Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/58

48 take too little account of that glow and exhilaration of the blood which come of every-day dealings with the ground and flowers and trees, and which, as age approaches, subside into a calm equanimity that looks Death in the face no more fearingly than if it were a frost. I have gray-haired neighbors around me who have come to a hardy old age upon their little farms,—buffeting all storms,—petting the cattle which have come down to them from ten generations of short-lived kine, gone by,—trailing ancient vines, that have seen a quarter of a century of life, over their door-steps,—turning over soil, every cheery season of May, from which they have already gathered fifty harvests; and I cannot but regard their serene philosophy, and their quiet, thankful, and Christian enjoyment of the bounties of Nature, as something quite as much to be envied as the distinctions of town-craft. I ask myself,—If these old gentlemen had plunged into the whirlpool of a city five-and-fifty years ago, would they have been still adrift upon this tide of time, where we are all serving our apprenticeships?—and if so, would they have worn the same calm and cheerful equanimity amid the harvests of traffic or the blight of a panic?—and if not adrift, would they have carried a clearer and more justifying record to the hearing of the Great Court than they will carry hence when our village-bell doles out the funeral march for them?

The rain is beating on my windows; the rain is beating on the plain; a mist is driving in from the Sound, over which I see only the spires,—those Christian beacons. And (by these hints, that always fret the horizon) calling to mind that bit of the best of all prayers, "Lead us not into temptation," it seems to me that many a country-liver might transmute it without offence, and in all faith, into words like these,—"Lead us not into cities." To think for a moment of poor farmer Burns, with the suppers of Edinburgh, and the orgies of the gentlemen of the Caledonian hunt, inflaming his imagination there in the wretched chamber of his low farm-house of Ellisland!

But all this, down my last half-page, relates to the physical and the moral aspects of the matter,—aspects which are, surely, richly worthy of consideration. The question whether country-life and country-pursuits will bring the intellectual faculties to their strongest bent is quite a distinct one. There may be opportunity for culture; but opportunity counts for nothing, except it occur under conditions that prompt to its employment. The incitement to the largest efforts of which the mind is capable comes ordinarily from mental attrition,—an attrition for which the retirement demanded by rural pursuits gives little occasion. Milton would never have come to his stature among pear-trees,—nor Newton, nor Burke. They may have made first-rate farmers or horticulturists; they may have surpassed all about them; but their level of action would have been a far lower one than that which they actually occupied. There is a great deal of balderdash written and talked upon this subject, which ought to have an end; it does not help farming, it does not help the world,—simply because it is untrue. Rural life offers charming objects of study; but to most minds it does not offer the promptings for large intellectual exertion. It ripens healthfully all the receptive faculties; it disposes to that judicial calmness of mind which is essential to clearness and directness of vision; but it does not kindle the heat of large and ambitious endeavor. Hence we often find that a man who has passed the first half of his life in comparative isolation, cultivating his resources quietly, unmoved by the disturbances and the broils of civic life, will, on transfer to public scenes, and stirred by that emulation which comes of contact with the world, feel all his faculties lighted with a new glow, and accomplish results which are as much a wonder to himself as to others. The pent river is at length set loose,—the barriers broken by the wear of mingled waters, and the force and the roar of it are amazing.