It is thus admirably suited for that country
where all is change, and all activity; where the working and
money-making members of the community are perpetually succeeding and
overpowering each other; enjoying, each in his turn, the reward of his
industry; yielding up the field, the pasture, and the mine, to his
successor, and leaving no more memory behind him, no farther evidence of
his individual existence, than is left by a working bee, in the honey
for which we thank his class, forgetting the individual. The simple blue
country may, in fact, be considered the dining-table of the nation; from
which it provides for its immediate necessities, at which it feels only
its present existence, and in which it requires, not a piece of
furniture adapted only to remind it of past refection, but a polished,
clean, and convenient minister to its immediate wishes. No habitation,
therefore, in this country, should look old: it should give an
impression of present prosperity, of swift motion and high energy of
life; too rapid in its successive operation to attain greatness, or
allow of decay, in its works. This is the first cause which, in this
country, renders brick allowable.
187. Again, wherever the soil breaks out in simple blue country, whether
in the river shore, or the broken roadside bank, or the plowed field, in
nine cases out of ten it is excessively warm in its color, being either
gravel or clay, the black vegetable soil never remaining free of
vegetation.
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