Address Delivered Before The Franklin County Agricultural Society Greenfield Oct 4 1855 PDF Download

Excerpt from An Address Delivered Before the Franklin County Agricultural Society: Greenfield, October 4, 1855 We respect hills, mountains, forests, waterfalls, and the ocean. There is not only an inspiration in these, the grandest works of nature, but there is a religion in them also. The dweller among mountains, the wanderer in the forest, or upon the shore of the ocean, is a continual worshiper. God has made him so. Nature is not the same everywhere, and what nature is, man, to a great extent, is also. Indeed, without seeking for the reason or principle of the law, we expect the mountaineer to be vigorous in body, and strong, though perhaps nucul tivated, in intellect. We associate physical indolence with great fertility of soil, and positive inability to labor with uninterrupted salubrity of climate. Switzerland is a small country, but her mountains are indicative of the greatness of her people, who, for ten centuries, by their comparative social purity and political freedom, have attracted the attention of the world far more than the populous states and principalities of Germany. Germany has, to be sure, a high rank for learning, but it is associated with a sluggish civilization, which might, under adverse cir cumstances, be easily exchanged for an effeminate barbarism. And the millions of the great Russian plains, if unsupported by mental or physical force from without, will too readily accept the conqueror's yoke, while the Swiss on the one hand and the Caucasian races on the other, would resist to the last extremity. A race of mountaineers may remain isolated for centu ries without loss of spirit or character, though the graces of civilization might be totally efi'aced. But this cannot with truth be said of the inhabitants of flat countries. And we may, perchance, get a glimpse of the philosophy of this fact. Mountains are not usuallyt)' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.