and trade till public and private honor became
identical; that the Western man, in that crowded and exciting life
which, develops his faculties so fully for to-day, might not forget
that better part which could not be taken from him; that the Western
woman might take that interest and acquire that light for the
education of the children, for which she alone has leisure!

This is indeed the great problem of the place and time. If the next
generation be well prepared for their work, ambitious of good and
skilful to achieve it, the children of the present settlers may be
leaven enough for the mass constantly increasing by immigration. And
how much is this needed, where those rude foreigners can so little
understand the best interests of the land they seek for bread and
shelter! It would be a happiness to aid in this good work, and
interweave the white and golden threads into the fate of Illinois. It
would be a work worthy the devotion of any mind.

In the little that I saw was a large proportion of intelligence,
activity, and kind feeling; but, if there was much serious laying to
heart of the true purposes of life, it did not appear in the tone of
conversation.

Having before me the Illinois Guide-Book, I find there mentioned, as
a "visionary," one of the men I should think of as able to be a truly
valuable settler in a new and great country,--Morris Birkbeck, of
England. Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters
from, Illinois. I see nothing promised there that will not surely
belong to the man who knows how to seek for it.

Mr. Birkbeck was an enlightened, philanthropist, the rather that he
did not wish to sacrifice himself to his fellow-men, but to benefit
them with all he had, and was, and wished. He thought all the
creatures of a divine love ought to be happy and ought to be good, and
that his own soul and his own life were not less precious than those
of others; indeed, that to keep these healthy was his only means of a
healthy influence.

But his aims were altogether generous. Freedom, the liberty of law,
not license; not indolence, work for himself and children and all
men, but under genial and poetic influences;--these were his aims. How
different from those of the new settlers in general! And into his
mind so long ago shone steadily the two thoughts, now so prevalent in
thinking and aspiring minds, of "Resist not evil," and "Every man his
own priest, and the heart the only true church."

He