u glorious land! Sweden, whither holy gods came in
remote antiquity from the mountains of Asia; thou land that art yet
illumined by their glitter! It streams out of the flowers, with the
name of Linnaeus; it beams before thy knightly people from the
banner of Charles the Twelfth, it sounds out of the memorial stone
erected upon the field at Lutzen. Sweden! thou land of deep
feeling, of inward songs, home of the clear streams, where wild
swans sing in the northern light's glimmer! thou land, upon whose
deep, still seas the fairies of the North build their colonnades
and lead their struggling spirit-hosts over the ice mirror.
Glorious Sweden, with the perfume-breathing Linea, with Jenny's
soulful songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and the swallow,
with the unsteady seagull and the wild swan. Thy birchwood throws
out its perfume so refreshing and animating, under its hanging,
earnest boughs--on its white trunk shall the harp hang. Let the
summer wind of the North glide murmuring over its strings.'

There is true fatherland's love there. I doubt if there was ever yet
_real_ patriotism in a hot climate--the North is the only home of
unselfish and great union. Italy owes it to the cool breezes of her
Apennines that she cherishes unity; had it not been for her northern
mountains in a southern clime, she would have long ago forgotten to
think of _one_ country. But while the Alps are her backbone, she will
always be at least a vertebrate among nations, and one of the higher
order. Without the Alps she would soon be eaten up by the cancer of
states' rights. It is the North, too, which will supply the great
uniting power of America, and keep alive a love for the great national
name.

Very different is the rest--and yet it has too the domestic home-tone of
the North. In Sweden, in Germany, in America, in England, the family tie
is somewhat other than in the East or in any warm country. With us, old
age is not so ever-neglected and little honored as in softer climes.
Thank the fireside for that. The hearth, and the stove, and the long,
cold months which keep the grandsire and granddame in the easy chair by
the warm corner, make a home centre, where the children linger as long
as they may for stories, and where love lingers, kept alive by many a
cheerful, not to be easily told tie. And it lives--this love--lives in
the heart of the man after he has gon