“I will never leave Borva,” said the Princess of Thule, yet she did leave Borva, and sang her old island songs in the strange land and amongst the strange people “with her heart breaking with thoughts of the sea, and the hills, and the rude, and sweet, and simple ways of the old island life that she had left behind her.” [Sidenote: William Black. His understanding of Patriotic Tenderness.] Here is an example of tender patriotism, so much localised that the lover of her own country, which is one of the Hebridean islands, feels herself a foreigner in London, and it might be argued that every British subject ought to feel at home in the capital of the nation. Well, we are coming to that, but the first patriotism is local and pathetic.[16] No English novelist understands the sentiment of patriotic tenderness better than does William Black, and he always represents it as strongest in poor and thinly-peopled places, such as are to be found in the Western Highlands, and in the bleak archipelago between the Scottish mainland and the open Atlantic. [Sidenote: Rural Life favourable to Tenderness.] Country life is highly favourable to the growth of a tender local patriotism, especially that kind of country life which remains stationary and attached to family possessions. Small estates are favourable to it, large estates less so, because they supply their owners with the means of living at a distance, and especially for passing a part of the year in the capital, and other months out of the country altogether. [Sidenote: Colonisation Unfavourable.] Colonisation is unfavourable to a tender English patriotism, because it diverts the affection of families from the soil of the mother country by giving them a second country beyond the sea, and by encouraging the idea that the mother country is but a part of a vast confederation, in which the colonists may have a patriotic feeling for the confederation generally, and a specially affectionate patriotism for the State or province in which they were born. [Sidenote: Composite States.] When the State is very heterogeneous in composition, including several very different nationalities, there may be a tender sentiment in each nation for itself, but this is not likely to extend to the entire State. Thus, a Scotchman may have a tender feeling for Scotland, an Irishman for Ireland, but their tender affection is not likely to include England, still less Canada and Australia. They may be proud of belonging to so great an empire, but that is another feeling. [Sidenote: Effects of Religion and Poetry.] [Sidenote: Utterance of Feeling.] [Sidenote: Its Stoical Repression.]