e getting of money is the chief end of man,--exclusive devotion to
labor has been deemed indispensable to success. The maxims of Franklin
have been literally received and adopted as divine truth. We have
believed that to labor is to be thrifty, that to be thrifty is to be
respectable, that to be respectable is to afford facilities for being
still more thrifty; and our experience is, that with increased thrift
comes increased labor. This is the circle of our ambitions and
rewards. All begins and ends in labor. The natural and inevitable
result of this is both physical and mental deterioration.

It is doubtful whether the world furnishes a finer type of man,
physically and intellectually, than the Irish gentleman. He is
handsome, large, courageous,--a man of fine instincts, brilliant
imagination, courtly manners, and full, vital force. By the side of
the Irish gentleman, there has grown for centuries the Irish
peasant. He is ugly, of stunted stature, and pugnacious; and he
produces children like himself. The two classes started from a common
blood; they now present the broadest contrast. We do not say that
freedom from severe labor on one side, and confinement to it on the
other, are entirely responsible for this contrast; difference of food
and other obvious causes have had something to do with it; but we say
that hard labor has, directly and indirectly, degraded from a true
style of manhood the great mass of the Irish peasantry. They are a
marked class, and carry in their forms and faces the infallible
insignia of mental and physical degeneration.

We would by no means compare New England farmers with the Irish
peasantry. We only present the contrast between these two classes of
the Irish population as the result of unremitting toil on one side,
and a more rational kind of life on the other. If we enter a New
England church, containing a strictly rural assembly, and then visit
another containing a class whose labor is lighter, and whose style of
life is based upon different ideas, we shall see a contrast less
marked, perhaps, but presenting similar features. The farming
population of New England is not a handsome population, generally.
The forms of both men and women are angular; their features are not
particularly intellectual; their movements are not graceful; and their
calling is evident by indubitable signs. The fact that the city
assemblage is composed of a finer and higher grade of men, women, and
children is of