“Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store
        Of charms which Nature to her votary yields! 
      The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
        The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
      All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
        And all that echoes to the song of even,
      All that the mountain’s sheltering bosom shields,
        And all the dread magnificence of heaven,
      Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!”

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[7] Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post
which stood in the court-yard before the house where he was brought up.
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It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we admire in Nature; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often found connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to the most common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom we have long known, and from whom we have received many benefits.  It is because natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention; with change of place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends; it is because they have surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in pleasure and in pain; because they have been one chief source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them as we do ourselves.

There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of ideas.  But this is not all.  That which distinguishes this attachment from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical objects; the associations connected with any one object extending to the whole class.  Our having been attached to any particular person does not make us feel the same attachment to the next person we may chance to meet; but, if we have once associated strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and we shall ever after feel the same attachment to other objects of the same sort.  I remember when I was abroad, the trees, and grass, and wet leaves, rustling in the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same trees and grass, that I had always been used to, as the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in England; the faces only were foreign to me.  Whence comes this difference?  It arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the individual with man, and only the idea of the class with natural objects.  In the one case, the external appearance or physical structure is the least thing to be attended to; in the other, it is every thing.  The springs that move the human form, and make it