ug and sweat, but He spake and it was done, He
commanded, and it stood fast. As the world was made, so must it be
subdued, not by matter clawing at matter, but by the calm dominion of
spirit over matter. Until intellect percolates the soil, the soil will
not part with its hidden hoards. We shall have effort, struggle, wear,
and weariness, but no victory. It is the strife of clod with clod.

So it is that the men who grieve to bring their minds into play will
never make of their occupation a profession. The people who work mind
and muscle, who turn knowledge into wisdom, shall stand before kings.
Those who

"Keep in uninquiring trust
The old dull round of things"

shall be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the end of the days. If
farming is doomed, farmers are doomed. For here is the earth ready-made,
and however much we may dislike it, it is all we have and the best we
shall get. If farming must be mere mechanical labor,--_peine forte et
dure_,--then there is a point where elevation and improvement must stop,
for there must always exist a class of serfs,--serfs to the soil, slaves
of their own farms; and none are more sure of this than those who have
lived in a farming community, and seen how surely the adventurous
spirits, the active, the energetic, the intellectual, the promising,
turn away from the dismal monotony of the farm and launch out on
currents of freer flow, or, if they remain at home, remain only in
consequence of the continued and earnest expostulations and the fairest
promises of parents, to rock the cradle of their declining years, and
not unfrequently to rock it over.

But if the founders of our Agricultural College, or if any furtherers of
rural education, propose to themselves to diffuse light (and dispel
darkness) by appealing to farmers,--if they think to correct the evils
of ignorance by furnishing special opportunities to farmers,--if they
flatter themselves that they can establish a college of aims and claims
so moderate that farmers and farmers' boys will not be discouraged by
the time, money, or mind required,--if they design to narrow the crown
that lesser brows may be circled,--they are spending their strength for
nought. No college and no school can be founded so wisely and fitly,
that farmers, as a class, will send their sons to it. Why should they,
believing, as they do, that the district-school already gives them as
much "learnin'" as they need? Boys there can "read, writ