istinguishes this attachment
from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to
physical objects; the associations connected with any one object
extending to the whole class. Our having been attached to any particular
person does not make us feel the same attachment to the next person we
may chance to meet; but, if we have once associated strong feelings of
delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes
indissoluble, and we shall ever after feel the same attachment to other
objects of the same sort. I remember when I was abroad, the trees, and
grass, and wet leaves, rustling in the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed
to be as much English, to be as much the same trees and grass, that I
had always been used to, as the sun shining over my head was the same
sun which I saw in England; the faces only were foreign to me. Whence
comes this difference? It arises from our always imperceptibly
connecting the idea of the individual with man, and only the idea of the
class with natural objects. In the one case, the external appearance or
physical structure is the least thing to be attended to; in the other,
it is every thing. The springs that move the human form, and make it
friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of
motives, passions, and ideas, contained in that narrow compass, of which
I know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each individual is a world
to himself, governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I
can, therefore, make no inference from one individual to another; nor
can my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend
beyond himself to others. A crowd of people presents a disjointed,
confused, and unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, because there is
nothing to connect the motley assemblage into one continuous or general
impression, unless when there is some common object of interest to fix
their attention, as in the case of a full pit at the play-house. The
same principle will also account for that feeling of littleness,
vacuity, and perplexity, which a stranger feels on entering the streets
of a populous city. Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal
identity. Every new face is a teazing, unanswered riddle. He feels the
same wearisome sensation in walking from Oxford Street to Temple Bar, as
a person would do who should be compelled to read through the first leaf
of all the volumes in a library. But