How To Observe Part 5

The very fact of there being no literature in a nation may, however, yield inferences as to its mental and moral state. There is a very limited set of reasons why a people is without speech. They are barbarous, or they are politically oppressed; or the nation is young, and busy in providing and securing the means of national existence; or it has the same language with another people, and therefore the full advantage of its literature, as if it were not foreign. These seem to be nearly all the reasons for national silence; and any one of them affords some means of insight into the morals and manners of the dumb people.

As for those which have utterance, they either speak freshly from day to day, or they show their principles and temper by the choice they make from among their own cla.s.sics. Whatever is most accordant with their sympathies, they dwell upon; so that the selection is a sure indication of what the popular sympathies are. The same may be said of the comparative popularity of modern books; but they may reveal only a temporary state of feeling, and the traveller has to separate this species of evidence from the more important kind which testifies to the permanent affections and convictions of a people. The revelling of the French in Voltaire, of the Germans in Werter, and of the English in Byron, was, in each case, a highly important revelation of popular feeling; but it is not a circ.u.mstance from which to judge of the fixed national character of any of the three. It was a sign of the times, and not signs of nations. Voltaire pulled down certain erections which could not stand any longer, and was wors.h.i.+pped as a denier of untruths,--the popular mind being then ripe for the exploding of errors. But here ended the vocation of Voltaire. The French are now busy, to the extent of their energy, in doing what ought to follow upon the exposure of errors;--they are searching after truth. Pretences having been destroyed, they are now propounding and trying principles; and works which propose new and sounder erections find favour in preference to such as only expose and ridicule old sins and mistakes.--Werter was popular because it expressed the universal restlessness and discontent under which not only Germany, but Europe was suffering. Mult.i.tudes found their uncomfortable feelings uttered for them; and Werter was, in fact, the groan of a continent. Old superst.i.tions, tyrannies, and ignorance were becoming intolerable, and no way was seen out of them; and the voice of complaint was hailed with universal sympathy. So it was with the poetry of Byron, adopted and echoed as it was, and will for some time continue to be, by the sufferers under an aristocratic const.i.tution of society, whether they be oppressed by force from without, or by weariness, satiety, and disgust from within. The permanent state of the English mind is not represented in Byron, and could not be guessed at from his writings, except by inference from the woes of a particular order of minds: but his popularity was an admirable sign of the times, for such observers as were capable of interpreting it. Probably, in all ages since the pen and the press began their work, literature has been the expression of the popular mind; but it seems to have become peculiarly forcible, as a general utterance, of late. Whatever truth there may be in speculations about the growing infrequency of "immortal works,"--about the age being past for the production of books which shall become cla.s.sics,--it appears that literature is a.s.suming more and more the character of letters written to those whom their subjects may concern, and becoming more and more a familiar utterance of the general mind of the day. In the popular modern works of Germany there is deep and warm religious sentiment, while the most unflinching examination into the philosophy and fact of revelation is widely encouraged. In England, there is a growing taste for works which exhibit the life of the lower orders of society, though all aristocratic prepossessions appear in practice as strong as ever. This seems to indicate that our philosophy has a democratic tendency under which a general opinion will be formed, which will, in time, be expressed in practice. The French, again, are devouring, at the rate of two new volumes every three days, novels which are, in fact, letters to those whom they may concern on the condition and prospects of men and women in society. The pictures are something more than mere delineations. They carry with them principles by which the position of the members of the community is to be tested.

The social position of Woman is a prominent topic. The first principles of social organization are involved in the groundwork of the simplest stories: and the universal reception of this product of literature shows that those whom it concerns are all. What an enormous loss of knowledge must the traveller sustain who omits to observe and reflect upon the spirit of the fresh literature of a people, or of its preferences among the literature of the past!

He must note whether a people has recent dramatic productions: if not, whether and why the times are unfavourable to that kind of literature; and if there is dramatic production, what are the pictures of life that it presents.

He must obtain at least some general idea of what the mental philosophy of the society is,--not so much because mental philosophy affects the national mind, as because it emanates from it. Is it a gross material, or a refined a.n.a.lytical, or a ma.s.sy mystical philosophy? The first is usually found in the sceptical stage of the mind of a nation; the last in its healthy infancy; while the other is rarely to be found at all, except as the product of an individual mind of a high order. Few travellers will have occasion to give much attention to this part of their task of observation; as, among all the nations of the earth, there is not one in ten that has any mental philosophy at all.

All have Fiction (other than dramatic); and this must be one of the observer's high points of view. There is no need to spend words upon this proposition. It requires no proof that the popular fictions of a people, representing them in their daily doings and common feelings, must be a mirror of their moral sentiments and convictions, and of their social habits and manners. The saying this is almost like offering an identical proposition. The traveller should stock his carriage with the most popular fictions, whether of the present day, or of a recent or ancient time. He should fill up his leisure with them. He should separate what they have that is congenial with his own habit of mind, from that with which he can least sympathize, and search into the origin of the latter. This will be something of a guide to him as to what is permanent and universal in the sentiments and convictions of the people, and what is to be regarded as a distinctive feature of the particular society or time.

It is impossible but that, by the diligent use of these means, the observer must learn much of the general moral notions of the people he studies,--of what they approve and disapprove,--what they eschew and what they seek,--what they love and hate, desire and fear;--of what, in short, yields them most internal trouble or peace.

CHAPTER III.

DOMESTIC STATE.

"How lived, how loved, how died they?"

BYRON.

Geologists tell us that they can answer for the modes of life of the people of any extensive district by looking at the geological map of the region. Put a geological map of England before one who understands it, and he will tell you that the inhabitants of the western parts, from Cornwall, through Wales, and up through c.u.mberland into Scotland, are miners and mountaineers; here living in cl.u.s.ters round the shaft of a mine, and there sprinkled over the hills, and secluded in the valleys.

He will tell you that, on the middle portion of the surface, from Devons.h.i.+re, up through Leicesters.h.i.+re, to the Yorks.h.i.+re coast, the wide pastures are covered with flocks, while the people are collected into large manufacturing towns; an ordinary map showing, at the same time, that Kidderminster, Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, and Nottingham, Sheffield, Huddersfield, and Leeds, with many others, lie in this district. He will tell you that the third range, comprehending the eastern part of the island, is studded with farms, and that tillage is the great occupation and interest of the inhabitants.

The moralist might follow up the observations of the geologist with an account of the general characteristics of societies engaged in these occupations. He knows that a distinct intellectual and moral character belongs to miners, to artisans, and to agriculturists; he knows that miners are p.r.o.ne to superst.i.tion, and to speculation in business, from the incalculable nature of their pursuits, the hap-hazard character of their enterprises; he knows that an artisan population is active-minded, communicative, capable and fond of concert; that among them is found the greatest proportion of religious dissent and political sagacity, of knowledge and its results in action. He knows that an agricultural people are less of a society than the others; that they are as mentally sluggish in comparison with operatives, as they are physically superior to them; that they make far less use of speech; are more attached to what is habitual and ancient, and have less enterprise and desire of change. They are, in fact, the representatives of the past,--of feudal times; while an artisan population is a prophecy of the future, and the beginning of the fulfilment. The ideas of equal rights, of representation of person as well as property, and all other democratic notions, originate in towns, and chiefly in manufacturing towns. Loyalty to the person rather than the function of rulers, pride in land and love of it as the blessing of blessings, and jealousy of every other interest, are found wherever corn springs up in the furrows, and there are farm-houses to be miniature representations of the old feudal establishments.

Such are the general tendencies, modified according to circ.u.mstances.

There are influences which make certain artisans in England tories, and certain landlords and tenants liberals; and there may be times and places where whole societies may have their characteristics modified; but there is rarely or never a complete departure from the general rule.

Landlords and their posse of tenants, called liberal, soon find a point beyond which they cannot go, and from which they tend back into the politics of their order; and there is often but a single step for tory artisans into ultra-radicalism; it turns out to be a spurious toryism.

So it is possible that there might have been here and there a democrat in La Vendee in 1793, and a sprinkling of royalists in Lyons in 1817.

Yet La Vendee and Linois may be taken as representatives of the two kinds of society. The weaving population of Lyons are, like that of manufacturing towns generally, disposed to irritability by physical uneasiness, nouris.h.i.+ng their ideas and feelings by communication, suffering from the consequences of partial knowledge, having glimpses of a better social state, and laying the blame of their adversities on a deficiency of protection by the government; enterprising and nicely skilled in the improvement of their articles of manufacture, and ever full of aspiration. The inhabitants of La Vendee are so diametrically opposite in their social circ.u.mstances and characteristics, that their bias in politics is a matter of course. Here is a description of the face of the district at the time that Lyons was as intensely republican as La Vendee was royalist:--

"Only two great roads traversed this sequestered region, running nearly parallel, at a distance of more than seventy miles from each other. The country, though rather thickly peopled, contained, as may be supposed, few large towns; and the inhabitants, devoted almost entirely to rural occupations, enjoyed a great deal of leisure. The n.o.blesse or gentry of the country were very generally resident on their estates, where they lived in a style of simplicity and homeliness which had long disappeared from every other part of the kingdom. No grand parks, fine gardens, or ornamented villas; but s.p.a.cious clumsy chateaux, surrounded with farm offices, and cottages for the labourers. Their manners and way of life, too, partook of the same primitive rusticity. There was great cordiality, and even much familiarity, in the intercourse of the seigneurs with their dependants: they were followed by large trains of them in their hunting expeditions, which occupied so great a part of their time. Every man had his fowling-piece, and was a marksman of fame or pretensions. The peasants resorted familiarly to their landlords for advice, both legal and medical; and they repaid the visits in their daily rambles, and entered with interest into all the details of their agricultural operations. From all this there resulted a certain innocence and kindliness of character, joined with great hardihood and gaiety. Though not very well educated, the population were exceedingly devout; though theirs was a kind of superst.i.tious and traditional devotion, it must be owned, rather than an enlightened or rational faith. They had the greatest veneration for crucifixes and images of their saints, and had no idea of any duty more imperious than that of attending on all the solemnities of religion. They were singularly attached also to their cures, who were almost all born and bred in the country, spoke their _patois_, and shared in all their pastimes and occupations. When a hunting-match was to take place, the clergyman announced it from the pulpit after prayers, and then took his fowling-piece and accompanied his congregation to the thicket."[J]

The chief contrasting features of these two kinds of society may be recognized in all parts of the civilized world. The most intensely loyal of the loyal Chinese will be found irrigating the terraces of the mountains, or busy in the ploughing-matches of the plains; and the least contented will be found at the loom. Spain is removed from a capacity for social freedom just in proportion to the discouragement of manufactures. The vine-growing districts of Germany are the most, and the commercial towns the least, acquiescent in the rule under which they are living. Russia will be despotically governed as long as she has no manufactures; and England and the United States are rescued, by the full establishment of their manufactures, from all danger of a retrogradation towards feudalism.

The way in which these considerations concern us in this place is, that public and private morals, no less than manners, depend on the degree of feudalism which is left in the community. We have spoken before of the morals of the feudal and democratic states of society; and what we are now pointing out is, that these states, with their attendant morals and manners, may be discerned from the face of the country, and the consequent occupations of its inhabitants.

It appears as if a geological map might be a useful guide to the researches of the moralist,--an idea which would have appeared insanely ridiculous half a century ago, but now reasonable enough. If the traveller be no geologist, so that he cannot, by his own observation, determine the nature of the soil, and thence infer, for his general guidance, the employments and mental and moral state of the people, he must observe the face of the country along the road he travels. He will do better still by mounting any eminences which may be within reach, whether they be churches, pillars, pyramids, paG.o.das, baronial castles on rocks, or peaks of mountains; thence he should look abroad, from point to point, through the whole region, and mark out what he sees spread beneath him. Are there pastures extended to the horizon, with herdsmen and flocks sprinkled over them, and in the midst a cloud of smoke overhanging a town, from which roads part off in many directions?

Or is it a scene of shadowy mountains, with streams leaping from their fissures, and no signs of human habitation but the machinery of a mine, with rows of dwellings near heaps of piled rubbish? Or is the whole intersected with fences, and here dark with fallows, there yellow with corn, while farmsteads terminate the lanes, and the dwellings and grounds of rich proprietors are seen at intervals, with each a hamlet resting against its boundaries? Is this the kind of scene, whether the great house be called mansion, or chateau, or villa, or schloss; whether the produce be corn, or grapes, or tea, or cotton? A person gifted with a precocity of science in the twelfth century might have prophesied what is now happening from the picture stretched beneath him as he gazed from an eminence on the banks of the Don or the Calder. He might see, with the bodily eye, only

"Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide,"

with cl.u.s.ters of houses in the far distance, and Robin Hood with his merry men lurking in the thickets of the forest, or basking under the oaks: but with the prophetic eye of science he might discern the mult.i.tudes that were, in course of time, to be living in Sheffield or Huddersfield; the stimulus that would be given to enterprise, the thronging of merchants to this region, the physical sufferings, the moral pressure, that must come; the awakening of intelligence, and the arousing of ambition. In the real scene, a cloud-shadow might be pa.s.sing over a meadow; in the ideal, a smoke-cloud would be resting upon a hundred thousand human beings. In the real scene, a warbling lark might be springing from the gra.s.s; in the ideal, a singer[K] of a higher order might appear remonstrating with feudalism from amidst the roar of the furnace-blast and the din of the anvil; and then, when his complaint of social oppression is done, starting forwards to the end of all, and singing the requiem of the world itself.

"Whose trade is poaching. Honest Jem works not, Begs not; but thrives by plundering beggars here.

Wise as a lord, and quite as good a shot, He, like his betters, lives in hate and fear, And feeds on partridge because bread is dear.

Sire of six sons apprenticed to the jail, He prowls in arms, the Tory of the night; With them he shares his battles and his ale; With him they feel the majesty of might."

"He reads not, writes not, thinks not; scarcely feels: Steals all he gets; serves h.e.l.l with all he steals."

"Yes, and the sail-less worlds which navigate Th' unutterable deep that hath no sh.o.r.e, Will lose their starry splendour soon or late, Like tapers quenched by Him whose will is fate!

Yes, and the angel of Eternity, Who numbers worlds and writes their names in light, One day, O Earth, will look in vain for thee, And start, and stop in his unerring flight; And with his wings of sorrow and affright Veil his impa.s.sioned brow and heavenly tears!"

Somewhat in the same way as such a supposed philosophic observer might be imagined to foresee that democratic strains of remonstrance would here succeed to foresters' and freebooters' songs, may a well-qualified observer of the present day discern the interior mechanism and the remote issues of what lies beneath his eyes. While surveying the vast prairies on the banks of the deep rivers of the Western world, he may safely antic.i.p.ate the time when self-governing communities will swarm where now a settler's log-house and enclosure are the only break in the wide surface of verdure. While looking down upon the harvests of Volhynia, or watching the processions of wagons laden with corn, and slowly wending their way down to Odessa, he may securely conclude that no vivacious artisan population will enliven this region for a long time to come; that the inhabitants will continue attached to the despotism under which they live; and that the morals of a despotism--the morals which coexist with gross ignorance and social subservience--may be looked for and found for at least an age.

Some preparation may thus be made by a glance over the face of the country. Much depends on whether it is flat or mountainous, pasture or arable land. It appears from fact, too, that much depends on minor circ.u.mstances,--even on whether it is damp or dry. It is amusing to the traveller in Holland to observe how new points of morals spring up out of its swamps, as in the East from the dryness of the deserts. To injure the piles on which the city is built, is at Amsterdam a capital offence; and no inhabitant could outgrow the shame of tampering with the vegetation by which the soil of the d.y.k.es is held together. While Irish children are meritoriously employed in gathering rushes to make candles, and sedges for thatch, "the veriest child in Holland would resent as an injury any suspicion that she had rooted up a sedge or a rush, which had been planted to strengthen the embankments."[L] Such are certain points of morals in a country where water is the great enemy. In the East, where drought is the chief foe, it is a crime to defile or stop up a well, and the greatest of social glories is to have made water flow where all before was dry. In Holland, a malignant enemy cuts the d.y.k.e, as the last act of malice: in Arabia, he fills up the wells. In Holland, a distinct sort of moral feeling seems to have grown up about intemperance in drink. The humidity of the climate, and the scarcity of clear, wholesome water, obliges the inhabitants to drink much of other liquids. If moderation in them were not made a point of conscience of the first importance, the consequences of their prevalent use would be dreadful. The success of this particular moral effort is great.

Drunkenness is almost as rare in Holland as carelessness in keeping accounts, and tampering with the d.y.k.es. There is no country in the world whose morals have more clearly grown out of its circ.u.mstances than Holland. On the theory of an infallible Moral Sense, it would be as difficult to account for a Dutchman's tenderness of conscience on any of the above three heads, as for a soldier's agony at the imputation of sleeping upon guard, or an Alabama planter's resentment at being charged with putting the alphabet in the way of a mulatto.

Having noted the aspect of the country, the observer's next business is to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants as to the supply of the Necessaries of life. He knows that nothing remains to be learned of the domestic morals of people who are plunged in hopeless poverty. There is no foundation for good morals among such. They herd together, desperate or depressed; they have no prospect; their self-respect is prostrated; they have nothing to lose, there is nothing for them to gain by any effort that they can make.--But it is needless to speak of this. When we treat of the domestic morals of any cla.s.s, it is always presupposed that they are not in circ.u.mstances which render total immorality almost inevitable.

In agricultural districts, the condition of the inhabitants may be learned by observation of the markets. An observing traveller has said, "To judge at once of a nation, we have only to throw our eyes on the markets and the fields. If the markets are well supplied, the fields well cultivated, all is right. If otherwise, we may say, and say truly, these people are barbarous and oppressed."[M] This, though a rather sweeping judgment, is founded in truth, and is well worthy of being borne in mind in travelling. It so happens that the negroes of Hayti are abundantly supplied with the necessaries, and with many of the comforts of life; that they are by no means barbarous, and far from being oppressed; and yet they have few roads, and scarcely any markets. They grow up in the midst of plenty; but, when a countryman is about to kill a hog, he sends his son round among his neighbours on horseback, to give notice to any who wish for pork, to send for it on a certain day. Their wretched, barbarous, oppressed countrymen in South Carolina, meanwhile, have excellent markets. The Sat.u.r.day night's market at Charleston might beguile a careless foreigner into the belief that those who throng it are a free and prosperous people. Thus the rule above quoted does not always hold. Yet it is true that the existence and good quality of markets testify to the existence and good quality of other desirable things.

Where markets are abundantly and variously supplied, it is clear that there must be a large demand for the comforts of life, and a diversity of domestic wants. It is clear that there must be industry to meet this demand, and competence to justify it. There must be social security, or the industry and competence would not be put to so hazardous a use. It _may_ happen, as at Charleston, that the capital is the masters' (whose the profits may also be, at any moment); that the industry is called forth by a delusive hope; and that the briskness of the transactions at market is ascribable to the pleasure slaves have in social meetings; but better things may usually be inferred from a well-supplied and well-conducted market.

The traveller's other researches in agricultural regions will be into the Tenure of lands,--whether they are held in small separate properties;--whether such properties are held by individuals, or shared with any kind of partners;--whether portions are rented from landlords; and, if so, whether any order of middlemen are concerned in the business;--whether the land is chiefly held by large owners; and, if so, whether the labourers are attached to the soil under feudal arrangements, or whether they are free labourers working for wages.

The homes of the agricultural population will be found to vary in aspect as any one of these systems prevails. In young and prosperous countries, the system of small separate properties is found to conduce to independence and the virtues which result from it, though it is not favourable to knowledge and enlightenment. Families live much to themselves; and thus, while forming strong domestic attachments, they lose sight of what is going on in the world. They become unused to the light of society, and get to dislike and fear it. The labourers, in such case, usually live with the family, whether they be brothers, as often happens in Switzerland; sons, as in many a farm-house of the United States; or hired servants, as in former times in England,--and still in some retired parts. In each case the picture is easily filled in by the imagination. All are engaged, throughout the year, in the business of living. The work is never ending, still beginning; or, if it has intervals, they are dull and weary, from the absence of interests wherewith to occupy them. The employments of life are innocent, and the principle of a.s.sociation is harmless; but if there be ignorance and prejudice in the region, in these farm-houses will they be found; and in company with them morals of a high order are not to be looked for.

If small properties are held in partners.h.i.+p, poverty is present or threatening. The condition of affairs cannot be lasting; and this may be well; for narrow means and partners.h.i.+p in a property which requires to be managed by skill are more favourable to discontent and disagreement than to a kindly social state.

The middleman system is favourable or unfavourable to morals, just in proportion as it is so to prosperity. Every one knows the wretchedness of it in Ireland, and that there are numerous instances in Italy of the complete success of the metayer plan.

Where the land is the property of large owners, and is tilled by labourers, there must be more or less of the feudal temper and manners remaining. Where the labourers are attached to the soil, there must necessarily exist whatever good arises from the certainty of the means of subsistence, coupled with the evils of subservience to the will of the lord, mental sluggishness, and ignorance. Where they are not irremovably attached to the soil, habit and helplessness have usually much of the same effect. The son hedges, ditches, or ploughs where his father hedged, ditched, or ploughed; he takes his beer, or cider, or thin wine, (according to the country he lives in,) at the same house of entertainment, and gossips about the doings of the lord and his family, much as labourers were wont to gossip two hundred years ago.

It is the business of the traveller to note which mode of agricultural life prevails, and how the morals which pertain to it are modified by particular circ.u.mstances.

He must make the same kind of observations on the Manufacturing and Commercial Cla.s.ses of the country he visits. Here again the chief differences in morals and manners arise out of the comparative prosperity or adversity of the cla.s.s. Take the cotton manufacture.

Pa.s.sing by the Chinese operative plying his shuttle as he sits under his bamboo shed, and the Hindoo drawing out his fine thread under the shade of the palm, what differences there are among artisans of the same race,--Europeans and of European extraction! In Ma.s.sachusetts there are villages of artisans, where whole streets of houses are their property; the church on the green in the midst is theirs; the Lyceum, with its library and apparatus, is theirs. There are rows of neat frame-dwellings, painted white or yellow, with piazzas before and behind, and Venetian blinds to every window,--all growing up out of the earnings of girls, who bring their widowed mothers to preside over their establishments. Others are paying off the mortgages on their fathers'

farms. Others are procuring for their brothers a learned education in a college. In the 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 n.o.blesse 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 too busy to be given to gossip, too unrestrained in their intercourse with numbers to retain much prudery: social despotism and subservience have become impossible: there is a generous spirit of enterprise, an enlargement of knowledge, an amelioration of opinion. There is, on the other hand, perhaps a decrease of kindly neighbourly regard, and certainly a great increase of the low vices which are the plague of commercial cities. Such is the transformation wrought by commerce. An observer who can also speculate,--one who looks before and after,--will conclude that, amidst some evil, the change is advantageous; and that good must, on the whole, arise from enlarged intercourses between men and societies. Seeing in commerce the instrument by which all the inhabitants of the earth are in time to be brought into common possession of all true ideas, and sympathy in all good feelings, he will mark the progress made by the society he visits towards this end. He will mark whether its merchants as a body have a spirit of generous enterprise or of sordid self-interest; whether they entertain a respect for learning and a taste for art,--bringing the one from abroad, and cheris.h.i.+ng the other at home;--whether, in short, the merchants are the princes or the money-grubbers of the community. The spirit of this cla.s.s will determine that of their subordinates. If the masters of commerce are liberal and enlightened, their servants will be thriving, and will have the virtues which wait upon self-respect: if the contrary, they will be debased. A Jewish money-lender is no more like a merchant of Salem or Bourdeaux than Malay porters at Macao are like the clerk cla.s.s of Amsterdam. In the mercantile orders of society may be found the extremes of honour, generosity, diligence, and accuracy,--and of treachery, meanness, and selfish carelessness. It is the traveller's business to note the tendencies to the one or the other,--from the vexatious hog and yam traffic of the islands of the South Sea, to the magnificent transactions of the traders of Hamburgh.

The Health of a community is an almost unfailing index of its morals. No one can wonder at this who considers how physical suffering irritates the temper, depresses energy, deadens hope, induces recklessness, and, in short, poisons life. The domestic affections, too, are apt to languish through disappointment in countries where the average of death is very high. There is least marriage in unhealthy countries, and most in healthy ones,--other circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.s! 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 cla.s.ses 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 dying early; and, in a country where an unusual proportion do die early, this species of vain-glory is likely to flourish. The pain felt everywhere by really enlarged and religious minds on seeing a false resignation exhibited, and hearing shallow sentimentalities given out on the brink of the grave, is peculiarly felt in a region where mourning mothers may be seen who have lost eight, twelve, or fifteen children, and where scarcely an enterprise of any extent can be undertaken which is not almost sure to be interrupted or baffled by sickness or death.--When these considerations are dwelt upon, and when it is remembered what the consequences of a low state of health must be to each future generation, it seems scarcely extravagant to say that the best influence upon the morals of the American nation would be such as might improve their health.