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been moderated and lowered down even to sluggishness; but some passing^[1] thought to-day opened a flood-gate which let them rush in upon me like an overwhelming current. I remembered the scenes of home, and the hour of parting, with a painful minuteness of detail, and a vividness of reality, which fell little short of reality itself. Vain philosophy! how easily and readily poor human nature resumes its sway when she finds you sleeping on your post! I wish some of you were here; I wish all of you were here:—no; 'tis a selfish wish; this life would not do for any of you. You would be obliged to forget, or at least dispense with, many comforts and refinements altogether; you must endeavour to lose the recollection of your former home, and if possible, of your former friends and feelings. What a task! how difficult! how impossible! yet otherwise no emigrant can be contented and happy here;

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1. The following lines naturally suggest themselves here.—Editor.

   "But ever and anon of griefs subdued
   There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
   Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
   And slight withal may be the things which bring
   Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
   Aside for ever: it may be a sound—
   A tone of music—summer's eve—or spring—
   A flower—the wind—the ocean—which shall wound,
   Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.
   
   "And how and why we know not, nor can trace
   Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind;
   But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface
   The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
   Which out of things familiar, undesign'd
   When least we deem of such, calls up to view
   The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,
   The cold—the changed—perchance the dead—anew
   The mourn'd, the loved, the lost—too many!—yet how few!"

   Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.