were besides stimulated to extraordinary exertions by their recently-acquired independence.  As the political existence of the United States commenced at a period when civilisation had made great progress in the mother-country, their subsequent improvement would, for various reasons, be much more rapid than that of the country from which they originally emigrated.  To show the influence of external circumstances on the characters of men, let us just suppose two individuals, equal in knowledge and natural capacity, to be placed, the one on an improved farm in England, with the necessary capital and farm-stock, and the other in the wilds of America, with no capital but his labour, and the implements required to clear the land for his future farm.  In which of these individuals might we reasonably expect to find the most energy, ingenuity, and general intelligence on subjects connected with their immediate interests?  No one who has lived for a few years in the United States or Canada can hesitate for a reply.

The farmer in the more improved country generally follows the beaten track, the example of his ancestors, or the successful one of his more intelligent contemporaries; he is rarely compelled to draw upon his individual mental resources.  Not so with the colonist.  He treads in tracks but little known; he has to struggle with difficulties on all sides.  Nature looks sternly on him, and in order to preserve his own existence, he must conquer Nature, as it were, by his perseverance and ingenuity.  Each fresh conquest tends to increase his vigour and intelligence, until he becomes a new man, with faculties of mind which, but for his severe lessons in the school of adversity, might have lain for ever dormant.

While America presents the most forbidden aspect to the new settler, it at the same time offers the richest rewards to stimulate his industry.  On the one hand, there is want and misery; on the other, abundance and prosperity.  There is no middle course for the settler; he must work or starve.  In North America there is another strong incentive to improvement, to be found in the scarcity of labour; and still more, therefore, than in Europe must every mechanical contrivance which supersedes manual labour tend to increase the prosperity of the inhabitants.  When these circumstances are duly considered, we need no longer wonder at the rapid improvements in labour-saving machinery, and in the means of internal communication throughout the United States.  But for the steam-engine, canals, and railroads, North America would have remained for ages a howling wilderness of endless forests, and instead of the busy hum of men, and the sound of the mill and steam-engine, we should now have heard nothing but

“The melancholy roar of unfrequented floods.”