It would be a work worthy the devotion of any mind.
In the little that I saw was a large proportion of intelligence, activity, and kind feeling; but, if there was much serious laying to heart of the true purposes of life, it did not appear in the tone of conversation.
Having before me the Illinois Guide-Book, I find there mentioned, as a "visionary," one of the men I should think of as able to be a truly valuable settler in a new and great country,--Morris Birkbeck, of England.

Since my return, I have read his journey to, and letters from, Illinois.

I see nothing promised there that will not surely belong to the man who knows how to seek for it.
Mr.Birkbeck was an enlightened, philanthropist, the rather that he did not wish to sacrifice himself to his fellow-men, but to benefit them with all he had, and was, and wished.

He thought all the creatures of a divine love ought to be happy and ought to be good, and that his own soul and his own life were not less precious than those of others; indeed, that to keep these healthy was his only means of a healthy influence.
But his aims were altogether generous.

Freedom, the liberty of law, not license; not indolence, work for himself and children and all men, but under genial and poetic influences;--these were his aims.