feel poverty--for delight is as a gold-tissued robe, and crowns them with

priceless gems. Enjoyment plays the cook to their homely fare, and mingles

intoxication with their simple drink. Joy strews the hard couch with roses,

and makes labour ease.

Sorrow doubles the burthen to the bent-down back; plants thorns in the

unyielding pillow; mingles gall with water; adds saltness to their bitter

bread; cloathing them in rags, and strewing ashes on their bare heads. To

our irremediable distress every small and pelting inconvenience came with

added force; we had strung our frames to endure the Atlean weight thrown on

us; we sank beneath the added feather chance threw on us, "the grasshopper

was a burthen." Many of the survivors had been bred in luxury--their

servants were gone, their powers of command vanished like unreal shadows:

the poor even suffered various privations; and the idea of another winter

like the last, brought affright to our minds. Was it not enough that we

must die, but toil must be added?--must we prepare our funeral repast

with labour, and with unseemly drudgery heap fuel on our deserted hearths

--must we with servile hands fabricate the garments, soon to be our

shroud?

Not so! We are presently to die, let us then enjoy to its full relish the

remnant of our lives. Sordid care, avaunt! menial labours, and pains,

slight in themselves, but too gigantic for our exhausted strength, shall

make no part of our ephemeral existences. In the beginning of time, when,

as now, man lived by families, and not by tribes or nations, they were

placed in a genial clime, where earth fed them untilled, and the balmy air

423

The Last Man