The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1869-11-23

the Romans also, agriculture was still
J more respected than among the Greeks
In the best and purest times Of the Re
public the most distinguished citizens, tn,
bravest generals, the greatest orators, tn,
most learned philosophers, and the proudes
patricians lived on their farms and labor
ed with their own hands. And when tn,
Sabines had advanced with victorious
army to the very walls Of the imperia
city, the people demanded that Cincin
natus an old farmer, should be created
dictator, and that absolute power and au
thority should be vested in his hands
and this same man who was then by the
united voice of his country men vested
with the power of all the magistrates, ,and
who was the hope and stay of his country
in that hour Of her extremity and peril
was found by the messengers who were
sent for him, cultivating his little farm
beyond the Tiber, leaning upon his spade
or holding his plow. Willingly and
cheerfully he obeyed the voice of his
coutry, and after having raised an army
and defeated the enemy, in sixteen days
he laid down the dictatorship which he
was authorized to hold for six months and
on the 18th day returned in triumph to
his farm. As soon as Adam, the newly
created father Of mankind, was formed,
he was placed by the Supreme Author OF
his existence in beautiful garden, which
had been planted for his reception, and
ordered "to dress and keep H."
Thus we see that before the heaving
bellows had urged the furnace, before
hammer had struck upon an anvil, before
the cleaning waters had flashed from an
oar, before trade had hung up its scales
or guaged its measures, the culture of
the soil began.
$40 dress tie garden and 10 KEEP IT.
was the divine command to our first
parents, and the same great mandate
comes back to us to-day from every hill
and valley, and from every mountain and
plain in our broad land. This was the
keynote struck by the hand of God him.
self in that long joyous, wailing trium-
phant, troubled, pensve strain of life
music, which sounds through the genera
tions and ages Of our race. Banished
from the Garden Of Eden, mans merciful
sentence, at once his doom, his repreve
and his livelihood, was, 'to till tie q,,oand
from Whtch he Uas tdkea," and this in its
original primitive simplicity, was the first
calling and occupation of the gathering
societies of men. The mighty East in
the days Of her ascendancy was trained
to this wholesome discipline, and so rapid
was her progress that long before the
light Of history had dawned upon the
world she had tanned the domestic animals,
had saddled the horse, and yoked the OK,
and MIXED the COW, and sheared the
patient sheep, and possessed herself of
all the cereal grains, which at the
present time, feeds the multitude of
men which people the wide earth. When
Cyrus the Persian King had travelled far
on the road to universal conquest and
empire, and when by the aid Of 127 sat
raps he administered laws which changed
not throughout one of the most extensive
and mighty empires that ever obeyed one
most honored pursuit among his people
History tells us that on one occasion when
Cyrus had received Lysander, the Envoy
OF the Grecian Allies at Sardis, and hav-
ing led him through his grounds and
pointed out to him the trees he had plant
ed and cultivated with his own hands, and
was asked by the astonished Lacedemon-
ian Chieftain "and did you plant all these
trees with your own hands ?" Cyrus ex-
claimed, Eyes by heavens nor do | ever
60 to my dinner till | have earned my
appetite by some military or agricultural
exercise" +' 17"--
Lysander saw at once, in these manly
life giving exercises, the secret of that
power which had for the time mastered
the world, and casping the hand of the
virtuous prince exclaimed. "justly has
thou prospered o, Cyrus thou art
fortunate and powerful, because thou des-
ervest TO be-"
Had Alexander the Great, in the inter-
walls of his wars, planted trees and drank
water like Cyrus, he might have lived to
establish the most extensive empire the
world has ever seen. But while the great
Persian was sinking beneath the sword of
Macedodian, and this short lived Empire
was falling with its youthful founder,
new pastime Of conquest was springing
up in the West, on the frugal acres Of
Latinum. Those iron handed and iron
hearted Emperors and Consuls of Rome,
who drove the Equi and Volsci from the
gates of Rome, and led the last King of
Macedonia in triumph up the steps of the
Capital, were in the intervals of their
wars tilling the soil and devoting the pow
er of their mighty intellects to the study
and practice Of agriculture. At length
the Roman civilization perished and
new one, resting on the morality of the
Gospel and the hardy virtues of the Nor
thern races, took its place, and has sub
sisted with gradual notifications to the
present day, and Notwithstanding the
great multiplication ofpursuits in modern
times, the perfection of the useful and
fine arts, the astonishing expansion of
commercial, manufacturing and mechani-
cal industry, agriculture has kept pace
with the other occupations of society, and
continues to be tho basis and foundation
OF the social system. But it is not nee
cessary to 90 back to the fiblous periods
of Grecian and Roman history, to find
bright and noble ilhgtrations of the pow
er and nobility of agricultural pursuits
The greatest political philosopher and
most consummate statesman OF modern
Europe, Edmund Burke, who saw farther
than any Of his countrymen into the
cloudy future which hung over the close
OF the Eighteenth Century, at the meri-
dan Of his life, and while most engrossed
in the public business of his country, pur-
chased farm, and devoted every mo-
ment he could spare to its improvement
and cultivation. II was upon this farm,
m tho f.tttat r d.