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b. CLIMATE.

§ 52. It is not proposed to consider here at large the influence of climate. One or two remarks, however, may be casually thrown out with regard to those discriminations, which seem at the first view inconsistent with an equal benevolence. a1. Its alternations as producing contentment and patriotism.

The severe climates are not the subjects of depreciation by those who live in them. On the contrary, the sympathy of others with those who inhabit such climates, like that of the wealthy anarchist in Canning's admirable satire of the needy knife-grinder, is entirely uninvited by those on whom it is spent. Nowhere is there so strong and deep a love of country as that engendered in these same inhospitable climes. Nostalgia, or home-sickness, (heimweh,) is almost entirely confined to the inhabitants of mountainous and sterile soils. "It is remarkable," says Dr. Rush,* "that this disease is most common among the natives of countries that are least desirable for beauty, fertility, climate, or the luxuries of life." And Goldsmith thus touches on the same point,

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

* Rush, on the Mind, pp. 38, 39.

Those who have watched over a collection of boys, drawn, as is often the case in our own country, from a wide diversity of climates and soils, will recollect how it is that those homes are most pined after which, in a worldly point of view, are the least inviting. The cottage by the mountainside, in which a rigid economy abridges even the few comforts which a hard soil and a narrow estate permit, plays in a sweet pathos before the sleeping vision of the boy, the dreams of whose next neighbor flit but lightly back to what the world would consider the infinitely superior charms of a luxurious city home.

b1. As producing home virtues.

§ 53. These climates are accompanied by home-enjoyments which are, in an eminent degree, bracing and comforting. Such a result, in fact, is incidental to the domestic life which a cold climate generates. Take, for instance, the inclement winter of England, which drives the family around the fireside, and compare it with the warmth of that genial French and Italian sky which draws them to the open field, or to the roadside where the village takes the place of the home. In the one scene, it is true, we see much that is plain and coarse. The rude and sometimes austere manner which, to strangers, will be absolutely harsh; the home-spun dress, cut in the most uncouth shape, arise, it cannot but be confessed, often from an entire want of perception of those graces and elegancies which give polite society one of its chief charms. But with these ruder qualities there is a deep and passionate domestic affection which pierces to the recesses of the hearts of those on whom it acts, and draws up from them the pure waters of a remunerative love. With this there is

a practical, personal sense of responsibility to God, which is so apt to be lost where home is merged in society, and an equally conscientious, though perhaps reserved and undemonstrative sense of responsibility toward others. Such a picture as that which Burns gives us in his "Cotter's Saturday Night" could not be drawn in France, unless, perhaps, among those hills where the Huguenots found refuge. the other hand, we shall be equally at a loss to discover, under the vicissitudes of even the most genial climates of our own land, and shall more so under the austere sky of England, scenes such as that where

France displays her bright domain,

Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease,

Pleased with herself, whom all the world can please.

On

But grace is here dearly bought when the price is the surrender of home seclusion, and the merging of the real in the dramatic. If it should turn out that we are to make choice between the reserved earnestness of the domestic affections and the pictorial elegance of the social, we cannot but determine that the former is most conducive to a higher order of happiness. Tennyson tells us that

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all;

and the practical experience of all is that none would part even with a grief, if with it is to go the memory of an earnest affection. There is still less ground for a comparison, if one must needs be made, between the home and the social affections when each is in successful play. For the difference is the old one between happiness and pleasure;

between the exercise of the healthy impulses of the heart in the view of conscience, and the display of its sensibilities in the eye of others; between a real and relied on reciprocation of affection, and a mere complimentary obeisance, paid out and received as such.

§ 54. To this it may be added, that a wide field of objects of enjoyment is not always accompanied by an increased capacity in enjoying. As the circuit of the instrument increases, its power of perception is weakened. The microscope may unfold the beauties of atom-worlds that lie in a butterfly's dust, but to do this it must be pointed to that dust alone. By increasing its range, we may see an hundredfold more objects superficially, but we will not see one entire. Thus it is that the frugal dweller by the hillside has often many more luxuries than the wealthy inhabitant of the city. For, as the latter's wealth increases, his luxuries diminish, until, when there is none which his wealth cannot purchase without self-denial, they cease to exist. All who have experienced an increase of wealth know how it is accompanied by a diminution of objects of real and innocent delight. What we called "treats," in more frugal days, have ceased to exist, just in the same way as there can be no holiday when all is vacation.*

* Charles Lamb has developed this thought with great beauty in the following passage from his letter on "Broken China” :—“I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state," so she was pleased to ramble on,-" in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money

To these considerations it may be added, that human pleasure, so far from increasing, rather diminishes in the inverse ratio of its concentration.

'Tis pleasure to a certain bound,

Beyond 'tis agony.

enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and oh, how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then when we felt the money that we paid for it.

Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare, and all because of that folio which you dragged home late at night from Barker's, in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was nearly ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late? And when the old bookseller, with some grumbling, opened his shop, and, by the twinkling taper, (for he was setting bedwards,) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures; and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome; and when you presented it to me, and when we were exploring the perfectness of it, (collating you called it ;) and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak, was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or, can those neat, black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit-your old corbeau-for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience, for the mighty sum of fifteen, or sixteen shillings was it?-a great affair we thought it then, which you had lavished on the old folio.

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