Amongst the nations under the British crown there is one that still retains that tenderness in perfection. The Irish people have it, and they even keep it in exile. The reason evidently is that Ireland is a small well-defined nation, separated from England by salient national characteristics, and a nation which for a long time has been poor, unhappy, and ill-used. Here are all the influences that increase the pathetic tenderness of patriotic feeling. If ever Ireland becomes rich and happy her patriotism may be quite as powerful, quite as genuine, but it will lose that intense pathos.[17] The pathetic element in Scottish patriotism was most intense when Scotland was poor, when the science and industry of her sons had not yet compensated for the barrenness of her soil. [Sidenote: Wordsworth.] Of all the English poets Wordsworth had the tender local affections in the greatest strength; and in his case not only did they attach themselves to a small district with a marked peculiarity of character, but they were almost invariably associated with poor and simple human lives, themselves rooted by hereditary affection in the miniature highland region that occupies the north-west corner of England. London, to Wordsworth, was “a crowded solitude.” [Sidenote: Attachment to Foreign Places.] [Sidenote: English love for Switzerland.] [Sidenote: Indifference to France. Love of Italy.] No race in Europe has so strong a tendency as the English race to form attachments for places outside of the native land. This tendency has increased with the habit of travel and with the spoiling of England by modern industrial works. The second love of Englishmen is Switzerland if they are mountaineers, and Italy if they care for poetry and art. France they seldom appreciate unless they are architectural students, when they cannot overlook “the most architectural country in Europe.” It is probable that no Englishman ever loved France as Robert Browning loves Italy, or would venture to express such a sentiment if he felt it. “Italy, my Italy!” cries the poet with a passionate longing-- “Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it Italy, Such lovers old are I and she, So it always was, so shall ever be.” [Sidenote: The Attraction of Greece for Englishmen.] The love of a foreign language is enough to give us a friendly interest in the country where it is spoken to perfection, and as Englishmen are better linguists than the French, foreign countries have this attraction for them. They are also better scholars, and therefore may be more drawn towards Greece. [Sidenote: The French love Algeria or Italy.]