widening the resources of new States, which, instead of abstracting from the wealth and safety of the old, afford them a prop and means of recovery, when the convulsions of commerce may have shattered their strength and impaired their resources.

It cannot fail to be seen that in these peculiar features of our country the Great Disposer of events has rendered agriculture a leading and prominent employment in America, as he formerly made it in Palestine. THERE he established this order of things by express laws. HERE he has done it by the decree and the movements of his Providence. We cannot change it if we would; and if we rightly understand our own welfare as a free nation, we would not change it if we could. The wisest and greatest of philanthropists and statesmen abroad see its results, and are now taking lessons of wisdom for themselves from our experience. To quote once more from one of them who may well be ranked among the most able men of our age;

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America," he has recently said, “America seems to have been reserved as a land of experiment for these latter times, a vast field in which all the lessons essential to the prosperity of Europe may be exhibited to the eye of nations. The first lesson is given in its agriculture. The husbandmen of America are shown to be the true strength of the country;

it is the culture of the earth that the State falls back upon in all its difficulties. All the showy expedients for fabricating wealth out of nothing, which are so familiar in Europe, are there proved to be fallacies on the largest scale of demonstration. Trading without capital, and currency without specie, are the two grand charlatanries of the world. America has tried them both, and again and again has seen her thousands utterly ruined. Yet all this passes by; the land again brings forth her produce; the strong husbandman props up the shattered merchant -the State, like a sickly patient, recovers by the diet of the farm. The country has such a mine of wealth in the soil, such facilities for recovery in the plough and the spade, such endless storehouses of national wealth in the forest, the prairie, and the mountain, that the commercial ruin is no more felt than the peasant feels the mouldering of the leaves which fell in the last autumn, and which are at the moment preparing a new fertility for the soil."

The picture can hardly be said to be too highly colored. It recals to our minds occasions of commer

* In some of the preceding paragraphs I have used the language of distinguished writers abroad, the more freely in order to show that these views respecting the resources and prospects of America are not confined to Americans. The estimate of our country by statesmen in Europe has been greatly and justly changed within the last few years.

cial distress which are of too frequent occurrence; and when we look back to the times in which we have seen fortunes wrecked, hearts broken; and sometimes honesty violated, honor lost, and the grave left as the only hiding place from the storm; we would raise the voice of warning to the youth of our country against the too prevalent desire for rushing into the marts of commerce, and neglecting, or undervaluing the noble occupation of tilling the earth. Ardent haste is the attribute of youth, whether it be in a young man or in a young nation; and the "haste to become rich" by a successful adventure that would accomplish all in a day, and not by the patient labor of a life, is the besetting sin of many in our youthful nation. It leads them too often to look on the labors of husbandry as tame, spiritless and unpromising; and to rush with inconsiderate ambition into our large cities, which have often proved a vast Maelstrom to the hopes and the lives of those who would have met with a different end had they called their energies into action in a different sphere.

As a remedy for this too prevalent tendency, let us ask, have the public authorities of the land done their duty to put honor on agriculture, and to render it attractive as an employment leading to both profit and distinction? Although we have a soil of such

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variety and richness, that it might reward the hand of industry with every product that can minister to health or comfort, its fertility has never been fairly tested. Our experiments are yet merely on the surface. The wealth that lies beneath remains to be explored and developed; and to accomplish this great end adequately and successfully, we need something more than the industry of individuals. We need instruction in agriculture as a profession. We need agricultural schools or colleges, to teach how science can be applied to develope and improve the riches of the earth. Every State in the nation should found and endow them either as independent and separate institutions, or as distinct departments of institutions already existing. They would scatter their benefits broadcast over the land, adding to the public wealth, and giving to the agriculturist his share in the improved intelligence of our day. He is now often left to work in the dark, to spend labor in vain which adequate instruction would enable him to render doubly available. It is due also to science that she should now have an opportunity both to vindicate her claims to public favor and to redeem lost time. In former ages of the world she confined herself to the cloister. She seemed to fear that her dignity and delicacy would suffer by allowing the sweet air of the fields to breathe upon her

cheek, or by lending her aid to any of the practical pursuits of life. She has become wearied of an existence both sickly and useless; and now comes forth and goes about doing good, gaining strength and brightness from her active labors. She has given skill and success to the mechanic, the manufacturer, and the mariner; and she waits to pour her wealth of knowledge into the ear of the husbandman, to lessen the weight of his toil, and yet give him a richer harvest. Little as she has yet been allowed to do for him, compared with her power and her will to serve him, she has already so improved his implements that he can accomplish in an hour an amount of service that would once have consumed whole days. She has discovered to him mines of wealth in what he once considered as wastes and blemishes on the earth. She has taught him that the marsh once dreaded as a source of disease and suffering to himself, may be converted into the means of fertilizing his fields; and that much of what he once labored to cast away as refuse and loss, are his best sources of gain, the means which nature provides for the restoration of her own exhausted energies. Did we only understand the wise economy of the Creator throughout the whole of his works, we would see how carefully he has framed his laws to gather up the "fragments that nothing be lost."