The daughters do not profess, as we are told, to draw like artists, but some very moderate performances in the line of the fine arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. They thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the whole family listen and approve. All unite in singing in a somewhat discordant and uncultured manner a few psalm-tunes or songs, and take more comfort in them than many amateurs do in their well-drilled performances.

that they could make, it isn't to be thought of

For the same reason, the daughters, after attending a quarter or two on the drawingexercises of a celebrated teacher, threw up their pencils in disgust, and tore up very pretty and agreeable sketches which were the marvel of their good-natured admiring neighbors. If they could draw like Signor Scratchalini, if they could hope to become perfect artists, they tell you, they would have persevered; but they have taken lessons enough to learn that drawing is the labor of a life-time, and, not having a life-time to give to it, they resolve to do noth

Everything about their establishment is brought to the highest point of culture. The carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is velvet, the flower-beds ever-blooming, the fruittrees and vines grow exactly like the patterns in the best pomological treatises. Within doors the housekeeping is faultless, all seems to be moving in time and tune, the table is more than good, it is superlative, — every article is in its way a model, — the children appear to you to be growing up after the most patentright method, duly trained, snipped, and cultured like the pear-trees and grape-vines. Nothing is left to accident, or done without much laborious consideration of the best manner of doing it; and the consequences, in the eyes of their simple, unsophisticated neighbors, are very wonderful.

Nevertheless this is not a happy family. All their perfections do not begin to afford them one tithe of the satisfaction that the Daytons derive from their ragged and scrambling performances.

The two daughters, Jane and Maria, had naturally very sweet voices, and when they were little, trilled tunes in a very pleasant and birdlike manner. But now, having been instructed by the best of masters, and heard the very first artists, they never sing or play: the piano is shut, and their voices are dumb. If you request a song, they tell you that they never sing now; papa has such an exquisite taste, he takes no interest in any common music; in short, having heard Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, and .others of the tuneful shell, this family have con

They have also, for a similar reason, given up letter-writing. If their chirography were as elegant as Charlotte Cushman's, -if they were perfect mistresses of polite English, if they were gifted with wit, humor, and fancy, like the first masters of style, — they would take pleasure in epistolary composition, and be good correspondents; but anything short of that is so intolerable, that, except in cases of life and death or urgent business, you cannot get a line out of them. Yet they write very fair, agreeable womanly letters, and would write much better ones if they allowed themselves a little more practice.

Mrs. More is devoured by care. She sits with a clouded brow in her elegant, well-regulated house; and when you talk with her, you are surprised to learn that everything in it is in the most dreadful disorder from one end to the other. You ask for particulars, and find that the disorder has relation to exquisite standards of the ways of doing things, derived from observation of life in the most subdivided state of European service, — to all of which she has not as yet been able to raise her domestics. You compliment her on her cook, and she responds, in plaintive accents," She can do a few things decently, but she is nothing of a cook." You refer with enthusiasm to her bread, her coffee, her muffins and hot rolls, and she listens and sighs. "Yes," she admits, "these are eatable,— not bad; but you should have seen the rolls at a certain cafe in Paris, and the bread at a certain nobleman's in England, where they had a bakery in the castle, and a French baker, who did nothing all the while but to refine and perfect the idea of bread. When she thinks of these things, everything in comparison is so coarse and rough!—but then she has learned

66

to be comfortable." Thus, in every department of housekeeping, to this too well-instructed person,

“Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.” Not a thing in her wide and apparently beautifully kept establishment is ever done well enough to elicit from her more than a sigh of toleration. "I suppose it must do," she faintly breathes, when poor human nature, having tried and tried again, evidently has got to the boundaries of its capabilities; "you may let it go, Jane; I never expect to be suited."

The poor woman, in the midst of possessions and attainments which excite the envy of her neighbors, is utterly restless and wretched, and feels herself always baffled and unsuccessful. Her exacting nature makes her dissatisfied with herself in everything that she undertakes, and equally dissatisfied with others. In the whole family there is little of that pleasure which comes from the consciousness of mutual admiration and esteem, because each one is pitched to so exquisite a tone that each is afraid to touch another for fear of making discord. They are afraid of each other everywhere. They cannot sing to each other, play to each other, write to each other; they cannot even converse together with any freedom, because each knows that the others are so dismally well informed and critically instructed.

Though all agree in a secret contempt for their neighbors over the way, as living in a most heathenish state of ignorant contentment, yet it is a fact that the elegant brother John will often, on the sly, slip into the Daytons' to spend an evening, and join them in singing glees and catches to their old rattling piano, and have a jolly time of it, which he remembers in contrast with the dull, silent hours at home. Kate Dayton has an uncultivated voice, which often falls from pitch; but she has a perfectly infectious gayety of good-nature, and when she is once at the piano, and all join in some merry troll, he begins to think that there may be something better even than good singing; and then they have dances and charades and games, all in such contented, jolly, impromptu ignorance of the unities of time, place, and circumstance, that he sometimes doubts, where ignorance is such bliss, whether it is n't in truth folly to be wise.

Jane and Maria laugh at John for his partiality to the Daytons, and yet they themselves feel the same attraction. At the Dayton's they

somehow find themselves heroines; their drawings are so much admired, their singing is so charming to these uncultured ears, that they are often beguiled into giving pleasure with their own despised acquirements; and Jane, somehow, is very tolerant at the devoted attention of Will Dayton, a joyous, honest-hearted fellow, whom, in her heart of hearts, she likes none the worse for being unexacting and simple enough to think her a wonder of taste and accomplishments. Will, of course, to the farthest possible from the Admirable Crichtons and exquisite Sir Philip Sidneys whom Mrs. More and the young ladies talk up at their leisure, and adorn with feathers from every royal and celestial bird, when they are discussing theoretic possible husbands. He is not in any way distinguished, except for a kind heart, strong native good sense, and a manly energy that has carried him straight into the heart of many a citadel life, before which the superior and more refined Mr. John had set himself down to deliberate upon the best and most elegant way of taking it. Will's plain, homely intelligence has often, in five minutes, disentangled some ethereal snarl in which these exquispun themselves up, and brought them to his own way of thinking by that sort of disenchanting process which honest, practical sense sometimes exerts over ideality.

site Mores had

The fact is, however, that in each of these families there is a natural defect which requires something from the other for completeness. Taking happiness as the standard, the Daytons have it as against the Mores. Taking attainment as the standard, the Mores have it as against the Daytons. A portion of the discontented ideality of the Mores would stimulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many things which might easily be made better, did they care enough to have them so; and a portion of the Daytons' self-satisfied contentment would make the attainments and refinements of the Mores of some practical use in advancing their own happiness.

plishments are so utterly out of the question that they never arise to the mind as objects of desire. In these well-balanced minds we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive line all through life between the attainable and the unattainable, and sets the key of desire accordingly. Common-sense teaches that there is no one branch of human art or science in which perfection is not a point forever receding. A botanist gravely assures us, that to become perfect in the knowledge of one branch of sea-weeds would take all the time and strength of a man for a life-time. There is no limit to music, to the fine arts. There is never a time when the gardener can rest, saying that his garden is perfect. Housekeeping, cooking, sewing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be pushed on forever, without exhausting the capabilities for better doing.

But while attainment in everything is endless, circumstances forbid the greater part of human beings from attaining in any direction the half of what they see would be desirable; and the difference between the miserable idealist and the contented realist often is, not that both do not see what needs to be done for perfection, but that, seeing it, one is satisfied with the attainable, and the other forever frets and wears himself out on the unattainable.

The principal of a large d complicated public institution was complimented on main taining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a diversity of cares. "I've made up my mind to be satisfied, when things are done half as well as I would have them," was his answer; and the same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic sphere.

There is a saying which one often hears among common people, that such and such a one are persons who never could be happy, unless everything went "just so,”—that is, in accordance with their highest conceptions.

When these persons are women, and undertake the sway of a home empire, they are sure to be miserable, and to make others so; for home is a place where by no kind of magic possible to woman can everything be always made to go "just so."

and

We can read treatises on education, very excellent ones there are. We may read very nice stories illustrating home management, in which book-children and book-servants all work into the author's plan with obliging una

an uncompromising fact, whose working into our ideal of life cannot be predicated with any degree of certainty. A husband is another absolute fact, of whose conformity to any ideal conceptions no positive account can be given. So, when a person has the most charming theo ries of education, the most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot to sit bound hand and foot and see them all trampled under the heel of opposing circumstances.

Nothing is easier than to make an ideal garden. We lay out our grounds, dig, plant, transplant, manure. We read catalogues of roses till we are bewildered with their lustrous glories. We set our plum, pear, and peach, we luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest grapes, and our theoretic garden is Paradise Regained. But in the actual garden there are cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for all the melons, slugs and rose-bugs for the roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, and late and early frosts, droughts, winds, and hail-storms here and there for all.

The garden and the family are fair pictures of each other. Both are capable of the most ravishing representations on paper; and the rules and directions for creating beauty and perfection in both can be made so apparently plain that he who runneth may read, and it would seem that a fool need not err therein; and yet the actual results are always halting miles away behind expectation and desire.

It would be an incalculable gain to domestic happiness, if people would begin the concert of life with their instruments tuned to a very low pitch; they who receive the most happiness are generally they who demand and expect the least.

Ideality often becomes an insidious mental and moral disease, acting all the more subtly from its alliances with what is highest and noblest within us. Shall we not aspire to be perfect? Shall we be contented with low measures and low standards in anything? To these inquiries there seems of course to be but one answer; yet the individual driven forward in blind, unreasoning aspiration becomes wearied, bewildered, discontented, restless, fretful, and miserable.

An unhappy person can never make others happy. The creators and governors of a home, who are themselves restless and inharmonious,

cannot make harmony and peace. This is the secret reason why many a pure, good, conscientious person is only a source of uneasiness in family life. They are exacting, discontented, unhappy; and spread the discontent and unhappiness about them. They are, to begin with, on poor terms with themselves; they do not like themselves; they do not like their own appearance, manners, education, accomplishments; on all these points they try themselves by ideal standards, and find themselves wanting. In morals, in religion, too, the same introverted scrutiny detects only errors and evils, till all life seems to them a miserable, hopeless failure, and they wish they had never been born. They are angry and disgusted with themselves, there is no self-toleration or selfendurance. And persons in a chronic quarrel with themselves are very apt to quarrel with others. That exacting nature which has no patience with one's own inevitable frailties and errors has none for those of others; and thus the great motive by which Christianity enforces tolerance of the faults of others loses its hold. There are people who make no allowances either for themselves or anybody else, but are equally angry and disgusted with both.

Now it is important that those finely strung natures in which ideality largely predominates should begin life by a religious care and restraint of this faculty. As the case often stands, however, religion only intensifies the difficulty, by adding stringency to exaction and censoriousness, driving the subject up with an unremitting strain till the very cords of reason sometimes snap. Yet properly understood and used, religion is the only cure for the evil of diseased ideality. The Christian religion is the only one that ever proposed to give to all human beings, however various the range of their nature and desires, the great underlying gift of rest. Its author, with a strength of assurance which only supreme Divinity can justify, promises rest to all persons, under all circumstances, with all sorts of natures, all sorts of wants, and all sorts of defects. The invitation is as wide as the human race: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you REST.”

Now this is the most remarkable, as this gracious form is accompanied by the presentation of a plan of perfection which is more ideal and exacting than any other that has ever been placed before mankind, — which, in so many

--

words, sets up absolute perfection as the only true goal of aspiration.

The problem which Jesus proposes to human nature is endless aspiration steadied by endless peace,- a perfectly restful, yet unceasing effort after a good which is never to be attained till we attain a higher and more perfect form of existence. It is because this problem is insolvable by any human wisdom, that He says that they who take His yoke upon them must learn of Him, for He alone can make the perfect yoke easy and its burden light.

The first lesson in this benignant school must be like a strong, broad foundation under every structure on which we wish to rear a happy life, — and that is that the full gratification of the faculty of ideality is never to be expected in this present stage of existence, but is to be transferred to a future life. Ideality, with its incessant, restless longings and yearnings, is snubbed and turned out of doors by human philosophy, when philosophy becomes middleaged and sulky with repeated disappointments, - it is berated as a cheat and a liar, — told to hold its tongue and take itself elsewhere; but Christianity bids it be of good cheer, still to aspire and hope and prophesy, and points to a future where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality.

A full faith in such a perfect future -a perfect faith that God has planted in the heart of man no desire which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in that future-gives the mind rest and contentment to postpone for a while gratifications that will certainly come at last.

Such a faith is better even than that native

philosophical good sense which restrains the ideal calculations and hopes of some; for it has a wider scope and a deeper power.

We have seen in our time a woman gifted with all those faculties which rejoice in the refinements of society, dispensing the elegant hospitalities of a bountiful home, joyful and giving joy. A sudden reverse has swept all this away, the wealth on which it was based has melted like a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen her with her little family beginning life again, in the log cabin of a Western settlement. We have seen her in the door of the one room that took the place of parlor, bed-room, nursery, and cheerfully making her children's morning toilette by the help of one tin wash-bowl that takes the place of her well

arranged bathing and dressing-rooms; and yet, as she twined their curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a jest and cheerful word for all.

The few morning-glories that she was training over her rude porch, seemed as much a source of delight to her as her former greenhouse and garden; and the adjustment of the one or two shelves wheron were the half-dozen books left of the library, her husband's private papers, and her own and her children's wardrobe, was entered into daily with a zealous interest, as she had never known a wider sphere.

Such facility of accommodation to life's reverses is supposed to be merely the result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament; in this case it was purely the work of religion. In early life this same woman had been the discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with vain longings in the midst of real and substantial comfort, had felt even the creasing of the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable annoyance. Now she has resigned herself to the work and toil of life as the soldier does to the duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, enjoying with a free heart the small daily pleasures which spring up like wild-flowers amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking to the end of the campaign for rest and congenial scenes.

This woman has within her the powers and gifts of an artist; but her pencils and her colors are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour after hour darning her children's stockings and turning and arranging a scanty wardrobe which no ingenuity can make more than decent. She was a beautiful musician; but a musical instrument is now a thing of the past; she only lulls her baby to sleep with snatches of the songs

which used to form the attraction of brilliant salons. She feels that a world of tastes and

talents are lying dormant in her while she is doing the dirty work of a nurse, cook, and seamstress; but she remembers Who took upon Him the form of a servant before her, and she has full faith that her beautiful gifts, like bulbs sleeping under ground, shall come up and blossom again in that fair future which He has promised. Therefore it is that she has no sighs for the present or the past, - -no quarrel with her life, or her lot in it; she is in harmony with herself and all around her; her husband looks upon her as a fair daily miracle, and her children rise up and call her blessed.-Mrs. Stowe, in Atlantic Monthly.

A NIGHT THOUGHT.

How grandly solemn is this arch of night!
How wonderfully beautiful and vast!
Crowded with worlds enswathed in living light,
Coeval with the immeasurable past!
With what a placid and effulgent face

The mild moon travels mid her golden isles,
And on the earth, asleep in night's embrace,
Pours the soft lustre of her quiet smiles!
Can I, Oh God! who tremble here with awe,
Doubt the Designer, sneer at the design,
Nor own that all is of Thy wisdom Thine,
Fashioned by Thee, and governed by Thy law?
I marvel at that being who can see

In these, Thy mighty works, no evidence of Thee.

A

AMERICAN LADIES.

COMPLIMENT to our countrywomen is paid by a Paris correspondent of a London paper. The writer, (of the "tender gender," it should be noticed,) in describing the company present at the Imperial dinner, says: "American ladies surpass our own countrywomen in the art of dress, and Paris and Parisian taste supply them with ample food for their expensive tastes. Thin muslin and rich lace were generally the materials of which the most

elegant costumes were composed; and a great many of the younger ladies, remarkable for their lovely features and figures, had, in some manner or other, contrived to bring into play the national colors. Thus, a bright blue scarf would be worn draped from one shoulder to the other, and hanging down at the side, while red

flowers or ribbons in the hat formed the tricolored emblems of the United States. One with lace, the skirt being looped up over a blue very elegant dress of muslin was richly trimmed silk slip by swallows. Hats of white straw and chip were gayly adorned with flowers, a gauze or tulle scarf being simply tied at the back and ist Hume was present, and, late in the evening, streaming down on the shoulders. The spiritualrecited some verses descriptive of a sea-fight, which he did in so admirable a manner that many of his audience, even of the masculine kind, were moved even to tears. National airs were sung in chorus, and, finally, some magnificent fireworks closed the evening. It was a great disappointment to many French ladies, who had begged for tickets, to meet with a refusal, as the fete was exclusively reserved for Americans, with perhaps one or two excep

tions."

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods.