examples of the fact, let education be such as shall prepare farmers for the labors of the field, that they may know how to accomplish the labors of each season in its time without the hazard of a broken constitution and to bring on their sons to the labors of the field without breaking their spirits or their health; and to give to wives all needful aid, in that most difficult and important period of life, when a young family is raised. But a proper education regards more than securing wealth and health and life and limb, than the mere supply of the animal necessities, even the making life as agreeable as possible. That is not deserving the name of education which provides only for a livelihood, a boon secured by mere instinct to the meanest animal. Education of man must provide for the well-being of man- for the refined enjoyments of the man, for the higher senses of the body and for all the faculties of the mind. This is true not only of the higher classes against which if we had them by hereditary descent, I have nothing to say; but it is true of the working classes. The working man is not educated properly as a working man unless he is trained to the enjoyments of a man. I need not dwell at large upon what is perfectly obvious, the pleasures which an improved and improving mind will find in reading and in conversation and in those reflections which belong only to improved and improving minds. They are but savages themselves who claim that savage is as happy as civilized life, and that the well informed and studious are no happier than the boor in his chosen ignorance. The happiness of improved and improving minds is within the reach of the agricultural population, and that is not a proper education for them which does not furnish them this happiness. Reading, reflection, conversation, such as belong to improved and improving minds, are the peculiar boon of the country. The absence of variety, of objects to stimulate curiosity, leaves the mind free to read the works of the wise and good of all nations and of all times, given as they are to the farmer in his own mother tongue his accustomed solitude and quiet give scope to his own reflections upon this growing knowledge. While his opportunities of conversation in his family and neighborhood are just frequent enough, to make it ever -- agreeable. Not to dwell upon the pleasures of reading and thought how are those pleasures diffused and multiplied by conversation in the family and neighborhood. The family needs not ingress or egress for its amusement or delight, for it lives farmer-like "within itself," and so much the better, as a youthful race grows up into the enjoyments of their parents. And the neighborhood is not dull, for want of good society as some exiled citizens may think; but glows daily with the pleasures of sensible and re fined conversations such as often is not in the saloons of wealth and fashion, and often is, in the calm country retreat, in the farm-houses and groves and fields and lanes of our rural districts. -- But when I speak of an education, to make rural life as agreeable as possible, while I require suitable reading, reflection, conversation, I am desirous to insist on one particular more likely to be left out of view; I mean that agricultural education should prepare the people for their own peculiar enjoyments, to take delight in rural life, and especially in their own rural home. As to the general delight in rural life, it can hardly fail to follow, from that study of agriculture for other purposes which we have already commended. I am not afraid to say, that there is no employment of man so likely to grow in one's affections, as he endeavors to learn to carry it on to the best advantage, as agriculture. Other employments are regarded more for their profits; but this from step to step, as one tries to improve it, more and more interests and delights the mind, while its results are ever furnishing the finest pictures to the eye. But I am yet more desirous, to see cherished a special fondness to one's home, for the enduring scene, its rocks and rivers and hills and vales, its orchards and groves, as they were to the eye of childhood and as they will remain to the eye of old age, and for that new and improving scenery with which industry and taste will adorn the cottager's acre, and the wealthy land-holder's domain. To regard fields and forests and hills and valleys and rocks and rills and rivers; to be capable of investing the home of labor or of wealth with new and changing beauties, to delight in gardening, husbandry and tree planting, to love with a cherished fondness the ancient and growing beau ties of a home; to acquire the capacity of leaving it with reluctance even at the call of necessity and duty, and the consequent power of making another home, the source of similar enjoyment. These, though missed sadly in all our rural districts are most important objects of rural education. If our rural society must roll on unceasing to the wilderness, it were well if every wave might bear the love of an early home, and a desire to renew, though at the farthest west, that early home; if distant emigrants might find and bequeath to posterity a country and a home. I cannot conceive the man to be a man, a whole man, in whom the love of nature about his birth place has not awoke, and is not cherished-cherished by himself, and whom it does not lead forth to beautify and adorn the spot, which though it were but for a year he calls his home; and which if our tossing sea has sickened will not revive again and live, in some beloved home. Let the love of nature and of home and of country revive everywhere and bless our eastern lands, and establish families and communities in beloved homes even to the farthest west. Thus, shall our country assume in the progress of its rural civilization the outward form of Paradise, which can never be given to the brick and mortar of the city; thus become the quiet garden of a peaceful and virtuous population.. The proper education, in this particular, may be greatly aided by a right course, in those farmers who rise to considerable wealth. Nothing is more silly nothing, in truth, more vulgarthan the attempts we sometimes see in such cases, to lay aside country vulgarity. Nothing is more ridiculous than the ill-taste of the family of a wealthy farmer, when the parents are mainly occupied in showing off their flock of young apes; whose whole influence in their rural neighborhood, is conveyed in the silly apery of city fashions and city manners. On the other hand, farmers whom providence has blest with wealth, need not be restricted to the narrow expenditures of their poorer neighbors; but may expend in good taste, and for good purposes, in a manner which shall at once benefit the circumstances of the community, and be a safe and proper example for imitation by the poorest of their neighbors, according to each one's de gree. The expenditure of thousands in the increase of real comforts and conveniences, and in an extended hospitality in the increase of books, maps, and all materials for the improvement of a family and the neighborhood; the improvement of lands and grounds, in view of permanent profit and enduring beauty, would be an example which, in their degree, all might imitate. Such example was rendered, on the highest scale, by the father of his country the plainest of all farmers-in the wise, useful, and tasteful expenditure of a princely establishment. His fondness for agriculture, his love of rural life and of home, would have made him the more humble copy of his own high example, had his been the lot of a working farmer. "The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs," said that true farmer, "the more am I pleased with them; insomuch that I can nowhere find so great satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits. In indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect how much more delightful to the undebauched mind, is the task of making improvement on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquest." With such a spirit, he could have found a delightful home, had his been the lot of a working farmer. Around his more humble dwelling, and with the labor of his own hands, he would have made a humble copy of the taste and beauty of Mount Vernon. I cannot forbear here the expression of the wish that we may have increase among us of the class of gentlemen farmers; by which I mean only farmers whose wealth prevents the necessity of their daily labor, but who prove themselves, like our noble Washington, to be gentlemen by the excellence of their principles and pursuits. The concentration of wealth about our cities, and the constant breaking up of wealthy country families, and their final exile from their homes and from rural life, deprives our wide country of the advantage which would be afforded by ancient and venerable establishments; conspicuous examples of all that is excellent in husbandry, and of all that is valuable in intellect and morals; touching the surrounding population with an influence less despotic, less presumptuous, and more propitious than is now too often exercised by the passing citizen, or the aristocratic gentry of the store, or the factory, or the professions. III. The proper education of an agricultural population, must regard their appropriate duties must be such as will enable them to do the duties of their lot. Whatever limitation to the mere knowledge of their trade might seem worthy on other grounds to be allowed, would be removed by the consideration that the agricultural population is entrusted, like all other portions of society, with domestic education- the education of the rising race; and from their numbers, of course, with the education of the mass of the people. If the agricultural community is ill-educated, then are the people ill-educated. Incompetence and neglect here, weakens and diseases the living body of society. In view, then, of a duty common to every class and to every family — but more important in the mass than in any fragments of society—what is the proper education of an agricultural people? In answering this question, briefly, as we must, we say that a business committed to all classes, and for the most part to those who are literally to eat bread in the sweat of their brow, does not demand what the author of their allotment has denied viz. the leisure universally allowed to the learned professions, or which wealth bestows; nor any learning for which such leisure is indispensable. Yet must we claim, since it is committed to beings capable of increasing knowledge and skill, that every parent, even down to the lowliest cottager, is bound to labor for growing knowledge and skill, and from step to step to take the utmost pains to know and do his duty well. Hence we must require that all parents should have-and if they have not, be studiously and earnestly acquiring such knowledge as will enable them to further the education of their children on the scale of their instruction in the rural schools; and that every attempt to elevate the standard of common education, be understood and welcomed as a demand for a corresponding elevation of parental education; and that every family press forward modestly, conscientiously, diligently, perseveringly, not only at every public demand, but with spontaneous desires and efforts. It is a part of this demand that an agricultural population should acquire as extensively as possible those just principles of education which, easily attained by all minds, are not to be separated from popular and prevailing error |