any less close for being trained? Would his reasoning be any less profitable by being wisely directed than by running at hap-hazard? Would it not be more economical to strengthen and polish his powerful weapons, and give them honest work to do, than to leave them rough and rusty from disuse? If education is not the foe of legal, mechanical, polemic, nor forensic acuteness, why should it be hostile to any?

No lover of his country who brings to this view the same clearness and sense which he takes to political or personal plans, but must hail as an omen of good the efforts now making throughout the North in behalf of agriculture and education. It is a cause for proud and grateful gratulation and congratulation, that our government is so wise and strong as to look through all the smoke and cloud of warfare, and set firm in the tumultuous present the foundations of future greatness, that, calm and confident, it lays in the midst of the thunder-storm of battle the corner-stone of the temple of Peace. It is equally encouraging to see the States from east to west responding to this movement, consulting with each other, enlisting in the enterprise their best men, and sending them up and down in the land, and in other lands, to observe, and collate, and infer, that the beneficent designs of Congress may be carried out and carried on in the best possible manner for the highest good of all. So a free people governs itself. So a

free people discerns its weakness and unfolds its strength. So a true aristocracy will yet develop a worthy democracy. From such living, far-seeing patriotism we augur the best results. Mistakes will doubtless be made; wisdom will not die with this generation; but a beginning is the sure presage of the end. Hesitation and precipitancy, unseemly delay, and ill-advised action, may retard, but will not prevent, a glorious consummation. In these colleges we look to see agricultural centres from which shall radiate new light across our hills and valleys. They will not at once turn every ploughboy into a philosopher, nor send us Liebigs to milk the cows; but to every ploughboy and dairyman in the country they will give a new and wider horizon. They will bring fresh and manly incentives into the domain of toil. They will establish in society a new order of men,

an order whose mere existence will give heart and hope to the farmer-lad disgusted with his narrow life, yet unable to relinquish it. They will send out to us men who have learned and who will teach that the plough, the hoe, the rake, are implements of profit and honor, as well as of industry. They will show that the hand and the head may work together, and that only so can their full capacity be tested. Science will be corrected by practice, and practice will be guided by science. These men will go over the land and quietly set up their household gods among our old-time farm

ers. They will gradually acquire influence, not by loud-voiced rhetoric, but by the silent eloquence of rich cornfields, heavy-laden orchards, full-uddered kine, and merry-hearted boys and girls,by the gentle, but irresistibe force of kindly words, pleasant ways, ready sympathy, a helping hand in trouble, "sage counsel in cumber,"-by the thousand little devices of taste and culture and goodfellowship, by the cheap elegances, the fine endearments, all the small, sweet courtesies of life. They will approve the beneficence and the power of the Great Mother; they will demonstrate to farmers the possibility of large and generous living; they will teach them to distinguish between the mountebanks of pretended science and the apostles of that science which alone is truth; they will give to thought a new direction, to energy a new impulse, to earth a new creation, to man a new life.

X.

PICTURES AND A PICTURE.

WO kinds of talk are extant concerning pictures. One is that which has seized a few of the floating technicalities, and discourses flippantly of light, and shade, and breadth, and tone, mouths the "old masters," rants of Italy, sneers at American art, and goes into raptures, in a public way, over a bit of old canvas, but is not so absorbed but that it has leisure to observe and brand the indifference of those who do not share its ecstasies.

The other prides itself on being "no artist." "It knows nothing of the rules of art. But it knows what it likes, and is going to like it, right or wrong. Artists may sneer, but it is not going to be driven from a picture, because the picture was not made with plumb and line." On the whole, this is rather more disagreeable than the first, since that only pretends to follow in the wake of excellence, while this sets up a claim to originality, strikes out boldly for itself, and is sure to

find hosts of admirers among our rampant democracy. Ignorance on any subject is a thing to be repented of and forsaken if voluntary, to be silently borne if involuntary, but on no account to be exulted over. We, who boast our ignorance, forget, that though the artist, like the poet, is "born, not made," he is not born an artist. The germ is there, but many a spring's sunshine, and many a summer's shower, ay, and many a winter's frost, must ripen it into the mellow fruit. The possibility is there, but only by careful study, constant trial, severe culture, can it be wrought into a fact. Is it, then, reasonable to suppose that the untutored eye can fully appreciate the work of the tutored hand?

It is, indeed, a merciful dispensation of Providence, that the humblest day-laborer, going home from his work at six o'clock, with his coat swinging over his arm, and his tin pail in his hand, may feel the soothing, elevating influence of the calm sunset sky, the still fields, and the shining flood, yet he but enters the vestibule of the temple. Only to her importunate child, — only

"To him who, in the love of Nature, holds

Communion with her visible forms,".

does she disclose the arcana, the mystic glory that shines in her holy of holies.

Thus a picture is not only the measure of the soul that conceived, and the hand that wrought, but of the eye that views it. If you see therein