FARM VILLAGES.
"God made the country, and man made the town."
Cowper's view of the charm of country life as compared with life in the town is a very natural one. The same view suggests itself to every cultivated denizen of the city who finds himself in the country on a beautiful June morning, or under a warm September sun, or during the time of brilliant autumn foliage, or when the sun sets with a warm glow, gilding the clean, bare boughs of November trees, or when the whole countryside is covered with spotless snow, or when grass and leaves and buds and birds first feel the awakening warmth of spring. The scene is full of a charm and a novelty which appeal to him most strongly; and he believes, for the moment at least, that nothing could make him so entirely happy as to spend his life away from the noise and confusion of the town, and amid such scenes of rural peace and beauty. Filled with this enthusiasm, one builds with reference to a magnificent view, and without regard to the practical inconveniences of the site, fancying that true happiness requires only a continuance of the novel charms which have enraptured him.
The cultivated countryman, too,—one who has learned to use his eyes, and to see what nature has to offer him,—appreciates even more thoroughly, if not so keenly, the never-ending and ever-changing interest by which he is surrounded. His admiration and enthusiasm, however, are tempered by familiarity with some disadvantages of country life,—just as the romantic house-builder finds on closer acquaintance that, magnificent though a hill-top view may be, a hill-top residence is not without its grave drawbacks, nor free from annoyances and practical objections which too often throw a veil over the most majestic outlook.
A blue-sided, white-capped mountain, reflected in a broad, placid, shimmering lake, and framed between fleeting clouds, graceful trees, and verdant lawn, is beyond compare the strongest inducement and the best reward one can offer to a visiting friend; but vile roads, distant neighbors, discontented and transitory servants, and all the thousand and one obstructions to the machinery of domestic life, soon blind the eye of the unhappy householder to the beauty which lies ever before him, until at last the one great good thing which commands his constant thought is that romantic and pecunious friend who shall come some happy day to purchase his estate.
There is another class, and a very large one, whose opinion concerning the godlike character of the country it is our especial purpose to consider here. The farmer and the farmer's family may or may not be cultivated persons. Cultivation does not come by nature; and the incessant and increasing duties of farm life leave one, however well disposed, but little time and but scant strength for æsthetic study. The farmhouse is the centre of the home life and of the homely thought and feeling of its inmates. The farm on which one has been born and bred is the centre and standpoint from which he regards the world without. All those more tender emotions which are common to our nature, and which attach themselves to the home, find their development on the farm as well as in the town. Sentimentally considered, it matters little whether the object of these emotions be on the farm, in the wilderness, in the village, or in the city. Fortunately, man is by no means a creature of emotion alone; and the satisfaction and good of living are less a matter of feeling than of activity, industry, and intelligence. The place in which one lives is more or less satisfactory in proportion as it facilitates and encourages the better and more useful living.
Just as the citizen feels the attractions of the country, which are so novel to his town-bred taste, so the countryman finds a charm in the novelty of the town. As one is led toward the quiet and solitude of the fields and woods, so the other is drawn by the life and interest of the community.
As a rule, at least in America, where the facilities for pleasant country living are far less than in England, the countryman who goes to town is less likely to wish himself back on the farm than is the town-bred farmer to long for the comforts and conveniences of his former condition.
"Man is a social animal," and the aphorism is especially true of his wife and daughter. As the lives of the wife and daughter are much more confined to the immediate surroundings of the domicile than is that of the man himself, so the question as between town and country should be considered more especially with reference to them.