hearts from our children; on many subjects of great importance they will extract our real sentiments, in spite of all our exertions to conceal them. And these real sentiments are those which will produce on their minds the strongest impressions.

It is therefore so evident, that we can neither be happy ourselves, nor effectually train up others to happiness, without being truly and consistently good, that the shortest way to accomplish these most important objects, is to begin with one's own self.

What blessings can we shower on that delightful retreat-our home -by self-improvement! If it is the dearest spot to us now; if it embraces interests which lie near out hearts, and offers us attractions and solace greater than all the rest of the world, what may it not become, what may it not contain, if we, after being transformed into better parents shall apply ourselves to the improvement of those within it?

When we enter our homes, then, what interesting reflections must crowd upon us! We are coming into the place where we are able to diffuse general joy, and communicate instruction by every word, act and look. We are coming into the presence of our little judges. How shall we bear their examination? If they could see every thing which lies in our hearts, all which others have witnessed in our conduct this day, what would be their sentence?"

TO YOUNG WIVES.

IN looking round upon the interesting class of young beings who have just entered the married life, we might shrink from the self-imposed task of calling them occasionally to a half-hour's twilight communion, on topics that touch the deepest chord of interest that vibrates within their hearts, did we not remember that no one having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is worthy of the reward attendant upon courage and perseverance. The first thing then that strikes the mind on looking over this group, is the amazing insensibility of the many to the station of interest they have assumed, and the circumstances of interest by which they are surrounded. The path of conjugal and domestic happiness is so beautifully and delicately guarded by the intermingling green of moss and ivy, that, like the path to Heaven, "few there be that find it.” We have long wanted to see a pilot stationed at that entrance to say to all, "this is the way-walk ye in it."

There is no concealing the fact that a shade of disappointment is discernible in almost every subject who has enlisted under the banner of wedded life. This disappointment either terminates in a sort of reckless indifference, or settles into a hopeless contentment with a lower standard of action and happiness than was once thought indispensable. Why is this?-chiefly we believe from entertaining erroneous views, and lacking the patience and wisdom to correct them. Young ladies, previous to their marriage, are brought up for the most part, in a manner, and with habits calculated to make them any thing but good

wives. Their habits are not formed with reference to this end; this object is never held up to view; (except perhaps occasionally, by a trifling, jocose allusion) while at the same time every parent looks forward to the marriage of their daughters as an event that will, in the course of things, almost inevitably occur. When we consider their total unpreparedness for what is before them, we marvel that so many make as good wives as they do. Many mothers would resent this charge, who think they have done all a mother's duty when they have instructed their daughters in the arts of housewifery, and learned them to order a feast with propriety. All this is fitting and necessary in its place and there is no comfort or enjoyment without it--but far higher duties remain untold. "These ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone." They are but the tithing of mint, cummin, and anise as compared with the weightier matters of the law [matri monial.] If mothers ever speak with their daughters on the subject of a married life, it is usually as a doom that awaits them, rather than a sphere which they are destined to fill with honor to themselves, if rightly prepared to enter it. The happy, ardent creature, who has never yet seen care or trouble, does not credit these representations— and hence is left to draw her conclusions from her own romantic and enthusiastic conceptions. Here she errs as far on the other extreme :— and from indulging habits of reverie, fed by all the glow of young affection, she goes to prove how different are the sober realities of life, to the fancies of an excited imagination. Here is the secret of this disappointment and its consequent depression. The young wife has been looking at the prospect before her through a Claude-Lorraine glass, instead of a plain, common spy-glass, which should have been given her, to bring its roughness as well as its beauties near:-and she now stands looking at it still, as the broken fragments of a beautiful dream.

Where shall we find the remedy? She must be brought to see and acknowledge the error of her ideal fabric-she must stand just where she is and take another view :—with the past on one hand to warn her -the present on the other, to guide her; and the future before, to cheer her. She must look at life now as it is. Checkered with care and trouble, joys and sorrows. With materials enough for happiness,and more than we deserve-but the happiness must be made by ourselves, in the right use and estimate of these materials.

Too often the gift is thrown away here-and the beggarly vanities of fashion and parade substituted in its place. Or the disappointment is met with a petulant, uncompromising asperity-thus planting at once a root of bitterness, which will poison every branch and bud of felicity as long as it is nourished.

Selfishness, is another great bar to the enjoyment of happiness. An expectation that every thing will be tributary to our comfort and convenience, and desires. While this is the case, we need the chastenings of disappointment. The only unalloyed, legitimate source of happiness is to be found in promoting the happiness of others. Forgetting yourself as a selfish being, as an individual being, for you are no longer such,-seek your happiness in consulting the happiness of

another. Let the same gratifying attention and regard that before marriage was offered freely from choice and inclination, be continued still from motives of principle and duty as well as choice. You can borrow strength, confidence, hope, in just a twofold proportion to what you could before, and may go on your way, if you will, in the consciousness of being doubly blessed.

When reason and reflection have gained the mastery over wayward fancy, you will find that all things are better as they are, than as you would have made them. To indulge a rebellious murmuring, dissatisfied spirit, is to impugn the wisdom of your Maker. He has blessed the work of His hands and pronounced it "very good." "Shall a mortal be more just than God?” Remember your trials only to train up your own children to avoid them. Ever hold up to their view the active duties of life as the objects of most desirable attainment—and thus save them the hard schooling of experience by which you have learned wisdom.

GREATNESS AT HOME.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO ROMAN MATRONS.

Licinia. I am the happiest wife in Rome, my Livia!
I doubt it not:

Livia.

But there's Flaminius's wife, the other day,

Scarce from the Forum to her house could pass

For gratulations that her husband won

The Consulate.

Licinia.

That day my Caius sat

At home with me, and read to me, my Livia ;

Little cared I who won the Consulate !

Livia. And there's Lectorius has obtained a government;

His wife will be a queen!

Licinia.

Well, let her be so!

My Queendom is to be a simple wife;

This is my government, my husband's house,
Where, when he sits with me, he is enthroned
Enough. You'll smile, but

I'd rather see him, with his boy upon

His knee, than seated in the Consul's chair,
With all the Senate round him.

Livia.

Must needs be thine.

Licinia.

Yet his greatness

I do not care for greatness,
It is a thing lives too much out of doors;
'Tis any where but at home; you will not find it
Once in a week, in its own house at supper
With the family! Knock any hour you choose,
And ask for it; nine times in ten they'll send you
To the Senate or the Forum, or to such

Or such an one in quest of it! "Tis a month
Since Caius took a meal from home, and that
Was with my brother. If he walks,

I walk along with him, if I choose; or if I stay
Behind, it is a race 'twixt him and the time,
And when he's back and the door shut on him
Consummate happy is my world within;

I never think of any world without.

Of human life must spring from woman's breast,
Your first small words be taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hours of him who led them.

It would be easy to enumerate the books in which woman is prominently brought forward in any of the great relative characters of life ;-as the daughter, the wife, the mother, the sister, the matron, or the friend; and yet wherever she is so introduced by a master hand, the absorbing interest of the book centers in her.

But who does not sympathise more strongly in those true tales which history has preserved for us of woman's love manifested in the relative duties and relative characters of life, than in any or all the creations of the sublimest genius, the purest fancy? She, who "had no ornament but her children❞—she who, even in the presence of Cyrus, "saw him only who said he would give a thousand lives for her ransom"-she who died to give her husband courage, and pronounced that death "not painful" these and a thousand other instances which shine, and will shine, on the page of history" as the stars for ever and ever," come home to the human heart with a far deeper and diviner influence than all the love of mere lovers. The reasons are plain. Pure and fervent as their love may be, it is still selfish; possessing no higher motive than personal will and pleasure. It has not yet become sacred as a duty, and settled as a habit; nor has it yet passed through long years of need, sickness, sorrow, and adversity, and come out impressed with the broad seal of constancy. Lovers' love may exhibit the "freshness and the glory of a dream;" but it is from the nature of things unproved and therefore from books, as in real life, we have far deeper satisfac. tion in contemplating that love which has passed its trial hour, undimmed and undiminished.

There is another reason: If we cannot all invent, we can all observe; and he must be singularly unfortunate in his society who does not know living instances of women whose love bears an analogy, at least, to that of which we have been speaking. His sphere is indeed confined, to say no worse of it, if he knows no woman who could, were it her duty, die with a husband and for a child-no wife who has found the devoted specious lover change into the unworthy, brutal husband, and has yet endured her lot with unrepining patience, and met the world with smiles of seeming cheerfulness, and

Learned the art

To bleed in secret, yet conceal the smart

and, higher and harder task, denied herself the privilege of friendship and never told her grief:-no intellectual and accomplished mother,

who has surrendered early affluence, and accustomed comforts, the pleasures of society, the indulgence of refined taste, and become a menial as well as mother to her children, and entered into all the harassing details of minute daily economy, not with mere dogged submission, but with active, cheerful interest! Does he not know some daughter, who has secluded herself from youthful companions, and youthful pleasures, that she may employ her health and spirits, her days and nights, in soothing a parent to whom "the grasshopper is become a burden," and existence a pain, but who can, nevertheless, depart quietly to his long home, because his last steps thither are supported by a beloved and affectionate child? Does he not know some sister, whose mild influence has controlled the follies, and whose tenderness, though at the risk of personal blame, has shielded the faults of a brother? Or has he never seen an instance of female friendship? His lip may curl at the idea, but there is such a thing as female friendship ;-not often, I grant, between young ladies, but between the young and the old-the matron who has safely trodden the ways of life, and the young blooming girl, who has just entered upon them. It is a beautiful, aye, and it is a frequent sight to behold the calm gravity of age, tempering the enthusiasm of youth; and the bright influence of youth shedding, as it were, a sunset radiance over the somber sky of age. But to come rather closer to the feelings of our sceptic-to touch upon his personal experience. If he ever lay upon a bed of sickness, what eyes became dim with weeping-what cheeks pale with watching, over him?-What hand administered the medicine and smoothed the pillow?-Whose form glided round his bed with the quiet care of a mortal, and yet ministering spirit?-Whose tear soothed his dejection ?—Whose smile calmed his temper?-Whose patience bore with his many infirmities?-Unless he live in a desert island, he will reply-Woman's! Woman's!

But to know, to the full extent of such knowledge, how noble, how sacred a thing is woman's love, it must be contemplated when strengthened by the bonds of duty, when called forth by the ties of nature. Some may think it needless to lay such strong and repeated stress upon this condition; but for my own part I do not believe that in the hearts of true women, and such alone are worthy of mention, love, the passion of love, has before marriage by any means the power generally supposed. I verily think that many a most exemplary wife has been as

the mistress

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please.

No true woman will either do or suffer for the fondest and most faithful lover, a thousandth part of what she will do and suffer for a husband who is only moderately kind. No-love must with woman become a duty, a habit, a part of existence, a condition of life, before we can know how completely it unites and exemplifies the natures of the lion and the dove, the courage which no danger can dismay, with the constancy no suffering can diminish.

Let man take his claimed supremacy, and take it as his hereditary, his inalienable right. Let him have for his dower, sovereignty in philosophy, in learning, in arts, and in arms; let him wear, unenvied,