over and the welcome shelter of
his domestic roof is attained, he husks off his formality with his
great-coat and appears to his family and his friends in a character
unknown to the outer world. The quiet comfort and heartfelt warmth of
an English fireside must be felt to be appreciated. These Britons, like
our own people, are by nature not demonstrative; they do not greet their
wives before strangers with a kiss, on returning from the day's
business, as a Frenchman may do; and if very glad to see you on
meeting, they are not likely to say so in words; but they cherish warm
emotions under a hard crust of reserve and shyness, and lavish all their
wealth of affection on the little band collected within the magic circle
of Home. Said an American who had spent two years as a public lecturer
throughout Great Britain: "Circumstances have introduced me favorably to
the intimacy and regard of many English families, and I can scarcely
recollect one which was not in its own sphere, a model household." My
own opportunities have been very limited, yet so far as they go they
tend to maintain the justice of this remark. There are of course
exceptions, but they would be more abundant elsewhere. And I regard the
almost insuperable obstacles here interposed to the granting of
Divorces, no matter on what grounds, as one cause of the general harmony
and happiness of English homes.

But I must not linger. The order to embark is given; our good ship
Baltic is ready; another hour and I shall have left England and this
Continent, probably for ever. With a fervent good-bye to the friends I
leave on this side of the Atlantic, I turn my steps gladly and proudly
toward my own loved Western home--toward the land wherein Man enjoys
larger opportunities than elsewhere to develop the better and the worse
aspects of his nature, and where Evil and Good have a freer course, a
wider arena for their inevitable struggles, than is allowed them among
the heavy fetters and cast-iron forms of this rigid and wrinkled Old
World. Doubtless, those struggles will long be arduous and trying:
doubtless, the dictates of Duty will there often bear sternly away from
the halcyon bowers of Popularity; doubtless, he who would be singly and
wholly right must there encounter ordeals as severe as those which here
try the souls of the would-be champions of Progress and Liberty. But
Political Freedom, such as white men enjoy in the United States, and
the mass do not enjoy in E