“A lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common principle in the minds of men. We seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers; our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate than suppress the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The satirist may laugh; the philosopher may preach; but reason herself will respect the prejudices and habits which have been consecrated by the experience of mankind.”[41] Of all nations on the globe, the Irish, as a people, are universally admitted to possess, in a pre-eminent degree, those finer sensibilities of the human heart, which, were they but wisely controlled, would exalt _man_ above the level of ordinary humanity, and make him, as it were, a being of another species. The numerous instances adduced in all periods of their history, of ardent and enterprising zeal, in every case wherein personal honour or national glory may be involved, are in themselves sufficient to establish this assertion. But while granting their pre-eminence as to the possession of those feelings, and the capability of the feelings themselves to be refined and sublimated to the very acme of cultivation, we may still doubt whether the _mere possession_ of them be not less a blessing than a curse--whether, in fact, their quick perception of disquietudes and pains be not more than a counterpoise to their keen enjoyment of delight or pleasure. Foremost, however, in the train of the _many virtues_ which flow therefrom, is that “amor patriæ,” or love of country, which, unsubdued often by the most galling miseries and the most hopeless wants, throws a halo round the loneliness of their present despair in the proud retrospection of their former buoyancy. This spirit it is which, despite of obvious advantages to be derived from emigration, has riveted the Irish peasant so immutably to his home, that any effort on his part to dissolve those local fetters would be equivalent to the disruption of all the ties and attachments which nature or habit had implanted within him. “The lofty scenes around their sires recall, Fierce in the field and generous in the hall; The mountain crag, the stream and waving tree, Breathe forth some proud and glorious history-- Urges their steps where patriot virtue leads, And fires the kindred souls to kindred deeds. They tread elate the soil their fathers trod, The same their country, and the same their God.”