Page:Pleasant Memories.pdf/380

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EFFECTS OF TRAVELLING.
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and to "love the stranger," since you had thus learned to know the heart and the solace of a stranger?

Travelling should incite to a warmer and more enduring patriotism. The depth of the "amor patriƦ" is never fully disclosed, till we see the misty line of our native hills recede, or after long absence thrill with ecstasy, as they again gleam upon the horizon, like the wings of a guardian angel. Then, when every remembered cottage seems to stretch towards us a greeting hand, all the pleasures we have tasted, all the knowledge we have acquired during our wanderings, we long to pour out at the feet of our own blessed land. Every usage of order and beauty, which distinguish other regions, we desire to transplant to her forests, or to see blossoming around her firesides. We feel willing to have borne an exile's pain, if we may bring back, as a proof of our loyalty, one germ of improvement for her humblest child, one leaf of olive for the garland that encircles her brow.

Travelling unfolds to us the love of home, and the length and breadth of the domestic charities. While a sojourner in the tents of strangers, perhaps while gazing on the glowing canvass of some ancient master, the clustered columns of some gorgeous temple, how often has the green vine, that waved over our own door, interposed itself, or the chirping of the callow nest among its branches overpowered for a time the fullest burst of foreign minstrelsy. As these modes of feeling gain ascendency, we pursue our researches more for the benefit of others than our own;