k into the house, and settle the affairs of state in our own way."

Walter Scott, whose deep love of park and forest scenery has stamped
with his masterly descriptions, his native land as the home of all
things beautiful and useful in trees and plantations, spent a great
share of his leisure time in planting, and has written a most
instructive essay on its practice and benefits. He puts into the mouth
of "the Laird of Dumbiedikes," the advice, "Be aye sticking in a tree,
Jock; it will be growing while you are sleeping." But Walter Scott had
no American soil to plant his trees upon; nor do the grandest forest
parks of Scotland show a tithe of the luxuriance and majesty of our
American forests. Could he but have seen the variety, the symmetry, and
the vast size of our oaks, and elms, and evergreens, a new element of
descriptive power would have grown out of the admiration they had
created within him; and he would have envied a people the possession of
such exhaustless resources as we enjoy, to embellish their homes in the
best imaginable manner, with such enduring monuments of grace and
beauty.

To the miscellaneous, or casual reader, such course of remark may appear
merely sublimated nonsense. No matter; we are not upon stilts, talking
_down_ to a class of inferior men, in a condescending tone, on a subject
above their comprehension; but we are addressing men, and the sons of
men, who are our equals--although, like ourself, upon their farms,
taking their share in its daily toils, as well as pleasures--and can
perfectly well understand our language, and sympathize with our
thoughts. They are the thoughts of rural life everywhere. It was old Sam
Johnson, the great lexicographer, who lumbered his unwieldy gait through
the streets of cities for a whole life, and with all his vast learning
and wisdom, had no appreciation of the charms of the country, that said,
"Who feeds fat cattle should himself be fat;" as if the dweller on the
farm should not possess an idea above the brutes around him. We wonder
if he ever supposed a merchant should have any more brain than the
parcel that he handled, or the bale which he rolled, or directed others
to roll for him! But, loving the solitude of the farm, and finding a
thousand objects of interest and beauty scattered in profusion, where
those educated among artificial objects would see nothing beyond things,
to them, vulgar and common-place, in conversing with our rural friends
upon what