strong attachment to all the ancient occupiers of his house and grounds, whether they be of the human or the brute, the animate or inanimate creation. His tenants are, mostly, coeval with himself; his servants have been either in his family, or on his estate, from their infancy; an old pointer, and an old house-dog, generally meet him in the lobby; and there is a flea-bitten horse, who, for several years, has been past riding, to whom he has devoted the grass of his orchard, and a manger of good hay during the severity of winter. A withered stump, which, I observed, greatly incommoded the entry to his house, he would not suffer to be cut down, because it had the names of himself and some of his school-companions cyphered on its bark; and a divorce from his leathern elbow-chair, patched and tattered as it is, would, I am persuaded, be one of the most serious calamities that could befal him.

This feeling will be easily understood by those in whom the business or the pleasure of the world has not extinguished it. That sort of relation which we own to every object we have long been acquainted with, is one of those natural propensities the mind will always experience, if it has not lost this connection by the variety of its engagements, or the bustle of its pursuits. There is a silent chronicle of past hours in the inanimate things amidst which they have been spent, that gives us back the affections, the regrets, the sentiments of our former days; that gives us back their joys without tumult, their griefs without poignancy, and produces equally from both a pensive pleasure, which men who have retired from the world, like Umphraville, or whom particular circumstances have somewhat estranged from it, will be peculiarly fond of indulging.-Above all others, those objects which recal the years of our childhood, will have this tender ef

fect upon the heart: they present to us afresh the blissful illusions of life, when gaiety was on the wing undamped by care, and hope smiled before us unchecked by disappointment. The distance of the scene adds to our idea of its felicity, and increases the tenderness of its recollection; 'tis like the view of a landscape by moon-shine; the distinctness of object is lost, but a mellow kind of dimness softens and unites the whole.

From the same sort of feeling has the idea of home its attraction. For, though one's interest there will undoubtedly be heightened by the relation to persons, yet there is, exclusive of that connection altogether, a certain attachment to place and things, by which the town, the house, the room in which we live, have a powerful influence over us. He must be a very dull, or a very dissipated man, who, after a month's absence, can open his own door without emotion, even though he

has no relation or friend to welcome him within. For my part, I feel this strongly; and many an evening, when I have shut the door of my little parlour, trimmed the fire, and swept the hearth, I sit down with the feelings of a friend for every chair and table in the room.

There is, perhaps, a degree of melancholy in all this; the French, who are a lively people, have, I think, no term that answers to our substantive home; but it is not the melancholy of a sour unsocial being; on the contrary, I believe, there will always be found a tone of benevolence in it both to ourselves and others;

I

say ourselves, because I hold the sensation of peace and friendship with our own minds to be one of the best preparatives, as well as one of the best rewards, of vir

tue.

Nor has Nature given us this propensity in vain. From this the principle of patriotism has its earliest source, and

some of those ties are formed, which link the inhabitants of less favoured regions to the heaths and mountains of their native land. In cultivated society, this sentiment of home cherishes the useful virtues of dometic life; it opposes, to the tumultuous pleasures of dissipation and intemperance, the quiet enjoyments of sobriety, œconomy, and family affection; qualities which, though not attractive of much applause or admiration, are equally conducive to the advantage of the individual, and the welfare of the community.