In those whose early associations have not been among them

In those whose early associations have not been among them

In those whose early associations have not been among them

The love of forest scenery is a thing to be cultivated as a high accomplishment, in those whose early associations have not been among them. Indeed, country life is tame, and intolerable, without a taste, either natural or acquired, for fine landscape scenery; and in a land like this, where the country gives occupation to so great a proportion of its people, and a large share of those engaged in the active and exciting pursuits of populous towns, sigh and look forward to its enjoyment, every inducement should be offered to cultivate a taste for those things which make one of its chief attractions. Nor should seclusion from general society, and a residence apart from the bustling activity of the world, present a bar to the due cultivation of the taste in many subjects supposed to belong only to the throng of association. It is one of the advantages of rural life, that it gives us time to think; and the greatest minds of whose labors in the old world we have had the benefit, and of later times, in our own land, have been reared chiefly in the solitude of the country. Patrick Henry loved to range among the woods, admiring the leafy magnificence of nature, and to follow the meandering courses of the brooks, with his hook and line. Washington, when treading the vast solitudes of central Virginia, with his surveyor's instruments on his back, conceived the wonderful resources of the great empire of which he will ever be styled the "father." The dwelling of the late John C. Calhoun, sheltered by noble trees, stands on an elevated swell of a grand range of mountain land, and it was there that his prolific genius ripened for those burning displays of thought which drew to him the affections of admiring thousands. Henry Clay undoubtedly felt the germ of his future greatness while sauntering, in his boyhood days, through the wild and picturesque slashes of Hanover. Webster, born amid the rugged hills of New Hampshire, drew the delightful relish of rural life, for which he is so celebrated, from the landscapes which surrounded his early home, and laid the foundation of his mighty intellect in the midst of lone and striking scenery. Bryant could never have written his "Thanatopsis," his "Rivulet," and his "Green River," but from the inspiration drawn from his secluded youthful home in the mountains of Massachusetts. Nor, to touch a more sacred subject, could Jonathan Edwards ever have composed his masterly "Treatise on the Will," in a pent-up city; but owes his enduring fame to the thought and leisure which he found, while ministering, among the sublime mountains of the Housatonic, to a feeble tribe of Stockbridge Indians.