with the Deity, by our unceasing experience of his superintending love, and goodness, connects earth with heaven, and brings religion home to our business and bosoms.
There are countries which yield a plentiful produce almost spontaneously. It is not in these, however, but in those which are comparatively barren, where the inhabitants are compelled to wring, by skill and industry, from niggard nature, the wealth she does not easily bestow, that the culture of the soil has been carried to the greatest perfection. Great Britain, placed under a sky by no means propitious, and possessing a soil originally by no means prolific, surpasses all the world in the art of husbandry. The faeility with which the banana can be cultivated has doubtless eontributed to arrest the progress of improvement in tropical regions. In the new continent eivilization first eommeneed on the mountains, in a soil of inferior quality. Neeessity awakens industry, and industry calls forth the intelleetual powers of man. When these are developed, he does not sit in a cabin, gathering the fruits of his little patch of bananas, asking no greater luxuries, and proposing no higher ends of life than to eat and to sleep. He subdues to his use all the treasures of the earth by his labour and his skill; and he carries his industry forward to its utmost limits, by the eonsideration that he has active duties to perform. The idleness of the poor Indian keeps him, where he has been for ages, little elevated above his inferior animal;—the industry of the European, under his eolder skies, and with a less fertile soil, has surrounded him with all the blessings of society—its comforts, its affeetions, its virtues, and its intelleetual riehes.
While we are thus enjoying the blessings of civilization, we cannot sufficiently honour the memory of those whose patriotie energies have been the means of plaeing us in such happy circumstances. And we regret to observe that one of the principal hinderances of soeial improvement, is, that in eonsequenee of a false taste, mankind have bestowed more attention and applause upon great talents or ingenuity, when exerted in the arts of destruction, than when
