storm, and defy the blasts of winter. The great business of his early life, is to provide against its decline. He has artisans to administer to every want, and to alleviate every pain. Hence his own importance is magnified in his view; and he thinks less frequently of the great Being, from whom all his comforts spring. The Indian, on the other hand, leads a life of privation and adventure. He wanders alone through the forest; and seeks companionship and communion with nature. He looks abroad on the majesty of creation, and feels that there must be a Deity. In the uncertainty of his supplies of food, he knows that he is at the mercy of an invisible Protector; and the feeling of gratitude for unexpected relief, is more vivid than can enter into the heart of the civilized man.

Without stopping to inquire into the justice of the Indian's remark, I shall go on to observe, that there is a like difference between the occupations of the city and country. Every thing in a great metropolis is artificial. As the division of labour is the great secret of national wealth, so it is carried to its greatest extent in the capital. The members of the community are there more interlocked with each other, more helpless by themselves, than is the case with us. Accordingly they look to each other for the principal part of their enjoyments. To begin with the most necessary things of life, a citizen is dependant upon a dozen tradesmen, perhaps, for those articles of food and clothing, which a farmer works up at home. He accomplishes himself for one object of pursuit; and although profoundly ignorant of all others, is enabled thereby to fill his station, to keep his place as a key-stone in the arch of society. It never occurs to him how helpless and impotent he would be by himself. He is accommodated to things around—the artificial creature of an artificial system. Nor is it only in this dependence upon his fellows, that, the citizen differs from the countryman. His contrivances against the unavoidable evils and calamities of life, are more numerous, and cast a veil, in some degree, between him and his Creator. The overruling of that hand, which dispenses and withholds the rain and the harvest, affect him, as it were, but at a distance.—His merchandise is the product of art. His system of credit equalizes, if I may use the expression, the dispensations of Providence. The tempest may bury his wealth in the bosom of the deep; but an insurance office repairs the ravage of the elements. Every means in his power is used to thwart the original decree, "By the sweat of thy brow," &c.—He looks into futurity, and calculates the unfruitfulness of the seasons—not as a motive to humble dependence—not as an incentive to prayer and repentance—but that he may build his fortune upon the wants and the casualties of his fellow creatures. He even grapples with death itself—calculates with unfeeling selfishness the days and the infirmities of his neighbours, and wagers upon the length of his life. All his arrangements are predicated upon this artificial system. The thought, if it ever occur to him, of the great God of nature, is as much shut out by it, as the fair face of creation from the alleys and courts of the city. And in proportion as he becomes impressed with a deep sense of that overruling Providence, will these things become hateful in his eyes. No doubt the mind is, as Milton has it, "its own place," and can transform the natural aliment of vice into a medicament of virtue. The noblest examples of active goodness are generally to be found in a large metropolis; for it must be virtue of a superior cast that can resist the temptations which are there presented.—But minds of a contemplative turn may be allowed to shun the combat which they find it so hard to sustain, and to seek for aids to their good resolutions in external circumstances.

To all such I may venture to recommend the pursuits of a country life as eminently salutary. Every month and week has there its appropriate labours, which cannot be neglected; and it is from this cause a life of activity and variety. The events of the season are full of interest, and it is peculiarly delightful to observe how Providence still delights to bless. Shortsighted and presumptuous that we are, we are constantly auguring this or that misfortune—lamenting the unpropitiousness in some respect or another of the year; and yet from harvest to harvest are our barns filled, and our granaries laden. The labours of the country do not, like those of the city, deform the body, and undermine the constitution; and there is in its clear atmosphere, and silent serenity, an influence as invigorating to the soul as the touch of earth to Antæus. In the country, the silent and manifest workings of the Deity are constantly before us, and meet our eyes in every phase of organized life: The mind must be worse than insensible that does not feel and respond to the voice of praise, which seems to be constantly ascending, as from one great altar.

Some philosophers have placed virtue in a state of lofty contemplation; and others, of continued activity. The truth seems to be, that they are both essential to the perfect character.—He who gives himself up to indolent meditation, will become a prey to the enemies of his own household, and will fall by a servile foe. He who never retires to "plume his feathers, and let grow his wings," will find himself less and less able to sustain his flight; and discover, perhaps, when it is too late, that he has lost the energy of virtue, and the love of moral beauty.

But as the temptations of the more selfish passions are the strongest, that state of society in which we are the most exposed to them, is the most dangerous; and we have more need of having our eyes and our hearts fixed upon pure and lofty objects, than of having excessive stimulants applied to that activity, of which every condition in life requires a steady and vigorous application. To reflecting minds, therefore, the labour and the relaxation which the country holds out, are both more salutary and invigorating, than that which is required amid the smoke, and bustle, and jarring interests of a great metropolis.

AN ACCOUNT
Of the Agricultural School at Hofwyl,
in Switzerland.

(From the Edinburgh Review.)

Mr. de Fellenberg was first known merely as an agriculturist, and still keeps up his original establishment of husbandry at Buchsie, an old chateau near Hofwyl; but agriculture was always with him a secondary object, and subservient to that system of education to which his thoughts were very early directed. He is a man of an unusually ardent as well as persevering turn of mind, and conceals a character of deep and steady enthusiasm, under a very calm exterior and manners. Although born to patrician rank in his own country, he early imbibed those political doctrines of which such tremendous misapplication was so soon to be made in his neighbourhood: and the disappointment filled his mind with melancholy views of the moral state and future prospects of mankind. It appeared to him, that the world was blindly hurrying on to irretrievable ruin; and that a sounder system of education for the great body of the people, could alone stop the progress of error and corruption. He has sometimes mentioned in conversation the particular circumstances, which finally determined him to the course he has since pursued. In the year 1798 or 1799, he happened to be at Paris as one of the commission sent by the provisional government established in Switzerland after the French invasion; and in that capacity he had an official conversation with the Director Reubel, at his country-house near Paris,—in the course of which he laid before him, in glowing colours, a picture of the miserable state to which his country was reduced, and which might soon lead to a Vendean war, destructive to both