Domestic Life.

Let us remember that a house should bear witness in all its economy that human culture is the end for which it is built and garnished. It stands there under the sun and moon to ends analogous, and not less noble than theirs. It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep; but the pine and the oak shall gladly descend from the mountains to uphold the roof of men as faithful and necessary as themselves; to be the shelter always open to the good and the true. A hall which shines with sincerity, brows ever tranquil, and a demeanour impossible to disconcert. Whose inmates know what they want, who do not ask your house how theirs shall be kept. The diet of the house does not create its order, but knowledge, character, action, absorb so much life and yield so much entertainment, that the refectory has ceased to be curiously studied. With a change of aim has followed a change of the whole scale, by which men and things were wont to be measured. Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and that poverty alone consists in feeling poor.—Emerson.