when his fancy painted the towers of Lisbon, the groves of Cintra, or the rocks of Coimbra! The grief of Gama, at quitting his native soil, was the grief of Camoens:

To weigh our anchors from our native shore:

To dare new oceans, never dared before;
Perhaps to see our native soil no more ".

Homer describes Phoenix, in the midst of his earnest address to Achilles, as pausing to add a note of affection to Greece. Highly pathetic, too, is the passage in Sophocles, where that poet represents Edipus, blind and miserable, desiring to be led to Citharon, that he might die on the spot, where he had been exposed in his infancy. In another tragedy he makes Ajax call upon the sun, the palace of his ancestors, the rivers and the fountains, near which he was born, to receive his last farewell. Nor is there a more affecting poem in Catullus, than that, in which he paints Atys, casting his eyes upon the ocean, and frantic with sorrow and remorse, addressing his complaints, his regrets, and wishes to his native soil. The best picture in Sylvester's Du Bartas, too, is that, where he describes the anguish of Abraham, at the thought of leaving Chaldæa :-and no language can paint more decidedly to the heart, than the exquisite lament of Alexander Selkirk !

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore

Some cordial endearing report

Of the land, I shall visit no more.

My friends, do they now and then send

A wish or a thought after me?

O tell me, I yet have a friend,

Though that friend I am never to see!

Here I cannot refrain from remarking, that, of all the cemeteries round London, there is none so affecting, as that of

St. Pancras : since it contains the ashes of a multitude of foreigners (many of illustrious rank), who have had the misfortune to die in a foreign country a.

If a native of Switzerland, the inhabitants of which, as Lord Bolingbroke observes, appear to have been made for their mountains, hear the wild and simple notes of the Ransdes-Vaches", which, played upon the Alpine horn, had charmed him in his infancy; an ardent and ungovernable passion is excited, once more to climb the cliffs, and navigate the waters of his native canton.

The intrepid Swiss, that guards a foreign shore,
Condemned to climb his mountain cliffs no more;
If chance he hears that song, so sweetly wild,
Which on those hills his infant hours beguiled;
Melts at the long lost scenes, that round him rise,
And sinks a martyr to repentant sighs.

Rogers-Pleasures of Memory.

Lingering along the battlements of a foreign fortress, while the moon, rising behind a cloud, throws her solemn mantle over those mountains, which screen him from his native Switzerland, his eyes are filled with tears; his breast heaves with sighs; and he turns from the impressive landscape in silence and in agony. He quits the ramparts; and wandering along the fosse, that little stream, recalling to his recollection the lakes of Constance, Zurich, or of Lucerne, he flies to his companions, to drown his sorrow in their wild and boisterous revelry. A fellow countryman, who has heard the same air and felt the same emotion, meets him; they know by each other's looks, the nature of their mutual feelings; and grasping each other's hands, with all the energy of grief, they

a

Among these are the ashes of the excellent Countess de Villiers :

Elle fut humble et généreuse

Dans la Prospérité ;

Et sa piété constante en fit un

Modèle de Resignation

Dans l'Adversité.

Air kührechen, or kührecken-meaning “ rows of cows."

:

shed the tear of sympathy and sorrow. The air, which had first thrilled their souls, is again heard at a distance; no word is spoken; they point towards the east; they quit the duties of their post; and the thought of their country alone occupying their hearts, they escape the guard, and the next morning surprises them on the road to Switzerland !

An effect, in some measure similar, is recorded of an air, sung by the Moors. Nothing could surpass the affection of the Moors for Spain. In the midst of great calamities, Aben Humaya wrote to his brethren of Grenada :-"Though you are surrounded by evils of almost every kind, in one thing you are happy-you behold the fields, which were the native spots of our common forefathers." In the middle of the fifteenth century, a prohibition was made in Grenada, relative to the fine ballad, written by a Moorish poet on the conquest of the Alhama; at the taking of which city, upwards of three thousand Moors were sold to slavery. When this ballad was sung, there was not a Moor, that heard it, who did not burst into an agony of tears. It was, in consequence, forbidden to be played on pain of death. For the same reason, the Rans-des-Vaches was interdicted, under heavy penalties, in all those countries, in which the Swiss were engaged as auxiliaries in war. This passion is called by the French la maladie du pays. The air of the Rans-des-Vaches is usually sung by the Swiss milkmaids, as they drive their cows to pasture. Its influence on the Swiss soldiers, therefore, arises from the association, which it produces; and not from any intrinsic merit of its own:-for to foreign ears it is far from possessing any attractive powers: being as wild and as barren (if we may be allowed the comparison), as the most bleak of all the Swiss mountains ".

a For a most affecting description of this event, vide Anquetil, vol. vii. 68-9. b 46 "Nostalgia genus est moeroris subditis republicæ meæ familiaris, etiam civibus, a desiderio nati suorum. Is sensim consumit æquos et destruit, nonnunquam in rigorem et maniam abit, alias in febres lentas. Eum spes sanat.

With what delight did Rousseau repose upon the memory of Switzerland! And with what rapture did Petrarch behold his native country, from the sides of Mount Genevre; when, in the enthusiasm of the moment, he vowed, that he would never quit it again. One of the most touching passages, in Dante, is that, in which he represents Count Guido Montefeltro, suffering the punishment of those, who had misapplied their talents, as, on suddenly hearing the voice of a newly arrived spirit speak in the Tuscan language, hailing amid sighs and tears the sweet accents of his native dialect". In another passage the very name of Mantua awakes the flame of love and concord, in the midst of faction and civil outrage, in the bosom of Sordello b.

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; hence, when carried several miles out to sea, it will, if thrown into the water, seldom fail to return to the place, in which it was spawned.

The rook, the blackbird, and the redbreast are extremely partial to their early haunts; and swallows frequently return

Etiam animalia consuetâ societate privata, nonnunquam deperiunt, et ex pullis amissis etiam lutræ maris Kamtschadalensis. Sic ex amore frustrato lenta et insanabilis consumptio sequitur, quod Angli cor ruptum vocant."—HALLER, Elem. Physiol. xvii. sect. ii. s. 5.

a Inferno, cant. xxvii. st. 4.

Inferno, cant. vi. st. 24-5-6.

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, returns 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!

66

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, Vandals, Huns, and Heruli. The next is that of commerce ;-enterprise 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, Shakspeare, Milton ;-of Hampden, of Sidney, and of Russel; -of Newton, Boyle, Herschel, and Lancaster. 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!