but we ought not, as too many of us do, to esteem it a disgrace or calamity not to be so. As I was walking one day in Hyde Park, I heard a blooming bright-eyed lassie, about ten years old, exclaim in a sweet, treble voice, "La! mama, look, there is a Frenchman!" "Hush, my dear!" replied the matron; "poor man! he cannot help it!" Now, though the supposed Frenchman was no less undeniably an Englishman than myself, I could not help smiling at the exclusiveness of our aristocratical Anglicism, which considers a foreign extraction in the light of a natural infirmity; and concludes that all nations would be English if they could. There is a calm unsuspicion, a grave taking of the matter for granted, in our English nationality, very different from the ebullient, bragging Gallicism of the French -the disputative Caledonianism of the Scotch-the pistolling Hibernianism of the Irish—the antiquarian Cymrodorianism of the Welsh-the Teutonic Cosmopolitism of the Germans, (Teutonic Cosmopolite is as good a phrase as Roman Catholic)—or the democratic citizenism of the Americans.

Roman patriotism, we "The land we live in " affections; but it is not,

Thank heaven! we all of us, English, French, Dutch, and Norwegians, still love our country; but when we affect Greek and pitifully deceive ourselves. has still a place among our as with them of old times, the beginning and end of all honourable love, all duty, all piety, all hope. To form the citizen was the sole aim of ancient discipline; and virtue itself was chiefly prized as the strength

and health of the community. According to the Roman and Spartan creed, men were made for the advantage and perpetuity of the state; we more wisely esteem the state in proportion as its institutions contribute to the welfare of man. The fervour of public spirit was, in a great measure, owing to the locality of the Gentile religions. The gods of a captive city were supposed to be vanquished, captured, exiled, and shamed. Our God is the God of the whole earth. The narrow limits of the classical republics, which rendered the terms, city and state, in a manner synonymous, and made each citizen acquainted with the utmost limits of his country, contributed much to the ardour and concentrated intensity of patriotism. Modern kingdoms are, for the most part, so large, that the patriotic feelings receive little assistance from local associations, which are apt to degenerate into provincial prejudice. Our zeal and our pride are diffused over too large a surface, or contracted within the narrow bounds of a county, a corporation, a college, a school, or a club; and a spurious public spirit, a dull, conceited kind of public pride is generated, not a little derogatory to the dignity of genuine nationality.

ON PRIDE.

(IN CONTINUATION.)

"The child is father of the man,

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety."

It is a great comfort to a man whose life has been somewhat erratic, and whose opinions have been formed rather from casual observations than scientific inductions, who has rather desired than achieved distinct ideas, which are the mental representatives of first principles, to discover that their latter thoughts explain, develop, and connect, but not contradict or falsify their first impressions. It is not, therefore, without some inward satisfaction, something better, I would fain hope, than selfish vanity, that I find the half-sportive characteristics of English nationality, indited for lady perusal, and the gay pages of a Winter's Wreath,-while, though my head was already grey, or, at least, like that of Idomeneus peσaiñoλIOS, my heart and hopes were not quite past their spring,-confirmed by the reflections of a recent day, set down without any purpose of publication, and under feelings so different, that I can hardly suppose them the offspring of mere impulse, humour, or idiosyncrasy.

Let me not be misunderstood. I blame not those whose last opinions are, or appear to be, not only opposite, but directly contrary to their first. The vile names, rat and apostate, are fulminated by all sects and parties against every man whose riper judgment does not confirm the protestations of his youth. No doubt their Hebrew or Syriac equivalents were, by the Pharisees, cast in the teeth of St. Paul. But this is as absurd as illiberal, and as illiberal as illmannerly. A man should not take his opinions like a wife, for better and for worse neither should he take them as a mistress, upon liking-but upon good behaviour-quamdiu bene se gesserint-so long as they approve themselves to be what he originally took them for, faithful servants of truth. For the best opinions are like fire and water, good servants but bad masters, and should never be confounded with principles, to which alone the allegiance of the moral will is due. Moreover, though it is the duty of every one who pretends or tries to think for himself, to comprehend and acknowledge whole truths, yet as all practical truths are many sided, and it is not always possible to exhibit more than one side of a truth at a time, a prudent man will turn that face outwards which the season needs, and this will sometimes be the face least like the general aspect. It is to beguile the time that men look like the time. But the charge of apostacy is very justly alleged against those who, without any new light, without pause or deliberation, change parties at the beck of a minister or a multitude, on hollow pretexts of expe

diency, or perhaps in the caprice of ill-humour, at some imaginary neglect, and at the utmost pinch desert the hopes of those who have entrusted them with the ark of their confidence. No change,-nay, nor conviction, can justify public treachery or private ingratitude. Such men there have been, but they are not worth mourning over. Far more afflicting is it to see how little even better kind of people are improved by the experience of their inward attention, and persevere in asserting that every successive shadow of a cloud on the unstable waters of their fancy is a rock of ages. And the cause is obvious. With ninetynine out of a hundred, opinions, when most they seem sincere when they do sound like a native utterance of the soul, and not a mere reverberation-the echo of an echo-are nothing more than the exponents of feelings, and feelings with the man are but the operation of circumstance upon complexion; they change therefore as circumstances alter, and as complexions are affected by age and bodily health. In sensitive persons, in whom the feminine element predominates, whose passive imagination is plastic as that of a lady in an interesting situation, and whose volition has become feeble for want of exercise, these changes are so rapid and visible, that they impose on nobody, not even on themselves. The more vehemently they assert, the more fancifully they illustrate, the more acutely they argue a position, the less credit they obtain for sincerity. Not that they are wilfully insincere, or influenced by mere vanity or love of contradiction. No such thing. They come