As a matter of course, life cannot have much dignity or much that is characteristically human in it unless it be based upon active intellectuality, genuine sensibility, a development of the finer affections, and positive Christian virtue. When a man is a man, he never "tucks in grub." When a man lies down for rest and sleep he does not "go to roost." To a man, marriage is something more than "hitching on," and a dirty shirt is a good deal more of a "surprise" to a man's back than a clean one. There is no doubt about the fact that a life whose whole energies are expended in hard bodily labor is such a life as God never intended man should live. I do not wonder that men fly from this life and gather into the larger villages and cities, to get some employment which will leave them leisure for living. Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul. It was never meant by the Creator that the soul should always be subordinate to the body, or sacrificed to the body. I am perfectly aware that I am not revealing pleasant truths. We are very much in the habit of glorifying rural life, and praising the intelligence and virtue of rural populations; and if they believe us, they cannot receive what I write upon this subject with pleasure. But the question which interests these people most is not whether my statements are pleasant but whether they are true. Is the philosophy sound? Are the facts as they are represented to be? Does a severe and constant tax upon the muscular system repress mental development, and tend to make life hard and homely and unattractive? Is this the kind of life generally which the American farmer leads? Is not the American farmer, generally, a man who has sacrificed a free and full mental development, and all his finer sensibilities and affections, and a generous and genial family and social life, and the dignities and tasteful proprieties of a well-appointed home, to the support of his muscles? I am aware that there are instances of a better life than this among the farmers, and I should not have written this article if those instances had not taught me that this everlasting devotion to labor is unnecessary. There are farmers who prosper in their calling, and do not become stolid. There are farmers who are gentlemen--men of intelligence--whose homes are the abodes of refinement, whose watchward is improvement, and whose aim it is to elevate their calling. If there be a man on the earth whom I honestly honor it is a farmer who has broken away from his slavery to labor, and applied his mind to his soil.