a hay-fork with dexterity, was fit to be a farmer. And yet his vocation is one of the most difficult, when considered in its numerous relations to the chemical properties of his fields, the influences of wind, moisture, and temperature varying in different localities, and the numberless causes which promote or obstruct the growth of plants. If there is any pursuit, which more than all others requires training, with some knowledge of the great principles which concern the fruitfulness of soils and the support of vegetable life, it is this. And yet, while we have for years had training-schools for medicine, and law, and theology, we have, until recently, had none for agriculture, the basis of all human industry. This is a great social wrong, which we have only just begun to reform by the institution of a school in the western district.

But, gentlemen, I have already outrun the time which I had allotted to the performance of the duty with which you have honored me, and will hasten to a conclusion. I cannot do so without bearing testimony to the great service which this Society has rendered to the cause of American agriculture by its steady and its disinterested labors. The valuable information it has circulated through its annual publications for nearly twenty years, on all the great subjects of practical husbandry, has given them new interest and importance, and the noble display of the last four days, in the products of the earth, in animals, and in agricultural machinery, attests its eminent success, and the strong hold it has gained on the confidence of the community.

In conclusion, gentlemen, let me repeat my conviction that no State in the Union possesses in a higher degree than ours the elements of a varied and abundant production. On such an occasion as this I could do no more than glance hastily at the leading characteristics of some of the larger divisions of our territory, in their relations to certain classes of agricultural products. Half a century more will, I do not doubt, develop the peculiar fitness of each for the productions for which they are respectively best adapted by climate and

physical constitution. Those who are to come after us, if we do our duty as faithful custodians of the productive powers of that portion of the earth which has been confided to us, will see the western district yielding, in undiminished abundance, its annual contributions of wheat; the eastern equally bountiful in corn and the coarser grains; the valleys everywhere teeming with varied productions; the elevated portions of the southern tier of counties, and the mountain-slopes of the northern and southern highlands, covered with flocks and herds, and the Atlantic district pouring its daily supplies into the vegetable and fruit markets of the great city. Before the nineteenth century shall have ended, the island of New York will be covered with warehouses, and workshops, and dwellings, with a population so full as to be incapable of further condensation. He who shall live to that day, and shall stand on the heights of Fort Washington, an elevation worthy of the immortal name it bears, the future central point of the wealth and taste of the great commercial capital,— will look down on a fairer scene than that which bursts on the sight from the plain of Sorrento, or the classical crest of Pausilippo. For he will look out, not over the sites of buried cities, or living cities abased by inaction and sloth, and on waters scarcely stirred by the keels of commerce, but on rivers bearing on their bosom the mighty traffic of continents, and on cities and shores instinct with life, and liberty, and industry, and intellectual power.

WAR WITH TRIPOLI.

This Lecture was prepared for the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York, in 1859. It was repeated before the Historical Society of New York in the same year, and is now published for the first time.

THE subject I have chosen for the lecture which you have invited me to deliver before your Society, is the war of the United States with Tripoli, one of the Barbary States occupying the northern portion of the African continent between Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean. My object in making the selection was to revive the remembrance of some of the most brilliant achievements in our early history, and I may say also one of the most important enterprises of the times, when considered in connection with the circumstances under which the contest was commenced, and its consequences not only to ourselves, but to the cause of humanity and civilization. It is now more than half a century since these events occurred; and if I may judge others by myself, the memory may be refreshed, not only in regard to details, but to the strong impulse which was given by our example to the older nations of the Eastern hemisphere.

Before I enter upon the narrative, it may not be uninteresting to take a brief survey of the geographical position of the Barbary States, and of the past and present condition of the country they possess.

I believe I hazard nothing in saying that the portion of Africa bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, west by the Atlantic Ocean, east by Egypt and the Desert of Barca, and south by Mount Atlas and the Great Desert, or Sahara, comprising the whole surface occupied by the empire of Morocco and the regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, is

physically one of the most beautiful regions in the world, and that it has in the progress of human society undergone more extraordinary revolutions than almost any other country on the face of the globe. The whole southern line of this district is flanked by Mount Atlas, taking its rise on the Atlantic coast, and terminating at the Desert of Barca, which separates Egypt from the territories of Tripoli, the most eastern of the Barbary States. South of Mount Atlas and along its whole extent lies the Sahara, or Great Desert. Barbary is thus completely insulated by seas and sands. Indeed, the Great Desert is believed to have been part of the Atlantic Ocean, and Barbary the Island of Atlantis, which was described to Plato by the priests of Egypt 400 years before the Christian era. The lower declivities of Mount Atlas are covered by the most luxuriant vegetation, trees and plants of the most graceful forms bending under the burden of their fruit, and flowers of the richest colors exhaling delicious fragrance. In the midst of this gorgeous display of vegetable life innumerable tribes of animals luxuriate in undisturbed repose. Although Mount Atlas traverses a continent with which we are accustomed to associate nothing but intolerable heat, it rises to the elevation of perpetual frost; and in the very middle of summer, when the sirocco is most fierce, the mountainpeaks are seen, through the steaming mists of the valleys, pushing their snowy crests far up into the heavens.

North of the Atlas range, the country to the very shores of the Mediterranean is extremely fertile and beautiful. Sugar, coffee, grains, vegetables, and fruits of all kinds are produced in the greatest abundance. It was at one time the chief granary of the Roman empire. South of the mountains the country runs into the Desert. The portion nearest to them is known as the date Region, from the great profusion of that fruit. As it approaches the Desert, it becomes sterile and is productive only where water is found.

This is all that time will allow me to say of its physical characteristics. Let us glance with the same rapidity at its ancient history.

The earliest authentic records are of the city of Carthage, about 500 years before the Christian era. It was founded some four centuries earlier; and at the time of its greatest prosperity, when engaged in the wars, which terminated in its destruction, with the Roman republic, it had a population of 700,000 souls. Razed to its foundations by Scipio 146 years before Christ, it was rebuilt under the Roman emperors, and became the great City of Africa. Seven hundred and fifty years later it was again destroyed by the Saracens; and its site is still marked by a ruined aqueduct, a broken wall, and a few other fragments of architecture, which are to be seen twelve miles from Tunis.

Farther east lay the five great cities of Cyrenaica or Pentapolis, of which Cyrene was the principal. The remains of this flourishing and luxurious town, which attained its greatest splendor under the Ptolemies, are on the declivity of a range of hills opening upon views of surpassing beauty and grandeur. It fell, like Carthage, under the scimitars of the Saracens; and the possession of its ruins is shared by jackals and hyenas, and by wandering Arabs, occupying it alternately with the variation of the seasons. Over all this vast region, from the Desert of Barca to the Pillars of Hercules, or the mountains which flank the Strait of Gibraltar, lie the scattered fragments of ancient art, in the Pentapolis the remains of Doric temples denoting the perfection of Grecian architecture, on the sites of later cities the Corinthian column and other tokens of the decline of the purer taste of earlier epochs. Ages wide apart impressed on this beautiful region the seals of their peculiar developments in art, to be obliterated by the barbarism of later eras in the history of our race. Among these relics of an extinct civilization the Bedouin Arabs, the Ishmaelites of our day, pitch their tents and elaborate their schemes of traffic, knowing little of the mighty struggles, with which their predecessors two thousand years ago disputed with the Roman people the dominion of the world.