shooting, boating, filled up with a little amateur gardening.

Want of energy is not the fault of the Americans; they will dash at
_everything_, and generally succeed. I had known them contract to do
difficult jobs that required the skill of the engineer or regular
architect, and accomplish them cleverly too, although they had never
attempted anything of the kind before; and they generally completed
their task to the satisfaction of the parties furnishing the contract.
"I cannot do it" is a phrase not to be found in the Yankee vocabulary,
I guess.

It is astonishing how a few years' residence in Canada or the United
States brightens the intellects of the labouring classes. The reason is
quite obvious. The agricultural population of England are born and die
in their own parishes, seldom or never looking out into a world of
which they know nothing. Thus, they become too local in their ideas,
are awake to nought but the one business they have been brought up to
follow; they have indeed no motive to improve their general knowledge.

But place the honest and industrious peasant in Canada, and, no matter
how ignorant he may be, when he sees that by his perseverance and
industry he will in a short time better his situation in life, and most
likely become the possessor of a freehold, this motive for exertion
will call forth the best energies of his mind, which had hitherto, for
want of a proper stimulus, lain dormant. Having to act and think for
himself, and being better acquainted with the world, he soon becomes a
theoretical as well as a practical man, and consequently a cleverer and
more enlightened person, than he was before in his hopeless servitude
in the mother-country.