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much, man too often contents himself with doing Uttle. 

 Amid all this plenty, the peasant is miserable. He lives in 

 a cabin of baked mud, or in burrows scooped out from the 

 friable hillocks, ignorant of the luxuries of furniture, and 

 barely possessing the necessaries of life. The want of roads 

 and of means of easy transport, makes his produce almost 

 worthless, so that a comparatively spare population exists, 

 and much wretchedness in the centre of fertile fields and 

 a land abundant in corn. 



We sometimes think ourselves unfortunate to have been 

 born, or to be doomed to live where clouded suns impart 

 a lessened light and heat ; or where the frosts of winter bind 

 up for many months the hardened earth. Yet in such 

 climes, man more really lives, and exercises a truer domin- 

 ion over inanimate things, than where tropical skies appear 

 to prepare for him an unceasing enjoyment. Where mind 

 and mental energy are dormant, he only vegetates or exer- 

 cises his brute passions. Where by perpetual struggles he 

 subdues the adverse elements, bends circumstances to his 

 Avill, forces a copious abundance from an unwilling soil 

 and in spite of inclement seasons — there he most truly lives, 

 and amidst his hardships enjoys life most ; there refreshing 

 sleep visits him with her balmiest breath, and in the power 

 of mind over matter, which his success displays, he brings 

 out more clearly the claim of man to a likeness with Him 

 who is all mind, and to whose slightest intimation all mat- 

 ter bends. 



Great Britain. — In striking contrast to the case of 

 Spain, is the agriculture of the Island in which I was bom, 

 and from which so many of your forefathers have come. 

 I need not tell you of our uncertain climate — our fickle sky, 

 our frequent rains, our late frosts in spring, our early frosts 

 in autumn, the cold winds and temperate suns of our most 



