friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it.  There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas, contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in which I have no share.  Each individual is a world to himself, governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses.  I can, therefore, make no inference from one individual to another; nor can my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to others.  A crowd of people presents a disjointed, confused, and unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, because there is nothing to connect the motley assemblage into one continuous or general impression, unless when there is some common object of interest to fix their attention, as in the case of a full pit at the play-house.  The same principle will also account for that feeling of littleness, vacuity, and perplexity, which a stranger feels on entering the streets of a populous city.  Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal identity.  Every new face is a teazing, unanswered riddle.  He feels the same wearisome sensation in walking from Oxford Street to Temple Bar, as a person would do who should be compelled to read through the first leaf of all the volumes in a library.  But it is otherwise with respect to nature.  A flock of sheep is not a contemptible, but a beautiful sight.  The greatest number and variety of physical objects do not puzzle the will, or distract the attention, but are massed together under one uniform and harmonious feeling.  The heart reposes in greater security on the immensity of Nature’s works, “expatiates freely there,” and finds elbow room and breathing space.  We are always at home with Nature.  There is neither hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours.  Our intercourse with her is not liable to accident or change, suspicion or disappointment:  she smiles on us still the same.  A rose is always sweet, a lily is always beautiful:  we do not hate the one, nor envy the other.  If we have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its foot, we are sure that wherever we can find a shady stream, we can enjoy the same pleasure again; so that when we imagine these objects, we can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade.  Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology.  All objects of the same kind being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their practical uses, we habitually confound them together under the same general idea; and whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, is immediately placed to the common account.  The most opposite kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same sentiment; and in our love of nature, there is all the force of individual attachment, combined with the most airy abstraction.  It is this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild interest, to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true lover of nature.