cheerfully to the deprivation of things they
had in former times reckoned necessaries of life. The change is found
to be conducive to vigour both of mind and body. The indolent become
active, the delicate, strong. Neither the physical nor moral
constitution is easily injured, except by the influences of artificial
life. A man who dares not sit by an open window for fear of the
draught of air, if thrown upon a rock in the sea--exposed for days and
nights to all the winds that blow, wet, cold, and starving--sustains
no injury. Persons in this situation, or similar ones, have remarked
over and over again with astonishment, that they were never in better
health in their lives!

The beneficial effect of emigration on the character and habits of the
lazzaroni of Ireland, is sufficient to indicate the cause of many of
the great evils of social life at home. People will not recognise the
fact, that they are castaways of fortune, and require to scramble as
well as they can for a subsistence. They like to read of the struggles
of the Robinson Crusoes, but never think of imitating them. They have
not imagination enough to see the analogy between such positions and
their own; and it is not till they actually find themselves in some
far-away desert, that the slumbering energies of their character are
awakened. Then they have nothing to lean upon but their
industry--nothing to look to but their ingenuity. Expedients must take
the place of habits; necessity must be their law instead of
prescription; the chains of conventionality--as strong among the
lowest as among the highest--drop from their limbs, and the man rises
up from the ruins of the slave and beggar. This consummation, however,
is not the invariable result. Even emigration only increases, although
to a large extent, the number of Crusoes; and there is still a portion
of the people who drift to and fro as helplessly as sea-weed. But at
home, the _bulk_ of the people are in this condition; they have no
capacity for expedients, which are the stepping-stones of progress. A
resolute tradesman, when one thing fails, tries another; when one
process is found tedious or expensive, he has recourse to another; and
in the same way the whole of society is on the move onward and upward.
But the movers are not the mass; they are the stirring spirits of the
time, at whose ceaseless work the multitude gaze unreflectingly,
grumbling when their own occupation grows scanty, and looking for
rel