doom of toil? How is it
that men have ever been blind to the exceeding profitableness of labor,
even for its own sake, whose moral harvest alone--industry, economy,
patience, foresight, knowledge--is in itself an exceeding great reward,
to which add the physical blessings which wait on this universal
law--health, strength, activity, cheerfulness, the content that springs
from honest exertion, and the lawful pride that grows from conquered
difficulty? How invariably have the inhabitants of southern countries,
whose teeming soil produced, unurged, the means of life, been cursed
with indolence, with recklessness, with the sleepy slothfulness which,
while basking in the sunshine, and gathering the earth's spontaneous
fruits, satisfied itself with this animal existence, forgetting all the
nobler purposes of life in the mere ease of living? Therefore, too,
southern lands have always been the prey of northern conquerors; and the
bleak regions of Upper Europe and Asia have poured forth from time to
time the hungry hordes, whose iron sinews swept the nerveless children
of the gardens of the earth from the face of their idle paradises: and,
but for this stream of keener life and nobler energy, it would be
difficult to imagine a more complete race of lotus-eaters than would now
cumber the fairest regions of the earth.

Doubtless it is to counteract the enervating effects of soil and
climate that this northern tide of vigorous life flows forever towards
the countries of the sun, that the races may be renewed, the earth
reclaimed, and the world, and all its various tribes, rescued from
disease and decay by the influence of the stern northern vitality,
searching and strong, and purifying as the keen piercing winds that blow
from that quarter of the heavens. To descend to rather a familiar
illustration of this, it is really quite curious to observe how many New
England adventurers come to the Southern States, and bringing their
enterprising, active character to bear upon the means of wealth, which
in the North they lack, but which abound in these more favored regions,
return home after a short season of exertion, laden with the spoils of
the indolent southerners. The southern people are growing poorer every
day, in the midst of their slaves and their vast landed estates: whilst
every day sees the arrival amongst them of some penniless Yankee, who
presently turns the very ground he stands upon into wealth, and departs
a lord of riches