belong to an older form of society; but it also rewarded him with the freedom, hardihood, and self-reliance of forest life.

Anxious to make farmers of his sons, Major Badger resolved to further this purpose by selling his farm in Gilmanton, and by making a more extensive purchase in a new country. At this early time, when emigration had not directed its course to the valley of the Mississippi, and when the attractions of Iowa and Minnesota lay sealed up for a future development, the mind of Mr. Badger was directed to the fertile woodland region of Lower Canada, which at that time was regarded as the best part of the world. To this region he accordingly made a journey, was much pleased with the country, and, after selling his farm in Gilmanton, which he sold for between four and five thousand dollars, he again visited this section of the king's dominions, in company with his eldest son, where he purchased eight hundred acres of the best of land. Only a few families at this time resided in the town. Leaving his son and several hired men to wage the war of industrious labor on the primeval wilderness around them, he returned home, and recruiting himself with new forces, and taking with him all necessary farming utensils, with several yoke of oxen, hastened to join the company that were already at work in turning the wilderness into a fruitful field. When he had arrived within eighteen miles of his land, a wilderness of wide extent spread out before him. No road was visible. Sending some of his men forward as surveyors, and setting others to work in cutting a road through the woods, he continued slowly his progress; and, finally receiving some assistance from the inhabitants of the town of Stanstead, and augmenting his company with the addition of those who had been laboring on his farm, he went forward with the road with great courage and success, building several bridges across large streams, and conquering every obstacle in the way till an excellent road was completed through the whole distance to his farm. It has since become a highway of great travel, and is known by the name of the Badger Road to this day. This brave pioneer opened the way for the settlement of the town. Building a small cottage for temporary convenience, they prosecuted their work with zeal for several weeks, when they constructed a house for permanent residence, the best that had, at that time, been built in the town. These preparations being made, Major Badger returned to convey his family to their new abode, in the town of Compton, Lower Canada, for which place they set out in February, 1802, in eight sleighs, laden with provisions and furniture, and after nineteen days of slow and expensive journeying, experiencing the alternations of good and evil fortune, they arrived on the 4th or 5th of March at their new home in the woods. Woman is ever the natural conservative, loving her established and long-tried home.

The contrast between the cheerful society and scenery of Gilmanton, and the solitude of this woodland region, which was swept by colder winds than the climate of the east had known; the isolation of the place, which required a journey of seventy miles to purchase the necessary grains for seed and family consumption, were calculated to awaken a deep feeling of loneliness, and at the same time to invigorate the spirit with new energy and promptings to personal efforts. But man's nature is flexible, and easily bends to every variety of condition. As soon as the news of their arrival had spread, nearly all the inhabitants of the town came in to greet them in a friendly visit; and soon spring unfolded in all its gayety of woodland gem and costume, whilst all the company became laborers to the extent of their respective abilities. Joseph, now ten years of age, who had known nothing of work, learned his first lessons in the sugar groves of the new farm. Soon they became contented with their situation, and the woody solitudes gave cheering proofs of transition, as extended acres appeared to view, ready to bear the verdure of the meadow, or the harvests of golden grain. On each side of the Coatecook river lay four hundred acres; the eastern swell was called Mount Pleasant, the western, Mount Independence. Here, in a few years, they reaped a large prosperity from the productive earth. In the journal of Mr. B. I find a notice of the total eclipse in 1806, the effects that followed it on the agricultural prospects of that country, and the melancholy thoughtfulness which the day inspired in his own mind. The effect was great, according to his statement; so much so as to be sensibly felt through the seasons. Fourteen acres carefully planted with fruit-trees and grafted with the best of scions, yielded nothing to reward the toil of the laborer.

In the general picture here presented, the reader may see the theatre of action occupied by the young man who was destined in future years to impress great numbers with his own ideas and sentiments. Doubtless there are in the world some conventional minds, who, hastily deciding all things by local prejudice or capricious fashion, would hold it impossible for genius and power to hail from any but certain favored localities; from college routine, and the aids of walls of books and of titled professors. But this is not the way in which the goddess of force and faculty distributes her gifts and makes her highest elections. She is by no means afraid of mountains and woodland solitudes; nor does she despair of winning her ends when professors and colleges do not wait upon her bidding. She exults rather in natural productions; being able to turn the night-stars, heaven's winds, earth's flowers, and even common events, into teachers; and the same of all experience and inward faculty. She brings a universal power from Stratford to London, from Ayreshire to Edinburgh, from Vosges and Domremi to Orleans and to Rheims. All great men are educated. The only variance resides in the modes and teachers. We like it that a prophet should, in early life, hail from the woodland world, and that the vastness and tranquillity of landscapes should reside in his public discourse; that his words and manners should savor, not of dry scholastic pretension and mannerism, but of songsters' voices, of colossal trees, wild rose and rushing brooks. Mr. B., however, for his time and day, was an educated man; we mean even in the more restricted sense in which the world understands this word; and certainly he was this, in its most important meanings.

"We soon had opportunity," says Mr. Badger, "for education in our new country. This was very pleasing to me, and I felt the necessity of improving every privilege of the kind." And I would say that those who knew him in after life could not but see in him the rare faculty bestowed on some of our race, that of turning a few means to a great account.

Passing on to his fifteenth year, he speaks of a season of illness, occasioned by excessive ambition at manual labor, which kept him from school a