August 10

world which worketh death," for that "godly sorrow which worketh repentance unto life, and needeth not to be repented of."

AUGUST 10.—"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage."—Psalms 16:6.

WE may put this acknowledgment into the mouth of AN INHABITANT OF THIS FAVOURED COUNTRY.

People are naturally attached to a land in which they were born and brought up, and with which all their earliest recollections and feelings are associated. It has pleasures and charms for them that others know not of. And who would be cruel enough to deprive them of their preference? and make them miserable by comparison? Rather, who would not rejoice that there is no region so absolutely dreary and barren as to have no flowers and attractions scattered over it by the kindness of Providence, to bind them to their native soil, and to make it painful to leave their own country and their father's house?

Yet we need not confound things that differ; and it would be the strangest inconsideration and ingratitude, were we, as Englishmen, to be unaffected with the advantages we enjoy in this highly distinguished and indulged country. We refer not to our extensive dominion, far surpassing the Roman world, having more than sixty millions under our sway, in one part of our dominion only. Neither do we admire the manner in which our dominion has sometimes been acquired and enlarged; though we are persuaded the conquerors will prove blessings to the conquered. In a thousand instances we are far from faultless. But,

"England, with all thy faults I love thee still?"

And how much is there, whatever view I take, to induce the acknowledgment, "The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage." Let me think of our insular situation, in consequence of which we are open to commerce; guarded from invasion; and even in war itself know so little of its ravages, never hearing the confused noise of warriors, or seeing garments dipped in blood. Let me think of the temperature of our atmosphere, in which we are not frozen to statues, or dissolved in heat. Let me think of our freedom from tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, pestilences. Let me think of a country where the seasons regularly return and melt into each other—where are the sweet interchanges of hill and vale, and wood and lawn—where the pastures are clothed with flocks and herds—where the fields and valleys stand thick with corn—where we are fed with the finest of the wheat. Let me think of a country whose merchants are princes, and whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth—a country ennobled by the zeal of patriots, enriched by the blood of martyrs, endeared and sacred by the dust of a pious multitude without number—a country illustrious by every kind of genius, and by every improvement in science and in art—a country in whose well-balanced constitution are blended the advantages of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, without their defects—a country whose government is equally averse to tyranny and anarchy; where none