perhaps he is not the farther "God has armed youth," as unpretending qualities. The only thing "aërial" about him may be his so-called neck-tie, but from perfection on that account. a great writer says, "and puberty, and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious, and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself." "We hear a great outcry about youth's want of judgment, It is not a want of judgment," as Hazlitt says, "of genius, but an excess of other things." We are told that their eye hath too much youth in it, but "the ragged colt may prove a good horse," which, very probably, he would never become if subjected to your dressing. Already one can read this in "a right ingenious spirit veil'd merely with the vanity of youth and wildness. He looks, methinks, like one that could retract himself from his mad starts, and when he pleased turn tame.” Whereas any one who has been subjected to the pure and unmitigated transcendental treatment of certain philosophers, bent on unmaking all common things, who has been required to exchange what is normal and natural in youth for what is phenomenal and artificial, and is not made a fool by it, or even, eventually, something worse, may, to use the words of a witty author, "consider himself as having had a very narrow escape." But "Here let us pause: O would the soul might ever Achieve its immortality in youth, When nothing yet hath damped its high endeavour Here let us pause, and for a moment sever This gleam of sunshine from the days unruth CHAPTER XI, CONTINUING to consider the excellence of common things in relation to virtue, our attention may next be directed to the impressions produced by our own country, our own circum stances as respects fortune, and our own position in the world as members of society, who can choose to follow either the guidance of ambition or the dictates of content. Come now, a truce to your trifling, and let us investigate, like persons wondrously sedate, these subjects in the order proposed. We shall soon perceive with what justice Pindar said, "Nor are desires for what is alien preferable for a man to have. Seek for subjectmatter at home, and thou hast already a fitting theme for praise, so as to sing something sweet *.' What is our country? The land of our education, of our ancestral associations, of which we know either the literature or the idiom, the history or the manners best; with whose people we most sympathize, amongst whom we feel ourselves to be one like others. Be grave now when I remind you that Nazareth was "His own country," because, though not born, our Lord was brought up there. "The proper birth-place of a man," says John Paul Richter, "is the place of his education." To every man there is a country, which, though among the commonest things surrounding him, is not the less dear; for in this one instance at least most persons can appreciate and esteem what is least strange and most familiar to them. Every one loves the place of his earliest associations or of his adopted home, where his friends live, where he loves and is loved. "The country," says a French author, "existed formerly in the local district or commune. People used to say the friendship of Lille, the friendship of Aire (l'amitié de Lille, l'amitié d'Aire), meaning the country of Lille," &c. Our country has now no doubt a wider and more abstract sense; but still the kernel of the thing is common neighbourhood and that sweet familiarity arising from living in the same place with persons dear to us, feeling the same weather, knowing the same faces, seeing the same sights, hearing the same songs of the day, enjoying the same pleasures or enduring the same sufferings with those we love, to receive whose smiles is identical with a fulfilment of the Pindaric wish, "grant me my country's smiles to meet." It is the hamlet or city, the meadow, the stream, or the street that we and our friends best know; and it is only as connected with these familiar common things and persons that so many hearts will respond to the popular song, beginning, * Nem. iii, "Flowers from foreign lands bring them not near me, No fond remembrance can waken for me. Bring me the treasures that grow in the wild wood, Songs in a foreign tongue sing not before me, Sweet though their tones may be, they cannot impart Like the sweet music that comes from the heart. Sing me the songs that in infancy cheer'd me, Songs that I learnt 'mid our old household mirth; That still bring to mind all the loved ones of earth.” Ulysses, far from Ithaca, when he thinks of that place, feels such sorrow at being absent from it, that he wishes to die. Did you ever hear the sound of Greek? Listen then : αὐτὰρ Οδυσσεύς ἱέμενος καὶ καπνὸν ἀποθρώσκοντα νοῆσαι "Our country, immortal gods!" exclaimed Cicero on his return to Italy, "who can express the pleasure that we derive from it! What beauty of landscape! What celebrity of towns, what forms of the country, what lands, what fruits, what beauty in the city, what humanity in the citizens !—all which things, though I used to enjoy them as much as any one, seem to me now still more delightful since I have felt what it is to be absent from them t." The same feelings are ascribed by our Hood to one pondering with saddened spirit on distant England in a foreign clime: Its leafy woods, its shady vales, Its moors, and purple heather, The verdant fields bedeck'd with stars His childhood loved to gather." However simple people like ourselves may love our Petersham, our Dudley, our Sudbury, or whatever other place we spent our youth in, it is your great travellers who have sought the strange and extraordinary in foreign lands, who generally can best sympathize with such representations. Depend upon it they know how precious is what is most familiar who have lost the sight and sound of what was once common to them in their country, their fellow townsmen and women, and their mother tongue; where they have their native English of no more use to them than an unstringed viol or a harp, or like a cunning instrument cased up, or, being open, put into his hands "that knows no touch to tune the harmony." It is they who, while allowing the natives of other countries to make the substitution required by their own feelings, will repeat with pleasure the poet's lines in praise of their mother tongue : "Greek's a harp we love to hear; Spanish like an organ swells, Italian rings its bridal bells; France, with many a frolic mien, Tunes her sprightly violin ; Loud the German rolls his drum, When Russia's clashing symbols come; But Britain's sons may well rejoice, The common sentiment of humanity, binding men to what is most common in their own country, rendering patriotism itself nothing else but attention to the common good of that people, is not to be confounded with the false patriotism which would inspire them with hatred and aversion for other nations. It is the ambition of a few rulers, seeking glory and distinction which is the general source of this feeling, which perhaps would not otherwise exist; for every one who has travelled must have observed that the general order of human society is for the majority of men to be content with their native land, and to have no thought even respecting the people of other countries; or when strangers are seen who have come from them, to treat them with courtesy and respect. “My husband,” said a poor woman in London to Mr. Mayhew, "was cheated in France by an Englishman, and was in a strange place without knowing a word of the language. But the foreigners were very kind to him, he said, and didn't laugh at him when he tried to make himself understood." The Romans called the people on the right bank of the Rhine Germans, as brothers of the Gauls *. The generality of the people of each nation are animated with no unfraternal feelings towards any strangers. We in England may dislike long beards and slovenly moustachios, but we respect even those who wear them as foreigners, and we would gladly speak to them in their own language if we knew how. It is not in the order of nature that we should be otherwise disposed; and when national enmities are excited, it is almost always due to some few distinguished individuals, either rulers or orators, or writers and journalists, taking advantage of circumstances, to produce an extraordinary feeling, contrary to the common bond of humanity, in the nation that they can influence. Sir Philip Sydney, when he spoke of "that sweet enemy France,” must have deeply felt the wretchedness caused by those dynastic feuds, which kept his own country hostile to that nation. "Communities," says a great writer, "suffer sorely by that species of immorality which statesmen have cherished as of signal utility; I mean, by hostile feeling towards other countries. Their doctrine has been that prejudice and enmity towards foreign states are means of fostering a national spirit and of confirming union at home. But bad passions once instilled into a people will never exhaust themselves abroad. Injustice to strangers does not breed justice to our friends. Malignity in every form is a fire of hell, and the policy which feeds it is infernal. There is a worse scepticism than what passes under the name of infidelity,—a scepticism as to the reality and power of moral and Christian truth; and accordingly, a man who calls on a nation to love the great family of which it is a part, to desire the weal and progress of the race, to blend its interests with the interests of all, must Strabo, lib. vii. |