e cotton settlements of Europe what a contrast! At the
best, operatives can only provide for their wants, and the placing out
of their children, by a life of strenuous toil. At the worst, they herd
together, many families in one house,--often in one room; decency is
discarded; recklessness succeeds, to such a degree that, in certain
sections of the society, there is scarcely a man of thirty-five who is
not a grandfather. Among such there is a barbarism as savage as among
the most vicious aristocracy of the worst feudal times. The lowest
artisan population of the present day may vie in corruption with the
noblesse of France on the eve of the first revolution. It is for the
traveller to observe what grade in the wide interval between the
operatives of Massachusetts, and those of Lyons and Stockport, is
occupied by the artisans of the places he visits.

* * * * *

Upon the extent of the Commerce of a country depends much of the
character of its morals. Old virtues and vices dwindle away, and new
ones appear. The old members of a rising commercial society complain of
the loss of simplicity of manners, of the introduction of new wants, of
the relaxation of morals, of the prevalence of new habits. The young
members of the same society rejoice that prudery is going out of
fashion, that gossip is likely to be replaced by the higher kind of
intercourse which is introduced by strangers, and by an extension of
knowledge and interests: they even decide that domestic morals are purer
from the general enlargement and occupation of mind which has succeeded
to the _ennui_ and selfishness in which licentiousness often originates.
A highly remarkable picture of the two conditions of the same place may
be obtained by comparing Mrs. Grant's account of the town of Albany, New
York, in her young days,[N] with the present state of the city. She
tells us of the plays of the children on the green slope which is now
State Street; of the tea-drinkings and working parties, of the gossip,
bickerings, and virulent petty enmities of the young society, with its
general regularity and occasional back-sliding; with the gentle
despotism of its opulent members, and the more or less restive or
servile obedience of the subordinate personages. In place of all this,
the stranger now sees a city with magnificent public buildings, and
private houses filled with the products of all the countries of the
world. The inhabitants are t