Architecture at last began to raise its tasteful fronts, Elizabethan, Gothic, Italian cottage, or American composite, set in trim yards or on smooth-shaven lawns, netted and webbed by paths and walks. On headlands, fringed with sea-wave ruffles; in valleys gladdened by the smiles of brooks and rallied into happy, healthy, joyousness by the outbursting frolicsome hills that cannot hold in their peculiar humors; on the sloping banks of many rivers seaward running; and on bossed and tufted hillocks where the pines, spruces, and larches hang aloft through all seasons their graceful flags, tasteful residences with clustering out-houses, sheltered thrift, corralled the domestic wealth which Midas cannot buy, and resounded with whoops that brought out other hoops in turn. Farmsteads had steadily added improvements, amplified their breadths, changed their white coats into colors more harmonious, and gathered around them well-adjusted farm buildings, and in their neatly fenced yards better stock, quadrupedal, bipedal, feathered, furred, and scaly. Under improved cultivation our two national farms—the sea and land—produced, in 1850, crops that weighted the census heavily. The former showed 1,360 new American-built vessels, carrying 272,218 tons; and the latter bore a growth that year of 53,000,000 pounds of wool, 100,000,000 bushels of wheat, 592,000,000 bushels of Indian corn, 813,000,000 pounds of cotton, 14,000,000 tons of hay, grown on farms valued at $3,300,000,000, upon which were used implements costing $153,000,000, and stocked with live animals valued at $544,000,000. But while American hands were thus busy through the half-century, American heads were not idle or unproductive. Of course in numbers political writings led, as political discussion is the intellectual bread and butter of Americans. Histories of many of the States—of Connecticut, by Benjamin Trumbull; of Pennsylvania, by Robert Proud; of New England, by Hannah Adams; “Annals of America,” by Dr. Abiel Holmes, father of the many-tongued, myriad-sided Oliver Wendell, and others—gathered up the variously colored skeins of the busy-fingered past; while lives of eminent statesmen—Patrick Henry’s, by the accomplished Wirt, _laus laudato viro_; of Columbus, by Irving, himself a discoverer of new worlds in America; Washington’s, Franklin’s, Adams’s, and others, by Jared Sparks; and a long catalogue of others—presented pictures of rare personal daring, heroism, patriotism, learning, and worth, set in choicely carved and polished frames.