with a divine
lustre.

But, to render a greater aid to her who desires and wills domestic
excellence, let us now speak of the particular relations of home, and
their natural, consequent claims on the young of her sex.

The filial relation is replete with moral incentives. To both parents a
daughter is indebted beyond even the powers of requital usually granted
her sex. From the hour of her birth up to the present moment she has
been to them an object of unceasing thought, care, and solicitude. The
little being, over whom, as she graced the cradle, they hung with the
deepest joy, spoke to their hearts the more eloquently, by her very
inability to tell of her wants, by her utter helplessness. No labor was
spared, no sacrifice withheld, did they promise to advance her
happiness. A few weeks pass, and she is radiant with smiles, the
emanations of light and love; but they are smiles effaced often by
tears, and for these, the parent cannot rest till they dry on the cheek.
And soon her age exhibits character, dispositions, propensities. How
anxiously is their earliest developement observed. What plans are
devised, what efforts employed, what prayers nightly ascend, that she
may prove an heir of grace and godliness.

"The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride,
Would, in the way his wisdom sees the best,
For them, and for their little ones provide;
But chiefly, in their hearts with _grace divine_ preside."

That father, with what meditations, and watchfulness, and alternate
hopes and fears has his soul been visited, as he looked on this
daughter. How has his daily toil been cheered by the anticipation that
its fruits would afford means to meet her wants, to educate her well,
and to furnish resources for supplying the outward and inward
necessities of her responsible age.

Can she love, respect, and honor this benefactor? Can she avoid it
rather, who does not ask? I know how much has been written, in romances,
of the devotedness of daughters; and yet the warmest coloring of this
sentiment seems never beyond parental desert. There are scenes in which
this truth is strikingly illustrated. It was a severe task for the
daughters of Milton to read to their blind parent, languages sealed to
their own understanding; but was it not the discharge of a simple duty?
We are stru