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النشر الإلكتروني

a calm and settled security, an hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues, and local attach

ments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation.

It is a pleasing sight of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, thronging tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments which their own hands have spread around them.

It is this sweet home feeling, this settled repose of affection in the domestic scene, which is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtues and purest enjoyments; and I cannot close these desultory remarks better, than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, who has depicted it with remarkable felicity:

Through each gradation, from the castled hall,
The city dome, the villa crown'd with shade,

But chief from modest mansions numberless,
In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life,

Down to the cottag'd vale, and straw-roof'd shed,
This western isle hath long been famed for scenes
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling place:
Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove,
(Honour and sweet endearment keeping guard,)
Can centre in a little quiet nest

All that desire would fly for through the earth;
That can, the world eluding, be itself
A world enjoy'd ; that wants no witnesses
But its own sharers, and approving heaven.
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft,

Smiles, though 'tis looking only at the sky.*

*From a Poem on the death of the Princess Charlotte, by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, ▲ м.

18

THE

BROKEN HEART.

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