Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1859-01-07

III the time OF Henry IL, though he
travelled on his journeyings in time of
peace with more than two hundred retain
ers, had not as many table cloths for his
almost royal establishments, as the most
frugal housewife in your county, while
linen, for any other purpose was to him
almost myth What a chasm yawns
between the American farmerand "Gurth
the born thrall Of Cedric p Each one
is not only a type of his own age, but
also Of the practical tiller of the earth
Of their respective times. In the days
of one, mystery roigncd, as if the veil
Of Isis had been thrown over all nature
in those of the other, the veil is rent,
the hidden is revealed, aud the most for
bidding as well as the most glorious
forms of earth, the clod and the flower,
have been compelled to disclose the inner
and most subtle laws by which they are
controlled. The social economy of farm
ing life, once narrow and contracted,
has, with the advancement of agricultu-
raj knowledge, been both enlarged and
beautifed. Asperities of temper, dig
nifed almost into savage virtues, by being
transmitted like heir-looms through gem
erations, from father to son, have been
melted in the genial glow which comfort
and plenty and knowledge have diifused
around the Preside The rough habi-
tudcs of body and mind which were
nurscd into rigor and harshness by ig-
norance and wrong, have been softened
under the sway of the divine Graccs,
for whom every well cultivated field and
every well ordered household is true
Parnassus. All honor to Sir Humphrey
Davy, who first and foremost introduced
to the world the laws of animal and veg
ctable chemistry. Having carried light
and safety to the begrimmed sons of toll,
struggling in the pits where Gods sun
light never shOne, he travcrsed the fields
of upper earth, wrung from reluctant
Nature what before had been the secret
of her mystery, and laid her confession
as his trophy upon the farmers hearth
stone. Unto him and to Justus Liebic.
DO the enlightened agricultural commu-
mites Of our own country and Europe
owe more for their social comforts and
advancement, than to any others who
have preceded or followed them, in un-
folding the mysteries and harmonies of
Nature. The researches of these two
into the chemistry of the animal and veg
etable kingdom, have not only created
new science, but have illustrated the ap-
othegm of Archimedes, by placing into
the hands of agriculturists a lever which,
with the homestead as its fulcrum, has
raised their social world to an elevation
never before attained. Augustus Caesar
boosted, when dying, that be had found
the city of Rome, built of brick, and
that he left it marble. TO the great dis
coverers Of the laws of organic chemis-
try is reserved the prouder glory of hay
ing cxpounded to the world the hidden
life aud mechanism which stirs and moves
in every clod of the valley They are
true captains of industry, holding that
the production of food for swarming mill
lions, is a noble and holy duty; each one
Cadmus, starting from the earth in new
forms Of life, new sources of power and
grandeur Their lessons are living ones.
gritten like the tables of Moses with the
finger Of God-revealing hundred stu
pendous maryels for every superstition
they have destroyed, and bringing ont Of
what is seeming chaos a great, living.
working, lighting, organic world, whose
most trivial phenomenon is adjusted to
the harmony Of the universe. They have
shown how mysteriously busy nature is
when seemingly most at rest; how that
in the working of her eternal laws, there
is ever sublime adjustment; how that the
lilac leaf Of your gardens, for instance,
though apparently inactive in the hushed
stiffness Of a summers day, has for its
every square inch more than one hum
bred and twenty thousand minute mouths. |
each one of which is eagerly consuming
as food its due proportion of the ten Gu
bic feet of poison with which each one Of
US is daily charging the atmosphere; how
that the forms which we wore in youth,
the bones ana muscles which sustained /
us in our boyish sports, have been re-
newed again and again, and have inter-
mediately lived in other manifestations,
while yet the scars of our infancy have
remained unchanged; how that even in
apparent death, there is boundless life
and action and use how that Nature out
Of ruin builds her habitations, "arrayed |
as Solomon in all his glory" never was
how that the warp and wool Of her swift,
unccasjng loom is decay, and how while
she is ever, as it were, executing the
warrant Of her death, she is cves listen
ing to the trumpet Of her resurrection.
The science of agricultural and ami
NAL chemistry is not yet fifty years old.
What light and beauty it has already
thrown into dark hooks What tri-
umphs are in its pathway yet. The field
that is spread out before your door-sill is
no longer dumb. 1t has mysterious
life within its bosom, which, though it
never dies, has as many yicissitudos and
perhaps knows as many changes as the
body which holds your spirit 1t has its
language too, which if not articuate, is
as distinct and as truthful TO those who
have ears to hear as the most reliable
oracles Of human speech Within it,
locked up for development at some more
era in the divine economy,
are grand and mysterious truths, which
for six thousand years the dumb one has
been struggling to utter, but has not yet
found the articulate interpreter. In due
season, and in answer to the inquiries of
science thov will lao ugborod 90 III N ,r,.Id