it was in no common degree amusing, to hear these young enthusiasts repel
every objection to the practicability of their scheme, and magnify the
condition to which it was to introduce them; where thorns and briars
were, no doubt, to be expelled, and their couch to be strewed with down
and roses.

It will excite merely an innocent smile in the reader at the extravagance
of a youthful and ardent mind, when he learns that Robert Lovell stated
with great seriousness, that, after the minutest calculation and inquiry
among practical men, the demand on their labour would not exceed two
hours a day; that is, for the production of absolute necessaries. The
leisure still remaining, might be devoted, in convenient fractions, to
the extension of their domain, by prostrating the sturdy trees of the
forest, where "lop and top," without cost, would supply their cheerful
winter fire; and the trunks, when cut into planks, without any other
expense than their own pleasant labour, would form the sties for their
pigs, and the linnies for their cattle, and the barns for their produce;
reserving their choicest timbers for their own comfortable log-dwellings.
But after every claim that might be made on their manual labour had been
discharged, a large portion of time, would still remain for their own
individual pursuits, so that they might read, converse, and even write
books.

Cowper, in an unpublished letter now before me, says, "I know well that
publication is necessary to give an edge to the poetic turn, and that
what we produce in the closet, is never a vigorous birth, if we intend
that it should die there. For my own part I could no more amuse myself
with writing verse, if I did not print it when written, than with the
study of tactics, for which I can never have any real occasion." But our
young and ardent friends seemed to entertain a strong impression that the