of societies spreading everywhere, the recent foundation of our
towns, and the settlements of so many rural districts. I am sure
that the rapidity of their growth would be more pleasing to behold,
than the ruins of old towers, useless aqueducts, or impending
battlements.

James: What you say, minister, seems very true: do go on: I always
love to hear you talk.

Minister: Don't you think, neighbour James, that the mind of a good
and enlightened Englishman would be more improved in remarking
throughout these provinces the causes which render so many people
happy? In delineating the unnoticed means by which we daily increase
the extent of our settlements? How we convert huge forests into
pleasing fields, and exhibit through these thirteen provinces so
singular a display of easy subsistence and political felicity.

In Italy all the objects of contemplation, all the reveries of the
traveller, must have a reference to ancient generations, and to very
distant periods, clouded with the mist of ages.--Here, on the
contrary, everything is modern, peaceful, and benign. Here we have
had no war to desolate our fields: [Footnote: The troubles that now
convulse the American colonies had not broke out when this and some
of the following letters were written.] our religion does not
oppress the cultivators: we are strangers to those feudal
institutions which have enslaved so many. Here nature opens her
broad lap to receive the perpetual accession of new comers, and to
supply them with food. I am sure I cannot be called a partial
American when I say that the spectacle afforded by these pleasing
scenes must be more entertaining and more philosophical than that