cherished in the heart of the English youth a predilection for his paternal vessel. An unknown passenger on the ocean of life, he beheld the sea rising as a barrier between him and our afflictions; happy in viewing only at a distance the melancholy shores of the world!

Among civilized nations the love of country has performed prodigies. The designs of God have always a connection; he has grounded upon nature this affection for the place of our nativity, and hence, the animal partakes, in a certain degree, of this instinct with man; but the latter carries it farther, and transforms into a virtue what was only a sentiment of universal concordance. Thus the physical and moral laws of the universe are linked together in an admirable chain. We even doubt whether it be possible to possess one genuine virtue, one real talent, without the love of our native country. In war this passion has accomplished wonders; in literature it produced a Homer and a Virgil. The former delineates in preference to all others the manners of Ionia, where he drew his first breath, and the latter feasted on the remembrance of his native place. Born in a cottage, and expelled from the inheritance of his ancestors, these two circumstances seem to have had an extraordinary influence on the genius of Virgil, giving to it that melancholy tint which. is one of its principal charms. He recalls these events continually, and shows that the country where he passed his youth was always before his eyes:

Et dulcis moriens reminiscitur Argos.1

But it is the Christian religion that has invested patriotism with its true character. This sentiment led to the commission of crime among the ancients, because it was carried to excess; Christianity has made it one of the principal affections in man, but not an exclusive one. It commands us above all things to be just; it requires us to cherish the whole family of Adam, since we ourselves belong to it, though our countrymen have the first claim to our attachment. This morality was unknown before the coming of the Christian lawgiver, who has been unjustly accused of attempting to extirpate the passions: God destroys not

Eneid, lib. x.

his own work. The gospel is not the destroyer of the heart, but its regulator. It is to our feelings what taste is to the fine arts; it retrenches all that is exaggerated, false, common, and trivial; it leaves all that is fair, and good, and true. The Christian religion, rightly understood, is only primitive nature washed from original pollution.

It is when at a distance from our country that we feel the full force of the instinct by which we are attached to it. For want of the reality, we try to feed upon dreams; for the heart is expert in deception, and there is no one who has been suckled at the breast of woman but has drunk of the cup of illusion. Sometimes it is a cottage which is situated like the paternal habitation; sometimes it is a wood, a valley, a hill, on which we bestow some of the sweet appellations of our native land. Andromache gives the name of Simois to a brook. And what an affecting object is this little rill, which recalls the idea of a mighty river in her native country! Remote from the soil which gave us birth, nature appears to us diminished, and but the shadow of that which we have lost.

Another artifice of the love of country is to attach a great value to an object of little intrinsic worth, but which comes from our native land, and which we have brought with us into exile. The soul seems to dwell even upon the inanimate things which have shared our destiny: we remain attached to the down on which our prosperity has slumbered, and still more to the straw on which we counted the days of our adversity. The vulgar have an energetic expression, to describe that languor which oppresses the soul when away from our country. "That man," they say, "is home-sick." A sickness it really is, and the only cure for it is to return. If, however, we have been absent a few years, what do we find in the place of our nativity? How few of those whom we left behind in the vigor of health are still alive! Here are tombs where once stood palaces; there rise palaces where we left tombs. The paternal field is overgrown with briers or cultivated by the plough of a stranger; and the tree beneath which we frolicked in our boyish days has disappeared.

In Louisiana there were two females, one a negro, the other an

Indian, who were the slaves of two neighboring planters. Each of the women had a child; the black a little girl two years old, and the Indian a boy of the same age. The latter died. The two unfortunate women having agreed upon a solitary spot, repaired thither three successive nights. The one brought her dead child, the other her living infant; the one her Manitou, the other her Fetiche. They were not surprised thus to find themselves of the same religion, both being wretched. The Indian performed the honors of the solitude: "This is the tree of my native land," said she; "sit down there and weep." Then, in accordance with the funeral custom of savage nations, they suspended their children from the branch of a catalpa or sassafras-tree, and rocked them while singing some patriotic air. Alas! these maternal amusements, which had oft lulled innocence to sleep, were incapable of awaking death! Thus these women consoled themselves; the one had lost her child and her liberty, the other her liberty and her country. We find a solace even in tears.

It is said that a Frenchman, who was obliged to fly during the reign of terror, purchased with the little he had left a boat upon the Rhine. Here he lived with his wife and two children. As he had no money, no one showed him any hospitality. When he was driven from one shore, he passed without complaining to the other; and, frequently persecuted on both sides, he was obliged to cast anchor in the middle of the river. He fished for the support of his family; but even this relief sent by divine Providence he was not allowed to enjoy in peace. At night he went to collect some dry grass to make a fire, and his wife remained in cruel anxiety till his return. Obliged to lead the life of outcasts, among four great civilized nations, this family had not a single spot on earth where they durst set their feet; their only consolation was, that while they wandered in the vicinity of France they could sometimes inhale the breeze which had passed over their native land.

Were we asked, what are those powerful ties which bind us to the place of our nativity, we would find some difficulty in answering the question. It is, perhaps, the smile of a mother, of a father, of a sister; it is, perhaps, the recollection of the old preceptor who instructed us and of the young companions of our

childhood; it is, perhaps, the care bestowed upon us by a tender nurse, by some aged domestic, so essential a part of the household; finally, it is something most simple, and, if you please, most trivial,―a dog that barked at night in the fields, a nightingale that returned every year to the orchard, the nest of the swallow over the window, the village clock that appeared above the trees, the churchyard yew, or the Gothic tomb. Yet these simple things demonstrate the more clearly the reality of a Providence, as they could not possibly be the source of patriotism, or of the great virtues which it begets, unless by the appointment of the Almighty himself.

BOOK VI.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL PROVED BY THE MORAL LAW AND THE FEELINGS.

CHAPTER I.

DESIRE OF HAPPINESS IN MAN.

WERE there no other proofs of the existence of God than the wonders of nature, these evidences are so strong that they would convince any sincere inquirer after truth. But if they who deny a Providence are, for that very reason, unable to explain the wonders of the creation, they are still more puzzled when they undertake to answer the objections of their own hearts. By renouncing the Supreme Being, they are obliged to renounce a future state. The soul nevertheless disturbs them; she appears, as it were, every moment before them, and compels them, in spite of their sophistry, to acknowledge her existence and her immortality.

Let them inform us, in the first place, if the soul is extinguished at the moment of death, whence proceeds the desire of happiness which continually haunts us? All our passions here below may easily be gratified; love, ambition, anger, have their full measure of enjoyment: the desire of happiness is the only one that cannot be satisfied, and that fails even of an object, as we know not what that felicity is which we long for. It must be admitted, that if every thing is matter, nature has here made a strange mistake, in creating a desire without any object.

Certain it is that the soul is eternally craving. No sooner has it attained the object for which it yearned, than a new wish is formed; and the whole universe cannot satisfy it. Infinity is the only field adapted to its nature; it delights to lose itself in numbers, to conceive the greatest as well as the smallest dimensions, and to multiply without end. Filled at length, but not satisfied with all that it has devoured, it seeks the bosom of the Deity, in