Country life -- England; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Let every man who has a sufficiency for the enjoyment of life, thank
heaven most fervently that he lives in this country and age. They may
tell us of the beauty of southern skies, and the softness of southern
climates; but where is the land which a man would rather choose to call
himself a native of--because it combines more of the requisites for a
happy and useful existence; more of the moral, social, and intellectual
advantages, without which fair skies or soft climates would become
dolorous, or at best, indifferent? I say, let every man gratefully
rejoice, who has the means of commanding the full blessings of English
life,--for alas! there are thousands and millions of our countrymen who
possess but a scanty portion of these; whose lives are too long and
continuous a course of toil and anxiety to permit them even to look
round them and see how vast are the powers of enjoyment in this country,
and how few of those sources of ease, comfort, and refined pleasure are
within their reach. I trust a better day is coming to this portion of
our population; that many circumstances are working together to confer
on the toiling children of these kingdoms the social rewards which their
unwearied industry so richly merits; but for those who already hold in
their hands the golden key, where is the country like England? If we are
naturally proud of making a portion of a mighty and a glorious kingdom,
where is the kingdom like England? It is a land of which the most
ambitious or magnanimous spirit may well say with a high emotion--“That
is my country!” Over what an extent of the earth it stretches its
territories; over what swarming and diversified millions it extends its
sceptre! On every side of the globe, lie its outspread regions; under
every aspect of heaven, walk its free or tributary people. In the West
Indies; in the vaster dominions of the East; in America and Australia;
through each wide continent, and many a fair island! But its political
and moral power extends even far beyond these. What nation is there,
however great, that does not look with breathless anxiety to the
movements of England; what country is not bound up with it in the
strongest interests and hopes; what country is there which does not feel
the influence of its moral energy? Through all the cities and forests of
Republican America, the spirit of England, as well as its language,
lives and glows. France, Germany, and even Russia to the depths of its
frozen heart, feel the emanations of its free and popular institutions.
Every pulse of love which beats here--every principle of justice that is
more clearly recognised--every sentiment of Christianity that is
elevated on the broad basis of the human heart, hence spreads through
the earth as from a centre of moral life, and produces in the remotest
regions its portion of civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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