274 Landscape Gardening 



"At first sight, there is something surprising in this strange 

 unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of 

 abundance. The spectacle itself is, however, as old as the 

 world. The novelty is to sec a whole people furnish an 

 exemplification of it. 



"In the United States a man builds a house to spend his 

 latter years in, and sells it before the roof is on; he brings a 

 field into tillage, and leaves other men to gather the crops; 

 he embraces a profession, and gives it up; he settles in a 

 place, which he soon after leaves, in order to carry his 

 changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave 

 him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of poli- 

 tics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor, he 

 finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls 

 him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will 

 travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his 

 happiness." 



Much as we admire the energy of our people, we value no 

 less the love of order, the obedience to law, the security and 

 repose of society, the love of home, and the partiality to 

 localities endeared by birth or association, of which it is in 

 some degree the antagonist. And we are therefore deeply 

 convinced that whatever tends, without checking due energy 

 of character, but to develop along with it certain virtues 

 that will keep it within due bounds, may be looked upon as 

 a boon to the nation. 



Now the difference between the son of Ishmael, who lives 

 in tents, and that man who has the strongest attachment to 

 the home of his fathers, is, in the beginning, one mainly of 

 outward circumstances. He whose sole property is a tent 

 and a camel, whose ties to one spot are no stronger than the 

 cords which confine his habitation to the sandy floor of the 

 desert, who can break up his encampment at an hour's 

 notice, and choose a new and equally agreeable site, fifty 

 miles distant, the next day - - such a person is very little 

 likely to become much more strongly attached to any one 

 spot of earth than another. 



The condition of a western emigrant is not greatly dissimi- 



