often much stinted in ready money. Yet their risks generally affect their income without endangering their principal; and herein they are more favored than merchants, whom they are so tempted to envy, since the merchant risks principal and income too, and most of the class who trade in our great towns and cities seem to be utterly wrecked every ten or twenty years. It is certainly a vast thing to have a sure home and daily bread, and opportunity to work and to train up a family where habits are simple and hard times are more tolerable, because hardships may be borne without exposure, and the meddlesome and artificial world is not looking on to see and tell what we eat and drink and wear. So important is it for a man to be sure of having a snug household of his own to fall back upon in dark days, that it is well for every prosperous man to own at least a cottage and a few acres in the country beyond all risks of business, and to settle it on his family, in addition to a life-insurance sufficient to keep soul and body together, in case of his being ruined by a financial crisis, or taken away without settling up his affairs.

called to exercise a wholesome control. Clearly, then, if he enters at all earnestly into his opportunities, he will be a man of varied force, and his right hand should have as much strength and cunning as any other man's.

What the farmer ought to be as a thinker or intellectual man, it would take much time to show with any tolerable fullness, so broad are the pursuits, so various are the labors, and so different the types of native character presented. Yet one or two points are sufficiently distinct to be positively noted, and briefly too. He certainly is led by his business to be decidedly a matter-of-fact person; and no man, who sees every day that bread and all wealth come out of the ground by hard and constant day's work, can very easily become a visionary. Undoubtedly much of the sound common sense that rules the thought and common life of this country comes from the practical judgment of our agricultural population, among whom the males over fifteen years of age are more numerous than all other classes of laborers combined, and make up nearly one-half of the entire people. The farmer is literally led to be Health is more important even than substance, a man of solid understanding, for he stands on the and the farmer is in the way to secure substantial solid ground, and does not expect things to grow strength as well as property. His calling is the without having some root there; being in this rehealthiest, as the official returns abundantly and spect unlike the frequent kind of theorists, who universally show. The reason, too, is as obvious, think that the world lives upon words and air, and as his out-door exercise, regular labor, frequent rid- a scheme may be done as easily as said. Especially ing, and sufficient fare show. He is lucky enough in politics does his characteristic realism appear; and never generally to have discovered that he has any we may well rejoice that the conservatism of the nerves or organs of digestion, and he needs no ano-rural districts has saved the nation from the grasp dynes to put him to sleep. When he combines, as of monopolists and the madness of radicals. He he often does, the manly and skillful sports with his does not believe, as so many traders and manufaclabor, his health has a high quality as well as rud-turers do, that the wealth of a nation is measured dy fullness, and with his rod, or oar, or gun he learns by the extent of its non-intercourse with other naa gentle courage that does much to soften and refine tions, and that it is best to give more to a native his massive force, and make him a welcome compan- for a poor article than to pay less to a foreigner ion to his more cultivated neighbors of the book, or for a good article; and not desiring to have any the sword, or the ledger. There is something, how- bounty paid him on his produce, he generally sees ever, in his habitual occupations that gives him a little wisdom in the high tariffs that pretend to procertain fineness of touch as well as force of muscle. tect other forms of labor, and tend to raise the price He must hold the plow and wield the spade, and so of his purchases in the stores of the cities and towns. also must he handle the sickle and the pruning- He is not, moreover, tempted to fall in with the knife; and in this and many other mechanical ap-assuming radicals who talk as if the world must be pliances he finds room for the use of much manual skill, and may indeed be readily something of a carpenter, locksmith, and cabinet-maker. No man is in a position to have more versatility of hand; and the farmer is very much like the sailor in being a Jack at all trades with his farm, as one field of labor which Jack with all his supple fingers can not get hold of while at sea.

turned upside-down, and nothing can go right without their fussy interposition. He sees that while he plants and tills the soil God gives the increase, and generally waters and warms it too. He is for letting things alone when they are best let alone; and hence it is that our farming class belong so generally to the better order of democracy, that leaves the people as far as possible to themselves, and assigns only as much power to the central, or federal, authority as is required to keep the nation one and

His strength not only thus joins with dexterity, but tends also to a certain command which is above brute bulk as it is above effeminate ease and senti-powerful. He believes in a man's taking care of mentalism. The farmer's mind tends strongly to the hand, and he is obliged constantly to make his mark upon solid material and to guide living forces. He is not a dreamer, but by eminence a doer, and he has direct dominion over the field and the beasts; and thus the best specimens of the vocation have in their bearing a certain princely quality of command. The old Roman gentleman was of necessity a horseman; and every good farmer is of the equestrian order by owning a good horse, and winning from him not only pleasant rides and profitable work, but something of the air noble that comes from ruling a powerful creature in a worthy spirit. Sometimes the same spirit goes out in the mastery of unruly men; and the lord of the soil, of the old times or the new, has servants and laborers under him over whom he is

himself without being interfered with by official
dictation; and precisely therefore he is a firm advo-
cate for a strong government in the State and the
nation that carries out the local and national law,
and so secures to each citizen the largest liberty in
the most regulated order. He uses his common
sense, too, in his ideas of reform; and knows well
that the great want is not of more imposing theories,
but of more judicious and effective measures.
stantly applying actual powers to actual objects, he
judges of all schemes from this point of view; and
when men talk of improving the farms of the coun-
try, or enlarging the liberty of laborers, whether bond
or free, he thinks little of high-sounding professions,
and regards it as about as reasonable to vote his
land to be twice as fertile and the whole country

Con

twice as productive because Liebig says it ought to be so, as to suppose that a million of rude hinds can rise to the state of civilized liberty merely by voting or proclaiming them free. He asks how the thing is to be done; and he knows full well that liberty is not merely a condition, but a quality; and that a man, like a child, is not free by being called so, or by being turned adrift into the world. Freedom is the gift, not of rude nature, but of civilized society; and any rustic knows that to be turned out of doors to herd with cattle, and be beset by wolves or savages, is exchanging a certain form of law and order for a fearful tyranny. Lover of liberty, he is a lover of order; and conscious of being the independent owner of his own soil, he knows that he holds it firmly under public law, and that every title-deed is the pledge of his citizenship, and should be the seal of his loyalty.

constantly yearning for something more; and they find the rivers, trees, and stars-nay, even the birds, the bees, and the cattle, very unsatisfactory companions as the sole dependence. Hence the need of positive religion, with its Gospel and Church; hence the fact that faith is little likely to lose its strongholds among our valleys and mountains, and the homesteads and barns are never long far distant from the spire that crowns their wealth and points their aspiration.

On the whole, we may safely affirm that country life enables a thoughtful man to discern very well the various kinds of substances and powers that combine to make up the universe, and to save him from the follies of visionaries who fail to see the substances, and of the materialists who lose sight of the motive and vital powers. If there be any defect in the school in which he is a learner, it comes from the dearth of human society, and the absence of the complex social organization and humanizing influences that are found in large towns and cities. True, indeed, where men much congregate, folly and vice abound, and so, too, wisdom and virtue there centre, and we are obliged to say in truth that the best social powers centre in the choice circles and improved institutions of our towns and cities. The farmer will at once confess that he misses the stores,

Yet, while no visionary, he is no materialist nor worshiper of the clod of the valley; no denier of the Spirit of God that giveth understanding. He looks constantly upon the earth and knows that to dust all of its growth, and man with the rest, must return. But he sees in the earth and above it the constant play of mysterious spiritual forces; and in the lightning, the moving planets, in vegetative and animal vitality, and in human thought and will, he discovers the presence of powers that can not be ex-markets, schools, and arts of the city, but he hardly plained by any theory of matter and motion. He is obliged to note the different planes as well as the different amounts of things and their forces, and to see the majestic scale of being which rises from the crystal which shines at his feet to the light that flashes from the human eye with the ray that emanates from the Eternal Mind, and appears in every living thing, from the opening flower to the beating heart and the rational soul. He is thus something of a poet as well as a philosopher; and in Shakspeare as well as Bacon the sagacious farmer finds many a simile or maxim that comes home to him more than to any closet student, and answers well to the play of his own observation and the thought of his own mind. He likes best the books that are based upon facts; and although ready to meditate upon the causes of things, and rarely willing to be content with facts without ascending to principles or defining powers, he is more fond of the method of observation and inference than that of theory and deduction. Yet we know that many farmers are keen metaphysicians, and such books as "Edwards on the Will and the Affections" hold a place in our rural libraries such as Shakspeare or Milton might covet. But Edwards, in his way, was a mighty realist; and metaphysician as he was, he was mainly a student of Nature and the Bible, and with these manuals and the light within his own soul, he wrote his books, so marvelous for gentle charity, lowly trust, inward illumination, as well as fearful denunciations. He did all that he could to put the life of the natural world and the Bible into the most terrible of all creeds, and many were won by the power of his grasp who shrank from the motto of his standard. One cause of the fondness of farmers for such writers as affirm a positive spiritual faith, lies in the insufficiency of merely natural religion to meet their wants, or the religion that is based upon the observation of visible nature; for nothing is clearer than that while sentimental maidens and smoking students, who see little more of nature than a chance nosegay or a stray cow, are ready to call the light of nature enough for their wants and fellowship, they who live habitually in the country are

knows how much he loses in the absence of the unconscious influence that comes from the courteous manners, elevating conversation, and refined culture of the best society. He may have specimens of this in his neighborhood, or may fall in with it in his visits in town; yet one of his first dangers comes from want of the sympathy and incentives flowing from habitual associates of the right stamp. He is tempted to be slovenly in dress, manners, and speech, and live as if it were of little importance how he lives so long as he breaks no moral law and parts with no essential comfort. Hence the frequent absence of good taste and even of common decency in many country places. The sacrifice of the beautiful to the economical, even to the thrusting of the pig-pen and dung-heap into the eyes and nose of the family, and the desertion of the whole house for the shelter of the kitchen and the fumes of the pot and the gridiron. The rules of good-breeding suffer sometimes as much as the laws of taste, and the conversation and garb are as rough as the furniture and aspect are unseemly. A hard selfishness is apt sometimes to be the spirit of the family; and if they agree together tolerably, they may live as if they thought that there were nobody worth caring much for outside their own doors. The isolation of position may tempt isolation of feeling, and the abandonment of the great human fellowship for the imperious sway of private thrift and personal appetites. Yet every generous nature relucts from such perversion, and the very dangers of a comparatively lonely position will impel a true man to take especial pains to resist them, and to win by deliberate effort the advantages that other men have as a matter of course. Hence the good farmer will bring out as much as possible the gifts and powers and graces of his own family, and will try to cultivate the best society in his reach, and to use every fair opportunity of associating with superior men in the interchange of business, and in the pursuit particularly of rural interests and patriotic, literary, and religious objects. He may find great help among his own children, and a half dozen bright girls and boys of various capacities and attainments will do much to

of supplying the defects of an earlier day by adding the conveniences of his own.

So if the loiterer upon the twilight beach should reflect that Baia was not better, even in its watering-place way, than Newport-if he should feel no envy of that older day—if he should remember how wanton and wicked was all that imperial luxury— if he should consider that although almond-trees and aloes and oleanders do not grow along the shore of Rhode Island, yet that, on the other hand, the Mediterranean is but a tideless lake, and that on the beach he treads he breathes the strong salt breath of the Atlantic, the philosopher may go home to tea satisfied with his own century and his own country.

what he wrote and sent to the Magazine would be fairly treated and considered, must have been peculiarly gratifying to the Editor by trebling and quadrupling his work, "as if any editor were not overwhelmed by the manuscripts which are sent to him without solicitation."

Let the Easy Chair, then, modify the letter. Good brethren of the quill, you will easily believe that most of what we all write is not worth reading; and when we add to the enormity of writing at all, the crime of writing illegibly, in what Abana or Pharpar shall we hope to be made clean? We must not suppose that because we have a fancy to write, and do write, we ought to pain any one else by compelling him to read it. Authors owe a duty to editors, as In respect of foreign Princes we observe a strict well as editors to authors, and the first duty is huneutrality. Several weeks ago the Prince Napoleon manity. Besides, if you send a poor thing, and it arrived and went to Washington, and was properly is, as it will be, rejected, you will find that it has dined and presented, and taken to a review. He infected all that follows. If a man in a green coat represents the Powers that be. Hard upon his heels has bored you once, you will always be wary of the comes the Prince de Joinville-Cap'n Jineville, as the bore in the green coat. You will not see him apworthy Boston matron described him after the fa-proach without the certainty that you are to be mous ball there of other days. He too goes to bored; and even if he have something really pleasWashington, is properly dined and presented, and ant to say it will sound to you wearisome. taken to a review. He represents the Powers that

were.

Treat every man as if he might one day be your enemy, was Machiavelian advice. Treat every man as if he might one day be your biographer, is the method of many famous men. Treat every prince as if he might come to his own again, is certainly the rule of good conduct for all potentates. The pretty steam-yacht Jerome has run round to Boston with her freight of an Emperor's cousin and a King's daughter. "Cap'n Jineville" has put his son to school at the Naval Academy. Meanwhile the whirligig of Time spins on. And is it more unlikely that a few years may show Louis Philippe's son restored to his chance of a kingdom, than it was that the few years which have passed since Cap'n Jineville was here should have restored Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew to the chance of an empire?

The visit of Prince Napoleon is certainly one of the most sensible visits to a country that a man in his position could make. He really saw the country. "Saw the country, Sir!" cried an explosive Second Lieutenant. "By Jupiter, Sir, you'd better say so. Why, he came plump into Syracuse by the train one noon, and dined at the table d'hôte of the Globe Hotel at Convention time; and if that is not seeing the country, Sir, I should be glad to be told what is."

If the first duty, brethren, is humanity, the second is humility. If you don't think what you have written is good enough to publish, resist "a few friends" and "a famous author who assures you," and "the urgent solicitation of many." That is the worst form of conceit. If you send what you write because you believe in it, that is something. But if you send it because somebody else believes in it, you merely try to gild your vanity with humility. And, O dear brethren, that is so transparent! It is painting your tub yellow, and trying to palm it off for a golden goblet. If you read in the preface to a book that the author has been persuaded by a few friends that he has written something the world will not willingly let die, do you turn with avidity to the pages, or do you quietly lay the book down?

When you have written a poem, or a story, or an essay, the probability is—it is probable of all of us, beloved brethren-that you have written a very poor thing. It is well for us all to think so. But when we do think so, let us not send it to an editor and request his opinion. He is too busy. Every moment he is engaged with his legitimate duties; and it is not one of those that he shall decide the abstract question of merit in your productions. It is so easy to write, and so hard to write well. Easy Chair receives many a modest and mannerly note accompanying a portentous manuscript. Here is one. It is written in perfect good faith, and it is so received and read:

The

At least we may be very sure that the French Prince knows something more of us than the English Prince who was here a year before him. Jenkins tried very hard to "do" the Prince Napoleon, but Jenkins was turned out into the street, and to this day does not know whether the Prince wears separate collars, or has them sewed on to the shirt. He seems to have made a quiet, gentlemanly impression. A man whose uncle made himself Emperor, and whose cousin had to do the same thing, is naturally doubtful of his future. They who play for crowns, directly or indirectly, play high, but they play a dangerous game. It was the Prince de Joinville's turn twenty years ago, and there was a young Mr. Bonaparte of no importance upon the world. It is Prince Napoleon's turn now, and "Cap'n demands of existence calls for work; work and duty chains

Jineville" is about.

A FRIEND suggests to the Easy Chair that his pastoral letter in August, informing every body that VOL. XXIII.-No. 138.-3 H

"DEAR EASY CHAIR,-Being afflicted with a temperaout in sundry effusions under a pressure of the hardest ment which I am afraid is of a poetic tendency, as it breaks kind of work, and being unable to overcome the longings and aspirations which are said to belong to such characters, I here humbly wait on the Easy Chair,' and pray him for his advice and counsel under such trying circumstances. The malady develops itself in beautiful visions which haunt my mind, while the beauties of truth captivates my understanding, harmony in sound or form enchants my soul, and all the beautiful in nature and art, in the grand, the terrible, the sublime, find deep responses in my inmost soul. Amidst all those feelings and impressions the

me to the material and irksome necessities of life, while the inquiring mind is wandering far away, giving hushed utterance to the tuneful vibrations called forth by time and circumstance and the varying events of our fleeting existence.

The writer incloses three poems. Will you hear will die, I will drive her away without it! Almost as the opening of the first?

"MY DEAR EASY CHAIR,-I read this in the New York asking if one L were residing there; for he had inEvening Post: