I do not anywhere know a class more to be pitied in a country, wherein the idle man finds neither sympathies, pursuits, nor associates, from which he can derive emulation, improvement, or even amusement worthy a rational being; it is, let me add, an exceedingly small class, and of necessity must, I conceive, decrease rapidly; at present its members ought to be regarded by parents as moral landmarks, living to warn the wise and worthy from that course on which their hopes have foundered.
The young ladies appear possessed of the same _naïve_, simple, yet perfectly easy manners which characterise their countrywomen of the North, where indeed they are principally educated and instructed in all those graceful accomplishments which embellish and refine our life. It appears upon a first view strange that, superior as they are, they do not exercise a greater influence over the youth of the other sex; but this may be ascribed to the fact, that they are brought out before either their judgment or knowledge of the world are sufficiently matured to make them aware of the existence of certain abuses, or of their own power of reforming them. Then again, marrying very young, they commonly quit society, in a great measure, at the moment the influence of their example might be of the greatest service to it.
_Nov. 30th._--Just entered my room, after having been for the last hour engaged waiting for, and watching the progress of, one of those startling phenomena which in the earlier ages were wont to be hailed as especial manifestations of the Creator's anger,--whose influence has been known to stay the onset of engaging hosts, making men deaf to the sound of the trumpet, and dead to the yet more stirring influence of their own furious passions, when standing armed before the array of their enemies,--which have been known to scare the robber from his spoil, and join in renewed amity the hands of long hating brothers.
And even at this day, when natural causes have been assigned for the appearance of this wonder, and science has learned to anticipate the minute and the effect of its coming, still, what power does it exercise over the imagination of the mass! Few minds can watch the progress of such an event, natural though it be, untouched by awe, unelevated to that Being who is the cause of all; the hearts of the simple and the profound, of the sinner and of the saint, alike own the influence of the hour, and render up nature's involuntary homage to nature's God.