briefly these: The man's power
is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the
creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for
speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for
conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the
woman's power is for rule, not for battle,--and her intellect is not
for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and
decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their
places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but
infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she
is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough
work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial: to him,
therefore, must be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error:
often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and _always_
hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as
ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger,
no temptation, no cause of error or offense. This is the true nature
of home--it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all
injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is
not this, it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer life
penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or
hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife
to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of
that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But
so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth
watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but
those whom they can receive with love,--so far as it is this, and roof
and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light,--shade as of the
rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea,--so
far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home.

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The
stars only may be over her head; the glow-worm in the night-cold grass
may be the only fire at her foot: but home is yet wherever she is; and
for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with
cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for
those who else were homeless.

69. This, then, I believe to be,--will you not admit