6
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
LITERARY.
TOWN AND COUNTRY.
Our country friends, if they read the newspapers, may be amused at the beginning of summer with the suggestions warm as the season, that people should betake themselves out of the city into the country. They are reminded of the brindle cow they milked in the happy days of child-hood—of the sequestered school-house under the shady elms or wide-spreading oaks—of the village church with the open windows on summer Sundays—of the field and the stream, and the purple hills—in fine the same agreeable picture of rural life is painted at the corner of the busiest street, that has from immemorial time been painted of the country in the city. A little investigation reveals that these pastoral pleas are written by men who have chosen the city and have not the slightest intention of taking their own advice. And naturally enough. For the countryman who comes to the city usually comes to seek his fortune there. He is not a man to whom the village church and sequestered school-house and purple hills have ever been romantic or agreeable. The brindle cow always kicked over his pail, and he had a rough cursing from the sulky farmer for whom he worked. In the church he heard long, dry sermons; and sitting upon a hard seat; was very drowsy on Sundays; and was as a small boy filliped on the head if he fell asleep or forgot the text. Under the shady elms and the widespread oak an intimacy with the birch was forced upon him; the fields were the arena of his daily toil—he hoed potatoes there, and in the sweltering June sun he swung his scythe upon the river meadows.
The country, to the countryman who has been compelled to choose the city as his abiding place, is not that agreeable remembrance sweet with clover blossoms and fresh with morning air, which the newspaper articles would persuade us to believe. It is remarked that the poets and other people who have been so enthusiastic about the country have lived in the city, and wrote their eulogies within brick walls.
Observe, also, how few people are brave enough to confess that they do not like the country; how every man has a vague dream of retiring to the country at that remote period when he shall have made money "enough" and how few people ever reach that Arcadia to which their whole lives have been the voyage. Then again, it is plain that the great things in history have not been done in the country. The triumphs of literature and art and of general affairs have always been achieved among the multitude of men. Genius seems to acquire attention in order to shine. When Wordsworth retired to the mountains in order to construct a work that might live his tastes, his studies and his friendships still kept the world around him, and he only lived farther from Charing Cross than Lamb or Coleridge.
But the real denizens of the country—the fathers and mothers of simple Susans for whom the poets sigh in coffee houses and to whom they write sonnets from taverns—they hardly understand the sighs and the sonnets; they see no purple hills and emerald meadows and silver streams. Their lives are very humble prose not poetry, can we truthfully say that their lives are more more lofty, more noble and inspiring than the life of a citizen? The country is Arcadian because it is unknown.
Is it probably very poetic to the factory girl, to the plow-boy, to the milk-maid? The statistics of the insane asylum show a proportionate majority from the country. The silence, the seclusions, the monotony of the year the mental idleness lead gradually to such results. It is certainly not surprising that the chances of the city tempt a youth whose life in the country has been an unintermitted toil from dawn to dark rewarded with a slight pittance. A few uncertain weeks' schooling at a miserable school in the winter do not satisfy his thirst for knowledge if he has any; the rough, coarse life of the farmer's home, although he does have as much fried pork as he wants, is neither amusing nor satisfactory if he be more than rude and coarse himself. The city by its very artificial multiplicity of luxuries offers a thousand chances for employment and success. If he has talent and ambition he will surely burst away from the relentless tedium of potatoes and corn and earn more money in an hour by writing a paragraph exhorting people to go and hoe corn and potatoes than he would by hoeing them a day.
We are far from advising country boys to come to the city. Contentment and character which are really better than the fame or fortune are quite as attainable in the country as in the city. But as enterprising youths always will try the town and many of the most successful citizens were originally country boys it is useless to deny that here is the great arena.
If they fail they may return, but the reader of the newspaper and other poetical works should understand that the poetry of the country is only visible from the city. Of course we know that the pleasantest life is the union of the two, the country enlivened by the intelligence and amenity of the city. Many a country-born and city-bred man retires upon his farm or his country-seat and counts every day a gain. But the fields are fair to him because he has known the streets; and the easy grace, the intelligence, the repose of the power of his tea and the superintendent of his shirt buttons, and derived from contact with society and the world. Man is not a tree after all. Cowper, who is guilty of that meaningless line—
"God made the country, man made the town."
was morbid; and Byron, who longed for a desert with one fair spirit for his minister was sentimental and always lived in cities where he was always sure to find his one fair spirit or more.
Man is a social being we venture to assail ; the whole world was made for him. The charms of solitude, the excitement of society, the sweet air, the placid farm and general mental recovery of the country and the splendor of all human achievements also, which congregate in the city. If editors and other poets would consider that as in their own case so that in most men milking a brindle cow is not the height of happiness, they would greatly assist the cause of general virtue and common sense.
POTATOES, CHILDREN AND PEACHES.
I might call this article, I suppose, a "glimpse" of Mormondom, but, reader, fearing the quoted word might suggest to you a ten-column article on a summer's sojourn in the West, thus causing this production to be passed by and you to remain. for a time at least, unacquainted with the productions of the Great Salt Lake