Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1871-10-07

land, anu say IL ne WIS less . The efrea
Conmoner," when welded to agrieultur
in all its scientific improvements, than whel
he stood without peer in our national col1n
ellis, at the head of his great and patriots
party? How grateful to me-" said Tn
erudite and metaphysical Calhoun, sis th
old Farm House with its rustic porch anc
trellised vines, when / return from the win
ter's strife at the National Capitol. and re
ceive from every hand of toll the eoriia
greeting that always awaits me, and enjoy
ing the fresh breezes as / walk through tb,
fields around Fort Hill.
To John Quincy Adams. it was a sourc,
of ravishng delight to instruct the listening
rustics in the science and art of agriculture
as he reclined in midsummer beneath tboss
beautiful white NAPLES that ornament hi:
ancestral estates. The seed from which
they grew, he is said to have gathered from
those around Independence Hall. made his.
toric by his father in his appeals for Amer.
can liberty. When Daniel Webster retired
for the time, from the arena of senatorial
strife, where he welded with Herculeau
| strength the battle-axe of COeur-de-Iion in
combat with that Saladin of the sonth
whose talismanic blade, as it cleaned in the
sunlight of Constitutional liberty. pricked
and worried if it did not yanguish him
sought, as a wearied giant, the quiet of Marsh.
| field, where he had aided by agricultural
! science and art, generous Nature, in gather
/ ing around him scenes which it was his deligh,
to reverence and extol. And when the
lamp of life was Pickering in its socket, he
was carried, at his own request, into his
| porch, that he might look out upon the
trees he had planted, as they cast their even
! ing shadows over the fresh, green landscape
and see his cattle browse and his kids skip.
On the page OF history, rising amid this
group, like Saul Of Tarsus, a head and
shoulders above his cOmpeers, is the stall
wart form of our noble Washington, whose
| compass and chain in early manhood had
marked the boundaries of many an, old Vir-
GINA farm; and who, while bearing upon
his Atlantean shoulders, the weight of the
American Revolution, or pressed by the
cares and conflicts of nation struggling
into existence, never forgot his devotion 70
the soil, nor lost an occasion to encourage
agricultural science" And when, like an old
knight, he had run the gauntlet of the lists.
and won and worn the prizes of both the
military and political tournaments, he
turned with an idolatrous love to the fields
of Mount Vernon, and found that peace
full repose which camps and courts can
never give.
Then, is agricultural labor dignifedl is
1t hOnor0blef is 1t Iucrdtiuel
Turn back the parchment scroll of an
Gent history, and look uqOn its old brown
face, and you will see its deepest and bright
est burrows, cut by the plow-share of the
husbandman.
fl,.a.a =
pronounced, by our merciful Creator, upon
disobedient man, the blooming flowers and
glistening waters, and ripened fruit We're no
longer his; our Creator in the plentitude of
his mercy, accompanied the sentence, with
the partial reprieve by allowing him to Z" till
the gronud from which he had been taken"
as condition precedent to the enjoyment
of what was left him of Eden. Under the
auspices of this primitive vocation, before
mechanics had brought in play their varied
appliances, and commerce had fioated upon
the waters of the deep, society, in its earliest
and simplest form was organized. The first
4" Offerings made by man to God, who en-
dowed him with this entaied landed estate,
was gathered from the fruits of the earth.
When the light of history first broke in the
East, and dispelled those shadows beyond
which We see not, it found with man the
pruning hook of husbandry, the wine
press and the vat: while as a part of his
domestic circle, were the horse, the COW, the
sheep and the goat still his Indispensable
companions.
Mans first war was waged to settle title
10 land, and the hoary prejudice for that
fayorite mode, instead of losing its relish,
has ripened into confirmation.
When the stranger approached the tent Of
the Patriarch. hewas met with those embems
of hOspitality-the cruise of oil and flagon of
wine, as the fruits of the earth. While the
paStoralS of peace We're first clianted in
their simplest form by the Shepherds who
guarded his flocks amid 1.-The everlasting
hills their rude strains were dedicated 10
the "Iich valleys" wherere generous nature
yielded pious usury TO the tiller Of the
soil.
1t has been curiously said in tracing the
origin of the grain of to-day. that it is the
lineal descendent of those seven sheaves that
stood erect in the dream of Pharaoh, as Ell
terpreted by Joseph, and was transmitted
in the sack Of Benjamine to the sorrowing
Jacob, and found means of preservation,
for thousands Of years, in the mummy
cloths Of embalmed Egyptians. However
this may be, it is patent. that the same love
for corn and wine which pervaded all the
ancients. has lost none of its zest in more
modern dcvotiOns. And no American, but
a citizen of Maine, stops TO enquire if it is
true or not; whether NEUROLOGICAL Greece
ever legalized the nuptials, between Ceres
and BachUS, While We pay special tax for
our daily sacrifice of the ,ciHe OF cOrne-
and offer our pOtatiOns, as hbatiOn at the
marriage feast of that old god and goddess.
The promised land which lured the muir
Israelites to their escape from
Egyptian bondage, was painted to their
hopeful visions as flowing with milk and
honey" beautifully typical of the fertility Of
soil which readily yielded its luXrTient
crops to the labor Of the husbandmen.
- In its teeming fields of corn, that yield
ed to the sickle; in its valleys, that blushed
with Eschol's JUICY fruit; and in the fiocks
that fatted on the grass of the natural mea-
dowS; those murmurs which were loud with
discomfort, even as the mana fell into
their midst from a boUntiful, though unseen
hand Of Protection. and the waters gIshed
forth to Stake their thirst, when, smitten by
the Prophets rod-lOst their discomfort
amid the songs Of joyous husbOndry.
When those hundred and twenty-seven Sa-
traps of power paid court to Ahasureus, who
could, byillis simple dictm, even under the
boast that the laws of the Meads and Per-
slams never changed-discard his modest
and lovely Nashti. and take as his wife,
the beautiful and heroic Esther, asserted
SWAY with an absOlutism, from the Indus 10
the Niie-briuging into requisition at WILL a
physical energy, unconquerable, and a re-
source that was b0UndlesS, reckoned in his !
agriculture, as the source Of de |
nestle power, while by the art of war he eX- !
tended his vast territorial cOnquestS.
When Greece was young and unambi- I
.ious, and her race not yet dominant on the |
sea and on the land, and even before her !
Pan, had tuned his read, or /
her Orpheus strung his Tyre; she sung in |
pastoral measures, the delightful joys Of her /
simple people; and in the days Of her after !
Glory, when commerce had stretched her |
trident beyond The Escan; and her shaft |
,pringing from ne sleeping granite, had been /
wrought by th~ chissel of genius, into the |
luted columns of her marble porches, and !
he stately grandeur of her Parthenon; she |
quilt a temple to the Goddess of Grain, and |
made annual offerings at her shrine. When
ler refined and cultivated philosophy be-
anne faint and sickly on her classic isles,
lad shed its radienCe over the islands of the !
Archipelago, and began to dispel the sha-
lows that rested amid the primeva forests
If Latium and EtrITia, it found arlIstic peO-
Die cultivating frugal soil-laying the