Stirring industry--the perpetual
conqueror--made the woods resound with the echoes of his biting
axe and ringing hammer. Smiling villages rose in cheerful white,
in place of the crumbling and smoky cabins of the hunter. High
and becoming purposes of social life and thoughtful enterprise
superseded that eating and painful decay, which has terminated in
the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every people,
must always result from their refusal to exercise, according to
the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and
sinews in tasks of well-directed and continual labor.
A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness,
is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly
and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and
forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence
rose where the pines had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened
through the dark and hitherto impervious thickets. The city sprang
up beside the river, while hamlets, filled with active hope and
cheerful industry, crowded upon the verdant hill-side, and clustered
among innumerable valleys Grace began to seek out the homes of
toil, and taste supplied their decorations.
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