Is the Bible, that is to say, the ridiculous consequences and rules of conduct which certain fantastic wits deduce from that collection of poems and songs, sufficient to cause all this unhappiness? To me it seems a very considerable effect for such a cause.
M. de Volney related that, being at table in the country at the house of an honest American, a man in easy circumstances, and surrounded by children already grown up, there entered into the dining-room a young man. "Good day, William," said the father of the family; "sit down." The traveller enquired who this young man was. "He's my second son." "Where does he come from?"—"From Canton."
The arrival of one of his sons from the end of the world caused no more sensation than that.
All their attention seems employed on finding a reasonable arrangement of life, and on avoiding all inconveniences. When finally they arrive at the moment of reaping the fruit of so much care and of the spirit of order so long maintained, there is no life left for enjoyment.
One might say that the descendants of Penn never read that line, which looks like their history:—
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
The young people of both sexes, when winter comes, which in this country, as in Russia, is the gay season, go sleighing together day and night over the snow, often going quite gaily distances of fifteen or twenty miles, and without anyone to look after them. No inconvenience ever results from it.
They have the physical gaiety of youth, which soon passes away with the warmth of their blood, and is over at twenty-five. But I find no passions which give pleasure. In America there is such a reasonable habit of mind that crystallisation has been rendered impossible.
I admire such happiness, but I do not envy it; it is like the happiness of human beings of a different and lower species. I augur much better things from Florida and Southern America.[1]
What strengthens my conjecture about the North is the absolute lack of artists and writers. The United States have not yet[(42)] sent us over one scene of a tragedy, one picture, or one life of Washington.