249 
Lis unyielding Roman virtue not in the senate, or the gay, dissipated 
city, but at the plow. The very air of the luxuriant grove, and the de¬ 
corated garden is favorable to the cultivation of virtue. It brightens th© 
eye and unseals and invigorates all the senses, and prepares them to 
drink in the perfumes of shrubs and flowers, and the harmonious strains 
which float from the great orchestra of nature. Indeed there is health, 
and gladness and devotion in the sweet, bracing,, rural air. It imparts 
keenness to the perceptions, and thus intensifies the soul’s appreciation of 
the works and wonders of creative love. In this respect the horticulturist 
is surrounded by far more propitious moral influences, than the merchant 
in the crowded mart. The former has one of the great volumes of Divine 
Revelation open before him continually. He sees the wisdom of Deity, 
in the curious structure of every plant—he sees the exquisite taste of the 
infinite Artist in the more than velvet texture of the blooming cactus, in 
the glittering gold that tips the insects wing, and in the inimitable pencil¬ 
ing which decks the garden with all the brilliant coloring of the rainbow; 
and in the wise adaptation of nature, in all her varieties to minister to 
human happiness, he beholds the clearest evidence of Divine goodness. 
Here is an easy ascent from nature’s great gallery of the fine arts, up to 
the glorious mind who spoke all nature into being. But the anxious 
tradesman, in the midst of the noise, the ceaseless occupancy and confu¬ 
sion of the great emporiums of commerce, is removed from all these hal¬ 
lowed influences of rural nature. She is a sealed volume to him, almost 
as completely, as God’s inspired Revelation is to the incurable skeptic, 
lie sees none of her beauties, he catches none of her delightful melodies, 
he feels none of her inspiration, and his heart is refined and exalted by 
none of her beautiful emblems which point upward “ to those everlasting 
gardens, where angels sing, and seraphs are the wardens.” The history of 
the world has shown, that man’s confinement in these great marts of busi¬ 
ness, and his seclusion from the rural charms of the country, have been 
unfavorable to his virtue. There have always been many noble exceptions 
to this statement. But the virtue of the masses, in our cities, will not 
bear comparison with the virtue of those rural districts where our intelli¬ 
gent and enterprising yeomanry are at home in the bosom of nature. 
This great disparity between the influence of the city and the country, 
upon the advancement of public virtue, will be in a measure removed by 
