LOVE OF COUNTRY. 31 



to heaven ; they are hoary with eld, but the hope 

 of immortality breathes around them."-;--. Glance 

 your eye over Asia, and you shall find, that while 

 conquest and change of race have swept the plains 

 of Euphrates and Ganges like floods, and the level 

 steppes of Siberia like the north wind, Caucasus 

 and Himmalaya have retained their people, and 

 their tuneful cliffs echo the same language as they 

 did in the days of the patriarchs. And who, too, 

 had footing on the Alps before the Swiss, or on 

 the Pyrenees before the Basques ; and how long 

 did the expiring sounds of the Celtic language 

 wail among the Cornish rocks, after the lowlands 

 of England had become Roman, Saxon, Dane, 

 and Norman, by turns, and the mingling of a five- 

 fold race, had given to the country the most capa- 

 ble population under the sun ? Turn whitherso- 

 ever we will, on the surface of the globe, or in the 

 years of its history, the discovery is ever the 

 same. The' Phoenicians were once great in northern 

 Africa, and the Egyptians mighty by Nilus' flood ; 

 but where now are the ships of Carthage, the pa- 

 laces of Memphis, or the gates of Thebes ; or 

 where are the men by whom these were erected, 

 or the conquerors by whom they were laid waste ? 

 The cormorant sits solitary on those heaps by the 

 Euphrates, where the conqueror of Egypt erected 

 his throne; the Goth and the Hun trod with 

 mockery over the tombs of the Scipios ; and the 

 turbaned Arab has erected his tent over the fallen 

 palaces of Numantia ; but the cliffs of Atlas have 

 retained their inhabitants, and the same race, which 

 dwelt there before Carthage or Rome, or Babylon 

 or Memphis, had existence, dwell there still, and, 

 shielded by the fastnesses of their mountains, the 



