adelphia Society languished, but was thoroughly revived in 1804 its earlier transactions had been communicated to the Philadelphia press from time to time—“the society published numerous communications from practical men in the newspapers of the day; and thereby contributed to diffuse the knowledge of many improvements in agriculture, the general adoption whereof has visibly tended to increase the product and to improve the qualities of the soil of Pennylvania."5 The Atlantic slope farmer was afforded organs by the end of the old century. Writing of this period, from the Revolution to 1800, Dr. Lee, of Georgia, said in 1852, “A well filled volume of a thousand pages might be compiled from contributions to the agricultural literature of the United States in the eighteenth century, showing that the farmers of the Revolution, their fathers and grandfathers, were in no respect the inferiors of men of their class in any other nation;" and further, "we do not hesitate to express our belief that agricultural sciences are less cultivated now than they were thirty years ago." It is not for us to prove the grounds of Dr. Lee's encomium of the ancients or of his disparagement of the moderns, but what he says is of interest as coming from an extremely well informed man, much nearer to the origins than ourselves. Such origins engage our fancies, for we imagine with difficulty a time when the farmer, or any other citizen, could not find admittance now and then to his trade journal or some public print.

The American farmer, having been advanced from his inarticulate colonial status into the period of his occasional record spread upon the Transactions of his few promotive societies, certain things remained to do, besides the fulfilment of what obligation there was to take up more and more new land ever west. In the first place, there was instruction to be provided by the home journal, reaching a wider public than that reached by the Proceedings of Societies or such institutions as the Arlington Sheep Shearings, and the Columbian

Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. Philadel phia, 1808. Vol. I, p. 1. This volume, of more than 500 pages 8 vo., contains some fifty signed articles, representing the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia.

See American Agricultural Literature, By Daniel Lee, M. D., in Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1852, Part II, p. 20.

Agricultural Society of 1809-12.7 It is likely the home journal, (enabling more farmers to talk at long distance, to make history for themselves and others), would have come earlier but for the war of 1812, although it may be said that if a further independence had not been established by that war, there might have been a further reliance upon commentary from abroad. The war over, for whatever reason there was undoubtedly in America a rush to the Natural Sciences. Amos Eaton, the geologist, found at Williams College in 1817 that "an uncontrollable enthusiasm for natural history took possession of every mind, and other departments of learning were for a time crowded out of the college." The next year Governor DeWitt Clinton invited Eaton to Albany to deliver before the members of the state legislature a course of lectures on natural history.8 At that time there was, it seems, a traceable connection between geology, politics, and agriculture. Agriculture, as the basis of our history, has always been in politics. But it is curious to note the parallel between the standardization of geology and of agriculture, in America. Silliman commenced his Journal in 1819 ("more especially of geology, mineralogy including also

agriculture.") and John Skinner his American Farmer. The first, Maclurean, era of American geology, beginning in 1785, is ended with 1819. We may assign a new era in American agriculture with the appearance of John Skinner's bi-weekly magazine at Baltimore, price $4 per annum. The editor himself, in his inaugural address to the public, of April 2, 1819, makes no such claim, but who that ever started a new era made the claim? The nomenclature of chronology must often be fixed long afterwards, and the name of course really matters little. What is meant in this case is that the time of agricultural journalism in America had begun. It would not be long before farm papers were established that are still publishing.

The editorial personages of the early farm journal in America are of much interest to us. There was literature among

description of these Columbian shows.

'Ben Perley Poore has given a good See his History of the Agriculture of the United States, in Report of the Depart ment of Agriculture, 1866. Pp. 517-520.

See Merrill, Contributions to the History of America Geology. Washington, 1904, p. 234, (Report U. S. National Museum).

them, and there is greatly more literature in the files of their periodicals than is commonly divined. John Skinner, the dean,-soldier, postmaster, turf expert, political economist in the best sense-Thomas A. Fessenden, the "Minute Philosopher" [New England Farmer, 1823]-Edmund Ruffin, perhaps the most learned of all the early editors [Farmer's Register, 1833, Virginia]-Judge Buel, of the Cultivator, [of Albany, 1834], the lives and works of these men are worth a careful study, they being notable organizers of our society. If we attach importance to our agricultural colleges, how great should we consider those who saw the necessity of a propaganda long ago? We must at least follow with some enthusiasm the work of men who saw to it, whether for gain or the public good, that a vehicle was supplied for opinion on agriculture in America. The mass of this opinion is now great, and it can hardly be that in any other field of our endeavor there is so much wisdom recorded under the names of so many persons, genuinely citizens of our great republic from its founding.

EDWIN W. BOWEN

Professor in Randolph-Macon College

Edward Everett Hale* was born of a good old New England family, in Boston, 3 April, 1818, uniting in himself the generous qualities of heart and head of both branches of his family -the Hales and the Everetts. In his book "A New England Boyhood," he recorded several accounts of his early years and described various incidents and experiences of his in Boston, then a representative New England town. In the first schools he attended young Hale did not exhibit any special aptitude for study, but he did later, both in the fitting school and in college. He tells us that he received excellent training in declamation, although the subject itself was utterly distasteful to him in practice. It was from this training that he learned not to be afraid of an audience, but to be at his ease and graceful on the platform and to take keen pleasure in public speaking.

Nathan Hale, the father of Edward Everett Hale, was editor of the Daily Advertiser, of Boston, and owned the entire printing plant, engaging all the printers and printing his own newspaper. This business quite naturally developed into the establishment of a book office. All of Nathan Hale's sons came gradually to learn the various phases of the printing business. The boys even edited and published a small news sheet of their own, and the earliest recorded verse of Edward Everett Hale was an "Address of the Carriers of the Public Informer to their Patrons," bearing the date of 1 January, 1835.

Edward Everett Hale entered Harvard College at the early age of thirteen. His brother Nathan, to whom he was devoted, had entered the year before at the age of fifteen, and the two brothers roomed together. In college Edward Everett Hale formed a warm and abiding attachment to Samuel Longfellow and George Hayward. From his college diary it is evident that young Hale did not enter with delight and zest into college

+

Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale. By Edward E. Hale, Jr. Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1917.

life. On the contrary, he informs us that he was discontented and was always counting the weeks till vacation, and that the first four weeks of a term usually seemed to him interminable. Still, for all that, he made good use of his opportunities, winning several prizes and standing among the first eight in the Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated second in his class,—the class of '39. Obviously he ranked among the most efficient members of his class. In the "Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale" we read that he kept up his classics and modern languages all through his life and improved that facility in writing which he acquired in his college days; and, what is of greater importance still, that he developed under the teaching of his college life that self-reliance and independence which proved a marked element of his character.

Upon his graduation young Hale determined to enter the ministry as the profession of his choice, largely out of deference to his mother's desire. Accordingly, for the next three years he planned to live at home and to study theology privately, in the meantime supporting himself by reporting for the Advertiser. He preferred this method of studying theology rather than to enter the divinity school at Cambridge. During his vacations he travelled a great deal and thus came to know New England intimately. Those days were times of great moral and intellectual movements. Emerson was preaching his favorite doctrine of Transcendentalism, and social life was in a state of fermentation. Goethe and Carlyle, too, were then names to conjure with. Yet Hale was not carried off his feet by any of these currents that swept over New England, nor did he throw himself with eagerness or abandon into the flood. He heard Emerson deliver his famous Phi Beta Kappa address on the "American Scholar" and indicated his conservatism by his frank comment, "Not very good, but very transcendental." After listening to Emerson's equally famous Divinity address, Hale remarked simply as indicating his independence as well as his conservatism, "I did not like it at all." Hale did not subscribe to abolition and declined to lend his endorsement fully to the anti-slavery movement. Yet he did endorse the conservative Whig ideas of Webster and Everett. Hale believed that his vocation of the ministry