Africa, nothing; in America, nothing; and in Asia, comparatively nothing;-if we except a few translations, and a few treatises on local antiquities.

In Greece it was otherwise. Nor is it possible to contemplate, without the liveliest admiration, the gems both of history and of poetry, that the Greek colonists of Sicily, Doria, and Ionia, have left for the instruction and delight of mankind. Scarcely a city of those countries, but has recommended itself to the gratitude of posterity! Homer, Theocritus, Herodotus ;-but the list were multitudinous.

IX.

Liberty came from the North; the sciences and the arts from Egypt, Arahia, and other parts of the East. These we have imported with safety; since we have had sufficient grace to perceive, that despotism was unworthy of importation. But as a drawback on these advantages, Europe owes some of its disorders to her intercourse with Asia. It is remarkable that in the year, which gave birth to Mahomet, the measles, the small-pox, and the hydrophobia, were first known in Arabia. The two former emigrated from Ethiopia. These disorders have subsequently been transplanted into Europe.

As Europe, in this particular, has suffered by an intercourse with the East,-Africa and the Pacific are under a similar disobligation to Europe. The Portuguese introduced the gonorrhea and the elephantiasis into the Congo country: and other Europeans left the small pox and the lues in the South Sea Islands. The natives complain, that the Spaniards left them the swelled throat; Cook the intermittent fever; Vancouver the dysentery;

36

and Bligh the scrophula. Europe has also introduced to them a new method of making war.

The diffusion of knowledge, by creating a vibration of interests from one end of the globe to the other, has annihilated space; by bringing countries, the most remote, into contact with each other. This has led to a juster equilibrium in respect to civilization. For commerce is one of the greatest and most profound of all instruments, for effecting the result, nature has instituted, by establishing a community of wants. The second instrument of civilization arises out of the greatest of all moral calamities-war. For savage countries and corrupt nations, as an elegant writer remarks, gain essential and lasting advantages, by being conquered by a people, governed by wiser laws, and distinguished by more humane institutions than themselves. The effects of Roman conquests yielded, in point of interest to those who were conquered, only to the advantages, which have been the constant results of British conquests;-whether in America, Africa, or in Asia.

Such are the advantages arising from war, from commerce, and from colonization. But those, who emigrate, seldom cease to lament the country, they have quitted; and they are at all times ready to address that country in imagination, as a lover addresses the mistress, he has left. behind.

Where'er I go, whatever realms I see,

My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee.-
Still to my country turns with ceaseless pain,
And draws, at each remove, a lengthened chain!

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

SCENERY, among its other beneficial results, never fails to increase the regard, which is entertained by every one for his native country. Even the nabob, who forsook his country after wealth, and marked a foreign soil with rapine, purchases comparative ease from his reflections in the groves of his native village.

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself has said,

This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart has ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he has turn'd,

From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self-
Living-shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

Lay of the last Minstrel, cant. vi.

Inhabitants of wild and desolate regions, of long extended plains, of heaths, of moors, and of the busy city, can transport themselves into the most distant

regions of the globe, and still find fields, and plains, and moors, and streets, resembling those, they have quitted, to awaken, at intervals, all the agreeable associations, which are connected with their native land. These associations are ardent; but they never exalt to that wild and ungovernable transport, which animates the mountaineer, and the inhabitants of a sequestered valley, at the mention, or even the recollection of their glens, rocks, rivers and mountains. Hence we find that the natives of Wales, of Scotland, of Arcadia, and of Switzerland, have been, in every period of their history, remarkable for an attachment, not only to their native country, but to their native village. Speaking by a figure,-they esteem no flowers beautiful, that do not grow among their vallies: in their imagination a foreign mineral is no better than a fossil; and an exotic gem of no more value than a paste. Their water is almost equal to wine; the speed of their horses surpasses that of the antelope; and their daughters are more beautiful than the daughters of Cashmire!

This passion, however, is so general, that no country, even if it were a desert, but is remembered with pleasure, provided it is our own. The Cretans called it by a name, indicating a mother's love for her children. The negroes of the Windward Islands are the proudest and most vain of all the western coast: the Ethiopian imagines, that God made his sands and deserts, while angels were employed in forming the rest of the globe1!

From the lotus was anciently distilled a wine, so luscious, that it was said to have the power of making strangers, who visited the ancient Loto-phagi, forget their native country.

The Arabian tribe of Ouadelin imagine, that the sun, moon, and stars rise only for them. A similar belief is indulged, in western Africa, by a tribe, called the Labdesseba.-" Behold yon luminary," said they to M. de Brisson', who was shipwrecked on their coast; "it is unknown in your country: and, during the night, you are never enlightened, as we are, by the stars, which are his children!”

The Persians were so enamoured of Shiraz, that they imagined, that if Mahomet had but once tasted the pleasures of Shiraz, he would have pray. ed to have been made immortal in Shiraz, rather than in heaven. The Maltese, insulated on a rock, distinguish their island by the appellation of “ The Flower of the World";" and while the Greenlander, wild and stupid as he is, has a sovereign contempt for a stranger, the Caribbees esteem their country a paradise, and themselves alone entitled to the name of man! A feeling of this nature animated Becarrus, when, in grave discourse, he insisted, that the language of Paradise was a Teutonic dialect.

OMAI, though he was delighted with every thing, he saw in this country, and had every temptation to stay in it, was yet delighted even to rapture, when he entered the ship, which was to convey him to his native country. The Abbé de Lille relates an affecting anecdote of an Indian, who, amid the splendour of Paris, beholding a banana tree in the Jardin des Plantes, bathed it with his tears, and, for a moment, seemed to be transported to his own land. And when an European ad

1 Leyden's Discov. in Africa, vol. i. p.
2 Flore del Mundo.

285.