t of his Country; and lastly the
belt or girdle of his mind has never been stretched to utter relaxation
by false philosophy, under a conceit of making it sit more easily and
gracefully. These sensations are a social inheritance to him: more
important, as he is precluded from luxurious--and those which are
usually called refined--enjoyments.

Love and admiration must push themselves out towards some quarter:
otherwise the moral man is killed. Collaterally they advance with great
vigour to a certain extent--and they are checked: in that direction,
limits hard to pass are perpetually encountered: but upwards and
downwards, to ancestry and to posterity, they meet with gladsome help
and no obstacles; the tract is interminable.--Perdition to the Tyrant
who would wantonly cut off an independent Nation from its inheritance in
past ages; turning the tombs and burial-places of the Forefathers into
dreaded objects of sorrow, or of shame and reproach, for the Children!
Look upon Scotland and Wales: though, by the union of these with
England under the same Government (which was effected without conquest
in one instance), ferocious and desolating wars, and more injurious
intrigues, and sapping and disgraceful corruptions, have been prevented;
and tranquillity, security, and prosperity, and a thousand interchanges
of amity, not otherwise attainable, have followed;--yet the flashing
eye, and the agitated voice, and all the tender recollections, with
which the names of Prince Llewellin and William Wallace are to this day
pronounced by the fire-side and on the public road, attest that these
substantial blessings have not been purchased without the relinquishment
of something most salutary to the moral nature of Man: else the
remembrances would not cleave so faithfully to their abiding-place in
the human heart. But, if these affections be of general interest, they
are of especial interest to Spain; whose history, written and
traditional, is pre-eminently stored with the sustaining food of such
affections: and in no country are they more justly and generally prized,
or more feelingly cherished.

In the conduct of this argument I am not speaking _to_ the humbler ranks
of society: it is unnecessary: _they_ trust in nature, and are safe. The
People of Madrid, and Corunna, and Ferrol, resisted to the last; from an
impulse which, in their hearts, was its own justification. The failure
was with those who stood higher in the scale. In fact; the