's observation offers itself perpetually, that
every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil. It is a true
picture of that country to which they say we shall pass hereafter, and
where we are to see God and his angels in splendor, and crowds of the
damned trampled under their feet. While the great mass of the people are
thus suffering under physical and moral oppression, I have endeavored to
examine more nearly the condition of the great, to appreciate the true
value of the circumstances in their situation which dazzle the bulk of
spectators, and, especially, to compare it with that degree of happiness
which is enjoyed in America by every class of people. Intrigues of love
occupy the younger, and those of ambition the elder part of the great.
Conjugal love having no existence among them, domestic happiness,
of which that is the basis, is utterly unknown. In lieu of this, are
substituted pursuits which nourish and invigorate all our bad passions,
and which offer only moments of ecstacy, amidst days and months of
restlessness and torment. Much, very much inferior, this, to the
tranquil, permanent felicity, with which domestic society in America
blesses most of its inhabitants; leaving them to follow steadily those
pursuits which health and reason approve, and rendering truly delicious
the intervals of those pursuits.

In science, the mass of the people is two centuries behind ours; their
literati, half a dozen years before us. Books, really good, acquire just
reputation in that time, and so become known to us, and communicate to
us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay compensated,
by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of nonsensical
publications, which issues daily from a thousand presses, and perishes
almost in issuing? With respect to what are termed polite manners,
without sacrificing too much the sincerity of language, I would wish my
countrymen to adopt just so much of European politeness, as to be
ready to make all those little sacrifices of self, which really render
European manners amiable, and relieve society from the disagreeable
scenes to which rudeness often subjects it. Here, it seems that a
man might pass a life without encountering a single rudeness. In the
pleasures of the table they are far before us, because with good taste
they unite temperance. They do not terminate the most sociable meals by
transforming themselves into brutes. I have never yet seen a man drunk
in Fra