The same image is made use of in the _Citizen of the World_. The reader may like to contrast the prose with the poetic version. “The farther I travel,” says Lien Chi Altangi to his correspondent, “I feel the pain of separation with stronger force; those ties that bind me to my native country and you, are still unbroken. _By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain._” We prefer the prose. Indeed the metaphor is not so much to our taste as that we should have thought it worth using a second time, and in the greater work. It suited Lien Chi Altangi very well, and with him it might have remained. It is too cumbrous—too material. What are we to do with this “lengthening chain” which he “drags” along the earth? and where, in imagination, are we to fasten it? To his ankle? It would make a felon of him. To his waist? Ridiculous! But, you will say, we are not to see the chain at all—only to hear it clank a little in the verse—only to have some dim idea of lengthening ligature. Very good; and thereupon we honestly respond—if, whilst reading the line you feel no irresistible tendency to look down upon the ground for this chain—if you do not see it at all, then to you the metaphor is quite unobjectionable. “And find no spot of all the world my own!” The natural feeling of the homeless, unprovided wanderer, looking over a great stretch of country. How finely is it contrasted with the sentiment which follows! No spot his own! It is all his! He has taken sympathetic possession of the whole. “Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crowned; Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round; Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale; Ye bending swains that dress the flowery vale— For me your tributary stores combine; _Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine!_” Having thus wrought himself into proper mood for his philosophic purpose, the poet commences his survey of the several regions of the earth, and nations of mankind. The train of thought is, at starting, somewhat perplexed, from the author being occupied with two separate reflections, which, until they are closely examined, appear contradictory. We have them in close juxtaposition in the following lines:— “Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall, To see the hoard of human bliss so small; And oft I wish amidst the scene to find _Some spot to real happiness consigned_, Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest, May gather bliss to see my fellows blest. But where to find that happiest below— Who can direct, when _all pretend to know_? The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own.” &c., &c.