There are no living persons to whom this Volume can be with so much propriety inscribed as to you. To you my heart desires to present some visible token of that affection and gratitude which animate it in reviewing all the good it has derived from you. It was to your inculcations, but far more to the spirit of your daily life,—to the purity, integrity, independent feeling, and simple religion,—in fact, to the pervading and perpetual atmosphere of your house, that I owe every thing which has directed me onward in life: scorning whatever is mean; aspiring after whatever is generous and noble; loving the poor and the weak, and fearless of the strong; in a word, every thing which has not only prolonged life but blessed and sanctified it. Following your counsels and example, I have striven not so much for wealth as for an independent spirit and a pure conscience. Do I not owe you much for these? But besides this, it was under your roof that I passed a childhood and youth the happiest that ever were passed; it was there that I imbibed that love of nature, which must live though it cannot die with me. But beyond this, the present volume is descriptive of that rural life, to which your ancestors for many generations, and yourselves to an honourable old age, have been invariably and deeply attached. To you, therefore, for these and a thousand other kindred reasons,
The present Volume is Inscribed,
By your affectionate Son,
THE AUTHOR.
O, dear Britain! O my mother isle!
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband, and a father! who revere
All bonds of natural love, and find them all
Within the limits of thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my mother isle!
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy lakes and mountain rills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drank in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joys and greatness of its future being.
There lives not form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country. O divine
And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God who made me.
Coleridge.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The kind and most cordial greeting which this work has received from the public, and by which a very large impression has been speedily exhausted, demands a prompt and grateful acknowledgement. After all, the highest gratification which an author can derive from his writings, next to the persuasion that he has effected some good to his fellow-creatures, is felt in the generous echo of his own sentiments, which reaches him from the amiable and intelligent of his countrymen and countrywomen, on all sides and of every class, and in the nearer sympathy and communication into which he is brought with such minds. With respect to the opinions of the Press, there is one fact connected with this work which I state with peculiar gratification, because it does honour to human nature,—and that is, that the very warmest approbation has been, in the greater number of instances, bestowed upon it by those critics to whom the author is most decidedly opposed in political opinion. I cannot, either, refrain from observing, that though I did hope to find a quick response in the hearts of Englishmen on a subject in which both the author and his countrymen are alike so deeply interested, I could not anticipate the delight which Americans have manifested in it; and I must take this opportunity, as it is the only one afforded me, to express my sense of the interesting letter of “An American Lady—a stranger in this country,” with a copy of Bryant’s Poems.