on seems, it is really one which it is impossible to answer;
though we suspect it would equally puzzle Scotchman or Englishman to
give a sufficient reason for his wishing to see any part of any other
country before he had seen what was best worth seeing in his own. His
own country ought to be, and generally is, dearest to every man. There,
if nothing forbid, he should not only begin his study of nature, but
continue his education in her school, wherever it may happen to be
situated, till he has taken his first degree. We believe that the love
of nature is strong in the hearts of the inhabitants of our Island. And
how wide and profound may that knowledge of nature be, which the loving
heart has acquired, without having studied her anywhere but within the
Four Seas! The impulses that make us desire to widen the circle of our
observation, are all impulses of delight and love; and it would be
strange indeed, did they not move us, first of all, towards whatever is
most beautiful belonging to our own land. Were it otherwise, it would
seem as if the heart were faithless to the home-affections, out of
which, in their strength, spring all others that are good; and it is
essential, we do not doubt, to the full growth of the Love of Country,
that we should all have our earliest imaginative delights associated
with our native soil. Such associations will for ever keep it loveliest
to our eyes; nor is it possible that we can ever as perfectly understand
the character of any other; but we can afterwards transfer and transfuse
our feelings in imagination kindled by our own will; and the beauty,
born before our eyes, among the banks and braes of our childhood, and
then believed to be but there, and nothing like it anywhere else in all
the world, becomes a golden light, "whose home is everywhere," which if
we do not darken it, will shine unshadowed in the dreariest places, till
"the desert blossom like the rose."

For our own parts, before we beheld one of "the beautiful fields of
England," we had walked all Scotland thorough, and had seen many a
secret place, which now, in the confusion of our crowded memory, seem
often to shift their uncertain ground; but still, wherever they
glimmeringly reappear, invested with the same heavenly light in which,
long ago, they took possession of our soul. And now, that we are almost
as familiar with the fair sister-land, and love her almost as well as
Scotland's self, not all the charms in which she is