30 LOVE OF COUNTRY. 



his country (and knowing it he cannot but love 

 it), thinks his own country the very best; and 

 would migrate in sorrow from the ice-clad rocks 

 of Labrador, to the perpetual spring and unchang- 

 ing verdure of the Atlantic Isles. The Bedouin 

 who careers over the sandy plain, fleet as the 

 whirlwind, carrying his handful of dates for his day's 

 repast, and marching twenty miles to the palm- 

 encircled pool, at which he is to quench his thirst, 

 would not give up the joy of the wilderness for 

 the fattest plains and the most gorgeous cities. 

 He has known nature, and seen the working of 

 nature's God in the desert, and beyond that, or 

 higher than that, the very excess and perfection 

 of man's working cannot give him pleasure. 



And who are they, whose ancestry in their pre- 

 sent localities, stretches backward till its fading 

 memorials out-measure not only all that has been 

 written, but all that has been erected in brick or 

 in marble, or in the aged granite itself the pri- 

 maeval father of mountain and of rock ? Are they 

 the inhabitants of fertile plains, spreading wide 

 their productive bosoms to the sun, rich in flocks 

 and herds, thronged with villages, and joyous with 

 cities and palaces ? I trow not. They are the men 

 of the mountains ; and if there is love of country 

 upon earth, you will find it where there is only a 

 mountain pine, a mountain goat, and a mountaineer, 

 as fast rooted and as firm footed on the rock as 

 either. Ask of the mountains of your own coun- 

 try ; and Snowdon shall answer to Ben-Nevis, and 

 Wharnside shall respond to grey Cairngorm, 

 " We have known our people for a thousand years, 

 and each year of the thousand they have loved us 

 the more. Our summits are bleak, but they point 



