of love? What makes the dinner of herbs sometimes more
refreshing than the stalled ox? What is the material profit of a first
love? What is the value in tangible dollars and cents of a beautiful
landscape, or a speaking picture, or a marble statue, or a living book,
or the voice of eloquence, or the charm of earliest bird, or the smile
of a friend, or the promise of immortality? In what consisted the real
glory of the country we are never weary of quoting,--the land of Phidias
and Pericles and Demosthenes? Was it not in immaterial ideas, in
patriotism, in heroism, in conceptions of ideal beauty, in speculations
on the infinite and unattainable, in the songs which still inspire the
minds of youth, in the expression which made marble live, in those
conceptions of beauty and harmony which still give shape to the temples
of Christendom? Was Rome more glorious with her fine roads and tables of
thuja-root, and Falernian wines, and oysters from the Lucrine Lake, and
chariots of silver, and robes of purple and rings of gold,--these useful
blessings which are the pride of an Epicurean civilization? And who gave
the last support, who raised the last barrier, against that inundation
of destructive pleasures in which some see the most valued fruits of
human invention, but which proved a canker that prepared the way to
ruin? It was that pious Emperor who learned his wisdom from a slave, and
who set a haughty defiance to all the grandeur and all the comforts of
the highest position which earth could give, and spent his leisure hours
in the quiet study of those truths which elevate the soul,--truths not
taught by science or nature, but by communication with invisible powers.

Ah, what indeed is reality; what is the higher good; what is that which
perishes never; what is that which assimilates man to Deity? Is it
houses, is it lands, is it gold and silver, is it luxurious couches, is
it the practical utilitarian comforts that pamper this mortal body in
its brief existence? or is it women's loves and patriots' struggles, and
sages' pious thoughts, affections, noble aspirations, Bethanies, the
serenities of virtuous old age, the harmonies of unpolluted homes, the
existence of art, of truth, of love; the hopes which last when sun and
stars decay? Tell us, ye women, what are realities to you,--your
carpets, your plate, your jewels, your luxurious banquets; or your
husbands' love, your friends' esteem, your children's reverence? And ye,
toi