and cared for, but
as creatures that possess the image of God in their souls, and whose
future characters, in a measure, depended on our instruction. The manner
in which Lucy governed her children, and led them by gentle means to
virtue and truth, has always been a subject of the deepest admiration and
gratitude with me. Her rule has been truly one of love. I do not know that
I ever heard her voice raised in anger, to any human being, much less to
her own offspring; but whenever reproof has come, it has come in the
language of interest and affection, more or less qualified by severity, as
circumstances may have required. The result has been all that our fondest
hopes could have led us to anticipate.

When we travelled, it was with all our young people, and a new era of
happiness, heightened by the strongest domestic affection, opened on us.
All who have seen the world have experienced the manner in which our
intellectual existences, as it might be, expand; but no one, who has not
experienced it, can tell the deep, heartfelt satisfaction there is, in
receiving this enlargement of the moral creature, in close association
with those we love most on earth. The manner in which Lucy enjoyed all she
saw and learned, on our first visit to the other hemisphere; her youngest
child--all four of our children were born within the first eight years of
our marriage--her youngest child was then long past its infancy, and she
had leisure to enjoy herself, in increasing the happiness of her
offspring. She had improved her mind by reading; and her historical lore,
in particular, was always ready to be produced for the common advantage.
There was no ostentation in this; but everything was produced just as if
each had a right to its use. Then it was, I felt the immense importance of
having a companion, in an intellectual sense, in a wife. Lucy had always
been intelligent; but I never fully understood her superiority in this
respect, until we travelled together, amid the teeming recollections and
scenes of the old world. That America is the greatest country of ancient
or modern times, I shall not deny. Everybody says it; and what everybody
says, must be true. Nevertheless, I will venture to hint, that, _caeteris
paribus_, and where there is the disposition to think at all, the
intellectual existence of every American who goes to Europe, is more than
doubled in its intensity. This is the country of action, not of thought,
or speculation. Men _