On the margin of this village, is a curious agricultural exhibition. It is a large tract of flat land upon Connecticut river, of great fertility and value (one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars an acre,) containing altogether several thousand acres. With one or two trifling exceptions, it has no houses or dividing fences upon it, though partitioned among perhaps two hundred proprietors. Hardly an opulent, or middling wealthy man in Northampton, but owns a lot of five, ten, twenty, or fifty acres, in this teeming expanse. The lots are all in crops, of one kind or other; and being mostly of regular shapes (oblongs, or other four sided figures,) the various aspects they present, accordingly as the crop happens to be deep green, light green, or yellow—mown, or unmown—afford a singular and rich treat, to an eye that can at once survey the whole. Most opportunely, Mount Holyoke (the great lion of western Massachusetts, to scenery-hunters,) furnishes the very stand, whence not only this lovely plain is seen, but the river, its valley, and the adjacent country, for twenty or thirty miles around. Nearly a thousand feet below you, and not quite a mile from the foot of the mountain, the low ground, fantastically chequered into lots so variously sized and colored—dwindling too, by the distance, into miniatures of themselves—reminds you of a gay bed-quilt. A lady of our party (we ascended the mountain this afternoon, and staid till after sunset,) aptly compared it to a Yankee comfort; the elms and fruit trees dotted over the surface, and shrunk and softened in the distance, representing the tufts of wool which besprinkle that appropriately named article of furniture. The whole landscape, seen from Mount Holyoke, it would be presumptuous in me to try to describe. I have said, twenty or thirty miles around: but in one direction, we see, in clear weather, the East and West Rocks, near New Haven—about seventy miles off. Fourteen villages are within view. The whole scene is panoramic: it is as vivid and distinct as reality; but rich, soft and mellow, as a picture. We descended; and as we recrossed the river by twilight, the red gleams from the western sky, reflected in long lines from the dimpling water, forced upon more than one mind that fine passage in a late work of fiction, where the remark, that "no man can judge of the happiness of another," is illustrated by the reflection of moon-beams from a lake. But I am growing lack-a-daisical: and must conclude.
I set off in the stage for Albany, at two o'clock in the morning. Good night.
We copy the following production of Mrs. Sigourney from the "American Annuals of Education and Instruction," a periodical published in Boston. It is difficult to decide whether the prose or poetry of this distinguished lady is entitled to preference. Her noble efforts in behalf of her own sex deserve their gratitude and our admiration.
ON THE POLICY OF ELEVATING THE STANDARD OF FEMALE EDUCATION.
Addressed to the American Lyceum, May, 1834.
The importance of education seems now to be universally admitted. It has become the favorite subject of some of the wisest and most gifted minds. It has incorporated itself with the spirit of our vigorous and advancing nation. It is happily defined by one of the most elegant of our living writers, as the "mind of the present age, acting upon the mind of the next." It will be readily perceived how far this machine surpasses the boasted lever of Archimedes, since it undertakes not simply the movement of a mass of matter, the lifting of a dead planet from its place, that it might fall, perchance, into the sun and be annihilated; but the elevation of that part of man whose power is boundless, and whose progress is eternal, the raising of a race "made but a little lower than the angels," to a more entire assimilation with superior natures.
In the benefits of an improved system of education, the female sex are now permitted liberally to participate. The doors of the temple of knowledge, so long barred against them, have been thrown open. They are invited to advance beyond its threshold. The Moslem interdict that guarded its hidden recesses is removed. The darkness of a long reign of barbarism, and the illusions of an age of chivalry, alike vanish, and the circle of the sciences, like the shades of Eden, gladly welcome a new guest.
While gratitude to the liberality of this great and free nation is eminently due from the feebler sex, they have still a boon to request. They ask it as those already deeply indebted, yet conscious of ability to make a more ample gift profitable to the giver as well as to the receiver. It seems desirable that their education should combine more of thoroughness and solidity, that it should be expanded over a wider space of time, and that the depth of its foundation should bear better proportion to the height and elegance of its superstructure. Their training ought not to be for display and admiration, to sparkle amid the froth and foam of life, and to become enervated by that indolence and luxury, which are subversive of the health and even the existence of a republic. They should be qualified to act as teachers of knowledge and of goodness. However high their station, this office is no derogation from its dignity; and its duties should commence whenever they find themselves in contact with those who need instruction. The adoption of the motto, that to teach is their province, will inspire diligence in the acquisition of a knowledge, and perseverance in the beautiful mechanism of pure example.
It is requisite that they who have, in reality, the moulding of the whole mass of mind in its first formation, should be profoundly acquainted with the structure and capacities of that mind; that they who nurture the young citizens of a prosperous republic, should be able to demonstrate to them, from the broad annals of history, the blessings which they inherit, and the wisdom of preserving them, the value of just laws, and the duty of obeying them. It is indispensable that they on whose bosom the infant heart is laid, like a germ in the quickening breast of spring, should be vigilant to watch its first unfoldings, and to direct its earliest tendrils where to twine. It is unspeakably important, that they who are commissioned to light the lamp of the soul, should know how to feed it with pure oil; that they to whose hand is entrusted the welfare of a being never to die, should be able to perform the work, and earn the wages of heaven.