A VISIT TO THE ILLINOIS. 433 



Mr. Rapp. The settlers consisted of many hundreds of persons, of 

 every variety of age, trade, and profession; and, by an excellent system 

 of management, and the artful manner in which the people were kept 

 in ignorance of the language and free institutions of the people around 

 them, wonders were here effected in the way of agricultural improve- 

 ments, and the useful manufactures. It resembled a scene in Germany, 

 to view the church, the dwelling-houses,, and the mill, with the dress, 

 manners, and boorish Teniers-like appearance of the people at Harmony. 

 It is, indeed, one of the most desirable peculiarities of the United States, 

 that the traveller, in his route, occasionally views the transplanted 

 people, scenery, and manners, of all the European countries. As Har- 

 mony is a miniature picture in Germany,, the vine-growers at Venay, 

 upon the Ohio river, exhibit the simplicity of Switzerland ; and, de- 

 scending to the lower region of the Mississippi, for a hundred miles, 

 the sugar district of Louisiana preserves the language ard manners of 

 France. Harmony was, at length, purchased by Mr. Owen, of New 

 Lanark, a gentleman whose schemes, for the welfare of his fellow men, 

 appear to embrace all the hemispheres. He purchased the lands, towns, 

 mills, and other appurtenances of the place, for the sum of one hundred 

 and twenty thousand dollars ; the two bells in the church alone being 

 estimated at the sum of six thousand dollars : and here this worthy man 

 commenced his plan of labour co-operation. He did not, however, cal- 

 culate sufficiently upon the difference of the habits and manners of the 

 people of whom his settlement was composed, from those of his German 

 predecessors at Harmony; for high-spirited and unsettled republicans 

 were soon found to be very different materials from German beasts of 

 burthen. Discontent and discord soon became the prevailing character- 

 istic of the place ; and Mr. Owen, having abandoned his injudicious 

 purchase at Harmony, has returned to the sphere where the efforts of 

 the man of philanthropy are a thousand times more required. 



It was the greatest disadvantage of the prairie settlements to be filled 

 with a cla|s of persons altogether unsuited, from previous habits of life, 

 to undergo the privations and labours peculiar to a new country. The 

 glowing descriptions of the prairies of the Illinois, when read in a 

 drawing-room in Bond-street or the Regent's Park, are certainly 

 calculated to excite the most rapturous anticipations, and numbers of 

 persons who were already in possession of elegance and luxury at home, 

 yet encountered the toils and privations of the sea and land to reach the 

 El Dorado of the Illinois. These adventurers forgot that the con- 

 veniences of life are altogether unattainable in a new country, and that 

 the charms of the finest natural scenery disappear in a few days or 

 weeks, whilst toil and hunger, and repining after home, endure to the 

 end of the days of man. Thus amongst the settlers in these wilds were 

 Londoners of every grade, publishers, painters, stock-brokers, lawyers, 

 bankers, cousins to a lord, and every variety of men who could least be 

 expected to be found in the land of labour. The greater proportion of 

 these persons soon found themselves with exhausted means, the illusion 

 wearing away, and themselves disappointed and dejected at the pro- 

 spect of a perpetual continuance in this, now to them a Siberian exile. 

 Others, more prudent and wealthy, returned, disgusted and disap- 

 pointed, to their native country, convinced that there is a time and a 

 place for all things, and that transitory causes of discontent ought not 

 M. M. No. 82. 2 G 



