As the untimely death of the good is our strongest moral assurance of the Resurrection, so the life wearily worn out in doubtful and perilous conflict with Wrong and Woe is our most conclusive evidence that Wrong and Woe shall yet vanish forever. Luther, dying amid the agonizing tears and wild consternation of all Protestant Germany, Columbus, borne in regal pomp to his grave by the satellites of the royal miscreant whose ingratitude and perfidy had broken his mighty heart,* - these teach us, at least, that all true greatness is ripened and tempered and proved in life-long struggle against vicious beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions; and that not to have been a Reformer is not to have truly lived.

Life is a bubble which any breath may dissolve; Wealth or Power a snow-flake, melting momently into the treacherous deep across whose waves we are floated on to our unseen destiny: but to have lived so that one less orphan is called to choose between starvation and infamy, to have lived so that some eyes of those whom Fame shall never know are brightened and others suffused at the name of the beloved one, so that the few who knew him truly shall recognize him as a bright, warm, cheering presence, which was here for a season and left the world no worse for his stay in it, this surely is to have really lived, — and not wholly in vain.

AGRICULTURE.

Is agriculture a repulsive pursuit? That what has been called farming has repelled many of the youth of our day, I perceive; and I glory in the fact. An American boy, who has received a fair common-school education and has an active, inquiring mind, does not willingly consent merely to drive oxen and hold the plow forever. He will do these with alacrity, if they come in his way; he will not accept them as the be-all and the end-all of his career. He will not sit down in a rude, slovenly, naked home, devoid of flowers, and trees, and books, and periodicals, and intelligent, inspiring, refining conversation, and there plod through a life of drudgery as hopeless and cheerless as any mule's. He has needs, and hopes, and aspirations, which this life does not and ought not to satisfy. This might have served his progenitor in the ninth century; but this is the nineteenth, and the young American knows it.

He needs to feel the intellectual life of the period flowing freely * See note, page 98.

into and through him, — needs to feel that, though the city and the railroad are out of sight, the latter is daily bringing within his reach all that is noblest and best in the achievements and attractions of the former. He may not listen to our ablest orators in the senate or in the pulpit; but the press multiplies their best thoughts and most forcible expressions at the rate of ten to twenty thousand copies per hour; and its issues are within the reach of every industrious family.

To arrest the rush of our youth to the cities, we have only to diffuse what is best of the cities through the country; and this the latest triumphs of civilization enable us easily to do. A home irradiated by the best thoughts of the sages and heroes of all time, even though these be compressed within a few rusty volumes, cheered by the frequent arrival of two or three choice periodicals, and surrounded by such floral evidences of taste and refinement as are within the reach of the poorest owner of the soil he tills, will not be spurned as a prison by any youth not thoroughly corrupted and depraved.

Any American farmer, who has two hands and knows how to use them, may, at fifty years of age, have a better library than King Solomon ever dreamed of, though he declared that "of making of many books there is no end"; any intelligent farmer's son may have a better knowledge of Nature and her laws when twenty years old than Aristotle or Pliny ever attained. The steam-engine, the electric telegraph, and the power-press have brought knowledge nearer to the humblest cabin than it was, ten centuries since, to the stateliest mansion; let the cabin be careful not to disparage or repel it.

But thousands of farmers are more intent on leaving money and lands to their children than on informing and enriching their minds. They starve their souls in order to pamper their bodies. They grudge their sons that which would make them truly wise, in order to provide them with what can at best but make them rich in corn and cattle, while poor in manly purpose and generous ideas.

Modern agriculture is an art- or rather a circle of arts-based upon natural science, which is a methodical exposition of divine law. The savage is Nature's thrall, whom she scorches, freezes, starves, drowns, as her caprice may dictate. He lives in constant dread of her frosts, her tornadoes, her lightnings. Science teaches his civilized successor to turn her wildest eccentricities to his own use and profit. Her floods and gales saw his timber and grind his grain; in time, they will chop his trees, speed his plow, and till his crops as well.

Science transforms and exalts him from the slave into the master of the elements. If he does not yet harness the electric fluid to his plow, his boat, his wagon, and make the most docile and useful of his servants, it is because he is still but little advanced from barbarism. Essentially, the lightning garnered in a summer cloud should be as much at his command, and as subservient to his needs, as the water that refreshes his thirsty fields and starts his hitherto lifeless wheels.

Only good farming pays. He who sows or plants without reasonable assurance of good crops annually, might better earn wages of some capable neighbor than work for so poor a paymaster as he is certain to prove himself. The good farmer is proved such by the steady appreciation of his crops. Any one may reap an ample harvest from a fertile, virgin soil; the good farmer alone grows good crops at first, and better and better ever afterward.

It is far easier to maintain the productive capacity of a farm than to restore it. To exhaust its fecundity, and then attempt its restoration by buying costly commercial fertilizers, is wasteful and irrational. The good farmer sells mainly such products as are least exhaustive. Necessity may constrain him, for the first year or two, to sell grain, or even hay; but he will soon send off his surplus mainly in the form of cotton, or wool, or meat, or butter and cheese, or something else that returns to the soil nearly all that is taken from it. A bank account daily drawn upon, while nothing is deposited to its credit, must soon respond, "No funds": so with a farm similarly treated.

Wisdom is never dear, provided the article be genuine. I have known farmers who toiled constantly from daybreak to dark, yet died poor, because, through ignorance, they wrought to disadvantage. If every farmer would devote two hours of each day to reading and reflection, there would be fewer failures in farming than there are. The best investment a farmer can make for his children is that which surrounds their youth with the rational delights of a beauteous, attractive home. The dwelling may be small and rude, yet a few flowers will embellish, as choice fruit-trees will enrich and gladden it; while grass and shade are within the reach of the humblest. Hardly any labor done on a farm is so profitable as that which makes the wife and children fond and proud of their home.

A good, practical education, including a good trade, is a better outfit for a youth than a grand estate with the drawback of an empty mind. Many parents have slaved and pinched to leave their children

rich, when half the sum thus lavished would have profited them far more had it been devoted to the cultivation of their minds, the enlargement of their capacity to think, observe, and work. The one structure that no neighborhood can afford to do without is the school-house.

A small library of well-selected books in his home has saved many a youth from wandering into the baleful ways of the prodigal son. Where paternal strictness and severity would have bred nothing but dislike and a fixed resolve to abscond at the first opportunity, good! books and pleasant surroundings have weaned many a youth from his first wild impulse to go to sea or cross the continent, and made him a docile, contented, obedient, happy lingerer by the parental fireside. In a family, however rich or poor, no other good is so cheap or so precious as thoughtful, watchful love.

Most men are born poor, but no man, who has average capacities and tolerable luck, need remain so. And the farmer's calling, though proffering no sudden leaps, no ready short-cuts to opulence, is the surest of all ways from poverty and want to comfort and independence. Other men must climb; the temperate, frugal, diligent, provident farmer may grow into competence and every external accessory to happiness. Each year of his devotion to his homestead may find it more valuable, more attractive than the last, and leave it better still.

There are discoveries in natural science and improvements in mechanics which conduce to the efficiency of agriculture; but the principles which underlie this first of arts are old as agriculture itself. Greek and Roman sages made observations so acute and practical that the farmers of to-day may ponder them with profit, while modern literature is padded with essays on farming not worth the paper they have spoiled. And yet the generation whereof I am part has witnessed great strides in your vocation, while the generation preparing to take our places will doubtless witness still greater. I bid you hold fast to the good, with minds receptive of and eager for the better, and rejoice in your knowledge that there is no nobler pursuit and no more inviting soil than those which you proudly call your own.

THACKERAY.

1811-1863.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, one of the great writers of fiction of the nineteenth century, was born in Calcutta in 1811, but was sent to England while a child, and educated in the Charterhouse School, which he has immortalized in The Newcomes, and at Cambridge University. On the death of his parents he found himself in possession of a handsome fortune; but it soon vanished, and he was compelled to earn a subsistence. He dallied with Law, courted Art with greater earnestness, and finally - a resolution for which the lovers of high fiction will never cease to be grateful resolved to devote himself to Literature. His first essay in letters was in the department of journalism; he wrote for the Times, The New Monthly Magazine, and Punch, to which latter periodical he contributed the inimitable Snob Papers, Jeames's Diary, etc. His first volume, The Paris Sketch-Book, was published in 1840, and was followed during the next seven years by several collections of essays, sketches, etc. In 1848 appeared his first novel, Vanity Fair, a work that deserves rank among the masterpieces of English fiction. Two years later The History of Pendennis was given to the world, which, if it did not enhance the author's reputation, confirmed his title to a high place among English novelists. The History of Henry Esmond, The Virginians, The Newcomes, appeared at short intervals, the latter, which was issued in 1855, being pronounced by high literary authority his masterpiece. Lovel the Widower (1861) and The Adventures of Philip (1862) mark the decay of the author's powers. At his death in 1863 he left unfinished a novel called Denis Duval. The Four Georges, lectures first delivered in the principal American cities, were published in book form in 1860. It is a remarkable fact that while Thackeray's writings were comparatively neglected in England, they enjoyed an extensive popularity in the United States, where they are still read with eagerness and delight by all who look beneath the surface of novels into the soul that animates them. It is impossible to do justice to the characteristics of Thackeray as a writer in the limits of this notice; but two or three of them may be briefly mentioned. He was a cynic, though a kindly one: he was a keen student of human nature, quick to recognize and to denounce its weaknesses; yet he apparently found his deepest pleasure in depicting its lovely features and recording its noblest manifestations. The character of Colonel Newcome is, we think, unsurpassed, if equaled, as a type of true manhood; its pathos is indescribable, and the memory of it lingers in the reader's mind, softening and refining. Thackeray's humor was nimble rather than rich; but it is not, though commonly held to be, a very important component of his intellectual strength. He was a reformer, who exposed and denounced social wrongs, not with rude force, but with polished satire. His mastery of English was wonderful; in the purity and vigor of his language he was unequaled by any writer of his time. The first extract is from The Four Georges; the others are from Pendennis.

GEORGE THE THIRD.*

WE have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano

* George the Third was king of England during our Revolutionary War. He was born in 1738, ascended the throne in 1760, and reigned for sixty years. He became insane in 1810, and died in 1820. His weaknesses are most mercilessly criticised by Thackeray in his Lectures on the Four Georges, as will be seen from the extract.