Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/245

 

Breathe's there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!" 1em " love of home, or that attachment to local objects which have been intimately associated with the pleasures and affections of opening life, is a feeling, or rather, indeed, a passion which has been found to exist, in a greater or less degree, in every age and nation, and may therefore be deemed natural to, and, for the most part, inherent in man. It is, moreover, the basis of all the charities and virtues of our nature, and ever burns brightest in the breast of him who is the most tender, philanthropic, and humane. It may, in fact, be asserted that he who has not strongly felt this domestic tie, will never, in any of the relations of life, be either happy in himself or useful to others; for on the love of home is founded that of his country and of his species, and without the first of these affections, which includes all the nearest and dearest affinities of our common kind, the heart must ever remain selfish, desolate, and cold, and consequently void of all those sympathies which can stimulate to any social or patriotic feeling The love of home may indeed be considered as a test of the goodness of the human heart, for without it, we again repeat, neither the domestic nor patriotic virtues can be said to exist. It is of all our feelings the most generous and amiable, and, if duly cherished, will ever prove one of the best preventatives of vanity, selfishness, and dissipation; of discontent, turbulence, and disaffection. Home is the haven to which, after all the storms and vexations of life, we return with the added conviction, that if happiness be anywhere resident on earth, it is only to be found within its still retreats, where vice and folly stand aloof, and when the soul, uncontaminated by its passage through the world, can prepare in peace, and in the sunshine of domestic love, for that not dreaded hour when the frame it now inhabits shall mingle with its parent dust."—  undefined