tinguished merchants, statesmen and divines. Their sons have been distinguished in our seminaries of science, for the zeal with which they have pursued knowledge, and the indefatigable application with which they have supplied the defects of early culture. When the sons of rich men, languid from indulgence, have shrunk from mental effort as insupportable hardship, and fallen a prey to those vices which indolence creates, the offspring of those who hold the plough have wrested from their feeble hands the prize of honour, and pressed on in the path of their country's praise and pride. There is, in the pursuits of agriculture, a salutary discipline both for the body and mind, as they are gradually developed. That hardihood of frame, which despises privation, or change of elements, is more congenial to elevation of character, than the enervating nurture of patrician families, where animal tastes are pampered, at the expense of vigour of intellect, and ease of body promoted, even to the bondage of the free spirit. Possibly also, in the simplicity of man's primeval occupation, there may be, like the angels hovering over Eden, natural and invisible guards around the avenues of innocence, cheerfulness, and that religion which springs from a view of the Creator in his works.
Agriculture has been, in the New-England States, a source of wealth, less splendid indeed than some others, but far less fluctuating. It has been a fountain, not always as profuse in its streams as avarice or ambition might, desire, but perennial when sought by industry and pru-
