Some such feeling as that here described will be found lurking at
the bottom of all our attachments of this sort. Were it not for the
recollections habitually associated with them, natural objects could not
interest the mind in the manner they do. No doubt, the sky is beautiful,
the clouds sail majestically along its bosom; the sun is cheering; there
is something exquisitely graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree
puts forth its branches; the motion with which they bend and tremble in
the evening breeze is soft and lovely; there is music in the babbling of
a brook; the view from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur; nor
can we behold the ocean with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly
sings,

"Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields!
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven,
Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!"

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[7] Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post
which stood in the court-yard before the house where he was brought up.
___

It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we
admire in Nature; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often
found connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to the
most common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom we have
long known, and from whom we have received many benefits. It is because
natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood,
with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind
takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest
to whatever strikes its attention; with change of place, the pursuit of
new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends; it is because they have
surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in
pleasure and in pain; because they have been one chief source and
nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them
as we do ourselves.

There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of
Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of
ideas. But this is not all. That which d