In the case of the individual farmer now cultivating land upon which he lives, it is not unlikely that he would find a certain pecuniary disadvantage in the change. But, as a broad question of the future benefit of our agriculture, it must be conceded that whatever will tend to make the occupation more attractive cannot fail, by enlisting the services of more intelligent minds, to insure its very decided improvement. As the case now stands, the farmer's son will become a clerk or a mechanic rather than remain a farmer, because clerks and mechanics live in communities where there is more to interest the mind, and where, too, the opportunities for enjoyment and amusement are greater. The farmer's daughter will marry the clerk or the mechanic rather than a farmer, because she knows the life of a farmer's wife to be a life of dulness and dearth, while she believes that the wife of the clerk or mechanic will be condemned to less arduous labor, and will have much more agreeable surroundings. I have no means of judging what may have been the experience in Deerfield, Mass., for instance; but I am confident that many a mechanic's daughter, and indeed many young women of much higher position in life, would consider her lot a fortunate one in becoming the wife of a farmer whose homestead lay on the beautiful street of this old village. All that is here said is, to a certain extent, mere theory; but the subject is one that has not thus far met any practical solution, and in which, therefore, nothing except theorizing is possible. The broad fact is that the farming class in this country is degenerating by the withdrawal of its best blood; and still more serious injury is being done to it by the introduction of the lower class of foreigners. It may well be doubted whether it is possible so to modify the manner of life of the isolated farmhouse as to make it materially more attractive to American boys and girls. All that can be done is to rob it of its isolation by withdrawing its people, and placing them under better conditions of life. In a word, the only way that seems to offer to keep the boys on the farm is to move everybody off of the farm, bringing them together into snug little communities, where they may secure, without abandoning the manifest advantages of their occupation, the greater social interest and stimulus which they now hope to enjoy by going into other callings whose natural advantages are less. That such a course as this would restore the farmer to his former position as a leading element in Eastern civilization, cannot be questioned. That he will retain even the relative influence that he exercises to-day, unless some radical change is made, is at least very doubtful.