e and gold. Alas! _Ilium fuit._ The gold is
become dim, the purple is dingy, the lucent whiteness has gone gray; a
very large, brown, zigzag fissure has rent its volcanic path through the
happy home, dividing the fair garden, cutting the plough in two,
narrowly escaping the ploughman; and, indeed, the whole structure is
saved from violent disruption only by the unrelaxing clasp of a string
of blue yarn. Thus passes away the glory of the world!

Is it not too often typical of the glory of our rural dreams? To live in
the country; to lie on green lawns, or under bowers of roses and
honeysuckle; to watch the procession of the flowers, and bind upon our
brows the sweetest and the fairest; to take largess of all the fruits in
their season; to be entirely independent of the world, dead to its din,
alive only to its beauty; to feed upon butter and honey, and feast upon
strawberries and cream, all found within your own garden-wall; to be
wakened by the lark, and lulled asleep by the cricket; to hear the
tinkling of the cow-bell as you walk, and to smell the new-mown hay:
surely we have found Arcadia at last. Cast away day-book and ledger,
green bag and yardstick; let us go straightway into the country and buy
a farm.

But before the deeds are actually delivered, before your feet have
finally deserted the pavement to make life-long acquaintance with the
dew, it will be worth while to ascertain whether the pitcher's word is
as good as its bond. If its fallen fortunes are indicative of what
yours shall be,--if Arcadia blooms only in its gorgeous bosom, and will
turn into an Arabia Petraea at the first touch of your spade,--better for
you a pitcher of roughest Delft on board of deal than all this pomp and
circumstance of lies.

Reports of societies are not generally "as interesting as a novel."
Nevertheless, if one will consult the Report of the Commission of
Agriculture for 1862, he will find, among fascinating columns of
figures, bold disquisitions on the midge, a mirage of grapes, pears, and
peaches, and uncomfortable-looking "thoroughbred" cattle, an essay, by
Dr. W.W. Hall of New York city, which may assist him in forming his
plans. It is not necessarily destructive of the most charming theories,
but it is very definite and damnatory as to facts. Among other
unromantic and disagreeable things, it asserts--and proves its
assertions by still more disagreeable, because incontrovertible
statistics,--that, for all the sylvan del