But it appears also to have been the infirmity by grace of which this people have been obliged to learn the ways of submission, and so have had the fortune to outlive their alien masters, all and sundry, and to occupy the land and save the uncontaminated integrity of their long-lived civilisation.
* * * * * Some account of the nature and uses of this spirit of patriotism that is held of so great account among Western nations has already been set out in an earlier passage.

One or two points in the case, that bear on the argument here, may profitably be recalled.

The patriotic spirit, or the tie of nationalism, is evidently of the nature of habit, whatever proclivity to the formation of such a habit may be native to mankind.
More particularly is it a matter of habit--it might even be called a matter of fortuitous habit--what particular national establishment a given human subject will become attached to on reaching what is called "years of discretion" and so becoming a patriotic citizen.
The analogy of the clam may not be convincing, but it may at least serve to suggest what may be the share played by habituation in the matter of national attachment.

The young clam, after having passed the free-swimming phase of his life, as well as the period of attachment to the person of a carp or similar fish, drops to the bottom and attaches himself loosely in the place and station in life to which he has been led; and he loyally sticks to his particular patch of ooze and sand through good fortune and evil.

It is, under Providence, something of a fortuitous matter where the given clam shall find a resting place for the sole of his foot, but it is also, after all, "his own, his native land" etc.