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society; yet, from an oversight of their parents, they have become unhealthy. They have become so enervated by the monotony of their seclusion, as to be painfully agitated at the arrival of a stranger, and to be affected with tremor, loss of voice, and sometimes violent hysteria, upon coming, once in two or three months, into a town.
There are some professions and occupations, the prosecution of which is attended with a sufficient variety of scene, society and circumstances, agreeably to recreate the mind; but there are, at the same time, occupations and pursuits not so diversified; and I have little doubt but that, from this cause alone, they are hurtful both to the mind and body.
The moral depravity so much complained of in large manufacturing places, may, in great measure, be traced to the necessity the persons engaged in them, feel themselves under of flying to something to relieve their minds from the ever-recurring sameness of their employment. The mind loses both its spring and balance, and they ignorantly attempt the renovation of both by recourse to baneful excesses. These afford a temporary diminution of their tcedium vitae, but followed by an increase of it, again to be removed by the same bad means; and thus habits destructive of health and happiness, and subversive of the best interests of society, become irrevocably established. The mind of the labouring manufacturer, requires instruction as to the modes of diversifying his occupation. It is not, I trust, an Utopian dream, to indulge the sanguine expectation that, as useful knowledge becomes more generally diffused amongst this class of persons, they will have their
