mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often exposed by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as ready to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury enjoyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia, some centuries ago.  Such an Editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead an easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life,—­to be blessed by Archbishops, or followed by the approving shouts of ascendant majorities; but he might find some recompense for their loss, in the calm verdict of an approving conscience:  and the tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might freshen for a season the daisies that bloomed above his grave.

* * * * *

From “The Crystal Palace and its Lessons.”

=_167._= TRANQUILITY OF RURAL LIFE.

As for me, long tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years fell upon me, the weary tempest-driven voyager’s longing for land, the wanderer’s yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by his mother’s knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast.  The sober down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it developes or strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or overlaid, for “that dear hut, our home.”  And so I, in the sober afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought me a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and bearing thither my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city’s labors and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a farmer, the memories of my childhood’s humble home.  And already I realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth.  Already I find in that day’s quiet, an antidote and a solace for the feverish, festering cares of the weeks which environ it.  Already, my brook murmurs a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain; and my trees, gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of their own quiet strength and patient trust in God.  And thus do I faintly realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which shall irradiate the Farmer’s vocation, when a fuller and truer education shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming Labor from drudgery, while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth.

* * * * *

=_Theodore Parker_,= about =_1812-1860_=. (Manual, p. 531.)

From “Lessons from the World of Nature,” &c.

=_168._= WINTER AND SPRING.