A country life might always be a happy one, were people possessed of the smallest competence, and of properly regulated minds. There is as much unhappiness, or at least discontent, in colonies as elsewhere; but discontented colonists are the greatest fools in the world, because they have themselves created the evils, and the remedies are generally in their own power. The grand object of man's search is happiness, which he strives to obtain by a thousand various ways. Wealth he covets, because he fondly believes that it contains the prize he seeks; but if happiness may be found without wealth, of what value are riches? Money is not so indispensable a necessary in a colony. Very little indeed suffices to enable a proprietor on the banks of the Swan, the Avon, or the Brunswick, to bring up his family in comfort, and to perform all the rights of a generous hospitality. The discontent which is so often felt in colonies arises from two causes: first, it is the natural feeling of those who emigrate late in life; who, although unsuccessful at home, have ever been fondly attached to home associations, to the friends and connexions with whom they have been bound up during many years, and to the national belief that a man can never be truly happy out of England. In addition to this, the emigrant of mature years has been so long accustomed to feel himself living in the very centre of intelligence, he has so long been accustomed to watch the progress of political action at home and on the continent, and to drink the fresh draughts of scientific discovery at the fountain-head, that now, when far removed from the busy and exciting scenes of the ever-moving panorama of European life, he feels lost in the wilderness -- a fragment of drift-wood washed ashore and left far behind by the fast-progressing waves of Knowledge and Action. The second cause of discontent is found in the non-acquisition of money. Every one goes out to a colony with the full conviction that he shall make a fortune in a few years, and then return to England and become a man of landed interest. A man has to conquer his first disappointments before he can become a happy settler; he has to form new and more just ideas of his actual position. Generally, it is necessary that he should return to England once more before he can entirely appreciate the advantages open to him in a colony. He then fully perceives how much more difficult it is to obtain a bare subsistence in the old country. He finds that with the utmost economy he cannot supply the numerous wants of his family, and he longs for his old Australian dwelling again, and the easy, independent life which he was accustomed to lead, when his children used to run about in brown holland, and his wife looked becoming in printed cotton, and thought no beverage so good as the wine which she had assisted to make. CHAPTER 11. PERSECUTIONS.