Sorrow doubles the burthen to the bent-down back; plants thorns in the unyielding pillow; mingles gall with water; adds saltness to their bitter bread; cloathing them in rags, and strewing ashes on their bare heads.  To our irremediable distress every small and pelting inconvenience came with added force; we had strung our frames to endure the Atlean weight thrown on us; we sank beneath the added feather chance threw on us, “the grasshopper was a burthen.”  Many of the survivors had been bred in luxury—­their servants were gone, their powers of command vanished like unreal shadows:  the poor even suffered various privations; and the idea of another winter like the last, brought affright to our minds.  Was it not enough that we must die, but toil must be added?—­must we prepare our funeral repast with labour, and with unseemly drudgery heap fuel on our deserted hearths —­must we with servile hands fabricate the garments, soon to be our shroud?

Not so!  We are presently to die, let us then enjoy to its full relish the remnant of our lives.  Sordid care, avaunt! menial labours, and pains, slight in themselves, but too gigantic for our exhausted strength, shall make no part of our ephemeral existences.  In the beginning of time, when, as now, man lived by families, and not by tribes or nations, they were placed in a genial clime, where earth fed them untilled, and the balmy air enwrapt their reposing limbs with warmth more pleasant than beds of down.  The south is the native place of the human race; the land of fruits, more grateful to man than the hard-earned Ceres of the north,—­of trees, whose boughs are as a palace-roof, of couches of roses, and of the thirst-appeasing grape.  We need not there fear cold and hunger.

Look at England! the grass shoots up high in the meadows; but they are dank and cold, unfit bed for us.  Corn we have none, and the crude fruits cannot support us.  We must seek firing in the bowels of the earth, or the unkind atmosphere will fill us with rheums and aches.  The labour of hundreds of thousands alone could make this inclement nook fit habitation for one man.  To the south then, to the sun!—­where nature is kind, where Jove has showered forth the contents of Amalthea’s horn, and earth is garden.

England, late birth-place of excellence and school of the wise, thy children are gone, thy glory faded!  Thou, England, wert the triumph of man!  Small favour was shewn thee by thy Creator, thou Isle of the North; a ragged canvas naturally, painted by man with alien colours; but the hues he gave are faded, never more to be renewed.  So we must leave thee, thou marvel of the world; we must bid farewell to thy clouds, and cold, and scarcity for ever!  Thy manly hearts are still; thy tale of power and liberty at its close!  Bereft of man, O little isle! the ocean waves will buffet thee, and the raven flap his wings over thee; thy soil will be birth-place of weeds, thy sky will canopy barrenness.  It was not for the rose of Persia thou wert famous, nor the banana of the east; not for the spicy gales of India, nor the sugar groves of America; not for thy vines nor thy double harvests, nor for thy vernal airs, nor solstitial sun—­but for thy children, their unwearied industry and lofty aspiration.  They are gone, and thou goest with them the oft trodden path that leads to oblivion, —­