Retrospect of Western Travel (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1838. Excerpt: ... American variety and beauty by languid powers. All that the people of New-England can do is to make the best of their case. Those who are blessed with health should use every reasonable endeavour to keep it; and it may be hoped that an improved settlement and cultivation of the country will carry on that amelioration of its climate which many of its inhabitants are assured has already begun. ORIGINALS. " The ideal is in thyself; thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of. What matters whether such stuff be of this sort or of that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic."-- Sartor Resartus. Evert state of society has, happily, its originals; men and women who, in more or fewer respects, think, speak, and act, naturally and unconsciously, in a different way from the generality of men. There are several causes from which this originality may arise; particularly in a young community less gregarious than those of the civilized countries of the Old World. The commonest of these causes in a society like that of the United States is, perhaps, the absence of influences to which almost all other persons are subject. The common pressure being absent in some one direction, the being grows out in that direction, and the mind and character exhibit more or less deformity to the eyes-of all but the individual most con* cerned. The back States afford a full harvest of originals of this class; while in England, where it is scarcely possible to live out of society, such are rarely to be found. Social and professional eccentricity comes next. When local and professional influences are inadequately balanced by general ones, a singularity of character is produced, which is not so agreeable as it is striking and amusing. Of this class of characters few examples are to ...