 Maine, he asked, " what are the duties which, 

 by general consent, devolve upon the wives of 

 respectable farmers, aye, and men of all clas- 

 ses" in New England ? and answered himself 

 by charging that the husbands there expected 

 their "wives to be at the same time cook and 

 chamber-maid, lady and serving-girl, nurse 

 and sempstress and governess, laundress and 

 dairy-maid," so that by "the sure decay of 

 strength and beauty and life" they are killed 

 at length " by slow consumption/' 



This address was accredited by the senior 

 editor as "one of the three best he had ever 

 seen;" and was supposed by us to have earned 

 this praise by its candour and philanthropy j 

 its other merits being quite moderate* We 

 innocently published it in order to assure our 

 Southern housewives that their condition was 

 not, by comparison, so unhappy as some of ihem 

 imagined. The very next number of the New 



