Love of country, that amiable and noble sentiment, which by turns exalts and softens the human mind, nourishes enthusiasm, and inspires alike the hero and sage, to defend and adorn the sacred land of their nativity, is a principle which hardly exists there. An American loves his country, or prefers it rather, because its rivers are wide and deep, and abound in fish; because he has the forests to retire to, if the god of gainful commerce should prove unpropitious on the shore. He loves it because if his negro is disrespectful or disobedient, he can sell him and buy another; while if he himself is disobedient to the laws of his country, or disrespectful to the magistracy appointed to enforce them, that shadow of authority, without power to do good, or prevent evil, must possess its soul in patience. We love our country because we honour our ancestors; because it is endeared to us not only by early habit, but by attachments to the spots hallowed by their piety, their heroism, their genius, or their public spirit. We honour it as the scene of noble deeds, the nurse of sages, bards, and heroes. The very aspect and features of this blest asylum of liberty, science, and religion, warm our hearts, and animate our imaginations. Enthusiasm kindles at the thoughts of what we have been, and what we are. It is the last retreat, the citadel, in which all that is worth living for is concentrated. Among the other ties which were broken, by the detachment of America from us, that fine ligament, which binds us to the tombs of our ancestors, (and seems to convey to us the spirit and the affections we derive from them) was dissolved: and with it perished all generous emulation. Fame, “That spur which the clear mind doth raise To live laborious nights and painful days,”