Who would labour for wealth,
if it were to procure nothing but conveniences.
If we wish to
render mankind moral from principle, we must, I am persuaded, give a
greater scope to the enjoyments of the senses by blending taste with
them. This has frequently occurred to me since I have been in the
north, and observed that there sanguine characters always take
refuge in drunkenness after the fire of youth is spent.
But I have flown from Norway. To go back to the wooden houses;
farms constructed with logs, and even little villages, here erected
in the same simple manner, have appeared to me very picturesque. In
the more remote parts I had been particularly pleased with many
cottages situated close to a brook, or bordering on a lake, with the
whole farm contiguous. As the family increases, a little more land
is cultivated; thus the country is obviously enriched by population.
Formerly the farmers might more justly have been termed woodcutters.
But now they find it necessary to spare the woods a little, and this
change will be universally beneficial; for whilst they lived
entirely by selling the trees they felled, they did not pay
sufficient attention to husbandry; consequently, advanced very
slowly in agricultural knowledge. Necessity will in future more and
more spur them on; for the ground, cleared of wood, must be
cultivated, or the farm loses its value; there is no waiting for
food till another generation of pines be grown to maturity.
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