Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1854-08-17
price Two Cents.
GBe 4aiIg spp,
THURSDAY, AUGUST II, 1854.
Drcnn-CuIturc.

/
the Berkshire hills to enjoy his summer vaca-
ton on his own homestead. Here is one Of
! its productions under his culture, and the fla
! vor seems to us good. We find it this weeks
! independent.
There is something in The cunning of piece
Of ground which affects me as did the old ru-
ms of England / am free to confess that the
value of a farm is not chiefly in its crops of
cereal grain, its orchards Of fruit and in its
herds, but in those larger and more easily
reaped haryests of associations, tancies and
dreamy broodings which it begets. From boy
hood have associated classical civic virtues
and old heroic integrity with the SOIL No
one who has peopled his young brain with the
fances Of Grecian mythology but comes to
feel a certain magical sanctity for the earth.--
The very smell of fresh-turned earth brings
up as many dreams and visions of the coun-
try as sandalwood does of oriental scenes. At
any rate, feel, in walking under these trees
and about these slopes, something of that en-
chantment of vague and mysterious glipses
OF the past which once felt about the ruins
Of Kenilworth Castle For thousands of wears
this piece of ground hath wrought its tasks.
Old slumberous forests used to darken it ; in
Vulnerable deer have tramped across it foxes
have blinked through its bushes, and wolves,
have howled and growled as they battered
| along its rustling leaves with empty maws.
| How many birds; how many fiocxs of pig
| cons, thousands of years ago how many
hawks dashing wildly among them; how
many insects, nocturnal and diurnal; how
J many mailed bugs, and timber serpents, Gid
! ing among messy stones, have had possession
| here, before my day 1t will not be long be-
fore l too shall be as wasted and recordless as
they.
Doubtless the indians made this favorite
resort. Their sense of beauty in natural seem
cry is proyerbIal. Where else in all this re-
gioD, could they find a more glorious amphi-
theatres But thick studded forests may have
hidden from them this scenic glory, and left
it to solace another race. l walk over the
ground wondering what lore of wild history
l should read if all that ever lived upon this
round and sloping hill had left an invisible
record, unreliable except by such eyes as
mine, that seeing, see not, and not seeing, do
plainly see.
Then, while 1 stand upon the browning
point Of the hill, from which can see every
foot of the hundred acres, and think what is
gong on, what gigantic powers are silently
working, l feel as if all the workmanship that
was stored in the Crystal Palace was not to
be compared with the subtle machinery all
over this round. What chemist could find
solvents to liquify these rocks: But soft rains
and roots like threads dissolve them and recon-
pose them into stems and leaves. What an
uproar, if hundred stone quarries were
being wrought, if one should attempt to crush
with hammers all the flint and quartz which
the stroke of the dew powders noiselessy
All this turf is but camp OF soldier roots, that
fight their battle with the elements with end
less victory. There is a greater marvel in this
thistle, which detles the farmers wits taxed
for its determination, than in all the reposito-
ries Of New York or London. And these
mighty trees, how easily do they pump up
and sustain supplies Of moisture that it would
| require scores of rafting engines to lift. 1t
is a vast laboratory, full of expert chemists
| 1t is a vast shop, full of nolseless maehinists.
And all this is mine These rocks, that lie
i'll bulk under the pasture trees, and all this
moss that loves to nestle in its crevices, and
clasp the invisible projections inits little cling
ing hands, and all these ferns aud sumach,
| these springs and trickling issues, are mine
Let me not be pulled up with sudden wealth.
Let me rule discreehy among my tenants. Let
me see what tribes are mine. There are the
black and glossy crickets, the gray crickets,
the grasshoppers OF every shape and hue, the
silent, prudent toad, type of conservative
wisdom, wise-looking, but slow hopping the
butterflies by day, and the moths and millers
by night; all birds-wrens, sparrows, king
birds, blue-birds, robins, and those unnamed
warblers that make the forests sad with their
melancholy whistle. Beside those, who can
register the sappers and miners that are al
ways at work in the soil-angle- worms, white
grubs and bugs that carry pick and shovel in
the head or muster all the mice that nest in
the barn, or nibble i'll the stubble-tield and
all the beetles that sing base in the woods
edge, to the shrll treble of gnats and myriad
musketoes? These are all mine.
Are they mines Is it my eye and nv hand
that mark their paths and circuits Do they
hold their life from me, or do give them their
food in due seasons Vastly as my bulk is
greater than theirs, am L SO much their supe-
rior that can despise, or even not admire p
Where is the strength of muscle by which 1
can spring fifty times the length of my bodys
That grasshoppers thigh lords it over mine.
Spring up now in the evening air, and fly to-
ward the lights that wink from Wonder hill
side. Ten million wings of despised flies and
useless insects are mightier than hand or foot
of mine. Each mortal thing carries some
quality of distinguishing excellence by which
it may glory, and say, ''ln this l am first in
all the world.
Since the same hand made me that made
them, and the same care feeds me that spreads
my board, let there be fellowship between us.
There is. have signed articles of peace even
with the abdominal spiders, who carry their
fleece in their belly and not on their back
1t is agreed that they shall not cross the Dan
ube of my DOORS and l, on the other hand,
will let them camp down, without wanton
disturbance, in my whole domain beside I.
too, am but an insect on larger scale. Are
there not those who tread with unsounding
feet through the invisible air, of being so vast,
that seem to them but mite, fitting in
sect And of capacities so noble and eminent
that all the stores which could bring of
thought and feeling to them would be but the
as the commune of grasshopper with me, or
the chirp of a birds
No. 1t is not i'll the nature Of true great
ness to be exclusive and arrogant. II such no.
bic shadows I'LL the realm, it is their nature to
condescend and spread their power abroad for
the loving protection of those whose childhood
is little, but whose immortal manhood shall
yet, through their kind teaching stand una
Dashed, and not ashamed. in the very ROYALTY
of heaven. Only vulgar natures employ their
superiority to task and burden weaker natures.
He whose genius and wisdom are but instru
ments of oppression, however covered and soft
ened with lying names, is the beginning of a
monster. The line that divides between the
animal and the divine, is the line of suffering.
The animal, for its own pleasure, inHicts suf-
ferng. The divine endures suffering for anoth-
ers pleasure. Not then when he went nm tn
theproportions of original glory, was Christ the
greatest; but when he descended, and wore
our form, and bore our sins and sorrows, that
by his stripes we might be healed
have no yicarious mission for these norm,