Sixty or seventy years ago, what was then the District, and is now the State, of Maine, was a proverb in New England for the poverty of its people, mainly because they were so largely engaged in timber cutting.  The great grain-growing, wheat-exporting districts of the Russian empire have a poor and rude people for a like reason.  Thus the industry of Massachusetts is immensely more productive per head than that of North Carolina, or even that of Indiana, as it will cease to be whenever manufactures shall have been diffused over our whole country, as they must and will be.  In Massachusetts half the women and nearly half the children add by their daily labor to the aggregate of realized wealth; in North Carolina and in Indiana little wealth is produced save by the labor of men, including boys of fifteen or upward.  When this disparity shall have ceased, its consequence will also disappear.

[Illustration:  A chained man in prison reclining against the wall.  He is gazing down at a sleeping young boy.]

CXV.  THE LAST DAYS OF HERCULANEUM. (401)

Edwin Atherstone, 1788-1872, was born at Nottingham, England, and became known to the literary world chiefly through two poems, “The Last Days of Herculaneum” and “The Fall of Nineveh.”  Both poems are written in blank verse, and are remarkable for their splendor of diction and their great descriptive power.  Atherstone is compared to Thomson, whom he resembles somewhat in style. ###

There was a man,
A Roman soldier, for some daring deed
That trespassed on the laws, in dungeon low
Chained down.  His was a noble spirit, rough,
But generous, and brave, and kind. 
He had a son; it was a rosy boy,
A little faithful copy of his sire,
In face and gesture.  From infancy, the child
Had been his father’s solace and his care.

Every sport
The father shared and heightened.  But at length,
The rigorous law had grasped him, and condemned
To fetters and to darkness.

The captive’s lot,
He felt in all its bitterness:  the walls
Of his deep dungeon answered many a sigh
And heart-heaved groan.  His tale was known, and touched
His jailer with compassion; and the boy,
Thenceforth a frequent visitor, beguiled
His father’s lingering hours, and brought a balm
With his loved presence, that in every wound
Dropped healing.  But, in this terrific hour,
He was a poisoned arrow in the breast
Where he had been a cure.

With earliest morn
Of that first day of darkness and amaze,
He came.  The iron door was closed—­for them
Never to open more!  The day, the night
Dragged slowly by; nor did they know the fate
Impending o’er the city.  Well they heard
The pent-up thunders in the earth beneath,
And felt its giddy rocking; and the air
Grew hot at length, and thick; but in his straw
The boy was sleeping:  and the father hoped
The earthquake might pass by:  nor would he wake
From his sound rest the unfearing child, nor tell
The dangers of their state.