Note 747 — CANTO THE FIFTEENTH.

{554}This extraordinary and flourishing German colony in America does not entirely exclude matrimony, as the "Shakers" do; but lays such restrictions upon it as prevents more than a certain quantum of births within a certain number of years; which births (as Mr. Hulme [perhaps Thomas Hulme, whose Journal is quoted in Hints to Emigrants, 1817, pp. 5-18] observes) generally arrive "in a little flock like those of a farmer's lambs, all within the same month perhaps." These Harmonists (so called from the name of their settlement) are represented as a remarkably flourishing, pious, and quiet people. See the various recent writers on America.

[The Harmonists were emigrants from Würtemburg, who settled (1803-1805) under the auspices of George Rapp, in a township 120 miles north of Philadelphia. This they sold, and "trekked" westwards to Indiana. One of their customs was to keep watch by nights and to cry the hours to this tune: "Again a day is past and a step made nearer to our end. Our time runs away, and the joys of Heaven are our reward." (See The Philanthropist, No. xx., 1815, vol. v, pp. 277-288.)]