This native affection is not confined to men: beasts, birds, and even fishes, having frequently been observed to present instances of it. The lion loses much of his strength, when taken from his native haunts: and Josephus relates, that Abgarus took several foreign beasts into the arena at Rome, and placed earths, which were brought from their native soils, in detached places; when every beast ran to the earth, that belonged to his country. Pliny, the naturalist, does not mention this instance; and it would, therefore, not be unwise to pause, before its truth is admitted; but it would be still more presumptuous to entirely deny the fact. There is a species of lobster, also, which has a remarkable affection for the rocks of its nativity; and when carried several miles out to sea, will, if thrown into the water, seldom fail to return to the place, in which it was spawned.

The rook, the blackbird, and the red breast are extremely partial to their early haunts; and swallows frequently return to the very nests, they had constructed the year before. The ciconia of the ardea genus, a bird of passage which subsists on snakes, toads and other reptiles, return in spring like swallows, not only to the same country, but frequently to the same house. The pigeon has a still more extraordinary quality. When let loose, it rises to a vast height and being, like the bee and the wasp, endued with an instinct, of which man knows nothing, reaches its home; though, when carried thence, it had no means of ascertaining the route for its return. It is said to fly forty miles in an hour and a half: and Thevenot assures us, that pigeons of this breed fly from Aleppo to Alexandria in six hours.

Of all ages of society, the hunting age is that, which enjoys the love of country least. This is illustrated by the examples of the Goths, the Vandals, the Huns, and the Heruli. The next is that of commerce;— enterprize frequently leading men to forsake a country, to which they are seldom permitted to return. “England!" with all thy faults, I love thee still." Yes! Thou art" the greatest and the best of all the main!" A country, whose peasantry are free men, and entitled to the benefit of wise laws;-whose merchants are princes; and whose nobles,~~with all their consequence and privilege-surpass all the nobles of the world. The country of freedom, industry, science, and of virtue. The land of Alfred, Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton;-of Hampden, of Sidney, and of Russel;-of Newton, Boyle, Lancaster, and Herschel. Yes!

"Thou art the greatest, and the best of all the main!"

And may those, who would by force, by influence, or by craft, convert thy free men into slaves, be the brothers of slaves, the companions of slaves, the servants of slaves! the outcasts of their country; the derision of those, they serve; the scorn of their sons and of their daughters; and companions to sloths, to tigers, and to rattlesnakes.

Converting this great, glorious, and transcendant nation into a nation of men, having,-as rewards for sacrificing the honours of their ancestors, and the birthrights of their children,-the dreams, wishes, jealousies, and tortures of

Creeping, crawling, sycophantic, Peers;

They'll knell for mercy e'en a thousand years!

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

BUT we have ventured on these subjects too widely and too long. Nature is so captivating; her methods so various; her laws so mysterious; her similitudes so beautiful; and her contrasts so magnificent; that we are led so insensibly from plants to insects; from insects to fishes, birds, and quadrupeds; thence to the subject of emigration; and lastly, to the love of the country, which gave us birth, that though we become enriched by the various transitions, we become embarrassed also.

In drawing similitudes, and making contrasts, the mind, though spiritualized, as it were, by the contemplation, is able to look into nature only in parts. Nature, as a whole, it has no power to approach. Men, in whom the energy of spontaneous ambition excites no appetite for the investigation of phenomena, are satisfied that effects cannot always be elicited from causes', and that

1 Cuvier has a beautiful remark." It could not be expected," says he, "that those Phœnician sailors, who saw the sands of Botica tranformed by fire into a transparent glass, should have at once foreseen, that this new substance would prolong the pleasures of sight to the old; that it would, one day, assist the astronomer in penetrating the depths of the heavens; and in numbering the stars of the milky way :-that it would lay open to the naturalist a miniature world, as populous and as rich in wonders, as that which alone seemed to have been granted to his senses and his contemplations :-in fine, that the most simple and direct use of it would enable the inhabitants of the Baltic Sea to cultivate, although under the frost of the polar circle, the most delicious fruit of the torrid zone."

causes cannot always be traced from results. And because Nature is stupendous in her works, and mysterious in her operations, they are unwilling, and indeed almost afraid, to exercise the powers, she has delegated. But they cannot always resist the majesty of their Creator! For no pleasures are so bland in their qualities, or so pure in their sources; and none are there so worthy the vast capacities of the human intellect. And though nothing is entirely certain, but that space is infinite, yet, as things present bear presumptive evidence to things unseen, the mind delights in the endeavour to trace the beauties, the harmonies, and the sublimities of Nature up to "Nature's God."

II.

When the waves break upon the distant shore with a wild, solemn, melancholy, yet delightful, murmur;-when we observe the regular succession of the seasons;—the rising of the sun from behind rocks lifting their spires, as it were, to the clouds ;-when we behold splendid meteors; comets; planets; the blue vault; and the uniform reproduction of animal and vegetable life; we feel, that sublimity dwells in beauty, beauty in order, and order in sublimity. A homage, at once pure and ardent, meditative and reflective, diffuses the cheek of manly virtue with delicious tears; and, turning with disgust and impatience from the cold spectacle of real life, light is beheld, where others see only mystery; clemency and benevolence are observed to proceed out of apparent cruelty; truth springs even out of optical and mental delusions; and out of apparently frigid commentaries are elicited the benefits of justice and wisdom. The INFINITE is every where, and speaks

in all things. And while bigotry associates with their contemplation the terrible graces of Dante and Schiller; and the indignation, terror, and astonishment, of Eschylus; the man of science sees all the proportion and harmony of Sophocles; and the man of an elegant mind and an affectionate heart feels, with redoubled sensibility, all the tenderness and pathos of Euripides.

III.

As our sensual enjoyments acquire a zest from an union with the mental, so each of them derive additional goût from those objects, which flatter the senses of both. A fine day, therefore, as Sir William Temple has observed, is as much a sensual, as it is a mental enjoyment. "It is a banquet given by Heaven to earth." It unites the character of luxury and temperance.

The Italians live in the air. Walking under piazzas ; sitting in porticos; and reclining under bowers, many of their domestic banquets are peculiarly agreeable1. How much more pleasure some of us derive from the simplest of collations, under the shade of a tree, than from the most luxurious banquet in a dining-room, every person of taste is ready to acknowledge. When we are enjoying the society of ladies, of a fine summer's evening, in a drawing-room, opening into a green-house, who will not confess, that the effects of their conversation are far more flattering to the mind, than at those moments, when, dressed in all the splendour of decoration, their persons derive additional lustre from the blaze of Grecian lamps, the heat of fires,

'Cur non sub alta vel platana, vel hac

Piu jacentes, &c. &c.

Hor. Carm. lib. iì. 2.