Herald Of The Times

YOUNG AFFECTIONS

There is no period of life in which the
affections are so natural, so pure, so free
from the conventional and the artificial.
as in youth. The whole world ac-
knowledges the love of country as a vir-
tue, and why is it? Because there the
providence of God had placed us: there
the earliest dawnings of intellect drew in
their first inspiration; there the young
tendrils of the heart sprang forth and en-
twined themselves around the sublime
the beautiful, the endearing, that the God
of Nature had placed about them. It
was there that the earliest lessons of
piety, of morality, of instruction, were
administered to their growth by an affec-
tionate mother, or some kind friend, and
became a kind of intuition and though
the thorns and brambles of life may have
covered up for a time, they could never
obliterate them. No! nor so entirely
hide but that the rays of truthfulness and
the forms of beauty would shine through.
and cast their reflection on surrounding
objects. The humble garden, in which
the humbler boy reared his first flower
planted, engrafted, and budded his first
trees, and sowed the seed of his earliest
vine, watched their rich blossoms, and
gathered their grateful fruits. The mea-
dow from which he picked his first straw-
berry - the hill-side from which he pluck-
ed the earth's soft -the mountain from
which he first exercised the powers of
vision, and drank in an inspiration from
the purity of an elevated atmosphere, the
grandeur of an expanded horizon, and
the beauty of an extended landscape-
the meadow where he had watched the
first gambols of the lamb, hearkened to
the in melody of the early birds of Spring
and last warble of Autumn, and viewed
the contented ruminant of his first calf
-the fire side by which his stormy days
and winter evenings were consecrated to
the marvellous and the wonderful on Tom
Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, and What
not
Whittington and his Cat-the school-room
where his earliest lessons in worldly wis-
dom were directed by a Webster and a
Bingham, or a Dilworth and a Pierpont,
"Pike or " Colburn-the church where
the word of God was preached with kind
ness if not with ardour, the psalm or hymn
was sung with simplicity "if not with
science, and the prayer was offered up
with sanctity and devotion, if not with
power-all, all have a hold on the mem-
ory—a connemoration in the affections that
neither time nor age of circumstances
can obliterate or faint, the heartless-
newn of a malicious word cannot take away,
the vices of a wicked one cannot destroy,
though it may sap and undermine and
for a time wither. There affections must
be planted, these seeds once sown, these
tendrils once put forth, the God of the
harvest will protect amid the storms of life,
and mature into fruitfulness, adhesiveness
and strength, and gather to himself in
his time.

Show me the New-Englander who
forgets the mountains and valleys, the
lakes and streams of his native land, or
Breed's Hill or Dorchester Heights--
the South-Carolinian who does not re-
member the Cowpens, Eutaw, and Fort
Moultrie, her orphan and her insane es
tablishments-the New Yorker who has
not the living image of the Narrows, the
Battery, the North River, and the mighty
lakes and sublime cataract of his State
imprinted on his mind's eye-the Irish
man who does not glow up when the
Emerald Isle is spoken of, and drop a
tear when he hears the story of her
wrong: recounted-the Frenchman whose
eye does not sparkle when Belle France
or her prowess is the theme-the Eng-
lishman who does not draw himself up
some inches when the moral greatness,
marital glory, naval ascendancy, and ex-
tended power of his native land, and
beauty of scenery in its hills and dales
are passing in review before him-the
Swiss whose ear is not wide open to the
tales of his country's history, the airs of
his native land-the Scotchman whose
heart does not thrill to the sound of the
pibroch and the bagpipe, who has not an
almost painful remembrance of the even
ing bugle note at Edinboro' Castle-the
German whose national airs have no re-
spousive echo in his own ear, his own
bosom-the Italian who hears of his na-
tive skies and her rich fields unmoved,
and I will place my finger upon a mons-
ter whose heart is chilled to beauty,
deadened to affection, and fit only to be
ensconced in a barren wilderness, a
will-o'-the-wisp bog, or a barrel of sour
crout. But show me the reverse of this
picture, and I will wear that man's
image in my heart of heart's core.

[Charleston Courier.]