Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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All experience has proved that the sublime spirit of foreign missions always is suggestive of home philanthropies, and that those whose heart has been enlarged by the love of all mankind are always those who are most efficient in their own particular sphere.

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Glasgow, April 16, 1853.

Dear Aunt E.:—

You shall have my earliest Scotch letter; for I am sure nobody can sympathize in the emotions of the first approach to Scotland as you can. A country dear to us by the memory of the dead and of the living; a country whose history and literature, interesting enough of itself, has become to us still more so, because the reading and learning of it formed part of our communion for many a social hour, with friends long parted from earth.

The views of Scotland, which lay on my mother's table, even while I was a little child, and in poring over which I spent so many happy, dreamy hours,—the Scotch ballads, which were the delight of our evening fireside, and which seemed almost to melt the soul out of me, before I was old enough to understand their words,—the songs of Burns, which had been a household treasure among us,—the enchantments of Scott,—all these dimly returned upon me. It was the result of them all which I felt in nerve and brain.