first temples. They are full of mystic influences; they nourish the
poetic nature; they feed the imagination. The air is elastic, and
every sound reverberates in broken, strange, and inexplicable
intonations. The woods are impregnated with a health-giving and
delightful fragrance nowhere else experienced. All the arts of modern
luxury fail to produce an aroma like that which pervades a primitive
forest of pines and spruces. Indeed, all trees, in an original
wilderness, where they exist in every stage of growth and decay,
contribute to this peculiar charm of the woods. It was not only a
manly, but a most lively, occupation. When many were working near each
other, the echoes of their voices of cheer, of the sharp and ringing
tones of their axes, and of the heavy concussions of the falling
timber, produced a music that filled the old forests with life, and
made labor joyous and refreshing.

The length of time required to prepare a country covered by a
wilderness, on a New-England soil, for cultivation, may be estimated
by the facts I have stated. A long lapse of years must intervene,
after the woods have been felled and their dried trunks and branches
burned, before the stumps can be extracted, the land levelled, the
stones removed, the plough introduced, or the smooth green fields,
which give such beauty to agricultural scenes, be presented. An
immense amount of the most exhausting labor must be expended in the
process. The world looks with wonder on the dykes of Holland, the
wall of China, the pyramids of Egypt. I do not hesitate to say that
the results produced by the small, scattered population of the
American colonies, during their first century, in tearing up a
wilderness by its roots, transforming the rocks, with which the
surface was covered, into walls, opening roads, building bridges, and
making a rough and broken country smooth and level, converting a