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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.