Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/12

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capacities and feelings of such implements should appear visionary and romantic. Not less so, perhaps, than to the war-contriving sage, at the time he coolly calculates how many of his countrymen may, without national inconvenience, be spared for slaughter!

Happily, there are others, to whom the prosperity of their country is no less dear, though its uiterests are viewed by them through a very diflerent medium. iNational happiness they consider as the aggregate of the sum of individual happiness, and individual virtue. The fraternal tie, of which they feel the influence, binds them, not exclusively to the poor or to the affluent—it embraces the interests of all. Every improvement in the arts, which tends to give additional grace to the elegant enjoyments of the wealthy; every discovery made by their countrymen in science; every step attained in the progress of literature, or philosophy—is to them a subject of heartfelt gratulation. But while they delight in observing the effects of increasing prosperity with which they are surrounded, they forget not the claims of a class more numerous than that of the prosperous. They forget not that the pleasures of the heart,