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THE CHOICE OP A SITUATION BOOK III. 



extend their imagination, and grasp the idea of them as it were 

 across the ocean, so both are desirous when returned of being 

 near it, or at least having a distant prospect from their dwelling, 

 in order to give exercise to the same habits. I have generally 

 found in almost every case, that gentlemen, when retiring from 

 a city life in their own country, and wishing to choose a coun- 

 try residence, have preferred those situations which had most 

 analogy with the scenes rendered familiar to them by habit in 

 their younger days. 



Similar sentiments indeed exist in every mind, though sel- 

 dom with the same energy, and often warped by the pernicious 

 effects of commerce, or the long habit* of living in great cities. 



* The anecdote of a marine officer, who at his villa erected a building in imita- 

 tion of the quarter-deck of a ship, and the greatest part of his time used to walk in 

 it alone, is sufficiently known. Most sailors indeed, when on shore, seldom make 

 long excursions, but generally walk backwards and forwards upon the same spot. 

 Wherever we are placed, we become in time habituated to certain objects, the ab- 

 sence of which gives us pain, in proportion as those objects have been analogous to 

 the mind, and according to the length of time that we have been habituated to them. 

 To this source the reader may trace an endless diversity of pleasures and dislikes, 

 which he will perceive take place in others upon the presence or absence of things 

 to him perhaps uninteresting. It is this which gives the chief interest to the house 

 in which we were born, the school in which we were taught to read, the dress of 

 our youth, and thousands of other recollections of departed joys; which, as a great 

 poet observes, are remembered with a painful pleasure. As a contrast to the ge- 

 neral remark of sailors never making long excursions, I may add, that those who 

 have been long abroad almost constantly delight in extensive prospects; perhaps 

 from the coincidence of all their past lives having been spent in the prospect of 

 more complete happiness at a future period. For illustrations of these observations, 

 see a beautiful little poem on " The Influence of Local Attachment." 



