ry high. There is least marriage in unhealthy countries, and most
in healthy ones,--other circumstances being equal. The same kind of
spirit (however largely diluted) prevails in sickly regions as in
societies which are visited by a pestilence. Study the tempers of the
people who are subject to goitres, of those who live in marshes, of
those who encounter an annual tropical fever; and contrast it with that
of dwellers on mountains, and in dry prairies, and in well-ventilated
towns. What selfishness, apathy, and discontent in the one class! and
what kindliness, briskness, and cheerfulness in the other! In the United
States, wide spreading as the country is, and comprehending every
variety of people, and almost of climate, the common deficiency of
health produces moral effects which must strike the most careless
traveller. The epicurean temper of the south, and the puritanic mood of
the north, are alike stimulated by this. In the south, the overseers,
whose business it is to encounter the fever, seem to be always
practically saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." There
is a recklessness among the trading classes there, a heathen levity and
grossness, which are doubtless in a great degree owing to the presence
of slavery, but also in part to the certainty of a very large annual
mortality. Not the purest Christianity itself could preserve a people so
placed from a more or less modified fatalism. The richer members of
society leave their homes for some months of every year, and go
northwards; and this perpetual unsettling of their families has a bad
effect upon the habits of the young people and the comfort of their
parents. It operates against domestic diligence, tranquillity, and
satisfaction with home pleasures. In the north, there is a perpetual
preaching about death, enforced by the never-ceasing recurrence of it;
but it has not the effect of making people less worldly-minded than
others. It serves only to shade life with apprehension, uncertainty, and
bereavement; and, it is to be feared, to give to the vanity of many
minds the direction of false heroism about meeting death. This seems too
serious a subject for the exercise of human vanity; yet that purpose it
has served, perhaps, in all societies; and in none more than in New
England. The greater number of very young people, everywhere, who cannot
be aware of the importance of life, and of the simplicity of death as
its close, have romantic thoughts about