to the secret burden of his heart. There he empties the load of his
envies, his rivalries, his disappointments; which he has carried before
the world muffled in courtesy or pride. These, it may be, meet and are
re-acted upon by kindred elements; engendered, perhaps, by the very
atmosphere which he himself, in the first place, created. Oh! how many
rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of luxury, that
are only glittering ice-caverns of selfishness and discontent;
pavilions of misery, where jangling discord mars the show, and a chill
of mutual distrust breathes through the sumptuous apartments, and
heartless ostentation presides like a robed skeleton at the feast. You
feel that nothing is genial or spontaneous there. The courtesy is dreary
etiquette, and the laughter forced music. You would dine as happily with
the forms on the canvas, with the cold marbles in the hall. For all this
magnificence is nothing more than a gorgeous pall over dead
affections--nothing more than the coronation of a living woe.

"Better is a dinner of herbs," says the wise man, "where love is, than a
stalled ox and hatred therewith." And many a home exists where there
_is_ but little more than a dinner of herbs, which affection and mutual
loyalty, and sweet dispositions, convert into a palace. And there are
fixed boundaries of peace, that society cannot encroach upon, while the
processions of ambition and pleasure and ceaseless pursuit, pass by its
windows and disturb it not. Here the good man and the brave man--the
man who has nobly discharged his duty at whatever cost--is respected and
understood. Hither he can retreat beyond the shots of calumny which have
torn the ensign of his good name; beyond the deceit of men, which halts
at the threshold. Here he can look calmly out upon the changes of
fortune and the frowns of the world. Here his perplexed spirit finds
inspirations of strength, and space for rest. There is no happiness in
life, there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions
which consecrate or desecrate a Home.

Moreover, the elements of profoundest joy or suffering are there,
because there are unfolded the deepest experiences of our mortal lot.
There transpire those events which constitute the _eras_ of our
existence. There, day by day, grows the sentiment of filial veneration
and love. There is the joy of wedded felicity. There wells up in the
heart the first strange gush of parental affection. There