Every influence that increases the sensibility of the feelings is likely to increase the tenderness of patriotic sentiment. Religion and poetry are both strong influences in its favour, and a very powerful constant influence is that of a society in which feeling is habitually expressed as it is by the Irish and the French. A society in which the utterance of deep feeling of any kind is repressed by conventional good breeding, and by a kind of external stoicism, is repressive of tenderness in patriotic sentiment. This stoical tendency in the English is more favourable to pride than to love. [Sidenote: Habits of Travel.] Habits of travel, habits of living abroad, cosmopolitan experiences on a large scale, diminish the intensity of local affection by affording opportunities for comparison, and so destroying illusions, especially about the grandeur of landscapes that have been dear to us in youth, and the appearance of houses and towns. After the Alps the English mountains are seen to be only hills, after Paris the northern towns look dismal. [Sidenote: Prosperity, Commercial and Political.] Lastly, a sustained commercial and political prosperity is unfavourable to the tenderness of national sentiment, because a very prosperous nation does not appeal to the pathetic sympathies, does not call for commiseration. The sons of a powerful and rich mother do not feel themselves to be so necessary to her as if she were afflicted and sorrowful. [Sidenote: Effects of these Causes in Modern England.] The reader will see at a glance how all these reasons against the tenderness of sentiment in patriotism tell in modern England. [Sidenote: Lack of small Proprietors.] [Sidenote: The Population not Stationary.] [Sidenote: Facility in changing Residence.]