but they gush forth impetuously from impulsive and loving hearts,
and spread like living waters which no artificially-cut stones
can bank and confine, but which must expand freely in the land
they fertilize.

Deep affection, then, is with them at the root of all moral and
social feelings; and as all those feelings, even the national and
patriotic, are merged in real domestic sentiment, a great purity
of morals must exist among them, nothing being so conducive
thereto as family affections.

Above all, when those purely-natural dispositions are raised to
the level of the supernatural ones by a divinely-inspired code, by
the sublime elevation of Christian purity, then can there be found
nothing on earth more lovely and admirable. Chastity is always
attractive to a pure heart; patriarchal guilelessness becomes
sacred even to the corrupt, if not altogether hardened, man.

Of course we do not pretend that this happy state of things is
without its exceptions; that the light has no shadow, the beauty
no occasional blemish. We speak of the generality, or at least of
the majority, of cases; for perfection cannot belong to this world.

Yet mysticism is entirely absent from such a moral and religious
state, on account, perhaps, of the paucity of ideas by which the
heart is ruled, and perhaps also on account of the artless
simplicity which characterizes every thing in primitively-constituted
nations. And, wonderful to say, without any mysticism there is
often among them a perfect holiness of life, adapting itself to
all circumstances, climates, and associations. The same heart of