divine grace alone. I often recall those days of summer sunshine to
which I have alluded; and the scarcely less joyous winter season, when,
ploughing the light snow, we raced with our inseparable companion, the
favorite pointer, or built up a brittle giant for the glory of
demolishing him with balls of his own substance, or directed the soft
missiles against each other. Accompanied by our father, but never alone,
we made excursions upon our frozen stream; and very sweet it was to the
fond hearts of my tender parents to watch the mantling glow of health,
the elastic vigor of increasing stature, and the unbounded play of most
exuberant spirits, in the poor child whom they had expected to enclose
in an early grave. How often, seated on the low wide brick-work corner
of the immense fireplace in a neighboring farm-house, have I been smoked
among hams and tongues, while watching the progress of baking a homely
cake upon those glowing wood-embers, or keeping guard over a treasury of
apples, nuts, and elderberry wine, all streaming together in the
lusciousness of a promised feast? Patriotism is with me no inert
principle; it verily lives and acts and pervades my whole spirit; and I
believe its energetic character, except as God deigns to work by his
especial influence, is traceable to that early acquaintance with what is
most purely English among us--the homes and the habits of our own bold
yeomanry.

Cities may resemble one another, and the aping propensities of their
inhabitants produce among them a rapid approximation of appearance and
manners; but where shall we look for the counterpart of a rural English
HOME? The thing is as untransferable as the word is untranslatable. The
antique village church, with its broad square tower or low spire, its
stone porch and oak seats, its narrow casements and the many vestiges of
those abominations which the besom of the blessed Reformation swept from
our services, though it could not, without demolishing the building,